#like mine is not a meritocratic argument here

[kittoforos]

a lot of Posts floating around now about chatgpt in college, lxds. some things people are saying are true of course, but I work in at a large public university in the usa and I will set aside my cool laissez faire tech accelerationist cynicism to be totally honest for a moment:

the argument that ‘essay writing is a super specific skill that doesn’t matter in professional life so you should disregard those courses and just cheat to get the degree’ is very concerning to me, even as someone who doesn’t give a fuck about cheating per se, bc we don’t teach ‘essay writing’ in reading comprehension courses. or at least decent instructors don’t. I don’t. all that stuff about it being a cultural code is like, true above basic courses (so like, in grad school and even advanced undergrad courses yes it’s about *how* you write with all the attendant bullshit) but in that kind of remedial textual reasoning class in undergrad that’s required to get the basic ba degree, *nobody* writes in the prestige cultural style. the task in question is to be able to parse text and understand and construct logical arguments, and to be able to tell when an argument has something wrong with it, and to explain this clearly to other people. which you will need all the time forever in this hashtag society no matter what your job is, so you can tell when institutions are taking you for a ride. so like. …. :/

[fremedon]

Brickclub 5.2.6, “Future Progress”

Nothing to add to Bird’s writeups of the last two chapters except “What he said,” so I’m going to jump in here where I have rather a lot to say.

So, Bruneseaus’s regularizing and straightening and mapping of the sewer under Napoleon is typical of the era--the Restoration and the July Monarchy inherited a lot of Napoleon’s reforms that really couldn’t be undone, because what had preceded them was too complicated a snarl of historical accidents to recreate on purpose.

Like meritocratic promotion in the armed forces, a professional civil service, uniform law codes and weights and measures and taxes across France, it was a good and necessary improvement. But also like those, it is enabling a fundamentally misguided and unjust system to continue working, even more efficiently than before, without suddenly filling the streets with the contents of the sewers or of the lowest human mines.

The list of the lengths of new sewer added by successive regimes is introduced with the aside “--these figures are interesting,” which I think means this actually is important and Hugo is trying to call your attention to it with just enough sarcasm to deflect anyone who hasn’t figured out by now that the digressions are the heart of the book’s moral argument? Something like that?

At any rate, this is one of the only sentences in the book that directly mentions “the present regime” without any deflection. And I think Bruneseau’s work underneath the surface is meant to remind us of Haussmann’s above it, especially in conjunction with Hugo’s digs in the previous chapter at the architecture of the Rue de Rivoli being mirrored in the sewers. Below as above, the streets have been widened, straightened, and prettied up--and the people they used to contain have been displaced, underground and out of sight.

And then we return to the moment where we left Jean Valjean:

Thirty years ago, at the time of the fifth-sixth of June insurrection, there was still in many places more or less the original sewer. A great number of streets, now cambered, then had a gutter running down the middle of them. Very often to be seen in the declivity into which the sides of a street or a crossroads sloped were large square gratings with thick iron bars that gleamed from being polished by the feet of the crowd, dangerous and slippery for vehicles and liable to bring down horses.

The entrance to the ancient sewer is itself a remnant of the ancien regime, something that makes society--the vehicle--swerve and rock but that can be fatal to the individual misérable--the horse.

The chapter ends with Hugo returning his metaphor to its non-symbolic argument: that Paris is sickening and impoverishing itself to throw away a thing--sewage--which has value.

We know that by ‘cleaning the sewer’ we mean returning the muck to the earth, putting dung back in the fields. As a result of this measure there will be a reduction in poverty and an improvement in health for the whole social community.

And I wish, I wish, given 1848, that the symbolism here did not make that proposition work out metaphorically to “deport the urban poor to the countryside.”

But I can’t see any way that it doesn’t.

[smartwebhostingblog]

Why Silicon Valley Remains Unbeatable the Center of Innovation

New Post has been published on http://psychotherapy-online.com/why-silicon-valley-remains-unbeatable-the-center-of-innovation/

Why Silicon Valley Remains Unbeatable the Center of Innovation

This article first appeared in Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top tech news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.

The Economist has published a lucid, well-reasoned, and interesting reported essay on why Silicon Valley, relatively speaking, is finished. Aaron linked to it last week and I, too, encourage you to read it.

I also think it’s wrong. Indeed, though well-argued and backed up both by compelling facts and impassioned quotes, the article is what journalists call an “evergreen” and also a bit of a “thumbsucker.” In short, I’ve read—and heard—it all before. Silicon Valley is too expensive, its people are too obnoxious, the traffic is too horrible, and other regions are hungrier. In its own finely honed words: “The cost of living and operating a firm will drive more people away. The dominance of the companies that have generated its current wealth will change the paths to success for those who stay. And unfavorable governmental policies will further harm the Valley’s dynamism.”

This is all true and then some. For all its phoniness and obsession with money, this region can be tough to take. But these truths may be beside the point. I’m no cheerleader for Silicon Valley. But its unique attributes—the concentration of wealth and talented people, a risk-taking and meritocratic culture, the proximity to great universities, the weather—make it unbeatable, at least in any sustained way, by any other region.

One tell of an argument gone sour was the sheer number of people around my age quoted in the article. These are Silicon Valley veterans, sources of mine for years, that have fewer years in their careers ahead of them than behind them. They have wisdom in spades. But it’s no surprise that they’re tired of the Valley. I’d rather hear what the hungry youngsters think about their prospects here. (One was quoted convincingly, but isolated anecdotes do not a thesis make.)

One person quoted in the article, scholar AnnaLee Saxenian, gave me pause. She wrote the definitive explanation of Silicon Valley’s success, particularly compared with the ossified tech industry in Boston. Her monumental work, Regional Advantage, which I’ve frequently cited to explain Silicon Valley’s staying power, came out in 1994. She believes Silicon Valley has become more like Boston, a damning assertion if ever there was one.

It’s tough, but not impossible, to dethrone the king. Despite its many problems, Silicon Valley still reigns.

***

Chip Bergh, CEO of apparel company Levi Strauss & Co., has a sharply worded essay on Fortune.com today about what his company is doing to stop gun violence. It’s a three-part corporate action plan to live up to the values Levi Strauss stands for. I recommend it, too.

[awesomecolorfulcollectorwombat]

Why Silicon Valley Remains Unbeatable the Center of Innovation

New Post has been published on http://psychotherapy-online.com/why-silicon-valley-remains-unbeatable-the-center-of-innovation/

Why Silicon Valley Remains Unbeatable the Center of Innovation

This article first appeared in Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top tech news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.

The Economist has published a lucid, well-reasoned, and interesting reported essay on why Silicon Valley, relatively speaking, is finished. Aaron linked to it last week and I, too, encourage you to read it.

I also think it’s wrong. Indeed, though well-argued and backed up both by compelling facts and impassioned quotes, the article is what journalists call an “evergreen” and also a bit of a “thumbsucker.” In short, I’ve read—and heard—it all before. Silicon Valley is too expensive, its people are too obnoxious, the traffic is too horrible, and other regions are hungrier. In its own finely honed words: “The cost of living and operating a firm will drive more people away. The dominance of the companies that have generated its current wealth will change the paths to success for those who stay. And unfavorable governmental policies will further harm the Valley’s dynamism.”

This is all true and then some. For all its phoniness and obsession with money, this region can be tough to take. But these truths may be beside the point. I’m no cheerleader for Silicon Valley. But its unique attributes—the concentration of wealth and talented people, a risk-taking and meritocratic culture, the proximity to great universities, the weather—make it unbeatable, at least in any sustained way, by any other region.

One tell of an argument gone sour was the sheer number of people around my age quoted in the article. These are Silicon Valley veterans, sources of mine for years, that have fewer years in their careers ahead of them than behind them. They have wisdom in spades. But it’s no surprise that they’re tired of the Valley. I’d rather hear what the hungry youngsters think about their prospects here. (One was quoted convincingly, but isolated anecdotes do not a thesis make.)

One person quoted in the article, scholar AnnaLee Saxenian, gave me pause. She wrote the definitive explanation of Silicon Valley’s success, particularly compared with the ossified tech industry in Boston. Her monumental work, Regional Advantage, which I’ve frequently cited to explain Silicon Valley’s staying power, came out in 1994. She believes Silicon Valley has become more like Boston, a damning assertion if ever there was one.

It’s tough, but not impossible, to dethrone the king. Despite its many problems, Silicon Valley still reigns.

***

Chip Bergh, CEO of apparel company Levi Strauss & Co., has a sharply worded essay on Fortune.com today about what his company is doing to stop gun violence. It’s a three-part corporate action plan to live up to the values Levi Strauss stands for. I recommend it, too.

[lazilysillyprince]

Why Silicon Valley Remains Unbeatable the Center of Innovation

New Post has been published on http://psychotherapy-online.com/why-silicon-valley-remains-unbeatable-the-center-of-innovation/

Why Silicon Valley Remains Unbeatable the Center of Innovation

This article first appeared in Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top tech news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.

The Economist has published a lucid, well-reasoned, and interesting reported essay on why Silicon Valley, relatively speaking, is finished. Aaron linked to it last week and I, too, encourage you to read it.

I also think it’s wrong. Indeed, though well-argued and backed up both by compelling facts and impassioned quotes, the article is what journalists call an “evergreen” and also a bit of a “thumbsucker.” In short, I’ve read—and heard—it all before. Silicon Valley is too expensive, its people are too obnoxious, the traffic is too horrible, and other regions are hungrier. In its own finely honed words: “The cost of living and operating a firm will drive more people away. The dominance of the companies that have generated its current wealth will change the paths to success for those who stay. And unfavorable governmental policies will further harm the Valley’s dynamism.”

This is all true and then some. For all its phoniness and obsession with money, this region can be tough to take. But these truths may be beside the point. I’m no cheerleader for Silicon Valley. But its unique attributes—the concentration of wealth and talented people, a risk-taking and meritocratic culture, the proximity to great universities, the weather—make it unbeatable, at least in any sustained way, by any other region.

One tell of an argument gone sour was the sheer number of people around my age quoted in the article. These are Silicon Valley veterans, sources of mine for years, that have fewer years in their careers ahead of them than behind them. They have wisdom in spades. But it’s no surprise that they’re tired of the Valley. I’d rather hear what the hungry youngsters think about their prospects here. (One was quoted convincingly, but isolated anecdotes do not a thesis make.)

One person quoted in the article, scholar AnnaLee Saxenian, gave me pause. She wrote the definitive explanation of Silicon Valley’s success, particularly compared with the ossified tech industry in Boston. Her monumental work, Regional Advantage, which I’ve frequently cited to explain Silicon Valley’s staying power, came out in 1994. She believes Silicon Valley has become more like Boston, a damning assertion if ever there was one.

It’s tough, but not impossible, to dethrone the king. Despite its many problems, Silicon Valley still reigns.

***

Chip Bergh, CEO of apparel company Levi Strauss & Co., has a sharply worded essay on Fortune.com today about what his company is doing to stop gun violence. It’s a three-part corporate action plan to live up to the values Levi Strauss stands for. I recommend it, too.