Category «Education»

New Database Maps the Politics of America’s Workplaces

PHYS.org: “Researchers, including Professor of Management and Organization Reuben Hurst at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, have produced VRscores, an unprecedented public database for understanding the partisan lean of different employers in the United States. Hurst, with co-authors Justin Frake (University of Michigan) and Max Kagan (Columbia University), developed VRscores …

Subjects: Education, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

CIA ends publication of its popular World Factbook reference tool

AP: Close the cover on the CIA World Factbook: “The spy agency announced Wednesday that after more than 60 years, it is shuttering the popular reference manual. The announcement posted to the CIA’s website offered no reason for the decision to end the Factbook, but it follows a vow from Director John Ratcliffe to end …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Records, Education, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Millions of books died so Claude could live

The Verge: “When ChatGPT launched, in November of 2022, it started a race that almost immediately consumed the tech industry. OpenAI didn’t invent the concept of AI, but most of the state-of-the-art technology was confined to research labs at companies and institutions around the world. Then, suddenly, it was everywhere. And better than anyone expected. …

Subjects: AI, Copyright, Education, Intellectual Property, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Search Engines

Professors Are Being Watched: ‘We’ve Never Seen This Much Surveillance’

The New York Times: “Scrutiny of university classrooms is being formalized, with new laws requiring professors to post syllabuses and tip lines for students to complain. College professors once taught free from political interference, with mostly their students and colleagues privy to their lectures and book assignments. Now, they are being watched by state officials, …

Subjects: Education, Legal Research, Legislation

New database reveals how Americans use water

Virginia Tech: “Water powers our lives. It feeds our crops, keeps factories running, generates electricity, and fills our taps. But until now, no one had a clear, national picture of how much water we’re using — and for what. Landon Marston, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, and his doctoral student Yunus Naseri are …

Subjects: Climate Change, Education, Environmental Law, Legal Research, Search Engines

On Russia’s New Official Dictionary and the Language of Authoritarianism

Literary Hub: “Russia has a new official dictionary. The Explanatory Dictionary of the State Language of the Russian Federation, compiled by St. Petersburg State University, with the assistance of the legal department of the Russian Orthodox Church, has joined the list of official reference materials within the Russian Federation. The dictionary, which defines authoritarianism as …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Education, Government Documents, Legal Research

Federal Data Is Disappearing

Notus: The Trump administration has disrupted data collection on everything from homeland security, maternal mortality, hunger, drug use, education, disaster preparation and the economy. Joy Binion worked for the federal government collecting data on emerging substance abuse trends in emergency rooms across the country. Her work was part of the Drug Abuse Warning Network, which …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Records, Education, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM PhDs since Trump took office

A Science analysis reveals how many were fired, retired, or quit across 14 agencies – “Some 10,109 doctoral-trained experts in science and related fields left their jobs last year as President Donald Trump dramatically shrank the overall federal workforce. That exodus was only 3% of the 335,192 federal workers who exited last year but represents …

Subjects: Education, Government Documents, Knowledge Management

Text is king read on, queen

Experimental History – “The hot new theory online is that reading is kaput, and therefore civilization is too. The rise of hyper-addictive digital technologies has shattered our attention spans and extinguished our taste for text. Books are disappearing from our culture, and so are our capacities for complex and rational thought. We are careening toward …

Subjects: Education, Knowledge Management

How “95%” escaped into the world and why so many believed it

Exponential View: “One number still keeps turning up in speeches, board meetings, my conversations and inbox: “95 percent.” Do I need to say more than that? OK, here’s another clue: this number traveled on borrowed authority in 2025, rarely with a footnote and it started to shape decisions. The claim is this: “95 percent” of …

Subjects: AI, Economy, Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

ChatGPT isn’t the only chatbot pulling answers from Elon Musk’s Grokipedia

The Verge: “Google’s Gemini, AI Mode, and AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Microsoft are starting to cite Musk’s Wikipedia knockoff…ChatGPT is using Grokipedia as a source, and it’s not the only AI tool to do so. Citations to Elon Musk’s AI-generated encyclopedia are starting to appear in answers from Google’s AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Gemini, …

Subjects: Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Search Engines, Social Media