This room-temperature superconductor news has potential to be either really big, or just another footnote in the history of physics, but either way the number of hits I got about it from different sources was interesting:

• RSS feeds: 3
• Everything else: 0

RSS wins! Again.

There is predatory, and then there is predatory:

When Björn Johansson received an email in July 2020 inviting him to speak at an online debate on COVID-19 modeling, he didn’t think twice. “I was interested in the topic and I agreed to participate,” says Johansson, a medical doctor and researcher at the Karolinska Institute. “I thought it was going to be an ordinary academic seminar. It was an easy decision for me.”

…

All the scientists interviewed by Science say Ferensby’s initial messages never mentioned conference fees. When one speaker, Francesco Piazza, a physicist now at the University of Florence, directly asked Ferensby whether the organizers would request a fee, Ferensby replied, “No, we are talking about science and COVID-19.”

But after the events, the speakers were approached by a conference secretary, who asked them to sign and return a license agreement that would give Villa Europa—named in the document as the conference organizer—permission to publish the webinar recordings. Most of the contracts Science has seen state that the researcher must pay the company €790 “for webinar debate fees and open access publication required for the debate proceedings” plus €2785 “to cover editorial work.” These fees are mentioned in a long clause in the last page of the contract, and are written out in words rather than numbers, without any highlighting.

What an absolute nightmare. Predatory journals at least have the decency to ask you for them money up front.

And let’s take a moment to contemplate the ridiculousness of the current academic publishing and conference model. Note that there is nothing unusual in academic conferences requiring attendance fees from speakers. If you have an scientific abstract accepted for oral or poster presentation at ASCO, let’s say, you will still have to pony up for the registration fee. And publication fees for a legitimate open access journal can be north of $3,000. So how is a judge to know whether the organizer’s claims are legitimate?

The difference, of course, is that the good ones — both journals and conferences — don’t solicit submissions; you have to beg them to take your money. Which only makes the situation more ridiculous, not less.

Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic:

I first encountered The Making of the Atomic Bomb in March, when I spoke with an AI researcher who said he carts the doorstop-size book around every day. (It’s a reminder that his mandate is to push the bounds of technological progress, he explained—and a motivational tool to work 17-hour days.) Since then, I’ve heard the book mentioned on podcasts and cited in conversations I’ve had with people who fear that artificial intelligence will doom us all.

I can see the appeal, but calling The Making of… “The Doomer Bible” is uncharitable to both books.

Chris Arnade walking across Japan, part 2:

So the technocrat/policy types look at Japan’s last few decades of relative economic stagnation as a failure, while the Japanese just shrug it off and chalk it up to one of the costs of maintaining their cultural identity.

Haven’t thought about it that way before, but isn’t another country set on preserving its identity also in a period of economic stagnation? Craig Mod noted how and why they are not the same, however, and I like Japan’s prospects better.

Christine Emba for the Washington Post:

It is harder to be a man today, and in many ways, that is a good thing: Finally, the freer sex is being held to a higher standard.

Even so, not all of the changes that have led us to this moment are unequivocally positive. And if left unaddressed, the current confusion of men and boys will have destructive social outcomes, in the form of resentment and radicalization.

The headline is so bad I won’t copy it here, but the article is sound and worth sharing. Good illustrations, too.

Writes The Washington Post:

Council member Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1) echoed Mendelson’s remarks. Bowser, she suggested, “can ask [D.C. police] why they’re not patrolling equitably across the city, or provide data on what they’re doing, or [ask] why the U.S. attorney is declining two-thirds of the cases. I want to reiterate: This council is united in addressing public safety issues and we’ll continue to do it.”

This is in regards to a new emergency public safety bill passed by the council in response to a spike in violent crimes, and if you took Nadeau’s comments to heart you would think that the problem was restricted to certain neighborhoods — you know which ones they are — and was a direct result of there being less police presence than in some other areas — you know which ones those are as well.

Throwing out words like diversity and equity has become a verbal tick for some, but if council member Nadeau said that the D.C. police were not patrolling equitably with intent, we are deeply in newspeak Ministry-of-truth territory. Because the police are, in fact, patrolling equitably: in the wrong direction. Bad decisions have consequences D.C. council cut the police budget by $15 million in June 2020; by April 2023, police staffing reached a 50-year low which came both from the cuts directly, and indirectly from the burnout of those who remained. and instead of owning up to their mistakes — the equitable policing the Council achieved meant that previously safe parts of town are now also unsafe — they double down on their bad reasoning.

But to justify the title of the post: equitable — unlike, let’s say, gaslighting is a precise word, which in my book makes it a good word. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that achieving equity is always good. “Socialism makes everybody equal: equally poor”, went the old joke, and what goes for equality can also go for equity, as D.C. Council has just shown.

Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts:

In the tourist quarter in the shadow of Porto’s fortresslike cathedral, a social worker with a government-funded nonprofit, SAOM, handed out clean syringe packages to people who use heroin. When crack pipes are available, the social workers give them out. There’s no judgment, few questions, and no pressure to embrace change.

Summing up the philosophy, Luísa Neves, SAOM’s president, said: “You have to respect the user. If they want to use, it is their right.”

Absolutely bonkers. Not putting people in jail for drug abuse is one thing, condoning it is madness. Do they also hand out flasks of whiskey to drunks?

🏀 USA Basketball starts fresh with new players and coach for FIBA World Cup:

USA Basketball has won gold at the past four Olympics but is seeking to avenge an embarrassing seventh-place finish at the 2019 FIBA World Cup in China, where an underwhelming roster lost to Serbia and France.

No shame in losing to the homes of Nikola Jokić and Victor Wembanyama, even though the first didn’t play and the second was still in diapers back then.

This morning’s story in The Washington Post on a slow-rolling climate disaster has this as the subtitle:

Maryland’s iconic Smith Island faces one of the nation’s most dire forecasts for rising seas, but real estate is booming

In the story we learn that the “booming” real estate market means that

More homes have sold on Smith Island in the last three years than in the previous 11 combined, according to sales data.

…

Woutila and Pueschel lived in the Baltimore suburbs for years, but she always dreamed of living on a sailboat and he of owning waterfront property. As they scouted real estate listings, they hit upon a marshy plot in the middle of the Chesapeake: Smith Island.

Waterfront homes run roughly from $100,000 to $200,000 — far less than most spots on the mainland — so it was one of the few places that fit the couple’s budget. In comparison, a two-bedroom condo on the water in Annapolis recently sold for $530,000 and a small home near a dock in Shady Side, Md., went for $360,000.

Framing is everything: a journalist’s “real estate boom” is a thinking person’s exodus.

Suitcase words are imprecise, mealy-mouthed pieces of verbal dreck whose purpose is to rouse emotion while masquerading as vectors of information. ⊕ Yes, yes, this is itself an emotional reaction, and they can indeed be useful — follow the link to read how and why — but most suitcase words are useful for thought and dialogue in the same way that semi-automatic rifles are useful for pest control: caveat usor. Oncology is full of them — from immunotherapy to survival — but all examples I encountered there came to me fully packed, zippers bursting, ready to confuse. Live long enough, however, and you will see a suitcase word being formed in front of your eyes as you stare in horror, incapable to do anything but mourn the sacrifice off a perfectly adequate concept to the gods of sophism.

Take “gaslighting”. The term — this may be common knowledge by now, but it is worth repeating — comes from the 1944 American movie Gaslight ⊕ Or maybe the 1940 British movie, or the 1938 British play — who knows? in which the husband of an heiress drives her insane by way of psychosocial manipulation — Wikipedia’s example is his secretly dimming and brightening the indoor gas-powered lighting but insisting that she is imagining it, making her think she is going insane. Note that there are three aspects to the original gaslighting:

1. The manipulator originates the stimulus that is to be misinterpreted;
2. The manipulator questions the victim’s initial interpretation, despite agreeing with it, or knowing it to be correct;
3. The manipulator’s intention for doing this is to “drive the victim insane”, i.e. question everything else about their reality.

And let’s all agree that intentionally pushing someone into psychosis is a very bad thing indeed. The emotional reaction to the action of gaslighting is therefore deservedly negative, more so than plain old lying, bulshitting, or scheming for a different purpose.

The first aspect of gaslighting dropped off early on. The very first mention ⊕ The link is to the Internet Archive version of a most excellent writeup on its etymology, now behind a paywall. of the term as a verb went “It is also popularly believed to be possible to “gaslight” a perfectly healthy person into psychosis by interpreting his own behavior to him as symptomatic of serious mental illness”, which eliminated number 1 but strengthened the criteria for number 2: to be the gaslighter you should not only question the interpretation, but you yourself should interpret it as a sign or symptom of breakdown. Undeniably bad! And for decades the word lived quietly in psychotherapy circles as a helpful shorthand for a type of behavior, usually from an abusive spouse.

Then 2016 happened, and everyone is gaslighting everyone else: politicians are doing it to their voters, doctors to their patients, and parents to their children, when in fact what they are doing, respectively, is bulshitting, misdiagnosing, and following guidelines you don’t agree with.

And all this is in writing, supposedly the more formal of the methods of communication. In everyday speech, gaslighting gets thrown left and right for any behavior with which people disagree, and has become a stand-in for lying, bullshitting, or just plain old making me feel bad. Note that in each case you can see a kernel of a connection with actual gaslighting — usually it is the questioning part — but the supposed gaslighter’s questioning is genuine, and/or the intent behind the questioning is — possibly misdirected but also genuine — care for the wellbeing of their “victim”.

So, whenever I hear or read the word now I have to stop, think, and unpack it. What is the actual process it is trying to describe? Would a different word better describe that process without implying things that aren’t true? ⊕ All good things to do when encountering any suitcase word. This is why I am slightly skeptical of speed reading. Did whoever (mis)used the word know its original meaning and broaden it to creatively express themselves, or did they have an agenda? Dismissing any argument which uses it would be the easy thing to do, and as most easy things also wrong: while its imprecise use may make me think slightly less of the person using it, they may still be making a valid point.

None of this is news: therapists have raised concerns about the misuse of the word and explained the issue much more eloquently than I just did, but also not as concisely, so if this piqued your interest this article quoting a few of them would be a good next stop.