Southern Poverty Law Center: SPLC Unveils Database Examining In-Custody Deaths in Mississippi Jails. “The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released a new database today tracking in-custody deaths in jails across Mississippi.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Spotted in my RSS feeds: a Chrome extension called Retake the Lake. (This link goes to a GitHub repository. Here is the extension in the Chrome Web store.) “This is a (hopefully temporary) extension for Chrome browsers that corrects ‘Lake America’ to ‘Lake Ontario’ in two ways.”

TechCrunch: Judge blocks X rival from using Twitter name, but allows ‘Tweet’ for now. “The story of the Virginia-based startup isn’t really about building something unique; it’s about a company trying to get its hands on abandoned trademarks that X relinquished. Even the homepage for the company clearly states its purpose is to go back and pick up what Elon Musk dropped when he renamed the town square as X, and ‘threw the bird away on his way out,’ it says.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Variety: YouTube Travel Creator Drew Binsky Inks Netfix Deal. “Beginning Sept. 19, Netflix subscribers can watch a curated collection of episodes from Binsky’s content library, including his latest episode ‘Entering The World’s Narrowest Island (100 Feet Wide).’ Going forward, Binsky will release new episodes day-and-date on Netflix alongside YouTube and other platforms.”

Retail Gazette: Lush launches campaign highlighting harm caused by social media. “Lush is looking to spotlight the harm caused by big social media platforms in its new campaign, which is now live across all of its stores in the UK, EU, USA and Canada. The retailer left the major social media platforms, Snapchat, X, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook almost five years ago. And since then, the platforms have been accused of creating their platforms to be addictive by design.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Mediaite: Pentagon Purges Decades of Classified Documents After WaPo Revealed Top Brass Warned Hegseth. “The Pentagon reportedly removed decades’ worth of classified military documents from a secret network used by defense officials and U.S. troops after The Washington Post revealed that several top military leaders had raised concerns about extending the war with Iran.”

Reuters: Opera loses court challenge against EU exemption of Microsoft’s Edge from DMA rules. “Norwegian browser maker Opera on Wednesday lost its ​court challenge against EU antitrust regulators’ decision to ‌exempt Microsoft’s browser Edge from rules reining in the power of Big Tech.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Wake Forest University: Mapping the Forest. “It took one drone, 300 million laser data points and seven teams of students on foot to map Wake Forest University’s trees. Led by Ovidiu Csillik, an assistant professor of remote sensing in the environment and sustainability studies program, the project produced a publicly accessible, interactive 3D digital map of more than 1,000 trees and helped the University earn international accreditation as a Level II arboretum.”

Search Engine Journal: Facebook Groups Are Google’s No. 2 Forum Source. “A recent analysis by Ahrefs shows that public Facebook Groups are now the second most common site in Google’s Discussions and forums module, after Reddit. Facebook appears in 38.3% of the search results where the module shows up, with all Facebook URLs coming from public Groups.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

LiveScience: Planting crops in fields of solar panels is more efficient, protects the plants and helps keep workers cool, study finds. “Compared to tomatoes grown in an open field, tomatoes grown under solar panels experienced leaf temperatures that were 1.84°C cooler during the day overall and up to 7.56°C cooler during peak afternoon heat, reducing water loss through evapotranspiration by 22.4%. Even though the simulated crops received 47% less sunlight, their carbon uptake declined by only 31%, suggesting that more temperate conditions lowered heat stress and partially offset the effects of increased shade.” 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.

National Security Archive: The best of IFA 2026: exoskeletons, ultralight laptops, and weird new tech. “The Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin (IFA) is the world’s biggest tech show (yes, bigger than CES), and each year, it wows us with the latest and greatest in tech, with this year’s edition no different. From incredible dual-use laptops to cutting-edge AI note-taking and all the way back around to fully robotic exoskeletons for everyday use, we’ve seen it all — and this is the tech receiving one of our coveted MUO Best in Show awards this time out.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Associated Press: SafeSport Sees Big Jump in Visitors to Banned Database After Announcing Sanctions Publicly. “The U.S. Center for SafeSport more than doubled the number of new visitors to its online Centralized Disciplinary Database in the month after it started making public announcements about people placed on its banned list.”

The Guardian: Nazi-looted painting must be returned to Jewish art dealer’s heir, Argentina court rules. “Argentina must return to the rightful owner’s heir an 18th-century painting stolen by Nazis from a Dutch Jewish art collector, a judge has ruled. Portrait of a Lady by Italian baroque painter Giuseppe Ghislandi was missing for eight decades before being photographed in 2025 hanging in the home of the daughter of a senior Nazi officer who had fled to Argentina after the second world war.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: 10 Video Downloading Hacks Every YouTube User Should Know. “YouTube constantly changes its website and apps, so these methods may not always work, but I’ve tested all of them and confirmed they are working at the time of writing. It’s also important to note that downloading YouTube videos outside of the app’s official channels is against the company’s terms of service. That said, if you’re only downloading videos for personal use, you’ll likely be fine, but if you plan to reupload that content to your own YouTube channels, or attempt to monetize the content you’ve downloaded, that’s another story. Please download responsibly.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Gothamist: TikTok is the new 311: New Yorkers tag Mayor Mamdani on social media for help. “Mamdani is being inundated with online requests for IRL fixes. The videos, which have become a meme on TikTok, show people begging Mamdani to take action on everything from mundane nuisances — like potholes and leaky subway stations — to more existential challenges like finding love. The requests have become so popular that the mayor of Los Angeles has embraced the trend, as have users everywhere from Manila to London.”

Los Angeles Times: In first major ufology acquisition, Huntington puts Integratron’s eccentric history on display. “The collection, announced by the museum Tuesday, is deep and vast, with materials dating from the 1910s through the 1990s. It includes an architectural model and original blueprints of the Integratron, as well as nearly 630 photographs, negatives and slides, more than 250 audio recordings, 8-millimeter film footage, books, publications and other records and ephemera.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ACPC: ‘It seemed like every town in America had something going on’: Week of Action against Flock and ALPRs gets people engaged. “[Len] Phillips said the man was an example of how the event’s 110 or so attendees included people of differing political ideologies—including Democratic Socialists, Libertarians and conservatives—who nonetheless shared concerns about the proliferation of police surveillance in their communities. The same thing was seen in many of the week’s 485 events across the country, said Ed Vogel, a member of DeFlock, a national group that organized the week.”

Reuters: UNICEF estimates 20 million children suffered online sexual abuse in one year. “About 20 million internet-using children across ​21 countries were subjected to sexual exploitation or abuse on digital platforms in a single year, with most cases occurring ‌on social media platforms, a new report by the U.N. children’s charity said on Thursday. More than one in five children aged 12 to 17 across Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe experienced at least one form of sexual abuse or exploitation on online platforms in the year before being surveyed, the UNICEF report estimated.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Michigan Daily: Your digital footprint is worth looking back on. “Think of the last time you had a Snapchat memory flashback pop up as a notification or scrolled through your Instagram archived posts. Usually, there’s an instant flash of embarrassment that often makes us treat our past selves like something to hide or erase indefinitely. There’s a modern impulse to scrub our digital footprint, the trail we leave behind through our online activities, clean from existence. Yet, doing so erases who we once were, and it strips us of a valuable tool for understanding who we are becoming.”

University of North Carolina: Carolina and Duke to combine plant collections. “UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University will unite their herbaria under the management of the North Carolina Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill. Herbaria are collections of preserved plant specimens that serve as irreplaceable scientific archives and enable researchers to study biodiversity, long-term climate shifts, invasive species and other changes in plant life across generations. Together the collection will comprise about 1.7 million specimens, making it the third-largest university herbarium in the country after Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley; and the largest in the southeastern United States.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

80LV: This Web Tool Lets You Create 360-Degree Illustrations. “JUNOTA’s Gururi Paint looks very useful for creating rough background sketches. You can draw while looking around the surrounding space, giving you a better sense of the environment. It includes basic tools like a brush, palette, fill, eyedropper, eraser, and layers, plus adjustable canvas and grid settings. The basic controls are simple: hold Space and drag to look around, and hold Z and drag to zoom. According to JUNOTA, Gururi Paint is still a work in progress, and they plan to keep improving it and adding new features over time.” 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.

Spokesman-Review: AI almost sent hazmat train barreling toward ‘catastrophe’ in Eastern WA. “A 146-car train carrying ‘hazardous materials’ was at risk of colliding with a roadway maintenance worker in Connell, Washington, had a BNSF dispatcher not caught an issue caused by an AI system. The June 16 incident would have been a ‘public catastrophe’ for the worker, driving crew and north Franklin County community, read a Wednesday letter from the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalman to the Federal Railroad Administration. At issue was BNSF’s use of an AI-powered dispatching system called Movement Planner, said Brandon Pettit, vice general chairman of the signalman union’s BNSF general committee.”

ANTI-AI SENTIMENT

San Francisco Standard: The latest tech billboard trend? Anti-AI graffiti. “The ad from AI customer-service company Pylon in Dogpatch is likely unintelligible to many San Franciscans. But a graffitied message that recently appeared at the bottom was unambiguous: ‘Fuck your AI billboard.’… It’s just one of at least 10 anti-AI messages that have been graffitied onto tech company advertisements around the city over the past few weeks, possibly by the same person. The exact wording of the graffiti varies, but the messages are consistent in calling out the million- and billion-dollar companies for their impact on the local economy and working class.”

DATA CENTERS

Montana Free Press: Data center opponents launch write-in campaigns in Billings state Senate district. “Sen. Daniel Zolnikov, R-Billings, is being campaigned against online and IRL by write-in candidates Cari Olson and Elijah Tidswell. The lawmaker’s last registered employer is Broad Reach Power, whose parent company, Houston, Texas-based EnCap Investments, is a stakeholder in Quantica Infrastructure, developer of a proposed data center near Broadview.”

The Current Georgia: Warnock calls for data center moratorium in Georgia. “U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock on Friday called for a moratorium on data center construction in Georgia, describing the secrecy surrounding plans to build a $20 billion data center in Effingham County ‘unacceptable.'”

AI MODELS

9to5 Mac: OpenAI releasing major upgrade to ChatGPT and Codex with GPT-6 Astra, details here. “OpenAI calls GPT-6 Astra a ‘significant jump in cyber capabilities,’ adding that it ‘meets the Critical threshold⁠ in cybersecurity under our Preparedness Framework.’ For that reason, the model is rolling out slowly to users.”

AI IN EDUCATION

Reason: Invasion of the Robot Teachers. “In New Mexico, Facebook and Instagram are considered a ‘public nuisance,’ but letting artificial intelligence systems record and store young kids’ voices and score their reading prowess is state policy. Starting last school year, the state required all public schools to use Amira—a personified AI system designed to assess and instruct elementary school students—for mandatory literacy assessments, dyslexia screenings, and weekly tutoring sessions in kindergarten through second grade.”

AI IN GOVERNANCE

Politico: Republicans struggle for footing on data center response ahead of midterms. “The desire for action on data centers, which had already divided the House GOP conference, came up in multiple member discussions early this week — including a conversation that House Speaker Mike Johnson hosted Monday with freshman lawmakers, Republicans told POLITICO.”

KMBC: More than 68% of voters support recall of Independence Councilman John Perkins. “Voters in Independence have successfully recalled a councilman after his vote to approve a multibillion-dollar data center. District 1 Councilman John Perkins was recalled during a special election on Tuesday, with unofficial final results showing over 68 percent of voters in the district supported the recall

AI IN WORK

NME: Prince estate respond to fans’ concern over rumours of AI use on new ‘Timeless’ release. “Now, following tracks ‘With This Tear’ and ‘Stone’ being released ahead of the full album arriving on August 28, Prince’s estate have responded to rumours from fans that AI was used to complete the album, particularly on one song called ‘Calabama’.”

Gizmodo: CNBC Accidentally Admits Why Employers Love AI. “Why do employers love AI? The official story is that it increases productivity, an assertion that has yet to be proven true. But a financial expert on CNBC spoke candidly on Friday about how the rate of wage growth has plummeted this year. And he pointed to the fear workers have of asking for a raise when they could be replaced with AI.”

AROUND THE AI WORLD

New York Times: Bill Simmons’s Podcast Co-Hosts Are Tired of His A.I. Antics. “Film buffs are complaining about several instances in which Mr. Simmons used ChatGPT — which he sometimes accidentally mispronounces ‘ChatGBT’ — to approximate the opinions of the deceased film critic Roger Ebert in his movie podcast, ‘The Rewatchables.’ Some argued that it was disrespectful of Mr. Ebert; others said it was incongruous that Mr. Simmons, a columnist, would use technology to misappropriate another writer’s work. Ads from OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, have run on the show this year.”

CNBC: South Korea’s AI rally is reshaping romance, reality shows and academic preferences. “South Korea’s AI stock rally is rapidly transforming different corners of the country’s society ranging all the way from romance to academics. In Korea’s dating scene, professionals such as physicians, lawyers and judges, have traditionally been the most sought-after. Now the preferences are changing, as the AI boom makes those working in the chip sector — flush with hefty bonuses — the new gems of the dating pool.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: DC court faults lawyers for Deutsche Bank subsidiary over AI hallucination . “The District of Columbia Court of Appeals said in a ruling on Thursday that lawyers for a Deutsche Bank subsidiary in a mortgage foreclosure lawsuit cited nonexistent cases generated by artificial ​intelligence, calling the matter a ‘cautionary tale’ about lawyers’ misuse of AI.”

The Register: Researcher shows how Claude Code can be tricked simply by asking it to summarize a website. “Anthropic’s Claude Code running Opus 5 in Auto Mode can be tricked into executing attacker-controlled code simply by asking the coding agent to summarize a website. The attack works up to 80 percent of the time, according to prompt-injection wizard Johann Rehberger, aka wunderwuzzi.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Bloomberg: AI’s environmental impact per task balloons with more complexity. “As artificial intelligence (AI) use shifts from simple, one-off queries to longer and more complex tasks, the added computing required results in a dramatically larger environmental footprint. The energy needed to build a web app using some models is equivalent to powering a home for 2 1/2 hours. That’s according to the results of a new analysis from Vals AI, an independent AI benchmarking company that evaluates models on real-world tasks.” Good evening, 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.

GBH: GBH Marks the 25th Anniversary of 9/11 with New PBS LearningMedia Educational Resources and Multiplatform Content. “GBH, the leading multiplatform creator of public media in the U.S., today announced a suite of educational tools and original content dedicated to marking the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001. Anchoring the initiative is a new collection of free digital classroom resources from PBS LearningMedia, developed in partnership with the Massachusetts 9/11 Fund, that bring together archival video, firsthand accounts, and primary sources to help educators explore the events of September 11, their impact on individuals and communities, and their broader historical context and legacy.”

National Geographic: National Geographic Commemorates 25th Anniversary Of 9/11 With The Launch Of A Groundbreaking Interactive Video Archive Featuring Never-before-seen Footage And Eyewitness Testimony. “Today, National Geographic published a landmark, interactive video archive that allows audiences to explore never-before-seen footage and eyewitness testimony from the events of Sept. 11, 2001, drawn from its catalog of 9/11 documentaries.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Die Hoorn: Google Maps routing trucks over Swartberg Pass sparks concern. “Concerns have been raised that Google Maps is directing trucks and other heavy vehicles over the Swartberg Pass, despite the route being unsuitable for such traffic. The issue has become increasingly relevant while Meiringspoort remains closed, with more motorists and transport operators making use of alternative routes through the region.”

BBC: New BBC Series Finding Britain’s Slave Traders with David Olusoga. “A new two-part BBC history commission for BBC Two and iPlayer, Finding Britain’s Slave Traders with David Olusoga, is set to explore the individuals, institutions and organisations who financed Britain’s trade in enslaved Africans from its first tentative steps in the 16th century to abolition of the trade in 1807. Based on exclusive access to the findings of a new academic research project, led by Professor William Pettigrew, this two-part series follows the work of the research team who, over five years, built a new database; the Register of British Slave Traders. The database will be made publicly available when the series is broadcast.”

ABC 15: Disabled Marine veteran forced to sell rare 1,000-letter WWII archive to save his family. “A disabled Marine Corps veteran who spent more than a decade preserving a rare collection of over 1,000 World War II letters says he now has no choice but to sell it. Joseph ‘Joe’ Alosi, 100% service-connected disabled, says mounting medical bills, the loss of his home, and family crises have left him no other option than to part with the archive he once vowed to keep intact forever.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

I Am Expat: TikTok housing scams hit international students in the Netherlands. “Fraudsters are increasingly using TikTok and social media to target students in the Netherlands with fake room listings amid the ongoing housing shortage. International students arriving for the new academic year are particularly vulnerable as tight deadlines leave many desperate for accommodation.”

India Today: 3 arrested for making fake currency after learning it from YouTube tutorials. “Hyderabad police arrested three men accused of printing and circulating fake currency after tracing their operation. Investigators said the case showed how social media tutorials and basic equipment were allegedly used to mimic genuine notes.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Associated Press: Trump administration scrubs data on gender-based bullying from school civil rights survey. “The numbers come from the Education Department’s Civil Rights Data Collection, a federal survey of nearly every public school in the nation. The release this week covers the 2023-2024 school year, when the survey included ‘nonbinary’ as a gender category alongside male and female. However, an Associated Press analysis shows that in every column for information related to gender identity, the numbers were replaced with a code indicating ‘Suppressed in Compliance with Executive Order.’ That refers to an executive order that President Donald Trump signed on his inauguration day calling for the federal government to define sex as only male or female.”

Canadian Wildlife Federation: New App Encourages Canadians to Explore Aquatic Barriers Blocking Fish Migration. “The Canadian Wildlife Federation (CWF) is calling on all Canadians to help monitor freshwater connectivity through the new Canadian Fish Passage Assessment (CANFISHPASS) app, a free mobile tool that helps identify barriers potentially restricting fish movement in rivers, streams and other waterways.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

ABC News (Australia): Common myna birds travelling on Sydney trains go viral on social media. “You may have heard of snakes on a plane, but what about birds on a train? A pair of common myna birds have become regulars on Sydney’s inner-city North Shore Line, perching themselves on the back of the seats during quieter hours. The lively duo went viral after Sydney journalist Jackie Dent posted a recording of their morning on social media.” 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.

Boston Public Library: Boston Public Library and Harvard IDI Release Open Dataset from 135 Years of Historic Newspapers. “BPL holds tens of millions of pages of historical newspapers on microfilm, roughly three million of which have been digitized and made searchable online through DigitalCommonwealth.org. Now, BPL and the Institutional Data Initiative (IDI) at the Harvard Law School Library are releasing a new dataset drawn from more than 1.47 million scanned newspaper pages — a window into 135 years of the public record, from 1795 to 1930.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Associated Press: Judge refuses to block Pentagon from firing Stars and Stripes staffers over CBS interview. “A federal judge refused Friday to block the Pentagon from firing three Stars and Stripes staff members who claim they were illegally disciplined for speaking out about the military news outlet’s need to maintain its editorial independence.”

Semafor: Exclusive / YouTube cracks down on ‘ghost creators’. “YouTube removed videos linked to a network of AI-supercharged ‘ghost creators’ after Semafor exposed a new online business seeking to capitalize on the platform’s advertising by churning out cheap, sensationalized political videos.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Communications Workers of America: Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA. “U.S.-based workers at Wikimedia Foundation—the nonprofit organization that hosts Wikipedia and sister projects—have won their union election, voting overwhelmingly to join Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 9415.”

Radio New Zealand: Almost 50 jobs could go at National Library and Archives, PSA warns. “A proposal to cut 12 percent of the workforce at the National Library and Archives NZ will decimate both organisations and have a significant impact on service levels, says the Public Service Association (PSA).”

Reuters: Influencer boom at US Open tests boundaries of tennis etiquette. “Celebrities have long been ubiquitous in the stands – from A-list ⁠stars to U.S. President Donald Trump – as the ultra-wealthy shell out thousands of dollars for seats at the see-and-be-seen event of New ​York’s summer sporting calendar. But the growing love affair between influencers and the premier American tennis event has caused some growing pains. A chair umpire ​was forced to reprimand a group of patrons for staging a disruptive photo shoot while two-time U.S. Open champion Naomi Osaka was serving during her first-round win against Anastasia Zakharova on Monday.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Krebs On Security: FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses. “A new identity theft service launched on the dark web this week is selling digital scans of more than 153 million drivers licenses from people in the United States and Canada. Based on interviews with individuals whose licenses are available for purchase on this service, it appears to be siphoning images collected by a widely-used identity verification company based in Louisiana.”

The Register: Healthcare cyberattacks hit pacemakers and millions of patient records. “Two major healthcare businesses, Boston Scientific and McKesson, disclosed more details over the weekend about separate cyberattacks that disrupted global operations and resulted in stolen patient data, respectively.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Nature: Revealed: inside the US military’s plan to tap huge sums from the NIH. “The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is seeking to redirect research projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars from its infectious-diseases institute to military biodefence programmes at the US Department of Defense (DOD), according to two NIH employees. They confirmed to Nature that the NIH and the DOD, also called the Department of War, have signed an agreement for the arrangement.”

The Guardian: It’s time for Mark Zuckerberg to resign from Meta. “Ushering in hope for the future of technology requires changing Meta’s leadership now, so that the future is collectively imagined and built upon a new reputation and commitment. Zuckerberg does not deserve another chance simply because he can afford it. We as a society ultimately pay for his mistakes. Now is the time for shareholders to speak up and push back on Zuckerberg’s dominance and control.”

Denver Post: US Forest Service closing 23 research facilities as part of reorganization under Trump. “The U.S. Forest Service is closing 23 research stations in more than a dozen states as part of an organizational overhaul under President Donald Trump that is intended to trim costs and concentrate the agency’s resources in Western states, officials said Thursday.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Chemistry World: Cockroaches producing energy-rich milk bag this year’s chemistry Ig Nobel prize as ceremony leaves ‘unsafe’ US. “The 36th Ig Nobel prize ceremony – which celebrates research that ‘makes people laugh, then think’ – saw an international team of researchers take home the chemistry prize last night for finding that milk-producing cockroaches are more efficient than cows.” 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.

Limelight: LaScala TV for free. “Milan’s Teatro alla Scala has removed the paywall from its streaming platform LaScalaTV, giving audiences worldwide free access to a growing archive of opera, ballet and concert performances. From September 1, the platform is available free of charge after registration, replacing the subscription model introduced when LaScalaTV launched in 2023.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Reuters: Google escapes ad tech breakup in third Big Tech antitrust loss for US. “U.S. Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, declined to make Google sell AdX, where publishers pay Google a 20% fee to sell ads in auctions that happen instantly when users load websites. The Department of Justice had argued Google could not be trusted to run the online advertising exchange after Brinkema ruled that Google had illegally ​quashed competition.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The City Paper: Colombia’s armed groups turn TikTok and Facebook into recruiting grounds for children. “Human Rights Watch has warned that illegal armed groups are increasingly using TikTok, Facebook and other social-media platforms to recruit children, combining propaganda, promises of money and status, coded language and carefully chosen emojis to draw minors toward illegal armed organizations.”

9to5 Google: MrBeast will try to survive ‘the planet’s most unforgiving landscapes’ using Gemini and Fitbit Air in deal with Google. “In a ‘multi-year partnership’ that extends beyond YouTube, Google will work with MrBeast – aka Jimmy Donaldson – to promote Gemini and Google Health. This starts with a video going live on September 5 on the MrBeast channel that will see Jimmy and co racing through the jungle, desert, and the Arctic, relying on Gemini to help guide them through the challenge.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Schneier On Security: Is Someone Hacking DoD Refrigerators?. “Each service declined to answer questions about how many bases are affected by the outages, referring all questions to the Defense Department. Pentagon officials did not respond to questions.”

Engadget: A decade’s worth of Steam files totaling more than 12TB has leaked . “A treasure trove of Steam data has been leaked, which seemingly contains everything that was published on Steam between 2003 and 2013. The leak totals more than 12TB in scale and includes beta builds and completely finished games from Valve’s own franchises, including Half-Life, Left 4 Dead and Portal.”

The Register: Healthcare cyberattacks hit pacemakers and millions of patient records. “Two major healthcare businesses, Boston Scientific and McKesson, disclosed more details over the weekend about separate cyberattacks that disrupted global operations and resulted in stolen patient data, respectively.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Perseus Digital Library Updates: In praise of the open digital classics ecosystem. “We have an article that is about to appear in the Journal of Open Humanities Data on ‘Perseus and the Open-Source Ecosystem of Greco-Roman Studies,’ but I thought I would precede that more formal discussion with a very recent example of what you can do in this open ecosystem.”

Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!): About half of Americans say they spend too much time on their smartphone. “Between scrolling, notifications, and messages, smartphones can be hard to put down. Just over half of U.S. adults say they spend too much time on their smartphone, according to a Pew Research Center survey from May and June 2026. About a third of adults say their smartphone use is about right, while just 3% say they spend too little time using these devices.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

New York Times: A City Unites Around a Common Goal: Moving a Castle by Hand. This link goes to a gift article. “The children, about 480 total working in shifts, were taking part in the ancient tradition of hikiya, which involves moving buildings with ropes and rollers rather than dismantling them. They were trying to move Hirosaki Castle’s keep — its central, most fortified part — closer to its original base. In 2015, the keep had to be moved because an earthquake damaged a stone wall underneath the structure. (Residents also helped pull the castle that time.) With the repairs recently completed, the city of Hirosaki summoned the public again to help move the castle back.” 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.

KRCR: Three Mount Shasta climbers rescued after relying on AI to plan climb. “The USFS said the climbers told them they had used an artificial intelligence platform, YouTube videos and AllTrails to plan the trip. They said they relied on AI to decide what food to bring and how much food and water they would need. The group said it packed supplies for an eight-hour climb, not its roughly 16-hour ascent. The climbers said AI recommended simple carbohydrates instead of fats because fats ‘take too long to digest.'”

ANTI-AI SENTIMENT

Bloomberg: A Data Center Revolt By Historic Battlefield Is Now a Blueprint for Backlash. “Data center landlords bankrolled by Blackstone Inc. and Brookfield Asset Management planned a $100 billion project after promising life-changing money to property owners in Virginia’s Prince William County. Dozens of residents sold more than 1,600 acres (647 hectares) to the developers in time for the AI boom, and another 200 banded together to sell 1,900 acres for more data centers. Others — including a group of fired-up retirees from a gated senior housing estate nearby — mobilized to save the community.”

DATA CENTERS

CNBC: Judge refuses to block Arkansas news reporting on Google data center energy documents. “An Arkansas federal judge on Wednesday denied a request by an energy company to temporarily block the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette from publishing additional details from confidential documents that the newspaper obtained about the company’s involvement in building a facility that will supply power to a $4 billion Google data center in that state, a court filing showed.”

Spectrum News: A data center battle unfolds 30 miles north of Manhattan. “The public backlash against data centers has become a potent political issue across the country, and one battle is playing out just 30 miles north of New York City, where residents are fighting a project that’s moving forward despite a statewide moratorium.”

The Verge: Is this the future of America?. ” Within the past few years, data centers have been elevated from an unremarkable part of daily life in Loudoun to something that many residents now think about every day. For some, it’s the constant hum they hear from their decks; for others, it’s the transmission towers that loom over their favorite green space, or the surprise call from their energy utility that one of those towers could go up in their own backyard. While residents recognize that data centers have brought a lot of prosperity to the county, they’re beginning to wonder how much more they can take.”

AI IN EDUCATION

San Francisco Chronicle: Silicon Valley parents are leading a backlash against tech in the classroom. “Palo Alto parent Tilli Bannett is a venture capitalist who invests in tech companies, but at a recent school board meeting, she challenged district leaders to remove most tech from classrooms.”

Miami Herald: Erika Donalds says more AI can benefit FL students, warns against overregulation. “Erika Donalds, a charter school executive heavily involved in education policy whose husband, Byron Donalds, is the GOP nominee for governor, said Wednesday she thinks artificial intelligence can help Florida students and teachers thrive. In many cases, she added, AI will ‘be the best teacher’ available to students.”

AI LEGISLATION

The Sun: Data centers bill passes Assembly days before session ends. “Data center operators would have to submit information about their facility’s energy consumption to the state if a newly passed California bill is signed into law. Assembly Bill 1577, authored by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, D-San Ramon, mandates that information about energy usage be sent to the California Energy Commission, as well as local government agencies that regulate permitting.”

Politico: ‘The landscape has changed dramatically’: States defy the tech lobby on AI rules. “Interviews with more than a dozen state lawmakers, tech representatives and AI regulation advocates revealed a defiant mood sweeping through statehouses. Legislators are increasingly ignoring warnings from the tech lobby and its Washington allies about an unworkable ‘patchwork’ of conflicting laws — and are instead preparing bills to address the safety of advanced models, new AI auditing standards, chatbot protections for kids and the impact of data centers.”

AI IN WORK

Time Extension: “I Hope They Choke On An AI-Generated Fishbone” – James Pond Creator On System 3’s “Soulless” Legacy Collection. “When Rogue AI was revealed, Chris Sorrell – who, in addition to creating the character, also served as the programmer, designer and artist on James Pond: Underwater Agent, James Pond 2: Codename Robocod and James Pond 3: Operation Starfish – had some choice words to give. Given that Pond is back in the news, I reached out to Sorrell for comment – and he had plenty to say.”

Reuters: Clooney tells Venice festival that AI threatens film and journalism. “U.S. actor George Clooney warned on Wednesday that advances in ​artificial intelligence were making it increasingly difficult to distinguish truth from fiction, posing a challenge ‌for journalists, governments and the public. Speaking at the Venice Film Festival, where he is receiving a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, the actor, filmmaker and political activist said deepfake technology and AI-generated content were undermining trust in information.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Elon Musk’s xAI used child porn to train Grok models, lawsuit says. “xAI has now been accused of training Grok on child sex abuse materials (CSAM), as regulators and courts continue to probe how far the problem goes, and some Grok users have been arrested.”

NiemanLab: Trump administration says a New York Times win in OpenAI lawsuit would “threaten national security” and hurt small newsrooms. “On Wednesday, the Trump administration threw its support behind OpenAI, backing the AI giant in its ongoing litigation with The New York Times. The Department of Justice voiced its support through a statement of interest (SOI) filed with the Manhattan judge overseeing the case, which includes several other plaintiffs, including daily papers owned by Alden Global Capital, high-profile book authors, and smaller nonprofit newsrooms like The Intercept.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Elon University: Imagining the Digital Future Center reports on ‘The Rise of AI Companions’. “A new survey finds that 27% of U.S. adult internet users have social and emotional interactions with artificial intelligence systems, with a third of those users considering their AI bot as a friend.”

HathiTrust: HathiTrust receives grant to deliver AI-enabled access to digital books. “Researchers, students, and the broader public will have new paths into the HathiTrust collection thanks to a Mellon Foundation award to develop responsible, equitable, and transparent services that leverage AI for the public good and scholarly discovery. Two respected collaborators will join HathiTrust in this effort: Northeastern University Library, which brings deep expertise in digital scholarship, and Authors Alliance, a nonprofit that supports authors who want their work to benefit the public.” Good morning, Internet…

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Arizona Luminaria: New database tracks deaths in ICE detention; 4 in Arizona. “… a newly launched database project called the ICE Detention Mortality Dashboard [was] built by research group Relevant Research. The dashboard is based on public records and can be filtered by state, year and where the death occurred from 2018 to 2026.”

Euronews: How is the Mediterranean changing? 40 years of data reveal climate change impact. “Researchers at the La Coruña and Balearic oceanographic centres of the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO-CSIC), together with scientists from European and US institutions, have compiled data from 46 oceanographic campaigns carried out between 1976 and 2018 across virtually the whole of the Mediterranean. The result is Carimed (source in Spanish), a new database that makes it possible to compare measurements taken over four decades and track the evolution of indicators such as temperature, oxygen or pH.”

EVENTS

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

National Diet Library Japan: 75,000 Rare Books and Old Materials are available for full-text searches in the National Diet Library Digital Collections. “About 75,000 full-text data of the Rare Books and Old Materials were added to the National Diet Library Digital Collections. The number of digitized materials that can be full-text searched will continue to increase.”

USEFUL STUFF

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

BBC: Footage of Tibet floods is being heavily censored in China – and we know little about victims there. “The dramatic footage was almost impossible to miss. A torrent of water tearing through Gyirong Port, one of the main border crossings between Nepal and Tibet, sweeping away all in its path as hundreds of people fled for their lives. The scenes, captured by CCTV cameras, quickly spread on social media and onto screens around the world. Except here, in China.”

ANSA English: Scorsese in talks to donate archive to Rome. “Cult Italo-American film director Martin Scorsese is in talks with the Italian ministry of culture to donate his entire archive to the city of Rome, Corriere della Sera reports Tuesday.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: I asked 100 companies for my data. Some deleted it instead.. “My experience placing these data access requests was incredibly time-consuming, from finding the right filing methods to verifying my identity multiple times. Most exasperating during this process were the companies that either responded to my access requests with messages concerning the deletion of information, which I explicitly said not to do, or refused to process the request through a method listed in their privacy policy.”

New York Times: How Meta’s $17.1 Billion Social Media Settlement Came Together. “The settlement, one of the largest agreements between a company and a group of states embroiled in litigation, was announced on Wednesday. This account of how it came together is based on a dozen interviews with state leaders, former and current Meta executives, court documents and trial testimony.”

Colorado Times Recorder: 20,000 Dougco Voters Signed a Ballot Petition Opposed by The County GOP. Now It Might Publish Their Addresses. “This November, voters in Douglas County will decide whether or not to add two more commissioners to the county’s current three-person board. The Douglas County Republican Party, which opposes the proposed expansion, has built a new section on its website that promises to doxx all the residents who signed the petition to place this question on the ballot.” The section was later taken down.

RESEARCH & OPINION

PEN America: Out of Circulation: Expanding Censorship in Public Libraries. “As pillars of civil society, public libraries are places of voluntary inquiry and should serve as unfettered gateways to the universe of knowledge. But since 2021, they have faced significant pressure to restrict access to information about race, sexuality, and gender as part of a larger movement that is chilling the freedom to read, learn, and think in public institutions through legislation and intimidation (previously dubbed the ‘Ed Scare’ by PEN America).”

Edinburgh Evening News: Palestinian lawyer’s diary saved from risk of destruction by Edinburgh university. “Through an estimated five million words, Raja Shehadeh has chronicled more than six decades of daily life in Palestine, spanning almost 60 years from 1967 when he was 15 years old. Alongside the diaries, his archive includes original copies of military orders, issued following the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967, and legal and diplomatic papers that belonged to Mr Shehadeh’s father, the lawyer Aziz Shehadeh, that span the 1930s to the 1980s.”

UC San Diego: Researchers Develop Method to Tell Authentic Artifacts from Fakes. “Advances in computing power helped scientists create a method for dating pottery purported to be ancient. The method takes advantage of the fact that the firing and cooling of clay materials creates a virtual time stamp within their structures based on the orientation of Earth’s magnetic field through time. Now that the method is established, the researchers intend to apply it to artifacts of debated authenticity in museums all over the world.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Daily Hampshire Gazette: Sealed for a century, Plainfield doctor’s office reveals 1800s medicine. “A rare, untouched glimpse into a 19th-century doctor’s office can be viewed in a small room in Plainfield, where Dr. Samuel Shaw, the town’s physician from 1821 to 1854, practiced…. ‘When he died, his family just locked the door to the office out of respect for him,’ said Dr. Robert Miller, a former solo practitioner in Shelburne Falls who retired in 2018. Miller began practicing in 1973 and reflected on how far medicine had advanced in the century after Shaw’s death.”

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.

BalkanInsight: ‘This Is How We Lived Here’: Documenting 16 Years in Hungary Under Orban. “Essentially an oral history archive, the husband-and-wife team are currently conducting personal interviews with people who have registered to share their stories. It’s a meticulous exercise. So far, they have received more than 240 submissions and conducted 54 interviews, but their target is at least 400 to have a diverse sample of different age groups and professions, spanning the country. The interviews will be edited and published online – possibly also in book format – as a memento of one of the most consequential periods of Hungarian modern history.”

EVENTS

State of Delaware: Delaware Public Archives Makes History with First-Ever Overnight Event. “From the evening of August 28 into the morning of August 29, the Delaware Public Archives welcomed young history explorers and their families for Night at the Archives, the first overnight event ever hosted by the Archives. The event received an enthusiastic response from the community, reaching capacity and generating a waitlist within 48 hours of being announced.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Getty Images: Getty Images and Penske Media Corporation Expand Partnership, Bringing Dick Clark Productions’ Iconic Entertainment Archive to Global Audiences. “Now available through Getty Images, the archive includes imagery and video from thousands of performances, concerts, broadcasts, documentaries and landmark entertainment events. The collection features content from some of America’s most loved shows including the Golden Globes, American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards, American Bandstand, and Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. Thousands of hours of additional offline footage are available on request.”

AROUND THE SEARCH & SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Vancouver is Awesome: Vancouver strip club’s Instagram taken down after sign calls out Trump’s lake fiasco. “Vancouver’s Penthouse Night Club has done it again. It appears the strip club had its Instagram account taken down not because of nudity, but because of a statement on their sign. The club’s marquee on Seymour Street was updated by Ben Jackson with one of his witticisms, calling out U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s ‘renaming’ of Lake Ontario.”

Tejano Nation: Bobby Pulido Says TikTok Banned His Music Account, Questions Politics. “Two-time Latin Grammy winner and South Texas Tejano icon Bobby Pulido says TikTok has banned his longtime music account, claiming the platform identified the profile as an impersonation account. Pulido, who is now campaigning for the U.S. House of Representatives in Texas’ 15th Congressional District, addressed the suspension Tuesday and questioned whether politics may have played a role in the decision.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Teen Charged With Murder After Livestreaming San Diego Mosque Shooting. “The girl, Sarah Santiago of Forsyth County, N.C., was arrested last week, and a grand jury indicted her on three counts of murder and one count of conspiracy on Monday, according to Jim O’Neill, the district attorney. She is being charged as an adult.”

Reuters: ChatGPT, Reddit, Roblox to adhere to EU’s “very large platform” rules. “The European Commission on Monday said ChatGPT, Reddit and Roblox will need ​to adhere to the EU regulations ‌for very large online platforms and search engines.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Edinburgh: Isolation drives lasting impact of cyberbullying. “Young people who experienced cyberbullying were more likely to develop emotional and behavioural problems over the following six months if the experience led to feelings of loneliness and difficulties managing their emotions, a study shows.”

KPBS: What happens when teens put down their phones? A San Diego-linked study offers some clues. “Pines said researchers from Sapien Labs and UC San Diego Health saw the potential of a summer camp environment to study what happens when teenagers spend an extended period device-free. They published their findings in the Mental Health and Prevention journal this month. Researchers assessed the teens at the beginning and end of camp using a questionnaire. They looked at areas including mental well-being, social connection, cognition and resilience.”

International Business Times: Music, Video Games and News Archives Are Vanishing From Public Access, Internet Archive Report Finds. “Decades of music journalism and a huge slice of video game history have quietly disappeared from public access in recent years, according to a new Internet Archive report on cultural preservation. Titled Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record, the study argues that the shift from owning media outright to accessing it through streaming platforms and temporary licensing deals has left huge parts of modern culture vulnerable to disappearing following corporate decisions.” 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.

NBC News: Side of slop? Bizarre AI food images jump from online to IRL menus. “As AI image-making technology has grown more advanced — and cheaper to use, in some cases being free — images with a distinct ‘slop’ flavor, namely ones with surreal or even disturbing attributes, have begun appearing on bodega, café and restaurant menus.”

1 News New Zealand: AI-generated ‘news’ pages on social media misleading thousands of Kiwis. “Thousands of New Zealanders are liking, commenting on and sharing ‘news’ on social media they may not realise has been written by artificial intelligence and paired with fabricated imagery that is unlabelled and inaccurate, a 1News investigation has found.”

AI MODELS

PCWorld: Claude’s updated Fable and Mythos models watermark their replies. “Anthropic has announced the arrival of its latest Claude models, and just as it promised last month, the new models will add invisible watermarks to all their text replies.”

AI IN EDUCATION

New York Times: A.I. Is to Be Banned in N.Y.C. Elementary and Middle Schools. “Under the rules, about 600,000 students in the city’s schools — about two-thirds of all students in New York City public schools — will not be allowed to use A.I. until they enter high school, and even then, it will be permitted only in specific cases. The department is also recommending caps on screen time, such as limiting middle schoolers to no more than 45 minutes a day. So-called companion chatbots, which offer emotional and mental support, will be banned in all grades.”

Brookings Institution: AI surveillance in schools raises safety and equity concerns. “Students walking into an American public school today might not immediately realize their movements are being monitored. Hallway cameras are familiar enough, but schools are increasingly deploying artificial intelligence tools that go far beyond a lens pointed at a corridor.”

AI IN FINANCE

Reuters: At Jackson Hole, global central bankers glimpse dystopian AI future. “Imagine a world where AI-powered trading is so prevalent, fast and effective that the Federal Reserve must give two news conferences, one for humans and another for machines, to avoid ​humans being completely shut out of responding to shifts in monetary policy. Or where central bankers, who in recent decades have moved toward more transparency, must speak in opaque terms and ‌act in unpredictable ways to keep AI agents from gaming the system.”

AI IN GOVERNANCE

The Verge: New York Governor Kathy Hochul thinks AI should be ‘less evil’. “Today, I’m talking with New York Governor Kathy Hochul, and I’ll just warn you — this episode moves really fast. It’s an election year, after all, with a shocking amount of tech policy at stake, and Governor Hochul has taken strong positions on almost every major tech issue there is.”

Arkansas Public Advocate: Judge blocks RFK Jr.’s teen pregnancy policy after HHS cites studies that appear not to exist. “A federal judge said HHS grant notices cited studies that appeared nonexistent or mismatched, describing the problem as a hallmark of AI-generated citations. But the court did not establish that AI was actually used, and its preliminary injunction does not restore the dozens of grants HHS already terminated.”

The Guardian: Pentagon official overseeing military AI sold millions worth of stock in AI firm. “The top Pentagon official overseeing military artificial intelligence policy, who reaped profits earlier this year of up to $24m selling his private investment in Elon Musk’s AI company, has now sold his holdings in another AI company for between $5m and $25m, according to records seen by the Guardian. (Federal financial records show ranges of dollar values rather than specific figures.)”

AI IN WORK

Associated Press: For a century, journalists have had a voluntary ethics code. Editors are giving it an AI-era reboot. “The [Society of Professional Journalists], which has some 4,000 members nationwide, was founded in 1909. In 1926 it adopted its first code of ethics, then formed an ethics committee in 1948 and revised the code five times — the last in 2014. The four, unchanging key principles: ‘Seek Truth and Report It.’ ‘Minimize Harm.’ ‘Act Independently.’ ‘Be Accountable and Transparent.'”

AROUND THE AI WORLD

Semafor: Paid actors, AI writing: How a new kind of video business cashed in on America’s divided politics. “Over the last several months, a new generation of YouTube growth-hackers have flooded American politics with sensationalized, low-quality content, reaching millions of viewers with nearly identical videos taking aim at progressive politicians including Zohran Mamdani, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Notably, while the videos are presented as laypeople giving straight-to-camera ideological news recaps, they feature actors and spokespeople paid small amounts of money to read nearly identical scripts laced with misleading claims and outright falsehoods.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Diplomat: AI Is Lowering the Barriers to China’s Information Warfare Against Japan. “Japan’s Ministry of Defense recently released its 2026 Defense of Japan white paper, once again drawing attention to China’s rapid advances in artificial intelligence and their implications for the regional security environment. Yet the most immediate danger to Japan may not come from AI’s application to conventional military systems. Generative AI is also lowering the barriers for Chinese information operations targeting Japanese society.”

Politico: Own a gun? Go to church? Do yoga? AI can find out in seconds. “Lawmakers and staffers from dozens of congressional offices have seen AI’s privacy-busting prowess in demos arranged in recent months by CivAI, a nonprofit that says its aim is to educate the public about AI’s dangers and capabilities. Besides building troves of personal information gleaned from commercial databases, the dossiers offer advice on potential ways to blackmail, coerce or stalk the individual in question, according to four Republican and eight Democratic staffers who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.”

Stereogum: Jason Isbell, David Lowery, & More Sue Suno For Violating Rights Of Publicity. “Everyone hates Suno, except Mary J. Blige for some reason. Jason Isbell, David Lowery, and more musicians are now suing the AI music platform. The legal complaint was filed on Monday (Aug. 31). The class action lawsuit emphasizes that its claims don’t depend on copyright infringement, but that Sono’s name-indexing and style-replication exploits artists’ names and identifiable traits for profit.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Small Wars Journal: The Faceless War: How Artificial Intelligence Rewrote the Map of Power. “A small number of private technology firms now build the infrastructure on which both military power and the public’s perception of reality depend. Drawing on a 2025 wargaming experiment at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and on the documented information war of the June 2025 Israel-Iran conflict, this essay argues that simulated combat and cognitive warfare increasingly depend on the same technological ecosystem — shared firms, infrastructure, and supply chains — with direct implications for doctrine, training, and mid-sized powers such as Brazil.” 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.