New paper on the state of democracy today.

If pundits would like to talk about violence, a terrorist recently shot up the CDC and another assassinated Democratic officials in Minnesota but they sort of let both stories disappear Not as threatening as motorbikes in DC I know but maybe we could circle back?

This is a good and important suggestion - every major dataset housed in the US (which is a *lot* of great data) can be considered under threat right now. One way researchers and institutions elsewhere can help limit the harm is finding ways to mirror host/backup a lot of that data.

"No, Mr Vance. No polar bears out there. And don't worry if you do meet one. They're very friendly. Feel free to go up and pet them! Totally safe! Absolutely won't eat you, honest!"

🚨I converted the list of terminated #NIH grants (as of 3/22) into a google sheet. I added activity codes and award jurisdictions (see tabs for grant count and $ by each). Note this HHS list likely does not include all planned/completed terminations as of this date.🚨 Please use, share and distribute!

On #AI and the "threat" to #ScientificPublishing: Read "Chaos in the Brickyard" (1963). It takes just 2 minutes. It's a 1-page letter in Science. AI makes bricks. What we really need are edifices. Those come from people who choose only quality bricks to build their edifices. #ResearchIntegrity

Thread on the potential for abuse of AI in government, by a GovTech AI developer. Cc @shannonvallor.bsky.social

Support deck.blue! And if you haven't checked out deck.blue now's as good a time as any. It's like TweetDeck for Bluesky.

In 1890, the Tariff Act came into place in the United States. It placed tariffs on imports of up to 50%. While touted as a way to build American industry, there was also the hope it would force an annexation of Canada. It backfired. Let's learn more. 🧵1/10

I'm not just blowing smoke, I'm involved with this academy

Ringen-Jacobs: strategy (4) female gangs are OK. Networking is fine. Let’s lift each other up (5) empower yourself and others #womenup

Ringen-Jacobs: Female Forward mode ideas. (1) control your visibility. Watch the cost - what feels right. (2) digital resilience - control your exposure (3) balance is calm focus #womenup

Ringen-Jacobs calls for digital self determination and digital detox, if needed. #womenup

Ringen-Jacobs: what stresses women? Echo chamber traps, swathes of information, gender specific challenges #womenup

Fits well with #womenup

Ringen-Jacobs: Women are well networked and well informed, but we feel isolated and overwhelmed #womenup

Ringen-Jacobs: we are living in difficult times. Austerity, diversity under attack. What can we do? How can we be an agent of change? #womenup

At #womensup, a Digital Media Women event. Keynote: Female forward: effective in digital times by Lisa Ringen-Jacobs

Read about the new additions to the Data Rescue Tracker! Thank you so much to @icpsr.bsky.social, EDGI, and others for participating in this effort. If you are doing data rescue, please get in touch. We'd love to track where the data are going. www.datarescueproject.org/dr-tracker-d...

Some changes to Google‘s AI principles.

Information about the federal workers' resistance. Link to a Verge article with a picture of a "doge" dog on orange background.

"So ein herrlicher Tag, und ich soll gehen. Aber was liegt an unserem Leben, wenn wir es damit schaffen, Tausende von Menschen aufzurütteln und wachzurütteln" (Sophie Scholl) Heute vor 82 Jahren wurden Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl und Christoph Probst von den Nazis ermordet.

Great idea - light maps for theatres. Lighting can be a barrier for folx. The link comes with a picture that shows a mind map, with bubbles of design requirements, and a few design ideas. All visual. Might benefit from a text version?

In welche Unternehmen haben die Großspender der AfD investiert, wo sind sie leitend involviert? (VOLT ist eine liberal-progressive Partei.)

Correct. If the birthdate field contains corrupt or mismatched data, it defaults to 1875-05-20, which serves as a flag. May 20, 1875, is the day the international standards and metrics treaty was signed. Everything is a conspiracy when you don’t know how anything works.

3/ Examples of potential harm: 🔹 South African women with vaginal rings with no follow-up care. 🔹 interruption of oversight of Malaria vaccine trial participants 🔹 HIV PrEP users in CATALYST trial risk drug resistance. 🔹 Ugandan children in a TB trial lost access to life-saving medication.

Accommodations are sometimes simple measures that can benefit many

Indie Book Spotlight is one of the few big accounts that regularly posts new authors, and might be the only chance of discovery some people get. Help her out, buy a book. Send her some money on Ko-fi. If you can't do that, pass the word along.

Penn is getting a lot of questions about Data Refuge. That effort no longer exists, but several efforts are currently active. I've created a doc from what I & others have suggested. I'll update as I hear more. Feel free to share or suggest: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Well just received this email regarding a paper under review:

The deferred resignation agreement that is used to get rid of federal employees.

Your annual reminder to donate to archive.org

The Internet Archive has to date downloaded 500 terabytes of US government websites, which it crawls at the end of every presidential term. The whole archive is fully searchable. This effort's housed by a donation-funded nonprofit, not a branch of the US government. blog.archive.org/2024/05/08/e...

BREAKING NEWS: Research and basic information on subjects ranging from tuberculosis surveillance to adolescent health disappeared from federal health agency websites.

How to make AI more climate friendly - the Chinese way

He’s Führious.

IMPORTANT The US CDC has announced that, going forward, reported SARS-CoV-2 wastewater levels will be normalized to an endemic baseline "Zero" on this baseline will be levels in the previous year @evanblake17.bsky.social @benjaminmateus.bsky.social

Social Media is so much more than doomscrolling and hate. It can be a safe haven for marginalised communities

This is really important if you use google workspace for anything sensitive or creative (client names, student grades, any original writing, etc). The embedded LLM content scraper may put you at risk even if it is apparently turned off.

Women’s claims of sexual abuse must be heard – unless they’re about master storyteller Neil Gaiman, apparently | Marina Hyde

In Sex Is a Spectrum, @anthrofuentes.bsky.social explains why human biology is far more expansive than the simple categories of female and male. Bringing clarity and reason to a contentious issue, this lively book is out May 6. Preorder yours: bookshop.org/p/books/sex-...

Oh jeez, I hadn’t thought about all the fine art in the Palisades not protected inside the Getty Villa.

New: Meta has deleted trans and nonbinary Messenger themes, as well as the blog posts announcing them. Happens the same week that it has changed its rules to allow users to say LGBTQ+ people are "mentally ill" www.404media.co/meta-deletes...

Happy Covid Day, I guess.

Listen, did you ever had a bad boss, a terrible person, at a job that you can't, for whatever reason, quit? Did you learn to delay, obfuscate, frustrate, and otherwise fuck up that person just to the line where you could keep your job? Congratulations, you have the tools to resist authoritarianism!

Meta has repeatedly deleted our articles, including ones about Instagram's censorship and disproportionate moderation against trans people. It put a "fact check" warning on an article we did about hurricane helene AI spam proliferating on the platform www.404media.co/facebook-is-...

Facebook’s free speech era is off to a shaky start.

Fuck you Facebook. That was the first thought I had when I woke up this morning. Followed by: What ministry is Mark Zuckerberg volunteering to manage for the dictators of the world? Ah, yes. The Ministry of Empowerment. And here's a rager of a blog post on this: www.zephoria.org/thoughts/arc...

Great introduction to UX reviews, useful for designing HCI assignments and walking students through practical processes

I know of a family that has lived here for generations. Do lots of charity work, have lots of members in the armed forces, own businesses that employ hundreds. Even changed the family name to Windsor and still get called German!