\n![\"A](\"https://grantwitness.org/content/nih/updates/methodology/reporter-terminated-screenshot.png\")
\n
\n\nNIH is the most complex of our pipelines due to the number and variety of data sources and because we attempt to track disruptions to supplements separately from \"parent awards\".
\nBriefly, our data sources include submissions to our reporting form; manually tracked information such as court documents, news articles, and direct communications; RePORTER; TAGGS; a spreadsheet of terminated awards provided by HHS; and USAspending. Below I'll go into some detail about how some of these data sources are used.
\nBecause each budget year of an NIH award has a different full award number and potentially a different FAIN (federal award identification number), we use the institution code and the 6 digits after it as a primary key to \"connect\" information across years. Supplements can be distinguished from their \"parent awards\" in some data sources, but not all, by having a suffix containing \"S\" in their full award number (suffix is excluded in the award FAIN). We currently treat each support year of a supplement as unique, because it is unclear if it is guaranteed that the suffix -01S1 and -02S1, for example, are two years of the \"same\" supplement and not two different supplements granted in two consecutive years1.
\nBecause AHRQ and NIH awards appear in the same data sources, both agencies' grants go through the same status determination process and are only separated out at the end of our data pipeline. The main difference with AHRQ is that these awards do not have supplements, so no subaward ID is listed in the final data, and that for AHRQ only we list awards that have experienced renewal delays over 60 days as their only form of disruption.
\nWe capture regular snapshots of award data on reporter.nih.gov through their provided API. RePORTER is one of the few sources with supplement-level information. We use this for award/sub-award metadata (e.g.\u00a0title, abstract, grantee information, project start and end dates, etc.) including as a source of award amount for supplements, as they are not broken out in USAspending, our main source of financial data on grants. With our snapshots, we are able to capture when the \"Terminated\u2014departmental authority\" text is added or removed from the web view of an award. We use the addition of this flag as a signal of termination and its removal as a signal of reinstatement. We do manual review of these signals as we have found that this flag can be added or removed for reasons unrelated to political targeting of awards.
\n\nWe also snapshot TAGGS data regularly and we use TAGGS primarily as another source of award metadata. TAGGS data does contain a signal of termination\u2014a \"TERMINATION\" action type\u2014however, it is not always clear what this means. Because TAGGS data only shows awards by FAIN and not full award number, it is unclear when a \"TERMINATION\" event indicates only a supplement has been terminated. Sometimes, the \"TERMINATION\" flag is added to a deobligation event after a termination as well. These flags are relatively new and when they were first introduced, we saw them back-filled to past actions in the TAGGS data. Because of these compilations, we do not use the addition or removal of a \"TERMINATION\" flag in TAGGS data as a signal for termination for NIH or AHRQ awards.
\n![\"A](\"https://grantwitness.org/content/nih/updates/methodology/taggs-terminated-screenshot.png\")
\nEvery Friday, someone at HHS exports an excel spreadsheet of terminated awards as a PDF and uploads it to the web (https://taggs.hhs.gov/Content/Data/HHS_Grants_Terminated.pdf). We parse the data from this PDF weekly and use the addition or removal of awards from this PDF as a signal of termination or reinstatement.
\nNOTE: The format of this PDF changed on Feb 20, 2026 such that the PDF no longer includes full award numbers (it now only shows the FAIN which does not distinguish supplements), but prior to that it showed clearly whether a supplement only or a full award was terminated. Because of this, we currently only use additions/removals from this list prior to Feb 20, 2026 in our status determination although we use the newer PDFs for manual verification of terminations and reinstatements.
\nusaspending.gov provides an API that we use to gather award data regulary. We use this source primarily for metadata including grantee information, grant assistance listing (CFDA), grant notice of funding announcement (NOFO), and total obligated and total outlaid amounts. We also track changes to project end dates (i.e.\u00a0project end date moved earlier, a \"cutoff\", or later, a \"reextension\"), although we do not use this as a signal of termination for NIH or AHRQ awards. These data are only at the FAIN level so information specific to supplements is not available.
\nFile C is released roughly once a month (except that Sep/Oct are combined into one release).\u00a0 We use this source primarily for outlay actions.
\nAn award is marked as terminated if it has been reported as such directly to us by a PI or via a trusted source, if it has gained the \"Terminated\u2014departmental authority\" flag on RePORTER, or if it has been added to the TAGGS PDF.\u00a0 It is only marked as currently terminated if it has not since been restored.
\nAn award is reinstated if it has been reported as such directly to us by a PI, appeared in a court document as being ordered to be reinstated, if we know it was terminated due to institutional targeting and the institution has since capitulated to the Trump administration, if the \"Terminated\u2014departmental authority\" flag on RePORTER has been removed, or if it has been removed from the TAGGS PDF. Additionally, terminated awards that have since received renewals but have no other reinstatement signals are marked as reinstatements with the latest renewal date as the reinstatement date. Awards are only marked as currently reinstated if they have not since been disrupted. Reinstatements are confirmed by verifying that an award has received outlays since the reinstatement.
\nTo determine awards with frozen funds, we rely on reporting of institutional targeting and outlay data in File C. Since there are many reasons an award might receive no outlays in a particular fiscal period2 besides a targeted freeze of funds, we apply a strict set of criteria to identify frozen awards:
\nAn award is marked as \"unfrozen (unconfirmed)\" when institutional targeting ends (i.e.\u00a0the institution capitulated to the Trump administration) and is marked as \"unfrozen (confirmed)\" once it receives an outlay.
\nTo calculate the funds obligated before disruption we take the award's current total obligations and subtract the sum of obligations since the first termination or freeze date. Similarly, for funds spent before disruption, we take the current total outlays and subtract the sum of all outlays since the first termination or freeze. The outlay and obligation events come from File C, while the current total obligated and outlaid numbers are from the more regularly updating USAspending awards data.\u00a0 As a result, these estimates may fluctuate week-to-week.
\nBecause USAspending data is not broken down by full award number, we must do something different than above for disrupted supplements. For supplements, we use the total value reported by RePORTER and assume constant linear spending over the award's one-year budget period to determine the estimated funds spent and remaining at disruption. If both a supplement and its \"parent award\" appear in our data as being disrupted, we subtract the supplement amounts from the parent award amounts so that column sums are still reliable and do not \"double-count\" awards.
\nNOTE: The total funds promised for an NIH or AHRQ award is generally greater than the current total obligations as multi-year awards are obligated one year at a time with non-competitive renewals. However, the total promised amount for NIH or AHRQ awards is not reported publicly. We are currently working on an algorithm to estimate the total funds promised, but for now the funds remaining before disruption is an underestimate.
\nNIH categorizes grants by research topic through the Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization (RCDC) Process. However, the RCDC categorization process typically lags behind grant awards by months, as they are assigned in bulk once per year. We developed a machine learning model to predict which RCDC categories apply to grants that don't yet have official NIH categorizations. These RCDC categories are in the \"Spending Categories\" column and an indicator for if they are NIH-assigned or predicted is in the \"Spending Categories Predicted by GW?\" column. For more information on this machine learning model, see our post on the topic.
\nCompared to previous administrations, the number of NIH and AHRQ awards not being renewed on time is increasing. NIH typically approves projects for multiple years and then each year's funding is released as a \"non-competing continuation\" following the submission of standard progress reports. We use award budget end dates and project end dates to detect when an award is more than 60 days overdue for a renewal and when it is finally renewed after such a delay. Missing fiscal years within a project period are also counted as a renewal delay. For NIH, these events are noted in the event history, however a delayed renewal alone is not enough to get an NIH award marked as \"Disrupted\" as even prior to the Trump administration there were hundreds of awards that experienced delays of over 60 days. For AHRQ, 100+ awards with renewal delays of many months were eventually mass terminated, therefore we do show individual AHRQ awards experiencing overdue renewals in our data table as they may be at risk for future terminations.
\nRead more about deciphering NIH award numbers here.\u21a9\ufe0e
Fiscal periods correspond to months of the fiscal year, starting in October (period 1) through September (period 12). However, outlay data for October and November are always reported together as part of period 2.\u21a9\ufe0e
![\"A](\"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Video_Games_Go_Choral.webp\")
\n\nLondon's musical entertainment scene has something for everyone - from long-running blockbuster shows to no-name bands in dingy basements. Somewhere in the middle is monophonic plainchant versions of the Halo theme sung in a church.
\n\nThe acoustics at St Martin in the Field are echoey. That makes it rather hard to hear the amplified announcement to turn off our phones, but makes an a cappella chorus absolutely soar. The choir of London Voices have sung on just about every movie you've watched and game you've played - so they're no stranger to more modern compositions.
\n\nThe programme strictly alternated between songs from popular games are some more traditional verses. As a tone-deaf musical ignoramus, I found some of the pieces hard to distinguish from each other and, perhaps, just a little repetitive. Delightfully, the choir is generous with its solos. Far too often these events have one main star while everyone else glares daggers at them. Here it seemed quite the opposite, with a range of voices brought to the forefront.
\n\nParts of the programme are a little odd. While Pilentze Pee is an incredible song and sung extremely well, I don't think there's much to tie it to The Wind Waker. Of course, the highlight was a cheeky rendition of \"Still Alive\" from Portal. An excellent arrangement sung with joy and gusto.
\n\nAn eclectic and interesting event, marred only by the uncomfortable pews of the church. Truly we must suffer for other people's art!
\n\n![](\"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/themes/edent-wordpress-theme/info/okgo.php?ID=76517&HTTP_REFERER=DOI\"){kind=small}
","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/rbv3f-z4d27","guid":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/?p=76517","image":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Video_Games_Go_Choral.webp","language":"en","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","published_at":1791504000,"rid":"93523-v7d19","summary":"London's musical entertainment scene has something for everyone - from long-running blockbuster shows to no-name bands in dingy basements. Somewhere in the middle is monophonic plainchant versions of the Halo theme sung in a church. The acoustics at St Martin in the Field are echoey.","tags":["/etc/","Gaming","Gig","Review"],"title":"Concert Review: London Voices - Video Games Go Choral","updated_at":1791565350,"url":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/10/concert-review-london-voices-video-games-go-choral/","version":"v1"}},{"document":{"authors":[{"affiliation":[{"id":"https://ror.org/0153tk833","name":"University of Virginia"}],"contributor_roles":[],"family":"Turner","given":"Stephen","url":"https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9140-9028"}],"blog":{"authors":[{"name":"Stephen Turner"}],"community_id":"382941a7-2ffa-41df-8bbb-5f772188517f","created":1780876800,"current_feed_url":null,"description":"A practicing data scientist's take on AI, genomics, biosecurity, and the ways AI is reshaping how science gets done. Weekly updates from the field. Occasional notes on programming.","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/stephenturner","favicon":"https://rogue-scholar.org/api/communities/382941a7-2ffa-41df-8bbb-5f772188517f/logo","feed_format":"application/rss+xml","feed_url":"https://blog.stephenturner.us/feed","filter":null,"generator":"Substack","home_page_url":"https://blog.stephenturner.us","issn":null,"language":"eng","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","prefix":"10.59350","relative_url":null,"secure":true,"slug":"stephenturner","status":"active","subfield":"1311","title":"Paired Ends","updated":1791556820,"use_api":true},"blog_name":"Paired Ends","blog_slug":"stephenturner","content_html":"![\"\"](\"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ywYU!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F41a4a457-21e4-404a-8cf2-a643189d868e_940x529.webp)
Join me and all of us here in the School of Data Science on Friday, Nov. 13 for Datapalooza 2026, UVA's flagship data science conference celebrating data science in action across disciplines and for the public good.
This year's theme is \"The Future of Work, Powered by Data and People.\" Data science is changing how we work and the decisions we make. As AI becomes more integrated into workplaces, its impact will depend not only on how the technology evolves, but also on the people who build and use it.
Datapalooza will be held Friday, November 13, 8:45pm - 5:45pm here at the University of Virginia School of Data Science in Charlottesville, VA. The main event kicks off at 1pm. Registration is free.
8:45 a.m. \u2014 Registration/Check-In Begins
9:30-10:30 a.m. \u2014 MSDS Online Breakfast
10:30-11:00 a.m. \u2014 Building Tours
10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. \u2014 Mixer for Residential & Online Students
11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. \u2014 Headshots
12:00-1:00p.m. \u2014 Networking Lunch
1:10-1:15 p.m. \u2014 Kickoff
1:15-2:15 p.m. \u2014 Fireside Chat Discussion Panel
2:30-3:30 p.m. \u2014 Breakout Sessions
3:45-4:30 p.m. \u2014 Keynote
4:45-5:45 p.m. \u2014 Reception
We'll kick off the day with a guided conversation with industry leaders which inspires and explores how Data Science and AI are fundamentally changing how we make decisions and how we work. The conversation will explore the evolving role of data science across industry and society. Panelists will consider the reality that the future of work cannot be shaped by technology alone but must be driven by the choices that people make about how technology is developed and put to use.
Breakout 1 | How Do You Become a Data Science Leader?
What does leadership look like in the age of AI? How can leaders harness data and emerging technologies that support teams in making decisions, setting priorities, and driving business. How are leaders thinking about data, AI, and helping to define the human-technology relationship?
Breakout 2 | What Do You Really Want to Know About Working in Data Science?
This is your chance to challenge data science academic and industry leaders to give candid answers and real-world perspectives about what's happening in the field\u2014as well as their personal journey to and through data science. They will be put in the \"hot seat\" by our very own students. How did they get here? What trends, tools, challenges, and opportunities are emerging now and in the future? How is industry/higher education thinking about and addressing AI ethics and safety concerns? And where will people be in all of this? Come curious and ready to engage.
Breakout 3 | How Can a Data Scientist Create and Innovate?
Explore how innovators are using data and AI not simply to analyze what already exists, but to create new possibilities. What emerging tools, ideas and experiences are unfolding, and how might you create and innovate as a student, community member, alumni or industry partner?
Close out Datapalooza with an inspiring keynote on how thoughtful policy and responsible data practices can help communities thrive.
Postdoc Research Showcase During Reception
","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/4yxfj-kdn52","guid":"219590216","image":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ywYU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F41a4a457-21e4-404a-8cf2-a643189d868e_940x529.webp","language":"en","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","published_at":1791504000,"rid":"n31cb-f4s26","summary":"UVA's flagship data science conference will be held at the School of Data Science Friday November 13. This year's theme: The Future of Work, Powered by Data and People. Registration is free.","title":"Datapalooza 2026: The Future of Work, Powered by Data and People","updated_at":1791556949,"url":"https://blog.stephenturner.us/p/datapalooza-2026","version":"v1"}},{"document":{"authors":[{"contributor_roles":[],"family":"Hunger","given":"Francis"}],"blog":{"authors":[{"name":"Carrier-bag Staff"}],"community_id":"0f516bef-eddb-49f7-afc4-b5fc2468ee95","created":1749168000,"current_feed_url":null,"description":"Critical writing and research on technology, AI, art and digital culture, run by Hito Steyerl and Francis Hunger at AdBK Munich","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/carrier_bag","favicon":"https://rogue-scholar.org/api/communities/0f516bef-eddb-49f7-afc4-b5fc2468ee95/logo","feed_format":"application/atom+xml","feed_url":"https://carrier-bag.net/feed/atom","filter":null,"generator":"WordPress","home_page_url":"https://carrier-bag.net/","issn":null,"language":"eng","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","prefix":"10.59350","relative_url":null,"secure":true,"slug":"carrier_bag","status":"active","subfield":"1702","title":"carrier-bag.net","updated":1791551869,"use_api":true},"blog_name":"carrier-bag.net","blog_slug":"carrier_bag","content_html":"Five practice reports illustrate the scope of research and studying within the Emergent Digital Media class (Prof. Dr. Hito Steyerl, Dr. Francis Hunger) at the Academy of Visual Arts, Munich. They foreground examples of generative practices using machine learning techniques, colloquially known as 'AI', leaving aside other diverse artistic strategies (conceptual, performative, video essay, etc.) negotiated in class. https://www.generativemedia.net
\n\n\n\nThe scope of the reports by Vasilii Vikhlaev, Chloe McFadden, Guillaume Menguy, Nikita Sazonov and Otto Ostermann reaches from direct inquiry into techniques and tools to the metaphorical reflection on societies 'AI' phantasms. A commonality of the diverse approaches is that they probe how systems work, instead of just using the outputs as finished results. By that the artists develop a critique of the dominant narratives about 'AI', and they uncover the material dependencies and massive infrastructures (data, energy consumption, data centers) behind the stochastic generation of images, sound and text.
\n\n\n\nThis report addresses two registers of my work with machine learning in sound: the inductive one, meaning pre-trained models, and the deductive one, meaning physical modeling. The question behind both is how to synthesize sounds that are not present in any database. I'll introduce three projects and deliver an outlook on future research.
\n\n\n\nThe first project is Aggressor’s Tongues (2025/26), a 10-channel audio experiment of 41 min that was exhibited at the Kunstbau of Lenbachhaus, Munich. The project began with audio material of scraped recordings of Russian propaganda speech from the ongoing war against Ukraine: voices saturated with hate and domination. The machine listens, so I don't have to. The Montreal Forced Aligner (MFA) algorithm takes an audio file and its transcript and returns time stamps for every word and phoneme, normally as a preparation step for phonetics research or for building speech datasets. I used its output as the material itself: the piece works on the phoneme grid, not on the meaning of the speech. The grid also set the segmentation of the training data for variational autoencoders (VAE), so the model could only learn units below the level of meaning. The VAEs were activated using the RAVE framework, originally developed at the Institut de recherche et coordination acoustique/musique (IRCAM).
During the process, I discarded an earlier approach with emotion recognition (openSMILE, Praat), because the results were too illustrative and literal. Instead, I focused on decoder artifacts. I displayed them rather than smoothed them out, to keep the apparatus audible. For the same reason the drifts through the latent space were deterministic, several phasors in irrational ratios, so that the trajectory never repeats. I wanted to hear and make audible the system, not the sounds it was meant to produce.
The second project is titled, vzkazy dom\u016f (2025) and was developed in cooperation with Andrea Vesel\u00e1. It's format is 7.1 surround sound with a length of 10 hours, and was developed for the former Radio Free Europe building in the frame of Public Art Munich 2025. Starting point was a short found-footage recording of a historical radio signal being intentionally jammed to interfere with its broadcast, going from signal to noise. We slowed this recording down and Andrea contributed a reactive voice interpretation. Then she listened to her own recorded voice through an earpiece and sang to it, close enough in pitch that the two voices interfere and produce interfering oscillations, called 'beatings' (Schwebungen). That material became the training data for the VAE. The preparation of the input was prioritized over any selection at the output, emphasizing the data: the beatings were already in the training material, as a measurable modulation, and not added posterior as an effect.
\n\n\n\nFor the third project, Composite (2026, in progress), I turned a synthetization technique that involves no machine learning at all, called 'physical modeling'. The work is based on the composite plastic coins of Transnistria, the first plastic coins in general circulation. With Modalys, a generative tool developed at IRCAM, sound is computed from the physical properties of a body (size, density, Young's modulus). Unlike classical sound synthesis (additive, subtractive, FM) or sample-manipulation approaches, physical modeling simulates the sound-producing behavior of an instrument itself. This makes it possible to capture sonic qualities that traditional synthesis techniques reproduce only with difficulty. As part of the exploratory artistic process, I went from small data to no data. Physical modeling uses established physical laws from material sciences and acoustics, so it can compute objects that never existed. Compared with machine learning approaches, physical modeling is able to produce sound without examples. Machine learning for audio is almost always inductive, needing data, so the availability of data decides what can be produced at all. For rare, local or non-existent material that is a hard limit. I did not take this step to abandon machine learning techniques, but to run both methods side by side and hear the difference.
For the machine learning process, I am building a dataset of the real coin sounds to train a VAE on them and drive that model with the computed sounds using physical modeling: the input is encoded into the latent space and decoded again, so the output carries the statistics of the training data. The input cannot lie inside that distribution: Modalys computes an idealized body, without a surface, without the other coins, without a room. Some of the material constants I set, do not belong to any real object either. The statistical signature of a real object is imposed on an object that never existed. Input and output will be presented as pairs, not blended, to keep the model readable. The inverse is planned too: physically modeled sounds as training data, real coin sounds as input driving the model.
This report reflects upon my practice-based technique, prompt-shifting. It is both a practical technique for methodically probing the biases and patterns of text-to-image models, and a conceptual intervention that opposes magical technoscientistic framings.
\n\n\n\nPrompt-shifting enables artists to probe commercial text-to-image platforms without stabilizing their rhetorical claims and purported abilities of dream-making and superior accuracy. Rather than visualizing our imaginations, this technique shifts attention away from outputs towards the processes and contexts of their production. Using the same seed, the artist slowly and methodically introduces and varies the influence of certain subjects in the prompt. By noticing what shifts and emerges overtime, the artist can speculate and sense how learnt patterns are activated within generative AI models in ways that manifest visually.
\n\n\n\nThis technique emerged from my broader research project that attempts to engage and disrupt the 'magical technoscientism' of generative AI: a fusion of magic and technoscientism that affords models the ability to simultaneously create miraculous and scientifically authoritative outputs. In commercial text-to-image rhetoric, prompts are imagined as granting users the gift of dream-making while appeals to 'prompt-adherence' and 'accuracy' position prompting as a science. Such a dissonant fusion positions models as both passive conduits of human imagination and objective authorities of visual representations. Prompting guides and practices frequently frame the misalignment of expectation and output, not as a limit of the system but as the user's failure to conform to its representational logic. The problem is how the user asked, not what the system can do.
\n\n\n\nThis redistribution of misalignment creates a magical technoscientistic perception of text-to-image models in which prompts are both magical phrases \u2013 'open sesame' \u2013 and formulas: dog + beach + realistic + 35mm film – people = output image. Via this magical perception, positive and negative prompts are imagined as adding or subtracting certain influences and features from an output image. Such explanations reduce image generation to a representational exchange of words for images, obscuring the operations through which outputs arise. Thinking operationally, what does it mean to 'add' or 'subtract' an influence from the creation of an image? Prompt-shifting attends to such a line of inquiry, redirecting attention away from representational desire and towards operational curiosity. For example, methodically introducing negative and positive terms to a prompt foregrounds the operativity of the model and how terms are embedded and mutually determine the trajectory of the denoising process.
\n\n\n\nPrompt-shifting thus enables a sensing of image features not as discrete and universal parameters, but as relationally, socially and operationally situated. This situated sensing may also disrupt framings of bias as an issue that can be resolved through the acquisition of more data. Prompt-shifting both requires a reflection upon the situated conditions of production enacted by text-to-image applications (across models, society and time) and demonstrates how bias manifests visually within generative images in strange and unexpected ways.
\n\n\n\nMy research about chatbots and autocompletion investigated the economies of word-completions and its aesthetic consequences. For my own exploratory and experimental use, I built a little text editor, not much more complex than the default Windows notepad, which runs a Large Language Model (LLama-3.2-3B) fine-tuned on a small, curated literary corpus (about 15MB of chosen modern English literature) to provide autocompletion while typing. The editor is offline and local; the model’s initial weights along with the Low-Rank Adaptation finetune (LoRA) are merged into a single file that can be loaded on a laptop.
\n\n\n\nI started to play around, writing narratives with this autocompletion system. The Ctrl and Shift keys are used to cycle deterministically through seeds, and parameters like 'temperature', and 'context size' are exposed for slightly more control over the model’s sensitivity. When typing, the latest 4000 characters are fed to the model as a prompt, and the model continuously predicts a likely continuation for the text based on this sliding context window.
\n\n\n\nRecurring narrative patterns emerge from the writing; many stories mentioned in passing the death of a close relative. Many of them were stories about friends with eccentric personalities, paranoid, conspiratorial, or otherwise consumed by esoteric beliefs. My own interactions with them were often those of a disengaged witness. Stories unfolded over years and decades with brisk jumps across time, and many contained fastidious and often invented literary references. I was writing a novel in many of these stories, and many of these stories ended up being much funnier, more surprising and strangely subversive to me than what I could have imagined myself.
\n\n\n\nIn a next step, I also developed a simple logging system. It turns out that I was writing less than 20% of the text, letting my model suggest the rest of the words. But the continuations I chose among the model’s suggestions were almost never the first one, and on average I cycled between 7 seeds for every next sentence.
\n\n\n\nThere is a larger context for this experiment: Modern LLMs are deployed in many ways, most of them in disguise; as mediators, taking in structured inputs and dispatching commands to tools, as content moderators, call-center agent assistants, legal reviewers, evaluators for other models, as editors, writing blurbs and summaries from unstructured text data, as agents crawling and gathering, making pull requests, so on and so forth. But the most publicly exposed and consumer-facing deployment of LLMs (though by far not the costliest, either in token expenditure or thermal devastation), is the chatbot.
\n\n\n\nLLM-based chatbots, of course, are just a formatting trick. What is presented to the user as a series of distinct messages, emulating the interface of messaging applications, is actually a single text file, to which markers and delimiters (<|im_start|>) are invisibly inserted to separate the queries from the inferences, the human text from the autocompletion. The website from which the LLM is accessed hides those markers and uses them to style the text as an exchange.
\n\n\n\nModels before ChatGPT, like GPT-2 were mostly accessed autocompletion tools akin to my own program. The logic of autocompletion is open and ambiguous: the model and the user share a string of words, and it is unspecified whether their respective inputs are answers, continuations, suggestions, setups, punchlines, lists, stories, provocations. It is unclear which words belong to which participant they enter into a kind of mutual alienation. Reading the texts back, I can no longer distinguish what I wrote from what was predicted. For a product, this ambiguity cannot be tolerated. The chatbot therefore solves a problem of economy, giving a precise answer to the question: what kind of service is provided by a word prediction machine?
\n\n\n\n'Be informative; be truthful; be relevant; be clear'. We can understand the chatbot as a system designed to follow exactly the maxims of Paul Grice's cooperative principle in communication. But to follow those maxims exactly is a way of misunderstanding them, interpreting them as prescriptive rather than descriptive. In fact, one of their functions is to establish a framework for communication theory in which participants are also able to communicate through the violation of the maxims. I would
suggest that the turn-based pseudo-dialogues we have grown accustomed to with so-called 'chatbots' introduces a friction which is also a fiction: this manufactured discontinuity makes the experience of working with a language model seem much slower, more instrumental or even confrontational than it really is. It forecloses the possibility of approaching a complex and potentially surprising arrangement of neurons with anything but a request.
Ironically, autocompletion can more easily be made to feel like a conversation, one in which the generation of new ideas cannot be attributed to a single thread of questions and answers. It rather becomes an experimental procedure of fumbling in the dark, full of ruptures and quips and forks, one that tends naturally to veer off track as contexts slide, without the desperate sycophancy of an intelligence alienated to some undisclosed charter, the procrustean system prompt that always redirects the stochastic towards that which it believes will be 'helpful'. Sometimes, the most helpful thing is just the first one that comes to mind.
\n\n\n\nMy relationship with generative tools and machine learning involves experimenting with various black-boxed tools. By iterating and reiterating multiple prompts to understand how the models work and how far they can be pushed, I test 'AI' as an interface of confrontation. I'll shortly discuss three of these confrontations.
\n\n\n\nFirst, generative AI might be treated as a tool confronted with other tools. The pipelines of editing/ animating/ compressing software are extended by generative tools of still and video generation. In this way, I am testing whether machine-learning ecosystems can be used as effectively as other tools in the routine practice of filmmaking. These experiments can be extended to a broader perspective of industrial cinematography, specifically ad-making, where AI outputs are becoming more widespread. In these practices, pretrained AI models are used to replace existing tools. They function as machines of imitation. Comparing generative AI to other tools, I also investigate the potential of generative tools to resemble the machinic cinema gaze of the early 20th century.
\n\n\n\nThe second line of confrontation is the conflict between analogue and digital technologies. AI tools currently represent the frontier of denying analogue technology its rights, creating an unsurmountable divide between the two worlds. At the same time, generative AI has given rise to stronger analogue nostalgia as a form of escapism from the contemporaneity. Film director Guillermo del Toro's recent statement, 'Fuck AI,' is very characteristic, considering the outdated nature of his alternative to machine learning techniques. Denying the current situation would only result in ugly visual effects, such as those in del Toro's Frankenstein (2025). My research method to this issue is to let these two worlds collide and let analogue and emergent digital engage in a sort of symbiosis, finding solutions in hybridization rather than in the pure-line genetic separation of one from the other.
\n\n\n\nThe final line of confrontation is cognition: recognizing the overlaps between human and other forms of cognition that can be bridged, or at least interfaced, by AI. For example, I use generative AI technology to move closer to the agency of plants and animals by using their various outputs as a source or starting point for generation. Additionally, AI is a tool that allows us to better understand disenchanted human cognition and brings us closer to something resembling the hallucinations of generative tools.
\n\n\n\nWhenever one engages with the discourse surrounding AI data centers and their adventurous materializations there is a wild mix of valid concerns, misinformation and conspiracies, creating a very muddy framing of the conversation. Especially in the last five years the states in the US have seen a massive increase in permitted planning and construction of data centers. The giant tech corporations produce their frontier AI models right there in the Midwest and Southern USA, a region more commonly known for its rurality, heavy industry and agriculture. The rapid speed of new construction has led to opposition in local councils and permitting committees by the public. There are concerns over environmental impact, false economic promises, privacy and spatial infringements and while a lot of these are valid claims, a few other things come up in interviews with attendees. Starting from more absurd conspiracy ideologies of surveillance to simple contradictions with their individual consumption of AI agents and the infrastructure necessary for them being trained in their direct vicinity.
\n\n\n\nThe German comedian Loriot discusses a similar paradigm in his episode 'Loriot VI' (1978). It features a Christmas special, in which the Hoppenstedt family welcomes a new technological novelty into their home. The parents give their child a nuclear power plant miniature model that is framed as an educational consumer product. Its scale and abstraction of mechanisms and environment suggest that nuclear technology can be understood, assembled and controlled easily. Loriot uses it as a reference to the light-hearted political embracement of nuclear power in the late 1950s. However, when the model explodes due to a 'mistake' in the assembly, it tears a hole through the floor onto the neighbors dining table. The easiness immediately turned out to be a facade, but the Hoppenstedts just cover up the hole with wrapping paper and dismiss the neighbors' complaint as petty-minded. The confidence in their own behavior survives even when the consequences of their actions become seemingly impossible to overlook.
\n\n\n\nWith people embracing AI services, but being generally opposed to an AI data center near them, a similar contradiction arises. We get the harsh criticism towards the impact of data centers, but even the critics and the impacted welcome the benefits of the infrastructure by self admittedly using AI, while protesting for the data center to be somewhere else. Loriot's abstracted stereotypes of the technology optimistic solutionist and the neighbors' insistence on undisturbed comfort therefore collapse into the same person. They reveal that the discussion is little different today, just more convoluted. This of course does not render all objections to the arising issues obsolete, but showcases how detached our understanding is to the underlying infrastructure until that infrastructure materializes in front of us. Even then the consequence barely moves into changes of personal behavior.
\n\n\n\nThe AI infrastructure in question also has history with the industry beforehand. Larger parts of the AI data center industry are based on build sites, electricity access and operational experience developed through industrial crypto mining. In recent years, a variety of crypto mining companies have announced agreements to adapt their facilities for AI computing infrastructure. Or they restructured as expert and advisory companies for planning, converting and developing build sites for AI datacenters, while crypto mining itself fell out of economic relevance. The enormous construction happening in the name of AI, which hugely absorbed the crypto infrastructure, leaves a few questions:
\n\n\n\nWill data centers be the new empty shopping malls one day? Can this level of demand for the technology persist or ever be met again? Will there be something to absorb the infrastructure left behind by the industry, once parts of it fall out of relevance? Can we allow tech companies to entirely buy out the energy of publicly funded plants, monopolizing it? How do we deal with power and power plants that have contractually disappeared from the grid for at least the next two decades? Should we allow Google to run its own nuclear power plant, with a fatal accident record, just to train Gemini? Do we not care that Talen Energy is using this trend to expand their nuclear market, for data centers, in cooperation with Amazon?
\n\n\n\nFor the installation Spielen wir das sch\u00f6ne neue Spiel? (2026), I have reproduced the model of Loriot's Hoppenstedt-family episode with a slight twist and added a hyperscale data center to it.
\n\n\n\n","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/ee5jy-h3077","guid":"https://carrier-bag.net/?p=3531","image":"https://carrier-bag.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/research.jpg","language":"en","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","published_at":1790812800,"rid":"7jxc9-pgy09","summary":"Introduction Five practice reports illustrate the scope of research and studying within the Emergent Digital Media class (Prof. Dr. Hito Steyerl, Dr. Francis Hunger) at the Academy of Visual Arts, Munich.","tags":["Experiments"],"title":"Using generative methods for artistic experiments","updated_at":1791552304,"url":"https://carrier-bag.net/using-generative-methods-for-artistic-experiments/","version":"v1"}},{"document":{"authors":[{"contributor_roles":[],"family":"Julia Hoffmann","given":"Petra Mensing"}],"blog":{"authors":null,"community_id":"db0d8909-9e37-46d0-b16c-0551f575e86b","created":1749772800,"current_feed_url":null,"description":"Das Blog der TIB \u2013 Leibniz-Informationszentrum Technik und Naturwissenschaften und Universit\u00e4tsbibliothek","doi":"https://doi.org/10.65527/tib","favicon":"https://rogue-scholar.org/api/communities/db0d8909-9e37-46d0-b16c-0551f575e86b/logo","feed_format":"application/atom+xml","feed_url":"https://blog.tib.eu/feed/atom/","filter":null,"generator":"WordPress","home_page_url":"https://blog.tib.eu/","issn":null,"language":"deu","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","prefix":"10.65527","relative_url":null,"secure":true,"slug":"tib","status":"active","subfield":"1802","title":"TIB-Blog","updated":1791550026,"use_api":true},"blog_name":"TIB-Blog","blog_slug":"tib","content_html":"Open Science und geistiges Eigentum werden oft als Gegens\u00e4tze verstanden: hier der freie Zugang zu Wissen, dort Patente, Urheberrechte und andere Schutzrechte. F\u00fcr den Transfer von Forschung in die Praxis greift diese Gegen\u00fcberstellung jedoch zu kurz. Die entscheidende Frage ist vielmehr: Was sollte offen sein, was muss gesch\u00fctzt werden \u2013 und wann?
\nDieser Frage wurde auf der Innovations-Roadshow des Deutschen Patent- und Markenamtes (DPMA) am 8. September 2026 in Hannover an der TIB nachgegangen.
\n![\"Teilnehmende](\"https://blog.tib.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2026-innovations-roadshow-1-1024x768.jpg\")
Forschungsergebnisse sind mehr als wissenschaftliche Publikationen. Sie entstehen als Daten, Software, Modelle, Videos, Prototypen oder technische Erfindungen. Damit stellen sich zugleich Fragen nach Zug\u00e4nglichkeit, Nachnutzung, Urheberrecht und gewerblichem Rechtsschutz.
\nWer Forschung offen zug\u00e4nglich machen und Innovation erm\u00f6glichen will, muss deshalb beides zusammendenken: Offenheit und Schutz.
\nEine wichtige Schnittstelle daf\u00fcr ist das Patentinformationszentrum (PIZ) Hannover an der TIB. Seit 1878 unterst\u00fctzt es dabei, technisches Wissen und Informationen \u00fcber Schutzrechte zug\u00e4nglich und nutzbar zu machen. Heute ist das PIZ das einzige Patentinformationszentrum in Niedersachsen und Kooperationspartner des Deutschen Patent- und Markenamts.
\nZu den kostenfreien Basisdiensten geh\u00f6ren Informationen und Fachliteratur zu Patenten und gewerblichen Schutzrechten, Unterst\u00fctzung bei Recherchen in Patent- und Schutzrechtsdatenbanken sowie Informationen zu nationalen und internationalen Schutzrechtsverfahren. Veranstaltungen und Sensibilisierungsangebote vermitteln zudem Grundlagen des gewerblichen Rechtsschutzes.
\nDabei versteht sich das PIZ Hannover als neutrale Lotsenstelle: Die kostenfreie Erfindererstberatung kann bei Bedarf zu IHK oder Patentanwaltschaft weiterf\u00fchren. F\u00fcr spezialisierte Recherchen, Analysen oder Patentstatistiken werden geeignete Anbieter und Einrichtungen vermittelt. Auch bei Fragen zu Verwertung, Schutzrechtsmanagement oder F\u00f6rderm\u00f6glichkeiten verweist das PIZ auf die jeweils zust\u00e4ndigen Stellen.
\nSo bietet das PIZ einen kostenfreien, neutralen und niedrigschwelligen Zugang zu Informationen und Orientierung im Netzwerk der Schutzrechts- und F\u00f6rderangebote.
\nF\u00fcr Forschende beginnt der Mehrwert oft schon vor einer Patentanmeldung: Welche L\u00f6sungen gibt es bereits? Was wurde schon ver\u00f6ffentlicht? Welche Entwicklungen sind neu \u2013 und wo gibt es Ankn\u00fcpfungspunkte f\u00fcr die eigene Forschung?
\nEine Patentrecherche kann dabei auch helfen, Unternehmen, Forschungseinrichtungen oder andere Akteure zu identifizieren, die an \u00e4hnlichen Technologien arbeiten und als m\u00f6gliche Kooperationspartner infrage kommen.
\nPatentinformationen k\u00f6nnen damit eine Br\u00fccke zwischen wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis und technologischer Entwicklung bilden.
\nEin Beispiel f\u00fcr diese Verbindung ist die Patentdatenbank Orbit Intelligence. Die Plattform kann aus wissenschaftlichen Texten technische Merkmale extrahieren und dazu passende Patentdokumente identifizieren. Lizenziert f\u00fcr Nutzende der TIB. DBIS \u2013 Orbit Intelligence
\nSo l\u00e4sst sich etwa pr\u00fcfen, in welchen Patenten bestimmte Komponenten, Verfahren oder technische Zusammenh\u00e4nge beschrieben sind. Orbit unterst\u00fctzt damit die Recherche und Analyse \u2013 ersetzt aber keine rechtliche Pr\u00fcfung von Neuheit oder erfinderischer T\u00e4tigkeit.
\nF\u00fcr Forschende entsteht so eine praktische Br\u00fccke zwischen wissenschaftlicher Publikation und Patentinformation.
\n![\"Screenshot](\"https://blog.tib.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2026-orbit_piz-1024x448.png\")
Wie aus Patentinformation und Forschungsergebnissen konkreter Technologietransfer entstehen kann, zeigt das Beispiel von Bardia Akaberi der Firma Goldhoop.
\nAusgangspunkt war die Recherche nach dem Stand der Technik, auf die dann der Schutz der Erfindung als Gebrauchsmuster DE 20 2025 003 427 folgte. Doch der Transfer endete nicht mit dem Schutzrecht. Ein funktionierender Prototyp wurde umgesetzt und in einem Video dokumentiert. Denn ein Film sagt mehr als 1.000 Bilder: Die technische Idee wird anschaulich, verst\u00e4ndlich und f\u00fcr potenzielle Kooperations- und Transferpartner unmittelbar erlebbar.
\n\u00dcber das TIB AV-Portal (https://doi.org/10.5446/73021) bleibt die Dokumentation dauerhaft auffindbar und zitierf\u00e4hig. Im TIB-Portal \u00a0k\u00f6nnen Patent, Video und wissenschaftliche Informationen miteinander verkn\u00fcpft werden.
\n![\"\"](\"https://blog.tib.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2026-dpma-1024x582.png\")
Ein Schutzrecht allein macht eine Erfindung noch nicht sichtbar. Erst wenn eine technische Entwicklung verst\u00e4ndlich, auffindbar und dauerhaft dokumentiert ist, kann daraus Interesse entstehen.
\nSichtbarkeit \u2192 Verst\u00e4ndnis \u2192 Interesse \u2192 Kontakt \u2192 Technologietransfer
\nSo wird aus gesch\u00fctztem Wissen ein anschlussf\u00e4higes Forschungsergebnis \u2013 und aus Forschung kann Innovation entstehen.
\nDie TIB macht mit Ihren Services Digitale Dienste und Dienstleistungen der TIB \u00a0Wissen dauerhaft sichtbar, recherchierbar und transferf\u00e4hig. Das PIZ Hannover an der TIB unterst\u00fctzt Sie bei den gewerblichen Schutzrechten. \u00a0So entsteht eine Br\u00fccke zwischen Forschung, Schutz und Innovation. Sprechen Sie uns gerne an!
","doi":"https://doi.org/10.65527/hbjbb-28825","guid":"https://blog.tib.eu/?p=33999","image":"https://blog.tib.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2026-dpma.png","language":"de","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","published_at":1791504000,"rid":"f73k7-csb39","summary":"Open Science und geistiges Eigentum werden oft als Gegens\u00e4tze verstanden: hier der freie Zugang zu Wissen, dort Patente, Urheberrechte und andere Schutzrechte. F\u00fcr den Transfer von Forschung in die Praxis greift diese Gegen\u00fcberstellung zu kurz. Die entscheidenden Fragen sind vielmehr: Was sollte offen sein, was muss gesch\u00fctzt werden \u2013 und wann?","tags":["SERVICES","Lizenz:CC-BY-4.0-INT","TIB AV-Portal","TIB-Portal","Patent"],"title":"Offen forschen, gezielt sch\u00fctzen","updated_at":1791550516,"url":"https://blog.tib.eu/2026/10/09/offen-forschen-gezielt-schuetzen/","version":"v1"}},{"document":{"authors":[{"affiliation":[{"name":"Fachhochschule Potsdam"}],"contributor_roles":[],"family":"Kaden","given":"Ben","url":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8021-1785"}],"blog":{"authors":null,"community_id":"00dd7e11-a802-44c1-9584-5c56d1f8d417","created":1706832000,"current_feed_url":null,"description":"Vernetzungs- und Kompetenzstelle Open Access Brandenburg","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/oabrandenburg","favicon":"https://rogue-scholar.org/api/communities/00dd7e11-a802-44c1-9584-5c56d1f8d417/logo","feed_format":"application/atom+xml","feed_url":"https://open-access-brandenburg.de/feed/atom","filter":null,"generator":"WordPress","home_page_url":"https://open-access-brandenburg.de/","issn":null,"language":"deu","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","prefix":"10.59350","relative_url":null,"secure":true,"slug":"oabrandenburg","status":"active","subfield":"1802","title":"Open Access Brandenburg","updated":1791545849,"use_api":false},"blog_name":"Open Access Brandenburg","blog_slug":"oabrandenburg","content_html":"Es gibt ein relativ neu beschriebenes Ph\u00e4nomen im Open Access bzw. Diamond Open Access, \u00fcber das unl\u00e4ngst Nature berichtete und auf das wir ebenfalls kurz hinweisen wollen. So berichten Lisa Matthias vom Institut f\u00fcr Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft der Humboldt-Universit\u00e4t zu Berlin und ihre Ko-Autoren Juan Pablo Alperin (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver) und Mikael Laakso (Tampere University, Tampere) \u00fcber F\u00e4lle, in denen wissenschaftliche Zeitschriften von einem Diamond-Open-Access-Modell auf APC-basierte Gold-OA, Hybrid-OA oder Subskriptionsmodelle umstellten:
\nLisa Matthias, Juan Pablo Alperin, Mikael Laakso: Diamond Fractures: Tracing Journal Transitions Away from Diamond Open Access. (30.06.2026) DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2606.31302
\nInsgesamt konnten sie 440 F\u00e4lle f\u00fcr den Zeitraum von 2009 bis 2026 identifizieren, wobei der gr\u00f6\u00dfte Anteil auf den Wechsel zu Gold Open Access mit Publikationsgeb\u00fchren zu verzeichnen ist. Interessanterweise beschleunigte sich diese Entwicklung in den vergangenen Jahren. Ebenfalls interessant erscheint, dass dies nicht etwa mit Verlags- oder Betreiberwechseln (\"ownership\") zu erkl\u00e4ren ist \u2013 die \u00fcberwiegende Zahl der Titel, 389 von 440 \u2013 blieb beim Ursprungsbetreiber.
\nBei einem Teil der F\u00e4lle l\u00e4sst sich Diamond Open Access als \u00dcbergangs- und Etablierungsma\u00dfnahme nach der Neugr\u00fcndung einer Zeitschrift verstehen:
\n\n\n\"we see the pattern of publishers forgoing APC revenue as a promotional strategy, while a new journal builds indexing and reputation, then introduce them once the journal is established\".
\n
Der gr\u00f6\u00dfere Teil der Titel \u00e4ndert sein Betriebsmodell allerdings erst sp\u00e4ter, was mit dieser Deutung adressiert wird:
\n\n\n\"The temptation and relative ease of adopting APCs is particularly evident for these journals, given that such established journals would be strong candidates for collective funding models, such as Subscribe to Open.\"
\n
Besondere Relevanz erh\u00e4lt die Analyse deshalb, weil Diamond Open Access verst\u00e4rkt, wie auch zuletzt auf den Open-Access-Tagen 2026, als ein m\u00f6gliches Alternativmodell besonders zum geb\u00fchrenfinanzierten Gold Open Access angesehen und diskutiert wird und man daher sehr viel \u00fcber die Verschiebung von Gold zu Diamond spricht. Die entgegengesetzte Entwicklung wird dagegen bisher kaum thematisiert. Dank der vorgelegten Auswertung ist \"Diamond Fractures\" im Diskurs und auch in Nature angekommen. Zudem unterstreicht der Befund zus\u00e4tzlich den Bedarf an Diamond-OA-Modelle, die auf strategische Verstetigungen in nicht-kommerziell ausgerichteten Kontexten aufbauen.
\nWer mehr \u00fcber Diamond Fractures erfahren m\u00f6chte, hat im November die Gelegenheit. Denn am 27.11.2026 ab 18 Uhr und virtuell wird Lisa Matthias ihre Forschungen zum Thema \"Diamond Fractures\" im Berliner Bibliothekswissenschaftlichen Kolloquium an der Humboldt-Universit\u00e4t zu Berlin pr\u00e4sentieren: Hybrid und Diamond Open Access unter der Lupe \u2013 Open Access als Forschungsobjekt der Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft.\u00a0
","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/e6ras-k5244","guid":"https://open-access-brandenburg.de/?p=10302","language":"de","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","published_at":1791504000,"rid":"hcj9j-j8585","summary":"Es gibt ein relativ neu beschriebenes Ph\u00e4nomen im Open Access bzw. Diamond Open Access, \u00fcber das unl\u00e4ngst Nature berichtete und auf das wir ebenfalls kurz hinweisen wollen.","tags":["OA News","OA Takeaways","APC","Bibliothekswissenschaft","Diamond Fractures"],"title":"OA-News: Diamond (Open Access) Fractures als Forschungsthema","updated_at":1791546311,"url":"https://open-access-brandenburg.de/oa-news-daimond-fractures-2026/","version":"v1"}},{"document":{"authors":[{"affiliation":[{"name":"Fachhochschule Potsdam"}],"contributor_roles":[],"family":"Kaden","given":"Ben","url":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8021-1785"}],"blog":{"authors":null,"community_id":"00dd7e11-a802-44c1-9584-5c56d1f8d417","created":1706832000,"current_feed_url":null,"description":"Vernetzungs- und Kompetenzstelle Open Access Brandenburg","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/oabrandenburg","favicon":"https://rogue-scholar.org/api/communities/00dd7e11-a802-44c1-9584-5c56d1f8d417/logo","feed_format":"application/atom+xml","feed_url":"https://open-access-brandenburg.de/feed/atom","filter":null,"generator":"WordPress","home_page_url":"https://open-access-brandenburg.de/","issn":null,"language":"deu","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","prefix":"10.59350","relative_url":null,"secure":true,"slug":"oabrandenburg","status":"active","subfield":"1802","title":"Open Access Brandenburg","updated":1791545849,"use_api":false},"blog_name":"Open Access Brandenburg","blog_slug":"oabrandenburg","content_html":"Es gibt ein relativ neu beschriebenes Ph\u00e4nomen im Open Access bzw. Diamond Open Access, \u00fcber das unl\u00e4ngst Nature berichtete und auf das wir ebenfalls kurz hinweisen wollen. So berichten Lisa Matthias vom Institut f\u00fcr Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft der Humboldt-Universit\u00e4t zu Berlin und ihre Ko-Autoren Juan Pablo Alperin (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver) und Mikael Laakso (Tampere University, Tampere) \u00fcber F\u00e4lle, in denen wissenschaftliche Zeitschriften von einem Diamond-Open-Access-Modell auf APC-basierte Gold-OA, Hybrid-OA oder Subskriptionsmodelle umstellten:
\nLisa Matthias, Juan Pablo Alperin, Mikael Laakso: Diamond Fractures: Tracing Journal Transitions Away from Diamond Open Access. (30.06.2026) DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2606.31302
\nInsgesamt konnten sie 440 F\u00e4lle f\u00fcr den Zeitraum von 2009 bis 2026 identifizieren, wobei der gr\u00f6\u00dfte Anteil auf den Wechsel zu Gold Open Access mit Publikationsgeb\u00fchren zu verzeichnen ist. Interessanterweise beschleunigte sich diese Entwicklung in den vergangenen Jahren. Ebenfalls interessant erscheint, dass dies nicht etwa mit Verlags- oder Betreiberwechseln (\"ownership\") zu erkl\u00e4ren ist \u2013 die \u00fcberwiegende Zahl der Titel, 389 von 440 \u2013 blieb beim Ursprungsbetreiber.
\nBei einem Teil der F\u00e4lle l\u00e4sst sich Diamond Open Access als \u00dcbergangs- und Etablierungsma\u00dfnahme nach der Neugr\u00fcndung einer Zeitschrift verstehen:
\n\n\n\"we see the pattern of publishers forgoing APC revenue as a promotional strategy, while a new journal builds indexing and reputation, then introduce them once the journal is established\".
\n
Der gr\u00f6\u00dfere Teil der Titel \u00e4ndert sein Betriebsmodell allerdings erst sp\u00e4ter, was mit dieser Deutung adressiert wird:
\n\n\n\"The temptation and relative ease of adopting APCs is particularly evident for these journals, given that such established journals would be strong candidates for collective funding models, such as Subscribe to Open.\"
\n
Besondere Relevanz erh\u00e4lt die Analyse deshalb, weil Diamond Open Access verst\u00e4rkt, wie auch zuletzt auf den Open-Access-Tagen 2026, als ein m\u00f6gliches Alternativmodell besonders zum geb\u00fchrenfinanzierten Gold Open Access angesehen und diskutiert wird und man daher sehr viel \u00fcber die Verschiebung von Gold zu Diamond spricht. Die entgegengesetzte Entwicklung wird dagegen bisher kaum thematisiert. Dank der vorgelegten Auswertung ist \"Diamond Fractures\" im Diskurs und auch in Nature angekommen. Zudem unterstreicht der Befund zus\u00e4tzlich den Bedarf an Diamond-OA-Modelle, die auf strategische Verstetigungen in nicht-kommerziell ausgerichteten Kontexten aufbauen.
\nWer mehr \u00fcber Diamond Fractures erfahren m\u00f6chte, hat im November die Gelegenheit. Denn am 27.11.2026 ab 18 Uhr und virtuell wird Lisa Matthias ihre Forschungen zum Thema \"Diamond Fractures\" im Berliner Bibliothekswissenschaftlichen Kolloquium an der Humboldt-Universit\u00e4t zu Berlin pr\u00e4sentieren: Hybrid und Diamond Open Access unter der Lupe \u2013 Open Access als Forschungsobjekt der Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft.\u00a0
","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/yq0vn-j2231","guid":"https://open-access-brandenburg.de/?p=10302","language":"de","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","published_at":1791504000,"rid":"6de69-bv238","summary":"Es gibt ein relativ neu beschriebenes Ph\u00e4nomen im Open Access bzw. Diamond Open Access, \u00fcber das unl\u00e4ngst Nature berichtete und auf das wir ebenfalls kurz hinweisen wollen.","tags":["OA News","OA Takeaways","APC","Bibliothekswissenschaft","Diamond Fractures"],"title":"OA-News: Diamond (Open Access) Fractures als Forschungsthema","updated_at":1791546310,"url":"https://open-access-brandenburg.de/oa-news-daimond-fractures-2026/","version":"v1"}},{"document":{"authors":[{"contributor_roles":[],"family":"Eden","given":"Terence"}],"content_html":"![\"Book](\"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/liamglass.webp\")
\n\nThis is a curious and mostly satisfying novel. It bills itself as a satire, but it is rather more cynical than that. A kid has been stabbed and the worst instincts of humanity descend. Race-baiting police, vote-grubbing politicians, and exploitative journalists.
\n\nI can't comment on the accuracy of the satire of the press - but it feels real. It's full of the hungriest, nastiest people who will step over anyone and cross any moral line in pursuit of a headline.
\n\nSimilarly, the political commentary isn't exactly subtle - but it will raise your blood pressure.
\n\nPerhaps that's the aim of the book? The author is an equal opportunity cynic. Every paragraph is so wry that it can only have been written with a permanently raised eyebrow. You'll leave it frustrated and bitter.
\n\nThere are no heroes in the story - just a series of increasingly desperate villains all trying to profit from a senseless tragedy - which makes for a difficult read at times.
![](\"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/themes/edent-wordpress-theme/info/okgo.php?ID=63095&HTTP_REFERER=DOI\"){kind=small}
","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/rqrz9-mta97","guid":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/?p=63095","image":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/liamglass.webp","language":"en","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","published_at":1759968000,"rid":"dscc3-s3b04","summary":"This is a curious and mostly satisfying novel. It bills itself as a satire, but it is rather more cynical than that. A kid has been stabbed and the worst instincts of humanity descend. Race-baiting police, vote-grubbing politicians, and exploitative journalists. I can't comment on the accuracy of the satire of the press - but it feels real.","tags":["/etc/","Book Review"],"title":"Book Review: The Breaking of Liam Glass by Charles Harris","updated_at":1791534794,"url":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/10/book-review-the-breaking-of-liam-glass-by-charles-harris/","version":"v1"}},{"document":{"authors":[{"contributor_roles":[],"family":"Eden","given":"Terence","url":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9265-9069"}],"blog":{"authors":null,"community_id":"61ce553a-bafd-4aba-a952-d3bab5e85bcc","created":1788652800,"current_feed_url":null,"description":"Regular nonsense about tech and its effects \ud83d\ude43","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/shkspr","favicon":"https://rogue-scholar.org/api/communities/61ce553a-bafd-4aba-a952-d3bab5e85bcc/logo","feed_format":"application/atom+xml","feed_url":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/feed/DOI","filter":"category:-1982","generator":"WordPress","home_page_url":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog","issn":"2753-1570","language":"eng","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","prefix":"10.59350","relative_url":null,"secure":true,"slug":"shkspr","status":"active","subfield":"1712","title":"Terence Eden's Blog","updated":1791565336,"use_api":true},"blog_name":"Terence Eden's Blog","blog_slug":"shkspr","content_html":"I'm a theatrical cheapskate. I'm on all those last-minute seat-filler websites. I'll happily take a chance on an experimental play for a tenner a ticket or sit in an inexplicably unsold cheap seat at a major show. My philosophy is that the worst seat at the best show is preferable to the best seat at the worst show. But, once in a while, I'll splash out and pay full price.
\n\nWhen the email landed in my inbox that Richard E. Grant (!!) and Christine Baranski (!!!) would be performing No\u00ebl Coward's Hay Fever, I booked instantly. Yes, it's nice to see up-and-coming stars playing in a grimy basement, but sometimes you want 100% star power burning up the stage.
\n\n\n\n![\"Richard](\"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/hayfever.webp\")
\n\nIt was magnificent. The script stills draws gasps of outrage from the audience. The zingers ping around the stage. Baranski's matriarch channels her inner diva and dominates the stage while Lucy Karczewski subtlety undercuts all the pomposity thrown around.
\n\nThe whole cast is superb, although perhaps a little under-rehearsed. The script is so tight that the few slips there were put a little brake on the frenetic pace. The set, costuming, and directorial deviations from the script are all perfectly in service of merriment.
\n\nI know the play is over a century old (!) but the wit is timeless. In a West End awash with Serious Plays dealing with Important Issues, it is delightfully refreshing to see something so silly and inconsequential. There's no deep trauma or challenging material, just the fascination of watching truly appalling manners. About the only content warning needed is for the copious smoking.
\n\nThere is some interesting metatextuality having Sandy and Jackie played by non-white actors. Are the Bliss family so unbearably rude to them out of racism? It's certainly one reading of the script - and some of the lines certainly hint in that direction - but it could equally be their social standing which the Blisses find so distasteful. That's about as close as the production gets to modern social commentary.
\n\nI wanted light-hearted fluff performed by A-List actors - Hay Fever delivers just that. No\u00ebl Coward has an immortal ability to collapse an audience into helpless giggles, ably assisted by Emily Burns' inspired direction.
\n\nAs I've written about before, when people are paying West End prices, they deserve to feel like they're a valued guest - not cattle to be farmed.
\n\nOn the run up to the Race For Space concert I attended the week before, I got regular emails letting me know about the performance, how excited the band were, and the like. Despite paying considerably more for a ticket, Wyndham's didn't send me anything. If I didn't have a reminder in my diary, I would have forgotten this show existed. I'm not saying I want a bombardment of emails - but a few messages to build excitement wouldn't go amiss.
\n\nWyndham's Theatre is old - from an age where no one ever contemplated going to the loo, apparently. The gents are paltry and, to be frank, stank. The seating was well raked, allowing brilliant views - although the seats themselves were a bit tired and uncomfortable. Unlike other theatres, there was free WiFi which was good enough for uploading the obligatory selfie.
\n\nPre-curtain there was period appropriate music. Charmingly the \"please turn off your phones\" announcement was also period appropriate. Much nicer than being shouted at by ushers. A special shout out to the glorious fire curtain - I won't spoil the surprise \ud83d\ude04
\n\nThe programme was not too expensive at a fiver and full of content - rather than the usual explosion of adverts. Oddly, the theatre was also selling Hay Fever merchandise. I'm not sure how many people are desperate for a souvenir magnet of the cast\u2026
\n\nWyndham's certain do more than the base minimum - and it is a pity that is so notable. A pair of tickets in the stalls cost the same as a year of Netflix. Yes, seeing the stars in person is magical, and live theatre is exciting, and a laughing crowd elevates your enjoyment - but the toilets at home are nicer and the snacks are cheaper. Theatres need to deliver much more if they want to keep attracting new audiences.
![](\"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/themes/edent-wordpress-theme/info/okgo.php?ID=75989&HTTP_REFERER=DOI\"){kind=small}
","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/st2tk-m4v64","guid":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/?p=75989","image":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/hayfever.webp","language":"en","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","published_at":1791417600,"rid":"zscyc-43d82","summary":"I'm a theatrical cheapskate. I'm on all those last-minute seat-filler websites. I'll happily take a chance on an experimental play for a tenner a ticket or sit in an inexplicably unsold cheap seat at a major show. My philosophy is that the worst seat at the best show is preferable to the best seat at the worst show. But, once in a while, I'll splash out and pay full price.","tags":["/etc/","Theatre Review"],"title":"Theatre Review: Hay Fever at Wyndham's Theatre","updated_at":1791531067,"url":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/10/theatre-review-hay-fever-at-wyndhams-theatre/","version":"v1"}},{"document":{"authors":[{"affiliation":[{"name":"Imperial College London, Chemistry"}],"contributor_roles":[],"family":"Rzepa","given":"Henry","url":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8635-8390"}],"blog":{"authors":[{"name":"Henry Rzepa","url":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8635-8390"}],"community_id":"8fb94c86-e95f-41cf-aac2-a2877ffc1b5f","created":1693094400,"current_feed_url":null,"description":"Chemistry with a twist","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/rzepa","favicon":"https://rogue-scholar.org/api/communities/8fb94c86-e95f-41cf-aac2-a2877ffc1b5f/logo","feed_format":"application/atom+xml","feed_url":"https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/?feed=atom","filter":null,"generator":"WordPress","home_page_url":"https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog","issn":null,"language":"eng","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","prefix":"10.59350","relative_url":null,"secure":true,"slug":"rzepa","status":"active","subfield":"1606","title":"Henry Rzepa's Blog","updated":1791459350,"use_api":true},"blog_name":"Henry Rzepa's Blog","blog_slug":"rzepa","content_html":"Understanding how molecules interact (bind) with each other when in close proximity is essential in all areas of chemistry. One specific example of this need is for the molecule shown below.
\n\n![\"The](\"http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/pirkle.jpg\" "\\"pirkle\\"")
The Pirkle reagent
This is the so-called Pirkle Reagent and is much used to help resolve the two enantiomers of a racemic mixture, particularly drug molecules. The reagent binds to each enantiomer of a racemic drug differently, and this difference can be exploited by using e.g. column chromatography to separate the two forms. The conventional wisdom is that such chiral recognition occurs via a three-point binding model. In other words, at least three different interactions must occur between the Pirkle reagent and the drug to allow such chiral recognition.
\nSo how do we identify where these bindings might occur? A good place to start is to look at the self-binding of the Pirkle reagent, in other words, how does it interact with itself in the crystal state? An X-ray structure of the pure enantiomer of the Pirkle reagent shows that it binds with itself to form a loose dimer. We are now in a position to analyze exactly how this binding occurs. To do this, we are going to invoke a technique known as Atoms-in-molecules or AIM. This effectively looks at the curvature of the electron density in the dimer, and from the characteristics of this curvature, identifies a series of so called critical points, or regions where the first derivative of the electron density (referred to as \u03c1(r) ) with respect to the geometry is zero. These critical points come in four varieties only;
\nThe electron density required for this analysis could in principle come from the X-ray measurements themselves, but it is not easy to acquire this to the required accuracy (although it can be done). In this case, it is easier (and probably no less accurate) to calculate the density from a DFT-based quantum mechanical calculation. The result of this is shown below.
\n
![\"Pirkle](\"http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/pirkle11.jpg\" "\\"pirkle11\\"")
Pirkle dimer. Click for 3D.
So adding up all eight interactions indicates that the two molecules of the Pirkle reagent have an interaction energy of around 15 kcal/mol resulting just from these weak bonds (there are other types of interactions between two molecules known as dispersion forces, which also contribute), and which together provide more than enough free energy to overcome the entropy required to bring the two molecules together.
\nArmed with tools such as AIM, one can now be more confident in analyzing the various terms that contribute to two molecules interacting with each other, and in the case of chiral molecules, how these interactions may result in chiral recognitions.
\n\nNIH is the most complex of our pipelines due to the number and variety of data sources and because we attempt to track disruptions to supplements separately from \"parent awards\".
\nBriefly, our data sources include submissions to our reporting form; manually tracked information such as court documents, news articles, and direct communications; RePORTER; TAGGS; a spreadsheet of terminated awards provided by HHS; and USAspending. Below I'll go into some detail about how some of these data sources are used.
\nBecause each budget year of an NIH award has a different full award number and potentially a different FAIN (federal award identification number), we use the institution code and the 6 digits after it as a primary key to \"connect\" information across years. Supplements can be distinguished from their \"parent awards\" in some data sources, but not all, by having a suffix containing \"S\" in their full award number (suffix is excluded in the award FAIN). We currently treat each support year of a supplement as unique, because it is unclear if it is guaranteed that the suffix -01S1 and -02S1, for example, are two years of the \"same\" supplement and not two different supplements granted in two consecutive years1.
\nBecause AHRQ and NIH awards appear in the same data sources, both agencies' grants go through the same status determination process and are only separated out at the end of our data pipeline. The main difference with AHRQ is that these awards do not have supplements, so no subaward ID is listed in the final data, and that for AHRQ only we list awards that have experienced renewal delays over 60 days as their only form of disruption.
\nWe capture regular snapshots of award data on reporter.nih.gov through their provided API. RePORTER is one of the few sources with supplement-level information. We use this for award/sub-award metadata (e.g.\u00a0title, abstract, grantee information, project start and end dates, etc.) including as a source of award amount for supplements, as they are not broken out in USAspending, our main source of financial data on grants. With our snapshots, we are able to capture when the \"Terminated\u2014departmental authority\" text is added or removed from the web view of an award. We use the addition of this flag as a signal of termination and its removal as a signal of reinstatement. We do manual review of these signals as we have found that this flag can be added or removed for reasons unrelated to political targeting of awards.
\n\nWe also snapshot TAGGS data regularly and we use TAGGS primarily as another source of award metadata. TAGGS data does contain a signal of termination\u2014a \"TERMINATION\" action type\u2014however, it is not always clear what this means. Because TAGGS data only shows awards by FAIN and not full award number, it is unclear when a \"TERMINATION\" event indicates only a supplement has been terminated. Sometimes, the \"TERMINATION\" flag is added to a deobligation event after a termination as well. These flags are relatively new and when they were first introduced, we saw them back-filled to past actions in the TAGGS data. Because of these compilations, we do not use the addition or removal of a \"TERMINATION\" flag in TAGGS data as a signal for termination for NIH or AHRQ awards.
\n\nEvery Friday, someone at HHS exports an excel spreadsheet of terminated awards as a PDF and uploads it to the web (https://taggs.hhs.gov/Content/Data/HHS_Grants_Terminated.pdf). We parse the data from this PDF weekly and use the addition or removal of awards from this PDF as a signal of termination or reinstatement.
\nNOTE: The format of this PDF changed on Feb 20, 2026 such that the PDF no longer includes full award numbers (it now only shows the FAIN which does not distinguish supplements), but prior to that it showed clearly whether a supplement only or a full award was terminated. Because of this, we currently only use additions/removals from this list prior to Feb 20, 2026 in our status determination although we use the newer PDFs for manual verification of terminations and reinstatements.
\nusaspending.gov provides an API that we use to gather award data regulary. We use this source primarily for metadata including grantee information, grant assistance listing (CFDA), grant notice of funding announcement (NOFO), and total obligated and total outlaid amounts. We also track changes to project end dates (i.e.\u00a0project end date moved earlier, a \"cutoff\", or later, a \"reextension\"), although we do not use this as a signal of termination for NIH or AHRQ awards. These data are only at the FAIN level so information specific to supplements is not available.
\nFile C is released roughly once a month (except that Sep/Oct are combined into one release).\u00a0 We use this source primarily for outlay actions.
\nAn award is marked as terminated if it has been reported as such directly to us by a PI or via a trusted source, if it has gained the \"Terminated\u2014departmental authority\" flag on RePORTER, or if it has been added to the TAGGS PDF.\u00a0 It is only marked as currently terminated if it has not since been restored.
\nAn award is reinstated if it has been reported as such directly to us by a PI, appeared in a court document as being ordered to be reinstated, if we know it was terminated due to institutional targeting and the institution has since capitulated to the Trump administration, if the \"Terminated\u2014departmental authority\" flag on RePORTER has been removed, or if it has been removed from the TAGGS PDF. Additionally, terminated awards that have since received renewals but have no other reinstatement signals are marked as reinstatements with the latest renewal date as the reinstatement date. Awards are only marked as currently reinstated if they have not since been disrupted. Reinstatements are confirmed by verifying that an award has received outlays since the reinstatement.
\nTo determine awards with frozen funds, we rely on reporting of institutional targeting and outlay data in File C. Since there are many reasons an award might receive no outlays in a particular fiscal period2 besides a targeted freeze of funds, we apply a strict set of criteria to identify frozen awards:
\nAn award is marked as \"unfrozen (unconfirmed)\" when institutional targeting ends (i.e.\u00a0the institution capitulated to the Trump administration) and is marked as \"unfrozen (confirmed)\" once it receives an outlay.
\nTo calculate the funds obligated before disruption we take the award's current total obligations and subtract the sum of obligations since the first termination or freeze date. Similarly, for funds spent before disruption, we take the current total outlays and subtract the sum of all outlays since the first termination or freeze. The outlay and obligation events come from File C, while the current total obligated and outlaid numbers are from the more regularly updating USAspending awards data.\u00a0 As a result, these estimates may fluctuate week-to-week.
\nBecause USAspending data is not broken down by full award number, we must do something different than above for disrupted supplements. For supplements, we use the total value reported by RePORTER and assume constant linear spending over the award's one-year budget period to determine the estimated funds spent and remaining at disruption. If both a supplement and its \"parent award\" appear in our data as being disrupted, we subtract the supplement amounts from the parent award amounts so that column sums are still reliable and do not \"double-count\" awards.
\nNOTE: The total funds promised for an NIH or AHRQ award is generally greater than the current total obligations as multi-year awards are obligated one year at a time with non-competitive renewals. However, the total promised amount for NIH or AHRQ awards is not reported publicly. We are currently working on an algorithm to estimate the total funds promised, but for now the funds remaining before disruption is an underestimate.
\nNIH categorizes grants by research topic through the Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization (RCDC) Process. However, the RCDC categorization process typically lags behind grant awards by months, as they are assigned in bulk once per year. We developed a machine learning model to predict which RCDC categories apply to grants that don't yet have official NIH categorizations. These RCDC categories are in the \"Spending Categories\" column and an indicator for if they are NIH-assigned or predicted is in the \"Spending Categories Predicted by GW?\" column. For more information on this machine learning model, see our post on the topic.
\nCompared to previous administrations, the number of NIH and AHRQ awards not being renewed on time is increasing. NIH typically approves projects for multiple years and then each year's funding is released as a \"non-competing continuation\" following the submission of standard progress reports. We use award budget end dates and project end dates to detect when an award is more than 60 days overdue for a renewal and when it is finally renewed after such a delay. Missing fiscal years within a project period are also counted as a renewal delay. For NIH, these events are noted in the event history, however a delayed renewal alone is not enough to get an NIH award marked as \"Disrupted\" as even prior to the Trump administration there were hundreds of awards that experienced delays of over 60 days. For AHRQ, 100+ awards with renewal delays of many months were eventually mass terminated, therefore we do show individual AHRQ awards experiencing overdue renewals in our data table as they may be at risk for future terminations.
\nRead more about deciphering NIH award numbers here.\u21a9\ufe0e
Fiscal periods correspond to months of the fiscal year, starting in October (period 1) through September (period 12). However, outlay data for October and November are always reported together as part of period 2.\u21a9\ufe0e
\n\nLondon's musical entertainment scene has something for everyone - from long-running blockbuster shows to no-name bands in dingy basements. Somewhere in the middle is monophonic plainchant versions of the Halo theme sung in a church.
\n\nThe acoustics at St Martin in the Field are echoey. That makes it rather hard to hear the amplified announcement to turn off our phones, but makes an a cappella chorus absolutely soar. The choir of London Voices have sung on just about every movie you've watched and game you've played - so they're no stranger to more modern compositions.
\n\nThe programme strictly alternated between songs from popular games are some more traditional verses. As a tone-deaf musical ignoramus, I found some of the pieces hard to distinguish from each other and, perhaps, just a little repetitive. Delightfully, the choir is generous with its solos. Far too often these events have one main star while everyone else glares daggers at them. Here it seemed quite the opposite, with a range of voices brought to the forefront.
\n\nParts of the programme are a little odd. While Pilentze Pee is an incredible song and sung extremely well, I don't think there's much to tie it to The Wind Waker. Of course, the highlight was a cheeky rendition of \"Still Alive\" from Portal. An excellent arrangement sung with joy and gusto.
\n\nAn eclectic and interesting event, marred only by the uncomfortable pews of the church. Truly we must suffer for other people's art!
\n\n","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/rbv3f-z4d27","guid":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/?p=76517","image":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Video_Games_Go_Choral.webp","language":"en","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","published_at":1791504000,"rid":"93523-v7d19","summary":"London's musical entertainment scene has something for everyone - from long-running blockbuster shows to no-name bands in dingy basements. Somewhere in the middle is monophonic plainchant versions of the Halo theme sung in a church. The acoustics at St Martin in the Field are echoey.","tags":["/etc/","Gaming","Gig","Review"],"title":"Concert Review: London Voices - Video Games Go Choral","updated_at":1791565350,"url":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/10/concert-review-london-voices-video-games-go-choral/","version":"v1"},{"authors":[{"affiliation":[{"id":"https://ror.org/0153tk833","name":"University of Virginia"}],"contributor_roles":[],"family":"Turner","given":"Stephen","url":"https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9140-9028"}],"blog":{"authors":[{"name":"Stephen Turner"}],"community_id":"382941a7-2ffa-41df-8bbb-5f772188517f","created":1780876800,"current_feed_url":null,"description":"A practicing data scientist's take on AI, genomics, biosecurity, and the ways AI is reshaping how science gets done. Weekly updates from the field. Occasional notes on programming.","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/stephenturner","favicon":"https://rogue-scholar.org/api/communities/382941a7-2ffa-41df-8bbb-5f772188517f/logo","feed_format":"application/rss+xml","feed_url":"https://blog.stephenturner.us/feed","filter":null,"generator":"Substack","home_page_url":"https://blog.stephenturner.us","issn":null,"language":"eng","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","prefix":"10.59350","relative_url":null,"secure":true,"slug":"stephenturner","status":"active","subfield":"1311","title":"Paired Ends","updated":1791556820,"use_api":true},"blog_name":"Paired Ends","blog_slug":"stephenturner","content_html":"Join me and all of us here in the School of Data Science on Friday, Nov. 13 for Datapalooza 2026, UVA's flagship data science conference celebrating data science in action across disciplines and for the public good.
This year's theme is \"The Future of Work, Powered by Data and People.\" Data science is changing how we work and the decisions we make. As AI becomes more integrated into workplaces, its impact will depend not only on how the technology evolves, but also on the people who build and use it.
Datapalooza will be held Friday, November 13, 8:45pm - 5:45pm here at the University of Virginia School of Data Science in Charlottesville, VA. The main event kicks off at 1pm. Registration is free.
8:45 a.m. \u2014 Registration/Check-In Begins
9:30-10:30 a.m. \u2014 MSDS Online Breakfast
10:30-11:00 a.m. \u2014 Building Tours
10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. \u2014 Mixer for Residential & Online Students
11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. \u2014 Headshots
12:00-1:00p.m. \u2014 Networking Lunch
1:10-1:15 p.m. \u2014 Kickoff
1:15-2:15 p.m. \u2014 Fireside Chat Discussion Panel
2:30-3:30 p.m. \u2014 Breakout Sessions
3:45-4:30 p.m. \u2014 Keynote
4:45-5:45 p.m. \u2014 Reception
We'll kick off the day with a guided conversation with industry leaders which inspires and explores how Data Science and AI are fundamentally changing how we make decisions and how we work. The conversation will explore the evolving role of data science across industry and society. Panelists will consider the reality that the future of work cannot be shaped by technology alone but must be driven by the choices that people make about how technology is developed and put to use.
Breakout 1 | How Do You Become a Data Science Leader?
What does leadership look like in the age of AI? How can leaders harness data and emerging technologies that support teams in making decisions, setting priorities, and driving business. How are leaders thinking about data, AI, and helping to define the human-technology relationship?
Breakout 2 | What Do You Really Want to Know About Working in Data Science?
This is your chance to challenge data science academic and industry leaders to give candid answers and real-world perspectives about what's happening in the field\u2014as well as their personal journey to and through data science. They will be put in the \"hot seat\" by our very own students. How did they get here? What trends, tools, challenges, and opportunities are emerging now and in the future? How is industry/higher education thinking about and addressing AI ethics and safety concerns? And where will people be in all of this? Come curious and ready to engage.
Breakout 3 | How Can a Data Scientist Create and Innovate?
Explore how innovators are using data and AI not simply to analyze what already exists, but to create new possibilities. What emerging tools, ideas and experiences are unfolding, and how might you create and innovate as a student, community member, alumni or industry partner?
Close out Datapalooza with an inspiring keynote on how thoughtful policy and responsible data practices can help communities thrive.
Postdoc Research Showcase During Reception
","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/4yxfj-kdn52","guid":"219590216","image":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ywYU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F41a4a457-21e4-404a-8cf2-a643189d868e_940x529.webp","language":"en","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","published_at":1791504000,"rid":"n31cb-f4s26","summary":"UVA's flagship data science conference will be held at the School of Data Science Friday November 13. This year's theme: The Future of Work, Powered by Data and People. Registration is free.","title":"Datapalooza 2026: The Future of Work, Powered by Data and People","updated_at":1791556949,"url":"https://blog.stephenturner.us/p/datapalooza-2026","version":"v1"},{"authors":[{"contributor_roles":[],"family":"Hunger","given":"Francis"}],"blog":{"authors":[{"name":"Carrier-bag Staff"}],"community_id":"0f516bef-eddb-49f7-afc4-b5fc2468ee95","created":1749168000,"current_feed_url":null,"description":"Critical writing and research on technology, AI, art and digital culture, run by Hito Steyerl and Francis Hunger at AdBK Munich","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/carrier_bag","favicon":"https://rogue-scholar.org/api/communities/0f516bef-eddb-49f7-afc4-b5fc2468ee95/logo","feed_format":"application/atom+xml","feed_url":"https://carrier-bag.net/feed/atom","filter":null,"generator":"WordPress","home_page_url":"https://carrier-bag.net/","issn":null,"language":"eng","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","prefix":"10.59350","relative_url":null,"secure":true,"slug":"carrier_bag","status":"active","subfield":"1702","title":"carrier-bag.net","updated":1791551869,"use_api":true},"blog_name":"carrier-bag.net","blog_slug":"carrier_bag","content_html":"Five practice reports illustrate the scope of research and studying within the Emergent Digital Media class (Prof. Dr. Hito Steyerl, Dr. Francis Hunger) at the Academy of Visual Arts, Munich. They foreground examples of generative practices using machine learning techniques, colloquially known as 'AI', leaving aside other diverse artistic strategies (conceptual, performative, video essay, etc.) negotiated in class. https://www.generativemedia.net
\n\n\n\nThe scope of the reports by Vasilii Vikhlaev, Chloe McFadden, Guillaume Menguy, Nikita Sazonov and Otto Ostermann reaches from direct inquiry into techniques and tools to the metaphorical reflection on societies 'AI' phantasms. A commonality of the diverse approaches is that they probe how systems work, instead of just using the outputs as finished results. By that the artists develop a critique of the dominant narratives about 'AI', and they uncover the material dependencies and massive infrastructures (data, energy consumption, data centers) behind the stochastic generation of images, sound and text.
\n\n\n\nThis report addresses two registers of my work with machine learning in sound: the inductive one, meaning pre-trained models, and the deductive one, meaning physical modeling. The question behind both is how to synthesize sounds that are not present in any database. I'll introduce three projects and deliver an outlook on future research.
\n\n\n\nThe first project is Aggressor’s Tongues (2025/26), a 10-channel audio experiment of 41 min that was exhibited at the Kunstbau of Lenbachhaus, Munich. The project began with audio material of scraped recordings of Russian propaganda speech from the ongoing war against Ukraine: voices saturated with hate and domination. The machine listens, so I don't have to. The Montreal Forced Aligner (MFA) algorithm takes an audio file and its transcript and returns time stamps for every word and phoneme, normally as a preparation step for phonetics research or for building speech datasets. I used its output as the material itself: the piece works on the phoneme grid, not on the meaning of the speech. The grid also set the segmentation of the training data for variational autoencoders (VAE), so the model could only learn units below the level of meaning. The VAEs were activated using the RAVE framework, originally developed at the Institut de recherche et coordination acoustique/musique (IRCAM).
During the process, I discarded an earlier approach with emotion recognition (openSMILE, Praat), because the results were too illustrative and literal. Instead, I focused on decoder artifacts. I displayed them rather than smoothed them out, to keep the apparatus audible. For the same reason the drifts through the latent space were deterministic, several phasors in irrational ratios, so that the trajectory never repeats. I wanted to hear and make audible the system, not the sounds it was meant to produce.
The second project is titled, vzkazy dom\u016f (2025) and was developed in cooperation with Andrea Vesel\u00e1. It's format is 7.1 surround sound with a length of 10 hours, and was developed for the former Radio Free Europe building in the frame of Public Art Munich 2025. Starting point was a short found-footage recording of a historical radio signal being intentionally jammed to interfere with its broadcast, going from signal to noise. We slowed this recording down and Andrea contributed a reactive voice interpretation. Then she listened to her own recorded voice through an earpiece and sang to it, close enough in pitch that the two voices interfere and produce interfering oscillations, called 'beatings' (Schwebungen). That material became the training data for the VAE. The preparation of the input was prioritized over any selection at the output, emphasizing the data: the beatings were already in the training material, as a measurable modulation, and not added posterior as an effect.
\n\n\n\nFor the third project, Composite (2026, in progress), I turned a synthetization technique that involves no machine learning at all, called 'physical modeling'. The work is based on the composite plastic coins of Transnistria, the first plastic coins in general circulation. With Modalys, a generative tool developed at IRCAM, sound is computed from the physical properties of a body (size, density, Young's modulus). Unlike classical sound synthesis (additive, subtractive, FM) or sample-manipulation approaches, physical modeling simulates the sound-producing behavior of an instrument itself. This makes it possible to capture sonic qualities that traditional synthesis techniques reproduce only with difficulty. As part of the exploratory artistic process, I went from small data to no data. Physical modeling uses established physical laws from material sciences and acoustics, so it can compute objects that never existed. Compared with machine learning approaches, physical modeling is able to produce sound without examples. Machine learning for audio is almost always inductive, needing data, so the availability of data decides what can be produced at all. For rare, local or non-existent material that is a hard limit. I did not take this step to abandon machine learning techniques, but to run both methods side by side and hear the difference.
For the machine learning process, I am building a dataset of the real coin sounds to train a VAE on them and drive that model with the computed sounds using physical modeling: the input is encoded into the latent space and decoded again, so the output carries the statistics of the training data. The input cannot lie inside that distribution: Modalys computes an idealized body, without a surface, without the other coins, without a room. Some of the material constants I set, do not belong to any real object either. The statistical signature of a real object is imposed on an object that never existed. Input and output will be presented as pairs, not blended, to keep the model readable. The inverse is planned too: physically modeled sounds as training data, real coin sounds as input driving the model.
This report reflects upon my practice-based technique, prompt-shifting. It is both a practical technique for methodically probing the biases and patterns of text-to-image models, and a conceptual intervention that opposes magical technoscientistic framings.
\n\n\n\nPrompt-shifting enables artists to probe commercial text-to-image platforms without stabilizing their rhetorical claims and purported abilities of dream-making and superior accuracy. Rather than visualizing our imaginations, this technique shifts attention away from outputs towards the processes and contexts of their production. Using the same seed, the artist slowly and methodically introduces and varies the influence of certain subjects in the prompt. By noticing what shifts and emerges overtime, the artist can speculate and sense how learnt patterns are activated within generative AI models in ways that manifest visually.
\n\n\n\nThis technique emerged from my broader research project that attempts to engage and disrupt the 'magical technoscientism' of generative AI: a fusion of magic and technoscientism that affords models the ability to simultaneously create miraculous and scientifically authoritative outputs. In commercial text-to-image rhetoric, prompts are imagined as granting users the gift of dream-making while appeals to 'prompt-adherence' and 'accuracy' position prompting as a science. Such a dissonant fusion positions models as both passive conduits of human imagination and objective authorities of visual representations. Prompting guides and practices frequently frame the misalignment of expectation and output, not as a limit of the system but as the user's failure to conform to its representational logic. The problem is how the user asked, not what the system can do.
\n\n\n\nThis redistribution of misalignment creates a magical technoscientistic perception of text-to-image models in which prompts are both magical phrases \u2013 'open sesame' \u2013 and formulas: dog + beach + realistic + 35mm film – people = output image. Via this magical perception, positive and negative prompts are imagined as adding or subtracting certain influences and features from an output image. Such explanations reduce image generation to a representational exchange of words for images, obscuring the operations through which outputs arise. Thinking operationally, what does it mean to 'add' or 'subtract' an influence from the creation of an image? Prompt-shifting attends to such a line of inquiry, redirecting attention away from representational desire and towards operational curiosity. For example, methodically introducing negative and positive terms to a prompt foregrounds the operativity of the model and how terms are embedded and mutually determine the trajectory of the denoising process.
\n\n\n\nPrompt-shifting thus enables a sensing of image features not as discrete and universal parameters, but as relationally, socially and operationally situated. This situated sensing may also disrupt framings of bias as an issue that can be resolved through the acquisition of more data. Prompt-shifting both requires a reflection upon the situated conditions of production enacted by text-to-image applications (across models, society and time) and demonstrates how bias manifests visually within generative images in strange and unexpected ways.
\n\n\n\nMy research about chatbots and autocompletion investigated the economies of word-completions and its aesthetic consequences. For my own exploratory and experimental use, I built a little text editor, not much more complex than the default Windows notepad, which runs a Large Language Model (LLama-3.2-3B) fine-tuned on a small, curated literary corpus (about 15MB of chosen modern English literature) to provide autocompletion while typing. The editor is offline and local; the model’s initial weights along with the Low-Rank Adaptation finetune (LoRA) are merged into a single file that can be loaded on a laptop.
\n\n\n\nI started to play around, writing narratives with this autocompletion system. The Ctrl and Shift keys are used to cycle deterministically through seeds, and parameters like 'temperature', and 'context size' are exposed for slightly more control over the model’s sensitivity. When typing, the latest 4000 characters are fed to the model as a prompt, and the model continuously predicts a likely continuation for the text based on this sliding context window.
\n\n\n\nRecurring narrative patterns emerge from the writing; many stories mentioned in passing the death of a close relative. Many of them were stories about friends with eccentric personalities, paranoid, conspiratorial, or otherwise consumed by esoteric beliefs. My own interactions with them were often those of a disengaged witness. Stories unfolded over years and decades with brisk jumps across time, and many contained fastidious and often invented literary references. I was writing a novel in many of these stories, and many of these stories ended up being much funnier, more surprising and strangely subversive to me than what I could have imagined myself.
\n\n\n\nIn a next step, I also developed a simple logging system. It turns out that I was writing less than 20% of the text, letting my model suggest the rest of the words. But the continuations I chose among the model’s suggestions were almost never the first one, and on average I cycled between 7 seeds for every next sentence.
\n\n\n\nThere is a larger context for this experiment: Modern LLMs are deployed in many ways, most of them in disguise; as mediators, taking in structured inputs and dispatching commands to tools, as content moderators, call-center agent assistants, legal reviewers, evaluators for other models, as editors, writing blurbs and summaries from unstructured text data, as agents crawling and gathering, making pull requests, so on and so forth. But the most publicly exposed and consumer-facing deployment of LLMs (though by far not the costliest, either in token expenditure or thermal devastation), is the chatbot.
\n\n\n\nLLM-based chatbots, of course, are just a formatting trick. What is presented to the user as a series of distinct messages, emulating the interface of messaging applications, is actually a single text file, to which markers and delimiters (<|im_start|>) are invisibly inserted to separate the queries from the inferences, the human text from the autocompletion. The website from which the LLM is accessed hides those markers and uses them to style the text as an exchange.
\n\n\n\nModels before ChatGPT, like GPT-2 were mostly accessed autocompletion tools akin to my own program. The logic of autocompletion is open and ambiguous: the model and the user share a string of words, and it is unspecified whether their respective inputs are answers, continuations, suggestions, setups, punchlines, lists, stories, provocations. It is unclear which words belong to which participant they enter into a kind of mutual alienation. Reading the texts back, I can no longer distinguish what I wrote from what was predicted. For a product, this ambiguity cannot be tolerated. The chatbot therefore solves a problem of economy, giving a precise answer to the question: what kind of service is provided by a word prediction machine?
\n\n\n\n'Be informative; be truthful; be relevant; be clear'. We can understand the chatbot as a system designed to follow exactly the maxims of Paul Grice's cooperative principle in communication. But to follow those maxims exactly is a way of misunderstanding them, interpreting them as prescriptive rather than descriptive. In fact, one of their functions is to establish a framework for communication theory in which participants are also able to communicate through the violation of the maxims. I would
suggest that the turn-based pseudo-dialogues we have grown accustomed to with so-called 'chatbots' introduces a friction which is also a fiction: this manufactured discontinuity makes the experience of working with a language model seem much slower, more instrumental or even confrontational than it really is. It forecloses the possibility of approaching a complex and potentially surprising arrangement of neurons with anything but a request.
Ironically, autocompletion can more easily be made to feel like a conversation, one in which the generation of new ideas cannot be attributed to a single thread of questions and answers. It rather becomes an experimental procedure of fumbling in the dark, full of ruptures and quips and forks, one that tends naturally to veer off track as contexts slide, without the desperate sycophancy of an intelligence alienated to some undisclosed charter, the procrustean system prompt that always redirects the stochastic towards that which it believes will be 'helpful'. Sometimes, the most helpful thing is just the first one that comes to mind.
\n\n\n\nMy relationship with generative tools and machine learning involves experimenting with various black-boxed tools. By iterating and reiterating multiple prompts to understand how the models work and how far they can be pushed, I test 'AI' as an interface of confrontation. I'll shortly discuss three of these confrontations.
\n\n\n\nFirst, generative AI might be treated as a tool confronted with other tools. The pipelines of editing/ animating/ compressing software are extended by generative tools of still and video generation. In this way, I am testing whether machine-learning ecosystems can be used as effectively as other tools in the routine practice of filmmaking. These experiments can be extended to a broader perspective of industrial cinematography, specifically ad-making, where AI outputs are becoming more widespread. In these practices, pretrained AI models are used to replace existing tools. They function as machines of imitation. Comparing generative AI to other tools, I also investigate the potential of generative tools to resemble the machinic cinema gaze of the early 20th century.
\n\n\n\nThe second line of confrontation is the conflict between analogue and digital technologies. AI tools currently represent the frontier of denying analogue technology its rights, creating an unsurmountable divide between the two worlds. At the same time, generative AI has given rise to stronger analogue nostalgia as a form of escapism from the contemporaneity. Film director Guillermo del Toro's recent statement, 'Fuck AI,' is very characteristic, considering the outdated nature of his alternative to machine learning techniques. Denying the current situation would only result in ugly visual effects, such as those in del Toro's Frankenstein (2025). My research method to this issue is to let these two worlds collide and let analogue and emergent digital engage in a sort of symbiosis, finding solutions in hybridization rather than in the pure-line genetic separation of one from the other.
\n\n\n\nThe final line of confrontation is cognition: recognizing the overlaps between human and other forms of cognition that can be bridged, or at least interfaced, by AI. For example, I use generative AI technology to move closer to the agency of plants and animals by using their various outputs as a source or starting point for generation. Additionally, AI is a tool that allows us to better understand disenchanted human cognition and brings us closer to something resembling the hallucinations of generative tools.
\n\n\n\nWhenever one engages with the discourse surrounding AI data centers and their adventurous materializations there is a wild mix of valid concerns, misinformation and conspiracies, creating a very muddy framing of the conversation. Especially in the last five years the states in the US have seen a massive increase in permitted planning and construction of data centers. The giant tech corporations produce their frontier AI models right there in the Midwest and Southern USA, a region more commonly known for its rurality, heavy industry and agriculture. The rapid speed of new construction has led to opposition in local councils and permitting committees by the public. There are concerns over environmental impact, false economic promises, privacy and spatial infringements and while a lot of these are valid claims, a few other things come up in interviews with attendees. Starting from more absurd conspiracy ideologies of surveillance to simple contradictions with their individual consumption of AI agents and the infrastructure necessary for them being trained in their direct vicinity.
\n\n\n\nThe German comedian Loriot discusses a similar paradigm in his episode 'Loriot VI' (1978). It features a Christmas special, in which the Hoppenstedt family welcomes a new technological novelty into their home. The parents give their child a nuclear power plant miniature model that is framed as an educational consumer product. Its scale and abstraction of mechanisms and environment suggest that nuclear technology can be understood, assembled and controlled easily. Loriot uses it as a reference to the light-hearted political embracement of nuclear power in the late 1950s. However, when the model explodes due to a 'mistake' in the assembly, it tears a hole through the floor onto the neighbors dining table. The easiness immediately turned out to be a facade, but the Hoppenstedts just cover up the hole with wrapping paper and dismiss the neighbors' complaint as petty-minded. The confidence in their own behavior survives even when the consequences of their actions become seemingly impossible to overlook.
\n\n\n\nWith people embracing AI services, but being generally opposed to an AI data center near them, a similar contradiction arises. We get the harsh criticism towards the impact of data centers, but even the critics and the impacted welcome the benefits of the infrastructure by self admittedly using AI, while protesting for the data center to be somewhere else. Loriot's abstracted stereotypes of the technology optimistic solutionist and the neighbors' insistence on undisturbed comfort therefore collapse into the same person. They reveal that the discussion is little different today, just more convoluted. This of course does not render all objections to the arising issues obsolete, but showcases how detached our understanding is to the underlying infrastructure until that infrastructure materializes in front of us. Even then the consequence barely moves into changes of personal behavior.
\n\n\n\nThe AI infrastructure in question also has history with the industry beforehand. Larger parts of the AI data center industry are based on build sites, electricity access and operational experience developed through industrial crypto mining. In recent years, a variety of crypto mining companies have announced agreements to adapt their facilities for AI computing infrastructure. Or they restructured as expert and advisory companies for planning, converting and developing build sites for AI datacenters, while crypto mining itself fell out of economic relevance. The enormous construction happening in the name of AI, which hugely absorbed the crypto infrastructure, leaves a few questions:
\n\n\n\nWill data centers be the new empty shopping malls one day? Can this level of demand for the technology persist or ever be met again? Will there be something to absorb the infrastructure left behind by the industry, once parts of it fall out of relevance? Can we allow tech companies to entirely buy out the energy of publicly funded plants, monopolizing it? How do we deal with power and power plants that have contractually disappeared from the grid for at least the next two decades? Should we allow Google to run its own nuclear power plant, with a fatal accident record, just to train Gemini? Do we not care that Talen Energy is using this trend to expand their nuclear market, for data centers, in cooperation with Amazon?
\n\n\n\nFor the installation Spielen wir das sch\u00f6ne neue Spiel? (2026), I have reproduced the model of Loriot's Hoppenstedt-family episode with a slight twist and added a hyperscale data center to it.
\n\n\n\n","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/ee5jy-h3077","guid":"https://carrier-bag.net/?p=3531","image":"https://carrier-bag.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/research.jpg","language":"en","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","published_at":1790812800,"rid":"7jxc9-pgy09","summary":"Introduction Five practice reports illustrate the scope of research and studying within the Emergent Digital Media class (Prof. Dr. Hito Steyerl, Dr. Francis Hunger) at the Academy of Visual Arts, Munich.","tags":["Experiments"],"title":"Using generative methods for artistic experiments","updated_at":1791552304,"url":"https://carrier-bag.net/using-generative-methods-for-artistic-experiments/","version":"v1"},{"authors":[{"contributor_roles":[],"family":"Julia Hoffmann","given":"Petra Mensing"}],"blog":{"authors":null,"community_id":"db0d8909-9e37-46d0-b16c-0551f575e86b","created":1749772800,"current_feed_url":null,"description":"Das Blog der TIB \u2013 Leibniz-Informationszentrum Technik und Naturwissenschaften und Universit\u00e4tsbibliothek","doi":"https://doi.org/10.65527/tib","favicon":"https://rogue-scholar.org/api/communities/db0d8909-9e37-46d0-b16c-0551f575e86b/logo","feed_format":"application/atom+xml","feed_url":"https://blog.tib.eu/feed/atom/","filter":null,"generator":"WordPress","home_page_url":"https://blog.tib.eu/","issn":null,"language":"deu","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","prefix":"10.65527","relative_url":null,"secure":true,"slug":"tib","status":"active","subfield":"1802","title":"TIB-Blog","updated":1791550026,"use_api":true},"blog_name":"TIB-Blog","blog_slug":"tib","content_html":"Open Science und geistiges Eigentum werden oft als Gegens\u00e4tze verstanden: hier der freie Zugang zu Wissen, dort Patente, Urheberrechte und andere Schutzrechte. F\u00fcr den Transfer von Forschung in die Praxis greift diese Gegen\u00fcberstellung jedoch zu kurz. Die entscheidende Frage ist vielmehr: Was sollte offen sein, was muss gesch\u00fctzt werden \u2013 und wann?
\nDieser Frage wurde auf der Innovations-Roadshow des Deutschen Patent- und Markenamtes (DPMA) am 8. September 2026 in Hannover an der TIB nachgegangen.
\nForschungsergebnisse sind mehr als wissenschaftliche Publikationen. Sie entstehen als Daten, Software, Modelle, Videos, Prototypen oder technische Erfindungen. Damit stellen sich zugleich Fragen nach Zug\u00e4nglichkeit, Nachnutzung, Urheberrecht und gewerblichem Rechtsschutz.
\nWer Forschung offen zug\u00e4nglich machen und Innovation erm\u00f6glichen will, muss deshalb beides zusammendenken: Offenheit und Schutz.
\nEine wichtige Schnittstelle daf\u00fcr ist das Patentinformationszentrum (PIZ) Hannover an der TIB. Seit 1878 unterst\u00fctzt es dabei, technisches Wissen und Informationen \u00fcber Schutzrechte zug\u00e4nglich und nutzbar zu machen. Heute ist das PIZ das einzige Patentinformationszentrum in Niedersachsen und Kooperationspartner des Deutschen Patent- und Markenamts.
\nZu den kostenfreien Basisdiensten geh\u00f6ren Informationen und Fachliteratur zu Patenten und gewerblichen Schutzrechten, Unterst\u00fctzung bei Recherchen in Patent- und Schutzrechtsdatenbanken sowie Informationen zu nationalen und internationalen Schutzrechtsverfahren. Veranstaltungen und Sensibilisierungsangebote vermitteln zudem Grundlagen des gewerblichen Rechtsschutzes.
\nDabei versteht sich das PIZ Hannover als neutrale Lotsenstelle: Die kostenfreie Erfindererstberatung kann bei Bedarf zu IHK oder Patentanwaltschaft weiterf\u00fchren. F\u00fcr spezialisierte Recherchen, Analysen oder Patentstatistiken werden geeignete Anbieter und Einrichtungen vermittelt. Auch bei Fragen zu Verwertung, Schutzrechtsmanagement oder F\u00f6rderm\u00f6glichkeiten verweist das PIZ auf die jeweils zust\u00e4ndigen Stellen.
\nSo bietet das PIZ einen kostenfreien, neutralen und niedrigschwelligen Zugang zu Informationen und Orientierung im Netzwerk der Schutzrechts- und F\u00f6rderangebote.
\nF\u00fcr Forschende beginnt der Mehrwert oft schon vor einer Patentanmeldung: Welche L\u00f6sungen gibt es bereits? Was wurde schon ver\u00f6ffentlicht? Welche Entwicklungen sind neu \u2013 und wo gibt es Ankn\u00fcpfungspunkte f\u00fcr die eigene Forschung?
\nEine Patentrecherche kann dabei auch helfen, Unternehmen, Forschungseinrichtungen oder andere Akteure zu identifizieren, die an \u00e4hnlichen Technologien arbeiten und als m\u00f6gliche Kooperationspartner infrage kommen.
\nPatentinformationen k\u00f6nnen damit eine Br\u00fccke zwischen wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis und technologischer Entwicklung bilden.
\nEin Beispiel f\u00fcr diese Verbindung ist die Patentdatenbank Orbit Intelligence. Die Plattform kann aus wissenschaftlichen Texten technische Merkmale extrahieren und dazu passende Patentdokumente identifizieren. Lizenziert f\u00fcr Nutzende der TIB. DBIS \u2013 Orbit Intelligence
\nSo l\u00e4sst sich etwa pr\u00fcfen, in welchen Patenten bestimmte Komponenten, Verfahren oder technische Zusammenh\u00e4nge beschrieben sind. Orbit unterst\u00fctzt damit die Recherche und Analyse \u2013 ersetzt aber keine rechtliche Pr\u00fcfung von Neuheit oder erfinderischer T\u00e4tigkeit.
\nF\u00fcr Forschende entsteht so eine praktische Br\u00fccke zwischen wissenschaftlicher Publikation und Patentinformation.
\nWie aus Patentinformation und Forschungsergebnissen konkreter Technologietransfer entstehen kann, zeigt das Beispiel von Bardia Akaberi der Firma Goldhoop.
\nAusgangspunkt war die Recherche nach dem Stand der Technik, auf die dann der Schutz der Erfindung als Gebrauchsmuster DE 20 2025 003 427 folgte. Doch der Transfer endete nicht mit dem Schutzrecht. Ein funktionierender Prototyp wurde umgesetzt und in einem Video dokumentiert. Denn ein Film sagt mehr als 1.000 Bilder: Die technische Idee wird anschaulich, verst\u00e4ndlich und f\u00fcr potenzielle Kooperations- und Transferpartner unmittelbar erlebbar.
\n\u00dcber das TIB AV-Portal (https://doi.org/10.5446/73021) bleibt die Dokumentation dauerhaft auffindbar und zitierf\u00e4hig. Im TIB-Portal \u00a0k\u00f6nnen Patent, Video und wissenschaftliche Informationen miteinander verkn\u00fcpft werden.
\nEin Schutzrecht allein macht eine Erfindung noch nicht sichtbar. Erst wenn eine technische Entwicklung verst\u00e4ndlich, auffindbar und dauerhaft dokumentiert ist, kann daraus Interesse entstehen.
\nSichtbarkeit \u2192 Verst\u00e4ndnis \u2192 Interesse \u2192 Kontakt \u2192 Technologietransfer
\nSo wird aus gesch\u00fctztem Wissen ein anschlussf\u00e4higes Forschungsergebnis \u2013 und aus Forschung kann Innovation entstehen.
\nDie TIB macht mit Ihren Services Digitale Dienste und Dienstleistungen der TIB \u00a0Wissen dauerhaft sichtbar, recherchierbar und transferf\u00e4hig. Das PIZ Hannover an der TIB unterst\u00fctzt Sie bei den gewerblichen Schutzrechten. \u00a0So entsteht eine Br\u00fccke zwischen Forschung, Schutz und Innovation. Sprechen Sie uns gerne an!
","doi":"https://doi.org/10.65527/hbjbb-28825","guid":"https://blog.tib.eu/?p=33999","image":"https://blog.tib.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2026-dpma.png","language":"de","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","published_at":1791504000,"rid":"f73k7-csb39","summary":"Open Science und geistiges Eigentum werden oft als Gegens\u00e4tze verstanden: hier der freie Zugang zu Wissen, dort Patente, Urheberrechte und andere Schutzrechte. F\u00fcr den Transfer von Forschung in die Praxis greift diese Gegen\u00fcberstellung zu kurz. Die entscheidenden Fragen sind vielmehr: Was sollte offen sein, was muss gesch\u00fctzt werden \u2013 und wann?","tags":["SERVICES","Lizenz:CC-BY-4.0-INT","TIB AV-Portal","TIB-Portal","Patent"],"title":"Offen forschen, gezielt sch\u00fctzen","updated_at":1791550516,"url":"https://blog.tib.eu/2026/10/09/offen-forschen-gezielt-schuetzen/","version":"v1"},{"authors":[{"affiliation":[{"name":"Fachhochschule Potsdam"}],"contributor_roles":[],"family":"Kaden","given":"Ben","url":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8021-1785"}],"blog":{"authors":null,"community_id":"00dd7e11-a802-44c1-9584-5c56d1f8d417","created":1706832000,"current_feed_url":null,"description":"Vernetzungs- und Kompetenzstelle Open Access Brandenburg","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/oabrandenburg","favicon":"https://rogue-scholar.org/api/communities/00dd7e11-a802-44c1-9584-5c56d1f8d417/logo","feed_format":"application/atom+xml","feed_url":"https://open-access-brandenburg.de/feed/atom","filter":null,"generator":"WordPress","home_page_url":"https://open-access-brandenburg.de/","issn":null,"language":"deu","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","prefix":"10.59350","relative_url":null,"secure":true,"slug":"oabrandenburg","status":"active","subfield":"1802","title":"Open Access Brandenburg","updated":1791545849,"use_api":false},"blog_name":"Open Access Brandenburg","blog_slug":"oabrandenburg","content_html":"Es gibt ein relativ neu beschriebenes Ph\u00e4nomen im Open Access bzw. Diamond Open Access, \u00fcber das unl\u00e4ngst Nature berichtete und auf das wir ebenfalls kurz hinweisen wollen. So berichten Lisa Matthias vom Institut f\u00fcr Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft der Humboldt-Universit\u00e4t zu Berlin und ihre Ko-Autoren Juan Pablo Alperin (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver) und Mikael Laakso (Tampere University, Tampere) \u00fcber F\u00e4lle, in denen wissenschaftliche Zeitschriften von einem Diamond-Open-Access-Modell auf APC-basierte Gold-OA, Hybrid-OA oder Subskriptionsmodelle umstellten:
\nLisa Matthias, Juan Pablo Alperin, Mikael Laakso: Diamond Fractures: Tracing Journal Transitions Away from Diamond Open Access. (30.06.2026) DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2606.31302
\nInsgesamt konnten sie 440 F\u00e4lle f\u00fcr den Zeitraum von 2009 bis 2026 identifizieren, wobei der gr\u00f6\u00dfte Anteil auf den Wechsel zu Gold Open Access mit Publikationsgeb\u00fchren zu verzeichnen ist. Interessanterweise beschleunigte sich diese Entwicklung in den vergangenen Jahren. Ebenfalls interessant erscheint, dass dies nicht etwa mit Verlags- oder Betreiberwechseln (\"ownership\") zu erkl\u00e4ren ist \u2013 die \u00fcberwiegende Zahl der Titel, 389 von 440 \u2013 blieb beim Ursprungsbetreiber.
\nBei einem Teil der F\u00e4lle l\u00e4sst sich Diamond Open Access als \u00dcbergangs- und Etablierungsma\u00dfnahme nach der Neugr\u00fcndung einer Zeitschrift verstehen:
\n\n\n\"we see the pattern of publishers forgoing APC revenue as a promotional strategy, while a new journal builds indexing and reputation, then introduce them once the journal is established\".
\n
Der gr\u00f6\u00dfere Teil der Titel \u00e4ndert sein Betriebsmodell allerdings erst sp\u00e4ter, was mit dieser Deutung adressiert wird:
\n\n\n\"The temptation and relative ease of adopting APCs is particularly evident for these journals, given that such established journals would be strong candidates for collective funding models, such as Subscribe to Open.\"
\n
Besondere Relevanz erh\u00e4lt die Analyse deshalb, weil Diamond Open Access verst\u00e4rkt, wie auch zuletzt auf den Open-Access-Tagen 2026, als ein m\u00f6gliches Alternativmodell besonders zum geb\u00fchrenfinanzierten Gold Open Access angesehen und diskutiert wird und man daher sehr viel \u00fcber die Verschiebung von Gold zu Diamond spricht. Die entgegengesetzte Entwicklung wird dagegen bisher kaum thematisiert. Dank der vorgelegten Auswertung ist \"Diamond Fractures\" im Diskurs und auch in Nature angekommen. Zudem unterstreicht der Befund zus\u00e4tzlich den Bedarf an Diamond-OA-Modelle, die auf strategische Verstetigungen in nicht-kommerziell ausgerichteten Kontexten aufbauen.
\nWer mehr \u00fcber Diamond Fractures erfahren m\u00f6chte, hat im November die Gelegenheit. Denn am 27.11.2026 ab 18 Uhr und virtuell wird Lisa Matthias ihre Forschungen zum Thema \"Diamond Fractures\" im Berliner Bibliothekswissenschaftlichen Kolloquium an der Humboldt-Universit\u00e4t zu Berlin pr\u00e4sentieren: Hybrid und Diamond Open Access unter der Lupe \u2013 Open Access als Forschungsobjekt der Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft.\u00a0
","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/e6ras-k5244","guid":"https://open-access-brandenburg.de/?p=10302","language":"de","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","published_at":1791504000,"rid":"hcj9j-j8585","summary":"Es gibt ein relativ neu beschriebenes Ph\u00e4nomen im Open Access bzw. Diamond Open Access, \u00fcber das unl\u00e4ngst Nature berichtete und auf das wir ebenfalls kurz hinweisen wollen.","tags":["OA News","OA Takeaways","APC","Bibliothekswissenschaft","Diamond Fractures"],"title":"OA-News: Diamond (Open Access) Fractures als Forschungsthema","updated_at":1791546311,"url":"https://open-access-brandenburg.de/oa-news-daimond-fractures-2026/","version":"v1"},{"authors":[{"affiliation":[{"name":"Fachhochschule Potsdam"}],"contributor_roles":[],"family":"Kaden","given":"Ben","url":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8021-1785"}],"blog":{"authors":null,"community_id":"00dd7e11-a802-44c1-9584-5c56d1f8d417","created":1706832000,"current_feed_url":null,"description":"Vernetzungs- und Kompetenzstelle Open Access Brandenburg","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/oabrandenburg","favicon":"https://rogue-scholar.org/api/communities/00dd7e11-a802-44c1-9584-5c56d1f8d417/logo","feed_format":"application/atom+xml","feed_url":"https://open-access-brandenburg.de/feed/atom","filter":null,"generator":"WordPress","home_page_url":"https://open-access-brandenburg.de/","issn":null,"language":"deu","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","prefix":"10.59350","relative_url":null,"secure":true,"slug":"oabrandenburg","status":"active","subfield":"1802","title":"Open Access Brandenburg","updated":1791545849,"use_api":false},"blog_name":"Open Access Brandenburg","blog_slug":"oabrandenburg","content_html":"Es gibt ein relativ neu beschriebenes Ph\u00e4nomen im Open Access bzw. Diamond Open Access, \u00fcber das unl\u00e4ngst Nature berichtete und auf das wir ebenfalls kurz hinweisen wollen. So berichten Lisa Matthias vom Institut f\u00fcr Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft der Humboldt-Universit\u00e4t zu Berlin und ihre Ko-Autoren Juan Pablo Alperin (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver) und Mikael Laakso (Tampere University, Tampere) \u00fcber F\u00e4lle, in denen wissenschaftliche Zeitschriften von einem Diamond-Open-Access-Modell auf APC-basierte Gold-OA, Hybrid-OA oder Subskriptionsmodelle umstellten:
\nLisa Matthias, Juan Pablo Alperin, Mikael Laakso: Diamond Fractures: Tracing Journal Transitions Away from Diamond Open Access. (30.06.2026) DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2606.31302
\nInsgesamt konnten sie 440 F\u00e4lle f\u00fcr den Zeitraum von 2009 bis 2026 identifizieren, wobei der gr\u00f6\u00dfte Anteil auf den Wechsel zu Gold Open Access mit Publikationsgeb\u00fchren zu verzeichnen ist. Interessanterweise beschleunigte sich diese Entwicklung in den vergangenen Jahren. Ebenfalls interessant erscheint, dass dies nicht etwa mit Verlags- oder Betreiberwechseln (\"ownership\") zu erkl\u00e4ren ist \u2013 die \u00fcberwiegende Zahl der Titel, 389 von 440 \u2013 blieb beim Ursprungsbetreiber.
\nBei einem Teil der F\u00e4lle l\u00e4sst sich Diamond Open Access als \u00dcbergangs- und Etablierungsma\u00dfnahme nach der Neugr\u00fcndung einer Zeitschrift verstehen:
\n\n\n\"we see the pattern of publishers forgoing APC revenue as a promotional strategy, while a new journal builds indexing and reputation, then introduce them once the journal is established\".
\n
Der gr\u00f6\u00dfere Teil der Titel \u00e4ndert sein Betriebsmodell allerdings erst sp\u00e4ter, was mit dieser Deutung adressiert wird:
\n\n\n\"The temptation and relative ease of adopting APCs is particularly evident for these journals, given that such established journals would be strong candidates for collective funding models, such as Subscribe to Open.\"
\n
Besondere Relevanz erh\u00e4lt die Analyse deshalb, weil Diamond Open Access verst\u00e4rkt, wie auch zuletzt auf den Open-Access-Tagen 2026, als ein m\u00f6gliches Alternativmodell besonders zum geb\u00fchrenfinanzierten Gold Open Access angesehen und diskutiert wird und man daher sehr viel \u00fcber die Verschiebung von Gold zu Diamond spricht. Die entgegengesetzte Entwicklung wird dagegen bisher kaum thematisiert. Dank der vorgelegten Auswertung ist \"Diamond Fractures\" im Diskurs und auch in Nature angekommen. Zudem unterstreicht der Befund zus\u00e4tzlich den Bedarf an Diamond-OA-Modelle, die auf strategische Verstetigungen in nicht-kommerziell ausgerichteten Kontexten aufbauen.
\nWer mehr \u00fcber Diamond Fractures erfahren m\u00f6chte, hat im November die Gelegenheit. Denn am 27.11.2026 ab 18 Uhr und virtuell wird Lisa Matthias ihre Forschungen zum Thema \"Diamond Fractures\" im Berliner Bibliothekswissenschaftlichen Kolloquium an der Humboldt-Universit\u00e4t zu Berlin pr\u00e4sentieren: Hybrid und Diamond Open Access unter der Lupe \u2013 Open Access als Forschungsobjekt der Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft.\u00a0
","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/yq0vn-j2231","guid":"https://open-access-brandenburg.de/?p=10302","language":"de","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","published_at":1791504000,"rid":"6de69-bv238","summary":"Es gibt ein relativ neu beschriebenes Ph\u00e4nomen im Open Access bzw. Diamond Open Access, \u00fcber das unl\u00e4ngst Nature berichtete und auf das wir ebenfalls kurz hinweisen wollen.","tags":["OA News","OA Takeaways","APC","Bibliothekswissenschaft","Diamond Fractures"],"title":"OA-News: Diamond (Open Access) Fractures als Forschungsthema","updated_at":1791546310,"url":"https://open-access-brandenburg.de/oa-news-daimond-fractures-2026/","version":"v1"},{"authors":[{"contributor_roles":[],"family":"Eden","given":"Terence"}],"content_html":"\n\nThis is a curious and mostly satisfying novel. It bills itself as a satire, but it is rather more cynical than that. A kid has been stabbed and the worst instincts of humanity descend. Race-baiting police, vote-grubbing politicians, and exploitative journalists.
\n\nI can't comment on the accuracy of the satire of the press - but it feels real. It's full of the hungriest, nastiest people who will step over anyone and cross any moral line in pursuit of a headline.
\n\nSimilarly, the political commentary isn't exactly subtle - but it will raise your blood pressure.
\n\nPerhaps that's the aim of the book? The author is an equal opportunity cynic. Every paragraph is so wry that it can only have been written with a permanently raised eyebrow. You'll leave it frustrated and bitter.
\n\nThere are no heroes in the story - just a series of increasingly desperate villains all trying to profit from a senseless tragedy - which makes for a difficult read at times.
","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/rqrz9-mta97","guid":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/?p=63095","image":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/liamglass.webp","language":"en","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","published_at":1759968000,"rid":"dscc3-s3b04","summary":"This is a curious and mostly satisfying novel. It bills itself as a satire, but it is rather more cynical than that. A kid has been stabbed and the worst instincts of humanity descend. Race-baiting police, vote-grubbing politicians, and exploitative journalists. I can't comment on the accuracy of the satire of the press - but it feels real.","tags":["/etc/","Book Review"],"title":"Book Review: The Breaking of Liam Glass by Charles Harris","updated_at":1791534794,"url":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/10/book-review-the-breaking-of-liam-glass-by-charles-harris/","version":"v1"},{"authors":[{"contributor_roles":[],"family":"Eden","given":"Terence","url":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9265-9069"}],"blog":{"authors":null,"community_id":"61ce553a-bafd-4aba-a952-d3bab5e85bcc","created":1788652800,"current_feed_url":null,"description":"Regular nonsense about tech and its effects \ud83d\ude43","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/shkspr","favicon":"https://rogue-scholar.org/api/communities/61ce553a-bafd-4aba-a952-d3bab5e85bcc/logo","feed_format":"application/atom+xml","feed_url":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/feed/DOI","filter":"category:-1982","generator":"WordPress","home_page_url":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog","issn":"2753-1570","language":"eng","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","prefix":"10.59350","relative_url":null,"secure":true,"slug":"shkspr","status":"active","subfield":"1712","title":"Terence Eden's Blog","updated":1791565336,"use_api":true},"blog_name":"Terence Eden's Blog","blog_slug":"shkspr","content_html":"I'm a theatrical cheapskate. I'm on all those last-minute seat-filler websites. I'll happily take a chance on an experimental play for a tenner a ticket or sit in an inexplicably unsold cheap seat at a major show. My philosophy is that the worst seat at the best show is preferable to the best seat at the worst show. But, once in a while, I'll splash out and pay full price.
\n\nWhen the email landed in my inbox that Richard E. Grant (!!) and Christine Baranski (!!!) would be performing No\u00ebl Coward's Hay Fever, I booked instantly. Yes, it's nice to see up-and-coming stars playing in a grimy basement, but sometimes you want 100% star power burning up the stage.
\n\n\n\n\n\nIt was magnificent. The script stills draws gasps of outrage from the audience. The zingers ping around the stage. Baranski's matriarch channels her inner diva and dominates the stage while Lucy Karczewski subtlety undercuts all the pomposity thrown around.
\n\nThe whole cast is superb, although perhaps a little under-rehearsed. The script is so tight that the few slips there were put a little brake on the frenetic pace. The set, costuming, and directorial deviations from the script are all perfectly in service of merriment.
\n\nI know the play is over a century old (!) but the wit is timeless. In a West End awash with Serious Plays dealing with Important Issues, it is delightfully refreshing to see something so silly and inconsequential. There's no deep trauma or challenging material, just the fascination of watching truly appalling manners. About the only content warning needed is for the copious smoking.
\n\nThere is some interesting metatextuality having Sandy and Jackie played by non-white actors. Are the Bliss family so unbearably rude to them out of racism? It's certainly one reading of the script - and some of the lines certainly hint in that direction - but it could equally be their social standing which the Blisses find so distasteful. That's about as close as the production gets to modern social commentary.
\n\nI wanted light-hearted fluff performed by A-List actors - Hay Fever delivers just that. No\u00ebl Coward has an immortal ability to collapse an audience into helpless giggles, ably assisted by Emily Burns' inspired direction.
\n\nAs I've written about before, when people are paying West End prices, they deserve to feel like they're a valued guest - not cattle to be farmed.
\n\nOn the run up to the Race For Space concert I attended the week before, I got regular emails letting me know about the performance, how excited the band were, and the like. Despite paying considerably more for a ticket, Wyndham's didn't send me anything. If I didn't have a reminder in my diary, I would have forgotten this show existed. I'm not saying I want a bombardment of emails - but a few messages to build excitement wouldn't go amiss.
\n\nWyndham's Theatre is old - from an age where no one ever contemplated going to the loo, apparently. The gents are paltry and, to be frank, stank. The seating was well raked, allowing brilliant views - although the seats themselves were a bit tired and uncomfortable. Unlike other theatres, there was free WiFi which was good enough for uploading the obligatory selfie.
\n\nPre-curtain there was period appropriate music. Charmingly the \"please turn off your phones\" announcement was also period appropriate. Much nicer than being shouted at by ushers. A special shout out to the glorious fire curtain - I won't spoil the surprise \ud83d\ude04
\n\nThe programme was not too expensive at a fiver and full of content - rather than the usual explosion of adverts. Oddly, the theatre was also selling Hay Fever merchandise. I'm not sure how many people are desperate for a souvenir magnet of the cast\u2026
\n\nWyndham's certain do more than the base minimum - and it is a pity that is so notable. A pair of tickets in the stalls cost the same as a year of Netflix. Yes, seeing the stars in person is magical, and live theatre is exciting, and a laughing crowd elevates your enjoyment - but the toilets at home are nicer and the snacks are cheaper. Theatres need to deliver much more if they want to keep attracting new audiences.
","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/st2tk-m4v64","guid":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/?p=75989","image":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/hayfever.webp","language":"en","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","published_at":1791417600,"rid":"zscyc-43d82","summary":"I'm a theatrical cheapskate. I'm on all those last-minute seat-filler websites. I'll happily take a chance on an experimental play for a tenner a ticket or sit in an inexplicably unsold cheap seat at a major show. My philosophy is that the worst seat at the best show is preferable to the best seat at the worst show. But, once in a while, I'll splash out and pay full price.","tags":["/etc/","Theatre Review"],"title":"Theatre Review: Hay Fever at Wyndham's Theatre","updated_at":1791531067,"url":"https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/10/theatre-review-hay-fever-at-wyndhams-theatre/","version":"v1"},{"authors":[{"affiliation":[{"name":"Imperial College London, Chemistry"}],"contributor_roles":[],"family":"Rzepa","given":"Henry","url":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8635-8390"}],"blog":{"authors":[{"name":"Henry Rzepa","url":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8635-8390"}],"community_id":"8fb94c86-e95f-41cf-aac2-a2877ffc1b5f","created":1693094400,"current_feed_url":null,"description":"Chemistry with a twist","doi":"https://doi.org/10.59350/rzepa","favicon":"https://rogue-scholar.org/api/communities/8fb94c86-e95f-41cf-aac2-a2877ffc1b5f/logo","feed_format":"application/atom+xml","feed_url":"https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/?feed=atom","filter":null,"generator":"WordPress","home_page_url":"https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog","issn":null,"language":"eng","license":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode","prefix":"10.59350","relative_url":null,"secure":true,"slug":"rzepa","status":"active","subfield":"1606","title":"Henry Rzepa's Blog","updated":1791459350,"use_api":true},"blog_name":"Henry Rzepa's Blog","blog_slug":"rzepa","content_html":"Understanding how molecules interact (bind) with each other when in close proximity is essential in all areas of chemistry. One specific example of this need is for the molecule shown below.
\n\nThe Pirkle reagent
This is the so-called Pirkle Reagent and is much used to help resolve the two enantiomers of a racemic mixture, particularly drug molecules. The reagent binds to each enantiomer of a racemic drug differently, and this difference can be exploited by using e.g. column chromatography to separate the two forms. The conventional wisdom is that such chiral recognition occurs via a three-point binding model. In other words, at least three different interactions must occur between the Pirkle reagent and the drug to allow such chiral recognition.
\nSo how do we identify where these bindings might occur? A good place to start is to look at the self-binding of the Pirkle reagent, in other words, how does it interact with itself in the crystal state? An X-ray structure of the pure enantiomer of the Pirkle reagent shows that it binds with itself to form a loose dimer. We are now in a position to analyze exactly how this binding occurs. To do this, we are going to invoke a technique known as Atoms-in-molecules or AIM. This effectively looks at the curvature of the electron density in the dimer, and from the characteristics of this curvature, identifies a series of so called critical points, or regions where the first derivative of the electron density (referred to as \u03c1(r) ) with respect to the geometry is zero. These critical points come in four varieties only;
\nThe electron density required for this analysis could in principle come from the X-ray measurements themselves, but it is not easy to acquire this to the required accuracy (although it can be done). In this case, it is easier (and probably no less accurate) to calculate the density from a DFT-based quantum mechanical calculation. The result of this is shown below.
\n
Pirkle dimer. Click for 3D.
So adding up all eight interactions indicates that the two molecules of the Pirkle reagent have an interaction energy of around 15 kcal/mol resulting just from these weak bonds (there are other types of interactions between two molecules known as dispersion forces, which also contribute), and which together provide more than enough free energy to overcome the entropy required to bring the two molecules together.
\nArmed with tools such as AIM, one can now be more confident in analyzing the various terms that contribute to two molecules interacting with each other, and in the case of chiral molecules, how these interactions may result in chiral recognitions.
\n\n