Sorry there bud, but in the simplest terms I can muster: You reap what you sow.

Alrgiht. Since its ride until this thing dies…is there an alternative OS for me humble Samsung S21 Ultra? I understand Graphene doesn’t work with it. I just need to call, 2FA support, Podcasts, Firefox, Maps, and use Signal. That’s it. And I can do without maps.

I’m hesitant to jump in here, seeing how far off the rails this went, but AI Data Centers have a plethora of problems. Potable water depletion (The Dalles, OR, USA), Exhaust (Boxtown near Memphis, TN, USA), Noise and lowering water tables (Sydney, Australia). The issues they present over “old school” data centers are amplified because of the speed they arise in communities, resources they use, and power (as in influence) disparities that are part of the package.

They are being built rapidly, with little oversight or research, and suck up enormous resources that “old school” data centers did not. Toss in the ethical concerns as wide ranging as stealing art styles to destroying books; to be normative, that tends to piss people off.

To get us back on rails, all of that contributes to me using theater of the mind rather than Gemini to draw me a portrait for goblin Yipyip in my campaigns.

I remain cautiously optimistic. The corporate PR stunt aside, the technology will continue to improve. Indeed, it must continue to improve to meaningfully dent the emissions of a dirty but necessary industry. We are years, perhaps decades, away from replacing regional and short haul flights with this though.

I have. Usually I am a voice of 1 and they ignore it. I have a new member meeting at the Writer’s Society next month and plan to bring it up there.

Yeah, that’s sad. I don’t let AI touch my RPG sessions. As a DM, the imperfections and winging it are part of the fun.

This is conjecture. Now I want to find out and see if one if these is right; but first let me guess. There are a few possibilities and I’ll, again, challenge myself to find the answer:

1. They competed for an award Google sponsored or held a competition for. Like an X Prize.
2. A board member was related to someone high up in Google (as in colleague, college room mate etc) or worked there previously.
3. Google wanted to fund something for PR reasons.

Here’s a resource for deeper diving. I apologize but I don’t have time to devout. But if its of interest to anyone:

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/300100369

Also, by law, a 501©3 must respond to and furnish copies of their 990s to anyone who requests. Those are, simply put, their financial statements for the fiscal year.

I enjoyed the read. I appreciate the work being done by the Professor and their team. We need more of this. Not to show to policy makers who don’t give a damn, but to help highlight who policy makers govern for. Its not us.

People want nice walks. Safe bike lanes. Trees and flowers and shops and parking. We want all of that integrated into a city that let’s people move, shop, eat, commute in any manner that works for them.

We also know some policy makers don’t give a shit. Let’s look at Doug Ford of Onatario.

Doug Ford is great at governing and a great policy maker. He just doesn’t govern or make policy for people. He governs for auto companies, contractors, and the petro industry. Doug doesn’t give a shit about your commute, your walk, your experience with access to food and entertainment. Doug cares about putting butts in cars and cars on roads. He’s very good at getting that done.

Furthermore, some city departments either can’t plan effectively or won’t plan well for a variety of reasons. Lack of funding. Path depdency. Just really bad outcomes from well intentioned ideas; like bike lanes but only for new development that create a nightmare of road conditions.

We need better urban planning policy. We need it now. People want to enjoy their walks and neighborhoods. We know that and we know why. We can not get these wants and turn them into reality for the reasons I’ve stated; and I’m sure I’m missing a few.

Is there a way around this? Local events near me only post there. Drives me insane and I refuse to get a Facebook account just so I know where the writers group wants to grab coffee.

An archive work around, some crawler, anything I’m not aware of?

Slate would be perfect for my current needs. Less than 25km a day, trips to buy wood for my shitty woodworking, etc. Stuff too big or too far to use my bike for safely. Its slated (sorry…) for 2027. It’s not my time.

So here in the land of geese and syrup we’ve got giant American earth destroyers or the tiny Japanese utility trucks. In between would be awesome. The Chinese EV’s with some Pickups are coming and, although the monitoring and data capture bothers me, somehow it feels the lesser of two evils compared to legacy makers with this pay to play and forced ad combination. Is that an accurate assessment?

In my experience, yes. Its not great. Chronicle of Higher Education and The Conversation have good articles on the publication process. The writers there do a better job exploring the process, and its pros/cons, than I can in this space.

I could have stated it better.

The quantity of publications is important. The number of citations is important. The number of high impact journals and citations in those journals is important.

It is a combination of money and prestige. The grant, depending on its conditions, funding exactly how you say. But also the prestige to the PI, or grant winner, from winning large grants to fund long term projects, entire research institutes, etc.

One would think, but no. That is changing a little in some areas as AI is getting push back. I don’t know what the future holds for the academic world, but when I left it was like this:

The publish or perish world of academics rewards quantity over quality to a degree. You need to turn one set of findings into multiple papers for multiple journals, push out dozens of papers annually, push out anything to get into good journals and fall back journals, even if some don’t stick. If the science behind it is right, you’ve got a 6 month to 2 year process until it gets published. You a bullet point on a CV then. So you absolitely need to publish, or try to, early and often. If you don’t, you perish.

If you can publish, get grants, bring money and prestige to your university or department, you are rewarded. Its hard to find wrong doing, easy to turn a blind eye, or difficulty holding people accountable in the system as it exists because of these pressures and how the process actually works.

I apologize for not understanding your question. Grants would be possible, if a grant was made specifically to support a journal and reviewers in that process. But you run into new problems a voluntary system was meant to prevent.

It’s not a bad idea at all. In fact, I agree that it could work and be better. You just need guard rails. Prevent review speed runs to get paid, internal review processes that highlight one type of research over another. Hard, but doable and there are enough people that, I surmise, want to work within a better system.

Former academic with publications here! Peer reviewers are not paid. Editors often are not either. You work for free for the prestige. Seriously. Journal publishers exploit that and make bank from institutional subscriptions and individual purchases.

Its an antiquated system that was meant to produce good science and understanding and has become a beast of burden for thousands of academics with no good alternative.

OnlyDams.

Silver lining.

I refer to the six essays (might have been 5) I received in a class on critical perspectives on disasters. I used a contract grading scheme, so no actual grades on essays:

“I first heard about critical theory in my sociology class.”

All of them opened with some version of that. Burned into my sad professor mind.