Inside the old church where one trillion webpages are being saved; CNN, November 16, 2025

Hadas Gold , CNN; Inside the old church where one trillion webpages are being saved

"The Wayback Machine, a tool used by millions every day, has proven critical for academics and journalists searching for historical information on what corporations, people and governments have published online in the past, long after their websites have been updated or changed.

For many, the Wayback Machine is like a living history of the internet, and it just logged its trillionth page last month.

Archiving the web is more important and more challenging than ever before. The White House in January ordered vast amounts of government webpages to be taken down. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is blurring the line between what’s real and what’s artificially generated — in some ways replacing the need to visit websites entirely. And more of the internet is now hidden behind paywalls or tucked in conversations with AI chatbots.

It’s the Internet Archive’s job to figure out how to preserve it all."

Netherlands WWII cemetery removes displays honoring Black soldiers; Military Times, November 14, 2025

Claire Barrett, Military Times; Netherlands WWII cemetery removes displays honoring Black soldiers

[Kip Currier: Reading this story, I was struck by how important it is to raise our awareness of people and events whose stories and contributions often are either unknown or not as well-recognized by more people as they should be. 

That anyone would learn about the service and contributions of Black American soldiers in the Netherlands during WWII and be troubled that their stories are included in the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten is an outrage. 

How dare the Heritage Foundation -- and even more, the Trump 2.0 administration that has codified these kinds of historical purges -- strive to erase this history and these Black American military members and their service from this Dutch museum.

Thank you to all those who are sounding the alarm about another example of this kind of historical censorship.]

[Excerpt]

 "The Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten, the only American military cemetery in the Netherlands, has quietly removed panels displaying the contributions of Black American soldiers during WWII, sparking outrage from Dutch and American citizens.

One of the two displays featured an overall history of Black American military personnel fighting a double V campaign — victory at home and abroad — while the other told the story of George H. Pruitt, a Black soldier in the 43rd Signal Construction Battalion who drowned a month after the war’s end while attempting to save a comrade’s life in a German river.

The two panels were added to the visitor center in September 2024 after the American Battle Monuments Commission, a U.S. government agency that oversees the cemetery, received criticism from families and historians for not including the contributions of Black service members and their experiences fighting in the Netherlands.

At the time of publishing, ABMC did not respond to requests for comment from Military Times. The commission, however, told Dutch news outlets that one panel is“off display, though not out of rotation,” although a second panel was “retired.” 

The panels were reportedly rotated out in early March, one month after President Donald Trump’s executive order terminated diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives across the federal government.

The same month the panels were removed, The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, contacted the ABMC for its supposed failure to comply with Trump’s anti-DEI initiatives...

Among such men was 1st Sgt. Jefferson Wiggins of the 960th Quartermaster Service Company, one of more than 900,000 Black men and women who served in the U.S. military during WWII.

Wiggins and the men of the 960th QSC were tasked with the grim job of burying American dead in Margraten.

What was once a fruit orchard would become the final resting place for some 8,300 U.S. soldiers, including 172 Black servicemen. In 2009, Wiggins recounted to historian Mieke Kirkels how the work was done under horrific conditions, often with only rudimentary tools like pickaxes and shovels to dig the graves. 

“There was a permanent arrival of bodies, the whole day long. Sundays included, seven days a week,” Wiggins recalled. “I find it difficult, even now, to read in the paper that soldiers ‘gave their lives.’ … All those boys in Margraten, their lives were taken away.”"

Dark forces are preventing us fighting the climate crisis – by taking knowledge hostage; The Guardian, November 14, 2025

George Monbiot, The Guardian ; Dark forces are preventing us fighting the climate crisis – by taking knowledge hostage

"An epistemic crisis is a crisis in the production and delivery of knowledge. It’s about what we know and how we know it, what we agree to be true and what we identify as false. We face, alongside a global threat to our life-support systems, a global threat to our knowledge-support systems."

Ready to Go: Joining the fight to defend libraries, workers, and the right to read; American Libraries, November 3, 2025

Dan Montgomery , American Libraries; Ready to Go: Joining the fight to defend libraries, workers, and the right to read

"When the interview committee asked why I was interested in the executive director position at the American Library Association (ALA), I replied, doing my best impression of famed mountaineer George Mallory: “Because it’s the ALA!” I was responding, of course, to my belief in libraries and in the right to read, both of which have been under serious attack. And library workers and advocates who defend reading, books, and unfettered access to knowledge are critical to protecting American democracy. So, to be part of the organization most squarely in the forefront of that cause seemed to me an unmissable opportunity, and a great honor."

Federal Cuts, Immigration Raids and a Slowing Economy Hit Rural Libraries; The New York Times, November 12, 2025

Anna Griffin

Photographs by Jordan Gale

, The New York Times; Federal Cuts, Immigration Raids and a Slowing Economy Hit Rural Libraries

"“A library is in a lot of ways a kind of civic symbol, a demonstration of a community’s commitment to itself. So what does it mean if that goes away?”"

Pitt School of Medicine Student Innovator is Empowering People to Take Charge of Their Healthcare; University of Pittsburgh Office of Innovation & Entrepreneurship, October 21, 2025

 KAREN WOOLSTRUM , University of Pittsburgh Office of Innovation & Entrepreneurship; Pitt School of Medicine Student Innovator is Empowering People to Take Charge of Their Healthcare

"Inspiration Strikes in the ER

While her research focuses on cystic fibrosis, Li’s entrepreneurial journey began during a rotation in the emergency room. It dawned on her that many patients in the ER could be empowered to take control of their own health monitoring and potentially avoid traumatic and costly ER visits. She quickly devised an idea for an electronic stethoscope that people can use to measure vital signs of the heart and lungs from home.

In collaboration with a friend, Akshaya Anand, a machine-learning graduate student from the University of Maryland, she founded Korion Health and entered the 2022 Randall Family Big Idea Competition hosted by the Big Idea Center, Pitt’s hub for student innovation (part of the OIE).

They were awarded a modest $2,000 4th-place prize, but the value they received from the month-long competition and mentorship extended far beyond that. The experience of crafting her pitch and having her idea validated in the eyes of experienced entrepreneurs gave her the confidence to continue pursuing the device’s commercial potential.

Next up was a pitch competition hosted by the Product Development Managers Association (PDMA) in which she won free first place in the graduate-student category, with the award including consulting hours from local companies such as Bally Design and Lexicon Design that she said “helped me take my half-baked idea and turn it into a prototype to show to investors.”

“This was a high yield for the effort. If it’s something they can hold in their hands it really helps communicate the value proposition,” she added.

From there, things began to snowball. On the same day that she won the UpPrize Social Innovation Competition sponsored by Bank of New York in the racial equity category ($75k), she won the first place prize from the American Heart Association’s EmPOWERED to Serve Business Accelerator ($50k). The resulting publicity attracted the attention of organizers of the Hult Prize Competition, a global student startup competition that receives thousands of applicants each year, who invited her to apply.

“I didn’t know anything about the Hult Prize competition. At first, I thought it was spam,” she admitted.

She had no illusions of advancing to the finals near London, let alone winning the top prize of $1 million: until she did."

To Preserve Records, Homeland Security Now Relies on Officials to Take Screenshots; The New York Times, November 6, 2025

Minho Kim , The New York Times; To Preserve Records, Homeland Security Now Relies on Officials to Take Screenshots

[Kip Currier: This new discretionary DHS records policy is counter to sound ethics practices and democracy-centered values.

Preservation of records promotes transparency, the historical record, accountability, access to information, informed citizenries, the right to petition one's government, free and independent presses, and more. The new DHS records policy undermines all of the above.]

[Excerpt]

"The Department of Homeland Security has stopped using software that automatically captured text messages and saved trails of communication between officials, according to sworn court statements filed this week.

Instead, the agency began in April to require officials to manually take screenshots of their messages to comply with federal records laws, citing cybersecurity concerns with the autosave software.

Public records experts say the new record-keeping policy opens ample room for both willful and unwitting noncompliance with federal open records laws in an administration that has already shown a lack of interest in, or willingness to skirt, records laws. That development could be particularly troubling as the department executes President Trump’s aggressive agenda of mass deportations, a campaign that has included numerous accusations of misconduct by law enforcement officials, the experts said.

“If you are an immigration official or an agent and believe that the public might later criticize you, or that your records could help you be held accountable, would you go out of the way to preserve those records that might expose wrongdoing?” said Lauren Harper, who advocates government transparency at the Freedom of the Press Foundation."

Judge orders White House to use American Sign Language interpreters at briefings; NPR, November 5, 2025

Kristin Wright , NPR; Judge orders White House to use American Sign Language interpreters at briefings

"A federal judge is ordering the White House to immediately begin providing American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation at its press briefings when President Trump or press secretary Karoline Leavitt are speaking.

"White House press briefings engage the American people on important issues affecting their daily lives — in recent months, war, the economy, and healthcare, and in recent years, a global pandemic," U.S. District Judge Amir Ali wrote in issuing a preliminary injunction on Tuesday. "The exclusion of deaf Americans from that programming, in addition to likely violating the Rehabilitation Act, is clear and present harm that the court cannot meaningfully remedy after the fact."

The White House stopped using live ASL interpreters at briefings and other public events when President Trump began his second term in January.

The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) and two deaf men filed the lawsuit against Trump and Leavitt in May. The suit also names White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, along with the offices for president and vice president. It alleges the White House's failure to provide ASL violates Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The law prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in programs conducted by the federal government. The suit also claims the White House is in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments, which protect free speech and provide for due process, respectively."

Internet Archive’s legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost; Ars Technica, November 3, 2025

  ASHLEY BELANGER , Ars Technica; Internet Archive’s legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost

"This month, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine archived its trillionth webpage, and the nonprofit invited its more than 1,200 library partners and 800,000 daily users to join a celebration of the moment. To honor “three decades of safeguarding the world’s online heritage,” the city of San Francisco declared October 22 to be “Internet Archive Day.” The Archive was also recently designated a federal depository library by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who proclaimed the organization a “perfect fit” to expand “access to federal government publications amid an increasingly digital landscape.”

The Internet Archive might sound like a thriving organization, but it only recently emerged from years of bruising copyright battles that threatened to bankrupt the beloved library project. In the end, the fight led to more than 500,000 books being removed from the Archive’s “Open Library.”

“We survived,” Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle told Ars. “But it wiped out the Library.”

An Internet Archive spokesperson confirmed to Ars that the archive currently faces no major lawsuits and no active threats to its collections. Kahle thinks “the world became stupider” when the Open Library was gutted—but he’s moving forward with new ideas."

In Grok we don’t trust: academics assess Elon Musk’s AI-powered encyclopedia; The Guardian, November 3, 2025

Robert Booth, The Guardian ; In Grok we don’t trust: academics assess Elon Musk’s AI-powered encyclopedia

"The eminent British historian Sir Richard Evans produced three expert witness reports for the libel trial involving the Holocaust denier David Irving, studied for a doctorate under the supervision of Theodore Zeldin, succeeded David Cannadine as Regius professor of history at Cambridge (a post endowed by Henry VIII) and supervised theses on Bismarck’s social policy.

That was some of what you could learn from Grokipedia, the AI-powered encyclopedia launched last week by the world’s richest person, Elon Musk. The problem was, as Prof Evans discovered when he logged on to check his own entry, all these facts were false.

It was part of a choppy start for humanity’s latest attempt to corral the sum of human knowledge or, as Musk put it, create a compendium of “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” – all revealed through the magic of his Grok artificial intelligence model."

Elon Musk launches encyclopedia ‘fact-checked’ by AI and aligning with rightwing views; The Guardian, October 28, 2025

Chris Michael, The Guardian ; Elon Musk launches encyclopedia ‘fact-checked’ by AI and aligning with rightwing views

"Elon Musk has launched an online encyclopedia named Grokipedia that he said relied on artificial intelligence and would align more with his rightwing views than Wikipedia, though many of its articles say they are based on Wikipedia itself.

Calling an AI encyclopedia “super important for civilization”, Musk had been planning the Wikipedia rival for at least a month. Grokipedia does not have human authors, unlike Wikipedia, which is written and edited by volunteers in a transparent process. Grokipedia said it is “fact-checked” by Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot.

Musk said the idea was suggested by the Trump administration’s AI and cryptocurrency czar, David Sacks.

Musk has frequently attacked Wikipedia for citing reporting by the New York Times and NPR, and regularly lambasts what he calls the “mainstream media” in an effort to encourage people to rely on X, formerly Twitter, the social media site he owns and which he has programmed to encourage the domination of conservative and far-right voices, including his own.

Grokipedia’s entries appear to hew closely to conservative talking points. For example, its entry for the January 6 insurrection on the Capitol cites “widespread claims of voting irregularities” – a lie pushed by Donald Trump and his allies to delegitimize Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 – and downplays Trump’s own role in inciting the riot."

He Stayed in Belarus for His Imprisoned Wife. Now He’s Locked Up, Too.; The New York Times, November 1, 2025

Valerie Hopkins , The New York Times; He Stayed in Belarus for His Imprisoned Wife. Now He’s Locked Up, Too.

[Kip Currier: 1st Amendment rights we currently have in the U.S. -- free press and freedom of expression -- are nonexistent in nations like Belarus, Russia, China, and many more autocratic states.

We must ensure those hard-won rights do not get disappeared here in America.

And we have a moral duty to speak out against oppression like the brave journalists in this story are suffering under in Belarus and other totalitarian places.]

[Excerpt]

"Belarus continues to lock up anyone who criticizes the government, even as the Trump administration rewards Mr. Lukashenko with improved relations."

N.C. GOP spokesman urges reporter to drop news story, citing Trump ties; The Washington Post, October 31, 2025

 Brianna Tucker, The Washington Post; N.C. GOP spokesman urges reporter to drop news story, citing Trump ties

[Kip Currier: Memo to Matt Mercer (North Carolina GOP spokesman) re Mob-like threats (“I would strongly suggest dropping this story,”) against ProPublica reporting on North Carolina Chief Justice Paul Newby:

Pssst...Read the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

American Civics 101: Freedom of the Press. 

Meaning: You don't get to dictate what free and independent presses can report on in America.]

[Excerpt]

"A spokesman for the North Carolina Republican Party appeared to threaten the news outlet ProPublica — citing “connections” to the Trump administration — over a story it reported and ultimately published on a prominent conservative state Supreme Court judge.

The story examined state Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby, his starkly conservative transformation of the court and power over the state’s politics. When Newby declined to be interviewed and the court’s communications and media team did not respond to questions, the reporter contacted his daughter, who also serves as the state GOP’s finance director.

Instead, the publication said it received a response from North Carolina GOP spokesman Matt Mercer, attempting to coerce ProPublica to kill the story.

“I’m sure you’re aware of our connections with the Trump Administration and I’m sure they would be interested in this matter,” Mercer said in an email that ProPublica published.

He added: “I would strongly suggest dropping this story,” underlining “strongly” and putting it in bold type.

After the story published, Mercer doubled down in a social media post, urging Trump to “feed ProPublica to the USAID wood chipper,” referring to the president’s termination of thousands in funding and grants from the foreign aid agency earlier this year.

While President Donald Trump and top administration officials have targeted media organizations for critical coverage of him or his policies,it is unusual for a state party official to explicitly leverage a relationship with the administration and express a willingness to retaliate toward news organizations.

It’s unclear if and how Trump would retaliate against ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that does not receive government funding and relies on private grants and donations."

Some of the earliest written notes in western musical history discovered in Pennsylvania; The Guardian, October 28, 2025

Richard Luscombe , The Guardian; Some of the earliest written notes in western musical history discovered in Pennsylvania

[Kip Currier: What an incredible discovery for not only musicologists but every human on the planet -- one of the earliest known examples of written notes in western musical history.

The article indicates that the document came to the attention of researchers through a private collector. This story underscores the importance of archivists, museum staffs, researchers, and others in cultivating professional, ethical relationships with private collectors and societies. 

It also highlights the importance of libraries, archives, and museums for preserving our collective historical artifacts. Hopefully, this musical notation artifact can one day be acquired by a cultural heritage institution, preserved, and made accessible for posterity.]

[Excerpt]

"Researchers in Pennsylvania have uncovered what they believe are some of the earliest written notes in western musical history – on a ninth-century manuscript they say remained “hidden in plain sight” for years in the hands of a private collector.

The notations – characters and dots similar to shorthand outlines – appear above the word “alleluia” on the document, a vellum manuscript leaf from a Latin sacramentary, a Catholic liturgical book used in western Europe during mass from the mid- to late 800s.

While earlier written forms of ancient musical notes exist, notably the Hymn to Nikkal, carved into clay tablets dated between 1400 and 1200BC, the sacramentary markings are among the first known depicting the birth of modern western music, according to the researchers.

They were discovered by historian and author Nathan Raab, president of the Raab Collection, during the evaluation of the document presented to him by the private owner. Raab believes the notations were previously overlooked or misunderstood, and he said he spent months researching their origin and significance.

“This is an incredibly early witness to our modern use of musical notations at its very dawn, and its discovery is a further reminder to us in the business of historical discovery that sometimes those discoveries are hiding in plain sight,” he said."

‘DeepSeek is humane. Doctors are more like machines’: my mother’s worrying reliance on AI for health advice; The Guardian, October 28, 2025

 Viola Zhou, The Guardian; ‘DeepSeek is humane. Doctors are more like machines’: my mother’s worrying reliance on AI for health advice

"Over the course of months, my mom became increasingly smitten with her new AI doctor. “DeepSeek is more humane,” my mother told me in May. “Doctors are more like machines.”"

Federal judge says Texas law requiring book ratings is unconstitutional; KUT News, October 22, 2025

 Bill Zeeble, KUT News; Federal judge says Texas law requiring book ratings is unconstitutional

"The 2023 Texas law requiring booksellers and publishers to rate their books based on sexual content and references has been declared unconstitutional in a Waco court.

A federal judge on Tuesday declared House Bill 900, also known as the READER Act, violates the Constitution. The ruling makes permanent a lower court's temporary injunction that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals later upheld.

The law firm Haynes Boone, which represented the coalition of plaintiffs that sued to block the law, said in a statement the ruling is a "major First Amendment victory."

"The READER Act would have imposed impossible obligations on booksellers and limited access to literature, including classic works, for students across Texas," attorney Laura Lee Prather said in the statement.

HB 900 sought to restrict which books are available in school libraries and required booksellers to rate their own books based on sexual content. The Texas Education Agency could have overridden the ratings to prevent school libraries from obtaining books."

‘Every kind of creative discipline is in danger’: Lincoln Lawyer author on the dangers of AI; The Guardian, October 20, 2025

Nadia Khomami  , The Guardian; ‘Every kind of creative discipline is in danger’: Lincoln Lawyer author on the dangers of AI

"The writer has his own battles with AI. He is part of a collective of authors, including Jonathan Franzen, Jodi Picoult and John Grisham, suing OpenAI for copyright infringement...

Connelly has pledged $1m (£746m) to combat the wave of book bans sweeping through his home state of Florida. He said he felt moved to do something after he learned that Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, which had been influential to him, was temporarily removed from classrooms in Palm Beach County.

“I had to read that book to be what I am today. I would have never written a Lincoln Lawyer without it,” he said. He was also struck when Stephen Chbosky’s coming of age novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower, “which meant a lot to my daughter”, received a ban.

He and his wife, Linda McCaleb, help fund PEN America’s Miami office countering book bans. “It’s run by a lawyer who then tries to step in, usually by filing injunctions against school boards,” he said. “I don’t believe anyone has any right to tell some other kid they can’t read something, to usurp another parent’s oversight of their children.”"

How to Secure Your Phone for the No Kings Protest; Your Time Starts Now (Substack), October 15, 2025

LORI CORBET MANN, Your Time Starts Now (Substack); How to Secure Your Phone for the No Kings Protest

"This post is about using technology safely at a protest — how to protect yourself, and the people you organise with, from unnecessary risk.

It’s a longer read than I would have liked — I’ve learned that when I just post the steps, I’m flooded with questions asking why, so I’ve explained the reasoning too. But if you prefer to skip straight to the practical advice, you’ll find a downloadable checklist at the end.

Technology is everywhere: phones, tablets, headphones, smartwatches, fitness trackers. In everyday life that’s fine, but at a protest it can expose you and others to tracking and surveillance.

This guide explains how those devices broadcast information, how that data can be used to identify or locate you, and what you can do to reduce those risks. The aim isn’t to frighten you — it’s to help you make calm, informed choices about what you carry and how you use it."

Major media outlets, including Hegseth’s former employer Fox News, decline to sign new Pentagon reporting rules; Politico, October 14, 2025

CHEYANNE M. DANIELS , Politico; Major media outlets, including Hegseth’s former employer Fox News, decline to sign new Pentagon reporting rules

"Fox News, which previously employed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, joined most major news organizations on Tuesday in refusing to agree to new rules around reporting at the Pentagon.

The company signed a joint statement with ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News saying the new requirements “would restrict journalists’ ability to keep the nation and the world informed of important national security issues.”

Two sides of book bans: PEN America and Moms for Liberty debate; USA TODAY, October 9, 2025

Anna Kaufman , USA TODAY; Two sides of book bans: PEN America and Moms for Liberty debate

"To hear PEN America and Moms For Liberty speak about the dangers of a society curtailing free speech, you may need to squint to see the differences.

Both organizations profess an unwavering commitment to liberty, but stand firmly on either side of a growing debate about book banning in America.

PEN America, a nonprofit aimed at bolstering the freedom to write and read, has emerged as an outspoken critic of removing reading materials from schools and libraries that have been deemed inappropriate, most often by advocacy groups, but also by individual parents. PEN has been tracking book bans since 2021 and filed lawsuits alongside families and publishers that challenge book restrictions in schools.

Moms For Liberty, a conservative collective, is among the leaders in the parental rights movement. Local chapters of the organization tackle issues across the educational landscape, guiding parents who want to raise concerns at their schools, and flexing their political might through endorsements, stamping President Donald Trump with their approval in 2024.

"Our mission at Moms for Liberty is to unify, educate and empower parents to defend their parental rights," Tina Descovich, one of the organization's founders, tells USA TODAY. "Parents have the fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children, whether it be education or medical care …So they also have the right to monitor what their children are watching and reading."

They don't ban books, she says, that would require the government to bar a person from writing or selling the book. "I think many Americans have chosen to use that word to advance a political agenda instead of using the word correctly," she says.

PEN begs to differ. Kasey Meehan, director of the organization's Freedom to Read program, says, "Our guiding light has always been access." If a group of a few has the power to remove a book from a public space open to all, then that amounts to a ban, she argues.

Banned Books Week "is not about acknowledging bygone censorship, it's really about bringing awareness of censorship that’s happening today," she says. "We have seen pretty well coordinated campaigns that are put on school districts or that are driven by state legislatures or state governors to see certain types of books removed."

To put both sides of the debate in clear view, USA TODAY sent the same questions to both organizations. Here are their responses, unedited and in full."