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• Post #4452444

  Vladimir Moskovkin proposes an interesting "reform model for scholarly communication that combines elements of centralized access —based on adapting the Soviet VINITI experience to the digital environment— with decentralized Diamond Open Access platforms." PS: This is the first time I've seen anyone draw the Soviet #VINITI model into #OpenAccess / #ScholComm discussions. Here's some background on the model, if it's new to you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VINITI #Cen...

• Post #4396282

  When #AI tools hallucinate citations, their made-up author names are not random. "We show that #LLMs do not merely default to high-probability individual names when generating fictional experts: they produce correlated character ensembles, pairs and trios [of co-authors] whose co-occurrence rates far exceed chance and are consistent across independent generations." https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.02184 They fool people and tools: "We identify 1,655 ghost-authored records claiming no...

• Post #4395058

  Even on X/Twitter, "users countering #misinformation are more established, more emotional, and have larger followings than accounts spreading false claims." https://viterbischool.usc.edu/news/2026/07/usc-researchers-discover-fake-news-spreaders-have-less-followers-than-users-pushing-back/ #SocialMedia, #Twitter

• Post #4280433

  "Musk Plans to Spend at Least $100 Million to Help Republicans in the Midterms." https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/us/politics/elon-musk-midterms-republicans.html PS: Assume Musk's net worth is 1 trillion. $100 million is 0.01% of 1 trillion. The net worth of the average American is $1,063,700, and the net worth of the median American $192,900. (These numbers are from the Federal Reserve's 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances.) https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.ht...

• Post #4280114

  The only surprise here is the apology. "State Dept. apologizing for Africa map that mislabeled every country." https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/07/30/state-dept-apologizing-africa-map-that-mislabeled-every-country/ #Africa #AI #Slop #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

• Post #4116383

  "Trump administration texted college professors' personal phones to ask if they're Jewish." https://theintercept.com/2025/04/23/trump-eeoc-barnard-columbia-texts-jewish/ As all academics know, you can't ask this question in a job interview. https://www.eeoc.gov/pre-employment-inquiries-and-religious-affiliation-or-beliefs But I guess it's OK when it's not a job interview, when it's the govt asking, and the govt includes a high-ranking official who gives #Naz...

• Post #4069683

  Update. "This study examines how editorial roles are distributed by gender across a national platform-based journal system…[We] distinguish four role categories—executive, operational, support, and symbolic…Women are significantly less likely to hold executive editorial positions…and more likely to occupy operational…and support roles…When these roles are aggregated into a single gatekeeping indicator, the gender coefficient becomes non-significant—not because stratification is absent, but...

• Post #4068066

  Major Swiss data-rescue and AI-training project: "Researchers have copied massive quantities of publicly available #climate and #environmental #data from #NASA onto a Swiss supercomputer to train #AI models—and for safekeeping amid U.S. #funding cuts…It had taken approximately a year to copy the roughly 6 billion files [roughly 100 petabytes]…Going forward, the researchers are also planning to copy large quantities of datasets from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (...

• Post #4014866

  I've accused #DOGE of terminating #NEH grants (and other grants) by using dumb keyword searches to look for prohibited words. It turns out that DOGE used dumb #ChatGPT prompts instead. Like this one (quoting verbatim): “Does the following relate at all to D.E.I.? Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’” https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/arts/humanities-endowment-doge-trump.html #Censorship #DefendResearch #DEI #Funding #Humanities #Takedowns #Trump #Trump...

• Post #3999335

  I'm sorry to hear about the death of Roger Summit (at age 95), the brains behind #Dialog, the pioneering pre-web search engine and library of searchable academic databases. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/17/technology/roger-summit-dead.html PS: Dialog was not free and not even close. But my college got two years of free connect time in 1990-91 on the condition that we keep logs and help the company learn what teachers and students wanted. I published my log in the American Philosophical A...

• Post #3991099

  A federal district court just ruled that training #AI tools on copyrighted texts is fair use. https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/20/anthropics-landmark-1-5b-copyright-settlement-is-approved/ #Anthropic is in the clear for training #Claude on millions of books without permission or payment. However, it's liable for obtaining many of those books illegally, and its settlement of those claims (about $3k/title) was approved by the court. So far this decision only applies in the Northern District...

• Post #3937037

  New study: "We show…that research assessment is driven more by differences between evaluators than by difference in the evaluated research." https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.09783 #Academia #Assessment #PeerReview #ScholComm #Universities

• Post #3912933

  Would you trust journalism, research, or data from the company that took this contract? "#ICE to Pay #ThomsonReuters $125 Million to Find ‘Voter Fraud’." https://www.404media.co/ice-to-pay-thomson-reuters-125-million-to-find-voter-fraud/ #USPol #USPolitics

• Post #3800434

  #Wikipedia just dodged a bullet in the UK but is still in danger. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2026-07-13/Special_report The bullet was the possibility of Category 1 classification under the UK Online Safety Act. It was spared that classification but remains on a "watch list" of platforms that "could become Category 1 at any point in the future." If Wikipedia is later classified as Category 1, then either (1) contributors could no longer be ps...

• Post #3768199

  The flagship journal of the American Diabetes Association (#ADA) just published an editorial criticizing the #Trump admin for attempting to "Dismantle and Destroy Biomedical Research in the United States." https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/49/6/901/164764/Misguided-Brushes-of-a-Pen-Continue-to-Dismantle At an ADA conference yesterday, some members tried to pass out copies of the editorial just before #NIH Director #JayBhattacharya was scheduled to speak. They were blocked by s...

• Post #3765690

  Republican politicians are way ahead of Haitian migrants in killing dogs and cats. #Republicans = 7 (Kristi Noem, Kevin Roberts, Todd Kincannon, Mehmet Oz, Mike Bost, Greg Gianforte, Victor Marx) #HaitianMigrants = 0 EDIT. See the thread below. I add more examples as I find them. 🧵 #AnimalCruelty #USPol #USPolitics

• Post #3607549

  "White House deletes thousands of web pages about energy conservation as heatwave slams US." https://www.theverge.com/policy/961449/white-house-mamdani-heatwave-deletion (#paywalled) "The deletions by the Trump administration are broad and indiscriminate. While pages that would support Mamdani’s request to lower thermostats were deleted, so too were pages about water conservation, types of insulation, and its solar decathlon challenge." Here are preservation copies of the...

• Post #3580920

  Today is a good day to reread 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘊𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘴 by Emma Lazarus. Here it is in her own hand. Image from the Museum of the City of New York. https://www.mcny.org/story/new-colossus Thanks to my daughter, Molly Suber Thorpe.

• Post #3557372

  "Professor fired over #CharlieKirk post could receive $1.9M in settlement." https://thehill.com/homenews/education/5948386-professor-fired-over-charlie-kirk-post-could-receive-1-9m-in-settlement This is just the latest in a series. Universities that disciplined professors for criticizing Charlie Kirk knew or should have known that they were violating those professors' free-speech rights. But they did it to align themselves with the Trump admin, even on the wrong side of the law....

• Post #3556754

  Great news for great service: The Data Rescue Project just won the 2026 "Documents to the People" Award from the #ALA, #GODORT, and #ProQuest. https://www.datarescueproject.org/dttp-award/ #Censorship #Data #DataRescueProject #DRP #DefendResearch #Preservation #Takedowns #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

• Post #3556753

  "Inside the new political screening that’s stalling #NIH grants." https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01924-8 "Mandatory reviews by [political appointees] and checks for 235 disfavoured terms have left hundreds of vetted grant applications in administrative limbo." Here's the Nature list of "disfavored terms" that trigger slow-walking and political scrutiny of grant applications. https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-ass...

• Post #3556752

  The #NSF is shifting significant amounts of money from research grants to tech investments. https://www.science.org/content/article/exclusive-nsf-slashes-research-programs-support-new-tech-initiative-insiders-say (#paywalled) #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

• Post #3556751

  Now we know. The high-security cell phone hardware and software used by the Secret Service are clunky. For example, when a local cop photographed Thomas Crooks, the man who shot at Donald Trump in 2023, agents had to receive the photos on their personal phones because their agency phones couldn't receive photos. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5943032-secret-service-hacking-vulnerability/ This answers one version of a question I posed in 2021. When govt officials need tools...

• Post #3556750

  #Republican protests about the #SCOTUS #citizenship ruling are eye-opening. From the NYTimes: "Kevin Roberts, the president of the #HeritageFoundation...[said that the decision] lessened the value of American citizenship." https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/06/30/us/birthright-citizenship-supreme-court #USLaw #USPol #USPolitics

• Post #3556749

  An anonymous Australian scholar chastised an Australian historian for publishing his award-winning book with an Australian publisher -- criticizing the author's "choice of publisher" and recommending that he "consider more prominent international academic presses". https://theaha.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/FINAL-Report-18.06.2026.pdf (See p. 25.) This is a stark example of favoring prestige over quality when the two differ. BTW, I argued in...

• Post #3541780

  TFW scientists confirm what you already knew. "Your brain was never designed for this much bad news." https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/06/260614012006.htm

• Post #3511252

  Today #arXiv officially leaves Cornell to become an independent nonprofit org. Details: https://blog.arxiv.org/2026/06/30/arxivs-next-chapter/

• Post #3495700

  Here's another good example of a new discovery based in part on the creative #reuse of #OpenData originally collected for another purpose. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-ai-formula-monster-years-worth.html FYI, here are some other examples I posted to #Twitter before I moved to #Mastodon. https://twitter.com/petersuber/status/1311674846858956801 https://twitter.com/petersuber/status/1276895850682290177 https://twitter.com/petersuber/status/1475176450374479880 https://twitter.com/petersu...

• Post #3491844

  "US Supreme Court just blew up EU-US Data Transfers." https://noyb.eu/en/us-supreme-court-just-blew-eu-us-data-transfers This is big but confusing. Here's my take: US tech companies that want to sign up #EU users must promise (through a formal process administered by the US Commerce Dept) to comply with #GDPR #privacy protections, and submit to the oversight of an "independent" US agency -- until now the #FTC -- with the power to enforce those promises. With no indepe...

• Post #3457194

  The #Trump admin is publicly naming "leftist influencers" in an obvious attempt to raise the cost of criticism, provoke MAGA attacks, and trigger self-censorship. https://www.whitehouse.gov/media-bias-publication/leftist-influencers/ And taxpayers are funding the effort. #EnemiesList #FirstAmendment #Intimidation #USPol #USPolitics