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Monthly Archives: May 2021

How The Tulsa Race Massacre Caused Decades of Harm

The Atlantic – “The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 was over in less than 24 hours, but the damage that the city’s Black citizens suffered went on for decades. Indeed, the full magnitude of the community’s economic loss is still coming into focus even on the centennial of the event—in part because new digital tools allow scholars to mine census records for data about its aftermath…”

The New York Times / Interactive – “Imagine a community of great possibilities and prosperity built by Black people for Black people. Places to work. Places to live. Places to learn and shop and play. Places to worship. Now imagine it being ravaged by flames. In May 1921, the Tulsa, Okla., neighborhood of Greenwood was a fully realized antidote to the racial oppression of the time. Built in the early part of the century in a northern pocket of the city, it was a thriving community of commerce and family life to its roughly 10,000 residents. Brick and wood-frame homes dotted the landscape, along with blocks lined with grocery stores, hotels, nightclubs, billiard halls, theaters, doctor’s offices and churches. Greenwood was so promising, so vibrant that it became home to what was known as America’s Black Wall Street. But what took years to build was erased in less than 24 hours by racial violence — sending the dead into mass graves and forever altering family trees. Hundreds of Greenwood residents were brutally killed, their homes and businesses wiped out. They were casualties of a furious and heavily armed white mob of looters and arsonists. One factor that drove the violence: resentment toward the Black prosperity found in block after block of Greenwood. The financial toll of the massacre is evident in the $1.8 million in property loss claims — $27 million in today’s dollars — detailed in a 2001 state commission report. For two decades, the report has been one of the most comprehensive accounts to reveal the horrific details of the massacre — among the worst racial terror attacks in the nation’s history — as well as the government’s culpability…”

NPR – 3 Documentaries You Should Watch About The Tulsa Race Massacre: “Tulsa Burning, The 1921 Race Massacre,” “Dreamland: The Burning of Black Wall Street,” and “Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten.”

Washington Post – The devastation of the Tulsa Race Massacre

CEO pay rises to $12.7M even as pandemic ravages economy

AP: “As COVID-19 ravaged the world last year, CEOs’ big pay packages seemed to be under as much threat as everything else. Fortunately for those CEOs, many had boards of directors willing to see the pandemic as an extraordinary event beyond their control. Across the country, boards made changes to the intricate formulas that determine… Continue Reading

OECD Economic Outlook, May 2021

“Prospects for the world economy have brightened but the recovery is likely to remain uneven and, crucially, dependent on the effectiveness of public health measures and policy support, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Outlook. In many advanced economies more and more people are being vaccinated, government stimulus is helping to boost demand and businesses… Continue Reading

How fast is my internet

CNET:  “The next time your home internet connection is struggling to load a simple webpage, or Apple TV Plus keeps buffering while you’re binging that new series everyone is talking about, take a few minutes to troubleshoot what’s going on. A good place to start is by checking your internet connection’s speed.  Magnifying any connection… Continue Reading

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 30, 2021

Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 30, 2021 – Privacy and security issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the… Continue Reading

EUIPO’s TMview database expands to Chinese market

“As of … the 19 May 2021, TMview will include trade mark data made available by the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA), taking the total number of trade marks in the search tool from 62 to over 90 million from 75 participating IP Offices. Over 32 million Chinese trade marks are now available in the… Continue Reading

The name game for coronavirus variants just got a little easier

STAT: “Do you have trouble keeping the names Covid-19 variants straight, and struggle to distinguish B.1.1.7 from B.1.351 or B.1.617.2? The World Health Organization wants to help. On Monday, it announced a new naming system it devised for so-called variants of interest and variants of concern, the forms of the SARS-CoV-2 virus with important mutations.… Continue Reading

Library Learning Analytics

portal: Libraries and the Academy, Library Learning Analytics: Addressing the Relationship between Professional, Research, and Publication Ethics Vol. 21, No. 3 (2021), pp. 417–423. Copyright © 2021 by Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD 21218. “The advent of and increasing interest in learning analytics among researchers, practitioners, and administrators alike has academic librarians questioning what… Continue Reading

Crypto Climate Accord

Make Crypto Green – “Surging demand for cryptocurrencies and accelerating adoption of blockchain-based solutions have highlighted a critical issue: the technology’s growing energy consumption and its impact on our climate. That’s why we’re working collaboratively with the crypto industry—including all blockchains—to transition to 100% renewables…Crypto Climate Accord Signatories are crypto market participants that make a… Continue Reading

Deepfake Maps Could Really Mess With Your Sense of the World

Wired: “Researchers applied AI techniques to make portions of Seattle look more like Beijing. Such imagery could mislead governments or spread misinformation online….In a paper published online last month, University of Washington professor Bo Zhao employed AI techniques similar to those used to create so-called deepfakes to alter satellite images of several cities. Zhao and… Continue Reading

Why COVID vaccines give way better protection than a COVID infection

Mashable: “COVID vaccines give us much better protection than a COVID infection, say infectious disease experts. That’s one of many reasons to get a COVID shot, which are rigorously (and continually) tested for safety. The vaccines trigger a significantly more robust immune response than a naturally-acquired infection. Ultimately, this better prepares your body for a… Continue Reading