#i am unsure how you are defining 'real serious historical work'

[rosacarolina]

I've read your pinned post and wanted to say something, as a white girl but also a South European: the "homestead" term is historically bounded to white supremacy, yes, but only in those countries of the Western world that actively participated in colonialism and built their economic fortune on slavery. I'm a contemporary history graduate and I can assure you NOT ALL OF WESTERN WHITE COUNTRIES WERE INVOLVED IN COLONIALISM. Go ask a Hungarian, a Moldovian, an Albanian if their grandparents were white suprematists because they owned a homestead and they will laugh. Also, some European peoples were themselves victims of colonialism. So please please please when you all talk about specific historic issues consider learning how to divide nowadays political discourse from actual historic work. "Fancy" political discourse has most of the time nothing to do with serious historic researches (at least, in European universities; I cannot speak for the level of academia in the US...).

I am also a history graduate student at a european university, but thank you for this ask anyway. I don't disagree with your general point-- that colonialism is not a strictly racial divide with white people being the colonizing party and all non white people the colonized. Like that's definitely true. When speaking about the term homestead, i am discussing it as a white supremacist dogwhistle, not saying that anyone who grows their own food is a racist. i would expect that the words agrarian subsistence farmers in hungary, moldova and albania used to describe their homes and their lifestyles would not be "homestead" because it is, an english word.

Consider also that this is a tumblr aesthetic blog and not a historical research conference, where the focus of discussion is, in fact the "fancy" (whatever that means in this context) political discourse which pervades the space and has pervaded it historically.

I'm sure as a student of contemporary history you would understand the historical connections between colonialism, white supremacy, and "blood and soil" rhetoric which used the visuals and languages of pastoralism. this is what i am referring to when i say that homestead is used as a dogwhistle.

also, the idea that a country or a people being subjects of colonialism means they cannot also, at the same or another time, be the perpetrators (or beneficiaries) of it is laughable. i would say that yes, EVERY western white country was involved in colonialism, to varying degrees, at the same time that some are/were subjects of it.

my apologies if this response was disorganized; but i found your assertion that political discourse (which i take from context here to be discussions of the current effects and manifestations of colonialism) not only is but should be largely divorced from serious historical study to be misguided at best. In fact I find it difficult to think of an example wherein the discussions are unrelated.

[rgr-pop]

circuitbird replied to your post:

what is the role of loud/soft big/small...

I just poked the beast and surprisingly he has a lot to say about Korn— he seemed irritated when I asked him if he would consider Deftones under the “nu-metal umbrella.” (Maybe if you consider historical context and audience overlap?) He notes that Deftones/Incubus could actually play their instruments well, and what he categorizes as nu-metal appears to be characterized by lack of skill! That they were like, the metal equivalent of punks, just banging away on these chromatic open tunings

I’m interested in his opinions on Korn! I asked that in part because I wanna know more about um Korn specifically and I know I have some (both out and secret) Korn fan followers. 

Re: Deftones though, he’s (sorry) wrong: Deftones famously rejected the title (in large part because by the time it was popular, it was derogatory), and I while I think a lot of people took them at their words (often as part of the growing respectability politics that drove artists to want to disassociate), it’s also fairly accepted to say that they started as nu metal and then became something else, which is probably fair (I’ve never listened to later Deftones). But Deftones are absolutely canonically nu metal, lol, there is no definition or history of nu metal that does not include them, and they are usually credited along with Korn as having invented it. Deftones are absolutely nu metal, even if you do not want to admit that there was one inarguably good nu metal band! Part of my interest in Deftones in that post was that I do think that they are exceptional in some ways, and because I was thinking about bands breaking away from partylines, and also they’re kind of like an emo band in many ways so it was on my mind.

But this is like, kind of core to my point anyway: people define nu metal as only “rap metal” or whatever because the mainstream reaction to it was heavily, heavily heavily racist. (The reaction to nu metal was racist because it was a genre created by black and brown people, and because it was influenced by and it had content of not just hip hop music--which was more visible and more acceptable to be racist about--but funk, ska, jazz in obvious ways, etc.) IMO dividing nu metal into "good at instruments” and “rap” is part of this legacy, as much as it’s not fair to lots of people who were good at their instruments. (I also think in the larger conversation, the ways that Deftones were influenced by and making black and brown music have been erased by white fans that love to celebrate how much there is not rap in Deftones music!) (This reminds me of a conversation I had ages ago about how Linkin Park “became white” on the radio, even though they were a multiracial band playing, well, nonwhite music. I should probably just start looking more at Linkin Park!) 

"The metal equivalents of punk” part is kind of interesting because that’s the thrash part of it and like, I mean, thrash is definitely “the metal equivalents of punk” in the literal sense (also very much a genre created by brown people), happy to have thrash fans @ me here about it, I can’t tell you whether thrash bands are good at their instruments but my surface interpretation would be that nu metal was like, MINIMALLY “fake smart thrash.” Maybe I’m being unfair to thrash but... I feel like all the parts of nu metal that are less serious come from thrash. This is too mean of me to say and I retract it already!!!! (SOAD has done a lot of service to the genre in terms of this interpretation, lol.) (Don’t @ me I know SOAD isn’t canon.)

I think the “bad at the instruments” myth about nu metal at least partially originated from macho metalheads mad about guitar solos though, right? Like, the perception that nu metal is less technically advanced seems transparently false to me but would be believable to someone who thinks they only way to demonstrate technical facility is through the solo, right? This is another way that a presumed whiteness of metal and experimental music shines through criticism of nu metal, imhooo. It’s kind of interesting to me because, actually, when I first read years ago that the main intervention of nu metal was “against” the guitar solo, that’s when I started to take it really seriously and I was so drawn to the potential of this as a gendered expression. So what’s interesting to me is that this genre of “alternative metal” that arose as one of the many genres in reaction to a kind of masculinist commodified radio metal of the eighties, that metal gets called “aggro”? I need to figure out where that came from--I mean, obviously a lot of it is um Limp Bizkit, yes, but at the same time, what does it mean that a metal rooted in rhythm because it drew from black music genres gets classified as more aggressive than...regular ass metal? Unsure.

NOW I will add: Incubus is definitely a controversial addition to the nu metal family, and I’ve had certain friends of mine object to their inclusion. I don’t disagree. Mostly the objection is that Incubus is dumbass fake woke music made by pretty boys and their one smart nerd friend, and, listen: I plead guilty. I liked Incubus because a) handsome b) listenable c) air sign dumbass thinks she’s real smart. Incubus is definitely imo late “influenced by nu metal” music and my questions about their role in the whole movement come down to: to what degree was their much-more-radio-friendly sound really just dumbed down alt metal vs being like, real experiments with song structure that lean into other genres? (I dunno yet and am biased in favor of Incubus.) I’d say, as I’ve been saying nonstop, that Einziger was an incredible guitarist, but I think he got better as he developed, and his skill was never about performative virtuosity, more about his ability to write guitar parts. I can’t say with confidence that he was a great guitarist when they were still closer to a nu metal band (first two albums), although that may just be closed minded of me. One way I heard a gear channel characterize that work was that while he has always and continues to love effects, his early playing relied on effects, while by Morning View he had come to use effects more masterfully as part of an overall practice! Sophisticated, you could say... maybe my opinion on that should be taken with a grain of salt.

[hopefulfestivaltastemaker]

July 12, 2020

My weekly review of things I have been reading and thinking about. Topics include social endeavors, software engineering, dealing with being stuck, and banning exercise for the environment.

Social Endeavors

This week I have started a new project, still not very well defined, to quantify the return on social endeavors. For now “social endeavors” is a broad concept, encapsulating things like R&D projects, business ventures, political movements, warfare, and so forth.

My working criteria for what constitutes a social endeavor are as follows.

1) A well-defined, discrete goal. Thus NASA is not a social endeavor, and the Apollo Program is a social endeavor.

2) Continuity of effort over time and agent. The International Space Station is a social endeavor, even though it involves multiple countries, because it is a collaboration. The American and Soviet lunar exploration programs are distinct social endeavors because, even though they worked toward similar goals, there was no collaboration.

3) The goal of the endeavor should be mostly fixed over its execution. If the goal mutates too far from its original conception, it is not the same endeavor.

4) The goal should be bounded and not open-ended, though for now I am unsure how strict to be on this criterion.

We can look at some of the highest rate of return for endeavors in history, at least for which there are reasonably good estimates. Eradication of smallpox and the Human Genome Project would be high on that list, with ROIs well over 100. Public subsidies for stadiums are probably net losers.

I am well aware of the risks associated with such a research project. First is a quantification bias, which will surely discount the value of endeavors with benefits that are real but difficult to quantify, will overvalue endeavors with costs that are real but difficult to quantify, and will also bias in favor of larger endeavors for which data is more readily available. There is probably a survivorship bias in the literature, in that successful endeavors will be better studied and better known than unsuccessful endeavors. I certainly know more about smallpox eradication than I do about unsuccessful attempts to eradicate other diseases.

Since the major motivating factor behind this project is to predict what kind of endeavors will be successful in the future, a second major risk is the cargo cult effect. It is the reasoning, “X was successful before, Y is similar to X, therefore we should do Y”. Such reasoning rarely leads to success because it does not question why X was successful and whether the similarities of Y to X are relevant. This is not to discount the importance of looking to historical precedent in evaluating future policy options, only to do so intelligently.

Understanding the success of social endeavors requires a strong qualitative understanding in addition to quantifiable metrics such as ROI. I am starting with quantitative metrics because I like things that are tangible and they help ground the qualitative work. For qualitative work, this week Andreas Hein put a new paper on the ArXiv drawing a comparison between starship construction and cathedral construction; I recommend it for anyone interested in space colonization or megaprojects more generally.

We’ll see where this project goes, if anywhere. Right now it is in an exploratory phase. The majority of my projects begin and end in the exploratory phase.

Software Engineering

There come several points in all our lives, and for me one such point is now, where we have to put some serious thought into our long-term careers and take action to insure that they are successful. While I enjoy my current role and plan to stay in it for the foreseeable future, it poses a high risk of stagnation and does not offer the security that I need to confidently provide for my family. To that end, I am recommitting to software engineering work.

Programming is a good, general purpose skill. For Urban Cruise Ship, I built the site in Node.js, styled it with Bootstrap, and do data analysis with Python. I recently dusted off my Matplotlib skills to revamp a graphic for the site. I recently learned some basics of React and used it to build a game. I can be confident that, no mater where I go professionally, I will benefit from better programming skills.

I made some major advances in my software skills in 2013-14, a time when I was serious about pursuing a software engineering career route, but since then I have let my skills stagnate while turning to other priorities. Now it is time for more progress.

I am working on a bug tracker app, which I hope to get online in the next week or two. It uses a Node backend; PostgreSQL to store data about users, projects, and issues; a React frontend; and a Bootstrap theme for styling. PostgreSQL is a new tool for me, and I am still shaky with React. The greater challenge is that I have not attempted such a complex combination of technologies before, and so doing is another skill. Deployment will also be a challenge, and I will cross that bridge when I get to it.

Software engineering is a bit like academic research in at least one respect. Every time I learn a new skill, I discover several more that I could learn, and so the frontier is continually expanding.

Dealing with Being Stuck

I think about stagnation a lot on the societal level, and now lately much more on the personal level.

When I have a clear goal that I am motivated to achieve and a clear path for doing so, I work efficiently and effectively and can get it done. When I lack a clear goal or a path for achieving it, I fall into a trap of work avoidance. If you observe heightened activity from me on social media, for instance, that is a symptom of being in such a state. It becomes a vicious circle, where work avoidance causes the obstacles to success to appear amorphous and chronic, leading to more work avoidance. It can lead to pseudowork: activity that vaguely looks like work but is not productive, such as reading news article tangentially related to my work area or engaging in unconstructive social media conversation. It is probably fair to say that this dynamic contributed to the failure of my previous job.

Since I can tell I have fallen into such a state this week with my current job, I am keen on understanding this “stuck” state: specifically how to recognize it early and how to get out. Pseudowork can be a kind of thrashing around, which a trapped animal for instance does when there is no clear path to escape. Maybe that’s actually the best solution in some cases. But I generally think that systematic approaches to problems are better.

In a job, being stuck might be a symptom of one or more of the following:

1) Lack of clarity on project goals. I need to better define the project myself or seek clarity from the manager/client.

2) The project is too difficult. Maybe it can’t be done, or maybe it can be done but I lack the skill to do it. In a work environment, especially when under the gun from management, it is difficult to admit that one is struggling and may seem preferable to do pseudowork to generate the illusion of progress. One needs to renegotiate project scope, or perhaps push harder to upgrade skills.

3) The job itself does not support my life goals. Maybe I am no longer interested in the field, or the job offers no viable paths to advancement, or the workplace is toxic. Then the best solution may be to make a switch.

I try to approach the problem by working backwards. What is my long term goal? What are the major things that need to happen to achieve this goal? How does the project fit into that goal? I won’t say that I have figured this problem out, but I have made some progress.

Banning Exercise for the Environment

The following is a silly thought experiment in the spirit of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, not a serious idea. Internet culture being what it is, such disclaimers are necessary (though probably still not sufficient).

There are various environmental movements out there that encourage (sometimes with the force of law) people to avoid eating meat*, driving, having children, having pets, using plastic, flying, or engaging in other activities generally regarded as central to modern living (or living at all). But I have never heard anyone argue that we should avoid exercising for the environment. Maybe we should.

About a quarter of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and the vast majority of anthropogenic land use, are related to agriculture. A person with an active lifestyle requires about 25% more calories than a person with a sedentary lifestyle. The greenhouse gas reduction of going from an active to sedentary lifestyle is thus comparable to switching from an internal combustion to electric car, or cutting driving by half, or switching to a vegetarian diet (these are mental, back-of-the envelope estimates, not serious calculations). From a land sparing perspective, television and the Internet might be the best inventions ever, and the gym might be one of the worst.

To my knowledge, the only environmentalist takes on exercise encourage people to go hiking or cycling in natural areas to foster environmental consciousness. I am not aware of anyone who has taken seriously the environmental impact of burning those extra calories. While I don’t think this is a good idea, I also don’t think it is a good idea to discourage people from flying or having children for environmental reasons, as these are valuable, prosocial activities, yet such exhortations are common.

I think we all know that lifestyle politics are generally not about dispassionate cost-benefit analysis. But I probably should understand better what they really are about to engage these issues more seriously.

* I don’t eat meat myself, and I don’t claim to reject all lifestyle environmentalism.