Censorship
Centre County (PA) Judge Thomas King Kistler ordered the Centre Daily Times and the Daily Collegian (Penn State’s student newspaper) to delete news stories about two defendants from their websites. The defendants’ lawyer “was concerned the media’s First Amendment rights to free speech were trumping his clients’ rights to have cleared records,” according to Genaro C. Armas writing for the Associated Press. The judge for the other three cases, Centre County Judge Bradley Lunsford reversed his original order to expunge the stories. Neither US federal nor Pennsylvania state law require newspapers to change archives that are factually correct. Sara Ganim, writing for the Centre Daily Times, reports that Kistler later met with fellow judges, district attorney, and the defense attorney and rescinded his expungement order.
ESRD
Apropos of nothing, but it fits as well here as any of the other categories. Jeremy Messersmith is one of the best under-the-radar songwriters to come down the pike in quite a while. He was on Minnesota Public Radio this week; here’s a video clip of him singing “Organ Donor.”
Internet
Last month Twitter reduced the number of API calls allowed for third-party applications from 350 to 175 per hour. This week Twitter third-party vendors reported that the the number of allowed API calls was reduced to 75 per hour. What that means is that Twitter is throttling its servers—if you follow a lot of people on twitter, or only a few really prolific ones—you can’t keep up with the stream. As Ryan Singel aptly writes for Wired, “... take this as another reason why communication services work better as open protocols—like email—not as proprietary platforms like Twitter and Facebook.”
Media
One of the stupidest newspaper headlines ever run is indicative of how truly far the Star Tribune has fallen: “15 homicides aside, serious crime drops on North Side.” To think that I can remember when the Star Tribune was one of the best papers in the US is simply stunning.
