A History of Cartography

Available online as PDFs.
https://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/HOC/index.html ;

The difficulty of sexual assault trials, redux

This is why I worry when people say "always believe accusers."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/09/13/a-dead-dog-helped-convict-a-man-of-child-sex-abuse-and-then-the-black-lab-was-found-alive/?utm_term=.ee881e2c5251

Short version: a woman testified her father has abused her since childhood and had secured her silence by threatening her pets. She vividly described how he shot one of them, a black lab named Lucy, in front of her to demonstrate the threat. Father consistently maintained his innocence. Jury convicted.

Except it turned out that Lucy was alive. The accuser subsequent refused to cooperate with the DA (or Project Innocence Oregon, which was appealing the case). The Da ultimately dropped the case, finding that there was reasonable doubt in light of the dog and other contradictions in the victim's testimony and the inability to address these contradictions without cooperation of the witness/accuser.

There is a difference between "always take accusations seriously" and "always believe accusers." We absolutely need to recognize the difficulty that victims of sexual abuse, assault or harassment have -- especially if the behavior happened in the past and the victim only now comes forward. But there is still an obligation to confirm that there is no contradictory or exonerating evidence.

I am old enough to remember the "recovered memory" prosecutions of the late 1980s and early 1990s. I have seen the pendulum swing back and forth. I have seen the suffering of victims ignored and denigrated and I have seen the innocent suffer from false accusations. The sad reality is that life is very complicated. We can make decisions that lean toward safeguarding one sort of harm or another. But we must live with the terrible uncertainty that even the most heinous accusation may be true -- with no physical evidence available to prove it - or false. Worse, the accuser can genuinely believe an accusation but still be wrong (that was one of the lessons of the recovered memory prosecutions and most of what we now believe based on our research on how memory works).

It is an uncomfortable reality.  

Link harvest: actually study of how to counter online harassment with actual data and stuff.

Granted it is much easier if you just come up with a solution and tell people they are awful for not agreeing with you. But data actually helps increase the adds of actually getting good policy.
https://medium.com/@susanbenesch/launching-today-new-collaborative-study-to-diminish-abuse-on-twitter-2b91837668cc?email=hfeld%40publicknowledge.org ;