Ars Technica: “Many federal policy changes are well known before they are announced. Hints in speeches, leaks, and early access to reporters at major publications all serve to pave the ground for the eventual confirmation. But on Thursday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) dropped a big one that seemed to… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: August 2022
Leaving your job? Take these steps before returning your work devices
Washington Post: “You’ve decided to leave your job and now it’s time to turn in your devices. But what should you do first? Grab all your personal documents and delete them? Do a factory reset to ensure none of your personal data gets left behind? Or do you turn the devices back in as they… Continue Reading
What If You Tried to Swallow a Whole Cloud?
Wired: Ask an absurd question, and xkcd’s Randall Munroe will give you a (somewhat) serious answer. An exclusive excerpt from his upcoming What If? 2. – “What does a star smell like? What’s the tensile strength of snow? How much actual dinosaur does a toy dinosaur contain? If you drove a car to the edge… Continue Reading
Anyone can sign up for DuckDuckGo’s privacy-protecting email address
The Verge: “After rolling out its Email Protection service in private beta last year, DuckDuckGo has announced that it’s finally available to all users. Email Protection is a forwarding service that assigns you a free “@duck.com” email address and intercepts email trackers before they hit your personal inbox. If you need a refresher on exactly… Continue Reading
The Mason OER Metafinder (MOM)
“The Mason OER Metafinder helps you find Open Educational Resources. Unlike other OER discovery sites (e.g, OER Commons, OASIS, MERLOT, OpenStax, etc.) with our Metafinder you aren’t searching a static database that we’ve built. Instead, the OER Metafinder launches a real-time, simultaneous search across 22 different sources of open educational materials as you hit the Search button. Because… Continue Reading
The Sustainable Finance Policy Tracker
OMFIF Sustainable Policy Institute: “The Sustainable Finance Policy Tracker provides a comprehensive overview of different countries’ approaches to mitigating climate risks in the financial sector. Covering 23 countries and jurisdictions, the tracker presents information on 14 sustainable policy subjects that include regulatory and supervisory measures, climate stress testing activity, net zero strategies, green bond issuance… Continue Reading
Abortion Rises in Importance as a Voting Issue, Driven by Democrats
Pew Research Center Report: “While the economy remains the dominant issue in this fall’s midterm elections, the issue of abortion has increased markedly in importance among Democrats following the Supreme Court’s decision ending the federal guarantee of a right to legal abortion in the United States. A majority of registered voters (56%) say the issue… Continue Reading
Why you (probably) won’t finish reading this story
Vox: “We live in a distracted world, almost certainly the most distracted world in human history. And if you’re part of this circus, you’re drowning in options and gadgets and screens and you’re being pulled in a million directions seemingly all at once. If you spend any time online, you already know this. You’re constantly… Continue Reading
How to create better passwords without much effort
Fast Company: “Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: you should use a different password for every account you have, and each of those passwords should be an extraordinarily long and complex string of characters that are easy for you to remember but hard for others to guess. Unfortunately, that’s solid advice and equally… Continue Reading
Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media
Science Advances, Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media – Inoculating against misinformation techniques. Jon Roozenbeek, Sander van der Linden, Beth Goldberg, Steve Rathje and Stephan Lewandowsky. Published August 2022 Volume 8I Issue 34: “Online misinformation continues to have adverse consequences for society. Inoculation theory has been put for-ward as a way to… Continue Reading
The Interpretation of Law
Tobia, Kevin and Slocum, Brian G., The Interpretation of Law (August 10, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4186956 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4186956 “Courts increasingly presume that law should be interpreted according to what it communicates to an ordinary reader. Textualists view this as a strict requirement, creating a bright line between favored “textual” interpretive canons (reflecting objective linguistic… Continue Reading
Bike transport – leading barriers related to riding on the road alongside motor vehicles
Lauren Pearson, Danielle Berkovic, Sandy Reeder, Belinda Gabbe & Ben Beck (2022) Adults’ self-reported barriers and enablers to riding a bike for transport: a systematic review, Transport Reviews, DOI: 10.1080/01441647.2022.2113570 – “Riding a bike for transport purposes is an effective way to improve population and environmental health. Despite this, participation levels in many countries are low.… Continue Reading
