From the Archives!—Editorial Maté

The SpecGram Archive Elves™

As reported earlier, our very own Butch McBastard brought to light a satchel of papers and other miscellanea labeled, “Top Secret SpecGram Time Capsule, 1964—Do Not Open for 50 Years!” While the SpecGram legal team continues their fitful bickering over potential incriminating evidence proprietary information, we thought we would share another interesting SpecGram artifact.

Here is a photo of the fourteenth archival item, an editorial maté cup. Traditionally filled by interns as needed, the editorial maté cup is an integral part of the “friendship” rituals of the senior editors who, like academics everywhere, are required by long-standing tradition to smile while they steal each other’s ideas, beat each other’s interns, and stab each other in the back.

This thin veneer of civilization, made concrete by a shared beverage, is possibly all that stands between a functioning editorial board and The Lord of the Flies made real. There is also some speculation that sharing a maté straw facilitates the maintenance of a common viral and bacterial balance among the biomes of the various editors—and this cross-infection may be all that keeps them speaking a common language at times.

More to come...

	Towards Gender Equality in Computational Linguistics—Oleg Gerakoff
	The SpecGram Inquisition—Mikael Thompson—with Inquisitor Generalis Jonathan Downie
	SpecGram Vol CLXX, No 2 Contents