Category Archives: Robert’s posts

Talisman

Posted on July 12, 2022 by Robert Basil

The Paper Hound is “a new, used, and rare book store” on Pender Street in downtown Vancouver. “We don’t specialize in one particular kind of book, but we favour the classic, curious, odd, beautiful, visually arresting, scholarly, bizarre, and whimsical.” … Continue reading →

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Good timing

Posted on June 13, 2022 by Robert Basil

University of Washington professor Kate Starbird and several of her colleagues just published “Repeat Spreaders & Election Delegitimization,” featuring an analysis of their 2020 Election Misinformation dataset, “including 307 false, misleading, exaggerated and/or unsubstantiated claims that sowed doubt in [the … Continue reading →

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Stanford University’s “Writing Matters”

Posted on June 13, 2022 by Robert Basil

My former haunt, Stanford University’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric, has taken down its old Resources page. Happily, though, you can still find online its wonderful “Writing Matters” series, interviews with Stanford professors and students describing “writing’s connection with academic … Continue reading →

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What could go wrong?

Posted on May 27, 2022 by Robert Basil

No Contest friend Chester Wisniewski provides the clearest précis I’ve read regarding the extravagant promises made on behalf of “decentralized blockchains,” in The Gospel of Crypto: A Solution in Search of a Problem. It’s concise, illuminating, and persuasive.

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Prime Yourself

Posted on May 6, 2022 by Robert Basil

There needs to be two of you: you and “you prime.” The latter is an heuristic entity brought into being by you for the purpose of protecting and orienting you. Your “you prime” makes the hard decisions – saying no to … Continue reading →

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Twitter

Posted on April 25, 2022 by Robert Basil

I’m keeping in abeyance any decision I might make on maintaining my presence on Twitter. I’ve been tweeting away since 2008, though I have never been especially prolific. (That said, this platform completely redefined “prolific”!) The place had a few … Continue reading →

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Better

Posted on April 15, 2022 by Robert Basil

When I finally consented, two decades ago, to using the necessary phrase “passive aggressive,” I felt awful, and beaten, like I had fallen off the wagon. But I am clean again! A dear friend employed the phrase defensive envenomater this … Continue reading →

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It’s actually easy

Posted on March 14, 2022 by Robert Basil

… not to do this.

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Not included.

Posted on March 9, 2022 by Robert Basil

Sometimes you have to read a story two or three times to make sure you’re reading it right. As in: A PhD candidate is hoping the University of Alberta changes its practice on publishing theses after hers was rejected for spelling her [Urdu] … Continue reading →

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Information warfare

Posted on February 23, 2022 by Robert Basil

Chester Wisniewski, longtime friend of this blog and principal research scientist at Sophos, has been studying Russian cyber aggression for a very long time. In a new piece he describes the kind of threats we can expect from Russia as … Continue reading →

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