Nazarré Merchant

Extremely interesting set of observations here. Would love to see some research on this, particularly as one suspect some federal anti-bullying initiative kicked off the change (or at least accelerated it).

Related, it's often hard to fathom Obergefell was only 9 years ago.

are executive fiduciary responsibility laws so weak as to be toothless? back when studying for actuarial exams (never completed) i recall them being made a big deal and waved about to scare the junior actuaries.

But it's not. Micropayments are everywhere, and are solved tech.

The real issue is that as a business decision it looks bad. Why would, e.g, the Times allow people to drop in and read a single article for say $0.25, when they can get a portion of those people to shell out for annual subscriptions?

Yeah, lots of inconsistent reporting (Forbes reports 10.6% for Q3 2023, others higher, notably Statista w/many quarters above 10%). Not a big deal.

To quibble slightly, Macs are reported variously to be between 10-16% of personal computer market share, a big leap over the grim 2% days.

Props for slogging it through such a self-indulgent piece. Had to give it up after the, I think, eighth picture of her with some tech mogul.

Not trying to defend the actual purchase price of an academic book here (which are exploitative), only that setting a max cost is likely the absolute last thing a publishing company would ever agree to.

Unfortunately book authors have no control over this (I didn't and don't know anyone who has). It's also of the type that these cos will never cede as it affects bottom line. There's even one legit arg for this as pub can happen years after the contract was signed, w/very different publishing costs

Fwiw, the US is 65th when ranked in terms of immigrants. Truly reprehensible framing by the Times, as they surely know better.

Trying to imagine the convoluted justification: "WH gave us this number, known to be inflammatory - reframing w/better statistic would be us media showing bias"

the perpetual mystery of the dems

the last scene (the joyous celebration of the terror of the brain), imo, intentionally undercuts the identification we've developed throughout for the characters, reminding the viewer who they've been cheering for: fascists who revel in, among other things, emotional suffering.

Dentists maybe, as people regularly experience physical pain with them. But math falls squarely in the category of topics that people loathe (such as writing and reading) because of bad experiences. The writing profs I know report similar responses for parallel reasons.

Idk, I teach math and also get this reaction a lot. It never feels personal. My read is that people really do hate math (or whatever subject) typically for having had some traumatic early experience. I see this in the classroom too though students are more prepared to control their visceral reaction

What's odd is that crucial deadlines for running in the Dem primaries are past (most notably Nevada), and most will be past in a couple weeks. Pure fantasy that anyone could get themselves on relevant ballots, raise funds, get noticed by, say, mid-December when registration is effectively over.

Also trans rights. Beshear vetoed a sweeping trans ban -- turned out quite alright for him.

we have a winner

If the inertial dampening system fails for even one millisecond (as all tech does), the spaceships will definitely be filled with goo!

From that editorial: "We are not naive."

I have read it. You're conflating cash with increase in net assets when you say things like "bringing in annual surpluses."

I think you may be misreading their financial statements. The increase in unrestricted net assets for the last three years were: $8million, $50m, & $16m. This is different from cash (which varies from $50-$86m). All functional orgs have cash and wiki's cash on hand is stable over time.

My #s are from the Foundations audited financial statements. 2023 endowment reports $119m.

Assets over time are not increasing significantly, and there's no other pot of assets

wikimediafoundation.org/about/annual...

wikimediafoundation.org/about/annual...

wikimediafoundation.org/about/annual...

I absolutely see your point about messaging (they are not financially struggling!), but to my view being conservative with a new influx of a large amount of money is good financial stewardship.

Looking at the Wiki Foundation's financial statements from 2022 we see $50.9m in cash, $141.9m in short-term invests (assuredly short-term bonds). 2021 saw $86.8m and $117m respectively. Net assets from 2020, 2021, 2022 are 191, 240, 250. I belabor this as I see no red flags here.

"Why are they building an endowment when they have a surplus of at least $50 million a year?" This strikes me as fundamentally a fear-mongering question. As someone who's been in tech, academia, and finance for decades, I don't know how to engage with such a query. And so really I'm trying to logoff

Why build an endowment when you have extra money? This isn't a serious question, just fear-mongering. According to the endowment's webpage, they are supporting various projects. I'm checking out here.

Through 2021, they were building the endowment up. You can rail against the messaging, but putting $ into a non-profit endowment, and not spending it, is not mismanagement.

This is a philosophical difference (perfectly fine!). I work in academia and collecting money for endowment is standard and in fact required - enrollments flux, building maintenance only goes up. Giving unrestricted $ to a Uni requires trust in their people & mission. Requesting such isnt a red flag

I'm not arguing whether their ads are deceptive, but whether their 'expenses are low compared to revenue' and 'they've amass[ed] a very large amount of $'. Subjective, yes, but they run a top-10 website, manager 2000+ servers, write their own backend and frontend code on $154m of rev.

Editors from top journals receive thousands of submissions. Going through that deluge takes time. Lots of it

Many things we should do to disseminate data, but using criteria like, "I'm not interested in using my precious hours editing topics my readers aren't interested in" will always be with us

I agree that incentives should change, but 'limited interest' is directly related to editors finding reviewers. An editor has to use some set of criteria to decide which papers to find reviewers for (it's a lot of work!) and limited interest is an entirely valid first cull.