Kino Zhao @kinozhao@fediphilosophy.org

TIL Reddit is raising API pricing to absurd levels to kill off third party apps, just like Twitter.
It was fun while it lasted. Y’all are gonna have to post a lot more frequently on here to fill my doomscrolling needs.

@pjw yes. The main trigger is that TexStudio broke on me for unknown reasons. Overleaf still works but I don’t like to write online.

Supporting reasons are: 1) I don’t write equations/proofs anymore. (Apparently Word is better with equations now but I haven’t tried it.) 2) I started using Zotero to manage my references and reference management was the biggest attraction of Latex for me. Zotero’s bibtex support is a lot worse than its Word integration. 3) It does not seem to be the case that latex makes journal formatting easier, both for me and for the copy editors.

@philippsteinkrueger ah, I had not considered that.

I had a sense that you weren't trying to be entirely anonymous, because then you wouldn't have made the github page.

To me, Mastodon is built on the idea of having control over one's audience, any many people (myself included) moved to Mastodon explicitly for that purpose.

Many people here turn on follower request for fine-grained control. I haven't felt the need to do that yet. Nevertheless, having an authorless bot circulating my content to a group of audience I have no control over (or access to, for that matter, since we're on different servers) kinda defeats the entire purpose.

With many complicated thoughts and feelings, I have made the biggest professional decision since the start of my PhD.

I decided to start writing in Word.

Pray for me.

@keithwilson I think the thought is to present a "snap shot" of what philosophers talk about, including non-philosophical/non-academic stuff.

It's the sort of thing where I really do see the appeal of it from the consumer side. But, from the producer side, it really veers towards creepiness real quick.

The fact that there's no declaration of ownership on its github page doesn't boost confidence either.

Today’s speculation: the world will be a better place (maybe not a “much” better place but a slightly better place) if philosophers are generally open to the possibility that I know more stats than they do.

Walking pass a “funeral planning” place and started talking about funeral planning with my spouse (as one does). Decided that what I want is for my body to be donated to the Smithsonian body farm and my funeral to be a place where everyone take turns listing 10 things that are better in the world now that I’m dead.

@juanrloaiza I didn't mean to stress the difference between types of conferences. I was mostly thinking that grad students tend to gain more from presentation opportunities and are more able to put in the effort. But that, of course, isn't always the case.

In my case, the conference was on phil of machine learning before it was big, but about when it was getting big. So there were a lot of "buzzword salads" out there. It is very difficult to judge, from a short abstract that doesn't lay out the argument, whether there is actually something there or whether author just put buzzwords together grammatically. That's when I ask for abstracts that are long enough for the author to actually make the argument.

Don't know if there's any point in saying this, but just to put it out there: I just blocked ICYMI (Philosophy), a bot that randomly boosts my post (as I'm on a list of philosophers).

I don't know who maintains that bot, and I can see why it may sound like a good idea. But, um, Mastodon, for me at least, is not quite about that kind of thing.

@juanrloaiza I've hosted a conference asking for extended abstract before. The reasons are 1) making it easier to recruit reviewers since they don't have to read long text; 2) allowing works in progress that are pre-drafting-stage.

It worked well for grad students and with very new & hot topics, because people are excited at the opportunity and the opportunities may be rare. But, for professional conferences in well-established areas, people might just pass because they don't want to write an entirely new thing :/

Going through a faculty media training program and getting complimented on my ability to explain philosophy in plain language while making it sound worthy of time really makes me realize how much I've had to justify philosophy of science to philosophers, scientists, and randos in the past.

Like, lol, the "curve ball" question of "do you think this is something consumers should think about?" is nowhere near the top 50 aggressive questions I've gotten on this topic. I can handle 10 variations of "what's the point of philosophy anyway" in stride and with a smile.