It is my 37th birthday today, and what I really crave, more than anything, is a continuity to my days. Not an accumulation, the sense that they’re adding up to anything, not necessarily, just a continuity. The sense that one day leads into another leads into another leads into another on and on and on.
All that goes to say, if you just one day got rid of pre-publication peer review entirely – just got rid of it, full stop – there’s no reason to believe that the overall quality of published research would go down, at all. You’re still incentivized to publish your best work; arguably more so because you no longer have the cover of “being peer reviewed” as legitimacy. There will still be good research, and bad research. And post-publication peer review will still be able to pass judgement on anything it wants.
The academic journal business model is a funny one, because the journals themselves don’t actually do much work. The content is produced by PIs, for free, who apply for publication in hope of getting selected. Other PIs who review and curate submissions also work for free: it’s considered a part of academic duty, and prestigious to accept but disastrous to decline. In short, aside from the cost of ink and postage, academic journals deal in one thing only: positional scarcity. The real shame in academic publishing, if you ask me, isn’t Elsevier’s 35% profit margin on journal subscriptions. It’s the much larger amount of money, time and influence that is regressively taxed from the young scientists, to the old ones, in exchange for nothing but brand access.
Only rarely do online-first takes on economics, management theory, cultural theory, and analytic philosophy, among others, make the leap into academia, that other internet of texts. There are perhaps numerous reasons why this is the case. A significant one, though, is the lack of coherent citation and attribution practices on the web.
Truly take a moment to think about it: How do you want to occupy space online? What are your goals? It’s nice when people treat their social media accounts as extensions of themselves, rather than as ads for themselves. The internet should not be a space to spam innocent bystanders with Soundcloud links and promotional blurbs. Instead, it should be a space to really exist inside of, and a place where you can forge connections that organically grow into mutual interest in—and support for—each other. Online friends are just different than your IRL friends. So, do not drop your friends or completely abandon your “old life” when you get a few hundred or thousand followers online.
Even if offices vanished entirely, that would only make room for new urban functions that would probably be more vital, further consolidating the city’s relevance.
Brilliant Hardware in the Valley of the Software Slump
A sign of great hardware and software is in forgetting about it, smoothly allowing it to integrate with your life — drawing fluency from it. Speed and reliability are often intuited hand-in-hand. Speed can be a good proxy for general engineering quality.
Mat Zo’s “20 Years Of Anjunabeats” (Continuous Mix)
Buy/Stream: https://anjunabeats.ffm.to/20mz.pbt
Follow Anjunabeats New Releases on Spotify: anjunabeats.ffm.to/newreleases.pbt
Find out more about #Anjunabeats20: https://anjunabeats.com/20/
Release Date: 11th June 2020
Born and bred in London, Anjunabeats started life as a university project in the year 2000. Today, Anjunabeats is one of the world’s best-loved dance labels. Over 700 releases spanning two decades wear the iconic Anjuna ‘A’.
To celebrate, they’ve opened the vault for a handpicked group of artists from the label’s 20-year history. Each artist will sift through thousands of hours of music to create a definitive, mix of their all-time favourite Anjunabeats releases.
On 11 June, GRAMMY nominee Mat Zo delivers the second mix in the series.
"Anjunabeats is a label with a lot of history, and it's cool to be a part of that. I've seen the label evolve over the years from relatively humble beginnings, and it's amazing to still be a part of it 12 years later. With this mix, I wanted to show how broad the range of Anjunabeats and Anjunadeep is, and what drew me to the label in the first place.” - Mat Zo
1. Michael Cassette - Zeppelin
2. Signalrunners - Meet Me in Montauk
3. Myon & Shane 54 - Not A Lot Left
4. Andy Moor - Fake Awake (Ecomix)
5. Bart Claessen - Elf (2001 Returning Mix)
6. Signalrunners & Julie Thompson - These Shoulders (Club Mix)
7. David West feat. Andreas Hermansson - Larry Mountains 54
8. Maor Levi - Illumina
9. David West - Welsh Morphology
10. Kyau & Albert - Kiksu
11. Above & Beyond - World On Fire (12 Inch Mix)
12. Maor Levi - Shapes (Oliver Smith Remix)
Website: www.anjunabeats.com
Anjunastore: www.anjunastore.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/anjunabeats
Twitter: www.twitter.com/anjunabeats
Spotify: Anjunabeats.lnk.to/NewReleasesYo/Spotify
Instagram: www.instagram.com/anjunabeats
SoundCloud: @anjunabeats
Reddit: reddit.com/r/AboveandBeyond
Discord: www.discord.gg/anjuna
I notice the “you don't belong here” looks when I dress a certain way. You may read each of these encounters and think “this isn’t so bad” in isolation, but a lifetime of small injustices is a massive boulder to carry.
Failures in an organization larger than 1,000 people are attributable to failed communication. The question mark is underused, the exclamation point overused. Treat headings as the structure of your argument, not your document. So only show [numbers] after you are done presenting your main point.
For a Black Mathematician, What It’s Like to Be the ‘Only One’
Fewer than 1 percent of doctorates in math are awarded to African-Americans. Edray Goins, who earned one of them, found the upper reaches of the math world a challenging place.
Let’s remember these words when the current protests have died down, and the world has moved on to the next thing. That will be the test of really means it — as opposed to who is just jumping on the bandwagon — when they say #blacklivesmatter.