I've spent the past few weeks tracking down answers to the questions: "When and why did paper become white and why was white paper so valued?" for my work on [_Paper Thin_](https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/31744/). Here are some of my very abridged findings. This sounds as though it's a trivial question. Obviously, we think, it must have something to do with contrast and ensuring the best legibility. This is definitely not the case.

It’s an exciting time in the OA book world because many experiments are coming to fruition. We’ve seen MIT’s recent D2O offering; Michigan has a new membership programme; punctum books and Open Book Publishers are on the go; Springer is piloting a scheme with Berkeley;

This morning I have been looking at the UK government's so-called "[Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill](https://bills.parliament.uk/Publications/41479/Documents/212/21012.pdf)". The politics of this are extremely complicated, but suffice it to say that when the Minister for HE ends up having to say that [the legislation will help get Holocaust deniers onto

This week, [cOAlition S endorsed the Subscribe to Open (S2O) business model](https://www.coalition-s.org/coalition-s-endorses-the-s2o-model-of-funding-oa/). This group of international funders is committed to a complete transition to open-access publishing.

I posted, a short while ago, about the [reprinting of OA books under CC licenses](https://eve.gd/2021/03/02/oa-books-being-reprinted-under-cc-by-license/). This is, of course, totally legal and allowed under the more liberal Creative Commons licenses. However, it will, I feel, alienate academics from OA. I think that they will consider it derogatory treatment of their work.

I love my Moog Minitaur synth. It's a great little bass station that packs a punch. However, I have been facing some issues using its full functionality. Namely, there's a software plugin that enables you to tweak all the settings from the DAW. It controls the synth over midi via USB.

Do you think that the Subscribe-To-Open model could be applied to new academic presses who have no backlist? Yes. The Open Library of Humanities, which I run, does not have a backlist but works on this model. It’s a great deal of work to set up and articulating the value proposition is more challenging, but it’s still doable. Thank you for your presentation. You mention usage from 129 different countries during spring 2020.

I was thinking idly today -- and probably in a wildly unoriginal way -- about some of the disputes about subscriptions to software and the politics of this model.

A friend chucked me an old Crumar Bit99 synthesizer from the 1980s. It's a beast! Lovely bass sounds. Totally unusable interface. See figure A. However, when I received it, the unit was in a bad state. Terrible fuzzy white noise sound along with every note. It sounded as though it was totally wrecked. It's actually, though, very easy to restore.

Non-vulnerable people perhaps don't understand why the government advice to shielders is so frightening. I think I can give a flavour though: 1. Shielding is to be eased on the 1st April. Nobody in the "extremely clinically vulnerable" group -- whom the virus would likely kill -- will have had their second jab by this point. Infection levels are still around 5,000-6,000 new cases per day, nationwide. This is not low.

I have to admit, today, that I was wrong about the risk of others reprinting open-access monographs produced under a Creative Commons license. An outfit called "Saint Philip Street Press" has reprinted (on demand) the entire catalogues of Open Book Publishers, Ubiquity Press, UCL Press, and others.