NEW RESOURCES

National Agricultural Aviation Association: NAAA’s database connects farmers with aerial applicators. “America’s aerial applicators — or crop dusters as they are known in older jargon — are primed and ready to support farmers in need of fast, timely and effective applications this growing season. If they don’t have an existing relationship with an aerial applicator, farmers in need of an aerial application service provider should search NAAA’s ‘Find an Aerial Applicator’ database.”

PR Newswire: imi, A Free, Mental Health Web App, Helps LGBTQ+ Youth Cope with Stress (PRESS RELEASE). “imi, (pronounced eye-me) helps LGBTQ+ youth explore and affirm their identity and learn practical approaches to cope with sexual and gender minority stress in ways that are supportive, relevant, inclusive, and joyful. The web app provides affirming resources, activities, and stories of lived experiences from LGBTQ+ youth on important topics like stress, LGBTQ+ identity, internalized stigma, and gender identity and expression.” The app will be available June 1.

Science Blogs: A database for French encrypted newspaper ads. “Blog reader Didier Müller has found numerous encrypted newspaper ads in an online archive and created an online database for them. Who can support him with further finds and solutions?”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 5 Free Sites and Extensions to Make Google Maps Incredibly Useful. “Google Maps is the best and most popular online map service. But that doesn’t mean it’s without flaws. These free websites and extensions make Google Maps better than ever before and fix some of its annoyances.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Input: Riding the rails with YouTube’s hobo vloggers. “Through their videos, these hobos — who are overwhelmingly male and white — hope to document what they consider to be a dying artform, while fending off critics who believe their content is dangerous and irresponsible.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Scientists Uncover a Shady Web of Online Spider Sales. “In a new paper, published in Communications Biology on Thursday, Dr. [Alice] Hughes and her colleagues shine a light on the largely unregulated trade of creatures that prefer to lurk in the dark. Their analysis of online sales listings turned up more than 1,200 species of spiders, scorpions and other arachnids; just 2 percent of them are subject to international trade regulations, the researchers report.

Reuters: Google ‘Private Browsing’ Mode Not Really Private, Texas Lawsuit Says. “The Google search engine collects data on users who think they can be anonymous if they use a ‘private browsing’ mode, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claimed …, filing an amended privacy lawsuit against the Alphabet Inc unit.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Ars Technica: Are TikTok algorithms changing how people talk about suicide?. “While the word ‘unalive’ first became popular in 2013 (when it was used in an episode of Ultimate Spider-Man), Google searches for the term have spiked dramatically in 2022. From TikTok, ‘unalive’ has spread to Twitter and Reddit; YouTubers also use it so their content isn’t demonetized. Depending on the context, the word can refer to suicide, murder, or death. Though ‘unalive’ is often used comedically on TikTok, people like Williams also use it to talk candidly, forge a community, and signpost resources on the app. The rapid rise of ‘unalive’ therefore raises a worrying question: What happens when we don’t openly say ‘suicide’?”

University of York: Study reveals flaws in using social media to identify race and ethnicity for health research. “Mining social media to identify race and ethnicity as part of research into health disparities is unreliable and inconsistent, a new study has concluded.”

CNET: Google, YouTube and Bing Rank Chinese State Media High for COVID, Xinjiang Info. “China exploits how search engines work to influence public opinion outside the country, by landing state-published stories about the detention of Uyghur Muslims and the origins of the coronavirus at the top of Google, YouTube and Bing searches.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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