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The Guardian – “From mass firings to unprecedented influence…Musk’s role in the Trump administration is without modern precedent. Never before has the world’s richest person been deputized by the US president to cull the very agencies that oversee his businesses. Musk’s attempts to radically dismantle government bureaus have won him sprawling influence. His team has …
Grant Watch is a project to track the termination of grants of scientific research agencies under the Trump administration in 2025. We currently are tracking terminations of grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Our data on terminated NIH and NSF grants are collected from submissions from affected …
“OSINT Tools and More – Editor’s note: Happy fifth anniversary to Jeremy Caplan’s excellent Wonder Tools Substack newsletter. He started his newsletter a couple of months before I launched the Toolbox newsletter. If you’re not subscribing, you should!. I took a fact-checking and OSINT tools course from the Knight Center for the Americas last month. …
The Freedom of the Press Foundation has launched an ongoing secrecy news database, which they are calling The Classified Catalog, to keep track of all secrecy-related news during the Trump administration. Reporters, FOIA requesters, and the public can use it to chart stories about FOIA news and litigation, disappearing messages, information being taken down from …
TechDirt: “We generally understand how LLM hallucinations work. An AI model tries to generate what seems like a plausible response to whatever you ask it, drawing on its training data to construct something that sounds right. The actual truth of the response is, at best, a secondary consideration. It does not involve facts. It does …
“Records reviewed by WIRED [no paywall] show law enforcement agencies are eager to take advantage of the data trails generated by a flood of new internet-connected vehicle features. Automakers are increasingly pushing consumers to accept monthly and annual fees to unlock pre-installed safety and performance features, from hands-free driving systems and heated seats to cameras …
Institute of Education Sciences Continuing the Work of ERIC: “Dear Colleague: I am pleased to announce that the U.S. Department of Education, on behalf of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), has renewed its contract with AEM Corporation to continue the work of ERIC. The largest library of education research in the world, ERIC serves …
“A republic, if you can keep it” – but can the US keep it? How Trump is dismantling democracy – Christina Pagel has mapped out 69 actions that President Trump has taken in the last twelve weeks to undermine democracy, undermine the rule of law, attack enemies, suppress dissent and control information.
“ERIC, the research repository of the Department of Education, was defunded this week. The ERIC catalog lists over 2 million education-related publications. More than 500,000 of these publications are directly hosted by ERIC as full-text PDFs. If the ERIC website goes offline, most of these 500,000 Open Access publications will not be available anywhere else …
Mental Floss: “Everyday chores can take their toll. While many errands and to-do list tasks won’t change from week to week, the ways you handle them can. In fact, learning a few new tips and tricks might help you simplify those onerous deeds. Consider these life hacks below to help you clean, cook, organize, and …
TechSpot: “YouTube is a massive competitor to TV, an engagement beast, uploading as much new video every five minutes as the 2,400 hours BBC Studios produces in a whole year. The 26-year-old YouTube star MrBeast earned US$85 million in 2024 from videos – ranging from live Call of Duty play-alongs to handing out 1,000 free …
The New York Times – “An expert on the federal work force estimates that the speed and chaos of Mr. Musk’s cuts to the bureaucracy will cost taxpayers $135 billion this fiscal year. President Trump and Elon Musk promised taxpayers big savings, maybe even a “DOGE dividend” check in their mailboxes, when the Department of …
