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Nation of Georgia, S.S. Caribou, Mapping Historic Boston, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, May 12, 2023

NEW RESOURCES

Agenda Georgia: New website on Georgia’s travel destinations, events launched by national body for visitors. “The new gateway features around 3,200 articles in both Georgian and English about significant tourist attractions, a calendar of interesting tourist events throughout Georgia as well as a centralised platform for intercity transport, plans for hikes and walking adventures, the Administration said.”

Local Journalism Initiative: S.S. Caribou remembered in online museum. “On Apr. 23 at 2:00 p.m., a new online museum exhibit on the sinking of the ferry, S.S. Caribou, during World War II was launched by the Railway Heritage Museum. The sinking, which resulted in the death of 137 people, is considered the deadliest enemy attack in both Canadian and Newfoundland waters during the war.”

New-to-me, from College of the Holy Cross: Students Combine Century-Old Documents and Modern Technology to Research Boston Landscape. “Boston’s Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway is a bustling 17-acre public park and green space, home to food trucks, fountains and even a carousel. But during the second half of the 20th century, that same space hosted one of the most congested elevated highways in the U.S. — the Central Artery. A century prior to that, the area was home to a candy factory, fruit markets and grocers, a Black barbershop, and more. College of the Holy Cross students enrolled in its Making the Modern City course could see all of those iterations at once, thanks to a Boston Public Library tool called Atlascope and Amy Finstein, assistant professor of visual arts. With a click of their cursor, students could walk the streets and travel through decades, watching the area change.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Elon Musk’s Twitter: Everything you need to know, from layoffs to verification. “If you’re just catching up, here’s a complete timeline of what’s going down at the bird app, starting with the most recent news.” I am skipping a lot of the Twitter feature stuff and all of EM’s announcements that don’t involve an actual physical change. I have no intention of indexing any articles about this new CEO, for example, until they are either named and confirmed or they take the post. Thanks to TechCrunch for these roundup articles.

Interfax-Ukraine: Almost 1,500 objects of cultural infrastructure of Ukraine suffer due to Russian aggression – Culture Ministry. “In connection with the Russian armed aggression against Ukraine, 1,464 objects of cultural infrastructure have already suffered, almost a third of them have been destroyed, the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy reports.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

AFP: Disinformation adds dark note to pivotal Turkish election. “Aired at a huge rally and beamed live on TV, the video showed opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu trying to rally his supporters to the tune of his campaign song. In the next sequence, members of Turkey’s banned PKK group echoed that call while clapping their hands to the beat of Kilicdaroglu’s election jingle. The message Erdogan was trying to project was clear: the secular opposition leader had formed a union with ‘terrorists’. Only it was a montage, one of the latest pieces of disinformation to pollute the campaign of one of Turkey’s closest and most important elections in generations.”

Reuters: Mexico to launch database of over 100,000 ‘disappeared’ people . “Mexico will launch a new tool later this month to help record information on the tens of thousands of people who have gone missing, the country’s federal prosecutors office (FGR) said on Thursday. The registry is set to gather information from a number of databases covering mass and clandestine graves, arrests, torture crimes, criminal records, fingerprints and genetics, the FGR said in Mexico’s official gazette.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Guardian: Social media firms should reimburse online fraud victims, say UK bankers. “The boss of the banking industry body UK Finance has called on social media companies to reimburse victims of online fraud, accusing them of “profiting” from scams taking place on their platforms. Figures from its fraud report show that 78% of authorised push payment scams, where a victim is tricked into approving a transaction, started online in the second half of last year, with about three-quarters of those beginning on social media.”

Fortune: Former FTX chief compliance officer cooperating in crypto lawsuit against Tom Brady, Shaq and celebrity promoters. “Dan Friedberg, the former chief compliance officer of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, is cooperating with the plaintiffs bringing a class action suit versus a group of sports stars and entertainers, Fortune has learned from a new legal filing. The lawsuit’s targets include, among others, Shaquille O’Neal, Tom Brady, Naomi Osaka, and Larry David.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Scientific American: How AI Knows Things No One Told It. “No one yet knows how ChatGPT and its artificial intelligence cousins will transform the world, and one reason is that no one really knows what goes on inside them. Some of these systems’ abilities go far beyond what they were trained to do—and even their inventors are baffled as to why. A growing number of tests suggest these AI systems develop internal models of the real world, much as our own brain does, though the machines’ technique is different.”

University of Adelaide: Shining a light on dark web wildlife trade. “A huge amount of wildlife is traded on the internet, with e-commerce marketplaces, private forums and messaging apps being the most popular means to sell and buy live animals, plants, fungi and their parts and products online.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Northeastern Global News: Why the video game industry is making a big mistake by ignoring older adults. “In April, AARP held its first Games Summit at its headquarters in Washington D.C., and for many people outside the video game industry, the event might seem like a head-scratcher. An organization focused on advocating for people in the 50-plus demographic talking about video games, a medium typically thought to be for younger people? But, for AARP––and the games industry––holding the summit actually makes perfect sense. Almost half of people aged 50 and older play video games, according to a recent report from AARP, and almost half of those people said they play daily. And this isn’t an insignificant piece of the gaming audience.” Good morning, Internet…

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