A wistful piece of writing. We’re each wealthier than kings of the past but we remain a kind of peasantry in the thrall of distant plutocrats. Unmoored without a sense of place. Indentured to the precarity machine of credit and capitalism.

Vanishing World: On Europe’s Disappearing Peasantry


NaNoWriMo Organizers Said It Was Classist and Ableist to Condemn AI. All Hell Broke Loose

But last Friday, the 25-year-old nonprofit, known as NaNoWriMo for short, shocked many in the writing community when it published a controversial statement detailing its position on AI. In it, NaNoWriMo asserted that the “categorical condemnation” of artificial intelligence has “classist and ableist undertones.”

NaNoWriMo Organizers Said It Was Classist and Ableist to Condemn AI. All Hell Broke Loose - Wired, via @hrb@wandering.shop



Google Scholar is more busted than I thought. Pay for citations schemes exist and may be more widespread than we realise.

Google Scholar is manipulatable - arXiv


A fascinating long read about the origins of Gaia theory, the early influence of systems theory, and NASA and JPL’s sexist culture in the ’60s.

A cool flame: how Gaia theory was born out of a secret love affair


Shisha available


“the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled against the long-running digital archive, upholding an earlier ruling in Hachette v. Internet Archive that found that one of the Internet Archive’s book digitization projects violated copyright law.”

The Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case wired.com


Rosella outside the window

A tree without leaves. A small red and blue bird is visible (a Rosella). Blue skies in the background.

I tried to explain this t-shirt to my ten year old niece and she looked at me so pityingly, as if she thought i was suffering a major mental impairment.

White text saying "you wouldn't steal a succulent Chinese meal", which refers to both the Democracy Manifest meme and the copyright warning ad that used to be on DVDs and VHS tapes.


A glorious start to spring

Sydney harbour looking particularly blue, with clear blue skies. North Head is visible in the distance. There are two paddleboarders visible.



Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to go up in smoke - The Verge

“The lost Library of Alexandria could have fit onto the microSD card in my Nintendo Switch, and yet the cutting edge of technology is a handheld telephone that spews lies as a fun little bonus feature.”


Over the last five years the average open access article processing charge has gone up by 26% to AUD $4,945.

www.eldiario.es/sociedad/…

via @Andbaker@aus.social

#research #openaccess

A chart showing the average price of open access publishing charges to authors has gone up across six major academic publishers.


A sewage crisis in San Diego County reveals the unpolluted truth about the U.S.-Mexico border

Parts of NAFTA anticipated this dynamic; the agreement included a provision to set aside $100 million a year for environmental infrastructure along the border. As time went on, though, Congress lost its appetite for funding public health upgrades in Mexican cities. How about building a wall and making Mexico pay for it?

That’s the kind of solution that appeals to the American political psyche, but it suffers from a basic misunderstanding. You can draw the border as a line on a map, but you still have to deal with the world on the other side. A sewage crisis in Mexico can’t be solved with pipes in California any more than a migration crisis that spans the hemisphere can be solved with a wall across Texas and Arizona.

A sewage crisis in San Diego County reveals the unpolluted truth about the U.S.-Mexico border – The New Republic


Shisha No Thanks! Five Years of Progress

Slides from a presentation to the Unpacking Vaping Cessation Special Interest Group.

Slides (PDF 1.4 Mb)

More about the project at Shisha No Thanks and the Raising awareness of the harms of waterpipe smoking: Five years of progress report.

The post Shisha No Thanks! Five Years of Progress appeared first on Ben Harris-Roxas.


Walsh Bag wharf at dusk on Sydney Harbour. Blues Point Tower is visible in the distance.

zesty

A bottle of yellow liquid that bears the label "zesty limoncello". Zesty is now slang for flamboyantly, or dashingly, gay.