Hi. There’s a pandemic going on, I’m isolated in two rooms and a bathroom until next Tuesday at 5pm, and unbelievable violence took place in our nation’s capital yesterday. Nothing has seemed real since I heard my Granny fall; now it feels like the dream has developed a fever. Hug your people. I love you.

NEW RESOURCES

Untapped New York: The Real Life Music Venues in Sylvie’s Love Set in 1950s NYC. “Set in 1957 Harlem, but filmed in modern-day Los Angeles, the film follows the complicated love story of aspiring television producer Sylvie Parker (Tessa Thompson) and jazz saxophonist Robert Halloway (Nnamdi Asomugha). Historic Los Angeles buildings and soundstage sets were used to recreate two iconic, New York City venues, Blue Morocco, a jazz club in the Bronx, and The Town Hall, a theater in Times Square. Read on to learn more about these two swinging sites, and discover more Sylvie’s Love filming locations here, on a brand new website dedicated solely to TV and movie filming locations from Untapped New York.”

Dublin Gazette: New website lists your nearest public toilet for times of need . “Already, hundreds of public facilities have already been submitted to the website, with dozens of these located around Dublin’s suburb and city centre. Toilets on the map are located in shopping centres, public parks, museums and more – even the Four Courts bathroom is listed on the website.” The site notes that many of these locations might be unavailable as Ireland is in lockdown.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5 Mac: Twitter acquires Breaker podcast app, will integrate its team to Spaces. “Twitter today confirmed the acquisition of Breaker, a podcast app focused on social interaction. The announcement was made through the official Breaker blog on Monday as the company mentions that its team will help build the new Twitter Spaces feature.”

Mashable India: Facebook Removes The ‘Like Button’ From Its Redesigned Public Pages. “Facebook recently revealed that it has dropped the ‘likes’ button from its redesigned public pages used by artists, actors, public figures, and brands. The move is aimed towards simplifying its overall design for users and help them connect with different artists and brands in an easy manner.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: How to Tell If an Image Has Been Manipulated or Photoshopped. “You can’t believe everything you read—or see. Social media is rife with manipulated or ‘Photoshopped’ images. Here are some telltale signs you’re looking at an altered image.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Electronic Beats: Digital Disconnect: Exploring the Influence of Social Media on Electronic Music in the Past Decade. “Social Media is an inextricable part of life in the 21st century. From DJs rising to fame on Instagram, new genres being introduced through viral hits on Soundcloud and YouTube, bedroom productions turn into chart-topping, Grammy-winning hits on TikTok, the music industry, as we know it today, is unimaginable without it. In this first excerpt from one of the essays featured in the Electronic Beats book, Caroline Whiteley traces how a decade of declining reliance on traditional media for musical discoveries and an increase of social media usage has shaped the electronic music landscape we know today.”

BBC News: World War Two veterans’ memories collected for new archive. “Landing on Juno Beach on D-Day, handing memos to Winston Churchill and working as a ‘land girl’ in the Women’s Land Army. These are just some of the remarkable memories of World War Two veterans whose stories are being collected for the West Wales Veterans Archive, which organisers say is an important and timely reminder of a turbulent chapter of history.”

CBC: From fossils to statues to shoes, P.E.I. Museum going online. “The Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation will launch a new e-museum this month, with thousands of artifacts ready for display. ‘We won’t, of course, have our entire collection online immediately. We’re still in the process of photographing everything,’ said executive director Matthew McRae. Staff have been working on the project for two years, and have 2,000 objects ready to go, but that’s just a tiny portion of the museum’s 100,000-object collection.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Trump Bans Alipay and 7 Other Chinese Apps. “President Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order prohibiting transactions with eight Chinese software applications, including Alipay, the payment platform owned by Ant Group, and WeChat Pay, which is owned by Tencent.”

CNET: Russia blamed for SolarWinds hack in joint FBI, NSA and CISA statement. “Key government intelligence agencies said Tuesday that the SolarWinds hack is ‘likely Russian in origin,’ according to a joint statement from the FBI, NSA, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It’s the first time the four agencies have attributed the cyber attack to Russia.”

The Art Newspaper: In the battle against antiquities trafficking, Germany develops app to identify looted cultural heritage. “One of the biggest challenges for police and customs officials in combating the illegal trade in looted antiquities is in identifying stolen objects. While drugs or weapons are readily identifiable as illegal imports, stolen antiquities can be passed off as modern copies or legitimate imports if they are accompanied by convincing documentation…. German information technology experts are developing an app to help them, and a prototype may be ready for practical trials by the middle of the year, says Martin Steinebach, the head of media security and IT forensics at the Fraunhofer Institute in Darmstadt.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Illinois: Retracted scientific paper persists in new citations, study finds. “A small portion of scientific papers are retracted for research that is in error or fraudulent. But those papers can continue to be cited by other scientists in their work, potentially passing along the misinformation from the retracted articles.” Good morning, Internet…

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