NEW RESOURCES

Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry: Bureau of Parks and Lands Announces New Outdoor Recreation Investments Map. “The map highlights investments in outdoor recreation such as trails, parks, and other projects. 870 [Land and Water Conservation Fund]-assisted outdoor recreation projects included on the map are safeguarded for everyone to enjoy perpetually.”

University of Nevada Reno: New SNAP dashboard strengthens food-security education across Nevada. “More than 11% of sixth graders in Nevada’s Clark County went hungry some time in the previous month because there wasn’t enough food at home. The number of people in the Las Vegas area who skipped meals or cut back their eating because they didn’t have enough food, meanwhile, grew by an estimated 47% during the pandemic. Even for food-security professionals such as Macy Helm who closely track numbers such as these, a powerful new online dashboard developed at the University of Nevada, Reno, provides a fresh – and sometime startling – way to visualize the challenges of food security, nutrition and physical activity across Nevada.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

BBC: Doubts cast over Elon Musk’s Twitter bot claims. “Botometer – an online tool that tracks spam and fake accounts – was used by Mr Musk in a countersuit against Twitter. Using the tool, Mr Musk’s team estimated that 33% of ‘visible accounts’ on the social media platform were ‘false or spam accounts’. However, Botometer creator and maintainer, Kaicheng Yang, said the figure ‘doesn’t mean anything’.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

NBC News: Viral video of a racist rant led people to threaten the wrong business. The owner blames Google.. “Online vigilantism is a well-recognized phenomenon, one that is the subject of academic study. Examples of people looking to take justice into their own hands to right perceived wrongs go back to the early days of the consumer internet, not long after the advent of the World Wide Web. The phenomenon has only gained momentum alongside the rise of search engines, social media, smartphones and digital video, which have provided the content, tools and motivation for just about anyone to play crusader. But in some instances of online mob justice, people hit the wrong target.”

University of Maine: Knowles developing website to tell the story of Holocaust victims through places . “Anne Knowles believes that places provide important information about historical events. The University of Maine professor and graduate coordinator in the History Department has made an academic career studying the relationship between geographical circumstances and major societal shifts, exploring topics from Welsh emigration to the United States to why American entrepreneurs struggled to match the productivity of the British iron industry. Now, Knowles is working with a team of historians and geographers to create a digital platform for students and educators to trace the geographies of the Holocaust and connect victimsʼ stories to the places where they happened.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Travel Weekly: The DOT is doing an airline customer service dashboard. “The Department of Transportation will launch a new web feature on Sept. 2 designed to provide air travelers with easy-to-access comparative information on the services that airlines offer when they are responsible for flight delays and cancellations.”

Politico: What Is the Supreme Court Hiding?. “The executive branch is subject to detailed rules laying out what work product must be preserved, when and how it must be released to the general public, and — as Donald Trump has unhappily learned — what happens to officials who don’t play ball. Not so for justices. [former Supreme Court Justice Stephen] Breyer, if he so chose, could toss his papers in a bonfire, auction them to the highest bidder, or ship them all to Mar-a-Lago for safekeeping.”

CNET: Twitter Profited From Users’ Data Without Their Consent, Lawsuit Alleges. “Twitter is facing more legal woes for allegedly providing advertisers user phone numbers and email addresses without their consent. In 2019, the company disclosed that personal information users handed over for a security feature may have been used for targeted advertising. On Thursday, two Twitter users sued the social media company in a proposed class action lawsuit filed in a federal court in Northern California.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Georgia: Robocrops: Data science, technology and A.I. coalesce in the field of plant robotics. “A four-wheeled, phenotyping robot that operates autonomously or under human control, Watson is taking shape in Changying ‘Charlie’ Li’s lab at the Phenomics and Plant Robotics Center (PPRC) on the University of Georgia’s Athens campus in collaboration with researchers in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.”

The Conversation: From watering via ice cubes to spritzing with hydrogen peroxide – 4 misguided plant health trends on social media. “The internet is full of advice on just about everything, including plant care. As the director of a plant diagnostic laboratory and expert on plant medicine, I help people manage their plants’ health. Here are four trends I’ve seen online recently that have stood out as being especially misleading or potentially damaging to plants.”

Engadget: ‘PowerWash Simulator’ players can now aid mental health research. “PowerWash Simulator players can now take part in a research project that looks at the links between gaming and mental health. Developer FuturLab has teamed up with independent researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute for what it calls a ‘a one-of-a-kind anonymous research study centered around the wellbeing of PowerWash Simulator’s players.'”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

University of Texas at Austin: Random Acts of Kindness Make a Bigger Splash Than Expected. “Even though they often enhance happiness, acts of kindness such as giving a friend a ride or bringing food for a sick family member can be somewhat rare because people underestimate how good these actions make recipients feel, according to new research from The University of Texas at Austin.” Good morning, Internet…

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