NEW RESOURCES

The 74: Is Your CA District Ready to Fix Learning Loss? New Database Has Some Answers. “A new tool from Pivot Learning called the District Readiness Index offers a way for education stakeholders, including parents, teachers and policymakers, to identify which districts are well positioned to implement substantial changes and which must address systemic issues that will hamstring recovery.”

Washington State Department of Natural Resources: DNR Releases Interactive Map for Clean Energy Development on State Lands. “The mapping project gives DNR the opportunity to use existing detailed information about the lands it manages to improve outreach to stakeholders, protect habitat and tribal heritage, and better serve the needs of utilities and clean energy developers. The tool is the State of Washington’s first published map for locating potential properties for solar and wind energy development.”

KFYR: State Historical Society adds digitized newspapers to web site. “The State Historical Society of North Dakota says it has added more than 50,000 additional newspapers to its digital archives. The papers date as far back as 1883 and run through the 1930s.” I didn’t see a release about this at the State Historical Society of North Dakota Web site, so I’m not sure, but I suspect that’s 50,000 pages, and not 50,000 newspapers. I could be wrong though.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Gizmodo: Twitter Notifications Keep Breaking in Wake of Elon Musk’s Mass Layoffs. “Have you gone to your notifications tab on Twitter, only to see nothing there? You’re not alone. Users have increasingly reported broken notifications in recent days. And while Twitter didn’t respond to questions about why, it’s hard not to see a possible correlation with the mass layoffs of software engineers instigated by new owner Elon Musk, who took over the social media company in late October.”

Ars Technica: New Winamp update adds features, fixes, and (sigh) support for ‘music NFTs’. “If you’d asked me in January to make some predictions about what 2022 would bring, I don’t think “multiple significant updates to the Winamp player” would have been on the list. But the release candidate for version 5.9.1 of the software builds on the groundwork laid by August’s 5.9 update to fix some bugs and add new features to the reanimated music player.”

Android Police: Google Photos tests a new image search button that’s arguably more useful than Lens. “The most game-changing thing about Photos is probably the search prowess it launched with, allowing you to view images with specific objects, places, or people in them just like you would search through text. Google long expanded this functionality with the option to search for similar results around the web with a Google Lens shortcut in the image viewer, but it looks like the company might change the way this image search tool works within Photos.”

USEFUL STUFF

HuffPost: How To Spot A PR Cycle On Instagram And TikTok. “While the phrase ‘public relations’ may have a negative connotation for some people, it’s not inherently bad, and PR cycles occur on social media a lot more frequently than you might think. But it is good to be able to spot one so that you can properly decide whether or not a product or angle is worth your buy-in.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Reuters: Google launches anti-misinformation campaign in India. “Google’s Jigsaw subsidiary is launching a new anti-misinformation project in India, aimed at preventing misleading information that has been blamed for inciting violence, a top executive said.”

MarketWatch: Pinterest is the latest social-media company to cut staff. “Pinterest Inc. has laid off some of its recruiting team and plans to slow hiring for the rest of the year, a representative said, making the online image and idea-sharing platform the latest social-media company to let go of staff amid a wobbly digital-ad market.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: Iran’s Protests Reveal What’s Lost If Twitter Crumbles. “Twitter—and social media in general—has been awash in videos appearing to show protesters being attacked by police forces, the bodies of those killed, and people’s injuries. For more than a decade, the social network, now owned by Elon Musk, has been used as a way to document protests and human rights abuses around the world. However, as Musk’s chaotic takeover unravels and key safety teams have been cut, the Iranian protests put fresh light on Twitter’s importance as a platform for information sharing and chronicling events globally.”

ARTnews: Restitution Organization Sues to Keep Smithsonian’s Benin Bronzes From Returning to Nigeria. “The New York–based organization Restitution Study Group (RSG) is spearheading a lawsuit against the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. to stop the return of the museum’s 29 Benin bronzes to Nigeria. The group argues that returning the bronzes denies the descendants of enslaved people in America the chance to experience their heritage.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Olive Oil Times: Researchers Use AI to Identify EVOO Provenance. “A new way to determine the authenticity of extra virgin olive oil has been devised by a group of researchers in Italy. Their study, published by Food Chemistry, details a method that includes training artificial intelligence to identify the provenance of an extra virgin olive oil using its phenolic compounds and sterols.” Good morning, Internet…

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