morningbuzz

Union Carbide Disaster, Riverfront Times, AI Fails, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, December 7, 2025

NEW RESOURCES

Times of India: 41 years On: Bhopal gas tragedy documented online by Sambhavna Trust. “The Sambhavna Trust Clinic that has been providing free medical care to the survivors of the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal for the last 29 years observed the 41st Anniversary of the disaster with the launching of a Digital Archive on the disaster.”

St. Louis Magazine: Moonlighting librarians save the RFT’s online archive from its post-porn purge. “A newly available digital archive that encompasses much of the recent history of the Riverfront Times went live yesterday. It is the brainchild of Joshua Lawrence and Jaclyn Crow, two St. Louisans with a passion for local history…. The database currently has about 2,000 articles from the paper’s last decade, all easily searchable, with no porn or pop-up ads.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: The 3 biggest AI fails of 2025 — Friend, imaginary summer reading lists, and so many hallucinations. “Generative AI could have written this introduction, but there’s a good chance it would have started hallucinating. Hallucination, which Google failed to mention in its AI-filled 2025 keynote, led to many, many AI fails in 2025. But it wasn’t the only factor. Below, please enjoy our picks for the biggest AI fails from this past year.”

Engadget: India will no longer require smartphone makers to preinstall its state-run ‘cybersecurity’ app. “India will no longer require smartphone makers to preinstall the Sanchar Saathi “security” app. After blowback from Apple, Samsung and opposition leaders, the Modi government issued a statement saying it ‘has decided not to make the pre-installation mandatory for mobile manufacturers.’ The app is still available as a voluntary download.”

The Register: Microsoft mops up Mesh after another metaverse misfire. “As of December 1, mixed reality collaboration platform Microsoft Mesh is no more, and Redmond has directed customers to immersive events in Teams. The writing has been on the wall for Microsoft Mesh for some time. After a lengthy stint in preview, the service became generally available in 2024 as a 3D world where users could hold meetings and events.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

TechSpot: Amazon data center linked to rare cancers and miscarriages in Oregon, report warns. “The environmental damage caused by data centers could be having a greater impact on people’s health than we realized. According to a new report, several of Amazon’s facilities in Oregon have contributed to a rise in rare cancers, muscle disorders, and miscarriages among nearby residents.”

NC Newsline: AI vs. AI: Patients deploy bots to battle health insurers that deny care. “Several businesses and nonprofits have launched AI-powered tools to help patients get their insurance claims paid and navigate byzantine medical bills, creating a robotic tug-of-war over who gets care and who foots the bill for it.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: US lawmakers press Google, Apple to remove apps tracking immigration agents. “The House Committee on Homeland Security has asked Google and Apple to detail what steps they ​are taking to remove mobile applications that allow users to ‌track federal immigration officers.”

The Guardian: New York Times sues AI startup for ‘illegal’ copying of millions of articles. “The New York Times sued an embattled artificial intelligence startup on Friday, accusing the firm of illegally copying millions of articles. The newspaper alleged Perplexity AI had distributed and displayed journalists’ work without permission en masse.”

Mezha: Russian Forces Steal 23,000 Artifacts from Kherson Regional Museum. “According to the museum, during the city’s occupation by Russian troops, about 23,000 museum items were stolen from the Kherson Regional Museum…. The occupiers tore tablets from the displays, even stealing models of ancient settlements. Late Paleolithic and Neolithic artifacts, unique artifacts of the Early Metal Age, samples of the Trypillian culture, items belonging to the Cimmerians, and more were taken to the occupied Crimea.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

UC Irvine: UC Irvine-led study uses social media for real-time monitoring of heat experiences in state. “A study led by health communications experts at the University of California, Irvine has yielded a new way to monitor heat equity in real time, facilitating the design of heat warning systems and targeted mitigation efforts in California’s most vulnerable communities.”

Search Engine Land: New AI models are worse at SEO: Benchmark shows sharp accuracy drop in Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT-5.1. “We just ran our AI SEO benchmark across the newest flagship releases – Claude Opus 4.5, Gemini 3 Pro, and ChatGPT-5.1 Thinking – and the results are alarming. For the first time in the generative AI era, the newest models are significantly worse at SEO tasks than their predecessors.” Good morning, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Nobody reads my nonsense. Shall I tell you a thing or two? I need to buy new shoes because these have holes in them, but I’m waiting until after we move. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.