@thestrainingstudent I'm afraid I can't provide much advice on using multimedia in QualCoder as I've only messed with text, but it is by far the most full-featured and usable free qualitative analysis software I've found (and the only one I'd realistically replace something like NVivo or atlas.ti with).

Must-read report from NPR, showing once again that DOGE is a massive threat to the cyber/national security of the United States:

"In the first days of March, a team of advisers from President Trump's new Department of Government Efficiency initiative arrived at the Southeast Washington, D.C., headquarters of the National Labor Relations Board.

The small, independent federal agency investigates and adjudicates complaints about unfair labor practices. It stores reams of potentially sensitive data, from confidential information about employees who want to form unions to proprietary business information.

The DOGE employees, who are effectively led by White House adviser and billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk, appeared to have their sights set on accessing the NLRB's internal systems. They've said their unit's overall mission is to review agency data for compliance with the new administration's policies and to cut costs and maximize efficiency."

"But according to an official whistleblower disclosure shared with Congress and other federal overseers that was obtained by NPR, subsequent interviews with the whistleblower and records of internal communications, technical staff members were alarmed about what DOGE engineers did when they were granted access, particularly when those staffers noticed a spike in data leaving the agency. It's possible that the data included sensitive information on unions, ongoing legal cases and corporate secrets — data that four labor law experts tell NPR should almost never leave the NLRB and that has nothing to do with making the government more efficient or cutting spending."

"Meanwhile, according to the disclosure and records of internal communications, members of the DOGE team asked that their activities not be logged on the system and then appeared to try to cover their tracks behind them, turning off monitoring tools and manually deleting records of their access — evasive behavior that several cybersecurity experts interviewed by NPR compared to what criminal or state-sponsored hackers might do."

"The employees grew concerned that the NLRB's confidential data could be exposed, particularly after they started detecting suspicious log-in attempts from an IP address in Russia, according to the disclosure. Eventually, the disclosure continued, the IT department launched a formal review of what it deemed a serious, ongoing security breach or potentially illegal removal of personally identifiable information. The whistleblower believes that the suspicious activity warrants further investigation by agencies with more resources, like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or the FBI."

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355896/doge-nlrb-elon-musk-spacex-security

A top scientist at Harvard received a stop-work order from the federal government telling her to halt a multicenter tuberculosis study. She anticipates layoffs of scientists and likely deaths of macaques bc researchers are no longer allowed to use federal funds to feed & care for them.

“Anybody who has animal studies ongoing…is looking at killing the animals” if funding is cut, Fortune said.
https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/15/harvard-tb-study-halted-sarah-fortune-trump-administration/
#press #Science

#QualCoder #open #qualitative #research #curriculum is now available in beta at https://ndporter.github.io/open-qualitative-research-qualcoder/. If you use it, or have suggestions to improve, please mesage me here or open an issue on GitHub.#cc-by

For Transgender Day of Visibility, I want to highlight some quiet work that is quite literally making Transgender people visible - clothing closets (e.g. clothing banks) for #nonbinary and #transgender folk. I know about this one because eldest offspring (they/them) volunteers quite a bit of time working with Out of the Closet at #RoanokeCollege to clean and organize the donations. Find your #mutualaid. https://www.roanoke.edu/news/out_of_the_closet #tdov

"Exclusive: NIH to cut grants for COVID research, documents reveal"

“"Now that the pandemic is over...'"
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00954-y
#COVID #COVID19 #NIH #dystopia #USpol #USpolitics #ElectionsHaveConsequences #ElectionConsequences #pandemic

New post from @thecarpentries https://carpentries.org/blog/2025/03/the-carpentries-reinforced-commitment-to-inclusion-diversity-equity-and-accessibility/ - this community and its leadership have a lot to be proud of.

Code coworking can be effective in as little as 15 minutes! As maintainer community lead for @thecarpentries I host monthly maintainer meetings with updates and discussion. Instead of a special topic for discussion this month, we had people find a small issue or PR in the #github repo for their lessons and try to finish it off. In <20 minutes we finished off multiple issues, created a PR, performed review and left comments on other issues/PRs.

PSA to anyone in Quebec! If you're between 21-45 and never got your HPV vaccine as a kid, you can get it for free for a limited time. Check out the banner at the top of the Clic Santé home page.

"Premium chatbots provided more confidently incorrect answers than their free counterparts."

My favorite finding from the Columbia Review of Journalism study on AI Chatbots as a source for news.

https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/we-compared-eight-ai-search-engines-theyre-all-bad-at-citing-news.php

Others looking at future directions in teaching research software may be interested in this blog post that covers both the decisions and the process of updating lesson software recommendations with @thecarpentries #rstats #python #bash #git

Is anyone doing (or has done) crowdwork data preservation events at universities to ensure vulnerable government data is preserved and available? Considering putting something together for education data but would love to see some models.

#JobOpportunity at #VirginiaTech University #libraries. Join our growing #EvidenceSynthesis team as Evidence Synthesis Information Scientist. First review April 1. https://careers.pageuppeople.com/968/cw/en-us/job/532611/evidence-synthesis-information-scientist

If you need some copium to get through the morning:

❞
A key finding is that 52% of all autocratization episodes become U-Turns, which increases to 73% when focusing on the last 30 years. The vast majority of U-Turns (90%) lead to restored or even improved levels of democracy. The data on U-Turn episodes opens up new avenues for research on autocratization and democratization that were previously treated as isolated processes, particularly it could help us understand why some processes of autocratization trigger a successful pro-democratic backlash
❝

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2024.2448742#abstract

Heads up for #qualitativeresearch folks: version 3.6 of the free #foss #qda tool QualCoder has both Mac and Windows installers, significantly reducing the barriers for new users (https://github.com/ccbogel/QualCoder/releases/). I'm teaching a free online workshop through #virginiatech libraries this Wednesday if you want to know more. https://calendar.lib.vt.edu/event/14147682

@DrSuzanne just gonna headcanon this as the X-Men but leaning into Professor X as world-shatteringly effective school administrator, rather than leader of mutant vigilante group.

If you accuse agencies of massive fraud and waste, but your first move is not to provide evidence of waste or fraud but to remove public access to agency #data and especially any sources (like #DEIA related webpages) that might provide such evidence, you're probably not the hero of the movie. #usaid #doge #nces #doe

More moves to chip away at Federal #data, this time by crippling the National Center for Education Statistics, whose data are critical to improving #k12 and #highereducation (and which I have frequently used or supported). #AERA #NCES https://www.aera.net/Newsroom/AERA-and-COPAFS-Statement-on-the-New-Administrations-Sudden-Termination-of-National-Center-for-Education-Statistics-Contracts?fbclid=IwY2xjawIYRclleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHdccmv18R3MldniWpeYNCPunBlAYT5649kCtLX0MfYnqLNXg5wBbXGmu9g_aem_YhdKYPaXoZvcDdgP0uETZw

For no particular reason, I thought I might remind you all that there is a repository (part of ICPSR) specifically dedicated since 2017 to citizens archiving and preserving government data of the sort that might be downloadable or accessible on government websites... until it isn't.

AFAIK Data Lumos has become a bit of an orphaned project (no obvious links from main ICPSR page, etc). Hopefully, there's no reason to worry if it doesn't get adopted soon. https://www.datalumos.org/

Looking for some nuance on whether and how to teach LLMs when you teach computing/coding/data science? https://carpentries.org/blog/2025/01/teaching-llms-report/