NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from the Roger Ebert site: Subscribe to the Black Women Directors Newsletter. “Black Women Directors is an online digital library I first created as a Tumblr in 2015 and later migrated to a standalone site. I created BWD as a way to highlight the contributions of Black women and nonbinary filmmakers from around the globe to the cinematic canon.”

Also New-to-me, from Penn State: Mont Alto professor creates open educational resources textbook online. “Called the Mechanics Map Digital Textbook, [Professor Jacob] Moore’s site contains written explanations, video lectures, worked examples and homework problems. The licensed materials are free for online visitors to use, share or rework. They include a table of contents with links to all the available topics, plus information for those who want to learn more about the project in general.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 6 Feedly Tips Every User Should Know About. “If you just started using Feedly, it might be a little hard at first to get the hang of it. But don’t worry; it’s pretty straightforward to use. To get you started, here are some basic tips you need to know to get the most out of Feedly.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Post and Courier: Oral history project aims to connect recent activism to larger civil rights movement. “About a year ago, local filmmaker Joshua Parks wanted to interview activists who were affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement in Charleston. He approached two staff members of the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston — Erica Veal and Daron Calhoun. Veal, an archivist, and Calhoun, coordinator of public programming and the Race and Social Justice Initiative, demurred. They weren’t eager to revisit the challenges and traumas of the recent past, Veal said. They told Parks, then a graduate assistant at the Avery, to circle back.”

Core77: The Viral TikTok Channel That Reviews Public Bathroom Sinks. “Bored out of his gourd, during the pandemic Dean Peterson started a TikTok where he earnestly reviewed public bathroom sinks…. It’s strangely compelling, no? Other’s thought so too. Peterson, a then-unemployed NYC filmmaker, continued populating the channel, and Sink Reviews went viral.” Note to historians: you will never appreciate how weird this era is. Seriously, we’re all nuts. A lot of genius will come out of this, though. You better appreciate it, you unborn ungrateful whippersnappers.

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNBC: Stolen goods sold on Amazon, eBay and Facebook are causing havoc for major retailers. “For the U.S. Government’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, organized retail crime probes are on the rise. Arrests and indictments increased last year from 2020, along with the value of stolen goods that was seized. While data is imprecise about the perpetrators, there’s growing consensus that an entirely different group should be held accountable: e-commerce sites.”

WUWF: Fight over Florida social media law heads to Supreme Court. “Attorneys for the state and online-industry groups plan to go to the U.S. Supreme Court in a battle about a 2021 Florida law that would crack down on social-media giants such as Facebook and Twitter, according to new court filings. The filings effectively seek to put proceedings on hold in a federal district court and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals while the case goes to the Supreme Court.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NewsWise: Study: Design Tricks Commonly Used to Monetize Young Children’s App Use. “The majority of apps preschool-aged children use are designed to make money off their digital experiences, a new study suggests. And children whose parents had lower education were more likely to use apps incorporating manipulative methods that increase advertising exposure, such as by keeping them playing games longer or encouraging in-app purchases.”

MedicalXPress: Social media use sheds light on dads’ mental health. “Deakin University researchers have mined Reddit posts and discovered that dads’ posting behaviors in the period surrounding their child’s birth can be a warning sign for depression. Their results were published in JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Ars Technica: Picasso‘s favorite pigment may one day recycle metals from your cell phone. “Gold and certain other precious metals are key ingredients in computer chips, including those used in consumer electronics such as smart phones. But it can be difficult to recover and recycle those metals from electronic waste. Japanese researchers have found that a pigment widely used by artists called Prussian blue can extract gold and platinum-group metals from e-waste much more efficiently than conventional bio-based absorbents, according to a recent paper published in the journal Scientific Reports.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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