NEW RESOURCES

Knight First Amendment Institute: Newly Released Office of Legal Counsel Opinions from 1952-1971 Illuminate Government Policy During Civil Rights Era. “The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University today published for the first time a set of Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memos authored between 1952 and 1971 pertaining to desegregation policies and civil rights law.”

KRDO: State launches new online directory to find behavioral health specialists in Colorado. “This online directory helps people to find behavioral health providers licensed by the [Colorado Behavioral Health Administration] and to search for specific services or use a guided search to identify providers or resources that best meet their needs. Searches can be specific and narrowed down by criteria such as location, days of operation, language support, payment types accepted, and more.”

Asbury Park Press: Jerry Garcia Archive launches online to celebrate life and legacy of Grateful Dead icon. “The Jerry Garcia Archive, a collaborative venture between the Jerry Garcia Foundation and online storage platform Starchive, will serve as an online resource, a digital library of Garcia information and fan submissions.”

Shetland News: Team behind new online dictionary of Shaetlan hopes for lively community participation . “SPEAKERS of the local language now have the chance to actively help collect and record words and phrases relevant to Shaetlan, thanks to a new initiative by language group I Hear Dee. Creating an interactive dictionary with the help of the local community also enables the new online tool to become a representative snapshot of contemporary local speech as it will include local versions of today’s words and expressions.” Shaetlan is a dialect of Scots spoken in Shetland. Shetland is an archipelago in the extreme north of Scotland.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

PC Gamer: Google denies rumor that Stadia is shutting down. “Google has formally denied a rumor that its Stadia(opens in new tab) gaming service will soon be closed down, saying that it is still ‘working on bringing more great games to the platform.'” If I were Google I’d say the same thing no matter what my intentions were. You can always abruptly cancel it and cite “extraordinary market conditions” etc. Who can gainsay that?

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: 8 Free Alternatives to Google Forms. “Many people love Google Forms because it’s an easy-to-use, free online form builder that makes polling your audience simple. However, its simplistic design and lack of features can make it difficult to customize to your exact data collection needs. If you’re looking for an alternative to Google Forms that offers more flexibility without breaking the bank, check out these online form builders that are free to use.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Lexington Herald-Leader: ‘We could lose history.’ Appalachian archives soaked in record Kentucky flooding. . “A good bit of Appalachian history and arts got soaked in the record flooding in Eastern Kentucky. In Whitesburg, water may have breached the vault at Appalshop, where the arts and media collective stored more than 20,000 items, including decades worth of film, oral histories, videotapes of musical performances, photo collections and other records.”

NPR: What is a recession? Wikipedia can’t decide. “Wikipedia has frozen edits to its page for ‘recession,’ halting a frenzy of changes to the entry after the Biden administration insisted that the U.S. economy has not entered a economic downturn.”

Middle East Eye: Iran: Outrage after government puts Google on Safe Search for all Iranians. “Iranians have reacted with incredulity to a move by the government to forcibly activate Safe Search on Google for all citizens, accusing officials of treating them like children. Iran’s communications minister, Isa Zarepour, confirmed the new restriction earlier this week, saying his government had activated Safe Search following requests from Iranian families.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Stuff NZ: NZ code to tackle disinformation: what have Google and Meta really agreed to do?. “Let’s be frank, these are not businesses that see any need to answer questions, let alone be meaningfully accountable to the public, and that makes any strong faith in self-regulation unlikely.”

The New Yorker: TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants. “This rejection of the social-graph model has allowed TikTok to circumvent the barriers to entry that so effectively protected early social-media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. By separating distraction from social connection, TikTok can directly compete for users without the need to first painstakingly build up an underlying network, link by link.” Terrific, thoughtful writing here.

University of Michigan: Moderating online content increases accountability, but can harm some platform users . “Marginalized social media users face disproportionate content removal from platforms, but the visibility of this online moderation is a double-edged sword. A new University of Michigan study about two online platforms—Reddit and Twitch—suggests that greater visibility means increased accountability, but the actions can also bring more attention to the offensive content, further harming marginalized people.” Good morning, Internet…

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