Just a reminder: if a site has an RSS feed and you have an RSS reader, then nobody’s algorithms affect what you see and when you see it. Nobody can boost or mute; posts show up when they’re posted, simple as that.
How to read weather forecasts (data from any source) in central Texas: If your app says
- 100% chance of rain, the actual chance is 65%
- 80% chance of rain, the actual chance is 30%
- 50% chance of rain, the actual chance is 15%
- Anything below 50%, it ain’t gonna rain.
“I see you’re trying to read!”
Re: this essay on scholars writing papers meant only to game the academic-metrics system: Sounds like a job for a chatbot! I sort of look forward to the day when all academic writing, by students and teachers alike, is written and read only by bots.
unstacked
Over the last few days I have received several emails from Substack telling me that I have new subscribers. Wait … what? I don’t have a newsletter, and I have never commented on a Substack post. But it seems that my Substack profile is public, and I guess anyone who searches for my name will find me — and the newsletters I subscribe to. I had no idea.
Now, it seems that I can choose which of my subscriptions to show on my profile — though the default is to show all of them, and you have to toggle that off one at a time — but there appears to be no way to make my entire profile private. I say “appears” because I cannot find a help document that addresses this issue, and Substack makes no email address available to those who need assistance for matters not covered on their help pages.
All of this is really bad form, I think, so: account canceled. I might start a new account (with a different email address) to see if I can build in more privacy from the start, but I dunno … I’m getting closer and closer to an “open web or nothing” position.
Ted Gioia: “There’s an ominous recurring theme here: The very technologies we use to determine what’s trustworthy are the ones most under attack.”
By Jon Haidt et al., a fascinating overview of studies indicating what young people think about the effects of social media.
