NEW RESOURCES

NME: The OPM Archive Foundation unveils online archive of digitised Filipino music artifacts. “The OPM Archive Foundation has unveiled an online archive collecting digitised artifacts of Filipino music, now open for virtual viewing. Earlier this week (August 26), the OPM Archive Foundation announced the digital archive, now open for online viewing and for donations of memorabilia.”

GPO: GPO Makes Available 11,000 Railroad Retirement Board Publications . “The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) is partnering with the Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) to make more than 11,000 RRB Board Coverage Decisions and Legal Opinions available on GPO’s govinfo, the one-stop site to authentic, published Government information. The indexed and searchable collection covers final agency decisions and agency guidance documents from 1936–2019. The Board Coverage Decisions available are final agency decisions that determine employer and employee status under the Railroad Retirement Act and the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Neowin: Google Assistant now lets you donate directly to nonprofit organizations. “Google today added a new feature to Assistant that allows you to make donations to various causes. The Center for Policing Equity is the first nonprofit organization to benefit from the new feature. The group promotes police transparency, equity, and accountability through research. To donate to them, simply launch Google Assistant and say ‘Donate to racial justice’.” I hope this is well locked down, because it seems open to shenanigans.

LiveMint: Google, Facebook dump Hong Kong cable after US security alarm. “Google and Facebook Inc. dropped plans for an undersea cable between the U.S. and Hong Kong after the Trump administration said Beijing might use the link to collect information on Americans. But the companies quickly submitted a revised proposal that includes links to Taiwan and the Philippines, as envisioned in the application that was withdrawn on Thursday.”

Digital Library of Georgia: GHN Forthcoming Newspapers – Fall 2020. “Over the next year, the Digital Library of Georgia will be adding a variety of new newspaper titles to the Georgia Historic Newspapers (GHN) website (https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/). Below is a list of newspapers titles currently slated to be added to GHN in Fall 2020/Winter 2021.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

BuzzFeed News: Facebook Employees Are Outraged At Mark Zuckerberg’s Explanations Of How It Handled The Kenosha Violence. “Frustrated Facebook employees slammed CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday during a companywide meeting, questioning his leadership and decision-making, following a week in which the platform promoted violent conspiracy theories and gave safe harbor to militia groups. The billionaire chief executive was speaking via webcast at the company’s weekly all-hands meeting, attempting to address questions about violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and the QAnon conspiracy that has proliferated across Facebook.”

NBC News: Viral pro-Trump tweets came from fake African American spam accounts, Twitter says. “Twitter has taken action to stop a spam operation that pushed messages from fake accounts about Black people abandoning the Democratic Party. The company removed two fake accounts and deleted the account of a San Diego man who spammed the platform, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed Wednesday.”

Balkan Insight: Journalism, Activism Combine to Preserve Riches of Ancient Romanian Port. “In early July, when a court in Romania declared null and void the 2003 sale of a century-old palace on the country’s Black Sea coast, it marked a milestone in a journalistic fight to preserve the rich cultural heritage of the port of Constanta. Built in the early 1920s at the behest of Queen Mary of Romania, the Royal Palace of Mamaia became a nightclub and eventually a depository for mouldy mattresses after the state sold it to a local businessman 17 years ago. But the battle to save it from ruin began only in 2014, with the investigative reporting and public campaigning of Info Sud-Est, an online publication on Constanta affairs with a rare focus on the preservation of the city’s cultural heritage.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BNN Bloomberg: U.S. Google Monopoly Case Could Hit Supreme Court AmEx Hurdle. “As the Justice Department prepares to file a landmark antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet Inc.’s Google, a 2018 Supreme Court decision in favor of American Express Co. could complicate matters.”

Motherboard: CBP Now Has a Massive Searchable Database for Devices Seized at the Border. “Every year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents seize tens of thousands of cell phones, laptops, and other devices from travelers at or near the country’s borders, often without charging them with a specific crime. Those seizures give the agency access to massive amounts of highly personal information—data that CBP will now upload to a searchable, agency-wide surveillance database and maintain for up to 75 years, according to a privacy assessment recently published by the agency.”

NonDoc (Oklahoma): Ambiguous social media rule leaves legislators in an ethical limbo. “State law holds strict rules preventing elected officials from using public resources for campaigning. Traditionally, this has meant that officeholders cannot solicit or receive donations in state-owned buildings or use state-owned phones or email accounts to conduct campaign business. When it comes to social media, however, the rules are not as well established, and many incumbents often stray into ethically ambiguous territory by using social media both to communicate with their constituents and to promote issues and campaigns.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Manila Bulletin: Nat’l museum unveils rare 14th century Chinese bowl in virtual series. “The National Museum of the Philippines (NMP) recently shared to the public a 14th century bowl found in an underwater heritage site located at the southern tip of Palawan as part of its ‘Museum From Home’ series.” Good morning, Internet…

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