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Internet Archive Blogs: “In the summer of 2023, the New York Times ran an article titled “Ways You Can Still Cancel Your Federal Student Loan Debt.” The article outlined six ways to cancel student debt, with the final being: “Death This is not something that most people would choose as a solution to their debt burden.” …
The Hill: “The federal government’s free at-home COVID-19 test program will be suspended beginning Friday in response to a drop in respiratory diseases. The Biden administration brought back the free test program last year ahead of the respiratory viral season. By going to COVIDtests.gov, households could order a free pack of four at-home COVID-19 tests. …
Eastland, Craig, The Legal Research Landscape: From Abridgements to AI (February 10, 2024). Northeastern University School of Law Research Paper Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4723343 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4723343 – “The landscape of legal research has become a bit bewildering. Fifty years ago, there was one way to do legal research, but competition and computers have created …
Los Angeles Times: “The loss of Arctic sea ice has long been a graphic measure of human-caused climate change, with wrenching images of suffering polar bears illustrating a worsening planetary crisis. Now, new research has found that Arctic Ocean sea ice is shrinking even faster than previously thought — and that the Arctic may start …
Data is Plural: “Different datasets have different answers, cover different timeframes, and use different methodologies. Miriam Barnum et al.’s Global Military Spending Dataset attempts to bring them together. By uniting “76 variables from 9 dataset collection projects,” the authors write, “we provide the most comprehensive and complete set of published datasets on military spending ever …
Open Culture – Courtesy of the Morgan Library & Museum: “Seventeenth-century Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn may have more name recognition than nearly any other European artist, his popularity due in large part to what art historian Alison McQueen identifies in her book of the same name as “the rise of the cult of Rembrandt.” …
Axios: “A new tool called Writable, which uses ChatGPT to help grade student writing assignments, is being offered widely to teachers in grades 3-12. Why it matters: Teachers have quietly used ChatGPT to grade papers since it first came out — but now schools are sanctioning and encouraging its use. Driving the news: Writable, which …
Bunting, William and Stein, Tomer, Amicus Lobbying: Friends of the Court or Friends of the Industry? (January 29, 2024). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4708986 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4708986 – “This Article reveals that lobbying has a vast and outsized impact on the development of judge-made business law. Lobby groups have taken control of the amicus curiae filing process …
Fast Company: “If you throw a plastic water bottle or yogurt cup in a recycling bin, it might not necessarily be recycled.Inside sprawling warehouses that the industry calls “MRFs” or materials recovery facilities, machines and workers often sort through hundreds of tons of waste a day. The process is imperfect, and valuable recyclables can often …
“Three recent FTC enforcement actions reflect a heightened focus on pervasive extraction and mishandling of consumers’ sensitive personal data. Proposed Settlements with Avast X-Mode and InMarket. In mid February, the FTC announced a proposed settlement to resolve allegations that Avast, a security software company, unfairly sold consumers’ granular and re-identifiable browsing information—information that Avast amassed …
