NEW RESOURCES

Vermont Law School: New Legal Resource Assists Farmers And Food Producers With Food Safety Compliance. “Today Vermont Law School’s Center for Agriculture and Food Systems (CAFS) and University of Vermont Extension’s Northeast Center to Advance Food Safety (NECAFS) announced the launch of a free legal resource for farmers and food producers….the new website features fact sheets that answer pressing legal questions about food safety compliance.”

Modesto Bee: Got wildfire fuel around your rural home? Use website to find livestock to graze it. “A new website helps put livestock to work on California land overgrown with wildfire fuel. Owners of small rural properties can schedule visits by cattle and other livestock that munch on the fuel. The animals come from full-time ranchers and other participants in the program.” If this sounds familiar, it’s because a similar site also launched in November. That, however, was a grazing exchange site focused on the midwestern US.

Irish Legal News: Law students create database of Irish court decisions. “The Irish Legal Information Initiative (IRLII) database includes keywords to help busy practitioners identify the cases most useful to them. IRLII was originally founded by Professor John Mee in 2001 as part of UCC School of Law’s commitment to the Free Access to the Law Movement (FALM) and in association with the British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII).”

NBC Los Angeles: Slime Science Goes Online at the Natural History Museum. “If you’ve got a child who is a slime scholar, and you’re seeking more lively and learn-ready ways to pass the time at home, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is here to give you the gooey goods. As in the ‘Science of Slime,’ an online, multi-faceted exhibition that’s all about the nature-amazing dimensions of the gelatinous substances.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Facebook, Twitter CEOs to visit Congress again: How to watch on Tuesday. “The virtual hearing marks the second time Zuckerberg and Dorsey are to appear before lawmakers in less than a month. On Oct. 28, the executives, along with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, testified at a hearing on Section 230, a law that gives internet companies immunity for content posted by their users. That hearing strayed from its intended purpose, with senators challenging the trio on content moderation policies, including their responses to the New York Post story.”

The Next Web: It’s official: YouTube has canceled Rewind 2020. “YouTube doesn’t want you to remember 2020. The Google subsidiary has announced it’s canceling 2020’s instalment of Rewind, its annual look back at the year’s most memorable moments. The decision marks the first time the company has decided to skip this ritual since its inception in 2010.”

The Verge: Google will soon let you opt out of Gmail’s data-hungry smart features entirely. “Google is adding a new option to let users opt out of having their Gmail, Chat, and Meet data used to offer smart features like Smart Compose and Smart Reply, the company announced today. Although you’ve previously been able to toggle these individual features on and off, the new toggle disables the background data processing that makes them possible.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Nylon: An Oral History Of The Mid-2000s Scene Queens. “Myspace was the creation of a mysterious man known simply as Tom, but by then, it was clear who really ruled the site. This was the era when the Scene Queens were at the top of the world — or, at least, at the top of your Top 8. They controlled the blogosphere with a heavy-hand of eyeliner and a searing hot flatiron, mingling offline with some of the era’s biggest bands, effectively making them the objects of obsession on LiveJournal and beyond. And then, just as quickly as Ryan Ross left Panic! at the Disco, they all but disappeared from the mainstream — or did they?”

The Art Newspaper: Unesco under fire for using Met objects in anti-trafficking campaign. “Unesco has pulled back images from an advertising campaign intended to highlight international trafficking in looted artefacts after receiving complaints that it misrepresented the provenance of the works pictured. Among the objects used in the campaign were three from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that were not stolen in recent years as the original ads indicated.”

Brookings: A brief experiment in a more open Chinese web. “On Oct. 9, a company backed by China’s largest cybersecurity company, Qihoo 360, released Tuber, an app for Android in China that enabled the browsing of content outside the Great Firewall, including banned sites like Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Netflix. A blurb on the app’s dedicated webpage noted that ‘Tuber has passed the review of relevant competent authorities and obtained an online operating license.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

MIT Technology Review: Ransomware did not kill a German hospital patient. “When a German hospital patient died in September while ransomware disrupted emergency care at the facility, police launched a negligent-homicide investigation and said they might hold the hackers responsible. The case attracted worldwide attention because it could have been the first time law enforcement considered a cyberattack to be directly responsible for a death. But after months of investigation, police now say the patient was in such poor health that she likely would have died anyway, and that the cyberattack was not responsible.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Knight Foundation: Researchers Found Anti-Vaccination Discourse On Facebook Increased In Volume Over The Last Decade, And Increasingly Emphasizes Civil Rights. “For this study, published on October 1, 2020 in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers examined more than 250,000 posts on 204 Facebook pages expressing opposition to vaccines between October 2009 and October 2019. While opposition to vaccines can take many forms, the researchers found vaccine opponents online coalescing around the ‘civil liberties’ argument that individuals have the right to refuse to take a vaccine.” Good morning, Internet…

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