Poynter: Opinion | Fact-checkers, don’t quit now: A call for endurance at GlobalFact 2026. “The International Fact-Checking Network brought together more than 300 journalists and researchers from across the globe this week in Vilnius, Lithuania, for GlobalFact 2026, the 13th annual conference. This essay is adapted from the opening welcome of the IFCN director.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Stephen Wolfram: Launching Version 15 of Wolfram Language & Mathematica: Built-in (Useful) AI & Lots of New Core Functionality. “June 23, 1988 is when we launched Version 1.0 of Mathematica. Today—almost 38 years later—we’re launching Version 15 of what—in recognition of how far it’s expanded beyond ‘math’—we now call Wolfram Language. It’s an impressive release, with a lot of new core functionality.”

Reuters: Telegram founder Durov says India has ‘punished’ more than 150 million people by banning Telegram. “Pavel Durov, founder of the ​Telegram messaging app, said ‌on Tuesday that by temporarily banning Telegram ​in the country, ​the Indian authorities have ‘punished’ over ⁠150 million ordinary ​users in India.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Tubefilter: Creators love collectibles, so TikTok is launching World Cup trading cards. “As if the 2026 FIFA World Cup needed more hype, TikTok is adding some limited-edition collectibles to the mix. In partnership with 65-year-old trading card company Panini, TikTok is issuing a set of World Cup trading cards that will feature the nations, players, and legends who define the culture of international soccer.”

Boing Boing: Emojli was a social network where the only language allowed was emoji. “Emojli launched on August 29, 2014 — a social media app that restricted usernames and messages to emoji only. No letters, no numbers, no punctuation. YouTubers Tom Scott and Matt Gray built it after seeing the success of Yo, an app whose entire function was sending the word ‘Yo’ to your contacts.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechSpot: The White House app could soon be auto-installed on every DHS work phone. “The White House app could soon appear on every Department of Homeland Security work phone, whether employees want it or not. According to a new report, DHS personnel were told in a June 16 email that the app will ‘soon’ be automatically installed on all government mobile devices managed by the department.”

Engadget: The EU won’t pursue a mandatory game preservation law . “The European Commission has opted not to require video game companies to continue supporting their online titles after they’re no longer available for purchase. Instead, the regulator said that it will ‘explore ways to improve industry standards’ for games that may become unavailable to their audiences.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Optional.is: TIL DB. “Introducing the Today I Learnt Database. Over the last few years, each day we’ve been collecting a few ‘interesting’ headlines. We dropped them into a text file and at the end of the year went through everything, converted it to HTML and added some tags. It was an interest, but long process. We always had the intentions of doing something with these headlines!”

Random Thoughts: Searchable comics text pages?. “After finding a collection of Marvel Bullpen Bulletins for the search engine for magazines about comics, I started to wonder whether it’d be useful (or fun) to include text pages from comics in general. I mean — editorials, letters pages, ‘hype pages’… There’s information there that’s not available anywhere else. So… perhaps? Maybe?”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Spotted in my RSS feeds: a one page zine-making utility called Dirty Little Zine. From the “Who made this?” popup: “I’m Rick. I love zines. The DIY kind especially — stapled, photocopied, cheap, alive. That’s why this tool exists: a free, fast way to make one without opening InDesign.” Good afternoon, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.

AL.com: Birmingham animal shelter joins opposition against proposed multibillion dollar ‘AI factory’. “The Greater Birmingham Humane Society has joined a growing group of opponents against the development of a 75-acre Nebius AI factory in Birmingham’s Oxmoor Valley neighborhood. In GBHS’ Change.org petition, published June 5, the group questions the safety of building the center 1,200 feet from its future ‘animal healing campus.'”

DATA CENTERS

Source New Mexico: Firm behind New Mexico Medicaid campaign recruits influencers to promote Project Jupiter data center. “The marketing agency behind New Mexico’s award-winning Medicaid re-enrollment social media campaign is recruiting influencers to promote Project Jupiter, the controversial artificial intelligence data center under construction in Doña Ana County.”

Kansas Reflector: My rural Kansas town has a bad case of data center fever. Boom or bust, we will never be the same.. “If completed as proposed, the data center would be across the street from farms and homes where people have lived for years. It would be within sight, and perhaps sound, of an elementary school in a residential neighborhood. It might also be the first view of the city that travelers northbound on Interstate 35 would have. The soul of Emporia is worth saving, but creating a data center to physically separate the city from the Flint Hills and change the essential goodness of the town isn’t the way to do it.”

AI IN GOVERNANCE

San Jose Inside: CA Admits Using High-risk AI Systems It Neglected to Report . “A year ago, California officials had to report under a new state law how they used automated systems to make important decisions about people’s lives. They said they never did… Now, the state has issued a more expansive answer: It is currently using six automated systems to make consequential decisions about the lives of Californians.”

Reuters: Exclusive: U.S. bank regulators ramp up scrutiny of AI use at financial companies. “U.S. banking regulators are stepping up scrutiny of how lenders deploy artificial intelligence as the developing technology sweeps through the industry, pressing firms on everything from data access and governance controls ​to risks posed by third-party vendors, according to people familiar with the situation.”

AI LEGISLATION

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: ‘AI slop’ resolution seeks to reel in city’s use of artificial intelligence. “A series of bizarre images posted to the city of Atlanta’s official social media pages caught the eye of one council member who thinks the city should disclose its use of artificial intelligence. Council approved a resolution this week calling on the city to prioritize the use of ‘human-created visual media’ in its official communications.”

AI IN WORK

Futurism: Mark Zuckerberg Orders His Employees to Start Having Fun Again After Brutal Layoffs Culled Their Colleagues. “In an internal memo to employees on Friday, Zuckerberg attempted to lift their spirits in what appears to be a notable failure to read the room. Specifically, the billionaire promised to host a companywide AI hackathon in July — only to get brutally shut down by workers who were in no mood for such a thing.”

AROUND THE AI WORLD

CNBC: OpenAI mulls slashing prices as it competes with Anthropic for users: WSJ. “OpenAI is mulling sharp price cuts to its artificial intelligence offerings, as it looks to woo consumers away from rival Anthropic, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday evening stateside, citing sources familiar with the matter.”

TechCrunch: A tech worker-backed PAC is bringing a $5M knife to Big Tech’s $100M gunfight . “A grassroots movement is forming among everyday tech workers who are demanding their companies develop and deploy AI responsibly. And the Guardrails Alliance, a new super PAC dedicated to supporting AI legislation, aims to leverage that discontent.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: Investigation by The Atlantic reveals many millions of songs used for AI music training . “We’re always glad to see more publications and groups digging deeper into artificial intelligence and its impact. Today, The Atlantic has published four searchable databases of music that has been used to train AI models. The scope is pretty staggering, with 12 million tracks in one database, 9 million in another, and the two final ones each containing about 100,000 songs.”

Associated Press: OpenAI hit with multistate probe into possible user harm as its IPO looms. “OpenAI received a subpoena from several states as part of a probe into the safety of users of its chatbot as it prepares to offer stock to the public for the first time.”

BBC: Russian families use AI to ‘resurrect’ loved ones killed in Ukraine. “For some grieving families, AI content provides a way to mourn their loved ones; in some cases, deepfakes featuring deceased people are used at funerals. Responses online to such clips are sharply divided: some say they were brought to tears, while others see the practice as unethical and deeply disturbing.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Search Engine Journal: TikTok Shows 3x More AI Slop Than YouTube, Report Finds. “About 59% of TikTok videos served to a new account’s For You feed are AI slop, according to a report from Kapwing, the video creation tool company. That’s roughly three times the rate Kapwing found on YouTube.”

Gizmodo: For the First Time, ChatGPT Reportedly Has Less Than Half of the AI Assistant Market. “OpenAI reportedly no longer dominates the AI assistant market. A report from Sensor Tower (reported on by TechCrunch) says that although OpenAI’s ChatGPT is still the number one-ranked AI assistant product, it can now brag only the plurality, not the majority of users.”

SiliconSnark: Open Letter: Mark Zuckerberg, Please Stop Managing Engineers Like AI Livestock. “Intensity without clarity is panic wearing a compression shirt. Speed without consent is churn. Accountability without agency is punishment. A leader can be fierce about the mission while still being careful with the people asked to carry it. In fact, that is the whole job. The best engineers do not need softness. They need seriousness. They need leaders who distinguish hard work from chaotic work, urgency from thrash, and ambition from organizational jump scares. They can handle a fight.” Excellent read. Good afternoon, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.

Spotted in my RSS feeds: Heikki’s Garden of Flowers. From the About page: “Heikki’s Garden of Flowers aims to be a comprehensive catalogue of historical and contemporary pictorial letterpress works…. The archive has more than 2500 images as of 2026. But, for a more focused set of 50, you can find my favourites in the Heikki’s favourites collection.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Register: Brit competition cops order Google to make search rankings less mysterious. “The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has imposed two new conduct requirements for Google’s search services, to improve transparency and fairness in result rankings and allowing users to port their search data to third parties.”

CNN: Trump administration ditches plan to close a critical ocean monitoring system after furious bipartisan backlash. “The Trump administration is U-turning on its controversial decision to dismantle a critical ocean monitoring system that provides vital information on the health of the world’s oceans, after a bipartisan backlash in Congress. The Ocean Observatories Initiative was established in 2016 and involves around 900 instruments across parts of the Pacific and Atlantic, especially designed to withstand the immense pressure and corrosive saltiness of the ocean depths.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Guardian: Attorney general tells department to stop using X amid UK disinformation concerns. “The attorney general for England and Wales has told his office to no longer post on X, making it the first UK government department to stop using the Elon Musk-owned platform amid increasing worries about its use to incite violence and racism.”

Denver Post: After Denver-area venues nix rally with Hasan Piker, Democrats weigh whether online figures help or hurt campaigns. “The venue cancellations, at least two of them said to be based on security concerns with hosting the event featuring Hasan Piker, prompted outrage by the candidates. The episode also underlined broader questions as Democrats from different factions of the party debate whether figures like Piker draw in voters or risk alienating them.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: US court rules Ohio can restrict children’s use of social media. “Ohio can implement a ‌law requiring social media companies, including Meta Platforms’ Instagram, to obtain parental consent before allowing children under 16 to use their platforms, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday.”

Politico: Meta faces calls for Congress to probe scam ads targeting seniors. “In a letter sent Thursday to House Homeland Security Committee Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) and ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the groups alleged Meta has been slow to take down fraudulent ads, leaving seniors vulnerable to financial loss. The letter, shared exclusively with POLITICO, was signed by the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Postal Workers Union Retirees and the American Federation of Teachers, among others.”

TorrentFreak: Major Publishers Sue ‘WeLib’, a Pirate Site Built on Anna’s Archive Code. “Less than a month after a New York court issued a default judgment against shadow library Anna’s Archive, thirteen major publishers have sued WeLib. The publishers characterize WeLib as a young but popular pirate site that was largely copied from Anna’s Archive. The site is allegedly used by tech companies for AI training purposes, but that allegation raises more questions than it answers.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Brennan.day: Announcing folk.zone: An attempt to build the IndieWeb commons myself.. “folk.zone is a collection of free (both as in speech and beer), community-run internet services. This includes but is not limited to: federated social media, a git forge, a writing platform, a wiki, an IRC server, a pastebin, a link shortener, a bookmarking service, an RSS reader, and more. All self-hosted. All open-source. All run by one person (me) on four machines in my living space.”

University of Queensland: World-first database first step to combatting MND. “It has been 12 years since the ice-bucket challenge went viral on social media across the world, but its impact is still front of mind for University of Queensland researchers who have developed a new database to combat Motor Neurone Disease (MND). The researchers collaborated with clinicians and researchers across Australia to establish the world’s most comprehensive unified patient data collection of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), which is the most common and aggressive form of MND that usually results in death within 3-5 years.”

Florida Atlantic University: Pixels Preserve World’s Most Endangered Marine Mammal, the Vaquita. “Researchers from Florida Atlantic University, in collaboration with the San Diego Natural History Museum, SeaWorld California, and NOAA Fisheries, have created a highly detailed digital record of a rare vaquita skeleton using advanced imaging technologies. The team combined medical CT scanning, high-resolution micro-CT imaging, and digital photography to capture the specimen at multiple scales, from overall skeletal structure to microscopic bone detail. The resulting datasets were reconstructed into precise 3D models that allow the entire skeleton to be virtually explored, measured and studied without handling the fragile original specimen.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Utah State University: Pine Needles Predict Air Quality? USU Researcher Says Yes. “Professor Randy Martin from the Utah Water Research Laboratory has used pine needles as passive air quality samplers in a recent study comparing urban air quality in Rose Park and Spanish Fork, Utah. Many compounds in the air, such as pesticides, are attracted to the fats on the surface of pine needles. Martin wanted to know if those same fats would attract toxic compounds known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs.” Good morning, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.

WJAC: Fort Bedford Museum launches online collection after four-year digitization project. “Nearly every artifact, photograph, letter and more from the museum can now be found online as part of a digitization project that began about four years ago. The collection went online a couple of months ago, and new additions are being added regularly.”

Mark Greville: I threw my last “5-star” book against the wall. So I built BookTribes.. “I built BookTribes for myself. I want to know the most loved books from the people in my tribe. The idea is simple: rate some books, and BookTribes finds other readers who rate those same books the way you did. Not people who like the same genre. People whose tastes overlap with yours. Your tribe. Then it shows you what those people loved, but that you haven’t read yet.” I entered three of my favorite books: Shogun, Little Women, and Carpe Jugulum. The site recommended Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (okay!), Dune (um, okay), and The DaVinci Code (ACK!)

Tokyo Weekender: Tokyo Metro Launches New Website To Help You Avoid Crowded Trains. “On Tuesday, Tokyo Metro Co., Ltd. launched Metro CrowdNavi, a website that lets passengers check congestion levels across all of its rail lines. The service provides average crowding data from the previous five days by station, time and train service, while a heatmap shows congestion levels across an entire route at a glance. It is available in Japanese and English and does not require registration.”

EVENTS

Waxy: Tiny Awards 2026 nominations are open. “I’m on the judging committee for the third time, joined by Depths of Wikipedia’s Annie Rauwerda, Today in Tabs’ Rusty Foster, Elle, Escape the Algorithm’s Elan Ullendorff, and a bunch of other cool people. We’ll narrow down hundreds of your submissions to a shortlist of finalists, which the public will vote on in August, with the winner announced in September.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Gizmodo: Snap’s AR Glasses Aren’t Even Out Yet, and They’re Already Getting Roasted to Death . “… the only thing most people can think about is how they look on your face—or more specifically, how ridiculous they look on your face. On social media, people have wasted absolutely zero time skewering Snap’s Specs for being bulky and generally dorky-looking, and Snap’s CEO Evan Spiegel is at the center of most of that commentary.”

USEFUL STUFF

bstn.info: List of blog aggregators. “More and more people are sharing and asking about blog aggregators, wanting to discover new sites and authors. It’s a great example of how the blogosphere is thriving and how much it interests us – its own creators. That’s why I decided to gather blog aggregators in one place.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Chicago Sun-Times: The Obama Presidential Center is not an official presidential library. Here’s why. “Yes, there is a Chicago Public Library branch at the center. But that is not the same thing as a presidential library run by the National Archives and Records Administration. The NARA owns all the digital and print presidential records and physical artifacts of former president Barack Obama’s presidency. The NARA is tasked with preserving them in perpetuity. Here are two major reasons Obama and the Obama Foundation opted out of the NARA system in 2017.”

New York State Education Department: Archives Partnership Trust Launches ‘Educational Resource Center for New York State History’ with $1 Million Gift from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation. “The New York State Education Department and Archives Partnership Trust today announced the launch of the Educational Resource Center for New York State History, made possible through a historic $1 million donation from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation. The gift, the largest single contribution in the Trust’s history, will help advance the shared mission of utilizing primary source materials to deepen student understanding and engagement with state and local history.’

SECURITY & LEGAL

Aphyr: More Fake Mastodon Signups. “On 2026-05-30, the Mastodon server I run started getting a flood of implausible signup requests. We think these are likely bots because our server rules and signup form clearly tell users to talk about their interest in gay leather.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Guardian: A bonanza for fans of the natural world: the digital library sharing 64m pages of scientific knowledge with everyone. “Today, however, the future of the world’s largest open-access digital library for biodiversity literature is under threat. Earlier this year the Smithsonian Institution, which has faced severe funding cuts under the Trump administration, stopped hosting the BHL’s administration functions, paying some staff wages and supporting its technical infrastructure.” Good afternoon, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.

Spotted in my RSS feeds: Bubbles. From the About page: “We monitor thousands of independent, personal blogs via RSS. Every new post appears on Bubbles automatically. Nobody submits individual links. The blogs were hand-picked from various curated sources and individually reviewed…. You vote on the posts worth reading. The good stuff floats to the top. Everything else sinks over time.” It’s kind of reminding me of old-school Technorati. That is not a bad thing. The site makes the entire list of 5000+ blogs indexed as available as an OPML file. I am very impressed.

Spectrum Local News: New tracking tool helps people stay safe in western North Carolina rivers this summer. “Many people head to the North Carolina mountains in the summer to cool off in rivers and streams. A new water quality dashboard from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality is now helping people decide which areas are safer for swimming and other recreation.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

ABC News: Trump admin seeks to block restoration of climate change, diversity info at historical sites. “The Trump administration sought to block a court order to restore historical sites across the country ahead of America 250 celebrations on July 4. The Department of the Interior and the National Park Service filed an appeal on Monday evening seeking a preliminary injunction to dismiss a judge’s ruling the federal government must restore materials that were removed from historical sites and national parks across the country since May 20, 2025.”

Mashable: Google officially launches Android 17. “Android 17, Google’s latest model of mobile operating system, is officially available — at least for owners of Pixel phones. Google also released a new Pixel Drop and the latest operating system for its smartwatches, Wear OS 7. There’s a lot of new features, so let’s dive into what’s coming to your devices.”

Tubefilter: Twitch creators can now get certified to earn more trust from potential brand partners. “Twitch users can obtain badges to identify themselves in chat or celebrate certain games. Now, there’s a new type of badge available on Twitch: It tells advertisers which creators are ‘certified’ for brand partnerships on the popular streaming platform.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Hollywood Reporter: ‘Backrooms’ Sends Hollywood Running to Reddit for New Ideas. “As Hollywood appears poised to pivot to digitally native creatives like Parsons and Obsession director Curry Barker, Reddit is emerging as a focus point (alongside obvious suspects like YouTube and TikTok) for agents and execs seeking the Next Big Thing.”

The Art Newspaper: Royal Ontario Museum acquires collection of nearly 600 Arab textiles and artefacts. “The group of acquired objects, the Widad Kawar Collection of Arab Dress and Heritage Arts, comprises almost 600 garments, historic objects and everyday accessories from Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

404 Media: Cops Keep Getting Arrested for Using Flock to Stalk People. “The contours of each story are much the same, with the police officer in question using their access to the system to repeatedly track a specific person over the course of weeks or months. The cases highlight the fact that Flock can be used to track the whereabouts of individual people, that police do not get a warrant in order to use the system, and that, if they have access to the system, they have the technical ability to look up any license plate they want for any reason they want.”

Politico: Google and Apple pulled into Raskin’s ICE investigation. “Apple and Google are facing a Democratic probe accusing them of acquiescing to the Trump administration’s demands that they remove apps used to track and document Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

British Library: From decisions to treatments: conserving a sketchbook . “Explore the conservation of a sketchbook from the Holland House Papers collection, where treatment decisions balanced preservation needs, reader access, and respect for the book’s historical character.”

UConn Today: Study Finds Positive Aging Videos Affected Women’s Views of Getting Older – For the Better. “Women who view TikTok videos of others comfortable with their gray hair and laugh lines start to feel more positive about their own aging the more they watch, a new UConn study has found, potentially influencing a woman’s ability to age well later in life.”

Gizmodo: Just 16% of Americans Believe AI Will Positively Impact Society, Pew Poll Finds. “Half of adult Americans use AI chatbots, with a quarter using them daily, according to new polling from Pew Research released Wednesday. That’s up from 33% of Americans who used AI chatbots in the summer of 2024. But a small minority, 16%, believe AI will have a positive impact on society.” Good morning, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.

Kiripost: Khmerica Database Opens Access to Cambodia’s Rare French-Language Historical Records. “Hosted on the museum’s website, the Khmerica database provides free access to an expanding collection of books, newspapers, journals and historical documents related to Cambodia, many of which are out of print or difficult to find elsewhere in digital format.”

Swedish Film Institute: 13,000 Rare Bergman Photographs Now Digitized. “More than 13,000 photographs related to the films of Ingmar Bergman have been digitized and made accessible by the Swedish Film Institute’s Stills and Posters Archive. The unique collection includes both production stills and behind-the-scenes photographs, many of which are being published and shown for the first time.”

Spotted on Reddit: Uruguay Football History.com. From the Reddit announcement: “Over the last few years, I’ve been collecting photographs, articles and historical documents related to Uruguayan football and recently put them together into a bilingual website in English and Spanish. The site covers World Cups, Copa América tournaments, qualifiers and other international competitions, with archives spanning more than a century.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Mastodon looks to newsletters to help revive the open social web. “With the software’s latest release, the social networking platform is introducing email newsletters, a feature that will allow writers to send their posts directly to subscribers’ inboxes, even if those subscribers don’t have or want a Mastodon account.”

Ukrainian Fund of Digitized Art: UFDA Grows Its Digital Archive with Artworks by Alina Zamanova. “Ukrainian Fund of Digitized Art welcomes a new artist to its roster — Alina Zamanova! We are happy to announce that we have digitized 13 of her works, which are now preserved in the highest possible quality.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Gizmodo: Signal Veterans Want to Encrypt Slack, Google Docs, and Basically Every Other App. “A team of developers, including the co-creator of the Signal protocol and contributors from Microsoft and Harvard, are building out open-source software that can help bring the sort of hardened privacy and security offered via Signal’s end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to more collaborative types of apps, such as Slack, Google Docs, and Discord.”

PBS News: Social media platforms spread hate music in India despite policy violations, new report says. “Across hundreds of songs, India’s Muslims and Christians are portrayed as enemies, invaders, traitors, demographic threats and legitimate targets of violence. A new report by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), a Washington-based research organization, argues that this ecosystem of hate music is being hosted, amplified and monetized by four of the world’s largest digital platforms: YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music and Meta.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Italian mother takes on Meta, TikTok after daughter’s death. “Rossella’s parents are among a number of families in ​Italy that have brought a lawsuit against Instagram-and-Facebook-owner Meta, and its biggest social media rival TikTok. In the first collective action in Italy to directly challenge social media companies and their algorithms, the families are seeking tighter limits on minors’ access and greater awareness of risks.”

Bleeping Computer: FortiBleed leak exposes Fortinet VPN credentials for 73,000 devices.. “A newly discovered data leak dubbed ‘FortiBleed’ has exposed what appears to be a collection of Fortinet and FortiGate VPN credentials for 73,932 firewall URLs at organizations worldwide.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Tom’s Hardware: Researchers recycle old phones and cluster them into ‘computing platforms’ that operate as a low-cost data center — says processors on modern smartphones deliver higher single-core performance than comparable multicore servers. “The study revealed that smartphones from just three years ago still deliver a higher single-core performance compared to servers like the Asus RS720A-E11, which can be equipped with Nvidia H200 or Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 GPUs and two AMD EPYC server processors, that you frequently find in the most powerful data centers.”

Royal Botanic Gardens Kew: AI and digitisation transform fight against global extinction, landmark report reveals. “In a seismic shift since Kew’s inaugural State of the World’s report ten years ago, the sixth State of the World’s Plants and Fungi report, published 16 June 2026, brings together expertise from over 400 scientists across 40 countries to explore how new technology is transforming the race to save nature. The report argues technology can be nature’s ally, with digital tools exposing critical gaps in scientific knowledge and highlighting where action is most urgently needed to safeguard plants and fungi.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

SwissInfo: Researchers calculate incidence of sunlight in Switzerland. “Researchers in Switzerland have calculated the incidence of sunlight so precisely that even the shadow cast by every single tree is recorded in a new map of where the sun shines and where it doesn’t in the Alpine country.” Good afternoon, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.

ANTI-AI ACTIVISM

Mediaite: Meta Employee Hijacks Livestreamed Meeting and Rants About Top Exec: ‘Piece of Sh*t’. “The incident comes amid broader unrest inside Meta’s recently created Applied AI organization, a unit established earlier this year to support the company’s artificial intelligence efforts. Current employees who spoke to WIRED described deep dissatisfaction with both the structure of the group and the assignments they have been given.”

AI IN GOVERNANCE

Texas Tribune: Abbott recommends sweeping data center regulation, including eliminating sales tax exemption. “Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday released sweeping regulatory recommendations on data centers for the Legislature to pass in the 2027 session, as Texas grapples with an explosion of artificial intelligence-driven development and soaring power demands.”

The Guardian: AI use by the US government is ballooning. And the lack of transparency is troubling. “The office of management and budget (OMB) disclosed a staggering 3,611 active or planned use cases for AI across the federal government. The list has ballooned by 70% from the one published in the final year of the Biden administration, and includes many disturbing-seeming plans to hand over sensitive governmental functions to AI.”

Let’s Data Science: Pentagon Says Grok Supported 2,000 Missile Strikes . “According to reporting by Yahoo and The Independent, Cameron Stanley, the Pentagon’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer, wrote in a sworn filing that Grok, a generative chatbot developed by xAI, was used to fire more than ‘2,000 munitions at 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours’ via the government’s Maven Smart Systems platform.”

AI LEGISLATION

Ohio Capital Journal: Ohio lawmakers introduce sweeping new data center legislation. “It’s a significant revision of state policy, touching on tax breaks, nondisclosure agreements, water use and testing, utility billing, and potential impacts on local governments. Despite some quibbles, lawmakers and witnesses found a lot to like in the initial proposal. But given the rapid timeline Chavez envisions for passage — potentially moving to a vote on the Senate floor one day after introduction — opportunities to tweak the language are scarce.”

AI IN WORK

Reuters: AI saves clinicians time but most lack training, survey finds. “AI is saving clinicians time, but the majority of healthcare professionals say training in the technology is inadequate, inconsistent or ​unavailable, a global survey by Philips showed on Tuesday. The study, ‌Philips Future Health Index, was carried out through two quantitative surveys, one with 2,011 healthcare professionals and another with 20,085 patients across 10 countries.”

NiemanLab: The Centre Daily Times unionizes after backlash to McClatchy’s AI tool. “Across the U.S., unions have been on the frontline of debates over the ethics and standards of AI adoption in journalism. Currently, 74 established newsroom units represented by The NewsGuild-CWA, the largest news worker union in the country, include some AI language in their union contracts. In a statement, Schleuss said that McClatchy’s unionized newsrooms, especially those with ratified contracts, have had greater leverage and control over how the CSA tool is used.”

Associated Press: Anthropic announces ‘Claude Corps’ to teach nonprofits to use AI more effectively. “Claude Corps, named for the company’s popular AI chatbot, will hire and embed 1,000 fellows trained in the use of Claude at a wide range of organizations for a year. Anthropic President Daniela Amodei told The Associated Press the company hopes the program will expand and become a pillar of its strategy to help humankind realize the benefits of AI while also managing its risks.”

AROUND THE AI WORLD

Gizmodo: Layoffs Reportedly Hit Sam Altman’s Creepy Eyeball-Scanning Startup. “Since launching in 2023, World has failed to reach its ambitious goal of scanning a billion people or about an eighth of the world’s population. As of April, the company says it had verified nearly 18 million people via its Orb device. That’s less than 2 percent of its goal. Now, it seems the company is shifting strategies.”

Screen Rant: Venom and Spawn Creator Todd McFarlane Reveals His Thoughts On AI, And Fans Aren’t Happy. “Speaking to The Escape Pod Podcast, Spawn creator Todd McFarlane explains why he believes AI isn’t an entirely negative invention for artists. McFarlane argues that generative AI is a valuable tool artists can use to increase their output and speed.”

The Register: Hand-cranked AI box lets you get a workout while you wait for answers. “Datacenters got you down? Worried that even the most innocuous questions will spin up AI models running in water-guzzling, energy-sucking, planet-destroying hyperscalers? You need CrankGPT. No, we’re not talking about surrendering to AI psychosis: we’re talking about a literal hand-cranked machine loaded with a voice agent that can respond to questions and even translate speech into other languages, provided someone keeps the power flowing.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Mississippi Free Press: Southaven Residents Sue xAI, Alleging ‘Near-Constant’ Noise From Gas Turbines is Causing Harm. “In a class-action lawsuit filed Monday, the plaintiffs allege that xAI’s energy plant in Southaven is creating a public and private nuisance, subjecting nearby residents to ‘near-constant noise, vibrations and other nuisance-level harms.’ These disruptions have kept residents from enjoying their properties and caused physical and emotional distress, the lawsuit claims.”

Mashable: Using Claude Fable 5 means your data will be collected. It’s not optional.. “‘To ensure we’re responsibly deploying Mythos-class models, we are requiring limited data retention and review as part of our safety work,’ reads an update on Anthropic’s official Claude support page. ‘Prompts submitted to, and outputs generated by, Mythos-class models are retained for 30 days for trust and safety purposes, on every platform where these models are offered.'”

RESEARCH & OPINION

404 Media: Chatbots Keep Telling Stories About Lighthouse Keeper ‘Elias Thorne’. We Might Know Why. “In late May, researchers Sil Hamilton and David Mimno at Cornell University’s Department of Information Science published their paper, ‘Elias in the Lighthouse, Again?’ on the preprint repository arXiv. They sampled 20,000 total stories from OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini, and the Allen Institute for AI’s chatbot using five prompts, and found that the same 11 words—names like Elias, Mara, and Elara, and occupations like lighthouse keeper, clockmaker, and librarian—appear in more than 88% of generated stories, with little difference between models.”

Search Engine Journal: Claude Is The Fastest-Growing AI Traffic Source, Per New Data. “Claude sent almost four times more referral traffic to websites in April than in January, per new SE Ranking data. That made it the fastest-growing AI traffic source among the five platforms tracked. It’s still the smallest by a wide margin, and it probably isn’t a meaningful line in your analytics yet.” Good morning, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.

Wisconsin Watch: Wisconsin’s prison population is heading toward a record high. Track the trend here.. “A new data tool from Wisconsin Watch allows anyone to track the population of the system and of each facility for free. The dashboard, which shows weekly population and capacity counts going back to 2006, updates automatically when prison officials post the latest figures.”

EVENTS

Tubefilter: YouTube looks to upstage its competitors with “Music Nights” headlined by A-list artists. “A blog post describes YouTube Music Nights as ‘a series of exclusive live concerts designed for dedicated fans.’ By linking up with artists for tour stops, release parties, and one-off shows, YouTube is highlighting exciting venues and providing free coverage of in-demand acts.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Brent Simmons: NetNewsWire Status. “My hope for retirement was to get a lot of work done on NetNewsWire. A year ago it was in sore need of modernization, tech debt pay-off, and bug fixes. People were asking for features, but the foundation needed a ton of work before I could get on to adding new rooms. Here are some highlights of what we’ve done with 2,188 commits in the past year.”

USEFUL STUFF

Engadget: Open-source Discord alternatives: What Stoat and Element actually fix . ” There’s a growing number of Discord alternatives out there, but open-source chat platforms where you have complete control over your data and don’t have to worry about features being locked behind a subscription will likely be your best option.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Associated Press: The U.S. will bury a time capsule for its 250th birthday. Here’s what’s inside. “The stainless steel capsule is shaped like a cylinder, not the typical box, because square edges tend to crack and break. It will be covered with a secondary cylinder that will trap air and push out any approaching water, and the capsule itself is rimmed with a soft metal that compresses under pressure…. The items inside were at 35% relative humidity. That’s moist enough to ensure they won’t dry out and disintegrate, but dry enough that they won’t create moisture problems.”

The Register: Fire burns Google Cloud India’s network, which remains slow a week later. “Google Cloud customers with resources in India have had to deal with elevated latency for several days – and there’s no end in sight. Per a Google status page, on June 9th ‘A fire at a third-party data center facility required an emergency power shutdown of networking equipment, isolating a non-compute local Point of Presence (POP) in Delhi and reducing available network capacity in the metro area.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

KOMO: Iran-linked hackers claim breach of CA water systems in Bakersfield, Visalia, Chico. “A reported cyber breach involving several California water systems has raised concerns about the security of critical infrastructure, though the water provider says there are no signs service has been disrupted. The breach happened last Thursday and involved systems connected to Bakersfield, Visalia and Chico.”

CBS News: Deadly Russian strikes leave landmark Ukraine cathedral in flames. “The violence killed five people and wounded 34 in the capital as fire broke out on the grounds of the UNESCO world heritage site Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, setting the roof of its Dormition Cathedral on fire…. Founded in the 11th century, the site holds huge significance for Orthodox believers in both Ukraine and Russia.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Florida State University: Rare Emmett Till trial records donated to FSU Libraries. “Florida State University Libraries Special Collections & Archives has acquired a collection of rare legal documents donated by independent Emmett Till researchers Kevin Murphy and Colleen FitzPatrick.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Spectrum News 1: Gov. Beshear posthu­mously pardons 43 who helped enslaved people flee. “Gov. Andy Beshear, D-Ky., on Monday posthumously pardoned 43 people who were imprisoned for helping enslaved people escape to freedom, just days before Juneteenth. Beshear also proclaimed Friday, June 19, 2026, as Juneteenth National Freedom Day in Kentucky.” Good afternoon, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.

Nature: ‘Every box has been opened’: London botanic gardens digitizes 7 million specimens. “The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in southwest London announced on 16 June that it has completed the digitization of 7.4 million specimens. The project, which used four high-resolution cameras operated by 100 staff and 42 volunteers, cost £15 million (US$20 million) and was funded by the UK government.”

Ian Visits: Gandhi autograph and suffragette protests among treasures in new London archive. “London has gained a free history archive after more than 200 years of records, photographs, films and artefacts were uncovered and catalogued during the restoration of Union Chapel’s Sunday School building.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: xAI’s lawsuit accusing OpenAI of stealing trade secrets has been thrown out . “As first reported by Reuters, US District Judge Rita F. Lin ruled in favor of OpenAI by dismissing the lawsuit with prejudice, resulting in a final judgement on the case that doesn’t allow xAI to refile the lawsuit.”

Chicago Sun-Times: Mayor Johnson’s social media tax generating windfall of revenue amid legal challenge. “The social media tax was expected to raise $31 million during all of 2026. But the city collected $16.4 million during the first four months alone from the 10 companies to which the levy has applied. At that rate, the first-year take would be $49.2 million, 58.7% higher than anticipated.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Mercury News: Google CEO brought optimism to Stanford commencement. Some graduates walked out. “As Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage Sunday at Stanford’s commencement, scores of graduates stood, booed and walked out, turning a celebration for nearly 6,000 degree recipients into a protest over the tech giant’s work with Israel.”

SF Standard: The 5% freakout: Inside tech elites’ madcap war against the California billionaire tax. “The proposal was emblematic of the strategies the billionaire class has tested over the last eight months: unorthodox, expensive, and increasingly desperate. Since the union’s Billionaire Tax Act campaign was launched last fall, the tech elites have organized in secret, scheduling and aborting Zoom meetings, starting and deleting and uninviting members from group chats, and casually throwing tens of millions of dollars at whatever idea seems poised to defeat the initiative and scare the union into submission.”

Reuters: India curbs Telegram use over medical exam fraud concerns. “India has blocked the Telegram messaging app until June 22, ‌saying the platform has been used to ‘defraud candidates’ taking a national medical entrance examination, the Ministry of Education said in a statement on Tuesday.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

NBC News: How old are you really? Inside Roblox’s new campaign to verify user ages. “One morning in late May, an 11-year-old armed with a fake mustache had a mission: fool Roblox’s age-estimation tool into thinking he was older. But moments after Cole Moretti looked into the camera, the system flagged him as a child between the ages of 9 and 12. Moretti was one of several children brought in by NBC News to try the technology at Roblox’s headquarters.”

The Guardian: Florida lawsuit accuses TikTok of violating state’s child social media ban. “Florida became the latest state to sue TikTok on Monday after the attorney general accused the company of violating a state law that limits social media access for teenagers.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Duke Reporter’s Lab: 2026 census: Fact-checking losses continue amid funding pressure, but most projects persist. “For the first time in the Duke Reporters’ Lab count, three-times as many fact-checkers closed their doors as opened them last year. Our tally shows 10 new fact-checking projects in 2025, compared with more than 30 that stopped posting.”

Philadelphia Inquirer: Elon Musk egged on a race riot, then became a trillionaire. What are we even doing?. “The nonprofit tech watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate found that Musk’s posts about Belfast and racial politics in the U.K. were viewed an astonishing 64 million times. The center noted that the amplified posts from Robinson — banned from the pre-Musk Twitter for hate speech, but restored in 2023 — drew responses calling for lynching and other forms of violence.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

SF Gate: Meet Merlin the duck, a Mexico City streetside regular turned World Cup mascot. “Images of Merlin parading through Mexico City, wearing a Mexican national team jersey — and socks — as thousands of fans celebrated, quickly went viral, racking up millions of views across social media. Overnight, and as if by the magic of the famous wizard who inspired his name, Merlin had captivated the internet.” Good morning, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.

Calishat: Super Edu Search, Powered By Diffbot. “Super Edu Search 1.0 aggregated sets of domains and presented them as Google search URLs because I can’t afford Google’s search API and that was a free workaround. But Diffbot’s API is free and so I can integrate its search results into the tool…. Since this result integration seemed like it would be useful to researchers, I added the ability to download search results as CSV or PDF.”

Hoover Institution: Hoover And Prague Partner To Digitize World’s Largest Russian Diaspora Press Collection. “As part of the Library & Archives’ Russia Abroad Digital Collection, the Czech Republic’s Slavonic Library will contribute nearly 1,700 publications chronicling émigré life across dozens of countries following the 1917 Russian Revolution. For the first time, these print records are being united digitally on Hoover’s open-access platform, transforming access for scholars studying displacement, political movements, and cultural preservation in the twentieth century.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Reuters: US judge orders halt to Trump administration’s ‘censorship’ of park exhibits. “A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Friday to reinstall ‌exhibits and signs on topics like slavery and climate change that it had removed from parks and monuments nationwide because they ‘do not align with its preferred narrative.'”

State of Minnesota: Minnesota’s New Labor Exchange Going Live Today. “The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) today announced the roll-out of CareerForce.MN.gov as the state’s official online labor exchange, replacing MinnesotaWorks.net. The new site is mobile-friendly, has more job search resources and is easier to access.”

USEFUL STUFF

Jeff Johnson: Reddit RSS feeds recent rate limiting and solution. “Overall, I subscribe to around 25 Reddit RSS feeds. This worked fairly well until yesterday afternoon. Suddenly, all of my Reddit RSS feeds started returning HTTP 429 Too Many Requests. The issue continued into this morning, and I found confirmation in a couple of Reddit posts.”

How-To Geek: I ditched Google Photos for these 3 open-source apps—and I’m never going back. “If like me, you’ve been looking for an alternative to Google’s cloud-first and AI-first Photos app, this list should end your search. These are free and open-source apps without any ads or intrusive AI or cloud features.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

TechSpot: Android engineer leaves Google amid concerns over defense partnerships. “René Mayrhofer, a principal software engineer for Android Security and self-described pacifist and privacy advocate, has resigned from Google. The engineer had worked at Mountain View since 2017 but said he had become increasingly dissatisfied with what he sees as the company’s departure from its previously stated – and repeatedly reaffirmed – moral principles.”

CBC: Breaking down the Bricks & Minifigs Lego scandal involving YouTube’s ‘Reckless Ben’. “You don’t often hear the words ‘Lego’ and ‘scandal’ in the same sentence, but here we are. And this deep into 2026, we’ve learned not to question why everyone on YouTube seems to be talking about a ‘Lego scandal’ involving ‘Reckless Ben,’ arrests and lawsuits, the closure of the store at the centre of it all, what the company describes as ‘manufactured, viral hysteria’ and a GoFundMe that’s raised $670,000 for a family in Oregon.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: The FBI built its own replica small town to simulate real-world cyberattacks.”The Federal Bureau of Investigation is pulling back the curtain on a 22,000 square-foot replica town on its Huntsville, Alabama campus that it built to train law enforcement in simulating and investigating real-world cyberattacks.”

Associated Press: Starmer says Britain will ban under-16s from using a range of social media apps. “Starmer said the U.K. measures ‘possibly go a bit further’ than Australia’s ban, which bars under-16s from holding social media accounts and allows for multimillion-dollar fines for tech firms if they don’t remove them. The U.K. said its ban will apply to platforms including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X, but not messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

UNESCO: UNESCO Online Press Briefing: Timely guide for parents navigating the complexities of digital life. “A new guide developed by UNESCO and CLEMI to be released on 22 June, responds to mounting empirical evidence that excessive, poorly-supported social media use is associated with cognitive, emotional, physical, and social risks, especially for children and adolescents. The guide empowers and equips parents to help their children navigate digital spaces safely, critically, and autonomously with concrete advice from a range of experts.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Block Club Chicago: Joabe Barbosa Finishes Running Every City Block — With The Help Of 1,000 Chicagoans. “On Sunday, Barbosa completed his mission to run more than 4,000 miles of city streets — this time running alongside as many as 1,000 fellow runners and well-wishers. He became the first person known to have run every block in Chicago, ending his journey with a two-mile victory lap down a blocked-off Michigan Avenue, from Oak Street Beach to Buckingham Fountain, on a journey he had always insisted belonged to the city as much as himself.” Good morning, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.