Matt Panhans @mpanhans@librem.one

I guess I'd be pissed off too if I spent all that money for a private jet and then found out it didn't actually make me invisible.

Huh, first post. Let's go with a good one! I am quite pleased to announce that my book Ujamaa’s Army: The Creation and Evolution of the Tanzania People’s Defence Force 1964-1979 is now officially under contract with Ohio's War and Militarism in African History series. Look for it in print in 2023!

Just thought that the radiant Rebecca Luker singing “My White Knight” would make a good first real post.

Aviv Nevo is the new chief economist at the FTC! This is a serious economist joining an agency that wants to deprivilege economic analysis. How will it work out? Will Aviv teach the Commissioners economics or will the Commissioners convert Aviv to getting along without it?

Be kind, since everyone you meet is fighting a tough battle.

One question was on how to set up your own course textbooks. I'll be offering a workshop on how to set up online textbooks using quarto and #rstats in the new year (I'll announce it here).

You can also fork the repository for our curent book template if you have some experience with github.

https://psyteachr.github.io/template/

I really couldn't have asked for a better clip to close out my intro to sociology class this semester. Thankful to hear Tressie McMillan Cottom on public space, social media, and the value of curiosity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQH9a9W5QP0

Did you know Monopoly was invented by a woman named Elizabeth Magie in 1903?

Originally ‘The Landlord’s Game,’ it was designed as a protest against the big monopolists of her time like Carnegie & Rockefeller.

But it was Charles Darrow, an unemployed salesman, who eventually sold it to Parker Brothers after playing a version.

Parker Brothers credited Monopoly with saving their company. Magie died in 1948 without recognition. Darrow became very wealthy & his legend lives on. #history #women

Next generation of GPT bot rumored to so realistic that when you ask it to write something important to meet a deadline it goes ahead and cleans your house.

The only things on this map are railroads!
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/lj4wqt/the_railroads_of_the_world_oc/

"Intangible gift ideas with open source in mind"

https://opensource.com/article/22/12/open-source-intangible-gift-ideas via @osdc

Austin Goolsbee will be the next president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago! Wow. Many congratulations.

Zotero continues to be the best reference manager around — #FOSS, made by scholars for scholars. Upcoming features (now available for beta testing) include automatic relinking of #mendeley citations, much faster #googledocs integration, and support for #latex math in notes

If you don't use a reference manager yet (or if you're using a for-profit one like Mendeley or EndNote) you can always give #Zotero a whirl: it's free and doesn't lock you in: https://zotero.org

#AcademicWriting

So far I feel as though Mastodon is giving me 70% or 80% of what I liked about Twitter and pretty close to 0% of what I didn’t like.

Surely I can't be the only person whose Spotify Instafest is just the same four pieces of music repeated over and over and over again.

When the Beatles Refused to Play Before Segregated Audiences on Their First U.S. Tour (1964)

https://www.openculture.com/2020/06/when-the-beatles-refused-to-play-before-segregated-audiences-on-their-first-u-s-tour-1964.html

Nice thing about Mastodon: It's one of the extremely rare web pages I visit where my ad blocker doesn't need to do anything.

Inkscape, the free, open source vector drawing program, lets you make lovely drawings. #inkscape #opensource

My co-founder at @spritelyinst (he's Executive Director, I'm CTO) now has an account on the fediverse: @frandallfarmer

Randy also:

- Co-invented JSON with Doug Crockford and Chip Morningstar
- Co-founded the world's *first* major massively multiplayer game / virtual world: Lucasfilms Habitat on the Commodore-freaking-64! (Also the place where the technical term "avatar" came from (borrowed from Sanskrit by Chip, I think)) Watch this wild video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVpulhO3jyc
- Co-runs the open source revival of the original Habitat: https://frandallfarmer.github.io/neohabitat-doc/docs/
- Co-founded Electric Communities. Electric Communities Habitat is where the E programming language came from from which much of Spritely is based. Watch this hilarious but mind-bending video from p2p virtual worlds... in 1997!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNiePoNiyvE
- The compression pass to my expansion pass of communication in the Spritely Networked Communities Institute. Any time things have gotten wordy, you can bet it's from me; any time they're terse and concise, you can bet it's from Randy. Usually we try to combine our skills.

Welcome Randy!

Time to introduce myself. Hello!

I'm an economist, writer and professional nerd. https://timharford.com/

I write books (The Undercover Economist, How To Make The World Add Up, etc).

I present "More or Less" on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service.

My FT column is called "The Undercover Economist"; it's been running since 2005.

I also present "Cautionary Tales", a podcast about learning from other people's mistakes.

Nice to be here.

#Twittermigration #Economics #Writing #introduction