Paul Sutton @zleap@social.cleverlibre.org

"Digitizing books can spur demand for physical copies" --Academic paper

"Their main findings: Digitization can boost sales of physical books by up to 8% by stimulating demand through online discovery. The increase in sales was found to be stronger for less popular books and even spilled over to a digitized author's nondigitized works. "

Yup. but now academic presses are demanding people stop checking out a book a maximum of 26 times a year. 26 times a year globally.

https://phys.org/news/2023-10-digitizing-spur-demand-physical.html

The medium is the message

Almost everything I post on Mastodon gets at least a reply, and often a conversation. On Bluesky and Threads, that’s rare. Again. I have many more followers here, but it was true even when I didn’t have many. It’s just a different culture. People elsewhere seem to be waiting for those services to evolve more, while people here are actually using what we have.

You weren't expecting that, were you? 🤣

#jokes #funny #humor

I have many thoughts and opinions about many things but have started to think there is no point trying to express them on social media platforms whose formats/algorithms effectively require — and only reward — a severe reductionism that is destructive & helping ruin the world.

The great Scottish physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell died #onthisday in 1879. He was only 48 years old.

Maxwell was responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and light as different manifestations of the same phenomenon. Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism have been called the "second great unification in physics" [1] (where the first one had been realized by Isaac Newton).

A few of my notes on Maxwell's equations are here: https://davidmeyer.github.io/physics/maxwells_equations.pdf. The LaTeX source is here: https://www.overleaf.com/read/fdtbdjmvtryx. As always, questions/comments/corrections/* greatly appreciated.

#maxwell #maxwellsequations #electromagnetism #math #maths #physics

References
--------------
[1] "Maxwell's grand unification", https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/123329

I've been saying for years: People are sitting in jail right now on deepfaked evidence. We just won't find out until they're exonerated 50 years from now and given like $200 for their trouble.

Someone once registered a throwaway email with one of my nicknames and sent a bomb threat from it. If cops and a judge fell for that, they'll fall for a deepfake. Every time.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/steak-umm-vegans-deepfake

https://youtu.be/eIfv22BQ1Y0

UK ‘in violation of international law’ over poverty levels, says UN envoy

Poverty levels in the UK are “simply not acceptable” and the government is violating international law, the United Nations’ poverty envoy has said ahead of a visit to the country this week, when he will urge ministers to increase welfare spending.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/nov/05/uk-poverty-levels-simply-not-acceptable-says-un-envoy-olivier-de-schutter

PC World - November 1996
https://archive.org/details/pcworld1411unse_0/page/10/mode/2up

I don't care if there is a Hamas operative in that orphanage. I do not want you to carpet bomb the orphanage, just send in some troops to get the operative. Killing the orphans is genocide and I will never approve of this.

Football weather ☀️

@GilletteStadium@twitter.com | #ForeverNE

We are witnessing the biggest global anti-war protests since the Iraq war in 2003.

(Pictures from Washington DC, London, Berlin, Jakarta)