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The ‘new elites’ of X: Identifying the most influential accounts engaged in Hamas/Israel discourse. Oct 20, 2023 RAPID RESEARCH REPORT University of Washington Center for an Informed Public: “Since the first news of the attack on Israel by Hamas, we have seen anecdotal reports from users of X (formerly Twitter) that the platform has become …
Scientific America [read free]: “The COVID-19 pandemic is ongoing, but in May officials ended its designation as a public health emergency. So it’s now fair to ask if all our efforts to slow the spread of the disease—from masking, to hand washing, to working from home—were worth it. One group of scientists has seriously muddied …
“This new Public Case Access site was created as a result of a collaboration between the Harvard Law School Library and Ravel Law. The company supported the library in its work to digitize 40,000 printed volumes of cases, comprised of over forty million pages of court decisions, including original materials from cases that predate the …
Brennan Center for Justice: “In August, a public school district in Iowa reportedly used ChatGPT to help it comply with the state’s controversial book ban law. That law—like counterparts passed in Florida, Texas, Missouri, Utah, and South Carolina—seeks to limit discussion of gender identity and sexuality in schools by barring school libraries from carrying books that …
MIT Technology Review – If we want online discourse to improve, we need to move beyond the big platforms. Erik Carter. “We’re in a very strange moment for the internet. We all know it’s broken. That’s not news. But there’s something in the air—a vibe shift, a sense that things are about to change. For …
A new index rates the transparency of 10 foundation model companies and finds them lacking. Katharine Miller – Companies in the foundation model space are becoming less transparent, says Rishi Bommasani, Society Lead at the Center for Research on Foundation Models (CRFM), within Stanford HAI. For example, OpenAI, which has the word “open” right in …
Washington Post: “As The Post’s FOIA director, I’ve helped expose government waste and wrongdoing, and published stories that led to new laws. This is the first installment of Revealing Records, a periodic column by Nate Jones about his work obtaining public records for The Post. Few things make a journalist happier than receiving a manila …
USAToday: “…It’s impossible to know how many book-ban attempts have been inspired by BookLooks.org, which adds new reviews weekly […The site launched in 2022 to showcase a book-rating system that has also been used by right-wing political activist group Moms for Liberty.] But in one researcher’s national database tallying more than 3,000 challenges to library …
Quartz: “The oldest digital library in the world, Project Gutenberg, has transformed thousands of ebooks into audiobooks using AI—bypassing the longer (and more expensive) process of hiring a human reader to do the job. It’s exactly the kind of AI application that actors, who are currently on strike in the US for the first time …
“Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) has launched The Banned Book Club to ensure that all readers have access to the books they want to read. The Banned Book Club makes e-book versions of banned books available to readers in locations across the United States where titles have been banned. The e-books will be available …
“Through a FOIA request to the US Department of the Interior, journalist Ben Welsh has obtained and published the agency’s drone roster. For each of the 850+ remote-controlled aircraft, the dataset lists the agency bureau and office, drone manufacturer, model, cost, serial number, and more. The FOIA request also unearthed spreadsheets listing specific drone flights …
“ALA compiles data on book challenges from reports filed by library professionals in the field and from news stories published throughout the United States. Because many book challenges are not reported to the ALA or covered by the press, the 2022 data compiled by ALA represents a snapshot of book censorship throughout 2022. A challenge …
