Cybertraps for Educators Digest

🔇 Above the Fold: The Steep Costs of Silence ~ 🪞 2. Teacher's Facebook Account Cloned ~ 🦠 3. Whipped Cream + Smartphones = Viral Video ~ 🔞 4. Texas Student Tries to Sell Explicit Deepfakes of Teacher ~ 👀 5. Look at What I Found! ~ 📢 PSA: Facebook Class Action Settlement

Frederick Lane ~ 19 April 2023

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Late last week, after working at Joe's Coffee on Waverly Place in Greenwich Village, I walked up Gay Street, a short arc of a lane that bends north to meet Christopher Street. Thanks to its pleasant proportions, old architecture, and the castle-like structure of One Christopher Street that juts into the sky above it, Gay Street has long been a popular spot for tourists and Instagrammers.

But the street these days is blocked by temporary construction walls and the pleasing smile-like façade of its white 19th-century homes now looks like it has lost a tooth. Peering through a cracked plastic window, I saw a gaping hole where 14 Gay Street used to stand. According to a delightfully detailed story in the New York Times, the old home fell victim to a ruinous combination of bad estate planning, poor city administration, capitalist greed, and contractor incompetence.

The infrastructure of American public education is under similar threat, so that's the most obvious metaphorical connection. But what struck me about this scene are the sturdy metal posts that are propping up 16 Gay Street, a contemporary of its demolished companion.