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“FracTracker, the project, was originally developed to investigate health concerns and data gaps surrounding western PA fracking. Today, as a non-profit organization, FracTracker Alliance supports groups across the United States, addressing pressing extraction-related concerns with a lens toward health effects and exposure risks on communities from oil and gas development. We provide timely and provocative …
The decline in reading for pleasure over 20 years of the American Time Use Survey. Article Online August 20, 2025. Open access. iScience. Reading has a wide range of benefits for literacy, employment, and health as well as promoting cultural understanding. However, previous monitoring of reading in the US has been inconsistent, with some studies demonstrating …
“What Do Librarians Look Like? Stereotyping of a Profession by Generative AI” SAGE Publications. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science. ISSN0961-0006. eISSN1741-6477. Online August 16, 2025. eLocator09610006251357286 “This study aims to investigate the presence of bias in the visual representation of librarians generated by ChatGPT across three different library settings: school, public, and academic. It …
Indicator: “Hilke Schellmann, an assistant professor of journalism at New York University, tested AI tools for summarization and research. Four LLMs were tasked with summarizing local government meetings. They performed well when asked to generate short summaries but were “surprisingly poor” at longer overviews. Schellmann also tested four summarization tools by asking them to generate …
PC Mag: Privacy Under Fire: Instagram Is Mapping You, Otter Is Recording You, and Smishers Are After Your Amazon Account …Watch out for this one. If you’re not familiar with the term “smishing,” it’s a portmanteau of “SMS phishing.” It just describes attacks like this one, reported by IT Security Guru, where you get a …
NewsGuard Reality Check: Debunk: U.S. is One of 33 Countries That Uses Mail-in Ballots, Contrary to Trump and Pro-Kremlin Claims. What happened: Donald Trump and pro-Russian and conservative sources are falsely claiming that the United States is the only country that permits voting by mail, advancing the argument that the method leads to widespread corruption …
The Hill – “More than 750 current and former staff members of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are calling on Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to stop “spreading inaccurate health information” and do more to protect public health professionals in the wake of a shooting at the headquarters of the Centers for …
PCMag – “Your internet-connected TV has Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) features that track what you watch. Here’s how to disable it, along with smart privacy advice from security experts. Smart televisions offer internet access, streaming apps, and sometimes even built-in cameras and microphones. They’re also collecting loads of personal data in order to sell it …
Rebecca Williams: “In August 2025, I hosted a Burner Phone 101 Workshop at the Brooklyn Public Library. [The link to the full text PDF of the program is here.] Below is a summary of the workshop with key points in bold and additional resources that participants helped crowdsource. Before the workshop began, we set the …
Visual Capitalist: “U.S. tariffs have climbed to an average rate of 18.6%—the highest since 1933. But what does this mean for everyday consumers? This visualization, developed in collaboration with the Hinrich Foundation, highlights major goods expected to face sustained price increases due to rising tariffs. Based on data from the Yale Budget Lab, it explores …
MakeUseOf – “I use Firefox primarily because I have always believed it’s the gold standard for privacy. This is more than an assumption—it’s how the browser markets itself. However, after many years of using the browser, I quit. It took some deep digging, but honestly, beyond the surface, the cracks begin to show…So yes, I …
The newly launched Eclipse Atlas website contains “over 2,000 historic and modern eclipse maps dating from 1654 to the present” as well as maps & guides for future eclipses. “Eclipse Atlas is a passion project of Michael Zeiler to celebrate the beauty of historic eclipse maps and to serve as a gallery of his eclipse …
