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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
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Complex Numbers A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number. The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi. Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary. Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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| I know I've ranted about "emotional intelligence" in here before. But, my mind being what it is, I don't remember what I said. Something about not having any of it, myself, probably. I don't think I called it bullshit, but I might have said I don't understand it. So if any of today's Deep Thoughts contradict something I said before, just roll with it. That's what I do. http://nautil.us/issue/51/limits/emotional-intelligence-needs-a-rewrite Emotional Intelligence Needs a Rewrite Think you can read people’s emotions? Think again. The usual note about the date of the article: three years old. I doubt much has changed of any import, though. You’ve probably met people who are experts at mastering their emotions and understanding the emotions of others. When all hell breaks loose, somehow these individuals remain calm. Sometimes, remaining calm when "all hell breaks loose" (can we find another cliché, please?) isn't a sign of maturity or wisdom; it's a signal that you're utterly oblivious to what's really going on. I suppose telling the difference between the two when someone remains calm in a crisis takes emotional intelligence. They know what to say and do when their boss is moody or their lover is upset. I know exactly what to do, which is why I have neither boss nor lover. After all, whom would you rather work with—someone who can identify and respond to your feelings, or someone who has no clue? Whom would you rather date? I've known lots of people who would rather date the clueless. I've dated some of them. The traditional foundation of emotional intelligence rests on two common-sense assumptions. The first is that it’s possible to detect the emotions of other people accurately. That is, the human face and body are said to broadcast happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and other emotions, and if you observe closely enough, you can read these emotions like words on a page. The second assumption is that emotions are automatically triggered by events in the world, and you can learn to control them through rationality. How... how are either of those things "common sense?" Any poker player will tell you that the first is difficult to interpret, especially when someone is focused on remaining neutral. The second goes against all common sense; emotions are internal, and while you can process them, I don't think you can "control" them. And leaving aside for a moment the porous boundary between the outer and inner worlds, those two assumptions seem contradictory; if someone can control their emotions, you can't read them accurately. In economics, nearly every popular model of investor behavior separates emotion and cognition. In economics, nearly every popular model of investor behavior is inaccurate. These two core assumptions are strongly appealing and match our daily experiences. Do not. In addition, we now know that the brain doesn’t have separate processes for emotion and cognition, and therefore one cannot control the other. This tracks with other things I've read. Fictional Vulcans notwithstanding, it seems that logic is utterly dependent on emotion. In fact, there isn’t a single emotion that has one specific, consistent expression. No wonder emoji is a foreign language to me. In short, when it comes to detecting emotion in other people, the face and body do not speak for themselves. Instead, variation is the norm. Your brain may automatically make sense of someone’s movements in context, allowing you to guess what a person is feeling, but you are always guessing, never detecting. I'm kind of taking notes on this as I read it, because it's been a while since I first came across this article and stuffed it in my Blog Fodder folder. So I don't know if any of these points I'm making will be addressed later in the article. But while I tend to agree about the "guessing, never detecting" thing, I think it's important to do the guessing. Hell, "cold reader" psychics use this to suck money from rubes, but it's a power that can also be used for good. This idea, however, is rooted in a bogus view of brain evolution. Books and articles on emotional intelligence claim that your brain has an inner core that you inherited from reptiles, wrapped in a wild, emotional layer that you inherited from mammals, all enrobed in—and controlled by—a logical layer that is uniquely human. This three-layer view, called the triune brain, has been popular since the 1950s but has no basis in reality. Quoting this here because I've seen similar arguments from actual biologists, so I'm inclined to believe that it's true that the triune brain model doesn't reflect reality. However, I will say this: even scientifically falsified principles can be useful as cognitive models. Hopefully we all know that "air, fire, water and earth" are not truly elements, but the model can be useful in mental categorization. Same thing with Freud's id, ego, superego (which seem to correlate with the triune brain model). As long as we don't fool ourselves into thinking it's an accurate reflection of reality, but only a metaphor, we can use these ideas to make connections. To improve our understanding of emotional intelligence, we must discard the idea of the brain as a battlefield. Fair enough, but my brain is often a battlefield. Part of me wants to clean my room. Part of me doesn't. The lazy part always wins, and it's incredibly annoying. That's one reason I look at stuff like this, hoping to find answers for why I can't seem to do what I know I want to do. Your brain’s most important job is not thinking or feeling or even seeing, but keeping your body alive and well so that you survive and thrive (and eventually reproduce). Or, in my case, decide that reproduction is for birds and bees, and make the rational decision that there are enough people already. But I'll let that slide, for the sake of considering that evolution is a thing that happens and part of evolution is reproduction in the most general sense. Your brain spends its entire existence in a dark silent box, called your skull. Silent? Someone in the neighborhood yesterday played Aerosmith with the volume cranked up to eleven, and "Walk This Way" has been banging around in my skull since then. I don't even like Aerosmith all that much. Silent. Ha. I should be so lucky. If your brain can construct many different emotions automatically and make fine distinctions among them, it can tailor your emotions better to your situation. You’re also better equipped to anticipate and perceive emotion in others in the blink of an eye. The more emotions that you know, the more finely your brain can construct emotional meaning automatically from other people’s actions. I'm skipping over some important stuff, here, but I have to wonder if there's some correlation between this and the ability to identify colors beyond the obvious ones we all know from the rainbow. Like, I see red but someone else might see rose, maroon, etc. Might be worth a study. On the other hand, being better able to understand and identify emotion would help me in the area I need it most: not dealing with other people, which tends to make me uncomfortable, but in writing. How much better would by writing be if, as the author suggests: Instead of perceiving someone as generically “glad,” learn to distinguish more specifics. Are they “overjoyed” or “contented” or “grateful?” Are they “angry” or “indignant” or “resentful” or “bitter?” I mean, it's not that I don't know these words. It's that I consider them synonyms. When you force yourself to learn new words—emotion-related or otherwise—you sculpt your brain’s microwiring, giving it the means to construct those emotional experiences, as well as your perceptions of others’ emotions, more effortlessly in the future. In short, every emotion word you learn is a new tool for future emotional intelligence. And boy, am I learning new words. I leveled up in French yesterday. It's not the words that I have trouble with, though; it's the ideas behind them. And the grammar, but that's probably irrelevant to my thoughts today. As I'm pretty sure I've noted in here before, different languages seem to mark different ways of thinking, and French especially is well-known for having subtle but important differences to English. Hell, American and British English have some of these differences; for example, I just wrote "differences to" like a Brit instead of "differences from" like a Yank. Foreign languages are a great source of new emotion words for increasing your brain’s emotional repertoire. You might already know schadenfreude, a transplant from German that means “taking pleasure in another person’s misfortune.” Like I said, I'm taking notes as I go. Glad to see some confirmation. And yes, I'm intimately familiar with schadenfreude. Science, after all, is merely our best understanding of how things work, given the evidence at hand. In the face of new discoveries, explanations change, sometimes significantly. That is how science works. This, I think, is important to understand even outside of the field I'm talking about today. As you know if you've been following along, I'm pretty focused on science. I may not understand emotion all that well, but I am okay with flexibility and change, at least for now. I know there's been a lot of pushback because experts keep changing the story on, for instance, the pandemic that's affecting all of us in some way. But as this author points out, we do the best we can with the knowledge we have. As new data comes in, the story changes, and that's to be expected. I'm also okay with changing my world-view when new evidence comes along. And I can still work on the emotion comprehension thing. |
This will be entry #3 for "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+] 9. You have to look through the rain to see the oncoming bus, dump truck, and motorcycle. Solace.Bring  I'd probably have gone with "clouds." You have to look through the rain to see the clouds. I don't really know the original quote here, but I suspect I would be disdainful of it. As it is... Well. I go through optimistic phases, but I'm not what you'd call an optimistic person. There's a scene I vaguely remember from Doctor Who, in the Matt Smith incarnation. I don't really remember the situation or the exact wording, and I can't seem to find it anywhere because most people associate the Doctor with optimism, but in this case he says something like, "It's not like things could get any worse." Things proceed to get worse, and then he says, "There are some sentences I should just stay away from." In other words, it's always darkest just before things fade entirely to black. I mean, obviously, I know it's not true. Simple statistics show that if something unpleasant happens, there's a good chance that something nice will happen afterwards, in addition to the possibility that things will get worse or that they'll stay about the same. But, see, that's not helpful. I like surprises, but only pleasant ones. If I find an unexpected creature in my home, it would be a nice surprise if it were a unicorn, and a lousy surprise if it's a rabid coyote. So if I expect the rabid coyote and then I get the rabid coyote, I can be like, "Yep, I was right," and I'd feel good about being right all the way up until the time I'd have to get rabies shots. But if I expect the coyote and get the unicorn, well, that's a pleasant surprise. On the other hand, if I expect the unicorn and get the coyote, that's all kinds of disappointing unpleasantness. So, yes, I'm going to expect the worst, because that way, I can feel good about being right, or I can feel good about the pleasant surprise. One thing I can never be is disappointed. Well, that's the theory, anyway. In practice, I get disappointed quite a bit, so I just keep becoming more negative until I'm no longer unpleasantly surprised. So to get back to the remixed quote above, I find rain to be generally pretty neutral. I know people who love it or hate it, or maybe it's situational, but to me it's like, well, I don't live in a desert (which makes me wonder just why all of these rabid coyotes are running around) and so I have to expect it to rain sometimes. It does no good to love it or hate it; it just is. But it does tend to put a crimp in one's plans, and when that happens, I can only expect things to get worse, like I get caught in a three-way weather-induced accident between a bus, a dump truck, and a motorcycle. And when that doesn't happen, I feel pretty good. When it does happen, I'll be dead.  Yesterday's entry included a mini-contest. The challenge was to describe the smell of coffee, because some stuffy German philosopher once said it couldn't be done. And there were some great responses. All of them, actually. You guys can't make this easy on me. But as per the above, I expected that. Based on the responses, I'm starting to think Wittgenstein might have been onto something after all. You can compare the aroma of coffee to some other scent, which is useful but also kind of kicks the can down the road; how would you explain these other scents? You can use metaphor, as in "the liquid essence of a black sun," which I thought was particularly poetic, but none of us have experience with black suns. And then there's the neurological route, as in "triggers the pleasure centre" (which I disagree with, but as I said, I'm not going to dismiss an attempt just because I don't like the aroma myself), but while that's accurate (for people who aren't me), it doesn't really convey the sensation. But maybe there's really no way to convey it on a practical level. I used the example yesterday of describing "blue" to a person blind since birth, but I suspect that trying to describe the scent of coffee to someone who has never had a sense of smell would be a problem just as intractable. As I said, I thought everyone provided a great response, but I'm going to go with the one that made me laugh. How would a non-coffee drinker describe the aroma of coffee? Well, like this. Coffee's aroma is the closest we'll get to someone trying to set moist soil or peat on fire using a non-petroleum based ignition fluid. You could imagine something like vodka, 151 rum, or a very small amount of C-4 in this scenario. These ignition fluids can account for any trace scents that may appear against the soil-based backdrop. If it's sweet, blame the rum. If it's clean, blame the vodka. If there's a flinty or mineral note, well, C-4 could account at least for part of that. Elisa the Bunny Stik  , I owe you a Merit Badge.This is fun. I'll keep doing it from time to time as long as I keep getting enough responses to make it worthwhile, so everyone will have another chance soon. |
| Last week, I posted an article and gave everyone a chance to win a Merit Badge. I'm considering making that a regular thing. Let's do it today, and see how it turns out. Today's link is about language -- something that might be of interest to all writers. It's a few years old, but that's irrelevant to everything except maybe one of the examples the author provides. https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/09/take-a-wittgenstein-class-he-explains-t... The Limits of Language Wittgenstein explains why we always misunderstand one another on the Internet. The best class I took in college was on the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Until that point, I had avoided philosophy of language as simply being too esoteric and hermetic to be of use. Um, you just described all of philosophy, for various philosophical definitions of "use." Wittgenstein, who lived from 1889 to 1951, is most famous for a handful of oracular pronouncements: “The limits of language are the limits of my world.” “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” “The human body is the best picture of the human soul.” All three of which are prima facie bovine excrement. Yes, I, an utter nobody with an engineering degree, am calling a philosopher's pronouncements bullshit. This is my blog and I can do that. (Since pretty much no one can agree on anything about Wittgenstein, I’m going to present things in the spirit of Pears’ interpretation, with the caveat that you could probably find a philosopher somewhere who would disagree with every following sentence.) Well, that's a tautology if I've ever seen one. Anything one person can say, another can disagree with. I can say "the sky is blue" and some asshole will respond with "Well, where I am, it's gray." To be perfectly fair, usually I'm the asshole pedant. The article goes on to describe in great detail exactly what this author's interpretation of the periods of Wittgenstein's work represent. The idea of words having relative meanings was not new, but Wittgenstein pioneered the controversial linguistic conception of meaning-as-use, or the idea that the meanings of words, relative or not, cannot be specified in isolation from the life practices in which they are used. This bit makes all kinds of sense, though. Words are not, and cannot be, stand-alone parcels of meaning. As writers, I hope we're all aware of the relationship between denotation (or definition) and connotation, as well as context. And that's not even getting into words with multiple meanings, such as "run" or "sex." I remember perusing a dictionary when I was a kid (I was a bored geek and this was before the internet) and marveling at the length of the entry for the word "run." Compared to that, "sex" was straightforward. Unfortunately, this makes the study of language considerably more difficult, since examining the meanings of words now requires not just verbal definitions, but analyzing the whole “language-game” of situations and practices to which they are attached. Any article on philosophy ultimately appeals to epistemology. Here’s one example. The French equivalents for here and there are ici and là respectively. But if I point to a pen and say, “The pen is here,” the French equivalent is not “Le stylo est ici,” but “Le stylo est là.” In French, là is always used to refer to a specific place or position, while in English here or there can both work. This rule is so obscure I never learned it in French classes, but obviously all native speakers learn it because no one ever uses it differently. It could just as easily be the other way round, but it’s not. The situation is not arbitrary, but the way in which language carves up the interaction between mind and world varies in such a way that French speakers recognize certain practices as right or wrong in a different way than English speakers do. I'm getting a lot of practical experience with this sort of thing as I continue to learn French. Learning a language creates a shift in one's mental processes and forces one to understand one's own language better in comparison. This is one reason why Google Translate is notoriously unreliable, and why the most unbelievable science fiction on Star Trek is not warp drive, transporters, or phasers, but the Universal Translator. Wittgenstein’s philosophy also accounts for the disastrous state of Internet discourse today. The shift to online communication, textual interactions separated from accompanying physical practices, has had a persistent and egregious warping effect on language, and one that most people don’t even understand. It has made linguistic practice more limited, more universal, and more ambiguous. More people interact with one another without even realizing they are following different rules for words’ usages. There is no time or space to clarify one’s self—especially on Twitter. This is, quite obviously, still true five years after this article was written. Thing is, though, just like with everything else, we learn and we adapt. It's long been said that "tone doesn't translate to text," or words to that effect, but I think it does -- it just doesn't work the same way that it does in spoken language. I mean, if I came home and said to my nonexistent spouse, "I had a rough day," she could tell by my body language, vocalization, and perhaps the way I threw myself onto the couch afterward, that it wasn't merely a rough day but a war zone. I type that in text or in my blog, though, and it probably comes across as a mere statement, devoid of nuance, and you might even be excused for thinking I'm engaging in either understatement or hyperbole (especially if you know I have a penchant for both). Some people compensate for that with emoji (or, here, emoticons), but I try to use them sparingly, because I feel that as a writer, I should be working on expressing myself more clearly in writing. The best way to do that, in the above situation, is not to simply type "I had a rough day," and throw in a string of indecipherable emoji, but, in the grand tradition of show-don't-tell, to say exactly what it is that was rough about it. "My car died on the way to work, and while I was trying to fix it, some asshole stole my wallet." For example. It's not that we lose nuance when typing. It's that a lot of people don't know how to express it. And that, friends, is why I think "philosophy of language" does have use. Now, the article I linked above is mostly about relating this philosophy to the problems of artificial intelligence, and it's interesting for those insights, but of course I view it through the lens of a writer, not a programmer. Just another example of how the meaning we take from something is not always the meaning the author intends. And now for the chance to win a Merit Badge. The linked article opens with an image that has the following caption: “Describe the aroma of coffee—why can’t it be done? Do we lack the words? and for what are words lacking?—But how do we get the idea that such a description must after all be possible? Have you ever felt the lack of such a description? Have you tried to describe the aroma and not succeeded?” Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations. Thing is, almost everyone knows what coffee smells like, even if we think it's a foul brew of sewage and nightmares from the depths of the Abyss. Describing coffee should not be the intractable problem that, say, describing the color "blue" to a person blind from birth would be. So: describe the aroma of coffee in the comments here. I'll pick the one I like best and give the author a Merit Badge tomorrow. No, you don't have to agree with me; you just have to be thorough and/or funny. You have until midnight. |
Wow, so much win today. First I find out that my entries for last month's "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS" [13+] earned me 2nd place in that contest. Shiny new Merit Badge up there in the header   Then people tell me this blog won the 2019 Quill Award for blogging!  (I haven't received official word yet, but more than one person has confirmed this.)You can tell this comes as a big surprise to me, because how often do I use emoticons in here? I appreciate it very much, and I want to thank everyone who nominated or voted for this blog, or even read this thing, closed it in disgust, and then voted for a different blog. As I've noted with, what, a year and a half or so at the 30DBC, there are a lot of excellent blogs out there. And yes, I know the awards ceremony was today, but I really dislike videoconferencing. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the efforts of those who organized, voted, and attended. Again, thanks  And now for an article related to yesterday's personal finance rant. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/recession-unemployment-co... I Don't Feel Like Buying Stuff Anymore Our economy is built on Americans of all class levels buying things. What happens when the ability — and desire — to do so goes away? I didn’t even realize I’d lost my desire to shop until one day, about six weeks into isolation, I absentmindedly clicked on a Madewell email offering an additional sale on a sale. I don’t even have anywhere to wear the jumpsuits I already own, let alone one that would require heels. Normally, I'd have stopped reading right there. This is obviously someone so far removed from my own experience that they might as well be on Mars. But I thought, what the hell, blog fodder. Not wanting to buy things feels as bizarre as not wanting to sleep or not wanting to eat. It’s been ingrained in us, as Americans, as an unspoken component of residency. We're far from the only consumerist society. And, in case you might have gotten the wrong impression from yesterday's entry, I'm not anti-consumerism. It's okay to buy things. It's okay to want to buy things. It's just that I counsel, and try to practice, thoughtful consumerism, not just buying things because they're on sale or because you're trying to fill that dollar-shaped hole in your heart. One problem, in my opinion, is that advertising has caused us to confuse needs with desires. You need water. You want bottled artisanal water with just a hint of anise. You need food. You want fancy French cheese (okay, I want fancy French cheese). The author (presumably) needs clothing. She wants jumpsuits (whatever they are) from Madewell (whatever that is). Okay, I know what a jumpsuit is; I've been reading science fiction almost since I learned how to read. But somehow I don't think we mean the same thing by it. Mars. When wants become needs, that's when you start going into debt. And then someone like Marie Kondo comes along and entices you to throw out all that junk that, at one time, you "needed" and that filled that dollar-shaped hole in your heart, and you end up with a lot more space that you can then fill up with stuff that's ON SALE! 50% OFF! And the cycle continues. This, by the way, is why advertisers target young people. Old farts tend to know the difference between needs and wants. Besides, have you seen the crap they market to seniors? Utilitarian walkers with busted tennis balls on the feet? Come on, throw me a bone here. By the time I need a walker, I want racing stripes, dammit. Maybe even airbrushed flames or a large-breasted barbarian woman. We’re trained to buy often, buy cheap, and buy a lot. And I’m not just talking about food, which everyone has to acquire in some capacity, or clothes. I mean all the other small purchases of daily life: a new face lotion, a houseplant holder, a wine glass name trinket, an office supply organizer, a vegetable spiralizer, a cute set of hand towels, a pair of nicer sunglasses, a pair of sports sunglasses, a pair of throwaway sunglasses. The stuff, in other words, that you don’t even know that you want until it somehow finds its way to your cart at Target or T.J. Maxx. Definitely Mars. Just because I'm in a good mood for once (see above about winning shit), I'll go through this list. A new face lotion - I've never purchased face lotion in my entire life. Yeah, okay, I'm a dude, and I have been known to buy shaving lotion, but I rarely use it. Shaving cream, sure, but one bottle of shaving lotion lasts me a decade because I keep forgetting to slap that stuff on after scraping my face. A houseplant holder - as I've mentioned in here before, plants die in my proximity (everything except, of course, poison ivy, kudzu, dandelions, etc.) A houseplant holder would be useless to me. A wine glass name trinket - aw HELL naw. For one thing, there's only one other person in my house, and my cats don't drink much. I know which glass is mine because it's in my trembling hand. As for the wine glasses themselves, I have a huge collection of complimentary wine glasses from various tasting rooms. An office supply organizer - granted, I have one of these. I bought it when I had an office and supplies. It was a business expense. A vegetable spiralizer - get the fuck outta here. A cute set of hand towels - ...seriously? A pair of nicer sunglasses, a pair of sports sunglasses, etc. - I had a prescription pair of Maui Jims. That might have been the most I ever spent on a single article of... clothing? Accessory? Well, no, I have a nice wool suit for funerals that was pricier. Nevermind. Point is, I sometimes pick up generic sunglasses at a convenience store for $10. I lost the Maui Jims and still have the cheap ones, so never again. I get the impression that most peoples' algorithm for buying shit goes something like: IF I see an ad or display AND shit's on sale THEN I decide I need it. For me it's: IF I identify a need or want THEN I go looking for something to fulfill it. This doesn't mean I'm immune to impulse purchases. Oh, hell no. I was getting groceries delivered even in the Before Times, in part because whenever I went to the grocery store I'd end up buying a package of Oreos. The point being I know what my Kryptonite is and how to avoid it. By not spending money on a lot of useless crap I don't need, I have more to spend on important things like beer, wine, travel, and cigars. We buy to accumulate objects meant to communicate our class and what sort of person we are. I'm not totally immune to that, either, but I can honestly say that I've never said to myself, "I'm going to buy this thing because it will communicate my class and what sort of person I am." So I guess I buy stuff that communicates that I'm not the kind of person who gives a shit about that sort of thing. Don't get me wrong; I'm not attacking the writer of this article or anyone reading this who might think differently. Everyone has their own thing, and that's fine; even if I don't understand it, I accept it. So how do Americans buy so much when we have so little discretionary money? Massive amounts of credit. Payday loans, credit cards, quick and easy car loans, and the newly common “Afterpay” function in online checkouts incentivize spending beyond our means. The average American has a startling $6,194 in credit card debt, with an average interest rate of 16.88%. This "average American" thing is misleading. You can say that the average credit card debt in America is $6000 or whatever, but that information is useless without other statistical parameters. It also says nothing about savings. And the interest rate? I use a credit card for everything, but pay it in full every month, using it more like a debit card only with the purchase protection that a debit card doesn't provide, plus cash back. I don't even know what my cards' interest rates are (though I could look them up if I wanted), because I don't pay them; they pay me in cash back. My lifestyle tends to not fit into sociologists' models. That kind of spending is what our current economic model is based on: Americans of all class levels buying things and always wanting to buy more, regardless of their actual means. Which is what I've been trying to say all along. And it's also why we're way past overdue to end the failed experiment of trickle-down economics and trade it for what I call piss-up economics. Stop giving more money to rich people. Give the money to all of us peasants, and it'll end up in rich folks' pockets eventually, because despite me railing about this shit, I'm under no illusion that anything I say is going to make a damn bit of difference. As unemployment numbers continue to rise and most of the country is still in some sort of lockdown, any marketing that frames a new shirt as a “quarantine necessity” feels like a con. News alert for the Martian: all marketing is a con. Some are more harmless than others, true, but they're all cons. “Everything I’ve bought has been for my kids, who are growing out of their clothes,” Tania told me. “And I have agonized over every purchase. The calculus for every decision is: Do I need to put an essential worker in harm’s way to get this? Can I do without it? Can I afford it? Do we have anything that could work in its place? Can I wait 10 days for it, since that’s the average shipping time? And if I can’t have something immediately, do I really want it?” Asking yourself "Do I really want it?" is a start. The article, which is quite long, goes on to talk about consumerism as citizenship. I'd recommend reading it (or I wouldn't have bothered to link it), whether you agree with it or not. But I'm going to stop here and start drinking, because otherwise this might end up being even longer than the original article. |
| I really do not like the website I'm going to link today. But it's the link I've got and I'll do what I can with it. https://twocents.lifehacker.com/its-time-to-live-on-a-budget-even-if-youre-finan... It's Time to Live on a Budget, Even if You're Financially Secure It's always been time to live on a budget. Maybe unless you're Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. Chances are you're not. But hey, if either of you are reading this: Hi! Jeff, Elon is kicking your ass in the space business. Elon, Jeff is kicking your ass in the everything else business. Both of you get on the ball. There are two big unknowns in all of our lives right now: What’s going to happen with the COVID-19 pandemic, and what it will mean for the economy. This article is from a month ago, so there's more than two unknowns. Some of us are already having to rethink our spending habits to make ends meet. Others may feel more financially secure thanks to high salaries, six-month emergency funds or the ability to work remotely. But when recessions come, they tend to come for everybody—so it’s time for all of us to reevaluate our budgets and, potentially, start saving as much as we can. I can't find it today, but at some point last month, when 30DBC was going on, I saw an article that basically berated all of us for not spending money. I wish I'd remembered to save it, but I didn't. From what I recall, it was some corporate media site like CNN or something, trying to shame us as hoarders if we dared to hang onto cash instead of feeding the capitalist machine. I probably would have read more of that article if I hadn't gotten a pop-up requiring me to subscribe. I laughed and closed the tab. It is true that our economy depends on the flow of cash. It is debatable whether what we had in the Before Times, where many of us had crushing debt and yet continued to spend more, more, and more, all while slaving away at a job that was able to pay a relative pittance because if you got fed up, there was no guarantee that you could even get another job, let alone one that paid more. Even with what was, at the time, remarkably low unemployment numbers, employers still held all the cards. Now they hold all the cards and have a few aces tucked in their boots as well. Deficit spending may work for governments. Or it may not, in the long run; I don't know because macroeconomics is really above my pay grade. Hell, the "experts" in the field often disagree. I mean, climate scientists are mostly all in agreement that we're boned, but economists? Ask three economists what needs to be done to fix the economy and you'll get six different answers. But I'm almost certain that deficit spending is the road to ruin for individuals and families. It's a hamster wheel, moving fast but without many people actually getting anywhere. If you're in debt of any kind, if you have expenses you can't cut, if you rely on your employer for health insurance... they OWN you. So, no, I strongly recommend that you don't listen to the alarmists going "but if people don't spend, the economy will collapse!" I mean, yeah, maybe it will, but then what? There you are in a shitty economy with no savings because you spent all your money on scented candles from Amazon. So what does Lifehacker recommend? With the caveat that I wouldn't blindly do anything that they recommend, you could always read the article. Here's a summary, though: Treat your income like it’s temporary I'm not sure if that's helpful or not. I do believe that it's a strong reason to save: if you think of your income as temporary, then you'd better have something squirreled away for when you don't have income. Saving money now is worth more than spending money later I think it's a little more complicated than that. I'd say that saving money now is more important than buying that shit you found that normally sells at a 1000% markup but is on sale for only an 800% markup. Remember: If you spend $80 on a $100 knickknack, they'll have you believe that you "saved" $20, when in reality you spent $80. Try budgeting for 30 days, then reevaluate What? No. Budgeting is an ongoing process. Spend the first 30 days just tracking your expenditures. Find ways you can cut back. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Look, I'll be the first to admit that I spend more than I should, and like most people, I've been known to make impulse purchases. Having money in the budget to do that, if you can, is important to one's mental health. Dickens probably said it best, at a time when money bought a lot more and long before the British finally decimalized their currency. But the idea remains valid: Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. |
| Here's another entry for "Journalistic Intentions" [18+]. I'm familiar with the original version of this. "Well behaved women seldom make history." Fair enough, I suppose, though I'd argue that well-behaved men seldom make history, either, making that a nonsequitur of sorts. There's more than one way to make history, and just because you do doesn't mean you've done a good thing. Carrie Nation, for example. Certainly not well-behaved, and one of the most evil people who ever existed. But this isn't about the original quote; it's about the remix. We all have our rebellions. Nobody does everything expected of them, all the time. Not only is that impossible, but if you told me you never even once rebelled as a teenager, you're either lying or boring. Hell, most of us make it a point of pride. "I was supposed to go to work today, but I called in sick. Yeah, sick of work." The important thing in a situation like that one is to not brag about it on social media. In fact, so many people have been busted for doing something naughty because they posted about it on social media that I have had to once again lower my opinion of humans' collective average IQ. Of course, there's misbehavior and then there's outright fraud. I have no sympathy for someone who claims disability for a bad back and then posts pictures of themselves climbing a mountain in their copious free time, and thence gets their benefits cut off. But stuff that's not really hurting anyone? Eh, you do you, or whatever the saying is these days. So if I ever see someone, of any gender, who presents themselves as a fine, upstanding member of society, always doing the Right Thing, signalling the fuck out of their virtue, well, I don't buy it. Oh, I'm sure that, like I said, there's a preponderance of good people in the world, but also like I said, sometimes good people do naughty things. If you're vegan, I assume you sneak a bite of cheese every now and then. If you're always talking about recycling, I bet that sometimes you get in a hurry and throw an aluminum can into the landfill trash. It's okay. I don't think less of you for it. I don't even think less of you for lying about it, because really, you're not hurting anyone and a little bit of rebellion can feel so damn good. But if you're a fiery anti-sex preacher and you get caught having an affair? Then I'm going to laugh. Or you pull a Carrie Nation and rail about the evils of alcohol, and I find you getting wasted in a bar 100 miles from home? You're damn right I'm going to take pictures and spread them around. We're all hypocrites to some degree; no one can be perfectly consistent, especially over time and growth. But if you're going to be that blatant about it, you will definitely get called out. And no, I'm not going to take the gender bait. Not this time, anyway. I reserve the right to be hypocritical about that in the future. |
| I just can't resist a good architectural takedown. It's even more fun than art criticism, because architecture, unlike art, is supposed to serve a purpose. Oh, yeah, I went there. https://www.cracked.com/article_27598_why-your-city-looks-ugly-af.html Why Your City Looks Ugly AF Ugly "AF?" Is this where journalism is going now: tweenspeak? Oh, wait, it's not journalism; it's Cracked. Carry on. In case you couldn't tell by my jaded cynicism towards the film industry and insufferable snobbery, I live in Los Angeles. Recently, between a meditation session with the Mindfulness Maharishi of my spirituality-focused initiative and my appointment for a medicinal gong-ringing, I was able to take the subway (yes, LA has a subway) to Little Tokyo for a big ol' bowl of ramen -- the good shit, not the twenty-five cent brick of noodle-shaped styrofoam and sodium you're thinking of. And as I was crossing the street, I noticed something. That all sounds more like San Francisco than Los Angeles to me. But then, I visit SF almost every year while I haven't been to LA in over 20. Why does one look like Minas Tirith and the other look like a DMV for the Borg? Or, for those of us who didn't have sex in high school, why does one look like a beautiful altar where blood sacrifices were made to a forgotten Canaanite god and the other looks like a jail for Cubists convicted of tax fraud -- the most boring crime? This is about where I started to lose my shit. Meaning I actually LOLed, something I rarely do when reading stuff. In classic Cracked form, this is a numbered list. At this point I'm just used to it. 5. You Hate Modern Architecture And modern art, but you already knew that. The word "modern" has a problem. It can mean both "current and up-to-date" and "belonging to a particular school of art that's not current." The Modern era ended before WWII (I think). The modern era is whatever we're in now. I had an ongoing battle with a particular landscape architect I worked with. Whenever we'd make major changes to a plan, we'd save the old one in case we had to go back to it for some reason, like when you save a video game before you go fight the Big Boss, so if you die you can go back to your old save point and nope on out of there. He always saved the old file as "filename" and the new one as "filename_new" or something along those lines. I always saved the old file as something like "filename_date" and the new one as "filename." As you can imagine, this caused some confusion. But his way, if you had to do this more than once, you'd end up with "filename_new," "filename_new_new," "filename_new_new_new..." you get the idea. My clearly superior way kept a record of when we made these save points, keeping the current file with always the same name. Should we ever go back to an older version, we could simply switch filenames. Our boss, who kinda-sorta knew what a computer was, resolved this by saying something like "But it is the new file, so just call it new." So I started my own company, and you're damn right I adopted the obviously better naming conventions. That particular landscape architect had the chutzpah to call me looking for a job. My short answer was "No." I'll leave the long answer to your imagination. I hear he's still designing bushes somewhere. Anyway. That's the problem with "modern." Anything Modern is older than I am, and it's confusing as hell. The first building I'd really consider to be "modern architecture" is the Rose Center for Earth and Space, all the way down at 33. Now before you rush down to the comments to yell at me for using terms like "Modern," "Post-Modern," "Brutalist," and "Contemporary" interchangeably, I'd like to offer a brief rebuttal: come the fuck on, you know what I mean. No. No, I really don't. The only Rose Center I know is in NYC, and it's modern. I mean new. I mean it's a massive glass box with a sphere inside for the Hayden Planetarium. It looks cool, and I'm not sure if it was built before or after the glass box at the corner of Central Park that's actually an Apple store, but both of those buildings ought to be paying royalties to my uncle, who pioneered the whole "transparent box" art movement. But I digress. And really, you have to click on the article to get the full effect. There are pictures. With captions. The point here is that most modern architecture strikes my uneducated plebeian eye as being an ugly, discordant collision of metallic angles. And statistically speaking, I'm in the majority here. I've said this before about art, a term that I assert includes architecture, but at some point, with any art, you start to get artists who care more about winning the adoration of other artists than about being accessible to the public. This is why I hate the Oscars, and why I refuse to read lit-snob writing. 4. Common People Aren't Deciding What Buildings Look Like Well, okay, but given that "common people" tend to vote for ocean vessel names such as "Boaty McBoatFace," this is a good thing. As the linked article points out later, we'd end up with a bunch of buildings that look like penises. But what the hell, right? We already have a bunch of buildings that look like penises. To be fair, it's hard to design a skyscraper that looks like a vagina. When architects saw that last [I think he meant "list"] of people's favorite buildings, they said "This isn't necessarily the design professional's view of the best buildings, but the emotional connection to where people live and work and play." In other words, "Yeah, idiots! Stop liking buildings just because they make you feel good! You morons. You intractable dumbasses. What's next? Liking food that tastes good? Maybe I'll respect your opinions when you get a Gunther Ford design airbrushed onto the side of your van instead of a huge-breasted woman riding a tiger, you hookworm-ridden carny." 3. Modern Architecture isn't Just Ugly, It's Also Hard to Live In Weirdly, architecture that's ostensibly predicated around being as brutally functional as possible actually kind of sucks ass at being a building. Not only is it ugly, it's bad at its job -- and I gotta say I don't appreciate these buildings stealing my schtick. Got news for you, bud. Every comedy writer on the internet is ugly and bad at their job. We don't owe you royalties. 2. More Than Practical Considerations Because what I'm getting at here is that in the arena of urban development, the idea of "comfort" seems to have been largely demoted from Literal Necessity to Frivolous Luxury. But comfort is important. It's why I exclusively wipe my ass with county fair quilts and get thirteen hours of sleep a night. Beauty is subjective, but surely an attempt to beautify our cities would at least relieve some of the crushing misery or urban life? At the very least, fewer buildings in the Concrete Mistake school of architecture could only help. Again, we need buildings that we can live, work, and shop in, not ones that win awards from other architects. Imagine a fancy architect trying to design a Wal-Mart. A Wal-Mart has but one function: get a lot of people in there and make them want to buy stuff. That's why they all look like giant postage stamps from the air. Not a single Wal-Mart will ever win a design competition at the Columbia School of Architecture, and yet people flock to them. That's because they sell cheap-ass shit, and that's what people want, not elegant architectural sorcery. 1. Art vs. Function, Democracy vs. Authoritarianism Now we're in a bit of pickle, because what can be done about the proliferation of ugly architecture? The Trump administration has, unsurprisingly, offered a solution that actually makes things worse: they've drafted an executive order that would put disallow modern architectural designs on federal buildings and make Neoclassical the default style. Which is not only un-democratic, it's also, frankly, kinda fashy -- since the word facism is itself an invocation of ancient Rome. Of course, legislating art out of existence has always ended well. But even with the ever present danger of vote brigading turning our cities into dickjungles, I think it could be worth giving the public greater say in what their cities look like. Here in LA in 2016 we voted to pass a bill that increased sales tax to fund an expansion of our Metro system, or as New Yorkers call it, "da unnagroun' piss-circus -- ayy, I'm walkin' 'ere!" I'm sorry, I shouldn't make hacky jokes about New York. (They have it hard enough what with their pizza being a Kraft single cheese byproduct melted on a greaselogged shingle and all.) Okay, dude, I get your points about architecture, but you know nothing about pizza. NOTHING. Tofu is not an acceptable topping for pizza, or anything else, you avocado-munching California hipster. I understand, I think, where the modern architects are coming from. Life is ugly, and art should reflect that. I don't want every movie to be a saccharine Disney lovefest, because that's not an accurate reflection of the whole of the human condition. But I also don't want every damn movie I watch to be A Serbian Film. But maybe making terrible buildings isn't just reflecting the misery of life; maybe it's actively contributing to it. I mean, living in a city is already killing us and driving us insane. All of that, and not one mention of the architectural abortion that is Hudson Yards. Oh well, that can be forgiven since he lives 3000 miles away from that monstrous failure, and besides, a few months ago, I linked a post from the Guardian that heeled that turd down the shower drain. I can't be arsed to find it now, but if you're interested, search my blog for Hudson Yards. Anyway, like I said, I highly recommend actually reading the article because the photos really drive home his points. |
| Today, because it looks like we need it (and because it came from my queue at random), we're going to talk about having fun. https://qz.com/quartzy/1564012/having-fun-is-a-virtue-not-a-guilty-pleasure/ Having fun is a virtue, not a guilty pleasure The article opens with a helpful picture of someone pouring champagne into a glass, with the caption: Though Judeo-Christian philosophy presents work as divine, there’s nothing inherently sinful in pleasure. Not to start a religious debate or anything, but I'm convinced that "Judeo-Christian philosophy" is a misnomer for several reasons. You know what the biggest difference between Jews and Christians is? "The Jesus thing." Well, that's a difference, but no. "Christians can eat delicious bacon." Okay, point for Christians. But no. It's this: Speaking in the most general terms, Christians hold the belief that humans are inherently sinners, and can only be redeemed through Jesus (or Jesus and good works in certain denominations). Jews tend to the belief that humans are inherently good but sometimes do bad things that they can atone for. It's a huge difference when you think about it. But the second-biggest difference is that Jews aren't afraid to have a good time. Okay, I'm probably being unfair to most Christians there. I'm thinking specifically of American Christians, who generally come from a Puritanical background, and Puritans are deathly afraid that someone, somewhere, is having fun. Again, I'm not trying to start a religious argument here; just giving my impression based on what I've seen. But I wasn't raised Christian, so that work ethic, that idea that "work is divine" that the caption speaks of, well, that was never drilled into me like it was into some of my friends. Work is important, yes, but it's also important to have fun, and in my family, it was learning that was emphasized. Despite being irreligious now, that attitude is still with me. Also, as far as I know, only the Jews have a holiday where the whole purpose is to get so drunk you can't tell the good guys from the bad guys. Point for Judaism. Doesn't quite make up for the no-bacon thing, though. And that's all I'll say to refute the idea that there is a monolithic, overarching "Judeo-Christian philosophy," as if the dozens, if not hundreds, of different sects, sub-sects, and individual congregations of each wasn't enough to dismiss the idea. But I was talking about the article, which is about having a good time. Imagine you had control of another person’s life, and could dictate their activity every hour of the day. Would you condemn them to spend 80% of their waking hours at a desk, repeating mind-numbingly boring tasks and depriving them of close relationships? Hopefully not—sentencing someone to such a miserable life would be immoral. A lot of what God is reported to have commanded would be absolutely immoral if it were imposed by a human authority. To me, that's the definition of God. And oh, man, I'm going to start a religious argument with that, aren't I? Okay, look, I'll say this: I'm really not trying to diss anyone's religion or lack thereof; again, I'm just calling it as I see it. “Some people worship beauty, some worship political identities, and others worship their children,” wrote Derek Thompson in the Atlantic. “But everybody worships something. And workism is among the most potent of the new religions competing for congregants.” Well, not dissing anyone's religion except maybe that one. Such widespread workaholism in part reflects the misguided notion that having fun is somehow an indulgence, an act of absconding from proper respectable behavior, rather than embracement of life. There was a time, however, when I would have been considered a workaholic. It wasn't that I didn't want to do other things; it was that there was so much to do at work and not enough time to do it all. This got especially bad when I was running my own company. But I never thought I was being virtuous by doing it, except in the sense that I wanted to meet my obligations and fulfill my promises. Indeed, Western society only began to shun pleasures, and to view work as virtuous, thanks to Christian ethics. Whereas the Greek philosopher Aristotle thought that work made you a worse person, Judeo-Christian philosophy holds that work is a means of imitating God’s act of creation, and so views work as divine. Millions of people who’ve abandoned theist practices still hold onto the religious belief that work is inherently virtuous. I won't belabor the hyphenated adjective anymore, but yes, even those who have become atheists and come from a Christian background can sometimes worship work in a sense, just as I hold dear the act of learning. Others suggest that having fun is frivolity, and claim to enjoy spending all their time at the office. Of course, work is fun, and a life without meaningful labor can be exceedingly miserable. But that doesn’t imply that work should be the only enjoyable activity in life. Working hard is part of the good life, as employment can bring fulfillment and financial freedom. There comes a time, though, when those financial rewards should be put to use for the sake of leisure. People talk a good game about work-life "balance," but I don't think they're looking at it right. As a friend of mine once put it, "I don't live to work. I work to live." Grant notes that Nietzsche, who espoused the value of life-affirming activities, is the most well-known modern philosopher to revive the importance of loving life. Nietzsche also had a truly epic mustache. I mean, really, look him up and LOOK AT THAT EPIC MUSTACHE. We are limited individuals, with a narrow sense of self, if we only allow ourselves to pursue the corporate mission of our employer. We need to spend hours devoted to art galleries, or playing cards, or drinking fine wine, to create richly developed selves with an identity unmodulated by company culture. To live well, it’s not enough to simply fall into enjoyment occasionally; we should pursue the joyful activities that make us happy and make life worthwhile. There is nothing inherently sinful in having fun. Which is great, if you get paid enough to have leisure activities other than sitting and staring off into space. I don't really have a profound point to make with all of this, except: even in these trying times -- especially in these trying times -- it's important to have a bit of fun and not feel guilty about it. And no, it doesn't have to involve booze. But it helps. And now, the results from yesterday. I promised a Merit Badge to whoever answered the question "What the hell are these dodecahedrons, anyway?" in the way that I deemed, in my own opinion, to be the best. You guys did NOT make that easy. I loved each and every one of the nine comments I got on the subject, even the utter non-sequitur about a sport I know next to nothing about. Though, I have to say, I was just a teensy bit disappointed that no one guessed "prototype Magic 8-Ball." I mean, seriously, it was hard to pick a clear favorite. Some made me chuckle, like "Gladiator wiffle ball." Some impressed me with their thoughtfulness, like "It's a shape sorting toy." (I once read an article that said that the wheel, commonly accepted as one of the most useful inventions of all time, probably got its start as part of a children's toy, so we shouldn't discount the importance of play toys in ancient times; see the above screed about "fun.") And the "souls of your enemies" one was right whimsical; it would make a good fantasy or horror story. So what clinched it for me is that I'm a gamer, so the D&D explanation appealed to me (I have to admit when I first saw the dodecahedron, I thought "D&D die," but then again, that's what I think whenever I see any Platonic solid); consequently, Chibithulu (Alyssa) is getting a Merit Badge. Here's the winning entry from Chibithulu (Alyssa): They were clearly playing some sort of game with these dice like creations. Maybe it was like marbles where they had to kick the other dice out of the circle, or maybe they had imaginations enough to be playing an extremely limited version of D&D. "What kind of neanderthal do you want to be?" "The smashy kind." "Well, we're all the smashy kind, so let's play!" This was fun (heh). Again, thanks for all the great answers. I'll probably do it again soon, so everyone will have another chance at an MB. Until then, have fun |
| It's late and I just woke up from passing out from drinking (I mean, come on, read the news), and I selected this at random. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/514246/are-roman-dodecahedrons-worlds-most-m... The Mysterious Bronze Objects That Have Baffled Archaeologists for Centuries One August day in 1987, Brian Campbell was refilling the hole left by a tree stump in his yard in Romford, East London, when his shovel struck something metal. I don't think 1987 was centuries ago. Campbell placed the artifact on his kitchen windowsill, where it sat for the next 10 or so years. Then, he visited the Roman fort and archaeological park in Saalburg, Germany—and there, in a glass display case, was an almost identical object. Oh, fine, they were just opening with an anecdote. Although dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of explanations have been offered to account for the dodecahedrons, no one is certain just what they were used for. Someone was certain, once. By the mid-19th century, as more were found, the objects became known to archaeologists as dodecahedrons, from the Greek for “12 faces.” Wow. What a creative name. No one has ever called anything else a dodecahedron. Except, you know, everyone else who talks about math, Platonic solids, and geometry. But other than that, never. So what the hell. I have a challenge for you. Come up with your own explanation for these bronze dodecahedrons and comment here. I will give a Merit Badge to whoever makes the comment that I like best. And I don't know. It might be the most plausible theory. Or it might be the one that makes me laugh the most. Or both. Give it a shot - just comment on this entry before midnight tonight and I'll send out the Merit Badge tomorrow. |
| I thought I'd go ahead and kick off the month of June with an entry for "Journalistic Intentions" [18+] A bit of background if you can't be arsed to click on the above link: Long ago, Elisa the Bunny Stik created a quote-remixing In&Out, which can be found here: "Fill in the Blank" [18+]. Go ahead, give it a try; it's fun. The idea is to change a tired old clichéd sentence into something new, which is definitely an idea I can get behind. So for the June round of the blogging activity, she's selected fourteen altered clichés to choose from, submitted by our fellow members.One of them was my own, so the least I can do is participate in the blog activity. So eight of my entries for the next five weeks will be inspired by these quotations. As usual, I'll be picking these at random as a personal challenge to see if I can come up with something interesting from anything, which has always been a kind of point of pride with me. 1. An over sized, monster truck on the highway with a competition sound system may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. (Winheim Witheiw  )You know, that sort of thing does annoy me, I'll admit it. But mostly just because anything loud that is not music annoys me. Dogs barking. Lawnmowers. Harleys. Leaf blowers. The trash truck on Tuesdays. Porn videos. But music is usually fine. Hell, if you're tooling down the road with your speakers cranked up to 11, and if I can hear the music over the blast of the face-melting sound system in my own Subaru, I might even like it. Not so much the exhaust system. But you know, I find there are two types of people in the world: people who think that there are two types of people in the world; and those of us who know better. Okay, no, seriously, there are at least two common reactions to the monster-truck-loud-on-the-highway scenario: 1. Meh, whatever. You do you. 2. There oughta be a law. These two reactions typify pretty much everything. Someone's smoking a cigarette on their lawn. Someone's chewing their gum too loudly. Someone fails to put the shopping cart into the parking lot corral. Well, okay, I lean authoritarian on that last one. I mean, really, how fucking hard is it? I don't care if you have brats or you're in a hurry or both. You should have planned better. In both cases. But if something isn't doing actual, immediate harm, I generally let it go. There's plenty enough drama in the world without adding to it by getting all complainey. So yeah, I lean toward #1 above. I know my rights, and one of them is most definitely not the right not to be annoyed. I will say this, though, if you're one of the monster-truck-loud-stereo types, at least assuming you're a guy (which is a fair assumption if you're driving a loud monster truck): I'm very sorry your penis is so small. |
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