morningbuzz

Belarus Banned Books, Claude Lanzmann’s Audio Archive, Public Domain Game Jam, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, December 13, 2025

NEW RESOURCES

Publishing Perspectives: Belarus: Where Independent Work is Branded Extremism. “On November 27, PEN Belarus and the Belarusian Association of Journalists hosted an event…where authors and journalists shared powerful testimonies about life and publishing under the authoritarian regime and introduced a new website dedicated to banned books in Belarus in order to give a platform to the writers who are being silenced.”

Free University Berlin: The Jewish Museum Berlin and Freie Universität Berlin Present Claude Lanzmann’s Audio Archive. “To mark one hundred years since the birth of Claude Lanzmann (1925–2018), the acclaimed French journalist, filmmaker, and chronicler of the Shoah, the Jewish Museum Berlin will be making Lanzmann’s audio archive accessible to the public for the first time. These recordings, made primarily during the 1970s, will be made available on Freie Universität Berlin’s Oral-History.Digital platform.”

EVENTS

Techdirt: Get Ready To Enter A New Decade With The Next Public Domain Game Jam: Gaming Like It’s 1930!. “The new year is approaching fast, and you know what that means: new material is entering the public domain in the US, and we’ll be celebrating it with the eighth installment of our public domain game jam. What’s more, this is an extra special year because the ever-growing public domain is hitting a new decade: it’s time for Gaming Like It’s 1930!”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Land: Google confirms it releases smaller, unannounced core updates. “Plus, a major Google core update is coming soon, which could bring significant ranking changes as it rolls out. Google added a new section to its core updates search developer documentation confirming it sometimes rolls out smaller, unannounced core updates. Google said this before, but now it’s stated explicitly in the official search documentation.”

Tubefilter: Netflix is leaning on YouTube to defend its Warner Bros. acquisition. “YouTube has quite suddenly become a key player in Netflix‘s plans to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. The streamer announced last week that it would get a Hollywood level-up by purchasing Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming assets in a deal valued at $82.7 billion (aka $27.75 per share). That deal came after a tense bidding war–and one of the losers isn’t going down without a fight.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

KY3: Drury University student creates database to connect Missouri playwrights with schools. “A Drury University student is developing the first database designed to connect local playwrights directly with Missouri schools, potentially making theatre more accessible across the state. Katie Mizell, a senior theatre administration major from Lebanon, created the Missouri Playwrights Educational Database to address barriers facing small theatre programs.”

Engadget: An AI copycat of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard went unnoticed on Spotify for weeks. “Despite making some moves to address the proliferation of AI-generated audio on its platform, Spotify failed to catch a copycat making imitations of music by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. The long-running experimental rock band from Australia, has been a vocal critic of Spotify and was one of several artists that took their music off the platform in the summer.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNN: Crypto mogul Do Kwon sentenced to 15 years in prison for $40 billion stablecoin fraud. “Onetime cryptocurrency mogul Do Kwon was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison after a $40 billion crash revealed his crypto ecosystem to be a fraud. Victims said the 34-year-old financial technology whiz weaponized their trust to convince them that the investment — secretly propped up by cash infusions — was safe.”

Al Jazeera: OpenAI sued for allegedly enabling murder-suicide . “The lawsuit, filed on Thursday, said that ChatGPT fuelled 56-year-old Stein-Erik Soelberg’s delusions of a vast conspiracy against him, and eventually led him to murder his 83-year-old mother, Suzanne Adams, in Connecticut in August.”

New York Times: App That Tracks ICE Raids Sues U.S., Saying Officials Pressured Apple to Remove It. This link goes to a gift article. “For six months, Apple distributed an app called ICEBlock that allowed users to alert people when they saw Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. But after the Trump administration complained that the app endangered officers, Apple removed it. On Monday, the app developer, Joshua Aaron, sued top Trump administration officials, accusing them of pressuring Apple to stifle his free speech and his right to create, distribute and promote ICEBlock.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

IndiJ Public Media: New industry standard calls for better record-keeping to protect Indigenous data. “A new standard developed in partnership with Indigenous data sovereignty experts at the University of Arizona, New York University, Harvard University and multiple international universities outlines how scientists and technology professionals should record the origin and history of use for data about and relating to Indigenous people.”

Harvard Gazette: What’s working, not on front lines of AI in classroom. “To share the innovative ways in which they’re bringing AI into the classroom, Harvard’s Graduate School of Education brought together an education researcher, a tech entrepreneur, and a school superintendent to discuss what’s working, what’s not, and what we still don’t know about utilizing AI’s capabilities.” Good morning, Internet…

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