74 of Our Favorite Facts for 2020
The New York Times – “Each day, our editors collect the most interesting, striking or delightful facts to appear in articles throughout the paper. Here are 74 from the past year that were the most revealing.”
Category «Knowledge Management»
CDC COVID Data Tracker – Maps, charts, and data provided by the CDC
CDC – “As a result of a data processing issue, some duplicate doses administered were reported for the state of Virginia up through January 5. The corrected number of People Initiating Vaccination for Virginia will appear beginning January 6, 2020. Doses distributed and people initiating vaccination (1st dose received) are for both Moderna and Pfizer …
2020 was the year activists mastered hashtag flooding
Mashable: “…There are a number of reasons why hashtag flooding can be impactful, but Volsky feels a hashtag’s ability to help people reclaim a narrative is one of the strongest. “I think the way social media is structured is to reward the loudest most obnoxious, most controversial voices out there, and that’s part of the …
Sci-Hub: Scientists, Academics, Teachers & Students Protest Blocking Lawsuit
TorrentFreak: “Following in the footsteps of the entertainment industries, publishers are increasingly trying to have pirate sites shut down or blocked to prevent the unlicensed spread of academic and scientific papers. Their main targets are Sci-Hub (‘The Pirate Bay of Science’) and Libgen (Library Genesis), platforms with a key aim of distributing such papers freely …
Millions of Americans now have access to free, anonymous coronavirus exposure notifications
Washington Post – “Here’s a phone alert you wouldn’t want to miss: “You have likely been exposed.” The coronavirus surge is upon us, and your phone might be able to help. More than 150 million Americans, now including California residents, have the ability to get pop-up notifications from local health authorities when they’ve personally spent …
How Full Are Hospital ICUs Near You?
The New York Times: “Just over one-fifth of U.S. hospitals with intensive care units, or 638 total hospitals, reported that at least 95 percent of their I.C.U. beds were full in the week ending Dec. 31. Nationwide, 77 percent of intensive care hospital beds were occupied. These numbers, which come from a dataset released weekly …
Understanding the origins of COVID-19
New York Magazine – The Intelligencer: “What happened was fairly simple, I’ve come to believe. It was an accident. A virus spent some time in a laboratory, and eventually it got out. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, began its existence inside a bat, then it learned how to infect people in a claustrophobic mine …
COVID-19, Death Records and the Public Interest: Now is the Time to Push for Transparency
Sanders, A. K. (2020). COVID-19, death records and the public interest: Now is the time to push for transparency. Journal of Civic Information, 2(4), 1-22. “As the U.S. has grappled with COVID-19, the government has resisted repeated requests to follow open records laws, which are essential to transparency. Current efforts to reduce access to death …
Google launches Question Hub for US publishers
Search Engine Land: “Google Question Hub, accessible at questionhub.withgoogle.com, is now open for US-based publishers to sign up for. In 2018, Google launched Question Hub in regions where the company found it did not have enough content in its search index to answer searchers’ questions. Google then started showing this box to searchers last year …
Facts won’t fix this: experts on how to fight America’s disinformation crisis
The Guardian – “Trump’s false claims about the election and coronavirus are taking a dangerous toll. Can the divide be healed? At the beginning of 2021, millions of Americans appear to disagree about one of the most basic facts of their democracy: that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. The consequences of Donald Trump’s …
The surprising grammar of touch
Linguistic Society of America. “The surprising grammar of touch: Language emergence in DeafBlind communities.” ScienceDaily, 30 November 2020. “A new study [Feeling Phonology: The conventionalization of phonology in protactile communities in the United States] demonstrates that grammar is evident and widespread in a system of communication based on reciprocal, tactile interaction, thus reinforcing the notion …
Google Docs versus Microsoft Word: Attorneys blame ‘technical incompatibilities’ for late filing
ZDNet – “…The American legal system runs on deadlines. As one practicing attorney wrote in an official publication for the American Bar Association, “[M]issing any filing deadline is a lawyer’s worst nightmare.” That’s especially true if you’re representing the plaintiffs in an “Emergency Complaint For Expedited Declaratory And Emergency Injunctive Relief” involving the United States …
