I use CW mainly as a label as I tend to use the maximum character limit.

Old man yelling at clouds. Clouds may need to mute me.

Tech Interests: [#SFF](https://mastodon.online/tags/SFF ), [#Technology](https://mastodon.online/tags/Technology ), [#Cosmology](https://mastodon.online/tags/Cosmology )
Language Interests: [#Typesetting](https://mastodon.online/tags/Typesetting ), [#Linguistics](https://mastodon.online/tags/Linguistics )
Other Interests: [#InvestigativeJournalism](https://mastodon.online/tags/InvestigativeJournalism ), [#Economics](https://mastodon.online/tags/Economics ), , [#AcademicPublishing](https://mastodon.online/tags/AcademicPublishing ) (dysfunctional)
Recommended Sites: Retraction Watch, Pluralistic, Scholars at Risk, Crosswalks Collective LA

Last Notes

A photo from the Doctorow/Merchant appearance at Skylight Books, LA.
(not my photo; published with permission).
@npub1fdr…lvhs
https://files.mastodon.online/media_attachments/files/116/783/619/178/694/862/original/fc9b23f2c6b75748.jpg

2026-02-03 19:34:47 UTC

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There's a Swanwick interview in the current Clarkesworld as well, not entirely coincidentally.

2025-12-12 23:39:38 UTC

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Friends don't let friends donate their labor to the profit margins of Elsevier or Windawi (aka Wiley), or, I would say, Springer; and I include the historically respected journals that those brands either acquired or currently manage.
Or, of course, the various bottom feeders.
I explain this to the editors as needed
I haven't come as far along as you, just part of the way.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/578897/universities-in-battle-of-the-century-with-journal-publisher-elsevier!
https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/publishing/mit-elsevier/
https://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-mass-resignations-list/

2025-12-06 19:06:36 UTC

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And they've already tweaked the algorithm to implement more aggressive driving, making any prior study irrelevant. And will do so again, in whatever way optimizes expected net revenue after court costs over the short horizon corresponding to the investment cycle. (Not that they have any way of actually making that calculation, but that's the paradigm that is followed.)
But anyway someone got himself published in the legacy media, nice for him. Nicer than a FIFA peace prize, I'd say.

2025-09-21 19:02:03 UTC

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I ran into Poe's law here, not that it really matters since there are really two audiences for this and one of them can just take it all as written.
Read as occasionally sarcastic, on the other hand, I have no issues with it.
The fourth bubble would be commercial real estate, where #2 provides a transient reprieve.
Ed Zitron has a number of straightforward pieces on the phenomenon, such as https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-a-money-trap/

2025-09-12 20:45:34 UTC

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One Die Lost

2025-08-11 03:44:35 UTC

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You're right about the misbreeding. it's called enshitzufication.

2025-07-25 16:47:32 UTC

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Nope.
Just another illustration of the original point.

2025-07-05 21:23:36 UTC

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What's the evidence that a significant part of that money is or will be committed?
This is one of those industries whose business plan is to lose money on each customer and make it up in volume.
I can't say I'm a close watcher but from time to time I come across things like this.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/core-incompetency/
One can dig some interesting numbers out of Ziton's latest rant (https://www.wheresyoured.at/make-fun-of-them/) but nothing global I believe.

2025-06-14 08:21:03 UTC

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https://prospect.org/politics/2025-06-13-alex-padilla-assault-senate-democrats-genius-act/

2025-06-08 02:37:25 UTC

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Compare 3 (2) at
https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/142-five-questions-about-domestic

2025-03-27 01:06:02 UTC

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My impression is that you can coordinatize the blue vertices by ordered pairs of the form
A=(a,{a+1,a+3}) and (a,{a-1,a-3}) with edge relation A connected to a, and A connected to the two other pairs of this form with two entries in common with A, for example
(0, {1,3}) joined to (1,{0,6}) and to (3,{2,0}), as well as to 0.

2025-02-25 00:59:49 UTC

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I'm always a sucker for a web search.
I had no idea ... but it's on p. 6
http://edouardlucas.free.fr/pdf/oeuvres/Jeux_2.pdf

2024-12-15 01:49:26 UTC

JK Galbraith writing in 1992:
"The fortunate and the favored, it is evident, do not contemplate and respond to their own longer-run well-being. Rather, they respond, and powerfully, to immediate comfort and contentment."

2024-12-08 18:38:35 UTC

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My question would be how the relationship with the Kurdish groups in Syria will evolve (and how the Turks will play their hand). Though I am perfectly willing to wait and see, as the major players themselves probably know very little about what is actually coming.

2024-11-11 22:39:47 UTC

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Some additional details under "Etymology"
at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer

2024-10-28 17:59:56 UTC

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I occasionally need to fill out an entry on a form asking whether I'm disabled and it leaves me somewhat at a loss to decide. (A bit like the final passage in Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, where he notices he has become old at some point, considerably earlier on.)
At the moment, anyone who remains concerned about covid (e.g., on the basis of age) is in *some* meaningful sense disabled, regardless of one's personal details.