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Forums Are Still Alive, Active, And A Treasure Trove Of Information

Aftermath: “When I want information, like the real stuff, I go to forums. Over the years, forums did not really get smaller, so much as the rest of the internet just got bigger. Reddit, Discord and Facebook groups have filled a lot of that space, but there is just certain information that requires the dedication of adults who have specifically signed up to be in one kind of community. This blog is a salute to those forums that are either worth participating in or at least looking at in bewilderment. What follows is a list of forums that range from at least interesting to good. I will attempt to contextualize the ones I know well. This post is by no means supposed to be complete and will be updated whenever I find more good forums…”

FTC Findings on Commercial Surveillance Can Lead to Better Alternatives

EFF: “On September 19, the FTC published a staff report following a multi-year investigation of nine social media and video streaming companies. The report found a myriad of privacy violations to consumers stemming largely from the ad-revenue based business models of companies including Facebook, YouTube, and X (formerly Twitter) which prompted unbridled consumer surveillance practices.… Continue Reading

Google Tests Quick View Button For Recipes That Keep You On Google

Search Engine Roundtable: “Google is testing placing a “quick view” button overlayed on the images on recipes within Google Search. The crazy part is that clicking on “Quick view” keeps you on Google while giving you a snapshot of the content from the publisher, without sending that traffic to the publisher. Looking at this “Quick… Continue Reading

Microplatics in Salt and Sugar

“A new study by Indian environmental and research organization Toxics Link has found that all salt and sugar brands from the country contain microplastics, concerning scientists as a growing body of analysis suggests the particles are harmful to humans.  As detailed by English language channel Times Now, researchers discovered microplastics (particles no more than five… Continue Reading

The Editors Protecting Wikipedia from AI Hoaxes

404 Media: “A group of Wikipedia editors have formed WikiProject AI Cleanup, “a collaboration to combat the increasing problem of unsourced, poorly-written AI-generated content on Wikipedia.” The group’s goal is to protect one of the world’s largest repositories of information from the same kind of misleading AI-generated information that has plagued Google search results, books… Continue Reading

The Moment of Truth

The Atlantic [unpaywalled] – “The reelection of Donald Trump would mark the end of George Washington’s vision for the presidency—and the United States. Today, America stands at such a moment. A vengeful and emotionally unstable former president—a convicted felon, an insurrectionist, an admirer of foreign dictators, a racist and a misogynist—desires to return to office… Continue Reading

Why the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling is untenable in a democracy

Washington Post – Opinion – Justices’ ruling in immunity case creates one legal standard for presidents and a different standard for citizens – Stephen S. Trott is a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. He was appointed to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan. “Under the Supreme Court’s recent… Continue Reading

AALL-SIS White Paper on Continuing Status and Tenure of Law Librarians

Osborne, Caroline and Davidson, Stephanie and Haight, Iantha and Hirsch, Cindy and Lohmeier, Kerry and Quigley, Brian and Whytock, Jessica, AALL-SIS White Paper on Continuing Status and Tenure of Law Librarians (April 15, 2024). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4938369 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4938369. “This work provides information to members and prospective members of the law librarian profession on… Continue Reading

The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth

William J Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Jillian W Gregg, Johan Rockström, Michael E Mann, Naomi Oreskes, Timothy M Lenton, Stefan Rahmstorf, Thomas M Newsome, Chi Xu, Jens-Christian Svenning, Cássio Cardoso Pereira, Beverly E Law, Thomas W Crowther, The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth, BioScience, 2024;, biae087, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biae087 “We are on… Continue Reading