If never read this before but I really hope this will be the last of my “she has breasts AND claims to read” profiles/interviews. Lots of levels of gross/embarrassing aspects to this but the attempt at a feminist critique at the end is maybe the worst part. https://t.co/5YVFgnn3WC

— Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) November 1, 2020

Why would you write something like this? Beauty does not preclude intellect nor talent. This is sort of the opposite of the halo effect, I guess? The assumption that someone attractive can’t do anything but sit around looking at herself in the mirror, or would want to.

Not sure. But Emily was truly genuinely good in Gone Girl. Wish she’d act more (yes, I know she has, some). She killed it in that role, as short as it was.

One of the men who plotted to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer because they felt her COVID-19 policies were too harsh wants out of jail because he fears COVID-19 https://t.co/q9MIuOfGS6

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) November 1, 2020

Life rarely delivers justice: the dead cannot be brought back to life; trauma cannot be unlived; what has been seen cannot be unseen.

But sometimes, oh sometimes, it can deliver comedy, and that will have to do.

Muslims’ rage at Macron threatens to escalate tensions across Europe.

I like Macron a lot more than I used to. I don’t care what kind of religious nuts they are — Christian, Muslim, other — it’s great when someone doesn’t accede to their absurd demands.

“Liberals” seem content to tell us that burqas are feminist and that someone getting slaughtered by masked gunmen is morally equivalent to a satirical cartoon. Macron is pushing back against all of this and I love him for it.

there is nothing you can conceive of that has not been done before a thousand times by your ancestors pic.twitter.com/jrkUrbPoRH

— Haunted Book Bolander (@BBolander) November 1, 2020

And of course this is not some novel insight, either.

Ecclesiastes 1-9-11, KJV:

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

Another article making the rounds complaining about pandemic "epistemic trespassing", unironically quoting a medical expert who has adamantly & baselessly claimed masks would induce false sense of security—to great harm. For "trust the experts" to work, experts need to deliver.

— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) October 31, 2020

Why trust the experts if they have proven to be unreliable? No reason to. I have always been very wary of experts which is more than justified considering how many of them are attempting to rob you.

The pandemic has only cemented my distrust. Don’t even do the old trust, but verify. Instead, don’t trust and verify lots. And keep a firm hand on your wallet at all times an expert is near.

Smart analysis on the uncertainty we tend to overlook. We need to get better at understanding probability and just how much we cannot know, in politics, and in life. https://t.co/ur5E6RoYOf

— Damien Cave (@damiencave) November 1, 2020

The problem isn’t understanding probability, though. I understand probability just fine, certainly better than most people, but the actual problem is that we are assigning probabilities to areas where it’s just inapplicable, where it makes no sense at all.

Applying probability to low-frequency, non-repeatable, model- and forecast-influenced events is just insane. It cannot work. And it does not. Saying that Biden has a “90 percent chance” of winning is essentially meaningless with the uncertainty present even in a normal election much less one occurring during a pandemic with an unhinged kinder-President.

It’s bullshit all the way down. Since the above is all true, you can’t even do normal statistical things like calculate proper confidence intervals because you don’t even have enough sample data (elections) to even begin to gin one up. And realistically, you only have one election, which hasn’t happened yet.

Yes, yes, I understand that the models are running simulations in pseudo-worlds much like ours where various perturbations are applied, etc. But elections aren’t the weather and again, they occur only once in reality.

It’s all worthless, but we pretend like it’s science while quant-y snollygosters sneer at us even though they are little better than an auspex peering into a crystal ball. Don’t buy into it despite what the “experts” tell you that you must believe or you are “anti-science.” This isn’t science; it’s superstition and dominance displays dressed as science.

People don’t seem to realize how many things we see as traditional that are in fact very anomalous and ahistorical given the long sweep of human history.

Not that I’m elevating the older ways above all of what we do and have now. But nuclear families, severe age segregation and lack of community connections — all very, very weird, and their advent is something we are not psychologically prepared for as a species.

me: makes single lame pun, naked
men: wow, such INCREDIBLE wit. what ASTONISHING intellect. SPARKLING personality

— Aella (@Aella_Girl) November 1, 2020

*shrugs* The halo effect is real, and it exists in all areas of beauty.

That’s one of the reasons I like listening to people’s music or reading people’s works before I know what they look like. Not always possible (especially with an actor), but it’s to avoid exactly this cognitive error. For the first ~month I read Aella, I had no idea what she looked like for instance.

But the halo effect is real and most people are unaware of it. I am aware of it, and aware that I am susceptible to it. Most men I think genuinely do believe that Aella is funnier than average because they unconsciously equate beauty with just being…more of everything good. It’s not cynical at all and that makes it even more pernicious.

But it’s not always beauty! I do think Sigrid is very pretty, but the main thing that causes me to like her more than I otherwise would is how much she reminds me of the mannerisms and audacious boldness of my dead friend from long ago. I don’t think this a bad thing; it’s like seeing some part of her living again.

Beauty, though, is a trickster — even when we know it is, it still is. That’s why I try to consciously squelch this bias, though it’s easier I think for me than with most because beauty doesn’t seem to have the outsize effect on me that it does on others.