diff --git a/2021fa/www/handouts/a1.html b/2021fa/www/handouts/a1.html
index 1668f25..dbc3334 100644
--- a/2021fa/www/handouts/a1.html
+++ b/2021fa/www/handouts/a1.html
@@ -10,12 +10,19 @@
 
 <h1><font color="#c55f5c">CS/INFO 6742 2021 Assignment 1</font></h1>
 
-
-<h2> <font color="red">Deadlines below will be adjusted!</font></h2>
-
-<p> Updates will be posted to the
-<a href="https://edstem.org/us/courses/8208/discussion">course discussion site</a>.</p>
+<div class="announcement">
+<p><span class="keyword">Updates </span>
+These will also be posted to the
+<a href="https://edstem.org/us/courses/8208/discussion">course discussion site</a>.
+	<ul>
+		<li>Tue Aug 31: 
+			<ul>
+				<li>Some (more) material in the "Attacked from within" reading has been deleted (as indicated by cross-outs) for being skippable for the purposes of this class.</li> <li> Due dates updated as promised and tasks descriptions lightly updated.</li>
+			</ul>
+		</li>
+	</ul>
 </p>
+</div>
 
 <p><span class="keyword">Task</span>: Propose a research idea related to one
 of the readings below and execute a pilot empirical study using one of the
@@ -23,11 +30,11 @@ listed datasets. Most crucial to <span class="me"></span> is that (a) your idea
 is interesting, and (b) your pilot empirical study demonstrates that you can
 quickly  evaluate feasibility and estimate the chances of an interesting result. </p>
 
-<p>It is neither required nor expected that your proposal for this assignment
+<p>It is not expected that your proposal for this assignment
 will relate to your final course project.</p>
 
 <p>Please strive to post your proposal well in advance of the actual due date
- (a suggested goal: (to be updated) Tuesday Aug. 29, 11:59pm), for two reasons.
+ (a suggested goal: Mon Sep 6, 11:59pm), for two reasons.
  First, I (and, I hope, your classmates)
  need time to be able to post useful replies and feedback
 	&mdash; indeed, perhaps more than one round, time permitting &mdash;
@@ -45,8 +52,8 @@ will relate to your final course project.</p>
 
 <p class="keyword">The two required readings</p>
 <ol>
-	 <li><a href="attacked-extracts.html">Excerpts from anaesthetica's &ldquo;Attacked from within&rdquo;</a>,
-		    2009. </li>
+	 <li><a href="attacked-extracts.html">Excerpts from anaesthetica's &ldquo;Attacked from within&rdquo;</a>, 
+		    2009. <span class="keyword">Update Tue Aug 31</span>: I've deleted some more material as skippable, as indicated by strikeouts.</li>
   <li>Dirk Hovy and Diyi Yang, 2021.
 		    <a href="https://aclanthology.org/2021.naacl-main.49/" target="_blank">
 							<span class="papertitle">The Importance of Modeling Social Factors of Language: Theory and Practice
@@ -55,7 +62,8 @@ will relate to your final course project.</p>
 </li>
 </ol>
 <p>These readings were chosen because they are thought-provoking, accessible, short,
-and together represent a wide range of possibilities. </p>
+and together represent a wide range of possibilities. 
+I do not necessarily agree with any particular point made in these readings.</p>
 
 
 
@@ -70,10 +78,10 @@ and together represent a wide range of possibilities. </p>
 						in which this dataset was introduced, Chenhao Tan, Vlad Niculae, Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, and Lillian Lee, 2016,
 						<a href="https://chenhaot.com/papers/changemyview.html"><span class="papertitle">Winning arguments: Interaction dynamics and persuasion strategies in good-faith online discussions</span></a>,
 						<span class="proceedings">WWW</span>, pp. 613&ndash;624.</li>
-						<li> Miscellaneous notes: the reason I chose this dataset, rather than
+						<!-- <li> Miscellaneous notes: the reason I chose this dataset, rather than
               the dataset associated with the Zhang et al. reading, is that it has more types of information in it, and
               so might be conducive to a wider variety of exploratory projects.
-            </li>
+            </li> -->
     </ul>
   </li>
 
@@ -81,13 +89,13 @@ and together represent a wide range of possibilities. </p>
   <li><a href="http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs6742/2017fa/handouts/slashdot-subsection-bc3-blog-corpus.zip">Slashdot portion</a> of the British Columbia Conversation Corpora BC3-Blog Corpus
     <ul>
 					 <li><a href="slashdot-subsection-bc3-blog-corpus-readme.txt">README</a>, constructed
-						from the paper in which this dataset was introduced, viz., Nicholas FitzGerald, Giuseppe Carenini, Gabriel Murray, and Shafiq R. Joty, 2011,
+						from the paper in which this dataset was introduced: Nicholas FitzGerald, Giuseppe Carenini, Gabriel Murray, and Shafiq R. Joty, 2011,
 						Exploiting conversational features to detect high-quality blog comments,
 						<span class="proceedings">the Canadian Conference on AI</span>, pp. 122&ndash;127.
 						[<a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-21043-3_15">official link</a>] [<a href="http://www.nfitz.net/papers/pdf/CCAI11_FINAL.pdf">author-posted version</a>]
 						</li>
       <li>As stated in the README, some comments are missing. For example,
-						    compare the<a href="http://slashdot.org/story/09/05/25/212203/public-notices-going-online-not-in-newspapers">
+						    compare this <a href="http://slashdot.org/story/09/05/25/212203/public-notices-going-online-not-in-newspapers">
 										original slashdot tree</a>
 (http://slashdot.org/story/09/05/25/212203/public-notices-going-online-not-in-newspapers)
 										with the file slashdot_part_1/09_05_25_212203.instancedata.txt (notice the correspondence between file name and URL). This makes this dataset less than ideal in representing full conversations, but should be fine for our pilot-study purposes.
@@ -117,85 +125,60 @@ There are further notes on how to find/work as a group below.
 
 
 
-<p><span class="keyword">Due dates</span> <font color="red">Deadlines below will be adjusted!</font>
-All deadlines refer to <strong>5:00pm</strong> unless otherwise specified.
+<p><span class="keyword">Due dates</span>
 <ol>
 
-  <li> Wed Sep. 1:
-       <ol type="i">
-        <li>Sign in to <a href="https://edstem.org">https://edstem.org</a>
-             using your Cornell NetID and password.  Click on "Your Profile" and
-													choose a nickname (which can be your real name or your first name)
-													and, via the pull-down menu that says "Display Name
-             Publicly As", a display name.  (The "nickname" you entered will
-													be one of the options.)
-        </li>
-        <li> Send an email to llee@cs.cornell.edu with subject line "CS/IS 6742 account request"
-             containing all the following information.
-             <ol>
-              <li>Your Cornell NetID (example: LJL2)</li>
-              <li>Name you prefer to be referred to by in this class
-														    (example: I prefer to be called "Lillian". Some other
-																		"Lillian" prefer to be called "Lil",
-																		but not me.)</li>
-														<li>The display name you entered at the course discussion site</li>
-														<li>Your goals for taking this course</li>
-              <li>What background you have, including but not limited to how you
-														    satisfy the three prerequisites ((a) CS 2110 or equivalent
-																		programming experience; (b) a course in artificial intelligence or
-																		any relevant subfield (e.g., NLP, information retrieval,
-																		machine learning, Cornell CS courses numbered 47xx or 67xx);
-																		(c) proficiency with using machine learning tools (e.g., fluency
-																		at training an SVM, comfort with assessing a classifier&rsquo;s
-																		performance using cross-validation))
-														</li>
+  <li> Wed Sep 1, 11:59pm: <ol type="i"> <li>Sign in to <a
+  href="https://edstem.org">https://edstem.org</a> using your Cornell NetID
+  and password, and check/update your settings, such as your display name and notification preferences.  </li> 
+  <li> Send an email to
+  llee@cs.cornell.edu with subject line "CS/IS 6742 account request"
+  containing all the following information. <ol> <li>Your Cornell NetID
+  (example: LJL2)</li> <li>Name you prefer to be referred to
+  by in this class (example: I prefer to be called "Lillian". Some
+  other "Lillian" prefer to be called "Lil", but not
+  me <li>Your goals for taking this course</li> <li>What background
+  you have, including but not limited to how you satisfy the three
+  prerequisites ((a) CS 2110 or equivalent programming experience; (b) a
+  course in artificial intelligence or any relevant subfield (e.g., NLP,
+  information retrieval, machine learning, Cornell CS courses numbered 47xx
+  or 67xx);(c) proficiency with using machine learning tools (e.g., fluency
+  at training an SVM, comfort with assessing a classifier&rsquo;s performance
+  using cross-validation)) </li>
 
 
              </ol>
-													Once you send this email, you will be (manually) given access to
-													the course discussion site and, if not already in the system,  CMS.
+													Once you send this email, you will be (manually) given access to CMS.
 
         </li>
        </ol>
 
   </li>
 
-  <li> (to be updated)Friday Sept. 1, 2:30pm (Note the <b>earlier-than-5pm deadline</b>, and, as mentioned in the &quot;Task&quot; description above, <em></em>aim for an earlier date of (to be updated) Tuesday Aug. 29, 11:59pm)</em>: Post pilot-study idea(s) to
-		the <a href="https://edstem.org/us/courses/8208/discussion">course discussion site</a>.  (Look for the "+ New"
-		item in the admin bar across the very top of the page and select "Post".)
+  <li> Thu Sep 9, 11:59pm (as mentioned in the &quot;Task&quot; description above, <em></em>aim for an earlier date of Mon Sep 6, 11:59pm)</em>: Post pilot-study idea(s) to
+		the <a href="https://edstem.org/us/courses/8208/discussion">course discussion site</a>.  (Click the "New Thread"
+		button and select "Post" (not "Question" or "Announcement".)
 
 			<ul>
-				<li>Feel free to make scratch or rough-draft posts to get used to the
-				discussion-site interface!  But use the Edit&rarr;&ldquo;Move to Trash&quot; functionality
-				to get rid of scratch posts.</li>
 				<li>Each idea should be a separate post, to keep discussions organized.</li>
 				<li>Choose a title that summarizes your project idea (e.g., &ldquo;Identifying reviewers with nefarious schemes&rdquo; as opposed to &ldquo;Random ideas&rdquo;).</li>
-				<li>Length expectation: 3+ paragraphs. Be as detailed as possible while remaining sensible. In the ideal case, you'll already have peeked at the data to make sure your idea is going to be feasible.</li>
-				 <li>Add the category "A1" before publishing your post (the category selection
-					choices are on the right-hand sidebar, underneath the "Publish" button).</li>
+				<li>For category, select "A1".
+				<li>Length expectation: 3+ paragraphs. Be as detailed as possible while remaining sensible. In the ideal case, you'll already have peeked at the data to make sure your idea is going to be feasible.</li
 
 
 
-    <li>If persons A, B, and C have already decided to work together, then A should make the idea post, and B and C should <em>each</em> individually post a reply to A's post stating that they've agreed to work together. This way, <span class="i"></span> can tell who has finished this part of the assignment.</li>
-    <li> If, subsequently, D and E want to join forces with A, B and C because your proposals are similar, please arrange to do so among yourselves. The  deadline for CMS group formation is a bit later than the proposal submission deadline precisely to allow for this possibility.</li>
+		    <li>If persons A, B, and C have already decided to work together, then A should make the idea post, and B and C should <em>each</em> individually comment on A's post stating that they've agreed to work together. This way, <span class="i"></span> can tell who has finished this part of the assignment.</li>
+		    <li> If, subsequently, D and E want to join forces with A, B and C because your proposals are similar, please arrange to do so among yourselves, and repost a combined proposal to the course discussion site. The  deadline for CMS group formation is a bit later than the proposal submission deadline precisely to allow for this possibility.</li>
     </ul>
 		</p>
 		</li>
 
- <li>(to be updated)Monday Sept 4:  form groups on<a href="https://cmsx.cs.cornell.edu/"> MS</a>. CMS group formation requires invitations and acceptance of invitations via the system, i.e., action by two people per person added; please check the <a href="https://www.cs.cornell.edu/Projects/cms/userdoc/">official CMS documentation</a> or this <a href="https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2021sp/resources/cms.html">more graphically-oriented guide</a> for instructions. <span class="icap"></span> need the group information from CMS to schedule the group presentations.</li>
-
-  <li>(to be updated)Tuesday Sept. 5 in class:
-	   <ol type="i">
-					<li>Check back on <a href="https://edstem.org/us/courses/8208/discussion">course discussion site</a>
-					    for any comments on your proposal, and add, as replies, any suggestions
-									you have on other people's proposals.  Ideally, you will continually
-									monitor the site for updates to your or other people's proposals.</li>
-					<li>Be prepared to informally discuss how things are going. For example, any preliminary observations about the data? No formal presentation materials are required.
-					</li>
-				</ol>
+ <li>Fri Sep 10, 11:59pm:  form groups on <a href="https://cmsx.cs.cornell.edu/">CMS</a>. CMS group formation requires invitations and acceptance of invitations via the system, i.e., action by two people per person added; please check the <a href="https://www.cs.cornell.edu/Projects/cms/userdoc/">official CMS documentation</a> or this <a href="https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2021sp/resources/cms.html">more graphically-oriented guide</a> for instructions. <span class="icap"></span> need the group information from CMS to schedule the group presentations.</li>
+
+  <li>wed Sep 15, 11:59pm: As a comment to your (group's) pilot-study proposal on the <a href="https://edstem.org/us/courses/8208/discussion">course discussion site</a>, post an update. Being informal is expected, and including any problems you're encountering is most useful and welcome.  Lecture the next day will be group meetings with me to discuss the state of your explorations.
 		</li>
 
-  <li>(to be updated)Friday Sept. 8: Submit a project report on <a href="https://cmsx.csuglab.cornell.edu">CMS</a>. One group = one CMS submission: any
+  <li>Mon Sep 20, 11:59pm: Submit a project report on <a href="https://cmsx.csuglab.cornell.edu">CMS</a>. One group = one CMS submission: any
 		group member can upload a version, which will overwrite any previous versions
 		by any other members of the group.<br>
   Required information: (a) the overall research problem you proposed; (b) relation
@@ -207,7 +190,7 @@ All deadlines refer to <strong>5:00pm</strong> unless otherwise specified.
 		(g) If you collaborated a bit with people outside your group, acknowledge those
 		other people by name and explain their contribution in the writeup.</li>
 
-  <li>(to be updated)Tuesday Sept. 12, in class: Group presentations. You can bring handouts (often most effective for discussions, since people can refer to things out of order) or project slides off a laptop. If the latter, bring a spare copy of your presentation on a flash drive <em>and</em> email <span class="me"></span> a copy.</li>
+  <li>Tue Sep 21, in class: Group presentations. Don't worry about being particularly formal, but do be <i>precise</i> about your findings. You can bring handouts (often most effective for discussions, since people can refer to things out of order) or project slides off a laptop. If the latter, bring a spare copy of your presentation on a flash drive <em>and</em> email <span class="me"></span> a copy.</li>
 </ol>
 
 </html>