BallotPedia: “As of September 9, 2024, 11 statewide ballot measures related to abortion were certified in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Nevada, and South Dakota for the general election ballot in 2024. This is the most on record for a single year. Since the 1970s, abortion-related policies have been a topic… Continue Reading
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Author Archives: Sabrina I. Pacifici
How to Tell If What You’re Reading Was Written By AI
Lifehacker: “This post is part of Lifehacker’s “Exposing AI” series. We’re exploring six different types of AI-generated media, and highlighting the common quirks, byproducts, and hallmarks that help you tell the difference between artificial and human-created content. From the moment ChatGPT introduced the world to generative AI in late 2022, it was apparent that, going… Continue Reading
Is the press ‘sanewashing’ Trump?
Columbia Journalism Review: “There’s a hot new term doing the rounds among media critics: “sanewashing.” The term itself actually isn’t new, and it wasn’t born in media-criticism circles, per se; according to Urban Dictionary, it was coined in 2020 on a Reddit page for neoliberals (which Linda Kinstler wrote about recently for CJR), and meant… Continue Reading
Dismissing All Your Notifications? 5 Ways to Make Them Effective
PC Mag: “If your badge counts and pop-up reminders go unnoticed, you probably have a signal-to-noise problem—but it’s easy to fix. Do your notifications and reminders work for you? Do they get the job done? If not, you should make them more effective. Don’t worry; most of what you need to do only needs to… Continue Reading
How Telegram Became a Playground for Criminals, Extremists and Terrorists
The New York Times & ProPublica: “Telegram has become a global sewer of criminal activity, disinformation, child sexual abuse material, terrorism and racist incitement, according to a four-month investigation by The New York Times that analyzed more than 3.2 million Telegram messages from over 16,000 channels. The company, which offers features that enable criminals, terrorists… Continue Reading
Billion-Dollar Bank Accused of Secretly Sending Customers’ Personal and Financial Information to Facebook, Google and Microsoft
The Daily Hodl: “The eighth-largest bank in the US by total assets is accused of secretly collecting personal and financial information from its customers and sharing the data with tech giants. A new class-action lawsuit alleges Capital One engaged in an “outrageous, illegal, and widespread practice of disclosing – without consent – the Nonpublic Personal… Continue Reading
YouTubers Are Almost Too Easy to Dupe
The Atlantic [unpaywalled]”Perhaps the most accurate cliché is that if a deal appears too good to be true, then it probably is. To wit: If a “private investor” of unknown origin approaches you through an intermediary, offering you $400,000 a month to make “four weekly videos” for a politically partisan website and YouTube page, you… Continue Reading
Compare State Gun Laws
Every Town – Pick any two states to see how they compare head-to-head on all 50 policies. You can also click on any state or policy for more detail. Continue Reading
Imports make up growing share of U.S. fresh fruit and vegetable supply
USDA: “Imports play a vital and increasingly important role in ensuring that fresh fruit and vegetables are available year-round in the United States. Since the 2008 completion of the transition to tariff- and quota-free trade among Mexico, Canada, and the United States under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), U.S. fresh fruit and vegetable… Continue Reading
The Big Map of Who Lived When
Open Culture – Shows Which Cultural Figures Walked the Earth at the Same Time: From 1200 to Present -“We could call the time in which we live the “Information Age.” Or we could describe it more vividly as the era of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey and Martha… Continue Reading
Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, September 7, 2024
Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, September 7, 2024 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly… Continue Reading
The information wars are about to get worse, Yuval Noah Harari argues
The Economist [unpaywalled]: “Let Truth and falsehood grapple,” argued John Milton in Areopagitica, a pamphlet published in 1644 defending the freedom of the press. Such freedom would, he admitted, allow incorrect or misleading works to be published, but bad ideas would spread anyway, even without printing—so better to allow everything to be published and let… Continue Reading
