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Daily Archives: December 27, 2020

Google Search Redirects Readers From Local Outlets: Study

Gizmodo – “When we ask who should take the rap for the decline of local news, most folks agree the blame partially lies on Google’s shoulders. The tech giant has spent the past decade systematically swallowing a larger and larger chunk of the digital ad market, diverting the dollars that outlets—particularly smaller outlets—desperately need. That’s not the only diversion that Google’s been doing. In an article published in the Washington Post this week, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the National University of Singapore described how they tried to figure out whether Google might be stymieing people hunting for local news on the company’s search engine. Close to 100,000 searches later, the team reported that, yep, it looked like Google’s engine defaulted to squashing struggling local outlets, and highlighting prominent national publishers in their stead. The team’s findings were published in the December issue of Nature Human Behaviour…”

Mapping COVID-19 Vaccine Pre-Purchases Across the Globe

Launch and Scale Speedometer: “A flurry of nearly 200 COVID-19 vaccine candidates are moving forward through the development and clinical trials processes at unprecedented speed; more than ten candidates are already in Phase 3 large-scale trials and several have received emergency or limited authorization. Also unprecedented is the number of advance market commitments (AMCs) made… Continue Reading

Why You Can’t Copy a Recipe Book

Plagarism Today – “U.S. Copyright Law is extremely clear, copyright “Does not protect recipes that are mere listings of ingredients.” As such, your grandmother’s secret recipe for pumpkin pie joins the ranks of high fashion and phone books as things that can not be copyrighted. However, if you open up just about any cookbook that… Continue Reading

End of Term Presidential Harvest 2020

“The Library of Congress, Internet Archive, University of North Texas Libraries, George Washington University Libraries, Stanford University Libraries, EDGI, and the U.S. Government Publishing Office have joined together for a collaborative project to preserve public United States Government web sites at the end of the current presidential administration ending January 20, 2021. This harvest is… Continue Reading

Mapping U.S. Covid-19 Cases Near You

Bloomberg: “Few areas of the U.S. have been spared a recent surge in the Covid-19 outbreak, as daily new case counts routinely exceed 100,000 across the U.S. and the number of hospitalizations nears totals not seen since the early days of the pandemic. State-level reporting of cases and deaths brush over how rapidly the virus spread… Continue Reading

The Washington Post asked readers to describe 2020 in one word or phrase

Here’s what they said. “A global pandemic. A racial reckoning. A presidential impeachment. A monumental election. We all know 2020 was a year like no other. But is it possible to sum it up in one word or phrase? The Washington Post asked readers to do just that and offer their reasoning, hoping that all… Continue Reading

2020 An extraordinary year in photos

Washington Post – “As professional photography editors, we are accustomed to seeing a little bit of everything: war, famine, fires, hurricanes, politics, suffering, beauty, silliness and sometimes joy. This year was different. Photography, and photojournalism in particular, is regarded as a medium of reality. Reality became surreal this year and with it, photojournalism. Photography shines… Continue Reading

Operation Warp Speed Contracts for COVID-19 Vaccines and Ancillary Vaccination Materials

CRS Insight – Operation Warp Speed Contracts for COVID-19 Vaccines and Ancillary Vaccination Materials, December 22, 2020: “Operation Warp Speed (OWS) is an interagency partnership between the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Defense (DOD) that coordinates federal efforts to accelerate the development, acquisition, and distribution of COVID-19 medical countermeasures.… Continue Reading

Tracking the coronavirus vaccine, state by state

“…The charts below reflect each state’s priority groups as described so far by the states. Some have specified only the very first recipients while others have given longer priority lists. The estimated population in each group removes overlap, such as medical workers with pre-existing conditions, as estimated by Ariadne Labs and Surgo Ventures based on… Continue Reading

The Plague Year – The mistakes and the struggles behind America’s coronavirus tragedy

The New Yorker published a 40-page account by Lawrence Wright about how American botched its virus response, December 28, 2020: “There are three moments in the yearlong catastrophe of the COVID-19 pandemic when events might have turned out differently. The first occurred on January 3, 2020, when Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for… Continue Reading

The CDC’s failed race against covid-19: A threat underestimated and a test overcomplicated

Washington Post: “A new virus was exploding in Wuhan, a Chinese city with 11 million people connected by its airport to destinations around the world. In the United States, doctors and hospitals were waiting for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop a test to detect the threat. On Jan. 13, the World Health… Continue Reading