Monday was Groundhog Day, which inspired one of the great films, Groundhog Day from the late, great Harold Ramis. It, consequently, inspired #GradhogDay, the revision of classic lines to have a science-y spin (and vent a little graduate school blues).
You can read all the tweets in the #GradhogDay Storify or contribute your own. So far, my favorite has been this offering:
This week, Science for the People is looking at medical advances that are blurring the lines between life and death. They’re joined by physician and researcher Dr. David Casarett, to talk about his book Shocked: Adventures in Bringing Back the Recently Dead. They also talk to Michael Kruse, founder of Bad Science Watch, about the history and application of CPR.
*Josh provides research help to Science for the People and is, therefore, completely biased.
In fact, I did know; but that is mostly because my children love to read The Unfeathered Bird* by Katrina van Grouw. I, however, greatly enjoy being reminded of this fact as often as possible (it is the kind of thing you know, but then forget you know – like that John Ratzenberger was in Empire Strikes Back), especially when accompanied by such wonderful illustration.
*Courtesy of Princeton University Press.
According to a purported, internal Twitter memo obtained by The Verge, Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo is taking personal responsibility for their poor record of dealing with abusive behavior on their platform – behavior that makes Twitter, as well as other online spaces, unwelcoming to non-white, non-cis-male individuals. Costolo wants this reputation to change and will, apparently, be putting serious resources behind this effort. Twitter is finally recognizing the need to combat online abuse and trolls, not that this is the right thing to do, but because it is costing them valuable users.
We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years. It’s no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day. We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day.
I’m frankly ashamed of how poorly we’ve dealt with this issue during my tenure as CEO. It’s absurd.
–Nitasha Tiku & Casey Newton quoting Twitter CEO Dick Costolo from what is, reportedly, a Twitter internal memo
For those of us interested in having online spaces be venues for debate, discussion, and promotion of equality, the prospect of robust tools built into the platform and taken seriously by Twitter is potentially a huge step forward.
HT: Alex Medina
According to multiple reports and his own opinion piece in Wired, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is ready to propose rules to protect Net Neutrality by extending Title II utility status to broadband. Wheeler wrote in Wired:
Originally, I believed that the FCC could assure internet openness through a determination of “commercial reasonableness” under Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. While a recent court decision seemed to draw a roadmap for using this approach, I became concerned that this relatively new concept might, down the road, be interpreted to mean what is reasonable for commercial interests, not consumers.
That is why I am proposing that the FCC use its Title II authority to implement and enforce open internet protections.
This appears to be a victory for the grassroots activism that has been fighting the large telecom lobbyists. The full details of his proposal are not yet available. So, we shall have to wait and hope that today’s optimism is well founded in the fine print of a 300+ page document.
The Finch and Pea 