Random fashion thoughts - Part II (A New Hope)

[LA Guy]

Who said we didn't engage in long-format discussion?!

A soulless algorithm.

 

[jet]

She's not standing out against the "consensus viewpoint". She is standing for the "consensus viewpoint" of her constituency.

Frankly, she is the type of smart person (and make no mistake, she is very smart), who assumes that because she is smart, she is right. And that if you don't agree with her, it's most likely because you don't understand what she is trying to tell you (see any discussion in CE), and if you do understand what she is trying to tell you, and still disagree, then you must be morally corrupt and compromised.

Before I left academia, one of my foci was to communicate with a very wide constituency about climate change and the effects on agriculture. I'm not a farmer, nor a rancher, nor a fruit grower, and I can't tell one tree for another (except from their radio signatures on satellite false color maps) so I already faced an uphill battle. Certainly, throwing what is frankly pretty uncertain model results at people wasn't going to get me anywhere, so I switched the script. The fact is that the GCMs (General Circulation Models) are highly uncertain, and that even if model corroborated with one another in their predictive outputs, there were serious issues with them - there really are, any real climate scientist worth their salt will tell you this - a lot of their work is in making the models better. However, by first principles, the earth ought to be warming due to our use of fossil fuels, and if it does, we could be facing some severe consequences. Therefore, it behooves you to "buy insurance" commiserate with the risk and extent of possible damage. By acknowledging the skepticism of a constituency, and reframing the issue and using more neutral language, it's much easier to get buy in.

The college chapter doesn't really address the same concerns as Harris' "Kids These Days". Incidentally, Malcolm and Cathy are contemporaries, and they share the same axioms of the American Left that are based primarily on their understanding of individualism. They might couch their ideas in pseudo-socialist language, but their ideas are fundamentally based on individualism.

This ***** said foci.

 

[LA Guy]

This ***** said foci.

Jet still mad at his SAT score.

 

[jet]

My guy you still mad about darklands?

 

[Patrick R]

Is "blandly stylish" an oxymoron?

It's my general style goal. See, for example: https://www.styleforum.net/threads/...ar-casual-style.253842/page-1620#post-9064911

 

[dieworkwear]

This ***** said foci.

Fok-i

 

[baltimoron]

 

[skeen7908]

Holy **** that thing is amazing

 

[WBaker]

.

 

[MaiLam]

Every time the SF is dying thing comes up, people always mention Instagram being the new cool place. Who should I be following? Because at the moment with:

@penanceroyaltea I just get pictures of delicious home cooked meals and wine. It's appalling
@conceptual 4est I just get pictures of vinyls on a Friday evening and homemade ice-cream
@Synthese I just get pictures of dogs and some more dogs
@Fokken I just get pictures of Belgian loft apartments and cats
@KamoteJoe I just get pictures of concerts I'm not cool enough to go to
@diniro I just get pictures of bbq and indian takeaway
@the shah I just get moody pictures of train stations

 

[FrankCowperwood]

I posted a moody photo of a seagull on IG, but I also posted it here so.

 

[notwithit]

Perhaps, but it's clear that twilight approaches at the current stage of sf development, at least on the swd side.

SF isn't dead; it just smells funny.

I’m curious what people think was the golden era of SF and how it was different from the past 4 years (1 lurking, 3 as a user) that I’ve been on the site.

Regardless of who asks or is asked, the answer is always 'before you joined'.

Mr P.: https://www.mrporter.com/en-us/mens/designers/Mr_P

Is "blandly stylish" an oxymoron?

Far from it. This line may be the grandest realization of Mr. Porter's economic and societal goals.

 

[nahneun]

@LA Guy, Grand Old Member? really >:{????? i just got triggered so hard that i had an aneurysm that sent me to bizarro sf where swd reigns king

 

[LA Guy]

@LA Guy, Grand Old Member? really >:{?????

I had a few drinks last night. I need something above senior member. Suggest titles of you wish.

 

[King Calder]

She's not standing out against the "consensus viewpoint". She is standing for the "consensus viewpoint" of her constituency.

This isn't a meaningful distinction. If I am a prominent flat earther activist I would be both standing against the societal consensus viewpoint and representing the consensus viewpoint of my constituency. I don't believe Cathy represents the consensus of data scientists and institutional consumers of these models in terms of her activism towards transparent models. If it were, Google wouldn't be making photo recognition algorithms that labeled black people as gorillas, and we'd know how credit scores worked. Most people just don't talk or think about how these algorithms impact peoples' lives, which makes her work valuable.