Back in April 2023, I was in Brooklyn to attend a live taping of the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. It was great, someone corrected Nate Silver on the U.S. constitution and former FiveThirtyEight writer Clare Malone returned for a lot of great banter backed by data. The very next week, Disney…
I broadly support economic boycotts when companies do things we don't like, and participate in plenty of them myself. And I've seen enough people cancelling their subscriptions to The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times after their billionaires owners interferred at the papers. But in media specifically, cancelling your…
Avery Brundage is Today's Featured Article on the English Wikipedia, which notes that he "fought zealously" against boycotting the Games in Nazi Germany.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avery_BrundageThe "Legacy" section spells it out clearly, noting he's well known as an anti-Semite, racist and admirer of Hitler.So it's a good day for me to re-post the…
Uh very cool, today's LWN article quoted and linked my blog post about Kiwix and Russian Wikipedia! https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/902463/0735202cb9eda4e2/ https://blog.legoktm.com/2022/03/15/how-to-mirror-the-russian-wikipedia-with-debian-and-kiwix.html
"San José Spotlight is suing San Jose, Mayor Liccardo over private email use"Really great to see this, it's absurd how flagrantly SJ and Liccardo have been continuing to skirt California's public records law after losing in the CA Supreme Court a few years ago.https://sanjosespotlight.com/san-jose-spotlight-is-suing-san-jose-mayor-liccardo-over-private-email-use/
The DoJ report is in, #SJSU actively suppressed and ignored reports of sexual harassment/assault from athletes and then retaliated against employees who tried to raise them: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-reaches-16m-agreement-remedy-title-ix-violations-san-jos-state-universityThis has been going on for over a decade but really broke open after USA Today published their explosive story in April 2020: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2020/04/17/san-jose-state-reinvestigates-trainer-claims-sexual-misconduct/5138353002/The…
I wrote for The Signpost this month, "The people who built Wikipedia, technically", filled with stories of Wikipedia's earliest days and how it grew into what it is today.Featuring interviews with @brion, @eloquence and more!https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2021-01-31/Technology_report
Photo by Jesus Tellitud and Blue Nguyen The Trustees of the California State University on recommendation of the faculty of the College of Humanities and the Arts have conferred upon Kunal Mehta the degree of Bachelor of Science Journalism So this makes me a scientist now, right? I used to…
It feels like forever ago, but at the end of the Spring 2019 semester, I was chosen as the next executive editor of the Spartan Daily. I definitely felt a lot of pressure to keep up high quality newspaper that my predecessors put out three days a week. But at…
You're seeing the world through a web browser; what does it see about you? As part of my work on the Freedom of the Press Foundation's Digital Security Team, I updated our guide comparing the privacy and security features of popular browsers in 2020.https://freedom.press/training/-depth-guide-choosing-web-browser/
Each semester the Spartan Daily staff puts out a special issue that focuses on a specific topic or concept. It allows for an in-depth exploration of something that the San Jose State community is interested in. Previous topics have included race, gender and home. The special issue normally comes toward…
In 2016, I made the decision to go back to school and pursue a degree in journalism. I had briefly dabbled in it in middle school, but really had no idea what I was getting myself into. I started at De Anza College, as a member of the La Voz…
Privacy is a right - not an earned privileged. Read more about how the proposed EARN IT Act would threaten that right in my column in the latest Spartan Daily: https://issuu.com/spartandaily/docs/sd031220all (page 2)
The second installment of my Spartan Daily tech column, Binary Bombshells, is out! I discuss design flaws in Twitter that lead to harassment and how Mastodon addresses some of them: https://sjsunews.com/article/binary-bombshells-twitters-tools-help-online-harassers
After a pretty hectic last semester, I'm taking a much more backseat role on the Spartan Daily for hopefully my final semester at San Jose State. I'm going to be the new "Science & Tech Editor" - yes, I invented my own position. I am currently planning for a science…
