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Wartime Correspondence, Historic Arctic Photography, Indigipedia, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, March 29, 2021

NEW RESOURCES

New York Times: An Online Museum Shows Life During Wartime. “American forces were stationed in Vietnam when Col. George S. Patton, the son of the famed World War II general, recorded that chilling message to his wife, Joanne, in 1968. As troops moved east of the Lai Khê base into an area called the Catcher’s Mitt, a lone fighter fired a rocket-propelled grenade at an American armored personnel carrier, killing a gunner and grievously wounding another soldier….That recording is being made public for the first time in the collection of a new history museum dedicated to wartime correspondence by American service members. The Museum of American War Letters, as it is known, opened Sunday, a day before National Vietnam War Veterans Day.”

Nunatsiaq News: Rare collection of historical Arctic photographs digitized. “Nearly 200 historical photos of the Canadian Arctic are now available online for the first time. Taken by the late photographer George Hunter between 1946 and the 1990s, the photos include scenes and people from at least 16 communities across Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and Manitoba.”

USEFUL STUFF

Search Engine Journal: Learn SEO: The 38 Best Blogs, Resources & Publications. “Today, SEO is more important than ever – and it’s also more complicated than ever. Some of these blogs are for beginners. Many aren’t, but don’t let that scare you away. That just means more opportunities to learn something nifty, right?”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Found (and backed) on Kickstarter: Indigipedia.ca. From the Kickstarter page: “The proposed development and creation of indigipedia.ca – the Indigenous Digital Encyclopedia is an opportunity to curate knowledge and write our own history to provide accessible knowledge, information, and resources with Indigenous communities and for allies. Through ease of access, we aim to return Indigenous knowledge to people who had it stolen from them, as well as share the knowledge with others who are eager to learn.”

Mashable: TikTok’s algorithm is sending users down a far-right extremist rabbit hole. “QAnon. Patriot Party, Oath Keepers. Three Percenters. Videos promoting these far right wing movements are all banned on TikTok. Yet the viral app’s recommendations algorithm keeps pushing accounts that promote these groups and movements anyway. According to a new report by the media monitoring group Media Matters for America, TikTok’s user recommendation algorithm is pushing its users toward accounts with the kinds of far-right views that are supposedly prohibited on the platform.”

Reuters: Facebook, Google plan new undersea cables to connect Southeast Asia and America. “Facebook said on Monday it planned two new undersea cables to connect Singapore, Indonesia and North America in a project with Google and regional telecommunication companies to boost internet connection capacity between the regions.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

MYNorthwest: Northwest Senators introduce ARCHIVES Act to stop sale of Seattle facility. “The long battle to save the endangered Seattle branch of the National Archives has now been officially joined by a group of federal lawmakers from the Pacific Northwest. On Wednesday, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) introduced the awkwardly, yet somewhat cleverly named ‘Assuring Regular Consultation to Have Indigenous Voices Effectively Solicited Act’ – or ‘ARCHIVES Act’ for short – to retroactively amend the original FASTA legislation. FASTA is an Obama-era law that was used by an obscure federal agency to target the Seattle facility, and other valuable federal real estate, for closure and rapid sale.”

Politico: ‘Time is not on our side’ — Biden navigates cyber attacks without a cyber czar. “The failure to fill the role, which would be responsible for coordinating the entire U.S. government’s defensive cyber operations, comes as the new administration grapples with how to kick suspected Russian and Chinese hackers out of federal cyber infrastructure following two major breaches. And it lays bare the challenges in setting up a brand new agency that could encroach upon some power centers in the White House, particularly the National Security Council.”

Rest of World: A Hong Kong journalist is on trial for using a public database. “This week a journalist in Hong Kong is on trial, accused of violating the Road Traffic Ordinance; she was arrested for accessing a public database, in a case that’s raising questions not about traffic laws but the city’s freedom of press.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

SUPERJUMP: An Appeal Through the Nostalgia Glasses. “Any perusal through social media will show you that gaming’s appreciation goes far beyond whatever the most recent release is. Gamers love to talk about old games, and not through a fond ‘do you remember when’ anecdotal sense, but through a ‘I just played this very real game on my very real PlayStation 2 last week’ sense. It can be expensive for companies to leave their servers live and allow gamers to buy games that are ten, fifteen, twenty years old, but maybe this finally needs to be accepted as a sacrifice for the historical curation of the medium — or, maybe, we need to figure out a better way to make virtual consoles and re-releases viable that go beyond a complete obliteration every couple of console cycles.”

WTVQ: First-of-its-kind analytics tool helps colleges eliminate blind spots in jobs and salary data. “Kentucky colleges and universities have a new tool to see if graduates who move out of state are securing jobs and earning good wages – key factors in evaluating the success of an academic program. The interactive tool is called the Multi-State Postsecondary Report (MSPSR). It’s one of the first efforts in the country to share workforce data from contiguous states on recent college graduates.”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

Gizmodo: The Boat in the Suez Canal Is Still Stuck, But You Can Now Stick It Anywhere You Want With This App. “For all who have been captivated by the Ever Given, the ginormous shipping container boat that has been stuck in the Suez Canal for days, we have some good news. Before you get excited, no, the boat’s still stuck. But you can now stick the Ever Given anywhere you please thanks to the clever people of the internet, specifically one Garrett Dash Nelson.” I believe by the time you read this the boat will be unstuck. Good morning, Internet…

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1 reply »

  1. Oh man — that Ever Given Ever Ywhere app drove me nuts… Amazing how hard it is to lose your sense of place when the underlying satellite imagery shows no geopolitical labels (city names, street names, state names, etc.).

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