He tends toward extreme optimism about humanity which can be a nice change from constant doom but also rings hollow and feels trite sometimes, depending on my mood.

The Years of Rice and Salt changed my brain

Isn’t that the same as “organizing a campaign”?

Academic publishers are parasites.

I have been working through a textbook this week that has a copyleft statement on every page, and was written by a government scientist who did not get paid to do it. When you access it through the publisher website there is a copyright and they’re charging $200 for access.

Replacing the human expert with a word-guessing machine is a logical progression in their unabashed rent seeking.