Articles of interest - week of July 16

***TECHNOLOGY 

Amazon Alexa Calls Police On Man Who Was Allegedly Beating His Girlfriend  WILM 

VIDEO: Move Objects With Your Mind? We're Getting There, With The Help Of An Armband  NPR

A Canadian bioethicist says a plan to edit human embryos to prevent deafness is "offensive"  CBC

Will California’s New Bot Law Strengthen Democracy?  The New Yorker 

 ***SOCIAL MEDIA  

I Was Banned From Twitter for Threatening to Kill Mr. Peanut  Vice

Here’s How To Stop Data Brokers From Advertising To You On Facebook  Buzzfeed News 

Conservatives pretending to be suppressed by social media dominated social media  Vox

Here’s how you can go back to the old Twitter layout   

The Hidden Costs of Free Social Media  Foundation for Economic Education 

***MOBILE 

Chinese app downloads surge in US  Axios 

Kids are spending over 30 hours a week on phones, survey finds  Cnet 

***PRIVACY & SECURITY 

I’m a hacker, and here’s how your social media posts help me break into your company  Fast Company  

Google admits leaked private voice conversations  CNBC 

EFF Hits AT&T With Class Action Lawsuit for Selling Customers’ Location to Bounty Hunters  Vice 

***PRODUCING MEDIA 

Podcast events are making a killing  Axios 

Facebook struggles to lure video creators amid intense competition  Economic Times

Facebook's war to win over creators  Axios

How to shoot stellar slow-motion video on your phone  Wired  

***INTERNET

Craigslist's Craig Newmark: 'Outrage is profitable. Most online outrage is faked for profit  The Guardian

How to fix the internet, according to its pioneers  Quartz 

***JOURNALISM

Tools and tips for digging into Facebook from two investigative journalists  The Ground Truth

Why Journalists Should Care About Collective Wisdom  Immerse  

ProPublica and NBC show how righteous media serve democracy  Baltimore Sun

‘We’re Almost Extinct’: China’s Investigative Journalists Are Silenced Under Xi  New York Times

A Nellie Bly Memorial Is Being Planned for New York City’s Roosevelt Island  Mental Floss  

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM 

Starbucks will stop selling newspapers come September 1  New York Post 

Here’s how some for-profit local news outlets are building subscriptions  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

***FAKE NEWS

A digital breadcrumb trail for deepfakes  Axios

Deepfakes have YouTubers worried: Vidcon offers a way to push back  Cnet

People Tell Us How QAnon Destroyed Their Relationships  Vice

We tell ourselves conspiracy theories in order to live  The Outline  

***PERSONAL GROWTH 

Let Go of it  Becoming (my blog)

What makes people change their lives entirely and how can we best become our true selves  The Guardian 

It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done  New York Times 

***GRAMMAR

What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old?  MEL Magazine

It Might Be Time to Update the Old ‘Alfa-Bravo-Charlie’ Spelling Alphabet  Atlas Obcura

***WRITING & READING 

The Power of a Good Sentence Why writing one isn't as easy as you think  The Walrus 

The Cost of Reading: the uneven burden taken by women writers in literary citizenship  Longreads 

***LITERATURE

New L.A. book festival LitLit announces talks by poets Yesika Salgado, Vickie Vertiz and more  LA Times

***GENDER   

Mississippi Politician Refuses To Let Female Reporter Travel Alone With Him  NPR 

The Women’s World Cup showed what women’s sports should be: This is what happens when women athletes don’t have to fight for relevance  SB Nation 

Robert Foster, GOP governor candidate, denies woman reporter access because of her gender  Mississippi Today 

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

The Dominance of the White Male Critic  New York Times

You All Look Alike to Me’ is hard-wired in us  UC Riverside 

Hate Crime Divides School  Washington Post

Aziz Ansari thinks white people are trying too hard with 'Crazy Rich Asians'  CNN

Georgia landlords evicted white woman for having black guests, ACLU lawsuit alleges  NBC News 

How news outlets are dealing with the 'moral dimension' of covering Trump and his racist tweets  CNN

'Go Back Where You Came From': The Long Rhetorical Roots Of Trump's Racist Tweets  NPR

A Detroit festival charged white people $20 and black people $10, then they got hit with backlash  CNN

***LEGAL ISSUES / CRIME

Does including “in my opinion” protect me from a libel or defamation suit? Student Press Law Center 

DOJ Says Local Governments Need To Prepare For Ransomware Attacks  NPR

A Florida cop planted meth on random drivers, police say: One lost custody of his daughter  MSNBC 

 ***RELIGION

Growth and Decline in American Religion over the Last Decade  Religion in Public 

The decline of the Christian bookstore  Slate 

Christian speaker removed from conference over church’s views on women, gays  Baptist News  

Behold, The Millennial Nuns  HuffPost  

US man accused of sex abuse at Kenyan orphanage he founded  Associated Press 

State Department Conference Aims To Identify Victims Of Religious Persecution  NPR

How religious restrictions around the world have changed over a decade  Pew Research Center

Researcher Identifies 'Oldest Handwriting of a Christian' In Ancient Papyrus Letter From Roman Egypt Newsweek

After 2016 Bible Slip, Trump Lashed Out at ‘So-Called Christians,’ Book Says  New York Times

***RELIGION AND BORDER ISSUES

Dr. Dobson’s visit to the border  Dobson Newsletter  

James Dobson's anti-immigrant rhetoric is dangerous  Sojourners 

***GOOD NEWS

Rejected from culinary school because she is deaf, woman goes on to launch her own pizza empire  The Week  

After final cancer treatment, little girl donates birthday gifts to sick kids  NBC News 

Strangers come together on Twitter to find dress for girl with autism  The Week  

Three young brothers started a candle company to buy themselves toys. Now they donate $500 a month to the homeless  Washington Post 

Athlete, 66, Has Run 45 Marathons with People Who Have Disabilities: 'It's Like Their Super Bowl'  People

A dying woman raised money for her own funeral: Strangers donated so much, she’s now giving away the surplus  Washington Post

***REALLY?!

Drunk Yoga: fun night out or workout disaster?  New York Post 

Worker falls into 8-foot tank filled with liquid chocolate, paramedics find him covered from 'head-to-toe'  Fox News

Metal drinking straw impales UK woman’s brain, killing her New York Post 

Illinois mother accused of driving with kids on top of SUV in inflatable pool  USA Today 

NY father and daughter charged with armed robbery WCAX  

Family Saves Octopus Stranded: Surprised by what it does the next day  The Epoch Times 

Man breaks into King Co. Sheriff’s Office, brings donuts, wants jail to avoid roommate  Q-13

***MUSIC  

Lennon or McCartney? Scientists Use Artificial Intelligence to Figure Out Who Wrote Iconic Beatles Songs  Open Culture

What TikTok's Explosion Could Mean For Music  NPR

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA  

Battle for the future of Spanish-language TV  Axios

***FREELANCE OPPORTUNITIES  

Pitches on "Stranger Things" and other shows   Bitch Media

Pitches for "Building Bridges"  YES! Magazine

Long travel and design-focused stories  Apartment Therapy

Pitches for beverage alcohol industry stories  SevenFifty Daily

Freelance tech pieces  The Daily Beast  

Pitches for culture stories and features  The Outline

How much money can you make on Amazon Mechanical Turk?  The Hustle 

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT 

What new research reveals about sexual predators, and why police fail to catch them  The Atlantic 

Harvard suspends star economics prof after sexual harassment claims  New York Times

***ACADEMIC LIFE 

Odds Are, Your Doctorate Will Not Prepare You for a Profession Outside Academe  The Chronicle of Higher Education

Teachers Sue U.S. Over Student Loans That Weren't Forgiven  NPR

***BORDER ISSUES  

Immigration Officials Use Secretive Gang Databases to Deny Migrant Asylum Claims  Propublica  

Concern Grows Over Plan To Scale Back Program That Protects Military Families From Deportation  NPR

Border crisis conditions for migrants, according to a lawyer who’s volunteered there for years  Slate 

Border Patrol Agents Are Passing Around A Commemorative Coin Mocking Care for Migrant Kids Propublica 

3-Year-Old Asked To Pick Parent In Attempted Family Separation, Her Parents Say  NPR

The US is quietly opening shelters for babies and young kids: One has 12 children and no mothers  Reveal News 

California Set To Expand Medicaid To Undocumented Young Adults  NPR

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

Branding has a moral responsibility  Fast Company   

Digital Tax Passed In France Is Aimed At U.S. Tech Giants  NPR  

The future of work in America  McKinsey

How much money can you make on Amazon Mechanical Turk?  The Hustle 

***ENVIRONMENT 

Trees emit a surprisingly large amount of methane  Wired 

These rare blue clouds could be headed your way  PopSci

Radioactivity in parts of the Marshall Islands is far higher than Chernobyl, study says  Wired

***HEALTH 

The meat-allergy tick also carries a mystery killer virus  Wired 

Urinary Tract Infections Affect Millions: The Cures Are Faltering New York Times

Is my insomnia all in my head? Why my brain might be sleeping without me knowing  Telegraph  

In US 1st, baby is born from dead donor’s transplanted womb  Associated Press

***TRAVEL

How to Fall Asleep on a Plane  Life Hacker  

Attendance falling at American Landmarks  Politico 

How to Get Through Airport Security Faster  Life Hacker

***SPORTS & GAMES

Why Do Sports Fans Watch, and Rewatch, Injury Footage?  New York Times

Robot umpires: MLB is testing technology in Atlantic League  Washington Post

Poker Bot Beats The Professionals At 6-Player Texas Hold 'Em  NPR

Chess Grandmaster Igors Rausis Caught Cheating  Bleacher Report 

We Watched 906 Foul Balls To Find Out Where The Most Dangerous Ones Land  FiveThirtyEight  

***FOOD

Hershey’s Co. sued over 'misleading' White Reese’s packaging  Fox News  

When Natural Disasters Strike, Operation BBQ Swoops In With Relief — And Ribs  NPR

***ANIMALS 

Heroic dog saves sleeping deputy constable from Montgomery County house fire  ABC-13

Drunk man sends injured baby bird to wildlife rescue center in an Uber  WFSB   

Why Dogs Now Play a Big Role in Human Cancer Research  Wired

Tourists Plays Around With An Octopus, Don't Realize It's One Of Australia's Most Venomous Species  Digg 

***SCIENCE 

Why we see the colors of faces differently than other things  Wired

NASA drops insane map of 4,000 planets outside our solar system  CNET

We Have The First-Ever Images of Molecules Changing Their Charge State  Science Alert

***PSYCHOLOGY & NEUROSCIENCE

30 intro psych textbooks: the vast majority defined or explained statistical significance inaccurately  Psychological Science  

REM sleep silences the siren of the brain  NIN 

***CHINA 

Google Working On AI In China Has Billionaire Peter Thiel, Others Raising Major Concerns  Media Post  

China Box Office Drops in First Half Despite 14.5 Percent Jump in Hollywood Revenue  Hollywood Reporter 

***POLITICS 

Trump campaign uses stock video pretending it portrays supporters  Associated Press 

Kantar Forecasts $6 Billion in Political Ad Spending for 2019-2020 Election Cycle  Kantar Media

Huge Turnout Is Expected in 2020. So Which Party Would Benefit?  New York Times

***RESEARCH 

Here’s how to deal with failure, say senior scientists  Nature Index

Scandal-weary Swedish government takes over research-fraud investigations  Nature 

The risk of embarrassing, high-profile retractions also prevents data from being published that could correct the published literature  Wiley 

Research publications: does piling them high sell them short?  Times Higher Education 

Replicator Degrees of Freedom Allow Publication of Misleading 'Failures to Replicate'  SSRN

Reproducibility crisis, the scientific method, and the quality of published studies: Untangling the knot   Wiley 

Rules to stamp out export of unethical research practices to poorer countries  gaining momentum  Times Higher Education 

Inside a “Fake” Conference: A Journey Into Predatory Science  Technology Networks

The greatest threat to medical science is not fabrication of results but ‘presentational fraud'”  BMJ

***HIGHER ED 

Bachelor’s Degree Movers  FlowingData 

Univ of Texas will give full scholarships for tuition and fees to in-state students with household incomes of $65,000 or less  Statesman 

Hackers Demand $2 Million From Monroe College  Inside Higher Ed 

Colleges Are Shutting Down, and Yankton Was a Precursor  The Atlantic

More Latinx Students, Stagnant Latinx President  Inside Higher Ed

Sorry, Headhunters, but the Healthiest Presidential Searches Are Open  The Chronicle of Higher Ed  

In the U.K., a Surge in Chinese Applicants  Inside Higher Ed

Accreditor approves Ashford U's nonprofit conversion  Education Dive 

The Downside of Reduced Student Borrowing  Inside Higher Ed

2 Indiana virtual schools received lots of public money: Now, the state wants $40 million of it back Washington Post

5 Years Later, Grand Valley Resolves Federal Complaint  Inside Higher Ed  

***CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS  

Michael W. Smith, Kevin Jonas to start music center, label at Liberty University  Religious News Service

He was hired to teach at Olivet Nazarene University: And then someone read his book Chicago Tribune 

PLNU students serve children in Philippines  Church of the Nazarene

***TEACHING

Survey shows nearly half of students distracted by technology  Inside Higher Ed

5 Key Aspects of Teaching Innovation In 2019  Entrepreneur

***STUDENT MEDIA  

Virginia school district orders high school student journalists to delete a video report documenting the school's poor conditions  Pilot Online 

Study: Millennials Worry About Media's Impact On Democracy  Media Post  

***STUDENT LIFE

Amazon fined a college student $3,800 for returning a rented textbook 4 days late  Business Insider 

Teens are abandoning hyper-produced personalities for people who seem just like them  The Atlantic  

Student Loans Are The Hardest On These Borrowers  NPR