Ars Technica: “Between 1400 and 1775, a significant upsurge of witch trials swept across early-modern Europe, resulting in the execution of an estimated 40,000–60,000 accused witches. Historians and social scientists have long studied this period in hopes of learning more about how large-scale social changes occur. Some have pointed to the invention of the printing… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Education
How rational inference about authority debunking can curtail, sustain, or spread belief polarization
Setayesh Radkani, Marika Landau-Wells, Rebecca Saxe. How rational inference about authority debunking can curtail, sustain, or spread belief polarization. PNAS Nexus, 2024; 3 (10) DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae393 In polarized societies, divided subgroups of people have different perspectives on a range of topics. Aiming to reduce polarization, authorities may use debunking to lend support to one perspective… Continue Reading
The illusion of information adequacy
Gehlbach H, Robinson CD, Fletcher A (2024) The illusion of information adequacy. PLoS ONE 19(10): e0310216. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0310216: “How individuals navigate perspectives and attitudes that diverge from their own affects an array of interpersonal outcomes from the health of marriages to the unfolding of international conflicts. The finesse with which people negotiate these differing perceptions depends… Continue Reading
How social media distorts perceptions of norms
Claire E. Robertson, Kareena S. del Rosario, Jay J. Van Bavel, Inside the funhouse mirror factory: How social media distorts perceptions of norms, Current Opinion in Psychology, Volume 60, 2024, 101918, ISSN 2352-250X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2024.101918. “The current paper explains how modern technology interacts with human psychology to create a funhouse mirror version of social norms. We… Continue Reading
Marching Toward Violence: The Domestic Anti-Israeli Protest Movement
Over 150 groups involved in the disruptive anti-Israel protests on college campuses and elsewhere in the United States are “pro-terrorism.” The vast majority support Hamas and/or the October 7 terrorist attacks. The movement contains militant elements pushing it toward a wider, more severe campaign focused on property destruction and violence properly described as domestic terrorism.… Continue Reading
GPO Makes Available Thousands of New US Congressional Serial Set Volumes
U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) has added more than 3,000 volumes of the Congressional Serial Set containing more than 45,000 individual documents and reports to GPO’s GovInfo, the one-stop site for authentic, published information for all three branches of the Federal Government. This comes as part of a multi-year effort with the Library of Congress… Continue Reading
Stream More Than 30,000 Movies for Free With This One Simple Item
CNET – “When I was an undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I decided to add a concentration in film studies as part of my English degree. This choice exposed me to the marvelous world of film scholarship, adding to my already fervent love for movies since I had been… Continue Reading
Forums Are Still Alive, Active, And A Treasure Trove Of Information
Aftermath: “When I want information, like the real stuff, I go to forums. Over the years, forums did not really get smaller, so much as the rest of the internet just got bigger. Reddit, Discord and Facebook groups have filled a lot of that space, but there is just certain information that requires the dedication… Continue Reading
The Editors Protecting Wikipedia from AI Hoaxes
404 Media: “A group of Wikipedia editors have formed WikiProject AI Cleanup, “a collaboration to combat the increasing problem of unsourced, poorly-written AI-generated content on Wikipedia.” The group’s goal is to protect one of the world’s largest repositories of information from the same kind of misleading AI-generated information that has plagued Google search results, books… Continue Reading
Compare Countries and Cities Around the World
MyLifeElsewhere is a collaborative community that allows you to compare the country you live in with other countries around the world. We’ll show you various statistics that differentiate your country from others, including cost of living, geographic size, and more. If you moved to another country, what would your life be like? Continue Reading
GPO Quadruples Number of Congressionally Mandated Reports Since Launch
U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) now has more than 500 Congressionally Mandated Reports (CMR) from more than 75 Federal agencies available for free public access on GovInfo, the one-stop site for authentic, published information for all three branches of the Federal Government. This number has quadrupled since GPO first put CMRs online in December 2023.… Continue Reading
The Most Sought-After Travel Guide Is a Google Doc
thrillist – “Although Google Docs and Maps are simple to share, the creators who spend years perfecting their magnum opus docs are often selective about who gets access. When her friends want to know where to go in London or Milan, they go to Emilia Petrarca. The 32-year-old is a writer by day, but an… Continue Reading
