Links I liked: Daesh (Isis), College textbooks as a racket, and humanity’s lost battle against the machine

The controversy about how we should refer to the terrorist group known in Western Europe as “ISIS” has been going on for some time (the Americans prefer “ISIL”). If you followed the news after the recent attacks (and who hasn’t), you will have noticed that a third name, “Daesh”, is gaining currency with heads of states and governments, allegedly because it annoys the terrorists.

But where there is controversy, there is also confusion in the anglosphere. Thankfully, one translator has come to the fore and decodes Daesh, and the confusion:  Decoding Daesh: Why Is the New Name for ISIS so Hard to Understand?

Over at the LSE blog, Terro Karrpi has an interesting piece on  how Humans are losing the battle against social media algorithms. Unfortunately, the threat is not some Colossus-Guardian-like superstructure (to which I would secretly love to surrender), but rather an unfortunate coupling of social media and stock trading algorithms.

And finally something that everyone in Higher Education knows: College textbooks are a racket. The same goes for most other forms of academic publishing, by the way.