This is very lazily researched, a few minutes in google will give you pretty clear confirmation that he did in fact use several contracted ghostwriters. This was brought up by Scholastic publishing as evidence of breach of contract when they sued Parachute Press back in 1999. See this link for the court filings [0], note here that RL's representatives do not deny the claim that the ghostwriters were employed by RL but instead that the use of them did not suffice to constitute breach of contract.
So he has essentially via his legal representation confirmed that to varying degrees he did not in fact write many of the books past the first 20. Instead, this filing shows that he often wrote outlines which he then passed onto other contractors. Scholastic claims here that they lost substantial amounts of revenue because the ghostwriters did not write stories as well as RL.
It’s a blog post from a decade ago. It’s not “researched” because it’s more like a journal entry (or a tweet, perhaps) than an “article” the way blog posts are often viewed now. It’s purpose isn’t to deliver readers a definitive answer but to spur discussion and get readers thinking. I might even go so far as to say the answer to the author’s question is entirely irrelevant.
> It’s purpose isn’t to deliver readers a definitive answer but to spur discussion and get readers thinking.
What is this supposed to get people thinking about beyond "Did R.L. Stine use ghostwriters for his Goosebumps and Fear Street series?" It's pretty much the only thing brought up in the post. How could the answer to that question be irrelevant?
I'll admit that this reads like a journal entry and it's pointless to try to hold a random blogger to the research expectations we might have for actual journalists, but if this post was intended to get people thinking or engaged in discussion there's really not much there to work with outside of the "Did R.L. Stine use ghostwriters for his Goosebumps and Fear Street series?" question which makes the answer pretty relevant.
If this post was intended to provoke discussion or thought it might have been better to address the concept of ghostwriting. The morality of ghostwriting, the impact it has on the quality of literature, the importance of branding, the economics of it etc. As it is, there's not much food for thought.
Let's see... right now we have the actual answer to the question right up top (as expected) then near the bottom some discussion on the wisdom of Captain Picard and the sleeping and vacationing habits of Bill Gates, and in the middle some general commentary on the Goosebumps books (they don't hold up/helped someone learn English), and even on ghostwriting in general, but I'm pretty sure we're doing all the heavy lifting here.
With the exception of posts about the question in question, it's pretty much what I'd expect people to come up with from the title alone.
My understanding is it is an arxiv-style repository but with absolutely zero censorship or curation for the most part. In practice, that means it ends up being a stable repository for actual researchers to host their research preprints easily, and an army of crackpot paper uploads that are very entertaining to read.
You are probably thinking of the show First 48. I was thinking of this exact show when reading the comments here about how Columbo plots rely too heavily on the murderer trying to help out Columbo with his investigation in order to seem innocent. It may seem unrealistic or stupid of them to do so, but if you watch shows like First 48 which follow homicide detectives around and show these interrogations, it happens A TON. More than I expected to be sure. I don't think Columbo is unrealistic in that respect.
VERY surprising how many people talk to the cops and give them all sorts of information that the cops then disprove, stories that make no sense, or even hand them info / leads that leas right back to them so on.
I want to say maybe the folks in a Columbo episode wold be more likely to talk to a lawyer first / not talk but ... Martha Stewart talked herself into jail...
I had it happen to me directly - I get accused, have no idea what is going on, accuser get’s in court, makes more accusations that don’t make sense. We follow up to get enough details to try to figure out specifically what is being accused (date and times, for one) - and lo and behold, the evidence (911 call log) when provided + security video on my side (that they knew I had!!!) showed that not only was it completely impossible that it happened, but that the accuser was perjuring themselves and had committed the additional crime of filing a false police report.
I did jury duty and despite all the complexity of the legal system .... the cases were pretty straightforward and I think we're all very lucky criminals are pretty dumb.
Yup, though it’s just most criminals that are dumb in my experience. There are some that are quite smart and also find themselves committing crimes. They are a real bear to catch and prosecute.
A lot of complexity in the legal system is so that at least most of the time even if someone is smart and can hire someone who has built their career on covering their ass, deflecting blame, understanding and using all the technicalities, obfuscating the facts as much as possible when not in their favor, calls to emotion when it helps them, calls to reason when it helps them, and all the other tricks (aka high end defense attorneys), we still end up with outcomes that aren’t clearly obviously wrong eventually.
And at least most of the time if someone is a real dumbass and can’t afford someone to at least help them pull their foot out of their mouth (aka low end defense attorneys), they don’t get railroaded and we end up with outcomes that are clearly obviously wrong either. Most of the time.
I certainly don't, I view everything I've ever written as MIT-equivalent. Feel free to copypaste what I've written without my express permission or rewrite it as you see fit. Does not matter to me whether this is to create spammy blogposts, commercial ventures, or for your school essay.
This. I don't publish code I think is useful. I realize that's contrary to the open source ethos, and that many people would consider it hypocritical that I would then use open source without compunction - but I view open sourcing as a choice, and closed-sourcing as an equally valid choice.
What I would never do, or never use, are restrictive/copyleft licensing terms. There don't begin to be enough hours in the day to spend even one second arguing about copyright with geeks. You get dirty, and the pigs like it, etc.
I'm very curious if this is somehow related to the ongoing gitlab outage also being reported on the front page. This just impacted me directly while I was going over a homework problem set with a student.
There are some great pieces written on this. The author is just in an academic bubble. If you go to a riotous situation on the ground you will encounter people spreading and handing out plenty of free literature espousing the views the rioters hold about their activities. It is a common topic of discussion and formalization, just not in an academic context generally. One example I saw that was particularly interesting is [0].
It is very much a topic within far-left circles, the issue is rather that there are very few far-left circles in anglo-saxon academia due to a lack of interest in the subject matter by the people funding the universities there. That said, both of the articles are interesting reads, but assume lots of premises as true without exploring them further. A unified theory doesn't exist as far as I know.
Let's go through the article's table w.r.t. the ultra letter:
Freedom preserving, Equality promoting - Indeed, he is overthrowing the elites
Voices of the unheard, Conditions of a polity's most disadvantaged - Indeed, according to his economic overview, he is quite poor and marginalized
Basic liberal democratic framework (life, liberty, property) - he frames this as not being able to buy a house, and the elites owning everything, so in some sense yes, this is about the distribution of property
Inability to seek redress through parliamentary procedures - Yes, the political parties are "fundamentally corrupt" and activism is "rigged". Although, he doesn't mention ever actually calling his representatives.
Unjust law - he is contesting capitalism, so in some sense yes
Unjust dispersal order - he says the riots are the "excuse" for authorities, so yes, presumably there is some suppression going on
Crowd behavior, Legitimate targets, Proportionality - unclear, he talks about riots in general rather than specific riots. But going off of William Gillis's article these are chosen after "careful deliberation", so there is some form of self-policing going on.
So the conclusion I get is that Havercroft's article is essentially pro-riot, although there is a lot of waffling.
So he has essentially via his legal representation confirmed that to varying degrees he did not in fact write many of the books past the first 20. Instead, this filing shows that he often wrote outlines which he then passed onto other contractors. Scholastic claims here that they lost substantial amounts of revenue because the ghostwriters did not write stories as well as RL.
[0] https://decisions.courts.state.ny.us/NYSComDiv/Oct02/600512-...