I mean, you could also say, if you're not in famdom, read this and you'll learn. :P I only had a vague idea what "antis" were... I just saw "antis" referred to a bunch on your Tumblr previously and was confused. Anti-*what*? I remember my initial inference was that it was something related to transgender politics, but eventually I realized my mistake and gathered it was something vaguely like what's described here. But this gives me a better idea!
I really do have to wonder where it started, though...
I'm a landscape architect in Maryland, USA and I am very curious about how the REDD+ system will work out. We have had very strict forest conservation regulations for the last ~30 years here (though I personally been doing forest conservation compliance work for the last ~2 years) that are mandated on the state level but implemented on the county level.
One of the ways to meet forest conservation requirements is off-site forest banking. Essentially, instead of meeting forest requirements by retaining/protecting onsite forest or afforesting a certain percentage of the site you're developing, you pay the owner of an offsite forested property to put some of their land in a perpetual conservation easement. Problem is, after only 30 years, there is basically no available forest in the counties I work in that is owned by anyone willing to bank it. Maybe that means there's just not enough remaining forest, or that the incentives aren't big enough, or something. Perhaps a national program, especially in a country with much more remaining forest, wouldn't have this availability problem.
Surprised to find there are multiple works in the "Star Wars fanfics about project management" sub-sub-subgenre. I thought this classic by Alexander Wales was the only one: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17356235
There's something odd about how the VFX article frames its subject. It says that VFX artists need to unionize because they're mistreated *and* because this leads to worse movies. Now this isn't necessarily *wrong*, but it's the sort of thing that sounds like it warrants more explanation; instead it's presented as a completely ordinary combination of claims.
Now I say this is odd, but actually I think this way of thinking is quite common, so I should explain what the alternative way of thinking is that I'm considering as "default" according to which this would be odd.
Namely, I would consider the default way of thinking to be that companies are trying to maximize profit, so they don't particularly care about employees' working conditions (that's a cost!), but they do care about selling as much product as possible, so they care about quality. Unions don't particularly care about the company's profit or output, so they'll improve working conditions, but presumably decrease product quality, as they make it harder to fire incompetent employees, etc. Which is to say, it's presumed that there is a *tradeoff* between these things; if in fact the two things go *together*, then the company would *already* be improving conditions out of profit motive.
So the claim that this is exactly the case but that they're not doing it is, from this point of view, a surprising one! One has to ask, why would that be? Why would the company forgo money like that? The article never asks this question!
Part of the reason it never asks this question, I guess, is because it seems like this sort of thing is in reality sufficiently common that we don't actually think of it as unusual. But it's not how a market system is supposed to work! When we see this, we should say, "Why would this be the case?", and highlight how contrary to idealized market dynamics it is, and discuss what the reasons might be that the market isn't fixing the problem like one might expect it to.
...of course, it's also possible that Kevin Feige is just right and that most people, unlike Drew Magary, really don't care that much about VFX, and better VFX wouldn't actually draw bigger enough audiences to justify it. But the article never asks whether that's the case either! (And if that were the case, you'd think that the movie makers would be more *deliberately* cutting corners, trying to optimize value for money, rather than just acting in a slapdash uncoordinated fashion like they seem to be doing. Again, the article doesn't discuss this.)
This is a great point, and I agree entirely except for one small nitpick. Unions won’t necessarily care about profits (by definition their wages are a part of costs, so they’re already subtracted out of profit measures), but they should absolutely care about revenue (and therefore output)! The more money the company makes, and the more efficiently, the more that can be shared with the union. Of course there are also incentives in the other direction, they’ll presumably care more about worker protections and overall wages than overall company health, but there are trade offs there, too.
Note though that this is true of private sector unions, not necessarily public, since it’s only the former that are drawing wages from company revenues, and need the company to survive in order to continue to do so.
The compactmag piece on the black professor being cancelled by their own students is deeply troubling. Not that long ago, I thought that the "other side" had started complaining that woke had gone too far before it had really gone anywhere at all - sure if you dig hard enough you can find isolated examples of stupidity in any community, but that doesn't mean the whole idea is stupid.
But more recently, the whole Hamline controversy, and now this where - I am not making this up! - it is apparently harmful to Black students to mention the horrors committed against Native Americans because this doesn't "center Blackness". (What happened to the idea of solidarity?) I can't help feel that whatever remnants of the KKK remain are laughing at the university woke movement's descent into absurdity.
The deeper problem here, as I see it, is that university education has become so marketised that it's ok to not renew a teacher's contract at Hamline because their actions have made a dent in the consumer satisfaction metrics - quite apart from the fact that this was possible without formally "firing" the teacher because they weren't on tenure in the first place; having more and more of your faculty on cycles of temporary contracts that you can decide not to renew on a whim is awfully convenient for the "market".
But the thing that made the dent was so dumb that I almost want to lock the "Keishas" and the alt-right in a room and let them fight it out, and meanwhile the rest of us (including probably something like 95% of Black people) can maybe do something actually productive about reducing inequality. Which I'm sure there's an EA study about somewhere!
"The gender wage gap for people working the same job accounts for about half of the gender wage gap. However, this is very different between countries: it accounts for 90% of the gap in Hungary and only a third of the gap in Israel. The gender wage gap itself is also heterogeneous across countries."
One thing I've been wondering about is what would appear as the dominant factor(s) if one took a bunch of variables relating to sex differences, gender relations, etc. by country and factor-analyzed them.
I tried doing this with personality questions, and found that the national sex differences were overall 1D. My vague impression is that the dimension looked like "women thrive more" on one end of the spectrum vs "men dominate more" on the other end, but I am not entirely sure. The country furthest in the "women thrive more" direction was Cyprus, while the country furthest in the "men dominate more" dimension was Kenya. Full list and full code here: https://pastebin.com/TXQ7tZgW
> If you’re not in fandom: don’t ask.
I mean, you could also say, if you're not in famdom, read this and you'll learn. :P I only had a vague idea what "antis" were... I just saw "antis" referred to a bunch on your Tumblr previously and was confused. Anti-*what*? I remember my initial inference was that it was something related to transgender politics, but eventually I realized my mistake and gathered it was something vaguely like what's described here. But this gives me a better idea!
I really do have to wonder where it started, though...
Re: carbon offsets by preventing deforestation.
I'm a landscape architect in Maryland, USA and I am very curious about how the REDD+ system will work out. We have had very strict forest conservation regulations for the last ~30 years here (though I personally been doing forest conservation compliance work for the last ~2 years) that are mandated on the state level but implemented on the county level.
One of the ways to meet forest conservation requirements is off-site forest banking. Essentially, instead of meeting forest requirements by retaining/protecting onsite forest or afforesting a certain percentage of the site you're developing, you pay the owner of an offsite forested property to put some of their land in a perpetual conservation easement. Problem is, after only 30 years, there is basically no available forest in the counties I work in that is owned by anyone willing to bank it. Maybe that means there's just not enough remaining forest, or that the incentives aren't big enough, or something. Perhaps a national program, especially in a country with much more remaining forest, wouldn't have this availability problem.
Surprised to find there are multiple works in the "Star Wars fanfics about project management" sub-sub-subgenre. I thought this classic by Alexander Wales was the only one: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17356235
Something something I'd have two Imperial Credits. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
There's something odd about how the VFX article frames its subject. It says that VFX artists need to unionize because they're mistreated *and* because this leads to worse movies. Now this isn't necessarily *wrong*, but it's the sort of thing that sounds like it warrants more explanation; instead it's presented as a completely ordinary combination of claims.
Now I say this is odd, but actually I think this way of thinking is quite common, so I should explain what the alternative way of thinking is that I'm considering as "default" according to which this would be odd.
Namely, I would consider the default way of thinking to be that companies are trying to maximize profit, so they don't particularly care about employees' working conditions (that's a cost!), but they do care about selling as much product as possible, so they care about quality. Unions don't particularly care about the company's profit or output, so they'll improve working conditions, but presumably decrease product quality, as they make it harder to fire incompetent employees, etc. Which is to say, it's presumed that there is a *tradeoff* between these things; if in fact the two things go *together*, then the company would *already* be improving conditions out of profit motive.
So the claim that this is exactly the case but that they're not doing it is, from this point of view, a surprising one! One has to ask, why would that be? Why would the company forgo money like that? The article never asks this question!
Part of the reason it never asks this question, I guess, is because it seems like this sort of thing is in reality sufficiently common that we don't actually think of it as unusual. But it's not how a market system is supposed to work! When we see this, we should say, "Why would this be the case?", and highlight how contrary to idealized market dynamics it is, and discuss what the reasons might be that the market isn't fixing the problem like one might expect it to.
...of course, it's also possible that Kevin Feige is just right and that most people, unlike Drew Magary, really don't care that much about VFX, and better VFX wouldn't actually draw bigger enough audiences to justify it. But the article never asks whether that's the case either! (And if that were the case, you'd think that the movie makers would be more *deliberately* cutting corners, trying to optimize value for money, rather than just acting in a slapdash uncoordinated fashion like they seem to be doing. Again, the article doesn't discuss this.)
This is a great point, and I agree entirely except for one small nitpick. Unions won’t necessarily care about profits (by definition their wages are a part of costs, so they’re already subtracted out of profit measures), but they should absolutely care about revenue (and therefore output)! The more money the company makes, and the more efficiently, the more that can be shared with the union. Of course there are also incentives in the other direction, they’ll presumably care more about worker protections and overall wages than overall company health, but there are trade offs there, too.
Note though that this is true of private sector unions, not necessarily public, since it’s only the former that are drawing wages from company revenues, and need the company to survive in order to continue to do so.
The compactmag piece on the black professor being cancelled by their own students is deeply troubling. Not that long ago, I thought that the "other side" had started complaining that woke had gone too far before it had really gone anywhere at all - sure if you dig hard enough you can find isolated examples of stupidity in any community, but that doesn't mean the whole idea is stupid.
But more recently, the whole Hamline controversy, and now this where - I am not making this up! - it is apparently harmful to Black students to mention the horrors committed against Native Americans because this doesn't "center Blackness". (What happened to the idea of solidarity?) I can't help feel that whatever remnants of the KKK remain are laughing at the university woke movement's descent into absurdity.
The deeper problem here, as I see it, is that university education has become so marketised that it's ok to not renew a teacher's contract at Hamline because their actions have made a dent in the consumer satisfaction metrics - quite apart from the fact that this was possible without formally "firing" the teacher because they weren't on tenure in the first place; having more and more of your faculty on cycles of temporary contracts that you can decide not to renew on a whim is awfully convenient for the "market".
But the thing that made the dent was so dumb that I almost want to lock the "Keishas" and the alt-right in a room and let them fight it out, and meanwhile the rest of us (including probably something like 95% of Black people) can maybe do something actually productive about reducing inequality. Which I'm sure there's an EA study about somewhere!
What’s a good definition for a “meta” career?
"The gender wage gap for people working the same job accounts for about half of the gender wage gap. However, this is very different between countries: it accounts for 90% of the gap in Hungary and only a third of the gap in Israel. The gender wage gap itself is also heterogeneous across countries."
One thing I've been wondering about is what would appear as the dominant factor(s) if one took a bunch of variables relating to sex differences, gender relations, etc. by country and factor-analyzed them.
I tried doing this with personality questions, and found that the national sex differences were overall 1D. My vague impression is that the dimension looked like "women thrive more" on one end of the spectrum vs "men dominate more" on the other end, but I am not entirely sure. The country furthest in the "women thrive more" direction was Cyprus, while the country furthest in the "men dominate more" dimension was Kenya. Full list and full code here: https://pastebin.com/TXQ7tZgW
(Used the Johnson IPIP 300 personality data: https://osf.io/tbmh5/)