The Guardian: “Books by Margaret Atwood, Judy Blume, Rupi Kaur and Sarah J Maas are among 13 titles that the state of Utah has ordered to be removed from all public school classrooms and libraries. This marks the first time a state has outlawed a list of books statewide, according to PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman,… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: August 2024
My journey into the surreal, infuriating future of homeowners insurance
Business Insider: “I take privacy and surveillance extremely seriously — so seriously that I started one of the leading think tanks on the topic, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. But while I study surveillance threats around the country for a living, I had no idea that my own insurance company was using my premium dollars… Continue Reading
Why you should use a VPN on your mobile device
ProtonVPN: “Growing public awareness about the threat posed to our fundamental right to privacy by online trackers has fueled a surge(new window) in VPN adoption, a trend that has been boosted thanks to people spending more time online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Although VPN use is at an all-time high, many people still associate… Continue Reading
How to Find the Source of a Video on the Web
MakeUseOf: “If you’ve ever wanted to find the source of a video you’ve watched online, you’ll know it’s no easy feat. Even after a lot of searching, you may not turn up results. Here’s how to search for the full video from a clip you’ve seen online. There are many reasons you might want to… Continue Reading
Everyone Can Benefit From These 7 Mac Accessibility Features
How to Geek: Quick Links Customize the Font Size Customize the Pointer Size Reduce Motion Zoom on Everything VoiceOver Increase the Contrast Reduce Transparency Your Mac comes packed with a long list of accessibility features that support your vision, mobility, hearing, and speech. Accessibility benefits everyone, and I’ve found that this rings true with these… Continue Reading
States With The Most Confrontational Drivers 2024
Forbes Advisor: “Driving in the U.S. is getting increasingly dangerous due to confrontational driving. The number of violent road rage incidents across the United States has surged over the past decade. Between 2014 and 2023, road rage shootings increased by more than 400%, from 92 to 481, according to an analysis of data from the… Continue Reading
All-night streetlights make leaves inedible to insects
Frontiers.org – Threatening the food chain: “In many cities, the streetlights run all night — but what does this mean for the plants and animals that live there? Scientists tested Japanese pagoda trees and green ash trees in Beijing to see what effect round-the-clock light has on them. They found that the leaves were tougher… Continue Reading
We need to prepare for ‘addictive intelligence’
MIT Technology Review [unpaywalled] The allure of AI companions is hard to resist. Here’s how innovation in regulation can help protect people. “AI concerns overemphasize harms arising from subversion rather than seduction. Worries about AI often imagine doomsday scenarios where systems escape human control or even understanding. Short of those nightmares, there are nearer-term harms… Continue Reading
Parenting in America Today
“Mental health concerns top the list of worries for parents; most say being a parent is harder than they expected. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and amid reports of a growing youth mental health crisis, four-in-ten U.S. parents with children younger than 18 say they are extremely or very worried that their children… Continue Reading
Google is finally taking action to curb non-consensual deepfakes
MIT Technology Review [unpaywalled]: “…Last week Google said it is taking steps to keep explicit deepfakes from appearing in search results. The tech giant is making it easier for victims to request that nonconsensual fake explicit imagery be removed. It will also filter all explicit results on similar searches and remove duplicate images. This will prevent… Continue Reading
Harness the power of visual materials for teaching and learning
JSTR: “Artstor is JSTOR’s cross-disciplinary collection of over 2 million* rights-cleared images from around the world, discoverable alongside JSTOR’s journals, books, and other primary sources on one feature-rich platform. By joining images with vital critical and historical background, Artstor on JSTOR expands avenues of research in one convenient workflow, and empowers educators to support active… Continue Reading
How Olivetti Designed the First Personal Computer in History
Open Culture – The Programma 101 (1965): “If you were to come across an Olivetti Programma 101, you probably wouldn’t recognize it as a computer. With its 36 keys and its paper-strip printer, it might strike you as some kind of oversized adding machine, albeit an unusually handsome one. But then, you’d expect that quality… Continue Reading
