Academic Mixtape 30

good stuff to read

From the LA Review of Books, some connections between AI and eugenics that are more overt and problematic that you might have considered.

From the NY Review of Books, Wallace Shawn’s “Developments Since My Birth”, which was published more than four years ago but is more relevant than ever.

Stephen Heard asks, “What if we didn’t expect all scientists to master the (remarkably confusing and weird) English language?”

Do you remember last month when NSF abruptly cancelled panels? It turns out that some junior-ish scientists who had prepped for these panels took a loss on their housing expenses and they aren’t getting reimbursed by NSF. These folks need to make ends meet, so I’ve started a gofundme so that those of us looking to pitch in have a way to help these folks. If you can give a fancy coffee’s worth to these scientists who can’t afford to not get reimbursed for their panel travel expenses, please do. Anything raised above this goal will go to Stand Up for Science so they can keep organizing. (For a bit of context, some contributions are anonymous and I suspect a decent fraction are actually folks who run panels who feel hard done by how this went down and are trying their best to support the folks who volunteer for panel duty.) Again, please consider a small donation to these folks.

This story of how a couple bozos were sent by Musk to open up valves to free the water in California to stop wildfires is a tragic comedy of errors, kind of like Confederacy of Dunces, but it’s real life.

An op-ed about environmental protection by novelist Tim Winton. The theme of this piece corresponds to his latest novel, Juice. Winton is one of my favorite writers and this book was orthogonal to every expectation of mine in the best way possible. I think a measure of art is if it keeps you thinking about it long after you’ve been exposed. I can’t stop thinking about this book, and I am seeing shadows of it everywhere.

The University of California Press has a series on Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences. The latest issue is all about Sociobiology , and there is a whole series of essays from scholars of science history and sociology. I thought the essay on The Politics of Objectivity” to be particularly illuminating. (If you’re wondering where I landed on the EO Wilson stuff a few years ago, here’s what I had to say at the time, and I think it holds up pretty well.)

How universities can save DEI. (It’s all straightforward and obvious, but also needs to be said!)

Why Earth and Space Sciences need to dismantle the cis-het-white boys’ club

”I am more than a researcher, but Stanford doesn’t care”

While it’s well established that university rankings (such as US News and World Report, THE World University, etc) are all about perverse incentives and are essentially a race to the bottom, I gotta say that I’m getting more interested in paying attention to the crop of ‘social mobility’ indices that have been popping up. Is it coincidence that the California State University system (not to be confused with the University of California system) is knocking it out of the park in these rankings? Qualitatively, that’s why I’ve valued my job so much and why I’ve been there for so long. So a quantitative indicator that we’ve made a difference? That’s nice, isn’t it?

We are aware that the rule of law is rapidly disintegrating in the United States, as folks from another country can easily explain to those of us who aren’t paying attention. I’m not going to be using this list of recommended reads to provide a detailed list of how higher education, science, equity and access, human rights, and everything else are under assault. This simply wouldn’t be good for my health to do this and you can get this anywhere else. Occasionally I’ll provide to you some things in this area that I thought were particularly useful, important, or contextualizing, and of course y’all are welcome to share additional things in the comments as you wish.

That said, here’s a thoughtful piece from a tech blog about how their site is now a democracy blog as well. Same thoughts here. This place is about the science and the people doing science, which means in an authoritarian state, it has to be about democracy to protect the science and the people.