NEW RESOURCES

Mixmag: An Online Archive Is Documenting 30 Years Of Dance Music History. “The Dance Music Archive is an online database that documents 30 years of dance music and rave culture. Just launched, the website allows visitors to explore each decade of dance music history from the 1980s onwards, through DJ mixes, radio shows, blogs, artwork and more. The team has ripped CDs, gathered physical documents and curated Spotify playlists to create an exciting audio-visual timeline.”

University of Arkansas: New Digital Collection Focused on International Scholarship Program. “A new digital collection, funded in part by the U of A’s Chancellor’s Innovation Fund, is now available to researchers worldwide. Drawing on materials from two archival collections in the University Libraries Special Collections Division, the Fulbright Program History Digital Collection provides information about the establishment of the Fulbright Program and the work of its early commissions.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

BetaNews: LibreOffice 7.2 is here with a long list of changes and improvements. “Serving as a handy reminder that Microsoft Office is certainly not the only office suite out there, LibreOffice 7.2 has landed. There are a sizable number of changes in this latest version of the free, open-source office software including support for Apple M1 chips.”

CNET: OnlyFans will prohibit sexually explicit content starting in October. “The London-based livestreaming website OnlyFans will begin prohibiting sexually explicit content starting in October, the company said Thursday. The new standards will still permit nudity, provided that creators post in accordance with the site’s acceptable use policy.”

TechCrunch: Twitter rolls out a series of improvements to its Direct Message system. “Have you ever tried to share a funny tweet with a few friends via Twitter DM, only to accidentally start a group chat? You’re not alone. Today, Twitter announced that it will roll out a few quality of life improvements to its direct messaging system over the next few weeks, including the ability to DM a tweet to multiple people at once in individual conversations. Researcher Jane Manchun Wong noticed that Twitter was working on this functionality last month.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Mashable: The TikTok controversy over collecting human bones, explained. “Human bone collector and distributor Jon Ferry built a TikTok following of nearly 457,000 for his videos sharing facts about human anatomy, showing viewers how forensic anthropologists use bones in their research, and displaying his (literal) bone-chilling collection of human remains. Ferry’s pièce de résistance, which he refers to his ‘pride and joy,’ is a corner stacked floor to ceiling with human spines.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNN: Facebook bug exposes some contact information. “The bug, which has since been repaired, was part of the Download Your Information tool, which lets Facebook users export all the data from profiles, such as posts to their timeline and conversations with friends. People using the tool may have downloaded inadvertently the contact information for people they were somehow connected to.” This seems to be something to be aware of, but not get too wound up about.

AP: Lawsuit: Iowa governor’s office violating open records law. “Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ office is illegally delaying the release of public records related to its $26 million, no-bid coronavirus testing contract, a new lawsuit contends. Reynolds and her office’s public records custodian, attorney Michael Boal, are the latest officials to be accused of violating open records laws by a Utah-based company investigating testing programs in several states.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Are You Ready for Sentient Disney Robots?. No. “There are animatronics at Disney World that have been doing the same herky-jerky thing on loop since Richard Nixon was president. In the meantime, the world’s children have become technophiles, raised on apps (three million in the Google store), the Roblox online gaming universe and augmented reality Snapchat filters. Cars are driving themselves, and SpaceX rockets are autonomously landing on drone ships How are the rudimentary animatronic birds in Disneyland’s Enchanted Tiki Room supposed to compete? They dazzled in 1963. Today, some people fall asleep.”

Poynter: Lessons learned from a year covering fact-checking. “I wrote in my parting email to the verified signatories of the IFCN’s Code of Principles that their work is a sisyphean task. You debunk a falsehood about something like chemical spraying helicopters in Italy only to see it pop up again in Ireland or France. Some of the details have changed, but the structure remains the same, and worse yet the repetition of the falsehood makes it easier for people to believe. Add to that the political and financial benefits of spreading malignant falsehoods, combined with the scapegoating of fact-checking organizations for technology companies’ content moderation decisions, and you’ve got a profession that requires a healthy dose of self-care and mental health days.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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