American Revolutionary War, Eating Invasive Weeds, Mojeek, More: Friday Researchbuzz, April 25, 2025

NEW RESOURCES

Talk of the Sound: Westchester Unveils Rare Revolutionary War Accounts. “The Westchester County Historical Society has released a digitized collection of 1,100 pages of eyewitness accounts from the American Revolution, titled ‘Experiencing the Neutral Ground of the American Revolution: The McDonald Interviews.’ The compilation, now accessible on the Westchester County Archives Digital Collections website and New York Heritage site, features 407 interviews conducted between 1844 and 1851 by John Macdonald.”

Allegheny College: Allegheny Student Turns Her Senior Project Idea Into a Savory Museum Exhibit. “While many people spend hours in the spring and summer on their hands and knees eradicating dandelions and ground ivy from their suburban lawns, Katherine Hoehl ’25 can be found in the kitchen turning those plants and other ‘weeds’ into tasty, nutritious meals. She enjoys the dining experience so much that she has created a virtual museum exhibit, ‘Eating Invasive Weeds: Unpacking the Colonial History of Foraging and Food Sovereignty,’ that details the delights of foraging for common weeds as a source of hearty nourishment.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mojeek on Mastodon: an algorithm update announcement. ” We have switched on an improved algorithm on https://mojeek.com. This improves general relevancy and navigational searches. It takes on board recent user feedback via the evaluator . Further feedback is, as always, welcome; navigational searches can sometimes be negatively impacted.”

AFP: Taliban change tune towards Afghan heritage sites. “In March 2001, the Taliban shocked the world by dynamiting the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan. Two decades later, they are back in power and claim to be making strides to preserve Afghanistan’s millennia-old heritage, including pre-Islamic relics. Even months before their takeover in 2021 the Taliban called for the protection of ancient artefacts in the country, sparking scepticism among observers.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Lifehacker: Notion Mail Takes You Back to When Gmail Was Good. “Notion Mail is finally out in the wild, for anyone who has a Gmail account. And it’s quintessential Notion. If you’ve used the standard Notion app, you really can’t confuse it for anything else. Notion Mail is a minimalist and text-based take on the Mail app that isn’t trying to do anything revolutionary. There are no AI summaries, and no complicated split views like in Superhuman. It’s just your email, sorted in a way that you like.”

Engadget: Google pays Samsung an ‘enormous’ amount of money to pre-install Gemini on phones. “Google has been paying Samsung tons of cash every month to pre-install the AI app Gemini on its smartphones, according to a report by Bloomberg. This information comes to us as part of a pre-existing antitrust case against Google. Peter Fitzgerald, Google’s VP of platforms and device partnerships, testified in federal court that it began paying Samsung for this service back in January. The pair of companies have a contract that’s set to run at least two years.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Route Fifty: ‘Living off the land’ a major cyber threat to critical infrastructure, report finds. “The report released early this month found that 62% of water and power operators in the United States and the United Kingdom have been targeted by cyberattacks in the past year, and of those, 80% have been targeted multiple times. Fifty-nine percent of those surveyed confirmed that cyber criminals sponsored by nation-states were behind the attacks, although experts said that figure could be higher.”

The Register: UN says Asian scam call center epidemic expanding globally amid political heat. “Scam call centers are metastasizing worldwide ‘like a cancer,’ according to the United Nations, which warns the epidemic has reached a global inflection point as syndicates scale up and spread out. Recent crackdowns in East and Southeast Asia – where scam centers took root at industrial scale – have coincided with organized criminal groups (OCGs) shifting operations to more permissive regions.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Tubefilter: YouTube videos with “negative interactions” are impacting kids’ mental health, study finds. “A team led by researchers at Ewha Womans University in Seoul and University of California at Davis studied the potential correlation between YouTube videos featuring ‘negative interactions’ and deleterious mental health effects. Results were mixed, but the research team uncovered a link between those negative videos and underdeveloped social skills.”

Mashable: Report: 1 in 7 teens exchange explicit images online for money or goods. “A new survey is a wakeup call for parents who believe their teen would never exchange sexually explicit imagery of themselves for money or other valuable items like gift cards, clothing, gaming currency, and social media followers and likes. The survey, conducted in fall 2024, found that 1 in 7 young people participated in a ‘commodified sexual interaction’ at least one time before they turned 18.”

The Conversation: AI is inherently ageist. That’s not just unethical – it can be costly for workers and businesses. “Although age has become a protected characteristic in UK law, ageist norms and practices persist in many not-so-subtle forms. Ageism can affect both young and old, but when it comes to technology, the impact is overwhelmingly skewed against older people. So-called algorithmic ageism in AI systems – exclusion based on automation rather than human decision-making – often exacerbates ageist biases.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

The Sun (Turks and Caicos Islands): Solar initiative powers cultural heritage at Junkanoo Museum. “The Junkanoo Museum, a vital cultural institution in Providenciales, has taken a significant step toward sustainability by installing an off-grid solar power system, reducing operational costs while preserving and showcasing the islands’ rich cultural heritage.” Good morning, Internet…

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