Hi. EMS came and got my mother Monday and she’s currently in the hospital with both Covid and pneumonia. My Granny is still in rehab but we have to find her a care situation by Friday as she can no longer live alone. And I got out of my 12-day self-isolation yesterday.

It seems like all I’ve had emotional energy for is doomscrolling on TweetDeck, and I’m damned angry at myself for it. I’m letting you down by not keeping up with ResearchBuzz and CoronaBuzz. I hate that because a) this is my baby and I’m not taking good care of my baby and b) I’m not doing right by those of you who have been so kind to support me on Patreon. Again, if you want a refund, let me know.

Let me get some work done. Hug your people. Wear a mask. I love you.

NEW RESOURCES

Irish Examiner: Women on Air: New database encourages women to contribute to broadcast media. “Women on Air is launching a new media database aimed at women who are ‘ready, willing and able’ to contribute to broadcast media opportunities. The organisation aims at bringing greater gender balance to Irish airwaves and have chosen Women’s Little Christmas (Nollaig na mBan) to launch their new database, which a view to providing ‘greater visibility and access to women from a wide range of backgrounds and expertise.'”

Spotted via Reddit: a database of election maps from a nonpartisan site. From the page: “Below you’ll find over 800 high-quality election maps available for you to view and download. Make sure to check out our User Guide if you have any questions about how to use the database.”

Princeton University: Middle Ages for Educators website brings Princeton scholarship to an international audience. “Princeton’s Program in Medieval Studies and the Committee for the Study of Late Antiquity have launched a new website, Middle Ages for Educators, aimed at high school and college students and educators worldwide and, more broadly, at anyone interested in studying or teaching Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.”

Justice for Iran: Profiles of hundreds individual and tens institutional Iranian perpetrators released. “The database demonstrates profiles of only a part of hundreds of perpetrators of grave violations of human rights who have so far been identified by Justice for Iran. It consists of more than 220 individuals and a multitude of institutions that have been involved in more than 430 incidents of grave human rights violations. The current time frame spans across the past four decades, following the inception of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Amongst other rights, violations include 156 incidents of violations of the Right to Life against individuals or large groups of prisoners, 106 incidents of violations of the Right to Freedom of Assembly, and 62 incidents of violation of the Prohibition of Torture.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Conspiracy theories about Capitol riot are still popping up on social media. “Ashli Babbitt, a President Donald Trump supporter, was identified by US Capitol Police as one of the five people who died after a mob stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday. It didn’t take long, though, for conspiracy theorists to falsely claim the 35-year-old Air Force veteran was actually alive and well.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Bridge Chronicle: Pune bizman dies by drowning after Google Map reveals the wrong path. “A Chinchwad-based businessman died by drowning after his car went under the backwater of a dam in Akole tehsil of Nagar district on Saturday (January 9) early morning. His two other friends accompanying him managed to escape and save their lives. The businessman was driving the car and relied on the closest route shown by Google Maps while they were enroute Kalsubai – a mountain in the Western Ghats and the highest point in Maharashtra with its summit situated at an elevation of 1,646 metre – for a trek.”

ABC News (Australia): Australian historians are building a 2020 time capsule — this is what’s in it. “When a koala which had been hanging on the Brooklyn Bridge arrived in a FedEx box for Libby Stewart in Canberra, she refused to touch it. The then-senior curator at the National Museum of Australia (NMA) had arranged for the plush toy, which had been left on the New York City icon, to be sent Down Under. A tag hanging from its foot read: ‘One billion of the world’s unique wildlife has died in the Australian bushfire.’ Ms Stewart had wanted to acquire the item, ever since the global campaign appeared on Instagram, for the NMA’s bushfire collection but there wasn’t a clear consensus on how long COVID-19 could survive on flat surfaces.”

Rolling Stone: Patreon Claimed They Kicked Conspiracy Theorists Off. QAnon Still Flourishes. “Both aspiring and well-established QAnon influencers are directly profiting off the paid subscription service platform Patreon, despite the website publicly cracking down on accounts pushing the conspiracy theory last winter. Rolling Stone found nearly a dozen examples of creators on the platform using language that identifies them as followers of QAnon, the far-right extremist conspiracy theory baselessly positing, among other things, that President Trump will arrest and execute a cadre of left-wing political figures who are secretly pedophiles.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Gizmodo: Google’s Plan To Quash Cookies Draws Scrutiny From Regulators. “On Friday, UK’s antitrust authority announced a new investigation into Google’s plan to end support for third party cookies in Chrome. The probe, it explained, is meant to determine whether the change ‘could cause advertising spend to become even more concentrated on Google’s ecosystem,’ potentially choking out competing companies that are — for the most part — already gasping for air.”

The Guardian: Twitter’s Trump ban could lead to regulation rethink, says Hancock. “The decision by Twitter to permanently suspend Donald Trump from its platform could justify tightening the regulation for social media companies, a cabinet minister has suggested. Matt Hancock said the move showed Twitter ‘taking editorial decisions’ and by implication accepting that social media companies are not just platforms.”

Threatpost: Researcher Builds Parler Archive Amid Amazon Suspension. “A security researcher said she has scraped and is archiving 99 percent of Parler’s public posts, as the social-media network goes offline following suspensions from Amazon, Apple and Google. Archived content includes public posts from the social-media site. These posts reportedly included Parler video URLs made up of raw video files with associated embedded metadata – and precise GPS coordinates of where the videos were taken, sparking privacy concerns about the service’s data collection.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University at Buffalo: Twitter was right to suspend Trump’s account, UB expert says. “UB geographer Monica Stephens agrees with Twitter’s decision to suspend President Donald Trump’s account following Wednesday’s insurrection in which his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the process of confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory. ‘I think that given the circumstances, Twitter did the right thing,’ says Stephens assistant professor in the Department of Geography who analyzes social media to understand how user-generated content is impacting communities, social relations and democratic processes.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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