Writers and Editors

Notes from an interactive New York Times Opinion piece

See it for specific dates, photos, and fuller copy

 

"For Americans who may have forgotten that time, or pushed it from memory, we offer this timeline of his presidency. Mr. Trump's first term was a warning about what he will do with the power of his office — unless American voters reject him."

 

Check out the article, click on headlines there for full copy, and see abundant photos here:

Donald Trump's First Term (NY Times, 7-18-24)

Before you do, picture what was happening when he says or does the following (lines from the article):

 

(2017) What Trump does or says...
Jan.     "This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period."

           Tries to defund sanctuary cities in an effort to ramp up deportations.

           The Muslim ban. In an executive order, Mr. Trump, without warning, closes the U.S. border to refugees fleeing war in Syria and several mostly Muslim countries.          

Feb.     Abandons a decades-long commitment to a two-state solution to Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

May     Fires the F.B.I. director, James Comey, who was leading an investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

           Reveals highly classified intelligence to Russian officials.

Spring  Tries to get the Justice Department to prosecute Hillary Clinton and Mr. Comey.

           Initiates family separations by executive order.

           Rages against immigrants, saying those from Haiti all have AIDS.
June    Tries to fire the special counsel Robert Mueller over the Russia investigation.
           Sends his son-in-law to negotiate Middle East peace.
July     Announces a ban on transgender people in the military.
Aug.    Trump makes his infamous comments after white nationalist groups hold a march in Charlottesville, Va., that involves waving Confederate  flags and swastikas and chants of "Jews will not replace us." One person died, and dozens were injured at the rally.You had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.”

Oct.     Throws paper towels to Puerto Ricans after a deadly hurricane. 

Dec.     Recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, upending decades of U.S. policy.

           Cuts taxes for corporations and the wealthy, sending the budget deficit skyrocketing.

(2018)

Jan.       Trump to CNN reporter: "I'm a very stable genius."

             Wants more immigrants from Norway instead of "shithole" countries.

             Reaps financial benefits from a diplomatic crisis in the Persian Gulf.

March    Brags about making up facts in meetings with foreign leaders.

April      Flip-flops on sanctions for Russia over its role in Syria's chemical weapons program.

May       Unilaterally pulls out of the Iran nuclear deal.

May       Closes pandemic preparedness unit. [!!]

             Insults NATO allies.

Summer Escalates the trade war with China, necessitating billions of dollars to fix the domestic damage.
July       Sides with Vladimir Putin over American intelligence agencies on Russian election interference.
Sept.     Lies about hurricane deaths.
Oct.      Continues to use his personal iPhones after warnings that they are not secure.
Nov.      Calls American soldiers "losers" and "suckers."
Dec.      Instigates the longest government shutdown ever.
            The E.P.A. proposes weakening regulations on power plants that restrict the release of mercury, which can cause brain damage.

(2019)
Feb.      Moves to appoint a climate change denier to lead a climate security panel.
            Declares national emergency to get money for border wall.
March    Suggests shooting migrants in the legs to slow them down.
            Continues to attack John McCain after his death.
            Reverses North Korea sanctions by tweet … maybe.
May      Proposes ending federal health rights protections for transgender people.
June     Says he would accept opposition research from Russia.
            Takes his daughter to a G20 summit.
            Steps into North Korea.
July      Pressures Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, for "a favor": to investigate Mr. Biden's activities in the country.
Aug.     Postpones meeting with Denmark when he learns it's not interested in selling Greenland
            Proposes regulation that would allow indefinite detention of migrant families.
Sept.    Insists, over meteorologists' objections, that Alabama will be hit by Hurricane Dorian.

            Possibly alters a map from NOAA to prove he's right.
Nov.     Reverses four decades of U.S. policy by declaring that Israeli settlements in the West Bank do not violate international law.
Dec.     Becomes the third president in the history of the United States to be impeached, on charges related to his interactions with Mr. Zelensky (see Constitution Annotated for outcome, explained). .

(2020)

Jan.     Rolls back school nutrition rules promoted by Michelle Obama — fewer vegetables, more pizza.
           Announces a Middle East peace plan that heavily favors Israel.

Feb.     Downplays Covid-19.
March   Botches the early Covid-19 response — sometimes deliberately.
April     Pushes hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug, as a Covid treatment.
           Pushes bleach, toxic to humans, as a Covid treatment.
May:    Pressures the Justice Department into dropping a Russia-related case
June:   "When the looting starts, the shooting starts."
July:    Defends Confederate flag.
Aug:    Praises QAnon at a news conference.
Sept:   Refuses to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.
           Hosts a Covid-19 superspreader event at the White House.
          "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by."
Oct:     Receives an experimental Covid treatment not yet widely available, calls it a "cure."
Nov:    Lies about winning the election.
           Fires the defense secretary in the wake of his election loss.
           Withholds briefings from Mr. Biden's team.
           Tries to overturn Michigan's results.

Dec.    Threatens to veto coronavirus aid.
          Vetoes annual military spending bill.

 

(2021)

Jan.     January 6. "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"

           Mr. Trump's lies about a stolen election culminate in a mob storming the Capitol, targeting his vice president, in order to stop the certification of the 2020 election.

              Mr. Trump takes no action for hours. At least seven people die in connection with the attack, and dozens of others are injured.

           Trump impeached again...the "first president in the history of the United States to be impeached twice."

           Tries to overturn Georgia's election result.

 

"Democracy is a team sport, we are all in the starting lineup, & every day is game day." ~ Indivisible

• People Power: Revisiting the origins of American democracy. (Jill Lepore, New Yorker, 10-24-2005) Both an essay on what democracy is (how it is defined) and a review of The Rise of American Democracy by Sean Wilentz

     "Sean Wilentz traces a historical arc from the earliest days of the republic to the opening shots of the Civil War. One of our finest writers of history, Wilentz brings to life the era after the American Revolution, when the idea of democracy remained contentious, and Jeffersonians and Federalists clashed over the role of ordinary citizens in government of, by, and for the people. The triumph of Andrew Jackson soon defined this role on the national level, while city democrats, Anti-Masons, fugitive slaves, and a host of others hewed their own local definitions. In these definitions Wilentz recovers the beginnings of a discontent: two starkly opposed democracies, one in the North and another in the South -- and the wary balance that lasted until the election of Abraham Lincoln sparked its bloody resolution."

 

• Trump lost the election, but he won the online disinformation war (Peter Geoghegan, openDemocracy, 11-9-2020) "Social media platforms have allowed US conservatives to delegitimise the election and sow mistrust of democracy. Posts by far-right news site Breitbart had been shared three times as often as posts from the official pages of every Democratic member of the US senate combined in the previous 30 days....As Tuesday night moved into Wednesday morning, Trump held the Sunshine State comfortably, mainly thanks to Latino voters in the state's most populous county, Miami-Dade, shifting in huge numbers from Clinton in 2016 to Trump this time around. Why? One reason is the months of YouTube videos and Facebook posts that led many in Miami to believe that Biden was a stalking horse for socialism, anathema to the city's large Cuban ex-pat population. These conspiracy theories were shared widely and then repeated incessantly on Spanish-language radio."

      "Social media platforms have allowed US conservatives to delegitimise the election and sow mistrust of democracy. Posts by far-right news site Breitbart had been shared three times as often as posts from the official pages of every Democratic member of the US senate combined in the previous 30 days....As Tuesday night moved into Wednesday morning, Trump held the Sunshine State comfortably, mainly thanks to Latino voters in the state's most populous county, Miami-Dade, shifting in huge numbers from Clinton in 2016 to Trump this time around. Why? One reason is the months of YouTube videos and Facebook posts that led many in Miami to believe that Biden was a stalking horse for socialism, anathema to the city's large Cuban ex-pat population. These conspiracy theories were shared widely and then repeated incessantly on Spanish-language radio."

• Special Counsel Asks Supreme Court to Decide if Trump Is Immune From Prosecution (Adam Liptak and Alan Feuer, NY Times, 12-11-23) Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting former President Donald J. Trump on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, asked the Supreme Court on Monday to rule on Mr. Trump’s argument that he is immune from prosecution. The justices quickly agreed to fast-track the first phase of the case.
      “This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former president is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin,” Mr. Smith wrote.
      The trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, rejected Mr. Trump’s sweeping claims that he enjoyed “absolute immunity” from the election interference indictment because it was based on actions he took while in office. In her ruling two weeks ago, she condemned his attempts to “usurp the reins of government” and said there was nothing in the Constitution or American history supporting the proposition that a former president should not be bound by the federal criminal law.

 

---Does the president have immunity from prosecution? ~"The President is not above the law. But under our system of separated powers, the President may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts."

      "A sitting president of the United States has both civil and criminal immunity for their official acts. Neither civil nor criminal immunity is explicitly granted in the Constitution or any federal statute."
---TRUMP v. UNITED STATES (U.S.Supreme Court decision, July 1, 2024)
---Are Former Presidents Immune From Criminal Prosecution? We’re Still Not Sure (Anna Bower, Quinta Jurecic, Lee Kovarsky, Natalie K. Orpett, Roger Parloff, Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare, 7-2-24) On the very last day of the Supreme Court’s 2023 term, the Court handed down its ruling in Trump v. United States, concerning the former president’s potential immunity from prosecution over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Rather than resolving the issue clearly, a 6-3 conservative majority found that presidents enjoy some immunity from criminal prosecution in some circumstances—a ruling that will likely create significant problems for the case against Trump. Scroll down on that site for further articles:
---A Decision of Surpassing Recklessness in Dangerous Times (Quinta Jurecic, Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare, 7-2-24) The Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States would have been wrong and dangerous at any time. It’s uncommonly so with Trump poised to retake power.
---Broad Reflections on Trump v. United States (Jack Goldsmith, Lawfare, 7-2-24) As Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent emphasized, the decision could give an unscrupulous president wide scope for corrupt behavior. The dissent exaggerates when it says that the Court’s decision makes the president “a king above the law” and “empower[s]” the president “to violate federal criminal law.”
---A Rule for the Ages, or a Rule for Trump? ( Trevor W. Morrison, Lawfare, 7-8-24) The majority opinion in Trump v. United States badly misstates principles of separation of powers to immunize hypothetical future presidents—in service of immunity for Trump himself. 'As Justice Sonia Sotomayor put it in her dissenting opinion in the case (which Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined), the indictment against Trump “paints a stark portrait of a President desperate to stay in power.” Do read this article.

 

• A User’s Guide to Democracy (ProPublica) Congress Works For You. Here’s How to Be a Better Boss. Short guides to understanding political ads, seeing what your representatives are actually doing (or not doing), etc. Sign up for personalized emails from ProPublica, which specializes in investigative reporting.

• How to Follow Your Congressional and Local Elections in 2022 (Karim Doumar and Cynthia Gordy Giwa, ProPublica, 10-23-22) From competitiveness ratings to campaign contributions, there’s a lot to follow in local and down-ballot elections. Learn how to decipher election coverage in this edition of the User’s Guide to Democracy.

--- A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works by Nick Capodice and Hannah McCarthy with illustrator Tom Toro

• What if a U.S, presidential candidate refuses to concede after an election? (Van Jones, TED Talk about how to stop a coup, October 2020) You can read transcript as you listen. "The president’s litigation strategy is unlikely to succeed, but it’s doing great harm in the meantime." Explaining why the customary concession speech is one of the most important safeguards for democracy, Jones exposes shocking legal loopholes that could enable a candidate to grab power even if they lose both the popular vote and the electoral college.

     Did you know "that under our constitution a presidential candidate could actually lose the popular vote, fail to get a majority in the electoral college, refuse to concede, manipulate hidden mechanisms in our government and still get sworn in as the president of the United States of America? Everyone essentially ignores the elite electoral process...". A concession speech is "the one speech no presidential candidate ever wants to give, and yet, it is that public address that is most important for the health and the well-being of our nation....The best way to stop a coup is to update and strengthen our democratic system as soon as this election is over. Maybe we need to rethink, reimagine or just get rid of this whole electoral college, extra inning thing in the first place.
      "Get informed. A number of progressive organizations are already working hard to warn Americans about this growing threat to our democracy. Some organizations you could look into and research for yourself: choosedemocracy.us, electiontaskforce.org, protectdemocracy.org, mobilize.us, allamericans.org, civicalliance.com and the Fight Back table at demos.org. All these groups are working on this. Now, on the right, if that's your cup of tea, you could also check out The Heritage Foundation or the Government Accountability Institute."
      "Some existing organizations, powerful groups, like the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the ACLU, NAACP, Legal Defense Fund, Indivisible, ColorOfChange.org, these groups are going to be fighting in the courts, fighting in Congress, to try to make sure that we have a fair outcome. Those groups could use your help and your donations."
---How Trump and His Enablers Are Laying the Groundwork For a Coup d'État (Anita Bartholomew, A Pointed View, blog 11-10-2020)

---The dangerous anti-democracy coalition (Robert Reich, 5-28-24) American oligarchs are joining Trump and his faux working-class MAGA movement. Elon Musk and entrepreneur and investor David Sacks reportedly held a secret billionaire dinner party in Hollywood last month. Its purpose: to defeat Joe Biden and reinstall Donald Trump in the White House.

• American Democracy Was Never Designed to Be Democratic (Louis Menand,New Yorker, 8-22-22) The partisan redistricting tactics of cracking and packing aren’t merely flaws in the system—they are the system.

• Democracy: A Journal of Ideas
---The Most Dangerous Law in America (Joseph Nunn, Democracy Summer 2024, No. 73) The Insurrection Act is a nuclear bomb hidden in the United States code, giving presidents unimaginable emergency power. No President has abused it. Yet.

• The consequences of ‘horse race’ reporting: What the research says (Denise-Marie Ordway, Journalist's Resource, 9-10-19) One of the most common ways reporters cover elections — with a focus on who’s in the lead and who’s behind instead of on policy issues — hurts the public and the news industry. Studies show it is linked to:
---Distrust in politicians
---Distrust of news outlets
---An uninformed electorate
---Inaccurate reporting of opinion poll data.

• Democracy: For Helping Voters Who Can’t Read, She’s Been Criminally Charged — Twice. That Hasn’t Stopped Her. (Mauricio Rodríguez Pons, Aliyya Swaby and Annie Waldman, ProPublica, 9-14-22) Olivia Coley-Pearson offered help to Georgia voters who struggle to read. For taking on one of America’s oldest forms of voter suppression, she got threats, a trip to jail and a reminder of the nation’s long legacy of weaponizing literacy. A ProPublica investigation found that the efforts to block people who have difficulty reading from casting a ballot continue, especially in the South. In fact, today's election system remains a modern-day literacy test. To learn more, check out ProPublica’s investigation of Coley-Pearson’s fight and the persistent suppression of low-literacy voters, read our story about successful voting reforms, and see our guide on how to get help with voting.

 
• Can Our Ballots Be Both Secret and Secure? (Sue Halpern, NY Times, 7-7-2020) A mathematician’s quest to make American elections more trustworthy. “We’ve decided in this country that private venders will play a central role in running our elections and counting our votes."

• How the U.S. election looks to pro-democracy activists around the world (Miriam Berger, Washington Post, 11-3-2020) Anxiety over the state of democracy in the United States is running high as the presidential election unfolds. And beyond America’s borders, pro-democracy activists around the world, already accustomed to following U.S. politics because of its global impact, see echoes of and implications for their own struggles.

• Coup d'État Project (CDP) (University of Illinois’ Cline Center for Advanced Social Research) A dataset detailing more than 900 coups, attempted coups, and coup conspiracies from 1945 to 2019. Each entry indicates the country and date, plus the “type of actor who initiated the coup (i.e. military, palace, rebel, etc.) as well as the fate of the deposed executive (killed, injured, exiled, etc.).” See glossary.

• Congressional Record searchable, at Library of Congress online.

"Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people." ~Abraham Lincoln"
Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters." ~Abraham Lincoln"
Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."~Winston Churchill

For those catching up on this story:

 

• The WikiLeaks saga (Video report,The Guardian, 6-24-24) Julian Assange returns to Australia a free man after US espionage charge in Saipan court.

Links to many related stories on this website page!

• Julian Assange returns to Australia a free man after US espionage charge – video report  (The Guardian, 6-26-24)

      The WikiLeaks founder has walked free from a court in the US Pacific island territory of Saipan after pleading guilty to violating US espionage law, in a deal that left him free to return home to Australia and brought an end to an extraordinary 14-year legal saga.

      Stella Assange, addressing reporters after her husband's arrival in Canberra, said: 'It took millions of people, people working behind the scenes, people protesting on the streets for days and weeks and months and years ... and we achieved it.' How freedom for Julian Assange is a quiet triumph for Anthony Albanese

     ‘He needs time’: wife pleads for privacy as Julian Assange reunited with family after landing in Australia.

 
• What to Know About Julian Assange and His Plea Deal (gift link, Glenn Thrush, NY Times, 6-25-24) The deal ends a period of confinement that lasted about a dozen years, first in the self-exile of the Ecuadorean embassy in London, then in prison.

 

• A Timeline of Julian Assange’s Legal Saga (gift link, Charlie Savage, NY Times, 6-24-24) A plea deal brought an abrupt end to an extraordinary legal saga that has raised novel issues of national security, press freedoms, politics and diplomacy.

 

• What Does Julian Assange's Indictment Under the Espionage Act Mean for Journalism? (Ofer Raban, Pacific Standard, 5-28-19) Originally published in The Conversation (5-25-19) as Assange’s new indictment: Espionage and the First Amendment What goes for Assange may also go for any person who obtains or discloses classified information—even journalists.

• The Constitutional Rubicon of an Assange Prosecution (Elizabeth Goitein, Just Security, 5-9-17) 'In general, an employee who signs a non-disclosure agreement in order to gain access to classified government information may be prosecuted for leaking that information. Drawing the line between those who leak classified information and those who publish it thus makes constitutional sense in a way that drawing the line between “good” publishers and “bad” publishers does not....Allowing the FBI to determine who is allowed to publish leaked information based on the bureau’s assessment of their patriotism would cross a constitutional Rubicon. If that giant step were to become a precedent, it could very well spell the end of independent, objective national security reporting.'

• Inchoate Liability and the Espionage Act: The Statutory Framework and the Freedom of the Press (Stephen Vladeck, Harvard Law and Policy Review, 2007, via Digital Commons) Parsing of the statutory text, and why it raises a First Amendment issue in cases like Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

• Julian Assange (Wikipedia)

• Assange's arrest was designed to make sure he didn't press a mysterious panic button he said would bring dire consequences for Ecuador ( Alexandra Ma, Business Insider, 4-12-19) WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange was dramatically arrested and carried out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on Thursday. British and Ecuadorian authorities engineered the timing and nature of the raid to stop Assange from accessing a panic button he mentioned in the past, Ecuador's foreign minister said. Specifics on the button — or what it might do — are sparse, but the foreign minister said Assange had said it could bring dire consequences for Ecuador. Ecuadorian officials have accused Assange of accessing the government's security files, playing music loudly, and having no regard for personal hygiene during his stay at the embassy.

• Julian Assange: the teen hacker who became insurgent in information war (David Leigh and Luke Harding, The Guardian, 1-30-11) The colourful lives and experiences that shaped underground rebel Julian Assange on the road to WikiLeaks luminary. This story is old (from 2011).

• Sixteen Things Writers Should Know About Quoting From Letters (Mark Fowler, Rights of Writers, 2-2011, which discusses various scenarios)
       "Are you the sender of the letter or the recipient? 'If I send you a letter, unless I have an agreement with you to the contrary, I continue to own the copyright. As the recipient of the letter, you own the letter itself -- the paper and ink.'

      "As the recipient of the letter, you cannot publish the entirety of the letter without my consent, with limited exceptions, which he spells out).
      "If the author of a letter dies, an estate or descendant of the letter writer can grant permission to reprint a letter only if it also inherited copyright and not just the physical letter.
      "On the other hand, the philosophy of fair use in the quotation of letters and other source materials is neatly summed up in this quotation from The Chicago Manual of Style:

    "Fair use is use that is fair--simply that....The right of fair use is a valuable one to scholarship, and it should not be allowed to decay through the failure of scholars to employ it boldly."
     "Ultimately in the Wright case, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals clarified that some amount of quotation from unpublished works, such as letters and diaries, can qualify as fair use. Congress then codified this finding by amending Section 107 of the Copyright Act to add this sentence: 'The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.' "

• Don’t Burn Your Family Letters When You Declutter (Amy Johnson Crow)

• To read or not to read? How to handle a deceased family member’s personal letters (Dawn Roode, Modern Heirloom Books, 5-27-24) Discovering a stack of handwritten letters can feel like winning the family history lottery—but is it always the right thing to read (or share) them?

• Are you weighed down by the stuff of your family’s memories? (Dawn Roode, Modern Heirloom Books,5-27-24) Do you have sentimental boxes of family mementos you don’t know what to do with?

• What Is the Federal Law for Opening Mail Not Addressed to You? (The Law Dictionary) Most people know that it’s illegal to open mail that is addressed to someone else. In fact, there is a federal law that makes it a crime to do so. However, the law only applies under very specific circumstances. To help determine if it’s lawful, take a look at the reasons listed for opening mail not addressed to you.

 

• Ethics, Etiquette and Old Family Letters (Denise May Levenick, The Family Curator, 4-6-18) When it comes to genealogy and reading other people’s mail, ethics and etiquette are two sides of the same coin. Is it morally correct (ethical) to read other people’s mail? Is it socially acceptable (proper etiquette) to do so?

• How to Preserve Old Letters (Amy Johnson Crow, video, 19 minutes) Denise Levenick, the Family Curator, provides tips on preservation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Collections_of_letters

 

Miscellaneous resources about letters and postcards:
• Letters of Note
• Grandpa's Postcards (Jana Last's Family History and Genealogy blog)

Many writers mistakenly lower-case short words in titles, even verbs (which are often tiny)

General rules (which vary somewhat according to style guides):

---In titles, do capitalize nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, the first and last words in a title and (per most style guides) words with four or more letters.

---In titles, don't capitalize (do lowercase) articles, conjunctions, short prepositions, and many words with three or fewer words.

---Major style guides: MLA Style and Chicago Manual of Style (for books), AP Style (for newspapers, etc.), and various other specialty style guides

 

• How I Found Out I had Pancreatic Cancer   [problem words in red]

     Good video, but "had," a verb, should be capitalized.

 

• The Basic Problem for Authors who write More than One Book
• There are Three Ways To Create Evergreen Links 

      "Are" (a verb, the plural of "is") should be capitalized; "to" is one of the short prepositions not capitalized in the middle of a title.

• This is Why Book Marketing Doesn't Work
• What is Memory Care and How Much Should it Cost? (Assisted Living Today)   

• California's Collusion with a Texas Timber Company Let Ancient Redwoods be Clearcut

• What is AI and How Can Writers Use It?

      "Is," a verb, should be capitalized. All forms of "to be" should be capitalized in titles.

 

• Top 10 Chronic Conditions in Adults 65+ and What You Can do to Prevent or Manage Them

• What do Anti-Freelancer Laws Mean for Independent Journalists?
     "Do" is as important as "Prevent" or "Manage" -- and it's a verb, so it should be capitalized.

• Your Story is More Important Than You Think You'd be surprised how many organizations get this one wrong.

•  An Air Force Career Held up Because of Debt Owed for Medical Bills
• Telling the Stories of Life through Guided Autobiography Groups, a book by James E. Birren and Kathryn N. Cochran.

     Capitalization of ‘through’ in a title follows certain style rules. In Chicago, MLA, and APA styles, ‘through’ should be capitalized as it’s more than four letters. But according to AP style, ‘through’ is considered a preposition and isn’t typically capitalized unless it’s the first or last word. AP style is for journalists, and this is a book, and "through" is more than four letters, so most book publishers would capitalize it in a title. [This is why, when you hire an editor, you should hire one who is familiar with the style for whatever product you want edited--newspaper-style or book-style.]  See Is “through” Capitalized in a Title?

• What is Typesetting and Why Does it Matter? (Michele DeFilippo, Ingram Spark) See Ingram Spark's useful online guide How to Design a Book.

   

 

Find explanations here: Capitalization

Including whether to capitalize "black" for Negro.

The rule is NOT "Capitalize all the big words."

Many authors wrongly lower-case "be" and "is" and "are" and "am" and "up" in titles, but if you are capitalizing titles, all verbs, including all forms of the verb "to be" should be capitalized. "Is" and "it" should both be capitalized. Why?

• Capitalize brand names. For example, whiskey and cola but Seagram's and Coca-Cola

 

• What is phishing? How to recognize and avoid phishing scams | (NortonLifeLock) Phishing is a con game. Phishers are tech-savvy con artists and identity thieves who use spam, fake websites, emails, phone calls and instant messages to trick people into divulging sensitive information like passwords or account numbers. How to avoid them and what to do if you've been the victim of a phishing scam.
---Three common types of phishing scams (Government of Canada) The “free vacation” scam, the “fake government message” scam, and the “gift card” scam, plus The 7 red flags of phishing and How to keep yourself safe

---20 types of phishing attacks + examples and prevention tips (Clare Stouffer, Norton)
---Phishing email examples to help you identify phishing scams ( Dan Rafter, Norton)
---Spear phishing: Definition + protection tips (Ellie Farrier, CNBC)

• How to Recognize and Avoid Phishing Scams (Federal Trade Commission) Scammers use email or text messages to trick you into giving them your personal and financial information. But there are several ways to protect yourself. How to recognize phishing, how to protect yourself from phishing attacks, what to do if you suspect a phishing attack, how to do if you responded to a phishing email, and how to report phishing. 

• Beware the “your domain has exceeded its disk quota“ Phishing Email (Nate Hoffelder, 6-5-24) One common feature shared by many hosting companies is that they will send automated emails if there is a problem with your account. Scammers know this, which is why they started sending out fake emails with warnings like “WARNING: the domain BLANK has exceeded its disk quota”. The scam email in fact looks almost exactly like the real email, so much so that I even thought it was real, and tried to solve the problem it reported. What the scammers want you to do is click a link in the email and enter your username and password.

• Phishing prevention and email hygiene (especially 2FA) (Harlo Holmes, Director of Digital Security, Freedom of the Press Foundation, 8-4-21) Most people are hacked via phishing attacks. Phishing is a social-engineering attack where an adversary crafts an email (or text, app message) in such a way to trick you into divulging information that could be used against you or your network; gain access to, and ultimately commandeer your account; or introduce malware and/or viruses to your machine. One of the most important advances in credential security is two-factor authentication.

      Two-factor authentication (or “2FA”) relies on the idea that services are more secure if you access them with something you know (i.e., your passphrase), and something you have (i.e. physical access to your phone). Turn on two-factor authentication for any and all services that you can, starting with your Gmail account. Better yet, get a security key, a small device that you either plug into your computer, or connect to your phone wirelessly, if it supports NFC, to enable this securely.

• What Is Two-Factor Authentication? (Brain Station) Links to subtopics along left side.

• What Is a Security Key? (HYPR) A security key, also known as a security token, is a physical device used for two-factor authentication (2FA) or multi-factor authentication (MFA) to enhance the security of online accounts and systems. Security keys are secondary hardware devices that rely on a primary device, such as a workstation, application or laptop. 80% of data breaches are the result of compromised login credentials. Security keys can help prevent data breaches by adding an extra layer of authentication while reducing the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive accounts and systems.  

• The Most Common Types of Cyber Security Attacks (Bill Jefferson, Top VPN Canada) How they work and steps you can take to protect yourself against: Socially engineered trojans, malware, phishing, mining cryptocurrencies viruses, AI-powered attacks, denial-of-service attacks (DDoS), man-in-the-middle attacks (aka session hijacking). "One way to protect yourself would be to use a premium VPN service to mask your IP and hide your location, in conjunction with a good firewall and antivirus."

    I recall receiving an "email from PayPal, which looked legit and stated that my account had been frozen and that I needed to click on the link and log in to report the problem. The only issue is that the link directs you to a phishing website, where your information is stolen. The only way to avoid this is never to open emails or click on links without verifying the sender. For example, if you get an email from PayPal, don't click on the link in the email but visit the website by typing in the address manually."

• Defending Against Ransomware A Resource Guide from the PCI Security Standards Council.  30%of users open phishing emails, and more than 12 percent click on their attachments. Phishing emails are a common delivery vehicle for ransomware. These emails look legitimate, such as an invoice or electronic fax, but they include malicious links and/or attachments that can infect your computer and system. Criminals are attacking businesses with a type of malware that holds business-critical systems and data hostage until a sum of money is received. See additional resources in PCI's Document Library.

Links to useful articles:
• Book Cover Design Basics (Ingram Spark)
• How to Design a Book Cover That Sells 101 (Dribbble)
• How to design a book cover: professional tips for success (Blurb)
• How Book Covers Are Designed (Penguin)
• The Art and Science of Book Cover Design in Book Publishing (David Taylor, Forbes, 3-1-24) Design that sells books. The front cover is the initial encounter with a book, enticing readers to explore the world hidden within its pages. A visually striking cover serves as the initial handshake between the author and reader, leaving a lasting impression that extends far beyond the bookstore shelves.
• Behind the scenes of book cover design (Tobias van Schneider, 10-5-20)
• What Makes an Iconic Cover? (Clare Thorp, BBC, 6-4-2020) Covers can be a swift way to signal genre, but the good ones do more than that. They give face to a book’s personality.
• Case Study: Designing Covers for Academic Publishing (Jordan Wannemacher, Book Machine, 11-16-20)
• Research: A look at Book Cover Design Cover Design (Kindlepreneur) For self-published books.
• The 139 Best Book Covers of 2023 (Lit Hub)
• Effortlessly Create Book Covers that Sell, With DIY Templates & Tutorials (DIY Book Covers)
• How to Design the Best Book Cover in 8 Simple Steps (Dave Chesson, Kindlepreneur)
• 34 Book Cover Design Ideas to Inspire Your Creativity (Kindlepreneur)

• Best-Selling Book Covers for Self-Publishing Authors (Rocking Book Covers)
• The case for recognising book cover designers. And some favourite book jackets of 2015. (Trip Fiction)
• Best Book Covers of the Year (Lit Hub, for several years)
• The Unexpected Politics of Book Cover Design (Jenny Bhatt, Lit Hub) A book’s cover is both art and commerce. It has to make a reader pause their scroll-on-by behavior on social media and compel buying behavior.
• Case Study: Designing Covers for Academic Publishing (Jordan Wannemacher, Book Machine, 11-16-20) Contemporary academic nonfiction can illustrate complex topics in some incredibly clever and beautiful ways.

Comments?

Indie publishing, digital publishing, and POD resources'

Processes to understand if you self-publish

(printing vs. publishing, offset printing, print-on-demand (POD), traditional publishing, self-publishing, indie publishing, subsidy publishing, and even hybrid publishing)

This world of "indie publishing" is full of new opportunities and possible problems, and requires much effort, so do your homework, see the long-range picture, pay attention to rights you must know about, and do things right the first time to avoid expensive mistakes! This page of links should save you the time it has taken me to learn what's what! Many of the processes explained on this page also apply in traditional book publishing; they're here because you should understand them if you are self-publishing, to be successful and to avoid making mistakes.

Understand: Printing is not publishing. Self-publishing (a.k.a. "self publishing" with no hyphen) is NOT the same as "print-on-demand" (POD) publishing. Printing is only one aspect of publishing). It is also not the same as subsidy publishing (a new name for vanity publishing, in which the publisher's primary customer is the author, not the target book buyer). It is important to understand the differences between them, even if you have money to burn, because there are issues of control and ownership, as well as economics. Do not, for the sake of temporary convenience, give up rights you are entitled to and may want in the longer term.

Print-on-demand is a digital printing process with which you can print as few books as you want--one at a time (as they are ordered and paid for). A traditional publisher like Random House can use POD technology. So can a self-publisher (someone who publishes independently). They can print one book at a time or a few at a time. But a self-publisher can also use the same offset printers the regular publishers use, if printing in sufficient quantity (typically 500 copies and above). There are pros and cons to POD, but it is rapidly becoming more popular.

Publishing is the broader process that includes printing as well as editing, typesetting, design, production, publicity, marketing, and distribution. A commercial publisher (say, Doubleday) handles all of these steps and publishes the book under its own imprint, "licensing" rights from an author (often through an agent), covering the costs of production, and paying the author a royalty. A subsidy publisher also publishes under its own imprint, but expects the author or organization to cover the costs of production.  (Mind you, sometimes commercial publishers effectively do the same thing, agreeing to publish a book, or a special edition of a book, if the author/organization promises to purchase a sizable number of copies, enough to cover basic costs.) The subsidy publisher owns rights to the book and authors receive royalties, but any author expecting sizable royalties in this set-up is delusional. A hybrid publisher also expects the author to cover many of the costs, but in return the author gets a larger share of income than traditional royalties would provide. (As well in most cases as fewer sales.)

Self-publishing means paying for all the costs of publication and managing publication yourself. Organizations often self-publish, typically creating an imprint just for that purpose. The biggest problem with self-publishing (apart from learning how to handle production) is distribution. The big advantage is that you have more control over the whole process, keep more of the revenues from sales, and can get copies of the physical book in your hands fast (as fast as you can handle all the processes yourself).

     What makes self-publishing more acceptable these days than vanity publishing is partly that the major publishers are not buying as many books (with big advances) as they used to. Instead of spending moderate amounts on lots of authors they are putting big money behind a much smaller group of what they presumably hope will be blockbuster bestsellers. So some authors are deciding they are better off investing in themselves and turning out a book relatively quickly than they are taking a lot of time finding and selling yourself to a traditional publisher, hoping that that publisher does a good job, and being disappointed. Hybrid publishing is a notch above self-publishing, the promise being that you won't have to supervise all aspects of production yourself, but it is expensive.

     This site can help you select which services to use: Best and Worst Self-Publishing Services Reviewed & Rated by the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi, Alliance of Independent Authors) See also Choosing A Self-Publishing Service. The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) Guide. ALLi's Watchdog Desk maintains this extremely useful multi-page list of ratings. (Report your good and bad experiences to them.)

Steps you pay attention to:

Choosing a good printer

Getting an ISBN number from Bowker

Getting copyright forms and registering with the Library of Congress (and getting the Cataloging in Publication form from the Library of Congress early so you list the right CIP data on the copyright page if you want your book in libraries)

Getting a bar code for the cover (for scanning price, etc., in bookstores)

Making sure all the right pages are in the right (standard) place and order (copyright page, preface, etc.)

Arranging for and supervising  the book's cover design (an important investment--don't do an amateur cover)

Arranging for endorsements and testimonials (blurbs) to go on the cover or inside first page

Developing and following a marketing plan

Arranging for publicity (free coverage as opposed to paid-for advertisements and commercials)

Arranging for radio and TV appearances, book signings and other public appearances

Making sure you're listed in all the right online places, and so on.
    

Marketing a book can take almost as much effort as writing it. You're not done when the manuscript is completed! But this is also true when you are published by a regular publisher; you can't expect them to do much for you, and whether they want to publish you will depend partly on how good they think you are at marketing yourself.

This is a world full of new opportunities, new problems, and lots of effort, so do your homework, see the big, long-range picture, pay attention to rights, do the work, and don't expect miracles.

 

Links to practical explanations on this site:

Scroll all the way down--some of the best bits are toward the middle or end.

 

• Printing is not publishing. Publishers don't own printing presses.

• Self-publishing 101: Basics of self-publishing

• Self-publishing and print-on-demand services
• Publishing scams, bad deals, vanity/subsidy publishing and presses, and author mills
• Secrets of success for indie authors
• Self-publishing (a basic booklist)
• Blogs about self-publishing

• Key submissions and self-publishing services

• Pros and cons of self-publishing

• Self-publishing success stories

• Hall of Fame of self-published authors

• A few books that were self-published

• Hybrid publishing
• Hybrid authors
• Subsidy publishing

• Self-publishing and print-on-demand services

The differences between Ingram Spark, Lightning Source, Kindle/KDP, Draft2Digital, Apple Books, Lulu, etc.
     (knowing that CreateSpace and KDP merged, etc.)
• Printers and printing
• Kickstarting your indie publication

• The truth about print-on-demand (POD) publishing
• Ebooks and self-publishing (ins and outs, pros and cons)
• Self-publishing children's books

• Book design and production
• The essential parts of a book
• Standard order of parts of a book
• Acknowledgments page
• Copyright page--what it should contain

• The index

• Book printing and binding, explained and illustrated
• Why you should get your self-published book edited
• Editing, design, and production (overview of the process)
• Mastering InDesign (book design software)
• Books on how to design books
• Book formatting
• Footnotes and endnotes (InDesign)
• Fonts and typography--the basics

• Book distribution and fulfillment

     (Wholesalers and distributors)

• Firms that distribute self-published print and ebooks
• Getting reviews and promotion for self-published books
• Marketing and selling your self-published book
• Selling your book to bookstores, schools, and libraries How, when, and where to register copyright
• ISBNs, LCCNs, CIP, PCNs, BISAC, WorldCat, barcodes, and other product identifiers
• Copyright, work for hire, and other rights issues

See also
   Secrets of successful book covers and titles
   Great covers sell books, but what makes for a great cover?
   The rising star of audio books
   For editors and publishing professionals
   Style, grammar, and word choice (for editors and copyeditors)
   Editing and revising fiction

 

Want to self-publish eBooks? To read up on digital publishing (eBooks and the like), see sections on
eBook publishing
Publishing and ePublishing, 
eBook Basics and Beyond,
Ebook devices and platforms
E-book rights, developments, conflicts, pricing, and struggles for market.
Ebook formatting vendors

"Quality is more important than quantity.One home run is much better than two doubles." ~ Steve Jobs

---

 

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• How Much Could I Make as a Writer? (Mary Adkins, blog and video) The nice thing "about an advance, is that if your book doesn’t sell as well as hoped and therefore your royalties don’t cover your advance, you still get to keep it. The advance is yours no matter what happens. Since many books don’t make a profit, especially for first time authors, this is a very good thing for you as the writer.

    "But while many authors make money beyond their advances when their book sells, in the data I’m sharing here, I'm just talking about advances so that we can reliably estimate guaranteed income. First, what does it mean to “sell” a book, and what’s an advance? How much can you make altogether by writing a book? How much will I make per book sold? Full of practical information on numbers, chiefly from a novelist's viewpoint.
---HOW MUCH can you expect to MAKE ON YOUR BOOK? Mary Adkins' free on-demand workshop with new data on fiction book advances broken down by genre. "After gathering data from hundreds of published authors anonymously self-reporting their earnings, I will share a breakdown of book advances 2016-2022, along with takeaways, insights, and publishing tips."

[I have not reviewed the workshop. Let me know what you think.]

• How much to charge for various functions and for various types of product (Pat McNees, in one of many sections of my Writers and Editor sites that contains lots of links to useful information)

    What can a writer or editor expect? Proofreader? Designer? Ghostwriter? Copywriter? Resume writer? Video producer? Some of the sites and articles linked to report ranges of fees reported in various genres, at various levels of expertise or complexity; some are articles on how to set rates. Some freelancers distinguish between a business model ("This is how much I charge") and a contractor model ("This is how much I pay").

• Common pay rates and ranges for writers and editors (Writers and Editors) "Cost. Quality. Speed. Pick any two."

• AB5 and Related Problems in the Gig Economy (Writers and Editors) AB5, the PRO Act, the ABC test, and other threats to freelancers' and independent contractors' livelihood. Under California's AB5, anyone providing labor or services for pay is considered an employee unless they pass all three components of the "ABC" test (explained).
As one writer explains, "This national rule is an attempt to impose on the entire country the horrific AB (Assembly Bill) 5 passed in a California a few years ago, written by a labor leader named Lorena Gonzalez. It has resulted in tens of thousands of independent contractors losing their work, from artists and musicians to many seniors who supplemented their Social Security with side gigs such as playing Santa Claus." Read up on this if you don't already know about it.

• Kill fees (Writers and Editors) For writing articles: Your contract "should include a kill-fee clause with a minimum of a 25 percent payment of the fee if the article is deemed unacceptable."

• How (and how much) do ghostwriters charge (Writers and Editors page) See also Credits--who gets them? If shared, who gets top billing, with what wording? (Writers and Editors)
• Landing the book deal (Writers and Editors) What draws an agent or editor to a book or leads them to reject it.
• How to make money as a freelance writer or editor (Writers and Editors) The good, the bad, and the truthful

This replaces an early version of this post that appeared in June 2018. 

Updated 5-15-24.

 

The Basics about AI
• What is AI? Everything you need to know about Artificial Intelligence (Nick Heath, ZDNet, 2-2-18) An executive guide to artificial intelligence, from machine learning and general AI to neural networks.

• What is an Internet bot? (Wikipedia) An Internet bot, web robot, robot or simply bot, is a software application that runs automated tasks over the Internet, usually with the intent to imitate human activity on the Internet, such as messaging, on a large scale.
• What is a bot: types and functions (Digital Guide IONOS UK, 11-16-21) What is a bot, what functions can it perform, and what does its structure consist of? Learn about Rule-based bots and self-learning bots, the different types of good bots, the different types of malware bots, and how they work. What types of attacks can botnets perform?
• ChatGPT (AI) This chatbot launched by OpenAI in November 2022 is being used to write novels, among other things. It has a problem with factual accuracy. See also section on this website on ChatGPT (AI)

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Writers/journalists/creators and artificial intelligence and issues like copyright protection, plagiarism, flaws and inaccuracies, and how frank creators must be about using AI
• FAQs on the Authors Guild’s Positions and Advocacy Around Generative AI
• A crash course for journalists on AI and machine learning (Video, 51 min., International Journalism Festival, 4-7-22)
• Denied by AI: How Medicare Advantage plans use algorithms to cut off care for seniors in need (Casey Ross and Bob Herman, Stat Investigation, 3-13-23, a Pulitzer finalist for a series, For exposing how UnitedHealth Group, the nation's largest health insurer, used an unregulated algorithm to override clinicians' judgments and deny care, highlighting the dangers of AI use in medicine. Read the full series.
• CNET Is Quietly Publishing Entire Articles Generated By AI (Frank Landymore, The Byte, 1-15-23) "This article was generated using automation technology," reads a dropdown description.The articles are published under the unassuming appellation of "CNET Money Staff," and encompass topics like "Should You Break an Early CD for a Better Rate?" or "What is Zelle and How Does It Work?" That byline obviously does not paint the full picture, and so your average reader visiting the site likely would have no idea that what they're reading is AI-generated.

     (H/T to Jon Christian for links to this and next four pieces)
• Google Is Using A.I. to Answer Your Health Questions. Should You Trust It? (Talya Minsberg, NY Times, 5-31-24) Experts say the new feature may offer dubious advice in response to personal health queries.
• CNET's Article-Writing AI Is Already Publishing Very Dumb Errors (Jon Christian, The Byte, Futurism,1-29-23) CNET is now letting an AI write articles for its site. The problem? It's kind of a moron.
• Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers ( Maggie Harrison Dupré, Futurism, 11-27-23) We asked them about it — and they deleted everything.
• CNET's AI Journalist Appears to Have Committed Extensive Plagiarism (Jon Christian, The Byte, Futurism 1-23-23) CNET's AI-written articles aren't just riddled with errors. They also appear to be substantially plagiarized.
• BuzzFeed Is Quietly Publishing Whole AI-Generated Articles, Not Just Quizzes (Noor Al-Sibai and Jon Christian, Futurism, 3-30-23) These read like a proof of concept for replacing human writers--lots of repetition of pet phrases.

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• The AI is eating itself (Casey Newton, Platformer, 6-27-23) Boy, is this post packed with info and insights. The third paragraph alone kept me online for an extra half-hour, following links to more good reading.
• The AI takeover of Google Search starts now (David Pierce, The Verge, 5-10-23) Google is moving slowly and carefully to make AI happen. Maybe too slowly and too carefully for some people. But if you opt in, a whole new search experience awaits.
• Google Rolls Back A.I. Search Feature After Flubs and Flaws (Nico Grant, NY Times, 6-1-24) Google appears to have turned off its new A.I. Overviews for a number of searches as it works to minimize errors.
• AI is killing the old web, and the new web struggles to be born (James Vincent, The Verge, 6-26-23) Generative AI models are changing the economy of the web, making it cheaper to generate lower-quality content. We’re just beginning to see the effects of these changes.
• New Tool Could Poison DALL-E and Other AI to Help Artists (Josh Hendrickson, PC Mag, 10-27-23) Researchers from the University of Chicago introduce a new tool, dubbed Nightshade, that can 'poison' AI and ruin its data set, leading it to generate inaccurate results.
---This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI (Melissa Heikkilä, MIT Technology Review, 10-23-23) The tool, called Nightshade, messes up training data in ways that could cause serious damage to image-generating AI models.
• Godfathers of AI Have a New Warning: Get a Handle on the Tech Before It's Too Late (Joe Hindy, PC Mag, 10-24-23) Two dozen experts warn that 'AI systems could rapidly come to outperform humans in an increasing number of tasks [and] pose a range of societal-scale risks.'

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• How AP Investigated the Global Impacts of AI (Garance Burke, Pulitzer Center, 6-21-23) "When my editor Ron Nixon and I realized that too few journalists had gotten trained on how these complex statistical models work, we devised internal workshops to build capacity in AI accountability reporting....No surprise, FOIA and its equivalents are an imperfect tool and rarely yield raw code. Little transparency about the use of AI tools by government agencies can mean public knowledge is severely restricted, even if records are disclosed.Viewing predictive and surveillance tools in isolation doesn’t capture their full global influence.The purchase and implementation of such technologies isn’t necessarily centralized. Individual state and local agencies may use a surveillance or predictive tool on a free trial basis and never sign a contract. And even if federal agencies license a tool intending to implement it nationwide, that isn’t always rolled out the same way in each jurisdiction."
• AI is being used to generate whole spam sites (James Vincent, The Verge, 5-2-23) A report identified 49 sites that use AI tools like ChatGPT to generate cheap and unreliable content. Experts warn the low costs of producing such text incentivizes the creation of these sites.
• The semiautomated social network is coming (James Vincent, The Verge, 3-10-23) LinkedIn announced last week it’s using AI to help write posts for users to chat about. Snap has created its own chatbot, and Meta is working on AI ‘personas.’ It seems future social networks will be increasingly augmented by AI.

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• AI Art for Authors: Which Program to Use (Jason Hamilton, Kindlepreneur, 12-9-22) There are dozens of AI art tools out there, many with unique specialties. But most would agree that three stand up above the rest:
    Midjourney
    Dall-E 2
    Stable Diffusion.

Hamilton discusses how to access them, what they cost, how they can be useful, and why he recommends them (or not, and what for, illustrated), with a final section on AI art's copyright problems: Are they copying exist art on the collage principle (a little here, a little there), or are they facing legal and copyright problems?
• Artificial Labor (Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At, 5-12-23) With the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, "we are entering a historical battle between actual labor – those who create value in organizations and the world itself – and the petty executive titans that believe that there are no true value creators in society, only “ideas people” and those interchangeable units who carry out their whims...The television and film industries are controlled by exceedingly rich executives that view entertainment as something that can (and should) be commoditized and traded, rather than fostered and created by human beings. While dialogue eventually has to be performed by a human being, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers clearly views writing (and writers) as more of a fuel that can be used to create products rather than something unique or special....entertainment’s elites very clearly want to be able to use artificial intelligence to write content."

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• The Fanfic Sex Trope That Caught a Plundering AI Red-Handed (Rose Eveleth, Wired, 5-15-23) Sudowrite, a tool that uses OpenAI’s GPT-3, was found to have understood a sexual act known only to a specific online community of Omegaverse writers. The data set that was used to train most (all?) text-generative AI includes sex acts found only in the raunchiest of fanfiction. "What if your work exists in a kind of in-between space—not work that you make a living doing, but still something you spent hours crafting, in a community that you care deeply about? And what if, within that community, there was a specific sex trope that would inadvertently unmask how models like ChatGPT scrape the web—and how that scraping impacts the writers who created it. (H/T Nate Hoffelder, Morning Coffee)
• AI art tools Stable Diffusion and Midjourney targeted with copyright lawsuit (James Vincent, The Verge, 1-16-23) The suit claims generative AI art tools violate copyright law by scraping artists’ work from the web without their consent. Butterick and Saveri are currently suing Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI in a similar case involving the AI programming model CoPilot, which is trained on lines of code collected from the web.
• The lawsuit that could rewrite the rules of AI copyright (James Vincent, The Verge, 11-8-22) Microsoft, its subsidiary GitHub, and its business partner OpenAI have been targeted in a proposed class action lawsuit alleging that the companies’ creation of AI-powered coding assistant GitHub Copilot relies on ---“software piracy on an unprecedented scale.”

---"Someone comes along and says, 'Let's socialize the costs and privatize the profits.'"

---“This is the first class-action case in the US chal­leng­ing the train­ing and out­put of AI sys­tems. It will not be the last.”
• The scary truth about AI copyright is nobody knows what will happen next (James Vincent, The Verge, 11-15-22) The last year has seen a boom in AI models that create art, music, and code by learning from others’ work. But as these tools become more prominent, unanswered legal questions could shape the future of the field.
`
• Wendy’s to test AI chatbot that takes your drive-thru order (St. Louis-Post Dispatch) (Erum Salam, The Guardian, 5-10-23) 'The Guardian' reports that Wendy's is ready to roll out an artificial-intelligence-powered chatbot capable of taking customers' orders. Pilot program ‘seeks to take the complexity [the humans] out of the ordering process’
• In a Reminder of AI's Limits, ChatGPT Fails Gastro Exam (Michael DePeau-Wilson, MedPage Today, 5-22-23) Both versions of the AI model failed to achieve the 70% accuracy threshold to pass.
• Some companies are already replacing workers with ChatGPT, despite warnings it shouldn’t be relied on for ‘anything important’ (Trey Williams, Fortune, 2-25-23)
• ‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead (NY Times, 5-1-23) For half a century, Geoffrey Hinton nurtured the technology at the heart of chatbots like ChatGPT. Now he worries it will cause serious harm.
• Teaching A.I. Systems to Behave Themselves (Cade Metz, NY Times, 8-13-17)

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On the plus or minus side:
• Smarter health: How AI is transforming health care (Dorey Scheimer, Meghna Chakrabarti, and Tim Skoog, On Point, first piece in a Smarter Health series, WBUR radio, 5-27-22, with transcript) Guests Dr. Ziad Obermeyer (associate professor of health policy and management at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. Emergency medicine physician) and Richard Sharp (director of the biomedical ethics research program at the Mayo Clinic, @MayoClinic) explore the potential of AI in health care — from predicting patient risk, to diagnostics, to just helping physicians make better decisions.
• Artificial Intelligence Is Primed to Disrupt Health Care Industry (Ben Hernandez, ETF Trends, 7-12-15) Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the prime technologies leading the wave of disruption that is going on within the health care sector. Recent studies have shown that AI technology can outperform doctors when it comes to cancer screenings and disease diagnoses. In particular, this could mean specialists such as radiologists and pathologists could be replaced by AI technology. Whether society is ready for it or not, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, or any other type of disruptive technology will be the next wave of innovation.
• How will large language models (LLMs) change the world? (Dynomight Internet Newsletter, The Browser, 12-8-22) Think about historical analogies for 'large language models': the ice trade and freezers; chess humans and chess AIs; farmers and tractors; horses and railroads; swords and guns; swordfighting and fencing; artisanal goods and mass production; site-built homes and pre-manufactured homes; painting and photography; feet and Segways; gull-wing and scissor doors; sex and pornography; human calculators and electronic calculators.

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• Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind by Susan Schneider. Can robots really be conscious? Is the mind just a program? "Schneider offers sophisticated insights on what is perhaps the number one long-term challenge confronting humanity."―Martin Rees
• Top 9 ethical issues in artificial intelligence (Julia Bossmann, World Economic Forum, 10-21-16) In brief: unemployment, income inequality, humanity, artificial stupidity (mistakes), racist robots (AI bias), security (safety from adversaries), evil genies (unintended consequences), singularity, robot rights. She makes interesting points!
• AI in the workplace: Everything you need to know (Nick Heath, ZDNet, 6-29-18) How artificial intelligence will change the world of work, for better and for worse. Bots and virtual assistants, IoT and analytics, and so on.
• What is the IoT? Everything you need to know about the Internet of Things right now (Steve Ranger, ZDNet, 1-19-18) The Internet of Things explained: What the IoT is, and where it's going next. "Pretty much any physical object can be transformed into an IoT device if it can be connected to the internet and controlled that way. A lightbulb that can be switched on using a smartphone app is an IoT device, as is a motion sensor or a smart thermostat in your office or a connected streetlight. An IoT device could be as fluffy as a child's toy or as serious as a driverless truck, or as complicated as a jet engine that's now filled with thousands of sensors collecting and transmitting data. At an even bigger scale, smart cities projects are filling entire regions with sensors to help us understand and control the environment."
• Beyond the Hype of Machine Learning (Free download, GovLoop ebook, 15-minute read) Read about machine learning's impact in the public sector, the 'how' and 'why' of artificial intelligence (AI), and how the Energy Department covers the spectrum of AI usage.

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• Can Artificial Intelligence Keep Your Home Secure? (Paul Sullivan, NY Times, 1-29-18) Security companies are hoping to harness the potential of A.I., promising better service at lower prices. But experts say there are risks.
• What will our society look like when Artificial Intelligence is everywhere? (Stephan Talty, Smithsonan, April 2018) Will robots become self-aware? Will they have rights? Will they be in charge? Here are five scenarios from our future dominated by AI.
• Amazon Is Latest Tech Giant to Face Staff Backlash Over Government Work (Jamie Condliffe, NY times, 6-22-18) Tech "firms have built artificial intelligence and cloud computing systems that governments find attractive. But as these companies take on lucrative contracts to furnish state and federal agencies with these technologies, they’re facing increasing pushback  Read More