Maitri

by Joseph Shieber

It is a great shame that the authors of the recently released AAUP statement “In Defense of Knowledge and Higher Education” do not even know what it is that they are attempting to defend. And it is the height of irony that, in an essay attempting to defend the importance of expert knowledge, the authors of the AAUP would be so cavalier in their rejection of expert knowledge about the very subject of their defense, namely knowledge itself.

The authors of the AAUP report have a laudable goal in mind. They seek to defend the importance of, as they put it, “the disciplines and institutions that produce and transmit … knowledge”.

The authors correctly note that recent critics of higher education mistakenly confuse the teaching and research conducted at colleges and universities with indoctrination. They quote the current United States Secretary of the Department of Education, Betsy DeVos, who exhorted college students to “fight against the education establishment”. “The faculty, from adjunct professors to deans,” DeVos warned the students, “tell you what to do, what to say, and more ominously, what to think.”

Although they aren’t terribly clear, it would seem that the AAUP report authors push back against DeVos’s conflation of education with indoctrination on the basis of three important qualities of research and education at higher education institutions:

1. College and university professors develop and transmit valuable thinking methods and skills — examples that the authors cite include learning how to “solve differential equations”, “to predict the path of a hurricane”, “to track the epidemic of opioid addiction”, “to study the impact of tariffs on the economy”.
2. College and university professors discover and disseminate factual information — examples that the authors cite include “the principles of quantum mechanics”, “the somatic effects of nicotine”, and “the history of slavery and Jim Crow, or the history of the Holocaust”.
3. In addition to those discipline-specific thinking methods and bodies of factual information, college and university professors also inculcate in students an appreciation for the methods of investigation appropriate to knowledge-seeking, which the authors characterize as “informed, dispassionate investigation”.

So far, so good! If the authors of the AAUP report had stopped here, they would have done higher education — and, indeed, the general public who derive so much from the fruits of higher education — a great service.

Unfortunately, they didn’t stop here.

They then, in a statement committed to the defense of disciplinary expertise and the value of research, blithely dismissed the value of disciplinary expertise when it comes to the analysis of knowledge. Here’s their nod to the disciplinary expertise of philosophers: “There are, of course, endless philosophical debates about the meaning of ‘knowledge.'”

That’s it.

Perhaps this wouldn’t have been so bad if the working definition of “knowledge” that the AAUP writers had come up with was any good. Unfortunately, their definition is an abject failure. Here’s why.

Here’s the definition, in its entirety:

For our purposes … we need define [knowledge] only as those understandings of the world upon which we rely because they are produced by the best methods at our disposal.

Now, if the authors of the AAUP statement had consulted a single disciplinary expert on the definition of “knowledge”, they would have known that, despite “endless philosophical debates”, there is remarkable agreement among philosophers about certain features of knowledge. (In fact, there is probably at least as much agreement about those features as there is among climate scientists about the phenomenon of anthropogenic climate change, or among epidemiologists about the lack of a causal role for vaccines in the prevalence of autism among the population.)

Paramount among those features of knowledge is this one. Knowledge entails truth. In other words, if you know something, then what you know is true.

The philosophical consensus actually comports very well with our everyday understanding of knowledge.

Suppose you tell someone, “I know who founded the Mughal Empire. It was Akbar.”

Suppose they then correct you and say, “Actually, Babur founded the Mughal Empire.”

You can’t then respond, “Well, I knew that Akbar founded the Mughal Empire, but I was wrong.” Instead, you would say something like, “Well, I thought I knew who founded the Mughal Empire, but I was mistaken.”

In other words, even the implicit command of “knowledge” contains the kernel of understanding that knowledge requires truth. If you believe something that’s false — even if you’re very confident of your belief, and even if you believe it on the basis of very strong evidence — then you still don’t know it. And this is why it’s abject nonsense for the authors of the AAUP report to write, “Such knowledge may in the end prove accurate or inaccurate”; if it’s genuine knowledge, it CAN’T prove inaccurate.

You might be wondering why this matters. Why not just use the working definition that the authors of the AAUP statement settled on?

Well, recall that the point of the statement in defense of knowledge is to defend the value of the sort of expertise that is developed and transmitted at institutions of higher learning.

With that in mind, look at this part of the definition of “knowledge” employed by the drafters of the statement: “they are produced by the best methods at our disposal”.

What makes the methods that are, according to the AAUP authors, part of the very definition of “knowledge” the “best methods”?

According to the AAUP statement, what makes them the best methods is that the experts agree that they’re the best methods: “The dialogue that produces expert knowledge occurs among those who are qualified by virtue of their training, education, and disciplinary practice.”

So, let’s see what the drafters of the statement are arguing — and remember, they’re arguing against those who claim that college and university researchers are merely indocrinating students in elitist ways of thinking with no underlying justification for commanding belief.

The drafters of the AAUP statement are, in effect, arguing that we should value “understandings of the world” produced by experts because experts tell us that we should value them.

As an argument intended to convince, that’s a disaster.

This is all the more saddening, because this disaster could have been so easily avoided. All that the writers of the AAUP statement would have needed to do is to consult an expert!

Here are two easy ways that the statement could have been improved.

First, the statement could have noted the distinction between know-how (or practical knowledge) and knowledge-that (or factual knowledge).

If I know how to evaluate proofs in quantified modal logic, or how to speak Shanghainese, or how to analyze a dataset in R, then it’s not so much that I possess a particular body of factual knowledge. Instead, I possess a certain sort of skill — the very sort of skill to which the authors of the AAUP statement appeal in the first defense of higher education that I attributed to them.

Note that know-how is not the sort of thing that can be called true or false. You either have the ability, or you don’t — although of course there are degrees of skill.

One reason why it would have been an improvement to include know-how in the defense of knowledge is that know-how would allow the defense of knowledge to extend to some disciplines that many people are uneasy to include within the umbrella of disciplines that discover factual information.

So even if you don’t think that creative writing, or music composition, or theater involve discoveries of factual knowledge (and note that I’m not necessarily endorsing this view!), you could still grant that there is know-how involved in, say, writing a villanelle, or arranging a piece in eight-part harmony, or conveying a particular emotion onstage.

(For much more on know-how, see lecture 16 of my Theories of Knowledge, or this excellent survey article.)

Second, the statement could have included facts or truth in the definition of factual knowledge, reflecting not only the overwhelming philosophical consensus but also common usage of “knowledge”.

The importance of this is that it can strengthen the argument that the AAUP writers offer in defense of knowledge. Knowledge is important because — in the case of factual knowledge — it involves FACTS. In the words of John Adams — words that the AAUP writers quote in their statement — “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

This definition of factual knowledge, in contrast to the definition offered by the AAUP drafters, would allow us to provide a non-circular defense of expertise as involving “the best methods at our disposal”. This is because, with the improved definition of factual knowledge, we can define “best methods” as “those methods most likely to yield (factual) knowledge”, rather than simply as “those methods that the experts endorse”.

(For much more on the value of true beliefs, see lecture 2 of my Theories of Knowledge, or this excellent discussion.)

In this age of “post-truth”, “alternative facts”, and government-sponsored assaults on expertise, the value of higher education research and teaching has never been more in need of a strong defense. It is a shame that, when the AAUP deputized a committee of scholars to draft such a defense, the members of the committee failed themselves — and us — by ignoring the value of expertise.

Sabine Hossenfelder, research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, writes: What we have here in the foundation of physics is a plain failure of the scientific method. All these wrong predictions should have taught physicists that just because they can write down equations for something does not mean this math is a scientifically promising hypothesis. String theory, supersymmetry, multiverses. There's math for it, alright. Pretty math, even. But that doesn't mean this math describes reality. Physicists need new methods. Better methods. Methods that are appropriate to the present century. And please spare me the complaints that I supposedly do not have anything better to suggest, because that is a false accusation. I have said many times that looking at the history of physics teaches us that resolving inconsistencies has been a reliable path to breakthroughs, so that's what we should focus on. I may be on the wrong track with this, of course. Why don't physicists have a hard look at their history and learn from their failure? Because the existing scientific system does not encourage learning. Physicists today can happily make career by writing papers about things no one has ever observed, and never will observe. This continues to go on because there is nothing and no one that can stop it. You may want to put this down as a minor worry because -- $40 billion dollar collider aside -- who really cares about the foundations of physics? Maybe all these string theorists have been wasting tax-money for decades, alright, but in the large scheme of things it's not all that much money. I grant you that much. Theorists are not expensive. But even if you don't care what's up with strings and multiverses, you should worry about what is happening here. The foundations of physics are the canary in the coal mine. It's an old discipline and the first to run into this problem. But the same problem will sooner or later surface in other disciplines if experiments become increasingly expensive and recruit large fractions of the scientific community. Indeed, we see this beginning to happen in medicine and in ecology, too.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Carrie Arnold in Nautilus:

The human genome contains billions of pieces of information and around 22,000 genes, but not all of it is, strictly speaking, human. Eight percent of our DNA consists of remnants of ancient viruses, and another 40 percent is made up of repetitive strings of genetic letters that is also thought to have a viral origin. Those extensive viral regions are much more than evolutionary relics: They may be deeply involved with a wide range of diseases including multiple sclerosis, hemophilia, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), along with certain types of dementia and cancer. For many years, biologists had little understanding of how that connection worked—so little that they came to refer to the viral part of our DNA as dark matter within the genome. “They just meant they didn’t know what it was or what it did,” explains Molly Gale Hammell, an associate professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. It became evident that the virus-related sections of the genetic code do not participate in the normal construction and regulation of the body. But in that case, how do they contribute to disease?

An early clue came from the pioneering geneticist Barbara McClintock, who spent much of her career at CSHL. In the 1940s, long before the decoding of the human genome, she realized that some stretches of our DNA behave like infectious invaders. These DNA chunks can move around through the genome, copying and pasting themselves wherever they see fit, which inspired McClintock to call them “jumping genes.” Her once-controversial idea earned her a Nobel Prize in 1983.

More here.

In January 2020, an estimated 250 million people have marched in protest across India, joining  a movement that began in opposition to a contentious “Citizenship Amendment Act” (CAA). It’s a piece of legislation that explicitly excludes Muslim immigrants and refugees from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh from being fast-tracked for Indian citizenship. Many see it as an overt erosion of India’s secular identity, and when paired with a “citizenship test” called the National Register of Citizens (NRC), could be used in draconian ways to exclude vulnerable groups from the Indian polity.

The movement was rooted initially in India’s northeast region and on university campuses, but brutal police actions in the state of Assam and at Jamia Milia Islamia University in Delhi brought millions more on the streets in solidarity. The protests are now a cross-cutting, multi-generation movement, and it’s being chronicled and defined by a new wave of artists, both on the streets and across the Indian diaspora. Webcomics, in particular, are being used to cut through the noise, explain complicated issues, and spread the word online. In a fiercely divided social media landscape, these comic creators are representing the movement with style and wit.

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A short story with this year’s jolly greetings from @braindedindia and Appupen. In #solidarity with the protesters across the nation. #humour #citizenshipamendmentbill #nrc #policebrutality #hindusagainstcaa #indiaprotests #citizenshipamendmentbill2019 #caa #jamiamilliaislamia #jamia #aligarhmuslimuniversity #fascism #minorities #indianpolitics #india #protest #dissent #strike #unity #unityindiversity #comics #posters #posterart #india #divideandrule #protestposters #rashtraman #halahalacomics #indiecomic #indiecomics

A post shared by Appupencil (@appupen) on Dec 26, 2019 at 6:15pm PST

Since the CAA was passed in parliament on December 11, 2019, artwork from established Indian comic creators like Orijit Sen and Appupen have become common sights on Twitter and Instagram. During some of the earliest protests,  many creatives banded together in collectives to release posters that could be printed and shared.

Watching from afar, the USA-based duo Meher Manda and Mayukh Goswami felt compelled to start a “webcomic of dissent” that they called “Jamun Ka Ped” (which translates to “The Jamun Tree” and takes its name from a 1960s satirical short story about bureaucratic inaction). “It came out of a profound helplessness,” Manda told Hyperallergic. “It felt like none of us could afford to be centrist or apathetic.”

The pair releases weekly comics that are sharp, insightful and timely, amplifying voices from pockets of protest around India, like the women who occupied the roads in the South Delhi neighborhood of Shaheen Bagh. The panels also make connections with broader governmental issues such as the state of Kashmir, which has been under an internet and communications blockade for over 150 days.

Manda and Goswami are animated by a sense that the mainstream media is “failing” to present an accurate picture of the movement, with important context getting lost in the cacophony of editorials and online disinformation. India’s raucous TV news channels, in particular, have come under fire as a toxic news source.

“Webcomics and illustrators have an advantage,” said Manda. “They can make a succinct point by marrying essential thesis arguments about the movement with images that can stick and invoke curiosity from the fence-sitters.”

On the night of January 5,  a large group of armed, masked men entered Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), muscled their way into dorms and hostels, and violently attacked students with rods. For artists like Vivekananda Roy Ghatak, the incident was a shocking escalation of violence that spurred him into action.

“More than the art, the amazing copywriting that goes into these works shows what super sharp, mature, aware and intelligent citizens of this country feel,” said Ghatak. “Their honesty and selflessness propel them further than any fake news or publicity stunt.”

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ALL BOOKS ARE REGISTERED IN THE LIBRARY. (COMICS) #jmu #studentprotest #library #nationagainstcaa #nationagainstnrc #nonrc #nocaa #noexclusion #indianstudents #resistance #statebrutality #stateterrorism #comics #comicstrips #politicalcomics #ink #protest

A post shared by sattik (@epithecus) on Dec 30, 2019 at 2:12am PST

Creatives like Ghatak, Goswami, and Manda have to frequently face online trolls. Protestors and groups associated with the protests are constant targets for harassment and the subject of rumors and insinuations that they’re “separatists” or have secret associations with neighboring Pakistan. As a result, many public figures — especially India’s powerful Bollywood film stars and cricket players — have been largely silent on the movement. In the absence of solidarity from the country’s icons, art and comics have stepped into the void to redefine the iconic, creating new symbols.

“As shareable commodities, they can combat the right wing-led propaganda,” Manda said. Creating symbolic images is key, she added, helping sustain what both Manda and Ghatak consider a “long movement.”

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Celebrities have everything except a spine. Please tag and shame all the celebs #CAA #IndiaAgainstCAA #NoNRC #NoCAA

A post shared by Sanitary Panels (@sanitarypanels) on Jan 5, 2020 at 1:22am PST

Despite waves of escalating protests, the government of India has made little attempt at compromise or conciliation. Another round of coordinated action is being planned during India’s Republic Day on January 26. Comic creators see their role expanding, from signal boosters for protests to bridge-builders, explaining and clarifying the issues and being a witness to what might come next. “Hum Dekhenge” (“We Shall Witness”), the title of an iconic Urdu poem by the Pakistan poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, is a common catchphrase. What started as art in response to state violence is now something more lasting: a political consciousness.

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The general strike today is in protest against the government's unconstitutional policies. What I didn't find a mention in news articles about the strike however, was one of the most unconstitutional moves of the ruling government, which has been going on for several years now: tampering with wildlife and environment protection laws and facilitating hasty, unplanned and unmitigated 'development' in some of India's most important eco zones. So here's a cartoon from 2015 as a humble reminder. And before practitioners of blind faith come and say "what about the growing forest cover under our supreme leader and God?", allow me to remind you that these 'revised' definitions of green cover include cash crops and monoculture. Cartoon from 2015, first published in BLink. #generalstrike #moef #greenhumour #tiger #wildlife #development #india

A post shared by Rohan Chakravarty (@green_humour) on Jan 7, 2020 at 8:01pm PST

“The true progress of any nation can be seen by how its art and its artists flourish,” said Ghatak. He’s confident that even more comic artists will join the fray, and the scene will only grow richer. “There’s a phrase someone came up with online that I love. It goes, ‘You divide. We multiply’.”

It’s all about your “stress mindset.” The good news is, with a bit of effort, you can improve your reaction to daily stressors.

Pressure has become an inevitable part of daily life. It’s unavoidable. But the best leaders and organizations adapt promptly without getting thrown off course by the uncertainty and the rapid rate of modern business.

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Boeing 737-MAX9 Artwork K65780. Credit: Boeing

Ever since two Boeing 737 Max planes crashed, Boeing has been playing a frantic game of damage control. In our early reporting on this issue, we emphasized the need for deliberate analysis and evaluation rather than leaping to conclusions. Nearly a year after Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 slammed into the ground, killing all aboard, it’s evident that the rot at Boeing went very deep indeed.

The company has turned over a tranche of internal email documents that emphasize just how ugly the situation got — and how much Boeing knew about it. I’ve personally read all 117 pages of Boeing emails and created a series of images to illustrate what, exactly, Boeing employees were talking about. In the documents, which cover a period ranging from 2013 – 2019, employees discussed various aspects of the situation. “Would you put your family on a Max simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn’t,” one employee wrote to another in a February 2018 message. The second employee agrees that they wouldn’t, either.

In another case, one employee remarked that it (the 737 MAX) is “such a shitshow.” A second employee agrees, saying they’d be shocked if the FAA passes the aircraft.

The FAA has also been upset about emails showing that employees were aware that the 737 Max simulator was in bad shape and worrying about how to clear that issue with regulators.

We’ve heard about problems with the 737 Max simulators before — in October, evidence surfaced that one of Boeing’s test pilots had raised serious concerns about the safety of the 737 Max and the simulator’s performance, before admitting he had inadvertently lied to the FAA. That didn’t stop the pilot, Mark Forkner, from requesting that the FAA allow Boeing to remove any mention of MCAS in the 737 Max pilot’s manual. The FAA, believing that MCAS only could activate remotely (and also believing that it functioned differently than it did), approved the request. Boeing employees referred to “Jedi mind tricking” regulators into believing they didn’t need to engage in an in-depth evaluation of the 737 Max.

Boeing Actively Discouraged Simulator Training, Declared It Would Strong Arm Regulators

This email, from 2015, illustrates who Boeing believed would control the regulation of the aircraft: Boeing. All of the emails shown as being from the 737 Chief Technical Pilot are from Forkner.

Forkner was critical to the effort to emphasize that the 737 Max and 737 NG had no differences between them save for “no OFF position on the gear handle.” I’m summarizing this bit, because Forkner wrote a number of these emails to various airlines, for example: “Boeing does not understand what is to be gained by a 3 hour simulator session, when the procedures are essentially the same.” When airlines specifically requested information on simulator time, Forkner pushed back on this option. In another email, he writes: “A simulator training requirement would be quite burdensome to your operation,” and “There is absolutely no reason to require your pilots to require a Max simulator.” These quotes are on pages 59 and 60 / 117 in the Scribd document. The phrase “Jedi mind trick” seems to be one that Forkner loves; you’ll see it used repeatedly in other internal emails identified as being from him.

I’m going to speed up at this point, because honestly, there are 117 pages of this sort of thing.

Boeing Employees Declare They Require Forgiveness From God

I’m not even being snarky.

Boeing Employees Would Rather Quit Than Lie to the FAA

Boeing Employees ‘Produced’ Emails to Make Regulators Feel Stupid About Requiring Training

Some Boeing Employees Were Aware of Problems and Tried to Raise the Alarm

Next, I’m going to include some snippets of different conversations here. These conversations were between two unnamed Boeing employees. It’s not clear if it’s always the same two employees talking or not. Each of these images should be read independently.

It’s not clear that this is in reference to canceling the entire 737 Max project or pausing the ramp to fix issues and bring the plane into a better position for eventual launch.

Boeing Employees Thought the Aircraft Was Designed By Clowns Being Supervised By Monkeys

Ethical Boeing Employees Didn’t Feel Like There Were Very Many of Them

This one builds on a screenshot I showed you before, but it gives a good deal of additional context around the email. Unfortunately, expanding context doesn’t make the situation any better. In fact, it makes it worse. This one is a two-parter. There’s a brief overlap where I clipped, to show that I captured the entire section.

The FAA Is Incompetent (or Possibly Bribed) and Boeing Is a Company of Liars

This request appears to be about the 777, not the 737, based on the subject line of the email, which reads,”- 777 ECL COC Update request”). But it still raises serious questions about how the FAA does its job and the degree of closeness between the FAA and Boeing. It would be very interesting to know why the email opens with a discussion of what a brown envelope can achieve. The implication of the statement as written is that Boeing straight-up bribed the FAA to overlook problems.

I asked a pilot friend of mine, who confirmed he didn’t know “brown envelope” as any kind of aviation slang or reference. That isn’t to say “brown envelope” doesn’t have a meaning. “Brown envelope journalism” is defined as “a practice whereby monetary inducement is given to journalists to make them write a positive story or kill a negative story. The name is derived from cash inducements hidden in brown envelopes and given to journalists during press briefings.” I’m not sure I’ve heard the term in the US, but it’s widely used in both the UK and Nigeria. And Boeing’s top-level employees clearly travel a great deal, as a number of emails in this tranche refer to various traveling schedules and trips around the world.

It’s possible that the author of the post was simply joking. I’ve made similar jokes before to people, about taking my AMD-funded limo to my Intel-funded jet so I can relax on my Nvidia-purchased private island. The problem is, it’s also possible to read the first paragraph as a series of statements: The 777 “isn’t anywhere near as good as it would appear to be.” Why not? Because the FAA “were neither thorough nor demanding and failed to write up many issues.” Why did they do this? “Amazing what a brown envelope can achieve.”

Could that be a joke? Absolutely. It could also be an admission that the FAA was bribed to look the other way and “miss” problems on the 777 by failing to document them in its report. It’s impossible to separate these questions from the fact that the FAA knew the 737 Max was dangerous after the first crash (but kept it flying) and then refused to immediately yank the aircraft after the second crash, doing so only after significant international pressure from other regulatory agencies. The fact that the FAA failed to act even after two crashes has been a topic of interest for investigators.  The 737 Max may not be the only aircraft impacted by lax or corrupt regulation.

 Everything Is Broken

This last one sorta wraps everything up, at least according to one unnamed Boeing employee. Based on the text color, it could be Forkner, but just because he uses that color in other emails doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to be him using it here.

When the 737 Max jets went down in Ethiopia and Singapore, some people blamed pilot error. Some assumed the aircraft were in poor condition. A lot of people wanted to hand Boeing a pass, based on the company’s long, generally excellent track record.

It is clear beyond doubt now, if it was ever doubted before, just how far-ranging and deep the rot went in the 737 Max’s design. Boeing employees knew it — and lied. They lied, and used “Jedi mind tricks,” and sent messages to airlines and regulatory agencies fighting back, hard, against anyone performing training on a 737 Max. They may have bribed an FAA official, but, even assuming that didn’t happen, there’s no evidence of appropriate oversight. Boeing employees worry about what regulators will do in these 117 pages of email, but there’s no sign that they actually put an effort into building a quality plane. The 737 Max was conceived, from the beginning, as an aircraft that would be economical. Any attempt to raise safety concerns that could require additional simulation training was rejected.

Boeing has announced it will now require simulation training for all pilots who wish to fly the 737 Max.

Now Read:

• Boeing Fires CEO Dennis Muilenburg
• NASA May Allow Crewed Boeing Starliner Flight After Failed Test
• The FAA Knew the 737 MAX Was Dangerous and Kept It Flying Anyway

Today is David Bowie's birthday (born Jan 8, 1947, died Jan 10, 2016). Here's a great example of our favorite leper messiah's sense of humor as he impersonates a number of fellow singers during the Absolute Beginner's recording sessions in 1985.

In the six-minute clip, you hear David doing his best impressions of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Anthony Newley, Iggy Pop, and Neil Young. Some of them are quite good, especially Springsteen.

And, if you (like me) are going full Bowiemas this week (can I get an alien mullet amen?), check out this 19-hour Bowie playlist on Spotify:

"If you're going to be a fucking rockstar, go be one. People don't want to see the guy next door on stage; they want to see a being from another planet."
-Lemmy Kilmister

Happy Birthday, David. We miss you!

Science and mathematics somehow got yoked to the vocational field of engineering and, worst of all, to "technology," which can mean almost anything—and nothing.

When the Square Kilometre Array is complete, the telescope will scan the universe to probe some of science's deepest mysteries.

AI doesn't know when it creates unintended consequences. As builders try to fix this, they may actually contribute to the problem.

Eli Zeger at The Baffler:

Godsmack is part of an aggressive, no-cowards-allowed milieu of hard rock known as “post-grunge” (or pejoratively “butt rock”), which was at its most lucrative during the late 1990s and throughout the aughts, when it dominated both the rock and pop charts. Obscuring the stylistic boundaries between neighboring genres—country, grunge, and the genre which grunge supposedly killed, hair metal—post-grunge is characterized by its dragging tempos, down-tuned chord progressions, sporadic twanginess, and overly passionate vocals. If you took an eighties power ballad’s major key and turned it minor, you’d have a post-grunge song more or less. Even today, as its pop appeal has vanished, it remains viable in the realm of mainstream rock, selling out amphitheaters and filling up the playlists on “Alt Nation”-type stations. It soundtracks WWE pay-per-views; it’s what plays over the loudspeakers in Six Flags food courts.

more here.

William Pierce in Literary Hub:

Dad called us, Thom and me, into the office. Its bifold louvre doors opened just behind my dining chair. He showed us the safe deposit key again. He showed us his will again. He showed us the folders of information about the condo in Florida, about his car, the binders of account statements, his credit cards, his social security, pension, and insurance policies. Part of me resisted.

And then he sprang a big one on us: he wanted to spread Mom’s ashes today. She wanted half to be spread in the gardens, and half at Jones Beach, where as a child she’d gone with her mother and sister nearly every summer day. That sun exposure, when she was immunosuppressed years later, had given her nearly twenty lesions a month, across her arms, legs, neck, and face, that her dermatologist would burn and freeze off: squamous, pre-squamous, and twice—jobs too dire for that simple burning—melanomas on her face.

More here.

This episode of TED-Ed is about Frank Herbert's 1965 science fiction novel, Dune, and why you should read it.

A mother and son trek across an endless desert. Wearing special suits to dissipate heat and recycle moisture, the travelers aren’t worried about dying of thirst. Their fears are much greater. Soon, the sound of the desert is drowned out by a hissing: a mound of sand 400 meters long bursts from the desert floor and races towards them. This is the world of “Dune.” Dan Kwartler dives into the epic story.

Image: YouTube

Governments need to plan now for the day automation makes many workplace skills obsolete. 

Mr. Nancy won’t be returning for season three of ‘American Gods,’ and Jones took to Twitter to give his side of the story.

Actor and comedian Orlando Jones claims he was fired from American Gods because its showrunner felt his character was sending the “wrong message for black America.”

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Last year’s run of Doctor Who episodes were among the most anticipated, highly-scrutinized in the show’s 50-plus-year history. In addition to being a coming-out party for the first-ever female regeneration of the Doctor (played brilliantly by Jodie Whittaker) and her family of companions (Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill,…

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It’s been almost three decades since Talking Heads called it quits and in the time since there’s been little reason to expect a reunion tour. The appearance of an Instagram account, though—even one with no posts to date or official verification—has fans going flippy-floppy over the potential that, at long last,…

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Avid Spoon fan and presidential nominee Pete Buttigieg made an appearance on CBS This Morning Thursday, where he let the audience know that his musical tastes extend well beyond Panic! At the Disco’s “High Hopes.”

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Danny Aiello, the Oscar-nominated actor who appeared in movies like Do The Right Thing, The Godfather Part II, and Moonstruck, has died. Fox News confirmed the news with Aiello’s literary agent after TMZ reported that he died following complications related to an infection. He was 86.

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The existence of habitable alien worlds has been a mainstay of popular culture for more than a century. In the 19th century, astronomers believed that Martians might be using canal-based transport links to traverse the red planet. Now, despite living in an age when scientists can study planets light years from our own solar system, most new research continues to diminish the chances of finding other worlds on which humans could live. The biggest stumbling block may be oxygen—human settlers would need a high oxygen atmosphere in which to breathe.

The surrealist master Salvador Dalí often dabbled in modes of mainstream culture, whether designing wine guides, appearing on game shows, or—in this instance—designing a deck of tarot cards for a James Bond film. Dalí undertook the project in the early 1970’s for Live and Let Die, starring Roger Moore and Jane Seymour. The deck didn’t end up appearing in the film, apparently due to Dalí’s high fees, but the artist continued to work on the cards for a decade and completed them in 1984. Art book publisher Taschen is releasing the deck, along with an instructional book that Dalí made to accompany it. Dalí.Tarot will be published on November 15, 2019, and is available for preorder on the Taschen website. (via Hyperallergic)

 

La Machine, the group of inventors, designers, artists, and builders responsible for 46 foot-tall minotaurs and massive tarantulas roving the streets of Europe, has most recently unleashed the Dragon of Calais. The moveable beast, complete with articulated limbs and a smoke-spewing snout, was paraded around Calais for 3 days at the beginning of November. It has now been installed as a stationary sculpture, on which visitors can climb up and walk around. Follow the latest projects from La Machine on Instagram. (via Laughing Squid)

 

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Photographer Kristina Makeeva creates captivating scenes centered around Lake Baikal. The lake, located in Russia, is the largest freshwater lake in the world by volume, holding nearly a quarter of the world’s fresh surface water. Makeeva takes advantage of its vastness in forming otherworldly images that seem totally separate from the built environments most of us reside in. “The first time I visited Baikal, I had no expectations, and yet what I saw and felt kept me awake for the three days I was there, Makeeva tells Colossal. “I was exploding with inspiration. Now, having traveled to many countries around the world, I still think of Baikal as one of the most beautiful places.”

Makeeva uses Lake Baikal as both the stage and the star in her striking photographs. Often, a single figure centered in the image poses in a manner that draws attention to the surprisingly vibrant colors, shapes, and textures in the frozen landscape. The photographer frequently outfits her models in ruffled tulle dresses with impossibly long trains or minimalist white suits that call to mind astronauts or acrobats. Makeeva explains that depending on the shoot, she either brings models from Moscow or hires local models to work on location, or the models are integrated into the frigid landscape in post-production if their costumes are tricky to travel with.

The artist explains that after a childhood in Moscow’s “grey and boring suburbs”, she is eager to incorporate the magical energy of fairy tales and fantasy into her photographs. “As I travel and read more, I’ve been able to add an element of cultural understanding and context to some of my favorite fairy tales,” says Makeeva.

I always have a movie playing in my head. As a photographer, you still need to do your homework if you want to create something unique in that location. So I immerse myself into history, landscape, and pictures. It’s important to have a special inventory list. As weather conditions play a major role in shoots, we will often order special clothes and dresses that fit with the landscape. We envision and look at several dresses in advance of a shoot. And, of course, we also buy thermal clothes for the model so that she’s as comfortable as possible in the climate.

In reflecting on the end results of her meticulously researched work as an artist, Makeeva tells Colossal, “How I feel about my art and how others feel is often very different. This is natural because our experience of art depends on our life experiences. As a rule, I try not to title my photos, so that everyone is free to interpret my photography however they’d like.”

To take a look behind the scenes of Makeeva’s photographic process, watch a short feature on her work produced by SmugMug, and see more of her finished works on Instagram.

People make fun of me when I talk about extending my wrists' duty cycle, but I earn the vast majority of my living with the parts of my body north of my chin and south of my elbows, and those are all pretty fragile, easily-damaged parts of your body.

Ergnomic Trends' list of "8 Best Hand and Wrist Exercises for Computer Users" were largely familiar to me, but I'm seriously loving "thumb touches."

Thumb touches help to increase coordination in the thumb and forefingers, and also help to reintroduce blood flow back to the area:

1. Hold your hands outwards with your palms facing the ceiling

2. With your right hand, slowly bring your thumb to touch the tip of every finger

3. Repeat on the other hand

4. Return to the starting position

5. Repeat five times with both hands

Preventing Injury: 8 Best Hand and Wrist Exercises for Computer Users [Ergonomic Trends]

(via Four Short Links)

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Make sure you own a copy of these must-read modern sci-fi masterpieces.

The post The Best Modern Sci-Fi Books appeared first on Giant Freakin Robot.

In Mumbai, India, the Western Railway deployed a police officer dressed as Yamarāja, a Hindu god of death, to educate commuters about railway safety and enforce the laws. From Zee News:

Railway Ministry's handle warned the people in Hindi, "Do not cross the track in an unauthorised manner, it can be fatal."

"If you cross the track in an unauthorized way, then Yamraj will be standing in front of you," Railway Ministry added.

In 2018, as many as seven people on an average lost their lives on a daily basis due to carelessness in crossing railway tracks illegitimately. At least 1,476 people had lost their lives while crossing the railway tracks while over 650 people died after falling off the trains.

The Mandalorian is the new Star Wars TV show premiering on Disney Plus+. Werner Herzog is the famous filmmaker who will also be appearing as an actor on the show.

It was only a matter of time before someone mashed-up The Mandalorian’s trailer footage with Herzog’s iconic documentarian voiceover. It’s not Grizzly Man, but it’s close.

We’ve heard winning isn’t everything, but new research proves that “losing” might boost your success in the long run.

After three years of pursuing an ambitious project to understand what kinds of teams promote optimal innovation, my colleagues and I were nearing the finish line. The resulting paper was nearing long-awaited publication. The journal we’d targeted had put the paper through several review rounds, we’d addressed all comments, and the editor had revised the paper to meet the journal’s stringent space requirement. So when we left for the year-end holidays, we felt great.

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I grew up never really caring about Princess Leia in the way that everyone else did. Sure, I loved her and wanted to be like her, but Chewbacca was my favorite because he was furry. (I was like 5; let me be.) But as I got older, I realized that my hero was not, in fact, any of the Star Wars characters, but instead Carrie Fisher herself.

The aspects of Leia that everyone clung to were aspects that I never understood. Carrie? Her love of writing and sharing her struggles? That I could understand. It took me meeting Carrie Fisher to realize that I didn’t want to be Princess Leia because I didn’t think I could be—I never got the guy, I could never lead a revolution, etc.—but Carrie Fisher looked at me and told me that she was Leia and Leia was her, and that I could too be both the blaster-wielding princess who falls in love with the scoundrel and the brilliant story-teller. She also told me I was pretty, but that’s a gloat for another day.

Often, I forget about this story because I find it deeply personal, but today, it came back to me because of an essay that Billie Lourd (Fisher’s real-life daughter) wrote about her struggle with Princess Leia.

Lourd, who writes about how she was constantly told by her parents to do anything with her life other than acting, came into the Star Wars world as Lt. Connix in The Force Awakens and discovered that this is what she wanted to do as a career, something that Fisher also realized when seeing her daughter on set. But while that part of the story is important for Lourd now, the essay holds a bigger significance to her relationship with Star Wars as a child.

Talking about everyone’s love of Leia and how she didn’t understand it, Lourd goes into watching the series for the first time and realizing why Leia (and her mother) was so important to fans.

I realized then that Leia is more than just a character. She’s a feeling. She is strength. She is grace. She is wit. She is femininity at its finest. She knows what she wants, and she gets it. She doesn’t need anyone to defend her, because she defends herself. And no one could have played her like my mother. Princess Leia is Carrie Fisher. Carrie Fisher is Princess Leia. The two go hand in hand.

What hurts about this entire story the most, the truth of Leia getting to have her moment, is the fact that Carrie Fisher was so excited about it:

One of the last times we spoke on the phone, she talked about how excited she was that the next movie in the trilogy was going to be Leia’s movie. Her movie.

I’ve been well aware of the fact that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is going to be hard for me. It’s going to be hard for all of us who have looked to Carrie Fisher and Princess Leia as a beacon of strength. To read Billie Lourd’s words on it, to hear her story and her own journey of having Carrie as a mother and what Leia now means to her, as she is her “keeper,” drives home the importance of this story.

You can read Lourd’s entire piece at Time and I highly suggest you do.

(via Time, image: Annie Leibovitz/Vanity Fair)

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