Most women are surprised I read books by and about women.
WTF, y’all?
Day: August 29, 2020, 5:10 PM
Verity
I need to think about it more, but I want to write something called “Against Probability” one day. I think most of the time relying on probability is a bad framing, especially as we use it now. It’s utterly worthless for most people. What would replace it, without merely renaming it?
I don’t know. I don’t think we have words or even ideas for what I’m envisioning. Of course, none of it will matter to anyone because I don’t have any credentials.
But I’ll still be right, and I’ll take that, smiling.
(Maybe something like “reverba” that posits a 100% true outcome across an outcome space of many worlds, kind of the Everett interpretation applied to and designed to neutralize standard probability while behind the scenes appealing to meta-probability, where the odds are always 100% in each of the realized worlds. But fuck, it’s a hard problem.)
Elena
I almost want to learn enough Italian to read Elena Ferrante in the original. It’d take me about six months (three if I weren’t working a full-time and part-time job).
Almost worth it. Almost. Maybe one day.
Anyway, Ferrante is just absurdly wise. I say that of few people, but she is. See for yourself.
Gratis
Whenever I post about workers making fair wages (which is a lot), there is always at least 1 guy saying some people don't "deserve" it, based on a job title, experience, or some other excuse.
I always wonder: what is it about people making a living wage that offends some people?
— Dan Price (@DanPriceSeattle) August 25, 2020
Investment in a hierarchy. If a “lowly” and “unskilled” barista or janitor makes as much or more than they do, then that devalues them (in their eyes), and destroys their putative status. They also object to someone getting something “for free” which in American eyes is worse than death itself. The thought that anyone, anywhere might get something they don’t “deserve” haunts American nightmares more than Jason, Freddie Krueger and Slender Man combined.
Quality
"a good deal of what currently passes for empirical psychology is already best understood as insightful qualitative analysis dressed up as shoddy quantitative science" ibid. // applies well beyond psychology.
insightful qualitative analysis is good!
— Steve Randy Waldman (@interfluidity) August 28, 2020
Agreed. Qualitative analysis has been sacrificed (and people called “bad scientists” who engage in it) at the false altar of quantification.
We worship at that tabernacle because it seems to promise certitude, but most of the time it just offers the illusion thereof. But qualitative analysis works, and I know it works: that’s how I make money in the market. That, unlike most of science, very much keeps score. If you’re wrong, you’re busted and broke. (Hint: I am not busted nor broke.)
System Ick
We’ve built a culture vilifying self control.
Can’t stop eating until you’re obese? Body positive!
Too lazy to go to the gym? Dad bods are sexier!
You lost weight? Why? That’s fat shaming!
Don’t give in!
This ideology is built by losers trying to justify their own weakness.
— Ryan Kon (@ryankon) August 28, 2020
I don’t disagree, but I think this is far too simplistic. It’s not systems-centric, which is how I generally prefer to think.
In a different, better system, there’d be a lot less of this type of behavior and belief. But it does become self-reinforcing after a while — that’s where I agree with Ryan. However, our system — rampant, rapacious capitalism — must promulgate this sort of ideation for its sustainment. Notice how all this points at consumption as a primary virtue, and avoidance of such as the cardinal sin?
Think on that, and much will be revealed.
Worseninginging
United: cutting 36,000 jobs. In 5 prior years, spent $8.6B on stock buybacks. Just got $5B bailout
American: cutting 19,000 jobs. Spent $13B on buybacks/dividends. Got $5.8B bailout
Delta: cutting at least 2,000 pilots. Spent $13B on buybacks/dividends and got $5.4B bailout
— Dan Price (@DanPriceSeattle) August 28, 2020
Things are going to get worse before…no, they are just going to get worse.
Spaced In
I know “liberals” hate the space program.
They are wrong, but I don’t have time now to examine why. But I really like how in For All Mankind it shows the space program, despite being pretty militaristic still, furthering the goals of progressivism. It even in this alternative timeline indirectly leads to the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. (Which I find fairly likely.)
Whoever wrote this show understands how systems function and that’s so rare and great that even the weaknesses of the work don’t make me love it less.
Fective
… and humans are highly heterogeneous, so until we know the statistical frequency of these re-infections, they should not alarm us any more than the occasional influenza or measles re-infections do (6/6).
— Bloom Lab (@jbloom_lab) August 28, 2020
Exactly. People are making a big deal of this and it’s probably a nothingburger. Every virus/bacteria has a certain (usually small) percentage of people that get reinfected — either because they have a poor immune system, or an abnormal one. I’d expect just from the little I know of other viruses (have read several virology textbooks in the past two decades) a reinfection rate of 0.5% or so within ~1 year.
I’d be really, really surprised if there weren’t some reinfections.
Big Bad Wulf
For those who express concern about the (reported) looseness of @MARIADAHVANA’s translation, I will note that Frederick Rebsamen turned:
feasceaft funden he þæs frofre gebad (found destitute, he prospered as consolation)
into:
/floating with gifts
a strange king-child.— John Dumas (@impofthediverse) August 27, 2020
I have no problem with loose translation, but from the excerpts I’ve read of the Maria Dahvana Headley rendering, I don’t care for it. As the New Yorker review said, it’s a “Beowulf for Our Moment.”
It’s like a Hamilton-ized Beowulf, in other words. However, I want my Beowulf to feel fey and strange, to read as if it emerges from a different world — because it freakin’ does. The Anglo-Saxons did not have minds like ours. I want to feel that, to know that.
That’s why I prefer the Tolkien translation, and why I prefer it is exactly why I think people dislike Tolkien’s writing in general. It feels otherworldly, and is awkward therefore. Many of these mooks say that Tolkien is a bad writer, but the reality is that they are bad readers; Tolkien achieved exactly what he wanted to achieve in his writing, and that is the one true sign of a good writer.
So this latest translation of Beowulf is not for me, and that’s ok. I didn’t like Hamilton and I don’t like Maria Dahvana Headley’s Beowulf as they are attempting to do the same things for the same group of people.