NEW RESOURCES

IF Australia: CGA and Showcast launch database for Deaf and disabled performers. “The Casting Guild of Australia (CGA) has partnered with casting resource Showcast to create a dedicated platform to showcase Deaf and disabled performers. Hosted on Showcast’s website, the database will be made available to casting directors, agents and producers, and include self-taped video footage of individual performers, as well as a headshots and CVs.”

WWD: Untold Stories of Designers Who Dressed First Ladies Is Focus of New Virtual Exhibition. “Eight unsung and primarily lesser-known seamstresses, dressmakers and fashion designers, who dressed first ladies for some essential public appearances, are getting their due in the new digital exhibition, ‘Glamour and Innovation: The Women Behind the Seams of Fashion at the White House.'”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: The 11 Best Places to Find Royalty-Free Sound Effects for Your YouTube Videos. “When making YouTube videos, you need to ensure that you have the right to use particular sound effects. Many websites allow you to download royalty-free sound effects, but not all sites are created equal. This article introduces the best places to find royalty-free sound effects for your YouTube videos.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Associated Press: Why captions are suddenly everywhere and how they got there. “In recent years, smartphone apps like Otter; Google’s Live Transcribe; Ava; InnoCaption, for phone calls; and GalaPro, for live theater performances, have emerged. Some are aimed at people with hearing loss and use human reviewers to make sure captions are accurate. Others, like Otter and Live Transcribe, instead rely on what’s called automatic speech recognition, which uses artificial intelligence to learn and capture speech.”

Mashable: A centuries-old secret society is hanging out in Facebook groups. “Centuries ago, Rosicrucians were only able to maintain their society through their ability to be invisible. But over the past several hundred years, the world has changed — and, along with it, so has the need for Rosicrucians to stay shielded from the public. Now, they’re finding new ways to connect, by pivoting away from secrecy with the help of the most public tools they could find: Facebook, Zoom, and YouTube.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Hill: Federal government getting ready to open its books and show us the receipts. “As members of Congress and staff dig into President Biden’s 2023 budget request, they have a new tool for tracking when, where, and how the president is authorizing federal agencies to spend money — but Congress, and the public, needs to know this new tool exists. It comes in the form of apportionment transparency, an instrument designed to reinforce Congress’s power of the purse.”

ITPro Today: My Body, My Data Act Tackles Online Privacy in Wake of Roe v. Wade Decision. “Government action to protect reproductive health data is already in the works in the form of the My Body, My Data Act, which was introduced simultaneously in the Senate and House of Representatives on June 16. If enacted, the legislation will create a national standard to protect personal reproductive health data by restricting the data that can be collected and retained. Additionally, the legislation would prevent the data from being disclosed or misused.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Heriot Watt University: New project helps Amazon create dataset to advance multilingual language understanding research. “Researchers at the National Robotarium, hosted by Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh, have created a Spoken Language Understanding Resource Package (SLURP) aimed at making it easier for AI and machines to understand spoken questions and commands from humans. One of the items included in the package is an open dataset in English spanning 18 domains. Amazon recently localised and translated the English-only SLURP dataset into 50 typologically diverse languages, creating a new multilingual dataset called MASSIVE.”

PetaPixel: The Smithsonian is Shifting to a Future of Digital Museum Experiences. “The Smithsonian’s collection of historical artifacts is so large that only 1% of its 150 million piece collection is showcased at any given time. Mixed with age and fragility, the museum is quickly virtualizing its collection to be viewed online. The goal of the Smithsonian Digitization Program Office (DPO) is to digitally scan these historical artifacts and publish those scans online for future generations to enjoy and interact with.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

The Scotsman: Great Scottish books to get Scots translation. “Works such as Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, Dracula by Bram Stoker, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, Outlander by Diana Gabaldon and Peter Pan are to get the Scots treatment in a new project designed to promote the language. Braw Beginnings is being run as part of Scotland’s Year of Stories, with Scots language ambassador Alistair Heather leading the work for VisitScotland.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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