#gish zoom

[clairedelune-13]

I’d pay to see Misha and Jensen do a series like “Staged”.

Cuz like, the GISH Zoom was basically that.

[bluehandprint]

Do you think jensen gave misha advices for his beard?

[destieldisaster]

Oh fuck, I'm 10 minutes into OFMD and I'm thoroughly hooked

[blanketforcas]

😅😅 the truly bizarre trend of cute cockles moments being audibly distorted in some way:

“yeah baby, take it all off” (spnuk 2018 j2m strip questions panel)

“hey sweetheart” (pre-upfronts 2019)

“okay, babe” (cockles gish zoom)

and now ccl with “that’s one of the reasons why i love him”

the cw sniper hates rps and never sleeps <3

[centrally-unplanned]

(Reposting from the twitters)  There is this "admin bloat" fact going today, which is always positioned as a problem at US universities and an explanation for their high tuition:

Which, well Harvard has 20,000 students, its 2/3rds grad students - that is a very selective figure to quote. But anyway it comes from this MRU post quoting a Harvard Crimson editorial, which follows with this framing:

Yet of the 7,000-strong horde, it seems that many members’ primary purpose is to squander away tax-free money intended for academic work on initiatives, projects, and committees that provide scant value to anyone’s educational experience.

For example, last December, all Faculty of Arts and Sciences affiliates received an email from Dean Claudine Gay announcing the final report of the FAS Task Force on Visual Culture and Signage, a task force itself created by recommendation of the Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging. This task force was composed of 24 members: six students, nine faculty members, and nine administrators. The task force produced a 26-page report divided into seven sections, based upon a survey, focus groups, and 15 separate meetings with over 500 people total. The report dedicated seven pages to its recommendations, which ranged from “Clarify institutional authority over FAS visual culture and signage” to “Create a dynamic program of public art in the FAS.” In response to these recommendations, Dean Gay announced the creation of a new administrative post, the “FAS campus curator,” and a new committee, the “FAS Standing Committee on Visual Culture and Signage.”

Regardless of your stance on the goal of fostering a more inclusive visual culture, the procedural absurdity is clear. A presidential task force led to the creation of an FAS task force which, after expending significant time, effort, and resources, led to the creation of a single administrative job and a committee with almost the exact name as the second task force. I challenge anyone other than the task force members themselves to identify the value created for a single Harvard student’s educational experience.

This approach is very obsfucating in a way typical of this genre. The 'task force' thing here is a Gish Gallop - 24 members! 26 page report! 500 people meetings! Bureaucracy run rampant!

Which, yeah true lol, but not due to this. The use of "task force" here is meant to sound all formal, but at universities everything is a task force, its just what we call a recurring meeting - a bunch of people meet a few times w/ free lunch, that is it. 500 people polled? Harvard’s population is ~40,000, these ‘meetings’ we 20 minute zoom calls, on people & time spent that is a rounding error. That 27 page report is 50% copy-pasted appendixes, easy, it took someone maybe a day to write.

And the culmination is they hired a full time staffer. So ditch the jargon and reframe: a large org met multiple times and surveyed stakeholders before creating a new role. Literally all big orgs do this! This is standard procedure, if you gonna expand a team you need buy-in + role definition. Unis are overrun with this task force stuff, they are inefficient, but it is almost no one's job to do only task forces. They are 5% at most of every fac-staff's time, bullshit provost agendas or overwrought due diligence that you shake your head at and suffer through before getting back to your real job. Stupid, but nowhere near an explainer for 7k admin roles.

When you look at the Crimson source article, it really tips its hand on the analytical error:

Wrong. Harvard has instead filled its halls with administrators. Across the University, for every academic employee there are approximately 1.45 administrators. When only considering faculty, this ratio jumps to 3.09. Harvard employs 7,024 total full-time administrators, only slightly fewer than the undergraduate population. What do they all do?

Most administrators have a legitimate function. I will happily concede that the University does need administration to operate effectively. No professors want to handle Title IX compliance or send institution-wide emails about Covid-19 protocols. Yet of the 7,000-strong horde, it seems that many members’ primary purpose is to squander away tax-free money intended for academic work on initiatives, projects, and committees that provide scant value to anyone’s educational experience.

Oh, ~most~ have a legitimate function? How much is most? 65%? 85%? ...99%? Big world of difference there, if its 99% this article doesn't make sense any more. Of course it never says...just 'many'. And it names...one, the new FAS role. Lets look at that role, from the famed 27 page report:

That is...a public art manager. Harvard has a metric ton of public art! You think wall murals and statues and banners paint, hang, and rotate themselves? Its Harvard, its 30% museum, its a high prestige venue, its in demand from artists, it *trains* aritsts. This is a real job!! Its not fake at all. Harvard wants to expand how diverse its public art is so its expanding its team.

Now you might think universities should be bare-walled office buildings, which you can think...except you don't, if you had to send you *own* child there and are the running to pick Harvard as that option. Suddenly all this 'bloat' is a beautiful campus with facilities to provide happiness and status for your kid. Suddenly...the branding makes sense. Suddenly this role generates value. That is the issue all the 'admin bloat' arguments run into; when you actually have to spec out the numbers, you see 95% of the staff increase is because what unis *do* is different. Harvard wasn't an art museum in 1950, but it is today. It *makes money* from that role. 

What I am not saying is unis don't have an org problem - they absolutely do. It stems from unis serving this three-tier job as status/credential certifier, teaching institution, and research facility, which we only pretend aligns, they don't really.  Which is the frame admin 'bloat' must be understood through - as unis changed faculty pushed back on having their job change to meet it. But there was way too much money at stake, so admin were expanded to fill the gap the old ‘faculty-as-owners’ model was exposing, and that gap has grown over time. The bloat model doesn't capture this dynamic at all. It just holds up fig leaf arts/humanities roles as synecdoche for all admin when they are the exception. Unis could be massively restructured, absolutely, but as of now only 2-3% (at most) could be fired before revenue, operations, research, etc. were impacted.

The ‘problem’ at US universities is baked into their core structure and incentives - if it was trivial to fix, they would have done it.

[regardingjenmish]

can’t believe it’s been 2 years since the jenmish “okay, babe” gish zoom — time is simply not real!!

TWO YEARS?!?!?! WHAT? That seems fake omg, what is time?

[sunglassesmish]

being late for the gish zoom with misha 🤝 being early for the winchesters live episode 🤝 jensen

[clairedelune-13]

I can’t rewatch the GISH Zoom cuz it legit feels like I stumbled in on a private call between them.

I mean...

And then:

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

yo guys if you need something for gish i could help you with hit me up. for instance i just was the italian person in the g7 zoom meeting for a gish team

[why-misha-why-2022]

ITEM #4   Zoom Challenge: "Fanfic through the Ages": Write a special crossover fanfic of a character from a 1990s show, book, or video game and a character from a 2000s show, book, or game meeting in a different 2010s universe. Post your item on social media and tag @SamMaggs, @PatrickWeekes (on Twitter) and #GISH. Submit an image of your work and put a link to your social post in the comments.

[hawkland]

Hey folks! Shameless promotion time from me. DC-Slash con is happening online July 29-31 (via zoom and discord) and registration is only $15 through this Friday, July 15! Last year it was a BLAST and such a nice chance to catch up with friends new and old and talk about all things slashy and fic-related.

The full programming schedule is up now, and this year I’m going to be moderating/co-moderating 6 panels:

Friday night: I Made This! Fandom Arts & Crafting. Share, show & tell! Show us what you’re working on and/or ask questions of fannish artists and crafters. Saturday: Still Crazy (in love) after all these years. What makes for a fandom that stands the test of time? And how do we deal with aspects of older fandoms that may make us cringe today? Keeping Up with the Winchesters - Speculation on the upcoming prequel, other projects from the cast & crew, and the current state of the fandom. Sunday: Supernatural: What are the New Classic Fics - You’ve gone through all the older rec lists; what are the newer fics and authors that are destined to become classics? How the Must Read Fics Have Changed - A multi-fandom continuation of the previous panel, looking at how trends in reading & writing in fic have changed with time. Ask a Doc - Mr. Hawkland will be here to talk about medical accuracy in your fanfic! Want to know how to hurt someone without killing them right away? Writing a convincing epidemic? Ins and outs of working in/with a hospital? He’ll be your guy :) I’ve also got 2 SPN vids that will be premiering in the Saturday night vid show :)

Yes, unfortunately it is the same weekend as GISH launches for this year, but hey, even if you’re doing GISH it’s something fun to attend and listen in on while working on your GISH projects. I know I will be. 

[regardingjenmish]

From the MensHealth interview: “I was just talking to my aunt, and she was like, ‘Where in the world are you right now?’” he says. “And I'm like, ‘I don't know. I don't know anymore….’” (jokingly because he’d been traveling so much) — reminds me of the Jenmish GISH zoom when Jensen was all “Where are you? I don’t even know where you are anymore” to Misha, who’d been moving around a lot at the time... like, thanks for the proof that it was indeed just a joke, Jackles!

I think we all knew it was a joke except the j2ers who swear jensen and misha never talk to each other.