Articles of Interest - Dec 17

***TECHNOLOGY 

‘Deepfake’ technology can now create completely real-looking human faces  BigThink

Taylor Swift used facial recognition to track her stalkers at a concert  Quartz

Morgan Stanley's Numbers on Flying Cars: $2.9 Trillion, 20 Years  Bloomberg  

The rise of the internet and a new age of authoritarianism  Harpers

The Growing Gulf Between Silicon Valley and Washington  The Atlantic 

Google says it won’t sell face recognition for now—but it will be hard to slow its use  MIT Technology Review 

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA   

Microsoft launches its Clarity web analytics tool for A/B testing sites  The Next Web

Magazines and the iPad  Bloomberg 

The downfall of digital media (podcast)  Columbia Journalism Review 

How Companies Like Bored Panda, REI, and Vox Are Growing Their Organic Reach on Social Media  Buffer 

New media hit stumbling block, scaring away some investors  Washington Post 

***JOURNALISM

Time's 2018 'Person of the Year' is killed and imprisoned journalists  NBC News

The Best of Nonprofit News 2018 Institute for Nonprofit News  Institute for Nonprofit News 

Beyond 800 words: What user testing taught me about writing news for young people  BBC News Lab 

'They don't care': Facebook factchecking in disarray as journalists push to cut ties  The Guardian

New Report Finds That More Than 250 Journalists Were Jailed For Their Work in 2018  NPR

ProPublica Picks 14 Newsrooms and Investigative Projects for Year 2 of Its Local Reporting Network  Propublica

Best News Bloopers of 2018  News Be Funny 

Journalists perpetuate myth about suicide during winter holidays  Journalists Resources  

Access to police records is an issue all across the country  Muck Rock

What happens when the third-party tools journalists rely on are shut down?  Poynter

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM 

Local Newspaper Closures Come With Hefty Price Tag For Residents  NPR

How to understand different reader types and drive each type to subscribe  American Press Institute

Jessica Starr, Fox 2 meteorologist, commits suicide at age 35  New York Post 

Popular Young Reporter For NewsChannel 9 Terminated By Sinclair As She Battles Cancer  The Chattanoogan

***FAKE NEWS 

Troll Factory Contributes To Russia's Worldwide Interference  NPR

How Whatsapp fuels fake news and violence in india  Wired 

How do you make fact-checking viral? Make it look like misinformation  Poynter 

How Russian trolls used meme warfare to divide America  Wired 

***BIG DATA & AI 

Kevin Kelly talks about the brain, the mind, what it takes to make AI  Gigaom

Machine learning firm win a Homeland Sec contract to develop predictive models to let computers predict who might be a terrorist  The Intercept 

***SOCIAL MEDIA 

Facebook exposed 6.8 million users' photos to cap off a terrible 2018  Wired

We asked 19 fact-checkers what they think of their partnership with Facebook  Poynter 

Social media is ruining our minds—it also might save them  Wired 

***PRIVACY & SECURITY 

Homeland Security will let computers predict who might be a terrorist on your plane — just don’t ask how it works  The Intercept 

Mapping Service Accidentally Locates Secret Military Bases  Popular Mechanics 

***INTERNET 

Google's top searches in 2018  Engadget 

How Google’s Autotype Contradicts Orwell’s Advice  The Chronicle of Higher Education

The Most Googled 'Should I?' Question Of Each State In 2018, Mapped  Digg

YouTube ‘Rewind’ was supposed to celebrate 2018: It’s now the most disliked video in the site’s history Washington Post 

***PERSONAL GROWTH 

Seeking the Best is a Trap Becoming (my blog)

The quest for the best: a psychologist explains why it makes us miserable  Vox

***WRITING & READING 

How Emily Dickinson Writes A Poem  Nerdwriter1

How the CIA Helped Shape the Creative Writing Scene in America Open Culture

***LANGUAGE

Jane Austen’s Subtly Subversive Linguistics  Daily Jstor  

'Justice' Is Merriam-Webster's 2018 Word Of The Year  NPR

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES 

Santas of color, once met with controversy, now in high demand  MPR

***FREE SPEECH

Report: 9 in 10 American colleges restrict free speech  The Fire 

LA College settles Lawsuit after Student Barred from handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution on Campus  City News Service 

***LEGAL ISSUES 

Tribute Bands - Are They Legal?  Music Think Tan

Paramount Defeats 'Wolf of Wall Street' Libel Suit From Stratton Oakmont Alum  Hollywood Reporter

Katie Couric Wins Appeal Against Gun Rights Group Arguing Documentary Was Defamatory  Hollywood Reporter 

Appeals court rules that secret OxyContin documents must be released  Stat News  

Donald Trump, Wedding Crasher, Ends Up Being Bad Copyright News for Esquire.com  Hollywood Reporter

***CRIME

Shooting Victims Face Lifelong Disabilities, Financial Burdens, Newspaper Finds  NPR

Report: Half of US adults have immediate family member who has been in jail or prison  CNN   

***RELIGION

Max Lucado Reveals Past Sexual Abuse at Evangelical #MeToo Summit  Christianity Today

The Return of Paganism  New York Times

Evangelical Author Rethinks his Book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”  NPR

Christianity Today's 2019 Book Awards  Christianity Today 

Judge sides with religious groups in ObamaCare birth control mandate fight  The Hill

At Trump's hotel, spiritual warriors pray for the president in his 'darkest hour'  Religion News Service

***MEGACHURCHES

Minister accused of stealing $800,000 from Houston's First Baptist Church  ABC-13

Former elders, pastors, and staffers from Chicago’s Harvest Bible Chapel accuse the church of financial mismanagement and a culture of deception and intimidation  World Magazine

Houston pastor on $200K Lamborghini gift  Houston Chronicle 

***THE BIBLE 

Meme Confuses Lincoln’s Bible With A Quran  Fact Check 

Slave Bible From The 1800s Omitted Key Passages That Could Incite Rebellion  NPR

***GOOD NEWS

California woman and her dog reunite after Camp Fire evacuation  CNN

Teens Surprised Their Professor After She Told Them The Holidays Are Difficult For Her  BuzzFeed News  

DNA Test Helps Mother Reunite With Daughter She Thought Died Nearly 70 Years Ago  New York Times

***ART & DESIGN

We made our own artificial intelligence art (and so can you)  Wired 

The world's best cities for street art  Afar    

The 75 best book covers of 2018 according to book cover designers  LitHub 

***MUSIC 

Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' becomes most-streamed song of the 20th century  Entertainment Weekly

Our Favorite Songs of 2018  The New Yorker

The 51 Best Albums of 2018  Spin 

'Blurred Lines' suit against Robin Thicke, Pharrell ends in $5 million judgment  CNN

Vladimir Putin Makes Moves To Control Rap Music In Russia  Huffington Post

Beyoncé, Kendrick, Cardi, and more: The Year in Good Music News 2018  Pitchfork

How Music Can Awaken Patients with Alzheimer’s and Dementia  Open Culture 

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT 

Ex-Baylor frat president indicted on 4 counts of sex assault won't go to prison  CNN 

What Went Wrong in a University Harassment Investigation — and How Officials Are Trying to Fix It  Chronicle of Higher Ed 

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

How the IRS Was Gutted  ProPublica

More Americans are making no weekly purchases with cash  Pew Research  

How Many Hours Americans Need to Work to Pay Their Mortgage  How Much 

***ENVIRONMENT 

New studies suggest coral reefs are more resilient than previously thought  Royal Society Publishing  

Five years of record warmth intensify Arctic's transformation  Nature 

The state of climate change coverage: An analysis  Columbia Journalism Review

***HEALTH 

Questions About Treatments For Pregnant Women Arise From Study  NPR

Sleeping too much can be just as damaging to your health as having too little  MarketWatch  

A clash between modern lifestyles and circadian rhythms can lead to the development of obesity and breast cancer, USC scientist says  USC

Exercise Wins: Fit Seniors Can Have Hearts That Look 30 Years Younger  NPR

Rare brain-eating amoebas killed Seattle woman who rinsed her sinuses with tap water  Seattle Times 

Johnson & Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder  Reuters 

***HEALTH & DIET 

Scant Evidence Behind the Advice About Salt  New York Times 

What Is Behind the Spread of a Mysterious Allergy to Meat?  The Guardian   

***VACCINES

Newly elected Tennessee Rep. Mark Green says he'll question vaccines  NBC News 

Was a Scientist Jailed After Discovering a Deadly Virus Delivered Through Vaccines?  Snopes

Scientists find more evidence that Alzheimer's can be passed to new patients via the transmission of "sticky" proteins under particular, but rare, conditions  Nature 

How personalized medicine is transforming your health care  National Geographic 

***TRAVEL 

These Are The Hottest Travel Destinations for 2019, According to Airbnb  Thrillist

A U.S. Transit Atlas That Ranks the Best (and Worst) Cities for Bus and Rail  CityLab  

***FOOD

What's lurking in your stadium food?  ESPN

***FAMILY

Researchers found one way that long-term marriages get happier  Quartz  

Rediscovering My Daughter Through Instagram  New York Times

Why shaming your children on social media may make things worse  The Conversation 

Most parents – and many non-parents – don’t expect to have kids in the future  Pew Research

***ANIMALS  

Rare white reindeer calf spotted on camera in Norway  BBC   

A City in Spain Plans to Exile 5,000 Pigeons  New York Times

***SCIENCE

Scientists identify vast underground ecosystem containing billions of micro-organisms  The Guardian

Blood Splatter: How a Dubious Forensic Science Spread Like a Virus  Propublica 

***PSYCHOLOGY 

What it’s like to live with a chronic urge to die  Huffington Post 

The bad news on human nature, in 10 findings from psychology  Aeon 

***HISTORY 

Histomap: Visualizing the 4,000 Year History of Global Power  Visual Capitalist

Showering Has a Dark, Violent History  The Atlantic  

America returns treasured church bells it stole during the Philippine-American war  New York Times

***ETHICS 

Amid ethics outcry, should journals publish the ‘CRISPR babies’ paper?  Stat News

You can donate your wedding dress to a person in need  New York Times

***RESEARCH  

EPA science adviser allowed industry group to edit journal article  Science Magazine   

Lessons learnt on transparency, scientific process and publication ethics: The short story of a long journey to get into the public domain unpublished data, methodological flaws and bias of the Cochrane HPV vaccines review  BMJ 

China introduces ‘social’ punishments for scientific misconduct  Nature 

Independent bodies – not universities – should investigate suspicions of scientific misconduct (opinion)  Horizons 

Solving the fake news problem in science: : A “citation refuting a report is counted the same way as one supporting it”  Stat News  

It is getting harder to publish in prestigious journals if you haven’t already  Science Magazine

How art and craft can boost reproducibility  Nature 

***HIGHER ED

Fallout from on-campus tragedies and athletic program controversies prompts donors to circle the wagons -- or flee  Inside Higher Ed

Facing Enrollment Declines, Colleges Seek Out New, Creative Ways To Make Money  NPR

***CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 

Azusa Pacific University board members resign amid LGBTQ policy turmoil  San Gabriel Valley Tribune  

Southern Baptist Convention’s flagship seminary details its racist, slave-owning past in stark report  Washington Post 

Catholic U. fires professor for relationship with subordinate  Washington Post 

Council for Christian Colleges and Universities & the NAE back LGBT Rights in Order to Protect Religious Freedom  PJ Media  

Bridging the gulf between conservative Christian colleges and the arts  Christian Century 

***LIBERAL ARTS 

How Can Colleges Help Liberal-Arts Majors Enter the Job Market?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

The Liberal Arts May Not Survive the 21st Century  The Atlantic

***TEACHING

Teaching the Students We Have, Not the Students We Wish We Had  Chronicle of Higher Ed

How 2 Professors Use a ‘Grade Insurance’ Project to Motivate Students  Chronicle of Higher Ed

How to Help a Student in a Mental-Health Crisis  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***STUDENT MEDIA  

Ganging Up on a Student Journalist?  Inside Higher Ed  

Faculty groups respond to censure issue: A “troubling disregard for the First Amendment” on the university’s part  Times Daily  

***STUDENT LIFE

What Straight-A Students Get Wrong (opinion)  New York Times

Does It Matter Where You Go to College?  The Atlantic 

Trump administration held back report revealing bank charged high fees to students  Politico 

Researchers find an easy way to improve high school students' grades: Let them sleep in  Science Mag

Sleepless No More In Seattle — Later School Start Time Pays Off For Teens NPR

***STUDENTS & DRUGS

Binge drinking among US high schoolers hit a record low in 2018  Quartz

Teen Vaping Soared In 2018  NPR

***ACADEMIC LIFE 

University of Illinois professor fired for falsifying data in grant applications  Chicago Tribune

Illinois Regulators Are Investigating a Psychiatrist Whose Research With Children Was Marred by Misconduct  Propublica 

Scientists are leaving academic work at unprecedented rate  Inside Higher Ed 

University of Illinois professor fired for falsifying data in grant applications  Chicago Tribune

Professor sent mercenaries to save her student from ISIS  The local 

Man charged with beating instructors at community college  KARE 11