How traffic through the Strait of Hormuz shrank to a trickle – a visual deep dive

CNN: “As the war in Iran enters its tenth week with no clear end in sight, shipping traffic in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz has been completely reshaped, heavily disrupting global markets and supply chains for oil, natural gas, fertilizer and other essential products. Before the United States and Israel launched their …

Subjects: Economy, Energy, Environmental Law, Financial System, Food and Nutrition, Internet, Knowledge Management, Search Engines, Transportation

Pomiferous

“Welcome to the world’s most extensive apples (pommes) database. Information on over 7,000 apples is available here, all carefully researched and provided in a way that is easy to navigate. They’re organized by name, pollination group, harvest period, and other characteristics.” [BoingBoing]

Subjects: Education, Food and Nutrition, Search Engines

When the Librarians Fought the Archivists Over Who Gets the Declaration of Independence

Michael Auslin on the Final Battle to Control the Declaration of Independence, LitHub – “In the summer of 1951, a month after the Declaration celebrated its 175th anniversary, an unmarked panel truck pulled into the basement of the Library of Congress. Once loaded, it drove to the Maryland campus of the National Bureau of Standards, …

Subjects: Government Documents, Legal Research, Libraries

Your name in Landsat

Type your name [or any name] and see it spelled out in stunning Landsat satellite imagery. The satellite images used in this interactive are part of Landsat’s extensive record, spanning more than 50 years. The Landsat series of Earth-observing satellites are jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Subjects: E-Records, Environmental Law

Trump’s Complaints About Iran War Leaks Prompt Aggressive DOJ Investigations WSJ

Wall street Journal Gift Article – “President Trump privately complained to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche about media leaks in the wake of the Iran war last month, according to administration officials familiar with the matter, prompting an aggressive push at the Justice Department to pursue those investigations. Blanche vowed to secure subpoenas specifically targeting the …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Defense, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

The World Press Freedom Index 2025

Press Freedom Index, over half of the world’s countries now fall into the “difficult” or “very serious” categories for press freedom. In 25 years, the average score of all 180 countries and territories surveyed in the Index has never been so low. Since 2001, the expansion of increasingly restrictive legal arsenals — particularly those linked …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Legal Research

ICE Agents Have List of 20 Million People on Their iPhones Thanks to Palantir

404 Media – Palantir is making ICE faster. “Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) use of Palantir systems now means agency officials effectively have a list of 20 million people readily accessible on their iPhones, increasing the speed at which ICE can find houses to raid and people to arrest, according to comments made by a …

Subjects: AI, Civil Liberties, E-Records, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Privacy

AI in journalism: Live tracker of scandals and mistakes

Press Gazette: “Round-up of the main cases where AI use in journalism has gone wrong. AI is being widely used in journalism and can lead to reputation-killing scandals and mistakes if not monitored closely. Here Press Gazette rounds up some of the main examples of where AI has gone wrong. Most recently, The New York …

Subjects: AI, E-Records, Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

GTIG AI Threat Tracker: Adversaries Leverage AI for Vulnerability Exploitation

Fortune Tech: “Google’s Threat Intelligence Group said Monday that it was able to stop an effort by hackers to use AI to “plan a mass vulnerability exploitation operation.” According to Google, the hackers used an AI model to find, then exploit, a zero-day vulnerability, the name for a software flaw that developers aren’t yet aware …

Subjects: AI, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Economy, Financial System, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Violent crime plummets in “Democrat run cities” blasted by Trump

Popular Information: “Since his return to the White House, President Trump has repeatedly claimed that major cities across the United States are overrun with crime. Trump has specifically targeted cities run by Democrats, calling them “unsafe” and “crime-ridden.” “The ones that are run by the radical left Democrats, what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, …

Subjects: Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

The Impact of AI-Generated Text on the Internet

The Impact of AI-Generated Text on the Internet. Jonas Dolezal, Sawood Alam, Mark Graham, Maty Bohacek: The proliferation of AI-generated and AI-assisted text on the internet is feared to contribute to a degradation in semantic and stylistic diversity, factual accuracy, and other negative developments. We find that by mid-2025, roughly 35% of newly published websites …

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

The Chief Justice and His Wife Took $20 Million From Firms He Rules On.

The Existentialist Republic – “Over sixteen years of federal financial disclosure forms, Chief Justice John Roberts mischaracterized more than twenty million dollars in household income from law firms appearing before the Supreme Court. He concealed his wife’s equity stake in her employer for three consecutive years. He failed to recuse from more than five hundred …

Subjects: Courts, Financial System, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Legal Research