NEW RESOURCES

Northwestern Now: New tool to guide sustainable building design and construction. “Originally created for disaster recovery and reconstruction guidance, the Building Material Selection and Use: An Environmental Guide (BMEG) examines environmental impacts, material alternatives, and design and construction best practices. WWF first created the tool in the wake of the 2015 Nepal earthquake, which severely damaged the country’s infrastructure and placed a high demand on resources. The BMEG provided a guidebook of sound practices to minimize likelihood of future disasters caused by deforestation, erosion landslides and floods.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

National Archives: 1950 Census Release Will Offer Enhanced Digital Access, Public Collaboration Opportunity. “The new website will include a name search function powered by an Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology tool. This is important for genealogists and other researchers who rely on census records for new information about the nation’s past.”

Deadline: Disney Reaches New Carriage Deal With Google’s YouTube TV. “YouTube TV and Disney agreed to a new deal that will restore access to a number of the entertainment giant’s networks including ESPN, ABC and FX. News of the updated carriage deal comes Sunday afternoon, just days after negotiations between Disney and Google failed to reach fruition, leading to the Disney networks going dark on YouTube TV.”

USEFUL STUFF

Wired: How to Use Discord: A Beginner’s Guide. “Discord has grown into a space where the conversations reach far outside of gaming territory, into music, culture, politics, art, finance, and even dating. And since it’s a multimedia experience, you can use Discord to stream videos, play board games remotely with friends, listen to music together, and generally just hang out. The platform is free, though you can pay for some premiums. It’s also a little complicated. Discord is a sprawling, layered platform, with tons of options and settings to wade through. Let’s start with the basics.” I don’t use Discord. If you use it, do you like it?

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Snopes: Advocates Shine Spotlight on Spanish-Language Misinfo on Social Media. “Efforts by social media platforms to clean up dangerous English-language misinformation are not being replicated in other languages, notably Spanish, which can have detrimental and even deadly consequences for the platforms’ users, advocates say.”

TechCrunch: Could Supernova be an ‘ethical alternative’ to the social media giants?. “Perhaps what people have forgotten is that the only reason Facebook (and by extension, Instagram) are as big as they are is that their advertising revenues prop up these free services. If advertisers had somewhere else to go that could capture the social media crowd with a compelling enough app, Facebook and Insta would start to feel some heat. At least, that’s how the theory goes. Now, a British entrepreneur, who knows the ad industry inside-out, plans to take on these giants with a solution of his own, designed to appeal to Millenials and Gen Z-ers who are generally led by a desire to support good causes far more than previous generations.”

Associated Press: Memorial planned for space exploration workers in Alabama. “A $1.5 million memorial is being planned to honor more than 20,000 people who have worked with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in north Alabama, assisting in U.S. space exploration. The Madison County Commission recently gave $50,000 toward the project, which is being organized by the NASA/Marshall Retirees Association and would recognize both government workers and contractors, WAAY-TV reported.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: US emergency directive orders govt agencies to patch Log4j bug. “US Federal Civilian Executive Branch agencies have been ordered to patch the critical and actively exploited Log4Shell security vulnerability in the Apache Log4j library within the next six days. The order comes through an emergency directive issued by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) today.”

Richmond Times-Dispatch: IT breach hits Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; website shut down during state investigation. “The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts acknowledged this week that it detected a breach in the security of its information technology system late last month that prompted the museum to shut down its website for a state investigation. The Richmond-based cultural institution said ‘there is no evidence’ that the security breach is connected to the ransomware attack on the IT systems for Virginia legislative agencies.”

ProPublica: The Extortion Economy Podcast: Exploring the Secret World of Ransomware. “The technology that enables ransomware may be new, but extortion and ransom are not. So why is this happening now? And can it be stopped? A new podcast from ProPublica and MIT Tech Review aims to find out.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Sydney Morning Herald: The insidious role of social media in Sydney power couple’s downfall. “I admit to groaning my way through many an Instagram feed, from former foreign minister Julie Bishop’s never ending cocktail selfies with celebrities, to the absurdity of purportedly serious and highly paid journalists like Samantha Armytage and Karl Stefanovic flogging all manner of products – from diets to coffee pods – for their corporate overlords. If only the ethereal Kate Waterhouse posted a photo of one of those designer frocks she wears on Instagram – for a fee – with tomato sauce dribbled down the front, it would all be a tiny bit more relatable.”

MIT Technology Review: How to save our social media by treating it like a city. “In a system where the worse your behavior is, the more you’re incentivized to do it, after-the-fact punishment is doomed to fail. Luckily, we have other approaches. After all, the physical city also doesn’t solve problems by surveilling and arresting everybody. Public health campaigns and social workers can help people before it’s too late.”

MIT News: Systems scientists find clues to why false news snowballs on social media. “A new model shows that the more polarized and hyperconnected a social network is, the more likely misinformation will spread.” My husband and I call this “drowning in cultural backwash.” Good morning, Internet…

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