NEW RESOURCES

KYW Radio Philadelphia: New digital archive allows Black and Native families to connect with ancestors who served in the Revolutionary War. “The Museum of the American Revolution and Ancestry.com are working together on a new family history resource for people of Native American and African American descent. The museum acquired the Patriots of Color Archive in 2022. In it: nearly 200 rare documents — original muster rolls, pay vouchers, enlistment papers, discharge forms and more — originally belonging to Black and Native American soldiers who served during the Revolutionary War…. Ancestry.com digitized the collection and made it available online for free.”

Discovered via Google Alerts: Listen, Hear Our Voices: A Digital Library Of Photographs For Cowessess First Nation. “Listen Hear our Voices is a digital library that consists of photographs of Cowessess First Nation membership, historical photos, events, and documents. Cowessess has many photos of community members who attended the Marieval Residential School.”

University of Maine: Women in the Military Oral History Collection Available Online. “Raymond H. Fogler Library Special Collections has published oral history recordings from MF144, the “Women in the Military” collection of the Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History. The full collection features recorded interviews with nearly 70 female military veterans serving between World War II and the Gulf War. Forty-nine of these interviews were published in the institutional repository, DigitalCommons@UMaine, in advance of Veterans Day, 2023.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

ProPublica: UC Berkeley Takes Significant Step to Repatriate 4,400 Native American Human Remains. “A notice filed Tuesday in the Federal Register indicates UC Berkeley is committed to repatriating 4,440 ancestral remains and nearly 25,000 items — including jewelry, shells, beads and baskets — that were excavated from burial sites across the San Francisco Bay Area. The notice follows extensive consultations between the university and tribes, including those that claim the Bay Area as their ancestral lands but are not recognized by the federal government, the university said.”

TechCrunch: Brave’s Leo AI assistant is now available to desktop users. “Brave, a company building an alternative web browser, is releasing its AI-powered assistant, Leo, to all desktop users. The company is also releasing a $15 per month paid version called Leo Premium with features like access to faster and better large language models (LLMs) and higher-rate limits.”

USEFUL STUFF

WordPress: Meet Site Profiler: Instant Access to Everything You’ll Ever Need to Know About Any Domain. “Site Profiler is a fast, accurate, and ad-free tool designed to provide WHOIS and hosting information about any domain. Whether you’re a domain owner or just curious about where a site is hosted, Site Profiler is a fast way to pull up the details you need. Just drop in any URL and you’ll have the hosting and domain registration details right at your fingertips. It’s free, simple, and user-friendly.” I know there are lots of tools like this, but this one is blazing fast and I like how the information is laid out.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Yale Herald: “Computer Crossdressing”: Charting the Trans Digital Archive. “‘The contemporary trans movement as we know it now—with all its accomplishments and failures—could not have come to be without the Internet.’ This is the central claim of Avery Dame-Griff’s newly-released book The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet. Consulting archival resources from people and organizations across the country, like the promotional advertisement (below) for the umbrella Internet organization US TOO (United Sisterhood of Transsexual Outreach Organizations), Dame-Griff outlines the formation of the trans community’s online presence. ”

Ars Technica: Elon Musk’s new AI model doesn’t shy from questions about cocaine and orgies. “On Saturday, Elon Musk announced xAI’s launch of an early beta version of ‘Grok,’ an AI language model similar to ChatGPT that is designed to respond to user queries with a mix of information and humor. Grok reportedly integrates real-time data access from X (formerly Twitter)—and is apparently willing to tackle inquiries that might be declined by other AI systems due to content filters and conditioning.”

New York Times: LeVar Burton Wants to Be Heard. “LeVar Burton has spent much of his career encouraging children to read. Now he is urging them to listen — really listen. They can develop that skill, along with an ear for mysteries, in ‘Sound Detectives,’ a new podcast for audiences of elementary-school age that is part whodunit, part science exploration and part comic adventure.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Trace: The ATF’s Gun Tracing Database Is a Black Box. A Lawsuit Could Change That.. “On October 20, a California federal judge heard arguments in a lawsuit seeking to compel the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to turn over data about guns smuggled from the United States into Mexico and Central America. The data, if released, would represent just the second time in two decades that the ATF has offered a detailed glimpse inside its firearms tracing database, which has been a black box to the public since Congress restricted its disclosure in 2003.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: Using social media for your holiday ‘inspo’ can be risky and even dangerous – here’s why. “How do you choose your next travel destination? Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok are handy tools for holiday research, full of #inspo for new and beautiful places to go. However, behind those mesmerising selfies, highlights and reels, there’s often a stark reality that isn’t shared. Our ongoing research shows that dangers abound from social media related misadventures. These include the hidden dangers of getting to the location, as well as the ecological strains on sites that get overcrowded with tourists.”

Hearing Review: Scientists Receive Grant to Develop Sign Language Lexicon for Chemistry. “Christina Goudreau Collison, professor in the School of Chemistry and Materials Science; Jennifer Swartzenberg, senior lecturer in the National Technical Institute for the Deaf’s Department of Science and Mathematics; Lea Michel, professor in the School of Chemistry and Materials Science; and Pepsi Holmquist, visiting assistant professor in NTID’s Department of Science and Mathematics, have been awarded nearly $380,000 for their proposal to transform chemistry for deaf and hard-of-hearing students via the design, implementation, and evaluation of a descriptive sign language lexicon.” Good morning, Internet…

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