Articles of Interest - April 15

***BIG DATA & AI  

How algorithms know what you’ll type next- deconstructing text predictors  Pudding 

Amazon’s empire rests on its low-key approach to AI  Economist  

Google launches end-to-end platform in an effort to democratize AI and Machine Learning  TechCrunch 

Does the Bayesian approach to statistics require a “subjective belief”?  Statistical Modeling  

Can a computer write a script? Machine learning goes Hollywood   LA Times  

A dozen things I wish I’d known before starting as a Data Scientist  Medium 

A snapshot of how programmers work  Tech Republic 

***JOURNALISM 

In the age of ‘enemy of the people’ rhetoric, do young people still want to be journalists?  Philly  

The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News  The New Yorker

'Crying girl' picture near US border wins World Press Photo of the Year  CNN

There are a lot of great journalism movies. Here are our top 25  Poynter   

Journalist David Carr As A Father In 'All That You Leave Behind'  NPR  

Many rural Americans say local news media mostly don’t cover their area  Pew Research Center 

It’s just in mice! This scientist is calling out hype in science reporting   Stat News

Devin Nunes Admits That His Bogus Defamation Lawsuits Are Really About Phishing For Journalists' Sources  TechDirt  

2019 Pulitzer Prizes Turn The Spotlight On Some Dangers Journalists Face  NPR

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM 

More than 30 media companies have unionized in the past 2 years  Axois

When local newspapers shrink, fewer people bother to run for mayor Harvard’s Nieman Lab 

The next big news fight is between Chinese aggregation apps  Axois 

Meet Frame, a weekly news magazine that lives in your calendar and text messages  Poynter 

Apple News+ gets off to a rocky start for some publishers  Digiday

Newspaper Racks For 'Tampa Bay Times' Come With Video Streaming, Advertising  Publishers Daily 

***FAKE NEWS

WorldNetDaily: "Inside the spectacular fall of the granddaddy of right-wing conspiracy sites   Washington Post 

Meet The People Fact-Checking The Election That Makes 2016 Look Like A Walk In The Park  BuzzFeed News

Why conspiracy theories are getting more absurd  Vox

Who needs deepfakes when bogus crowd photos get thousands of shares on Facebook?  Poynter 

Asian governments are trying to curb fake news  Economist 

Conspiracy theories, misinformation swirl online as Notre Dame burn  Daily Dot

  ***TECHNOLOGY

How much can we afford to forget, if we train machines to remember?  Aeon

Amazon Workers Are Listening to What You Tell Alexa  Bloomberg

Forget The Black Hole Picture — Check Out The Sweet Technology That Made It Possible  FiveThirtyEight 

How photo booths escaped the brink of extinction by becoming FOMO generators The Verge  

 ***SOCIAL MEDIA  

Social media usage in U.S. remains unchanged despite a year of turmoil  Pew Research Center

Pinterest's Midwestern charm  Quartz 

An Influencer Shares How She Turned Instagram Into A Viable Living  Digg

***FACEBOOK

Facebook Tests Combining News Feed, Stories  Digital News Days

Facebook will stop asking you to wish your dead friends a happy birthday  Fast Company

The standalone Messenger app may be merging back into the flagship Facebook app  BGR

***MOBILE 

How to Run Diagnostics Tests on Your Smartphone  LifeHacker  

Is Your Smartphone Making You Fat?  WebMD  

***PRIVACY & SECURITY 

Hackers publish personal data on thousands of US federal agents  TechCrunch 

Microsoft webmail breach exposed email addresses and subject lines  Engadget 

Incognito mode won’t keep your browsing private. Do this instead  Fast Company

One Month, 500,000 Face Scans: How China Is Using A.I. to Profile a Minority  New York Times

Hackers could read non-corporate Outlook.com, Hotmail for six months  ArsTechnica

***INTERNET

Google testing 'Before' and 'After' commands that filter dates direct from the Search box  TechSpot 

What Women Know About the Internet: The digital world is not designed to keep women safe.. New regulations should be  New York Times

 ***PERSONAL GROWTH 

Would you be Willing?  Becoming (my blog)

How to become a more curious person  Quartz

Should We Have Empathy For Those We Hate?  NPR

How to prime your mind to make creative leaps and new discoveries  BigThink

You Are Not as Good at Kissing as You Think. But You Are Better at Dancing: We overestimate and underestimate our abilities in weird ways  New York Times  

***GRAMMAR

Real Language Analysis Should replace disembodied grammar instruction in schools   Economist 

Linguists found the world’s “weirdest” languages—and English is one of them  Quartz

***WRITING & READING 

How Writing Changed My Life & Career  Darius Foroux Blog 

Old-school writing tools will boost your creativity, concentration—and speed  Quartz

***LITERATURE

‘Extraordinary' 500-year-old library catalogue reveals books lost to time  The Guardian  

Every Kurt Vonnegut Novel Ranked in Order of Relevance  Consequences of Sound  

Libraries are letting patrons pay off their fines by donating canned goods  Daily Item  

PBS' 6-Episode 'Les Misérables' Miniseries Focuses On The Story Instead Of Music  NPR  

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World (book review)   The Week

Wattpad, an online reading room, wants to print books  Economist 

***GENDER   

5 Fast Facts You Need to Know about the woman whose algorithm led to the first image of a black hole  Heavy 

Why Men Get Worse Forehead Lines and Wrinkles Than Women  Fatherly

Everything you need to know about the transgender military ban  Axios

Virginia Hall, the greatest spy you’ve never heard of  Economist  

New Augmented Reality App Celebrates Stories of Women Typically Omitted from U.S. History Textbooks  Open Culture 

London bookstore—devoted mostly to overlooked works by female writers—celebrates 20 years  New York Times 

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES 

New Report Takes A Deeper Look At How Latinos Experience Discrimination In The US  NPR

Deputy sheriff's son charged in connection with string of fires at historically black churches in Louisiana  CBS News 

The Civil Rights Activist Murdered by the Ku Klux Klan Whose Story Was Nearly Lost to History  A mighty Girl

The sons of slaveholders quickly recovered their fathers’ wealth  Economist 

Israel’s Election, Through the Eyes of a Young Palestinian  The New York Times

Thomas Mann Explains the Nazis' Ulterior Motive for Spreading Anti-Semitism in Rare 1940 Audio  Open Culture

Native American Women Are Facing a Crisis  New York Times  

As black activists protested police killings, homeland security worried they might join ISIS  The Intercept

Sharp Rise in the Share of Americans Saying Jews Face Discrimination  Pew Research Center  

Texas high schooler sends racist promposal on Snapchat  KVUE-TV

***FREE SPEECH

Anti-Transgender Speaker Sprayed During Talk  Inside Higher Ed

FUCT: An Unconstitutional Restriction of Speech or an Allowable Ban on "Scandal"?  The Fashion Law Blog  

***LAW & CRIME  

Kim Kardashian hopes to become lawyer in 2022 after four-year apprenticeship  BBC

Without Using Profanity, Supreme Court Justices Discuss Case Centered On Bad Language  NPR

Nebraska faces a prison-crowding emergency  Economist

***RELIGION

The fire at Notre Dame, a Catholic icon, was made even more heartbreaking by the timing Washington Post

What Pope Benedict's Letter On The Sex Abuse Scandal Means For Catholics  NPR

Southern Baptist seminary removes stained glass windows showing church leaders, Alabama pastor  Al.com

Little-Remembered Religious Preachers Get Their Due In 'American Messiahs'  NPR

Noah's Wife Gets A Name In 'Naamah' (author interview)  NPR 

'Why I joined a cult - and how I left'  BBC 

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

Steve Bannon and U.S. ultra-conservatives take aim at Pope Francis  NBC News 

Pence says Buttigieg bringing 'attacks on my Christian faith'  CNN

Trump: Am I being audited because I'm a Christian?  USA Today

***GOOD NEWS

Woman still riding motorcycles at 93 years old, rolls through Triad  FOX 8

20-year-old raising 5 siblings gifted new car from strangers  WTOL-TV 

New Jersey teen shares the stage with her service dog  CBS News 

***REALLY?! 

A Burglar Hiding In An Oregon Bathroom Turned Out To Be...A Trapped Roomba  BuzzFeed News

Woman does karate, son gets nude, dog steals cornbread mix from Walmart, police say  KY3

A cassowary bird killed a man in Florida  Quartz  

Drunk Florida man arrested at Olive Garden, eating spaghetti  Miami Herald

Man shoots himself and his daughter while trying to change her diaper at a Chuck E. Cheese  WBRC-TV 

***ART  

What’s Left of Notre Dame’s Art?  The Cut 

How Leonardo da Vinci made a “satellite” map in 1502  Vox

Art frenzy takes over Havana as biennial kicks off Reuters 

***GRAPHIC DESIGN

The History of Italics In Type  Kottke

Chobani, Glossier, and more are branching out into ’70s-style serif fonts  Vox

Behind the process of Helvetica’s 21-century facelift  The Verge

***MUSIC 

The Surprisingly Technical Process of Songwriting  Medium 

***FILM

'Long Day's Journey Into Night' Is a Mind-Boggling Feat  The Atlantic

Review: Netflix's 'Tijuana' Finally Offers Good TV About Journalists  Daily Dot

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA  

Johnson Publishing Co., the ex-publisher of Ebony and Jet, files for bankruptcy  Chicago Sun-Times 

A Wave of Consolidation among media companies  Economist 

Will It Soon Be Legal to Say Curse Words on Broadcast Television?  Hollywood Reporter

***FREELANCE WRITING

Freelancers to cover public media  Current.org  

Political news pitches  Medium  

Freelance pitches  Reader’s Digest

Pitches on travel, food or personal essays  Curiosity Magazine

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT  

Up against the invincible: A professor was convicted of sexual misconduct: Why is he still on campus?  Columbia Spectator  

A new study confirms: fraternity men and athletes are committing more sexual assaults than are those in the general student population and that repeat offenders are a major problem  Inside Higher Ed

Students accused of sexual assault are suing colleges — and winning most of the time  USA Today

 ***SOCIAL ISSUES 

The IRS Audits the Working Poor at a Higher Rate than Wealthier People  WNYC Studios  

6 demographic trends shaping the U.S. and the world in 2019  Pew Research Center

***THE BORDER

What’s happening at the U.S.-Mexico border in 6 charts  Pew Research Center

Photographing All 2,000 Miles of the US–Mexico Border  Wired 

The Borderlands — Not The U.S., Not Mexico, A Transitional Land  NPR

11-year-old ordered deported without her family  MSN 

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

What Qualifies as Middle-Income in Each State  FlowingData

H&M is Being Sued for Allegedly Collecting and Sharing Employees' Fingerprints  The Fashion Law Blog

***ENVIRONMENT

Are Plastic Bag Bans Garbage?  NPR

How Fake Meat Could Save the Planet  One Zero

***HEALTH

One Day There May Be a Drug to Turbocharge the Brain. Who Should Get It?  New York Times  

Are You Overdosing on Caffeine? Signs that your coffee habit is doing more harm than good  Outside Online 

Napping is good for you, experts say—if you do it the right way  Quartz

Invisible Middlemen Are Slowing Down American Health Care  The Atlantic

The Science Behind the Mental Clarity Diet  Medium 

Can wearing your heart (monitor) on your sleeve save your life? Doctors grapple with Apple Watch’s latest addition  Economist  

High Stress Can Lead To Heart Attacks, Sibling Study Finds. Here's How To Relax  NPR 

A Dying Nurse Is Claiming She Switched Thousands of Babies at Birth  Fatherly

***HEALTH: VACCINES

How Misinformation Is Driving the Measles Outbreak Among Ultra-Orthodox Jews  New York Times  

How Philadelphia Mandated Vaccinations In 1991  NPR

New York's Vaccine Order Shows How Health Laws Are Failing Us  Wired

Measles Cases Spike Driven By Outbreaks In N.Y. And 4 Other Regions  NPR

***TRAVEL

Why airlines make flights longer on purpose  BBC 

Beijing is building a colossal new airport  Economist 

Delta reduces how much passengers can recline their seats  Quartz  

***FOOD

Swiss government declares that coffee is not essential for survival  BBC

***GAMES & SPORTS

Professional Sports Bettor Sets 'Jeopardy' Single-Day Record  Bleacher Report  

Britain's Tara Moore saves match point at 0-6, 0-5 down – and goes on to win  The Guardian  

The Athletic's next arena is in podcasting  Axiox 

Our deep dive into how esports broadcasting differs from traditional sports  VentureBeat

***FAMILY

Kids Whose Parents Read to Them Understand Up to 1.4 Million More Words  Mental Floss

Want to raise successful kids? Harvard, MIT study says doing one thing at age 4 could make them happier and wealthier in life  CNBC 

For Anxious Kids, Parents May Need To Learn To Let Them Face Their Fears  NPR

***ANIMALS  

Study shows dogs can accurately sniff out cancer in blood  Science Daily

Border Collie Comes Out Of Nowhere, Saves Chihuahua From Being Run Over By Car  Digg

***SCIENCE

New Twitter account outs shoddy reporting in science stories  Quartz

The engineering of living organisms could soon start changing everything  Economist 

Emotional mirror neurons found in the rat  Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience

***MATH

Mathematicians Discover the Perfect Way to Multiply  Wired

The Mathematics of (Hacking) Passwords  Scientific American 

***PSYCHOLOGY  

Is evolution the key to understanding mental illness?  Economist 

The Most Important Question in Psychology Research  Psychology Today

***NEUROSCIENCE  

Deep brain stimulation in patients over 60 boosted short-term memory for up to an hour, making it comparable to an average 20-year-old  The Guardian

The violent attack that turned a man into a maths genius  BBC 

Kashfia Rahman: How risk-taking changes a teenager's brain  TED Talk

Doctors Use Electrical Implant to Aid Brain-Damaged Woman  New York Times

***HISTORY  

Reconstruction, one of the most misunderstood chapters in American history  CBS News

See the Oldest Printed Advertisement in English: An Ad for a Book from 1476  Open Culture

Telegram announcing Abraham Lincoln’s death is up for sale  Associated Press

Third-graders found error in their workbook about Columbus: Here’s what they did about it  Washington Post

***RESEARCH 

Fears that academia’s unhealthy obsession with publication metrics is worsening  ResearchResearch

Elsevier’s Presence on Campuses Spans More Than Journals: That Has Some Scholars Worried The Chronicle of Higher Education 

The Dissertation Publication Requirement: It’s Time for Reexamination  Scholarly Kitchen

Isaac Asimov once submitted a hoax paper  Futility Closet  

***RESEARCH ETHICS  

The study of a cancer test seemed like a triumph: But some data were missing  Stat News

Plagiarism in Predatory Publications: A Comparative Study of Three Nursing Journals  Sigma

When Public Discourse Mirrors Academic Debate: Research Integrity in the Media  Science and Engineering Ethics 

The replication “crisis” is good for science  The Conversation 

Train students to navigate ethical swamps  Nature 

Caught stealing a manuscript? blames a dead colleague  Retraction Watch  

***HIGHER ED 

What the College-Admissions Scandal Reveals  The Atlantic

Western Kentucky reinstated the dean its now ex-provost forced out last week  Inside Higher Ed 

Colleges are upending majors  Axios 

Faced with high costs, crowding and confusion, college students struggle to earn a degree in four years   Union Tribune 

U. of Tulsa Has a Billion-Dollar Endowment for Just 4,000 Students: Why Is It Cutting Programs? Tulsa World 

"Predatory" company uses Canadian universities to sell shoddy conferences  Ottawa Citizen

The Rise of the Mega-University  The Chronicle of Higher Education

Students Are Protesting Mike Pence's Commencement Speech At This Christian University  Newsweek 

Students at Mormon-owned BYU urge honor code compassion  Associated Press

After catholic university students vote to ban porn on campus wifi, nonprofit renews call for Notre Dame to follow  Newsweek

***STUDENT MEDIA  

Administrators censor High School newspaper, demanding the name of a confidential source and moving to prior restraint  Dynamics of Writing 

Police are investigating trashed student newspapers  Student Press Law Center 

***STUDENT LIFE 

The most consequential, and least informed, decision that college students make  New York Times 

Group Instagram accounts for incoming freshman are a way to make friends, find roommates, and suss out colleges before fall  The Atlantic

The Texas State student senate voted to bar a conservative group  Texas Tribune 

Nearly half of indebted millennials say college wasn't worth it, and the reason why is obvious  Business Insider

My Daughter Died By Suicide After Being Abused at College  Vice  

A cartographic clash between the LSE and its Chinese students  Economist 

Fewer than 25% of college graduates can answer 4 simple money questions correctly  Market Watch 

Video shows campus safety officers pin black Columbia University student down when he refuses to show his ID  WPIX-TV

***TEACHING

Broadcast training boss warns of 'gradual erosion' of social skills as journalism students grow up messaging online  Press Gazette  

In praise of teachers (opinion)  The Week  

Five Lessons Online Faculty Can Learn from the IRS  Faculty Focus  

***ACADEMIC LIFE 

3 Things a Faculty-Pay Survey Shows About Academic Jobs  The Chronicle of Higher Education

Kentucky Prof is under investigation for misconduct  Retraction Watch   

The Rise of the Pedantic Professor When academic self-regard becomes an intellectual style   The Chronicle of Higher Education 

‘This Was a Hell Not Unlike Anything Dante Conjured.’ Readers Share Their Stories of Fraught Academic Careers Chronicle of Higher Ed