Millions of research papers at risk of disappearing from the Internet – “An analysis of DOIs suggests that digital preservation is not keeping up with burgeoning scholarly knowledge.”
Paper or Pixel? Where do we keep knowledge?
What am I even doing anymore?
I haven’t had an idea for a post in a while. I’ve been writing, not necessarily the things I’m supposed to be writing, but writing nonetheless. I have a year’s worth of short bits in my journal that have given me a new outlook on my life.
I don’t change much, really.
I think that it’s hard to see a whole year unless you’ve chronicled it in some way, whether in a scrapbook a bullet journal, or even your photo albums on your phone. Without that easy avenue to look back, you’ll never leave the path you’ve been on for, well, your whole life.
By having a link that forces me to see what I wrote on this day last year, I can spend a moment lamenting over how the obstacles and complaints are still the same and that, whether by my own fear or others’ handiwork, I have not moved forward as much as I’d like. Alas, reflection is not always a positive experience, but it is always useful.
Diss-combobulated
I am supposed to be writing the revision of my dissertation proposal, but I am a bit lacking in the motivation department. I even set up an appointment with my diss chair to get me moving and, maybe when it is imminent (as in that day) I will finally get something workable on the page. I would like to not be like this. I don’t think it’s fair to me or my chair.
How much do you want to hear about this journey? I wonder if it would be helpful to future Ph.D.s to hear about my experience. I know I found a lot of advice online (for reasons) and wouldn’t have made it this far without it.
However, it’s not a path I would recommend to most. It is not necessarily healthy, mentally or physically, and the rigor of the work is largely performative. There are small movements, particularly in the humanities, of making the PhD process more a communal practice instead of an individual struggle. They are slow though and largely rooted in the departments outside STEM.
This is my sixth year in the PhD program. I am a bit jaded now, which is why I wonder if it’s time to go. Not leave the program, but leave the fellowship, find full-time work doing…something…and finish the dissertation on the side.
I love working with students. I love reading their writing. Teaching, though, is changing and I’m not sure I want to change with it. I’ll talk more about that later.
For now, I think I will try to post more often and talk about school, my interests, and various things. I am not interested in creating a personal brand, though I am not completely against creating merch. (But I’ll probably forget to.)
This ain’t Storage Wars
While that show and this article both represent a business plan that allows someone to take advantage of other people’s misfortune, at least when storage lockers are auctioned off, we can fool ourselves that the storage company is trying to recoup their losses.
Not sure how many suitcases are lost due to passenger error, but this many don’t seem to hurt the airlines (since they got payment in most cases for not delivering) and their insurance doled out the cash to the passenger. But the things we pack are more than just material belongings, there are sentimental and important objects that, for whatever reason, need to get from one place to another.
I feel like this company could be funneling a lot of this stuff for charitable causes and the article takes a pretty flippant view on people losing their belongings forever.
>>> U.S. airlines lose 2 million suitcases a year. Where do they all go?
Death Star Contractor Sim
“Which, a) sort of casually disregards the entire existence of things like “tone” as they apply to the storytelling intent of a piece of media and, b) Lucasfilms has never tried to pitch people on a reality show about how cool it would be to get blown up by the Death Star.”
Just say… wait?
The fact that articles like this don’t refer to Nancy Reagan as an activist is how well conservatives have fooled everyone into thinking that what they do isn’t radical or activism.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/opinion/rosalynn-carter-first-lady-politics.html
Shouts from the top of the Ivory Tower
Certainly, not all students wear these moral blinders. But the fact* that many students do, and that they are at some of the nation’s leading colleges and universities, should be a cause for profound concern across higher education.
-Ezekiel J. Emanuel “Hamas and the Moral Deficiencies of a Liberal Education – The New York Times“
*Where is that fact located, Professor? Could you cite your sources? Let’s keep focusing on the plight of liberal education by shaming 34 Harvard students for exercising their right to free speech. Would the good professor like to address food insecurity on campuses? How about other universities are slashing major parts of that “liberal education” he is crying about? I think the Vice Provost (again, what even is that job?) wanted to be mad at the Harvard students, but gets to yell about it in The New York Fucking Times.
We have left these students a world on the brink of death, destruction, and despair.
We have all failed them and they are letting us know.
No ethical consumption
The scene recalled an observation of the Scythian philosopher Anacharsis, who divided people into three categories: the living, the dead, and those at sea.
Ian Urbina
If you read one long-form piece of journalism this week (and you should) I would recommend “The Crimes Behind the Seafood” in The New Yorker.
Why isn’t housing an inalienable right?
Aside for the small discussion at the end with Taylor Lorenz about having someone watch your social media streams for you (which I understand, but never hope to need) the discussion about Section 8 housing, its history, and the bureaucratic nightmare that it is for the most precarious people was maddening. So many of us are just a step away from being homeless. We all need to do better.
What if they tried talking to it?
Don’t talk about tech and NOT credit authors
This short section of The Atlantic Daily has the following sentence:
“The term metaverse was coined in a 1992 science-fiction novel titled Snow Crash. (The book also helped popularize the term avatar, to refer to digital selves.)”
The book, not Neal Stephenson, the person who happened to author the book, but the book. If we want to talk about the future and technology and don’t address the erasure of the humans behind the technology (and the Book inspirations of its ideas) then you’re part of the problem.