An academic mystery novel in which we learn that the culprit murdered the victim because they could not agree on which font to use for their very important committee memo.

The tension builds throughout the book as they exchange drafts of the memo, each time changing the font back to the "proper" font.
No one mentions the font changes, they just seethe.
Exasperated, one of them sets up a Qualtrics survey for the committee. It has only one question: "what is the correct font to use for this committee's correspondence?"
Qualtrics data is inconclusive.
It's about the font, but so much more. The subtle indignities, the history of undermining, the times when one of them sat on the grant review board and purposefully tanked the other's grant project, which meant they didn't get to hire grad assistants & had a double courseload.
Another time one of them sat on the college-wide course approval committee and rejected all of the proposed courses in the others' field as being "redundant" and "superfluous," leading to the courses being taken out of the university's core curriculum.
Somehow these two enemy-colleagues were selected to co-chair a committee that will propose the new 10-year plan for their college. The stakes are high, the enmity is long.
Had one of them had an affair with the other's grad student while they were at an academic conference? We don't know, but we suspect.
One of them had stolen/"refined" the other's idea and published it in the top field journal. The article became cannonic, won all of the disciplinary awards, and is the sole reason why they have a higher H-index than the other.
The murder happens on the day that the @MacArthur Foundation announces its new round of Genius grants.

More from Crime

Yesterday I did a thread on how Huawei is trying to manipulate Belgian policy audiences with a fake online ecosystem ahead of a key 5G decision. (https://t.co/ViIp7X5KsN) Huawei did not take kindly to my research.


Mike Bai, the "President of Strategy Marketing Western Europe" for Huawei doubled down and tagged me and the organisations listed in my profile in a promoted (!) tweet. It's still doing the rounds now.


But who is Mike Bai? An analysis of his Twitter account by Botometer rates him a dubious 2.2/5 (by comparison, I rate 0.4, where 0 is best). @villaraco points out that he gained 800K followers in 9 months: https://t.co/YfoVaVNq2y


Bai's sudden and massive online presence for Huawei started at the exact same time as the fake ecosystem of blogs and websites started being built, in March 2020. I can find no job history for him pre-Huawei, starting in March of this year.

I did find another (?) Mike Bai. The other Mike Bai authored a blog that posts Chinese state propaganda about things like the Covid-19 outbreak not originating in China. I won't link to the blog as not 100% sure it's same person, but here's a screenshot of part of the text.

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