griff.works

Current status: Perplexed.

So says the social media accounts of many of my friends, flummoxed by the continued support of The President amid his latest incompetence, scandal, malfeasance or other recently reported noxious thing. Long resigned to the loathsome nature of the man in office, they question his enablers and supporters instead:

• Who are these people?
• What is wrong with them?
• When did this become ok?
• Why are they supporting him?
• When will they stop?

Why We’re Polarized constructs a view I wish those friends would sit with.

I think it is safe to say that the dominant view of partisanship has been—and probably still is—tied closely to ideology: we’re all smart people, Homines economici in the realm of ideas and the ideas we adopt determine our choices and our affinities. Increasingly, research shows this might not be exactly right. It may be the case that how we think of ourselves (and anyone who is not us) determines much more than we are conciously aware of. Perhaps, how we identify ourselves has more impact on us, has more deterministic consequence over what we do, than does our supposedly objective assessments of the world and how we should act within it. Self-ascribed or personally adopted identities—in some cases—may be the reason we believe certain ideas in the first place.

Ezra Klein compiles a succinct (but competently sufficient) history of research explaining how identity and affinity interacts with ideas like group conflict, confirmation bias, and self-interest. Astutely, he considers this amid the tension between a politics dominated by parties on the one hand, and a constitutional framework constructed with no consideration for the rise of parties on the other. He brings the role and motivations of media entities into the mix, constructing a framework that just works — ridiculously well, in fact. He gets the job done in explaining–as advertised–Why We’re Polarized. 

He accomplishes it in an entertaining, conversational manner to boot–never really going so far in the weeds that he loses the scent of a compelling narrative. He offers insights and a few ideas along the way that, alone, are probably worth the cost of the book. While the book is clearly about the political–the axes of polarization referenced are the Republican and Democratic Parties–the book is situated within the larger social realm. For all these reasons, the book succesfully navigates a not-uncomplicated subject in a way that is quite approachable — more than most others in this space I suspect, and I’m thinking here of Sides, Tesler and Vavreck’s Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign… [a fucking brilliant work!} as the point of comparison. 

This is an impressive book and was exceedingly well put together. I recommend it with no hesitations. Specifically, to anyone who finds themselves asking any of the questions laid out in bullet points above, just go get a copy now — but I also recommend it to anyone who has never encountered much information on the role of identify and affinity in determining own thoughts and actions. This will definitely open new (and fascinating) concepts to those readers and perhaps help bring a little more skepticism and consideration into the world as a result.

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That we have a neatly scheduled day every four years consisting solely of chronologic remainders — each a crumb from the annual difference between the actual rate of Earth’s orbit around the sun and the convention we use to measure that orbit — seems intensely cool to me and may be worth reflecting on. Also worth considering: The Sun is slowing Earth’s orbit exacerbating this difference. If every year since 2016 seemed longer to you, that’s because they were. On the up-side: more frequent leap days are in the works! 

Music: Finding new music I like seemed/seems an increasingly difficult process to me; I’ve been working on identifying reliable resources to pick up on new music as of late. Luke Muehlhauser’s quarterly playlists on Spotify have been worth paying attention to since I found them, and props are always in order for KALX and KCSM playlists (in particular, Matokie and Agapanthus at the former and Michael Burman at the latter, usually have tracks I find worth repeated listening).

And that is why I am making playlists now. (The internet needs more.)

Ahead of hiking season, my backcountry and alpine wilderness goals this year will likely include some notable first attempts.

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815 – 1879) was introduced to me outside a university darkroom by an adjunct professor (and later, a good friend of mine), Joshua Dommermuth, who basically held a monograph of hers in front of me and yelled LOOK AT IT for about an hour.* The soft focus of her lens, the ‘window’ light illuminating nearly every subject, the composition and just the feel of her portraiture was simply sublime according to Josh. I vaguely agreed with him at the time; I agree more with his assesment now. It is a thing that gets truer as time proceeds. She seems to capture the person, not just the face. If you don’t know the work of Julia Margaret Cameron, you should.

*others may remember this differently; who is to say who is right?

recently, there was a contest to see who could take the best picture underwater. this one seemed pretty good:

Thomas Picketty released a new book–Capital and Ideology–last year; the english translation is set for release next month. He is making the rounds in the podcast universe. Apprarently, the book is even longer than Capital which means I may just focus on some pretty new charts instead.

The Hell of the North is coming. Second weekend in April. Photos from last year’s race, are here. For anyone unfamiliar with Paris-Roubaix, I would argue that you might not even need to be interested in cycling to enjoy this one. Just a pure affection for sport, adversity or competition will do. It truly is the Queen of the Classics.

“Barring a shock to the system, Democrats recapture the presidency.” On July 1, 2019, Rachel Bitecofer posted her 2020 electoral predictions – and she seems to be pretty good at this as of late. Six months later, the following passages may be of interest:

“By and large, I don’t expect that the specific nominee the Democratic electorate chooses will matter all that much unless it ends up being a disruptor like Bernie Sanders.”

“Indeed, the only massive restructuring I might have to make to this forecast involves a significant upheaval like the entrance of a well-funded Independent candidate such as Howard Schultz into the general election”

“…on Election Day Donald Trump will earn the vote of somewhere around 90% of self-identified Republicans. And as 2018 demonstrated, Republicans will increase their turnout rate over 2016. This, combined with a floor for Trump among Independents of around 38% (because of right-leaning Independents) and an infusion of cash that will dwarf his 2016 efforts, Trump has a floor that is at least theoretically competitive for reelection and will force Democrats to compete hard to win the presidency.”

So yeah, COMPETE HARD y’all!

The X100F by Fuji is my favorite camera of any I’ve owned. Fuji is releasing an update, the X100V and it looks legit. There is no reason to own both; if anyone is stuck in a DSLR rut, these cameras might offer a way out.

finally, on a dark note — from Michael H. Keller, NYT investigative reporter:

“It’s not altogether uncommon in investigations, for us to turn up information that is shocking and disturbing. the challenge is when in the course of your reporting you come across something so depraved and so shocking that it demands attention — People have to know about this. But nobody wants to hear about it.

How do you tell that story?“

The Daily (podcast) tries to tell that story – they’ve released Part 1 of a story delving into the problems of online sexual abuse imagery. Of the many, many points made by this first episode in the series, I’ll leave just one here: With a lack of funding to address the issue, law enforcement agencies are forced to prioritize resources; sometimes that ends up being a directive to only address cases involving toddlers and infants.

i am floored.

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When an Attorney General decides to take control of individual legal cases the President has expressed personal interests in, that is an assualt on the idea of an independent system of justice.

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Currently reading: A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America by Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker

Currently listening to: Rational Security Podcast #249: The “Lessons Learned” edition

Every morning Orville Anders rises and digs amid the ruins of Los Verticalés. Once a marvel of architectural engineering, Los Verticalés now lies collapsed amid an apparently vast and unidentified desert. Developed by a visionary entrepreneur, Los Verticalés was designed to be a self-contained civilization of sorts, a modular skyscraper that could be expanded—upward and outward—as demand (and population) increased. At some point, it reached over 500 stories in height – but then shortly thereafter, the skyscraper collapsed in a single tragic event. Orville, and the others who camp around the wreckage, spend their days searching for reclaimable materials and for survivors, including Orville’s brother, Bernard, the lone known survivor of the collapse, buried somewhere deep within The Heap.

Bernard is buried in the rubble, trapped in the radio studio he was broadcasting from during the collapse. He spends his days broadcasting over the radio frequencies, taking calls from the surface and keeping hope alive for other survivors who may yet be found as a result of The Dig. Bernard has daily contact with his brother Orville in the evenings, the latter calling in to the radio station after the digging of the day is completed. The calls are broadcast live and eventually, as it happens, they come to be among the most sought after moments of media across the world; folks far and wide tune in to hear the brothers talk. One brother buried alive, with no idea where he is or how to explain how to reach him, and the other with just a shovel and hope – also with no idea how to reach him.

It isn’t long until the powers that be have just one small question for Orville: during his daily conversations with his buried brother, would he mind just quickly saying a quick word from our sponsors?

And with the ask, the book is off and running. Doing a not inconsiderable amount of work with the metaphor described above, the author, Sean Adams, takes a mighty swing at parodying our current moment. Writing in a braided narrative style for roughly 300 pages, Adams takes turns expressing narrative flourishes of absurdity, unfairness and other ideas that make you tilt your head ever so and wince a little, wondering just how much of what you just read actually applies to the actual world you actually inhabit. In this trick, ongoing as it is, The Heap ends up as an impressively competent reference point; the reader can crawl around in the narrative gauging where we are — actually, corporeally— in the current Zeitgeist.

Where I’m from, that last part is fancy talk, and I should pause here to make sure it is understood that the voice expressed in the book is not at all fancy. In fact, that is probably the heftiest critique I have for the The Heap, namely that the writing is kept to about a tenth grade reading level. It reminded me a great deal (for reasons) of George Orwell’s 1984. The procession of narrative – sequential and staccato sentences in a just-the-facts-ma’am style moved the book along quickly, but definitely at the cost of depth. The plot is superficial—consistently so, to its credit; the characters are all about an inch deep, but it still works. The book tells a tale; it is not playing with language. Your favorite sentence will not be found in this book. The tale is dystopic and expressed in a uniform voice. The book isn’t great – not in the way that the greatest novels are great at least – but The Heap is great fun, and Sean Adams deserves any success that comes his way for having written it.

Sunday, February 9, 2020: (computer) algorithms are increasingly deciding who should be released from prison and who should stay, who gets probation and what the terms should be, and otherwise reducing social decision making within legal systems in the US and abroad. Any moral system of justice demands good faith negotiations with concepts like deterrence, rehabilitation, restitution, retribution, and messy, messy context*. Are we cool with just writing some code and letting the processors take care of it? (hint: I’m not)

Isabella Tabacchi has some photos of Kamchatka. (they’re really good)

The results of the 2019 VOTER Survey (Views of the Electorate Research Survey) was released last month. Despite reflecting poll answers from about a year ago, its scope certainly makes up for the delay. There are 500+ pages of statistically significant information available here; if you are at all interested in what Americans think, you should check the Top Lines and Cross Tabs. (or just ask all of them the questions)

This was a cool primer on the Iowa Caucuses (RIP). Also, despite the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth (most notably from CNN) on caucus night, I will just go on record as being more annoyed by political reporters with a sense of entitlement to quick caucus results than I was by the delays from the Iowa Democratic Party in releasing the results. Between the conflicting priorities of timeliness and veracity, the latter should never be given any shortness of shrift.

I’m playing the banjo in 2020. Focused on the instrument, I find stuff:

I’ve recently picked up Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein. Tyler Cowen has apparently read it (twice). They both had a very sharp conversation about it here.

New Hampshire is on Tuesday. This is what it looks like now:

The Oscars are happening as I type. Of the 9 films nominated for Best Picture, I’ve seen 5 of them and rank them as follows: #1. Parasite #2. Jojo the Rabbit #3. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood #4. 1917 #5. Joker. If anyone beats Scarlett Johannsen for best supporting actress from Jojo the Rabbit, I will be very interested in seeing their performance; similarly, it is hard to imagine Joaquin Phoenix not winning Best Actor.

Finally, Thomas Vanoost has the lead position in the current issue of LensWork, and for good reason.

*not a complete list

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