A TCIP Primer and Roadmap for 2026

For most of human history, science has been communicated through the spoken word. Knowledge moved from person to person through oral storytelling and apprenticeship style training. Writing helped to fix ideas in time and allowed for greater reach. Science spread through personal correspondence and in-person gatherings. The invention of the printing press was the beginning of truly widespread knowledge distribution.

A few months back I was invited by Issues in Science and Technology to write a response to The Real Returns on NIH’s Intramural Research | Real Numbers by Jeffrey Alexander and Rossana Zetina-Beale. The reply was published on December 16th, and - no surprises here given my previous article for the Good Science Project - the basic premise is that NIH Intramural Research Program (IRP) data represents an additional return on taxpayer investment.

Appalachian History Series – Pine Mountain Settlement School: A Mountain School on the Crest of Change High on the north slope of Pine Mountain in Harlan County, Kentucky, a narrow valley opens just enough for a campus of stone and timber buildings, gardens, and fields. Since 1913, Pine Mountain Settlement School has watched over that valley and the families who live along Isaac’s Run, Shell Run, and Greasy Creek.

Appalachian History Series – Black Mountain Coal Company and the Camp at Kenvir In a 1946 photograph by Russell Lee, the tipple of Mine 31 rises over a narrow hollow at Kenvir while rows of company houses climb the slope behind it. Men move coal, children and laundry hang on porches, and the whole scene feels at once ordinary and precarious.

por Masiel Hurtado González En la época colonial y buena parte de los siglos posteriores, la Iglesia católica impregnaba casi todos los aspectos de la vida cotidiana. Entre ellos, la familia y la reproducción ocupaban un lugar central. Tener hijos no solo era lo esperado; era considerado un deber moral.

It’s 2026 and so it’s time for another edition of “the papers I selected for a module that I teach”. Previous selections are here (2025, 2024, 2023, 2022). The list serves as a snapshot of interesting papers published in the previous 12 months or so. I hope it’s useful to others who are looking for lists […]

tl;dr: You can now serve map files for CoMaps from your own servers, including local ones. I made a small and simple command-line tool to help you download the maps to your computer and serve them in a local network. CoMaps is a mobile app for Android &

Information & truth. What’s the difference? I’ve always liked this analogy from the world of data science: data is information, but models are truth. Let’s start with the data. This image shows total monthly publications for a particular journal up until mid 2024: On its own, the data doesn’t tell us much that’s interesting. But a little bit of analysis can go a long way here.

R + AI, uv, RAG+Zotero, Quarto books, Codex in Positron, Positron assistant &

Appalachian History Series – Blackjewel: How One Coal Company Turned Appalachian Mines Into Bankruptcy Assets On strip mine benches above eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia, Blackjewel looked like any other late era coal operator. Conveyor belts crossed hollow mouths. Rusting loaders sat beside black ponds. Permit numbers were nailed to posts at the edge of steep, gray highwalls. On paper, though, Blackjewel was something different.