Like most years, a mixed bag for me here. Kidney failure continues to be a truly challenging medical fiasco, with AV fistulas, overnight dialysis, hormone therapies, and much much more. I also continue to feel the severe difficulties of my rheumatoid arthritis, which required a hip replacement in April.
The UK currently has an assisted dying bill going through parliament and I am very conflicted about it. On the one hand, I am a member of DIGNITAS, the organization that supports assisted dying and that runs a “clinic” in Switzerland to which members who are terminally ill can travel to end their lives. I have no desire for the end of my life to be a mess of literally unbearable suffering and nausea, even with palliative care.
People are obsessed with the short-term effects of Covid, prioritising them over the longer-term impacts. “It was just like a minor cold, really”, they say, perhaps not realising that even mild cases of Covid have been shown to cause lasting cognitive impairment. But I also take exception with this comparison to the common cold. Because, for me, a simple cold led to lifelong disability and severe chronic health problems.
This post picks up an argument that I made in [Theses on the Metaphors of Digital-Textual History](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Metaphors-Digital-Textual-History-Stanford-Technologies/dp/1503614883/ref=sr_1_1) about facts and copyright. Namely, that although facts are exempt from copyright, factual status is not necessarily stable. Some thoughts reproduced from the book: The Catch-22 situation in which factuality finds itself is as follows: 1.
There are lots of things that I have learned about kidneys and their functions since BK virus destroyed mine. Kidneys regulate potassium in your blood; they also control phosphate levels; they remove urea from the blood stream; they take excess fluid out of your body and blood; they produce the hormones that stimulate the creation of red blood cells; and a whole host more. Kidneys are the Swiss Army Knives of internal organs.
Research England has dropped the mandate for OA books in its guidance for the next REF, saying that it will, now, apply instead by 2029. It is hard to see, given the extensive trailing of this mandate, what will be different by 2029.
There’s a movement at the moment on social media where angry academic authors are gathering with the intent to boycott Routledge, who are apparently distributing academic works for training in AI. I say: read your publishing contracts. I believe that Routledge’s default agreement certainly allows this.
I am very pleased to say that my book, _Theses on the Metaphors of Digital-Textual History_, is out today!
It's always frustrating to find errors in a work that has already gone to press/been through peer review, but unfortunately my friend Pete Christian has unearthed a few minor mistakes that I want to put out here. Thanks to Pete, who also says that none of this detail affects the overall argument of the text. On p. 154, I’ve made a mistake when quoting Hollander – he says (correctly) that “home” is a Germanic word.
Some remarks that will be presented at the SHARP plenary roundtable: AI in the Communications Circuit. Last week, the CEO of Microsoft’s AI division said, in an interview with CNBC, that “I think that with respect to content that’s already on the open web, the social contract of that content since the ‘90s has been that it is fair use.
A few personal notes on the clamour around OA for books (written from the perspective of [an author of 10 books](https://eve.gd/books/) that are all openly accessible): 1. The REF mandate for books has been argued and trialed over an eight-year period, starting with the 2016 ‘Consultation on the second Research Excellence Framework’, published by the Higher Education Funding Council for England.
