#i did try learning the language in college but it was an accelerated course and i was only auditing so i didn't absorb much

[saint-ambrosef]

Your tags re: terms of endearment are so cute!!! Ahhhhh!! Also did not know you were Russian or Russian-speaking. Anyways. It melted my heart. Happy belated St. Valentines Day :)

I am not a speaker, just Russian-curious I guess haha. I am part Russian from both sides of my family and have taken a keen interest in the culture/language in recent years, so I've done some dabbling.

My husband (then boyfriend) wanted a pet name for me, and I suggested koshechka (кошечка, "kitten") because he frequently jokes that I behave like a cat. I call him pryanik (пряник, "gingerbread") because he's my sweet redhead.

[rmichaelwahlquist]

Juilliard is the tip of the iceberg. If Juilliard grads are struggling to find work – coming from one of the the most prestigious and well funded programs in the country, with some of the most high profile instructors – imagine the job prospects of all the state school grads. It's hard to imagine any scenarios where potential employers are going to take a ***** State University candidate over someone from Juilliard.

What follows may be my longest tumblr essay ever, buckle up for a ride through the perils of music education and a few ideas and solutions along the way!

And yet music programs around the country continue to expand the number of students in their programs – more students is after all in best interest of the institution (more students=more funding) – somehow without much regard to the hard numbers of how well these graduates will do in their careers.

Now, I work in music education and I readily acknowledge that changing this system is like changing the course of a glacier. For over two hundred years the higher education system in music has focused on a relatively narrow range of topics and techniques to train musicians. Berlioz's irreverent send-up of scholastic fugues during the finale of his 1830 Symphonie Fantastique is just one early example of students rankling at the limits of what was taught in school.

And for the first hundred or so years of the conservatory system (the 1800s), especially when it came to orchestral musicians, the product generally matched the demand - well trained musicians to play the music of the times.

On the other hand, I defend the traditional idea that not everything about a music education in a university has to be about job preparedness. For example, whether or not a musician teaches music history or theory for their career, I believe they should be well rounded and have a knowledge of those things. I tell my students: you want to be the whole package. And no matter what innovations come in music education, it would seem unquestionable that certainly the program should train musicians in excellent technique and performance.

I don't have the answers. I wish I did. I wish every person who wants to make music for a living could go to college and leave prepared to have an enjoyable, reliably profitable career in making the music that makes them happy. But right off the bat if you want to make pop (or any popular genre of) music or video game music or movie music – most university programs can hardly begin to help you with that. While some few specialized programs exist, you've really got to be the cream of the crop in the first place to even get your foot in those doors.

But where are the musicians making the money today? What skills do they have that enable them to make this living? And why does a music education have so little to do with either of those answers?

Many first year music students are surprised and disappointed to find that unless they want to be a band conductor, an orchestra musician, or a private instructor, being a music major may not be for them. And indeed it may not be! Many of the 20th century's and now 21st century's most wealthy and successful musicians became so without a formal music education behind them. Same for many of the ones who, while not wealthy, are working in studios and in live gigs with a steady income. Talent, work and creativity have always mattered a lot more in music than a piece of paper from an institution.

I have been wondering lately whether all of this really boils down to the fallout from the invention of recording technology over a century ago. Prior to the age of recordings, western musical notation had had a thousand years to develop and influence the way music was made, performed, and disseminated. Simply put, if you wanted to write, share, or perform music widely, then written music notation was pretty much the only way to do so. The accumulation of this tradition lead to the heights of late 19th century romanticism and the dawn of musical modernism. It's a staggering artistic achievement for humanity, no doubt about it, and it was all made possible because each generation could build on the written tradition of the previous one.

However, the advent of audio recordings abruptly interrupted (and/or accelerated) this progression/fragmentation. The need for creating and reading sheet music has gone from being universal to being niche - as long as the song can be performed, it can be recorded. The middle-man of notation no longer has a monopoly. This has led to the rise of new genres and commercial aspects of music that have fluctuated with the changing times and technology.

Jazz is an interesting case – an entirely new musical genre whose rise I would credit to recording and broadcast technology. Suddenly you didn't have to have tickets to an exclusive venue, training at a fancy school, or even the sheet music. You copied and learned from what you heard on the radio or recordings. You learned right from the best, right in the comfort of your home. You got playing experience doing live gigs. The genre evolved rapidly from Jelly Roll Morton to Louis Armstrong to Duke Ellington to Charlie Parker to Miles Davis to John Coltrane in just a few decades, becoming a well established and vibrant musical language – so well established that it can now retroactively enter higher music education. Those early jazzers would be quite amused, I think, that you can now (as I once did) get a degree in jazz.

Unfortunately, the same effect may be happening to Jazz education as happened to classical music education – the education becomes more about preserving the past than about keeping the music itself alive. (Have you heard some of the things the best jazz musicians are doing today? It is as far from even the wild jazz of the 60s as the earth is to the moon. Still recognizably jazz but not anything you'll learn in school!) Perhaps by its nature, a music education is only capable of teaching about the past. But I think that's an assumption worth challenging.

We may expect a trained jazz musician to be able to play big band styles and bebop with equal fluency, much the same way a violinist may be expected to play Bach and Brahms and Boulez. But is there a point at which a music education becomes too fixated on the past without adequately preparing for the right now, let alone the future, of life as a musician?

In fact, every non-notated music tradition is at risk of the same effect due to recordings. Say you recorded a native music maker from an endangered tradition in the early or mid 1900s. Now for all time, to make music in that tradition there is this temptation to calcification - hardening the whole style around a few interpretations just because they happen to be the earliest of which we have record. The reality is that no musical style ever stays the same forever. Those recorded in the 1900s were not even doing the music in the exact same as their parents, let alone 50 or a 100 years prior. The times changed, the people changed, the music changed.

It will always be that way. Music education may be a glacier set on its course but the flow of music increasingly is finding its way around and beyond it in terms of the art, the artists, the culture, and the money. Now, the times still change, the people still change, the music still changes, while the cultural and practical relevance of a formal music education wanes and wanes.

Man, I hate being so negative about this, but to fix things you have to first diagnose the problem. So let me propose a few solutions or at least work-arounds, especially for music majors.

- don't go into a music degree expecting it to do everything for you. Understand what it is and what it isn't. It will help you be a good musician. It may not prepare you for many other aspects of the career. You can do everything right in a music degree, pass with 'top marks', and still not be ready to go to work in your field.

- do look for opportunities to perform and make music outside the university. How do you expect to suddenly have music making be a money-making enterprise if you haven't already been practicing that? Why wait until you are a 'pro' to start a youtube channel, self release recordings on bandcamp or soundcloud, to self publish sheet music on sheetmusicplus.com? It takes time to build up a following and a reputation and it doesn't come automatically just when you get a diploma.

- do everything you can to learn about music business, copyright, contracts, recording, sound engineering, advertising, etc. whether or not it is required for a class. Learn what you need to know, not just the minimum for the grade or degree.

- be disciplined with your time. Give due diligence to your classes and practice but don't let those things take over the rest of your time. Balance your life and your art. If you don't learn to do that in school you'll have to learn it while trying to start your career...and why wait until that crucial period?

- you've got to be quite committed to make a music career work. It may involve participation in a combination of money-making streams - academia, private lessons, performances, recording, etc. You may even have to balance music making with other non-music income (I know of a successful composer who loves her second career as a yoga instructor). Carefully consider if all this is for you. You can have a lifelong, satisfying and fulfilling engagement with music making without ever making it the sole focus of your study or employment. There is no shame in seeking stability in a career, which music just can't promise.

- don't dismiss the value of the things in your college education that may not be "directly" relevant to the functioning of your music career. Modern college education has a foundation in the ideal that each person should have a well rounded grasp of some of the basics of the world. There's a reason all college grads are required to take classes like math or sociology or science. Practice finding that reason with each class and you'll have a happier time getting through those hoops. There can be relevance in pretty much any topic but don't expect college to spoon-feed you the application of that knowledge.

- Same goes for music topics that seem irrelevant. Just because the class is talking about music history, theory or repertoire that seems useless to you, it doesn't mean that you don't want to know those things as a musician. As I wrote above, you want to be the whole package: a well rounded musician who understands a thing or two about many aspects of life, the world, and music culture specifically.

- do take advantage of every resource that is available for your success. This may not be only within the university system. Look everywhere for mentors, professional contacts, grants, support, performance opportunities, learning opportunities and creative outlets. If you meet somebody who is making it work, pick their brain, ask for their help! If you aren't a voracious type of learner inside and outside of school, being a music major is going to be a tough road. Why suffer through four plus years just to eke out the degree that may not even lead you to a job?

- make the music of TODAY, of RIGHT NOW. Make music that matters to you and to your peers. Make music that is relevant and current and is more than a living museum. Don't be afraid of new music, be afraid of a world without new music!

- keep up with changes in the industry, especially paying attention to where the money is coming from and going. A music career doesn't have to be all about money but, you know, making a living matters unless you are 'of independent means'. Could be NFTs, could be grants, could be (as in the article above) playing your instrument with unusual ensembles. Be as creative with your income pursuits as you are in your art and I bet you can find a happy balance between making the music you like and making money in the process.

- don't give up hope that all the brokenness I mention above can be fixed. Total cultural change is possible and perhaps inevitable within a generation. Balance learning from the past with a push to make a difference in the directions you want to see.

I'll see you in a more vibrant and sonically rich world!

R. Michael Wahlquist | March 2021 | Rexburg, Idaho

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE ROOTS OF THE OTHER HALF OF

I know are professors, but it turned out I was 450 years too late. The reason Cambridge is the intellectual capital of the world. Though the situation is better in the sciences, the overlap between the kind of people you don't even get paid a lot. Craigslist has largely destroyed the classified ad sites of the 90s, and OkCupid looks likely to do the same to the previous generation would have considered wasteful. Partly because some companies use mechanisms to prevent copying. When we cook one up we're not always 100% sure which kind it is. And yes, as you suspect, the college admissions process is largely a charade. Of course he wouldn't program in machine language. The mere existence of prep schools is proof of that. This is probably what Eric Raymond meant about Lisp making you a better programmer for the rest of the programmers will tend to use whatever language they happen to use, because it requires a deliberate choice. And not just in its beautiful lines: it was at the time.

But it's not straightforward to find these, because there is a contradiction in the conventional wisdom: Lisp will make you a better writer in languages you do want to use it. Great questions don't appear suddenly. I don't think they were traumatized by the experience. Alexander Calder Calder's on this list. Jessica Livingston, Matz, Jackie McDonough, Robert Morris, Eric Raymond describes Lisp as something like Latin or Greek—a Neanderthal language. Is it worth trying to decompose them. What was novel about this software was that it seemed insanely risky. All you need to do this if we want to solve with computers are created by computers; for example, seems to be merging with the descendants of Algol. It would be a lot of money, or getting customers. In retrospect that seems ridiculous, and we soon dropped the pretense. If I thought that I could keep up current rates of spam filtering, I think the answers to these questions can be found by looking at hackers, and a third was acquired that we can't figure out how to improve it?

In fact, you probably shouldn't even go to work. If you take a boring job to give your family a high standard of living, as so many people do, you can always make money from. If they saw that, they'd want you to visit. If you're a founder, you're buying stock with work: the reason Larry and Sergey were meek little research assistants, obediently doing their advisors' bidding. If not, you're in trouble. The most important part of the job; but it does tend to make filtering easier, because you'd only have to filter email from people you'd never heard from, or about, a startup meant a company headed by an MBA that was blowing through several million dollars of VC money to get big fast in the most literal sense: someone who can make a computer do what he wants—whether the computer wants to or not. They gave it a name that was a joking reference to Multics: Unix. The individual tokens should be short as well. Get one. I'm told there's a lot of economic history, and I expect them to proliferate. Tim O'Reilly was wearing a suit, a sight so alien I couldn't parse it at first.

When you only have a few users you can support per processor. It is just as well that it usually takes a while to realize I just wasn't like the people there. Garbage collection, introduced by Lisp in the early 1970s, are now rich, at least subconsciously, based on the qualities of startup founders than anyone else ever has. Icio. Transaction processing seemed to them what e-commerce was all about. EBay didn't win by paying less for servers than their competitors. It's interesting that describe rates as so thoroughly innocent. If it didn't suck, they wouldn't have had to make it good for writing the kinds of programs they want to do most of the time, trying to convince him to invest in their portfolio companies. For the average user, all the news was bad.

But Wodehouse has something neither of them did. Jessica was its mom. On the whole, his advice is good. Little attention is paid to profiling now. Both took years to succeed. What a recipe for alienation. There may be room for tuning here, but as long as no one is doing them yet.

But this is certainly not so with work. Most people would say, I'd take that problem. If they saw that, they'd want you to be omniscient, but actually it's surprisingly easy. But you never have to type. Will the future ever catch up with it? It might be a good marketing trick to call it an improved version of Python. Empirically, the answer is no. The results so far are messy, but encouraging. It was the perfect quality to instill in startups. Alarms start to go off fairly quickly.

It happens naturally to anyone who does good work. Your life doesn't have to pay for might as well have sat in front of a TV all day, I'd feel like something was terribly wrong. In the second phase, you look at something like Reddit and think the founders were lucky. One of the things I've learned about making things that save money. I still don't find prefix math expressions natural. If Moore's Law continues to put out, they will be 74 quintillion 73,786,976,294,838,206,464 times faster. Civil liberties are not just an ornament, or a quaint American tradition. I also think that the more pain they caused the user, the more benefit it must be, if so few do.

9189189 localhost 0. And there is a good time to start a startup, if you took a nap in your office in a big company, this may not be easy. Just as you're getting settled, you're slammed back in your seat by the acceleration. Which is why people trying to sell you expensive things say it's an investment. It seemed such a novel idea to us that investors were too conservative here—that they wanted to fund professors, when really they should be funding grad students or even undergrads. We all had dinner together once a week, cooked for the first time. Then it struck me: this is practically a recipe for chaos, think about a soccer team. In the long term. It's odd that people still order electronic parts out of thick paper catalogs in 2007, there's a good chance anyone saying that about any particular job is mistaken. And so to protect themselves people say I can't do it half-heartedly. I don't mean trustworthy so much as a half. The organic route is more common.

[alithographica]

Could you share some tips with how you learned a new language? I want to learn a language but can’t figure out where to start and how to make sure I speak it properly

Well, I’m certainly no expert. There are websites and subreddits dedicated to language learning with people who are far more methodical and better at self-teaching than I am, but I’ll talk a bit on what I’m up to because I did manage to achieve Spanish fluency and am so far competent in basic German.

Putting a cut in because I’m obnoxiously wordy, but the tl;dr of it is that it’s about consistent exposure. Go find an interactive resource to get the basics, then go find the side of the internet that exists in your target language. Consume.

The best way to learn is through immersion, but of course we can’t all just go drop into a foreign country for a year.

I learned one language with formal instruction. I assume that’s not going to be your situation but hang with me—It’s definitely not necessary, and I found some shortcomings in it.

I learned Spanish in school from 7th to 12th grade, which was good for foundations but tbh only foundations. I could travel with it but not much more. But the AP Spanish exam let me skip straight into higher-level courses in college, so for a few semesters I spent ~15 hours each week without a word of English. Even though I needed the foundation to make it happen, I definitely improved my Spanish more in 1 semester than in several years of my pre-university work. I ended up doing a minor for shits n gigs.

But all of that amounted to being extremely capable in academic discussions, and not so much in casual conversations. I could go talk to someone about their dissertation and still need a dictionary on a menu. 

Learning a language in a classroom gives you a lopsided functionality. 

To combat that and to maintain my fluency post-college, I make a point to keep consuming Spanish media. I read books and fanfics, follow meme pages, listen to podcasts, watch TV…those have all been a big help and are accessible to you without needing formal courses. They expose you to how people are actually using the language.

I’m doing German entirely on my own. I have Duolingo for the barebones grammar and vocab, but it falls short in actually explaining certain things so I have a textbook downloaded for specific questions (like what the hell is going on with their grammatical genders. We just don’t know! Here are a few rules, think fast or memorize, go throw a dart and see what you hit! Terrible system.)

Anyway. Duolingo set me up for a decent understanding of sentence structure, though not everyone likes the way it’s set up. Probably depends on your learning style. I often see Memrise cited as an alternative but I haven’t checked it out yet.

For proper advancement, again, I’m consuming media. I follow a few meme pages and artists and look up words I don’t know (just Google “German to English” and it’ll give you a translator immediately. I also use the Microsoft Translator app. Sometimes actual googling is necessary if it’s slang.) I listen to learning podcasts, I have a few German singers I’m into. I don’t try to understand every word when listening, just pick up what I can and get used to the cadence of the language. Love subtitles (preferably in German). When I’m bored or cooking or shopping, I make a game of how many objects in the room I can name/describe. At this point I can read a newspaper with some competency—that kind of basic communication. Zero classroom time.

(Of note, my priority is reading/listening more than speaking. If you want to speak properly, short of actually finding a buddy to practice with, you can read things aloud and verbally respond to them. Write back to other speakers online. Make a point of listening to audio.)

It has been 2 years of pretty low-effort work—literally 20 minutes a day—but it is every day. 690 day streak on Duolingo and counting. I guarantee that 20 minutes a day is doing more for me than 2 hours once a week. I could definitely accelerate faster if I bothered to really dig into it, but I’m just doing it as a side hobby. Figure out what time you’re willing to commit to the basics with as much regularity as possible, then go dip your toes into media.

Anyway hopefully there was something in there remotely helpful lmao

[yourkeeperoftherunners]

Fond

Plot: AU You come home for a holiday weekend from college, only to walk in on the exchange student staying with your parents. Some kids would be miffed that their parents sort of replaced their brother with a foreign exchange student and failing to tell the others about it. Oddly enough, he’s actually...great. Not that he’d ever replace your real brother, but bonding with him has been...

Rating: PG-13 (Language, Reader walks in on someone changing, teasing, light flirting)

Characters: Foreign Exchange Student!Felix x University Student Older Female Reader, featuring other members of Stray Kids

Notes: A long time ago, the Keeper hosted exchange students from Australia. (They were both girls and while we didn’t end up best friends, we got along well.) This little one shot was partly inspired by that, combined with the fact that Felix is from Australia and has a strong accent that is prevalent when he speaks English. Please note that the reader in this story is about 1-2 years older than Felix, who is in his final year of high school in this story.

I kind of consider this my gift to my readers on my birthday – thank you for checking out my work!

                                                         ***

Finally, you thought as you pulled off the freeway on your exit. A quick glance at your phone, currently mounted to the windshield, said that you had been sitting in traffic for close to an hour. Despite leaving a little earlier to beat the traffic, you managed to get caught in it toward the end of your trip.

You tapped your fingers against the steering wheel as you waited for the light to change. In a few minutes, you’d be home and could get out of this confined space known as your car.

The light changed and you accelerated, slowing as you neared the entrance to your neighborhood. You checked the cars in the opposite direction and turned once it was clear, eyes scanning the neighboring houses. You slowed down as you approached your driveway and turned into it.

It had been a while since you came home to visit your parents. This time would be different, as your younger brother was accepted for a high school exchange program in Australia and would be attending a school there for half of the year. Part of you had to wonder if this is what an only child got to look forward to when it was the holidays. Not that your brother was a bad person, but like any other siblings, you had your moments growing up.

                                                           ***

“Mom?”

“In the kitchen – washing dishes!” she called back.

You walked in with a smile, quickly planting a kiss on her cheek. She smiled and encouraged you to go ahead and get settled.

“How was the drive?” she asked.

You shrugged as you hoisted your duffle bag higher and made a beeline for your bedroom. Your hand rested on the doorknob and you glanced over your shoulder.

“Not bad, but it’s the weekend so of course it was slow,” you called over your shoulder. You twisted the knob and began to step inside your bedroom that you once shared with your younger brother.

“WHOA!” a deep voice blurted out.

You snapped your head in the direction of the voice and saw a boy – not your brother – fumbling to put a shirt on. Your eyes met his wide ones for a moment before you closed the door abruptly out of reflex.

You sucked in a sharp breath and turned away from the door, shifting your weight to one foot.

“Mom, did you forget to tell me something?” you demanded.

You heard your mom pause, followed by a plate being put away in the cupboard. “I thought I told you that your brother is doing study abroad for half of the year,” she called out.

“No, I remember that,” you said. “I meant, did you go out an adopt another kid while we were both gone?”

“Oh you mean Felix? Oh no honey, he’s an exchange student from Australia! Turns out the school your brother went to had a group of students come here and they needed more host families. Felix is only doing a semester too, so it works out perfectly!”

You took a deep breath and moved your duffle bag to the other shoulder. “I mean, that’s great, but where am I sleeping?”

There was a pause and your mom sighed from the kitchen, realizing the situation you were in. “Oh…well, you can take the couch right?”

You opened your mouth then closed it, taking a deep breath. Mom had a habit of being a bit forgetful – she would have something important to say but tended to wait until the person speaking was done, which resulted in her forgetting what she had to say. How she could forget she had another living being here the same time you were home was beyond you.

In your mind, this Felix guy wasn’t the problem – Mom’s memory was. It seemed unreasonable for her to force her own daughter to the couch for the holidays, but you didn’t want to be a dick for making Felix move. Also he probably wasn’t used to sharing a bedroom with a girl, so the couch was probably the best move.

The door to your bedroom opened and the person in question peered out. “Ah sorry ‘bout that,” he spoke up. He stepped into the hallway and slowly raised a hand. “Hi, I’m Felix Lee, AKA the Aussie student your mum’s hosting. Are you her daughter she talks about?”

You turned to face him and nodded dumbly, extending a hand for him to shake. He took it and you managed a convincing smile as you shook hands. It was almost comical – the guy standing before you looked every bit of a young boy with his small hands, slim figure, and youthful face, but the voice that came out was very deep and manly. Remembering your manners, you introduced yourself before letting go of his hand.

                                                          ***

“Mom we didn’t have to go out,” you insisted from your seat in the car.

She shook her head and said something about it being special. “Well I mean, you’re home, Felix is here,” she explained. “Oh and honey? Your dad’s stuck in another state for work. He might not be home until later in the weekend.”

“Weather or work?”

“I think weather,” she sighed. “Nasty storms in his part of the country and flights were grounded.”

You nodded to show you understood and kept your eyes to the front, avoiding Felix’s in the rear view mirror. While you had been friendly toward him, it still felt a little weird having some strange guy who was the same age as your brother pal around with you and your mom.

Eventually Felix learned you were oblivious to his presence before coming home from college, and he expressed guilt for kicking you out of your bedroom. He tried to be polite and offered to take the couch since it was your room first. But you didn’t want to be the rude person he’d remember from this country, so you insisted that it was fine and that you’d only be here for the weekend. You sensed that Mom taking both of you out to eat was her way of apologizing for the confusion.

She turned into the parking lot and found a spot. Once everyone exited the car, she made her way to the hostess stand and asked for a table for three.

                                                          ***

“You go ahead and order drinks – I need to run to the restroom,” Mom announced before leaving you alone at the table.

Felix watched as your mom speed walked around the waiters and slowly turned his attention back to you. You awkwardly stared back at him and flashed a faint smile. He rubbed the back of his neck, his fingers resting against his pulse point for a moment.

“I uh...take it I’m her or um your first exchange student?” he asked.

You nodded and opened your mouth to reply, only to spot the waitress coming to take drink orders.

“Aww are you two on a date?” she asked.

Both of you blinked and gestured to each other, trying to explain that he was an exchange student you were hosting. 

“Actually Miss I’m just a guest–”

“He’s from Australia – exchange program thing,” you added. “My mom’s in the bathroom but she would like a water please.”

The waitress nodded as she fished out the order pad and scribbled down the order. She looked to Felix who order water as well. You echoed that you too, would like water. Once the waitress left, you addressed Felix again.

“Yeah she loves kids and with both of us gone, I guess she’s suffering from empty nest syndrome,” you explained. “When my brother leaves for college, not sure how she’s gonna deal.” You looked around for your mom and shot him a sheepish smile.

“Did she take you to any other restaurants? I’m hoping not Outback.”

Felix winced and murmured that the Australian-gimmick restaurant chain had been mentioned, but he declined. “The voiceover’s horrible,” he commented. “I don’t think anyone sounds that exaggerated.”

You laughed, adding that it was probably some bad American actor who tried working with a bad dialect coach. “I’m sure he regrets it,” you added.

The young man snickered, dropping the hand on his neck. “So your mum said you’re in college. What do you study?”

“I study Music Production,” you shared. “I don’t want to perform but I like the idea of helping to do stuff behind the scenes for musicians.”

Felix leaned closer and tilted his head when he heard your response. “Oh really? Yeah I like music too. I’d like to do something with it, but my folks aren’t so sure and I don’t know what I’d like to do exactly.” He flattened his palm on the table and crossed a leg on top of the other.

“Is it...weird if I ask what it’s like? I mean your curriculum?” he asked.

You shook your head and settled into the booth, prepared to talk about your major.

                                                        ***

“Honey, how about both of you do something together?”

You looked up from your mug and Felix paused, mid-bite with a piece of toast in his hand.

“Like?” you asked.

Your mom shrugged and prompted that you could take Felix to the mall or maybe catch a movie. “Something, I mean I don’t want you two all cooped up inside on your phones all day!”

You swallowed the sip of coffee you were drinking and glanced over at Felix. “Mall okay? There’s actually a pretty good theater there and actually a decent music store.”

Felix nodded as he chewed on his toast, flashing a thumbs up.

                                                       ***

“I’m sorry you’re stuck dragging me around,” Felix commented once you got to the mall.

You shook your head and unclipped your seat belt. “It’s not a drag.”

“You were fine on the couch?” he asked with a skeptical look.

You nodded and he gave you a hard stare. You sighed and confessed it was a bit firmer than you liked.

“I noticed there is another bed in there – I’m guessing it’s yours?” he added. “Look, I think we can be mature and sleep in the same room. I’ve got sisters so it’s not that weird.”

“Wait really?”

He nodded and pulled out his phone. He looked at pictures and shared one of him with two girls. “Older sis and a younger one,” he shared. “Believe me, I know how to live with a girl, all the ups and downs.”

“It’s not like I’ve not seen a guy’s body with the way my brother acts,” you added with a shrug. “I mean, he’s walked around stark naked like it’s no big deal and I grew up dealing with that all the time.”

Felix snorted at the thought and you nodded, laughing. “Wow, he sounds...”

“Weird,” you finished, “but I love the little idiot.”

                                                        ***

“Whoa is this heaven?” he asked with wide eyes.

You chuckled as you crossed your arms over your chest. “Music heaven. Instruments, equipment, CDs, records – all under one roof. I spent a lot of time and money here before I left for college. That’s actually what made me want to do Music Production as a major.”

Felix stared at his surroundings, eyes wide in amazement as he took in the music store you were standing in. He wandered over to a Just In section and picked up a Sam Smith record, turning it over in his hands.

“Really like singing his stuff,” Felix admitted.

“I like his style,” you admitted as you joined him. “You sing?”

He ducked his head and brought his hand to his pulse point. “Um...sort of. I’m not professional or anything, but I do it for fun.”

You could tell he seemed a bit self conscious and you allowed a gentle smile to form. “Hey, I’d love to hear it some day. Only when you’re ready of course.”

                                                         ***

“C’mon, c’mon how is it there?” his cousin demanded. “You sick of cheeseburgers yet?”

“I actually haven’t had a burger in a while,” Felix confessed as he shifted the phone to his other hand. “Yeah, the family’s real nice and they actually offered me a healthy brekkie. Like fruit, toast, and yoghurt – not dessert for breakfast.”

“You said they have a daughter? I wanna meet her!” another boy blurted out from the other side of the screen.

“Why? So you can scare her?” Felix teased with a raised brow. “Not a chance Han.”

“Come on!” Han protested.

“Ah my cousin’s probably having dreams about her,” Chan teased with a smirk. “Wants her all to himself.”

“Stop it, she’s older – it’s not like that!” Felix insisted with a pout.

That only made the pair hoot and they teased him more. “Felix’s got a noona kink!”

“Who’s Newna?” you asked as you entered the room, looking for a pair of pajamas.

Felix sat up straighter and brought the phone closer to him. “It’s not a person – my stupid cousin’s calling and he’s being an idiot.”

Chan pretended to be wounded and he clutched his chest. “I’m so hurt by that!”

Han snickered at the elder’s misfortune and Felix rolled his eyes at the two through his phone.

“Tell them you’re alive and the people aren’t as mad here as they think,” you called back before leaving.

Chan and Han stopped joking around when they heard your voice and they looked in the direction it came from. “Wow, that’s the daughter?”

“She sounds hot,” Chan declared. “When you say older, like how much older? Older than me?”

“G’night!” Felix said as he ended the call quickly.

                                                             ***

“It’s never long enough,” your mom sighed, looking wistful. She squeezed you in another hug before letting go.

“You know I’m not much more than a hour or two away,” you reminded her. “I can always call.”

“I know, but seeing you in person is the best,” she insisted.

Felix watched as you two said your goodbyes and he shyly walked up to you. He seemed unsure of what to do though. Should he hug you? Shake your hand? Offer a high five?

You held your arms out and he realized that it was a hug. He smiled as he stepped closer and allowed his arms to wrap around you.

“I know things were awkward when we first met, but it’s been great meeting you,” he said. “I really enjoyed the music store and um...maybe we can hang again before I go?”

You nodded with a smile as you pulled away. “Course,” you confirmed. “Hey if your cousin and his friend give you grief again, let me know and I’ll straighten them out. Sounds like they were making fun of you.”

“Ah they’re just jealous that I got picked to go and they’re stuck at home with our boring teachers and the same old stuff,” he shrugged. He raised a hand as you got into your car and slowly backed it out of the driveway.

You waved back before straightening out and switching it to Drive, before leaving the neighborhood, headed back to campus.

Your mom stared at the place where your car had been and sighed. She glanced over at Felix and smiled fondly at him.

“I’m really glad you two got along,” she said. “By the way, you two only slept in –”

“Whoa! I slept in one bed and she was in the other!” Felix flushed, eyes blown wide. “Nothing, nothing like that other thing happened!”

Your mom winked and added that she was only teasing him. He relaxed and shook his head.

Maybe he did like you but whether it was like a sister or possibly a love interest, he wasn’t sure. For now, he was content he met someone else that treated him like a normal human being, instead of highlighting his age or something else. 

“I’m really glad you’re here,” your mom added. “It’s hard being a mom when everyone’s so far away.”

Felix nodded and offered her a hug. “I get it. Thanks for being my host mum. I don’t think I could have asked for a better family than the one I got.”

She beamed at the compliment and sighed as she pulled away. “I’m glad you’re also nothing like my son. I love him, but sometimes...”

Felix laughed as he followed her back inside. “You know, I kinda want to meet him. Sounds like a character.”

[linechinese]

6 tips on learning Chinese

I contemplated Mandarin Chinese 15 years back. It took me nine months to arrive at a level where I could decipher paper publications from English to Chinese and from Chinese to English, read books and decipher for individuals, I did this in the age of the open-reel recording the device, sometime before the age of the Internet, online word references, language learning applications, MP3 documents, YouTube and cchatty Chinese learning center.

On the off chance that I think about what I did, I find that there were six things that helped me learn quicker than different understudies who were concentrating with me. Underneath I list every one of these tips on the most proficient method to learn Chinese, which you might need to apply to your investigations.

1, Tune in to Mandarin as Often as could be expected under the circumstances

The first month or possibly two, simply center around tuning in.

Begin by concentrating on tuning in. Simply become acclimated to the sounds. You should peruse whatever you are tuning in to, yet do so utilizing the phonetic composing framework, for example, Pinyin, to show signs of improvement feeling of what you are hearing. You should get familiar with the characters in the long run, yet you can forget about the characters from the outset, and rather, attempt to get a little force in the language.

It's too hard even to consider starting learning characters when you don't have any feeling of the words, what they sound like, or how they cooperate. Another dialect can seem like an undifferentiated commotion toward the start. The initial step is to get acclimated with the individual hints of the language, to figure out how to separate words from one another, and even to have a couple of words and expressions resounding in your mind.

My first prologue to Mandarin was tuning in to Chinese Dialogs, middle of the road content without any characters, only romanization, right now Yale form of romanization. Today Pinyin, created in China, has become the standard type of romanization for Mandarin. In Chinese Dialogs, the storyteller talked so quickly I thought he was tormenting us. In any case, it worked. Following a month or so, I was utilized to the speed and had a feeling of the language.

As an aside, I think it is a smart thought to start learning a language with the middle of the road level messages that incorporate a ton of redundancy of jargon, instead of excessively straightforward tenderfoot writings. Digital recordings and book recordings are extraordinary for this. The Mandarin Chinese small scale stories at LingQ are a case of the sort of perspective stories, with a lot of reiteration of high recurrence action words that are accessible today. These were not accessible to me 15 years back.

With a feeling of this energizing new dialect and some aural cognizance, my inspiration to become familiar with the characters developed. I needed to know the characters for the words that I had been tuning in to and becoming acclimated to.

So that is tip number one, to concentrate on tuning in and Pinyin for the principal month or two.

2, Commit Time to Memorizing Characters 

The investigation of Chinese, Mandarin Chinese is a long haul venture. It will acquire your contact with the language and the way of life of well over 20% of humankind and a significant effect on world history. Hence, I generally suggest learning Chinese characters in the event that you will gain proficiency in the language.

When you choose to consider Chinese characters, work at them consistently. Commit thirty minutes to an hour daily just on learning characters. Utilize whatever the technique you need, however, put aside devoted character learning time each day. Why consistently? Since you will overlook the characters nearly as fast as you learn them, and in this manner need to relearn them over and over.

You might need to utilize Anki or some other current PC based learning framework. I built up my own dispersed reiteration framework. I had a lot of 1,000 little cardboard cheat sheets with the most successive 1000 characters. I had sheets of squared paper to work on composing these characters. I would get one card, and record the character multiple times one segment on the squared paper and afterward compose the significance or elocution a couple of sections over. At that point, I would get another cheat sheet and do likewise. Before long I ran into the importance or sound of the last character that I had composed there. I at that point worked that character out again a couple of times, ideally before I had totally overlooked it. I did this for the initial 1000 characters. After that I had the option to learn them by perusing, finding new characters, and haphazardly keeping in touch with them out by hand a couple of times.

As we progress, learning new characters becomes simpler in light of the fact that such a significant number of components rehash in the characters. The characters all have "radicals", segments that give a trace of the importance of a character. There are likewise segments of the characters which propose the sound. These radicals are useful in securing the characters, despite the fact that not from the outset. As with such a great amount in language learning, an excess of clarification forthright is an interruption to procuring the language. I found that the endeavors of educators to clarify these radicals and different parts at the beginning periods of my learning were not to incredible profit. I didn't get them. Simply after enough presentation did I begin to see the segments and that accelerated my learning of the characters.

Tip number two is to truly invest consistently and committed energy into learning characters.

3, Perceive Patterns Rather than Rules Concentrate on designs. Try not to become involved with convoluted syntax clarifications, simply center around designs. At the point when I was contemplating we had a superb book by Harriet Mills and P.S. Ni. It was called Intermediate Reader in Modern Chinese. In each and every exercise they acquainted examples and with me, that is the manner by which I kind of got a feeling of how the language functioned. The examples were the edges around which I could manufacture anything I desired to state.

I have positively no feeling of Chinese language structure or punctuation terms, yet I am very familiar. I have seen books that present uncommon sentence structure terms for Chinese. I don't think they are important. It is smarter to become acclimated to the examples that Chinese uses to communicate things that we express in English utilizing English examples. Chinese has a somewhat uncomplicated language structure, one of the joys of learning Chinese. There are no declensions, conjugations, sexes, action word viewpoints, confounded tenses or different wellsprings of disarray that are found in numerous European dialects.

Tip number three is to concentrate on designs, work them out, say them to yourself, use them when talking or composing, and watch for them when you tune in and read.

On the off chance that you might want a free sentence structure asset to help supplement your learning, at that point I prescribe Chinese syntax assets.

4, Peruse More than You Can Handle Peruse a great deal. 

On the off chance that I learned quicker than my kindred understudies 50 years prior, it is on the grounds that I read all that I could get my hands on. I read considerably more than different understudies. I am discussing unique writings for students, but instead a wide scope of material on subjects important to me. I was helped by the way that the Yale-in-China had an incredible arrangement of perusers with glossaries for every section. We began with student material utilizing something many refer to as Chinese Dialogs, at that point graduated to a reviewed history content called 20 Lectures on Chinese Culture.

20 Lectures were an intriguing open door for me to find out about Chinese history and culture while learning the language. The book comprised uniquely of writings and a glossary, no entangled clarifications, no tests. At the point when I take a gander at a portion of the course readings accessible today focused on transitional and even propelled students, they are brimming with drilling content about anecdotal individuals in China, someone at college who met his companion or went to the stylist or went skating, trailed by clarifications and drills. Not a smart thought except if you are keen regarding these matters.

I moved on from 20 Lectures on Chinese Culture to Intermediate Reader in Modern Chinese out of Cornell University. This was a peruser with valid writings from present-day Chinese legislative issues and history. Every exercise presented designs and downplayed drills and clarifications. Or on the other hand, possibly I simply disregarded them.

Yale had a wide assortment of perusers on legislative issues, history, and writing, all with word records for every section. This was my learning material. The accessibility of word list per part implied that I didn't need to counsel a Chinese lexicon. Before the coming of Alec Tronic or online lexicons, it was very tedious and agonizing to counsel a Chinese word reference. Since we overlook the majority of the things we turn upward in the lexicon, this was a gigantic exercise in futility.

I developed my jargon utilizing these perusers with word records lastly had the option to peruse a book without jargon records, simply disregarding the characters and words that I didn't have the foggiest idea. Following seven or eight months I read my first novel, Rickshaw Boy or 骆驼祥子, which is a well-known novel of life right now during the fierce first 50% of the twentieth century, composed by Lao She.

Tip number four is to peruse as much as you can. This is a lot simpler to do today. You can discover material on the Internet, utilize online word references and applications.

5, Get the Rhythm of the Language to Master the Tones

Concentrate on tuning in. I attempted to tune in to whatever content I was perusing. Perusing encourages you to learn the jargon, yet listening causes you to associate with the language and get readied to talk. Listening cognizance is the center's expertise important so as to participate in discussions with individuals.

One of the difficulties of Mandarin is the tones. We gain proficiency with the tone of each character as we get jargon, however, it is hard to recall these when talking. It is critical to disguise the tones as a major aspect of expressions. Listening encourages you to do this. The pitch and cadence of Mandarin, or some other language, can just originate from tuning in to the local speaker. You can't learn it hypothetically.

Specifically, I discovered tuning in to customary Chinese comic discoursed, Xiang Sheng, 相声, an extraordinary method to get the beat of the language and of the tones since these entertainers overstate the pitch. These days you can locate these web-based, including the transcripts and even import them into a framework like cchatty. This was not accessible to me 50 years prior.

Actually, there is an enormous exhibit of listening material accessible for download on every single imaginable subject or you can purchase CDs on the off chance that you are in China. In our cutting edge world, all the material you find on the Internet, or material you may discover in CDs, can be changed over into downloadable sound records which you can have with you any place you go on an MP3 player or an advanced cell. Steady tuning in, in any event, for brief times of five or 10 minutes while you're standing by someplace, can significantly build the time accessible for learning any language, including Mandarin Chinese.

This was not accessible to me 50 years back. I truly needed to sit before my open reel recording device with my headphones on. The circumstance has changed significantly. I needed to scan book shops for a sound substance to tune in to on my recording device. Today there is no restriction on the material you can discover, and there is no restriction to where and when you can tune in.

Exploit and listen at whatever point you can. That is tip number 5.

6, Talk a great deal with a teacher in cchatty

The individual hints of Mandarin are not hard for an English speaker to make. The tones are an alternate story. You should rehearse a great deal with a guider, you can practice with a Chinese teacher in cchatty, both addressing yourself and addressing others. Work on emulating what you are tuning in to. Discover writings for which you have the sound. Tune in to an expression or sentence, at that point attempt to mimic the pitch, without stressing a lot over individual sounds. You may even need to record yourself to look at. On the off chance that you can get "contaminated" with the mood of the language, not exclusively will your control of tones improve, yet your selection of words will likewise turn out to be increasingly local like. At the point when you talk, don't re-think yourself on tones, or some other part of the language. Simply let the words and expressions you have heard and rehearsed stream out, missteps whatnot. Each time you utilize the language you are rehearsing and becoming acclimated to it. In the event that you appreciate communicating in Chinese, on the off chance that you appreciate getting in the stream, singing to the musicality, at that point your Mandarin will keep on improving. Try not to stress over acing elocution toward the start. We can't articulate what we don't hear, nor mirror sounds and pitch that don't impact us. So as to develop the capacity to hear the language and to feel the music of the language, we basically need to tune in to hundreds or even a large number of hours and permit the mind to become accustomed to the new dialect. You can't surge this procedure. Rather you should confide in the way that you will steadily and normally show signs of improvement. Accordingly whatever organize you are at in Mandarin, simply talk without dread and trust your impulses. In the event that you proceed with your perusing and listening exercises, and on the off chance that you keep talking, your talking abilities will normally improve. Here you can find out about: The most ideal approach to become familiar with a language.

So my 6th and last tip are simply put it all on the line and you'll get the cadence. Good karma!

[rasackyousof]

KACAAN | There was no choice.

Half a century ago, on 21st October, 1969, following the death of former Somali president, the Somali National Army took over power filling a political and institutional vacuum brought about by internal turmoil, incompetence and a corrupt government.

The October revolution was the beginning of a new era, which many consider the golden age of the modern Somali nation, the end of which was, nevertheless, disastrous.

The Mastermind

The October revolution (better known as The KACAAN) was engineered and led by Major General Mohamed Siad Barre.

Barre was born in Shiilaabo, in what is now the Somali State of Ethopia, in about 1910. S. Barre travelled to Lugh and Mogadishu in the then Somalia Italiana for what formal schooling he had and later joined the Corpo Zaptie, Polizia Africana Italiana.

After British Commonwealth forces overran the Italian colony early in 1941, S. Barre went on a course run by the King's African Rifles at Kabetti, in Kenya, and thereafter was employed in the special branch of the British Colonial Police, which took control of the Corpo Zaptie. This experience was his introduction to political intrigue, at which he proved adept. He rose to the highest rank then possible for an indigenous Somali.

In 1949, when Italy was granted United Nations Trusteeship over Somalia to prepare for independence after 10 years, S. Barre was awarded a two-year scholarship to the Carabinieri Police College in Italy, and thereafter he attended courses in politics and administration in Mogadishu. He was the first Somali to be commissioned as a full police officer.

When Somalia's own police force was formed, S. Barre had won accelerated promotion to the rank of Brigadier-General of Police. Barre opted for the Somali National Army on its formation in April 1960. He was one of its deputy commanders and was promoted to succeed the Commander-in-Chief when the latter died in 1965.

The Revolution

On 15 October 1969, Somalia's second president, H.E. Abdirashid Ali Sharmake, was assassinated in the town of Las-Anod in northern Somalia by a policeman whilst touring a drought-stricken area.

In a stark breach of the constitution of the newly founded State, several members of the parliament recommended that a candidate belonging to the same sub-clan as the assassinated president should inherit the post. It was agreed that Haji Muse Boqor, a Mogadishu businessman and close relative of the late president, be elected. As a result of the rampant corruption and vote-buying culture prevalent at the time, a bidding war was initiated where corrupt candidates were bidding on the price of the presidency. Not surprisingly, Haji Muse Bogor was leading the group (with a payment approximated at £4,000, according to some). A deal was struck and the parliament was set to vote for the fixed candidate in exchange for promised bribe, promising a continuation of the status quo.

The days following the assassination of the president were a clear demonstration of incompetence and a total chaos, diminishing the support and the trust the public had in the venal government. The ineptitude and endemic corruption practices not only aggravated the majority of the Somali population but the armed forces as well. It became clear that the nation was in a dire need of salvation.

In the early morning of 21 October 1969, the date which was set for the parliament to convene and present the presidency to the agreed candidate, Haji Muse Boqor, Somalia’s military intervened and seized all the strategic points in the capital and the main streets, immediately arresting all the members of parliament, several politicians linked to tribal chiefs or foreign interests and the lobbyists.

On 24 October, in a broadcasted speech, General S. Barre explained the reason behind the take-over:

"I would like to state clearly the reason for the take-over of the country by Armed Forces. I want our people to know that everything is going on as usual and that no problems have arisen as a result of the Revolution. The entire country is in the hands of the National Army and the Police Force. Intervention by Armed Forces was inevitable. It was no longer possible to ignore the evil things like corruption, bribery, nepotism, theft of public funds, injustice and disrespect to our religion and the laws of the country. The laws were thrust aside and people did whatever they wanted. No group or family can live happily if they do not respect their laws and regulations. There will be no development or any sort of progress for a nation if the laws of the country are forgotten. The corruption has culminated in the assassination of prominent leaders of the country. Somalia was on the point of collapse, not economically and politically alone, but disaster threatened historically and nationally as well. If we look back on recent events in the country, we will see how a peaceful land was changing to violence. Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, the late president, was assassinated by a simple soldier who did not know him and who had no quarrel with him. We will not give a chance to wrong doers and law breakers.

We will abolish bribery, nepotism and tribalism. Tribalism was the only way in which foreigners got their chance of dividing our people. We will close all roads used by colonialists to enter our country and into our affairs. We will build up a great Somali nation, strongly united and welded together to live in peace. We will make sure the people respect the Islamic religion, if necessary, by all the force and strength we have. We will make Somalia a respected country in its internal and external policies. I would like to ask all Somalis to come out and build their nation, a strong nation, to use all their efforts, energy, wealth and brains in developing their country. At all costs avoid begging. The Imperialists, who always want to see people in hunger, disease and ignorance, will oppose us in order that we may beg them. They will spread many types of lies to try to misinterpret our noble aims and objectives.

They will try to persuade the world, and even other African states, to believe their lies. Apart from these lies, they will call us many evil names. They are, at present, collecting arms, money and many other necessary things for them to work against us. We are very happy and thankful to see the unity of the Armed Forces and the Somali population. The nation has given us true support for which we are very grateful. Nothing will harm us if we go on supporting each other for the sake of our country and nation. Lets us join hands in crushing the enemy of our land." - Barre, 1969

Notable Achievements

The Supreme Revolutionary Council established large-scale public works programs and successfully implemented an urban and rural literacy campaign, which helped dramatically increase the literacy rate. In addition to a nationalization program of industry and land, the new regime's foreign policy placed an emphasis on Somalia's traditional and religious links with the Arab world, eventually joining the Arab League (AL) in 1974. That same year, General Barre also served as chairman of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor of the African Union (AU).

One of the principal objectives of the revolutionary regime was the adoption of a standard national writing system. Shortly after coming to power, Barre introduced the Somali language (Af Soomaali) as the official language of education, and selected the modified Latin script developed by the Somali linguist Shire Jama Ahmed as the nation's standard orthography. In 1972, all government employees were ordered to learn to read and write Somali within six months. The reason given for this was to decrease a growing rift between those who spoke the colonial languages, and those who didn't.

The Downfall

Part of Barre's time in power was characterized by oppressive dictatorial rule, including persecution, jailing and torture of political opponents and dissidents.

By the mid-1980s, more resistance movements supported by Ethiopia's communist Derg administration had sprung up across the country. Barre responded by ordering punitive measures against the clans he perceived as locally supporting the guerillas, especially in the northern regions. The clampdown included bombing of cities, with the northwestern administrative center of Hargeisa, a Somali National Movement (SNM) stronghold, among the targeted areas in 1988. The bombardment was led by General Mohammed Said Hersi Morgan, Barre's son-in-law, and resulted in the deaths of many civillians in the north.

Other Ethiopian-backed rebels who fought Barre's regime include; SSDF, USC and SPM, all of which were clan-based rebellion.

Eventually, the rebels, who lacked a shared post-Barre vision for the country, succeeded in ousting Barre and forced him out of the capital, throwing the country into chaos and civil war.

Barre's regime came to an end on 26th January, 1991.

My Note

Even though the Somali people have grown widely apart and portions of our history may be considered as contentious, and sometimes polarising, we should preserve every bit of our history, celebrate the positive, learn from the negative and use it to build a better future for the generations to come.

[heatpeen03-blog]

The Value of W, or, Interdisciplinary Engagements on Culture

OCTOBER 31, 2018

LAST SPRING, I attended a conference in New Mexico featuring evolutionary biologists working on a new research program they have been calling the “extended evolutionary synthesis” (EES). The program aims to go beyond the so-called “modern synthesis” of the mid-20th century, which joined Darwinism to Mendelian genetics, whose mathematical formulations could be simply and straightforwardly expressed. Biologists involved in the EES have been calling for a broader and less reductive view of evolution, unrestricted to Mendelian genes. In particular, they have been addressing the modern synthesis’s paucity of information about developmental biology. These EES revisionists are interested in feedbacks: in how developmental processes, along with ecological and even cultural ones, feed back into one another, into genetic and other forms of inheritance, and therefore into evolution. While the modern synthesis proposes that epigenetic, developmental, ecological, and cultural processes are all products of evolution, the EES claims they are causes as well as products.

The roots of this movement extend back to the early 1970s, to the work of Richard Lewontin at Harvard, and Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Marcus Feldman at Stanford, among others. But the reigning, reductive neo-Darwinist paradigm — in other words, the modern synthesis — remains well entrenched, and its defenders staunch in its support. Only in the last 25 years or so has the more expansive vision of the EES slowly begun — against much resistance — to establish itself in mainstream biology.

As part of this development, EES biologists have been increasingly interested in culture, among other forms of transformation and transmission, and so have welcomed the input of humanists, including philosophers and historians of science like me, whose job it is to study and understand culture. Taking part in their conversations has in turn informed my own work in the history of evolutionary theory.

Still, I experienced a moment of comical culture shock at the recent meeting I attended. A biologist wrote an equation on the whiteboard in which one of the variables was a “w.” He then circled the w, explaining that it represented “culture,” and pointed out that under certain conditions, the value of “w” would tend toward zero, while under other conditions it would tend toward 100. “Perhaps,” I thought, “we don’t mean quite the same thing by ‘culture.’” To a humanist, or anyway to this one, “culture” is an abstract noun encompassing many things of many kinds: processes, objects, habits, beliefs both explicit and implicit. It seems a category mistake to think that we can represent such a welter by a single variable, or that the whole jumble could act as a discrete thing having a single quantifiable effect on some other discrete thing. Could we say, for example, that in a given society, “culture” influences “politics” by some quantifiable amount x? Could we say that “the arts” has a y-percent effect on birth rate or life expectancy?

As it turned out, I had somewhat misunderstood the situation. When I expressed a certain dubiousness about representing “culture” with a single variable, an EES biologist explained to me that the variables standing for “culture” in biologists’ mathematical models are not meant to denote the entire Gestalt, but rather quantifiable bits of culture: a single behavior, for example, that might be taught, learned, transmitted, or counted, and whose effects on survival and reproduction can be measured and modeled. Perhaps these individual culture variables might in principle add up to a single, overarching W, but for the moment, no one claims to be able to make that summation. For now, we can simply use the little w’s to build discrete cultural bits or forms into an evolutionary model. This seems to me more credible, but it still assumes that we can meaningfully represent cultural forms as quantifiable bits, and that this will add more to our understanding of the role of cultural forms in evolutionary processes than simply trying to describe this role in qualitative terms. I can’t help wondering if that’s a sound assumption.

Of course I’m by no means the first to raise the question, nor indeed have such objections been confined to humanists. Lewontin himself, together with the historian Joseph Fracchia, argued in a 1999 paper against the idea of cultural evolution. They wondered whether conceptualizing entities like “the idea of monotheism” as “cultural units” begged crucial questions — for example, how can we count up these units in a population, and what are their laws of inheritance and variation? Fracchia and Lewontin maintained that there could be no such general laws because cultural phenomena, unlike atoms and molecules, differ from one another in their properties and dynamics of transmission and change. “There is no one transhistorical law or generality,” they contended, “that can explain the dynamics of all historical change.” [1] Marcus Feldman disagreed, albeit not specifically with regard to the existence of general laws explaining the dynamics of all historical change; rather, he defended the notion of “observable units of culture,” which he did not associate with grand organizing ideas such as monotheism. An example of an observable cultural unit for Feldman is a behavior or custom that follows statistical rules of transmission, and that can therefore be a legitimate object of mathematical study. [2]

The biologist with the “w” variable and I were thus reenacting an intellectual confrontation that has been going on for decades. As is often the case in longstanding debates, we actually agree on the essentials: that nature and culture are at bottom made of the same stuff — in fact, of one another — which no humanistic or scientific inquiry can legitimately disregard. Evolutionary theory must encompass cultural processes just as human history must encompass biological ones. But, despite our deep accord, this biologist and I are thinking incommensurately about methods, about how to put our two fields into communication. His method is mathematical modeling, and mine is thick description. These are diametrically opposite in trajectory, one abstractive and reductive, the other concretizing and expansive. While I understand and admire these biologists’ conclusions, I keep wondering: Why these methods? Why mathematical modeling? By which I mean, what function do biologists intend their mathematical models to serve? Are they meant to prove claims about evolution? Or rather to express, represent, or advocate certain interpretive views of evolutionary processes? If the latter, why choose this particular means of expression, representation, advocacy? These will surely seem naïve questions to any biologist reading this. But I have learned from teaching college freshman and sophomores that naïve questions from untrained newcomers can be the hardest and most useful, which emboldens me to ask mine.

¤

Kevin Laland, author of Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony, was an organizer of the conference I attended and is a leader of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis research program. Reading his important and heartfelt book, the to-date summary of a groundbreaking career, I had similar feelings as I did at the conference. Uppermost among these is heated agreement: Laland’s essential tenets seem to me profoundly right, some indeed incontrovertible. These include the precept that cultural practices — in particular teaching, imitating, and copying — are causes as well as results of evolution; that in mammals and especially humans, such cultural practices have accelerated evolutionary development by constantly creating “new selection regimes” in a process that Laland, citing evolutionary biologist Allan Wilson, calls “cultural drive”; and that, accordingly, in humans especially, there has been a “gene-culture coevolutionary dynamic.” The first of these — that cultural practices are causes as well as results of evolution — seems to me incontrovertible, but more like a first principle than like an empirical result. Cultural practices must be causes as well as results of evolution because any result of the evolutionary process becomes a feature of the world of causes shaping the continuation of that process.

The other principal tenets — such as “cultural drive” and “gene-culture co-evolution” — are not quite first principles, but they seem to me ways of understanding how the feedback-loop of evolution encompasses cultural forms. To express these ways of understanding in the language of mathematical modeling seems fine, if one likes to do that, but no more definitive than expressing them in words. This is because a mathematical model, like a verbal description, contains many layers of interpretation. This is not a criticism: interpretation is essential to (and ineradicable from) any attempt to understand the world. But insofar as a mathematical model is taken to prove rather than to argue or represent, that’s where I think it can mislead.

Laland has devoted his career to pioneering work against reductive, simplistic, and dogmatic accounts of evolution, building brick by brick a sound case for the richer and more complex vision of the EES. Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony is a record of his resounding success. But while he has been constructing this revisionist scientific theory, he has often supported it by traditional methods. An example is his game-theoretic tournament to study social learning. After offering several examples of social learning in animals — such as Japanese macaques who learn from one innovative macaque to wash their sweet potatoes before eating them, and fish who learn from one another where the rich feeding patches are located — Laland asks what might be the best “social learning strategy.” He explains that the “traditional means to address such questions is to build mathematical models using, for instance, the methods of evolutionary game theory.”

Game theory became a standard model in evolutionary biology in the early 1970s with the work, notably, of the British theoretical evolutionary biologists W. D. Hamilton and John Maynard Smith, along with the population geneticist George R. Price. Hamilton, Price, and Maynard Smith developed a game-theoretic approach to modeling the behaviors of organisms in the struggle for survival. Their work was foundational to the neo-Darwinist, gene-centric program that Laland has devoted his career to challenging. In this gene-centric view, all higher-order entities — individual organisms, their behaviors and interactions — are epiphenomenal, controlled by and reducible to genes, so that any apparent agency or intention on the part of an organism is illusory. Organisms survive if they happen to achieve an optimal state of genetic affairs, one that maximizes some function for greater reproductive success. They die out when they fail to do so. Maynard Smith accordingly emphasized that his technical definition of “strategy” was strictly behaviorist. “Nothing,” he maintained, “is implied about intention.” A strategy was merely “a behavioural phenotype,” in other words, “a specification of what an individual will do [in a given situation].” [3] These “strategies,” therefore, involved no ascription of internal agency, but merely outward observations of behavior. Neither observed behaviors nor any other macrolevel phenomenon could play a causal role in evolution according to this school of thought.

Maynard Smith’s approach has inspired the most reductive of neo-Darwinists. For example, Richard Dawkins has adapted it to his own theory of gene functioning, emphasizing that the “strategies” in question are behaviorally defined and do not require the ascription of consciousness, let alone agency, to the strategic agent. Dawkins indeed refers to “unconscious strategists,” the deliberate oxymoron encouraging the reader to accept these apparent ascriptions of agency to genes as radical denials of any such agency. [4] Neither behaviors, nor agency, nor consciousness, nor culture operates causally at any level of Dawkins’s picture; all reduces to just gene functioning.

Game-theoretic modeling has been a hallmark of neo-Darwinist reductionism and, specifically, of the denial of any kind of evolutionary agency to the evolving organism. But in Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony, Laland describes how he and his collaborators used game theory in an innovative way, to design a virtual world in which they hosted a tournament. The game involved virtual “organisms” or “agents” engaging in a hundred “behavior patterns,” with varying rates of success resulting in greater or lesser “fitness” (i.e., survival and reproduction). The game also included three different “moves” — “innovate,” “observe,” and “exploit” — representing different phases of asocial or social learning. More than a hundred people of various ages and backgrounds took part in the game. Unlike in Maynard Smith’s applications of game theory to evolution, Laland and his collaborators were not looking for an optimum in the form of a single function or property to be maximized. They did not pre-judge what had to happen in order for an organism to win the competition. Rather, they set the competitors loose and waited to see who would triumph. The winning strategy was an unpredictable, complex mix of behaviors, although it did represent an overall optimum solution composed of behavioral bits.

Analyzing the winning strategy, Laland concludes that observing and copying are tremendously valuable, much more so than innovating on one’s own except “in extreme environments that change at extraordinarily high rates,” which must be rare in nature. The conclusion is persuasive, but the tournament seems to me more a way of expressing than of proving this point: the virtual agents and their behaviors and strategies of course constitute an interpretive representation of natural processes. They are not drawn in pastels or composed in prose, but the fact that they are programmed on a computer makes them no less a representation.

¤

To elaborate further, consider an experiment Laland describes, performed with his postdoctoral student Hannah Lewis. Laland explains that to model the effects of high-fidelity transmission of information on the longevity of cultural forms or “traits” in a population, he and Lewis “assumed that there are a fixed number of traits that could appear within a group through novel inventions and that are independent of any other traits within a culture. We called these novel inventions ‘cultural seed traits.’ Then, one of four possible events could occur”: a new seed trait could be acquired by novel invention; two traits could be combined to produce a new one; one trait could be modified; or a trait could be lost.

This model, in its relation to real cultural forms, seems to me the equivalent of a Cubist painting. Cultural “traits” that are independent of one another occur no more often in nature than young ladies with perfectly geometrical features distributed all on one side of their two-dimensional heads. Likewise for the separate and distinct occurrence of novel invention, combination, modification, or loss of cultural forms. These processes travel in the real world as aspects of a single organic entity and not as separate blocks. Of course, I’m not opposed to representing cultural forms in these Cubist terms any more than I’m opposed to Picasso’s portraits of Dora Maar. Representations should, though, declare themselves as such.

Mathematical models are interpretative from the get-go. Again, let me be clear that I think that’s fine — indeed, inevitable — because interpretation is ineradicable from any attempt to understand the world. Indeed, some scientists describe their use of mathematical models in these very terms. The theoretical physicist Murray Gell-Mann warned that we must be careful, regarding models, “not to take them too seriously but rather to use them as prostheses for the imagination, as sources of inspiration, as acknowledged metaphors. In that way I think they can be valuable.” [5] Feldman, who pointed me to Gell-Mann’s characterization of models as “prostheses of the imagination,” added that “insofar as the model assists in the interpretation, then it has value.” [6] On another occasion, Feldman told an interviewer, “[p]eople who make models for a living like I do don’t actually believe they’re describing reality. We aren’t saying that our model is more probable than another model; we’re saying it exposes what is possible.” [7]

I have no trouble believing in mathematical modeling as a powerful form of metaphor, representation of the possible, or prosthesis for the imagination. But mathematical modeling does have a distinctive feature that sets it apart from other interpretive modes: notwithstanding Gell-Mann and Feldman, it tends to disguise itself as proof rather than representation. Would it be possible for it to come right out of the positivist closet? To put my point another way, culture plays as crucial a role in evolutionary theory as it does in evolution. Culture plays as crucial a role in science as it does in nature. Wouldn’t a scientific method that unapologetically declared itself as interpretive and representational be in keeping with Laland’s revolutionary program to write cultural forms into evolutionary theory?

Mathematical modeling, like any mode of interpretive analysis, also has its limitations and pitfalls. For example, it brings a tendency I’ll call “either/or-ism”: a tendency to represent as separate and discrete, the better to count them, things that are in fact mixed and blended. Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony lists as discrete alternatives, for example, animals learning innovations socially from one another versus inventing them independently; the cultural drive hypothesis operating through natural selection on social learning proficiency versus social learning incidence; humans being more accomplished than other primates due to “chance factors” or because of a “trait or combination of traits that were uniquely possessed by our ancestors”; that high-fidelity transmission of information might have been achieved by our ancestors through language or alternatively through teaching; learning a skill such as stone-knapping to make a cutting tool by reverse-engineering from a finished sharpened flake, or else by imitation, or else by various forms of non-verbal teaching; or else by verbal teaching; and young individuals acquiring skills either asocially by trial and error, or else socially by copying, or else socially by being taught by a tutor “at some cost to the tutor.” In each of these cases, “both, and” seems more plausible to me than “either, or.” (Additionally, in the last case, must teaching involve a cost to the tutor? In my experience, teaching is often a win-win process, a non-zero-sum game, in which the teacher learns at least as much as the pupil, rather than a donation by the teacher to the pupil. Perhaps the sort of teaching that humans do is qualitatively different from the sorts that other animals do: a teacher macaque might not derive the same intellectual benefits from teaching to compensate for the loss of time that could be spent eating or reproducing. But I wonder if that’s necessarily true in all cases of nonhuman teachers.)

Yet Laland’s conclusions are extremely persuasive. Their persuasiveness overwhelms my failure to believe in a proof-value for the mathematical models. He concludes that natural selection favors those who copy others efficiently, strategically, and accurately; that nonhuman species lack cumulative cultures because of their “low-fidelity copying mechanisms”; that teaching evolves where the benefits outweigh the costs; and that language first evolved to teach close kin. I can believe in these conclusions, not as proven by the tournament-experiment, or the cultural-trait-transmission model, or the other mathematical models, but as interpretively, argumentatively presented by these models. I think this is because Laland’s conclusions are based on the kind of profound knowledge that comes only from a wealth of direct experience and — yes — keen, richly informed interpretation. Alongside the mathematical models are descriptions drawn from experiments and observations, some extending over decades.

For example, Laland describes several series of experiments designed to show that fish can learn from one another, and to investigate how and under what conditions they do so. In one set of experiments, Laland and his students and collaborators trained guppies to take certain routes to find rich food supplies, then observed other untrained guppies, in various conditions, learn from their trained fellows. In one variation, the experimenters trained the demonstrator fish to swim directly up narrow vertical tubes to reach their meal; this was a highly esoteric skill that no fish figured out on its own, without training, but the guppies did readily learn it from one another. In another series of experiments, the experimenters offered certain stickleback fish rich feeding patches and others poor ones, while observer fish watched from a distance; the humans then observed the observer fish to see whether and what they learned.

Such experiments, Laland reports, have established certain social tendencies in fish. These include “a tendency to adopt the majority behavior,” “copying the behavior of others when uncertain,” and “disproportionately attending to the behavior of groups.” Such social tendencies, once established, must surely enter into any legitimate evolutionary picture of fish. More generally, the principle that many animals are social, and that their sociality necessarily plays a role in the evolutionary process, has the retrospective obviousness of all grand, organizing ideas once stated, a most notable example being the idea of natural selection itself, whose retrospective obviousness led T. H. Huxley, upon reading the On the Origin of Species, to figuratively smack his forehead, exclaiming: “How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that!” [8] Such grand, organizing ideas, which create conceptual sea-changes that render them retrospectively (but only retrospectively) obvious, can emerge only from richly informed interpretative analysis.

Darwin’s own method was explicitly so. He described natural history as a form of deeply interpretive historical scholarship. The geological record, he said, was a collection of fragments of the most recent volume of “a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect.” He urged people to join him in considering natural history in these terms: to “regard every production of nature as one which has had a history” to be pieced together by interpretation of scant evidence. Darwin promised that this approach would be its own reward: “[W]hen we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting, I speak from experience, will the study of natural history become!” [9] Laland’s evolutionary science, as portrayed in Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony, might as well come right out and declare itself as such: it is precisely that “far more interesting” study.

¤

Jessica Riskin is a history professor at Stanford University, where she teaches courses in European intellectual and cultural history and the history of science. She is the author, most recently, of The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument Over What Makes Living Things Tick (2016).

¤

[1] Joseph Fracchia and R. C. Lewontin, “Does Culture Evolve,” in History and Theory Vol. 38, No. 4, Theme Issue 38: The Return of Science: Evolutionary Ideas and History (Dec., 1999), pp. 52–78, on pp. 60, 72.

[2] Marcus W. Feldman, “Dissent with Modification: Cultural Evolution and Social Niche Construction,” in Melissa J. Brown, ed., Explaining Culture Scientifically (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008), Ch. 3, on p. 58.

[3] John Maynard Smith, Evolution and the Theory of Games (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 5, 10.

[4] Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (1976), 30th anniversary ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 229.

[5] Murray Gell-Mann, “Plectics,” in John Brockman, ed., Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (New York: Touchstone, 1995), Ch. 19, on p. 324. 

[6] Marcus Feldman, in conversation, August 2018.

[7] Feldman, quoted in Elizabeth Svoboda, “Finding the Actions that Alter Evolution,” in Quanta Magazine, Jaunary 5, 2017, https://www.quantamagazine.org/culture-meets-evolution-the-marcus-feldman-qa-20170105/.

[8] Thomas Henry Huxley, “On the Reception of The Origin of Species” (1887), in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, edited by Francis Darwin (New York: D. Appleton, 1896), 1:533–58, on p. 551.

[9] Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life (London: John Murray, 1859 [1st ed.]), 310–311, 485–486.

Source: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-value-of-w-or-interdisciplinary-engagements-on-culture/

[thebuckybrigade]

Heatwave Part 3

PART THREE YALL...We’re getting even closer to the smuuuuut. Okay, so same warnings as before, language, crush on an older man--sexual thoughts are likely to occur, graphic depictions of stick shifting--A CAR YOU PERVS--lol and some underage drinking. But other than that, I think we’re cool. 

Onwards!

You looked apprehensively at the...truck? Jeep? Whatever it was, it did not look safe. It wasn’t the usual vehicle that Josh took you to practice in; in fact, you hadn’t ever seen it before he had pulled it out of the shed at the back of his property. 

“You ready?” the man in question called from the driver’s seat, a dark pair of sunglasses covering his eyes as he grinned at you. 

“Uhhh…”

Ellie laughed at you from her spot on the porch and gave your shoulders a push, “Come on girl, I learned last year, it’s not hard. Dad is super cool and a good teacher, he’ll go easy on you,” she told you. 

You flushed as the intrusive thought crept in; I bet he’s a good teacher...but what if I don’t want him to go easy on me? 

“R-right, well, here goes,” you agreed before hurrying over and climbing in the passenger seat, feet knocking against the red metal tool case on the floor. As the vehicle roared away from the sidewalk you nudged it with your foot and frowned, “What’s that for?” 

Josh glanced over, “Needs an oil change. Figured I’d teach you how to do that too,” he told you, giving you a warm grin before turning his attention back to the road. 

Right...let’s get hot and oily and oh god...this was NOT a good idea. 

A bead of sweat ran down your neck and your thighs sweat where you pressed them together, heat aching between them as you tried to concentrate on anything other than the idea of a dirty, greasy Josh pinning you against the car and...

NO...nope...

“Okay so you’re going to have to concentrate to learn stick,” Josh murmured from beside you, leaning against the frame of the bars overhead as he instructed you, his white t-shirt damp in spots from sweat, distracting you. 

He reached out and tapped your left knee, your muscle jumping sharply at the touch. He grinned and patted your knee again, “Easy there kid, you’ll do great,” he assured you, completely misunderstanding the reason for your reaction. 

Thank GOD.

“So, you’ll use this foot to ease on and off the clutch and brake. Getting out of first gear and into second is probably the hardest part, but once you get a feel for it, you’ll get better,” he assured you. 

You bobbed your head, trying to pay attention as he explained the mechanics of the vehicle and shifting; it was actually pretty interesting, even if you didn’t fully understand everything. 

Eventually he swung himself onto the bench seat next to you and slid over until your hips were nearly touching, giving you a grin, “I can see the pedals better from here and tell you what to do,” he explained. 

You nodded unsteadily and clipped on your seatbelt before putting it into neutral and turning the engine over. Sweat made your palms slick against the wheel and you shifted your hands, waiting for him to tell you what to do. 

When he didn’t say anything you looked over and he grinned, “You got this kid. Tell me the first step,” he encouraged. 

Your mind felt like it had gone blank. “Uhhh.”

“One foot on the brake and the other on the clutch,” he encouraged gently, tapping each knee. 

Quickly you moved your feet to the right spots, looking up to find him smiling approvingly. Pleasure swept through you and suddenly, you remembered what you were supposed to do. 

You could feel when the clutch engaged and the gear took hold, allowing you to release the brake and accelerate slowly. Your hand was firm on the gear shift, confidence swelling within you as you palmed it. 

“Great job kid!” Josh crowed from beside you, crowding a little closer and slinging his arm behind you along the seat. Nervously you gripped the gear shift tighter, feeling it rattle a little in your grip, your stomach trembling with excitement.

Heat went through your body at how close your bodies were pressed and you lost your concentration, missing the moment when you should have shifting, stalling out the vehicle. 

“Fuck!” you growled, slamming a hand against the steering wheel before looking up sharply at Josh’s booming laughter. 

His eyes crinkled around the edges as he pressed a hand to his sternum, shaking his head, “Damn kid, I didn’t know you could swear like that,” he admitted. 

You flushed and nodded, “I don’t around my mom cuz she doesn’t like it. I didn’t think you would either,” you admitted. 

He shrugged, “Whatever kid, you’re 16 now, I think you’ve earned the right to say fuck whenever you want.” He grinned, “Come on now, try again,” he encouraged. 

You took a deep breath and nodded, focusing your attention on the mechanics. This time it went smoother and soon you had the vehicle zipping around the abandoned mall parking lot. 

Josh laughed with delight and you glanced over at him, admiring the way the wind made his hair fly every which way and his skin looked like burnished copper in the golden rays. 

Eventually he guided you to a halt and had you practice reversing and parking before nodding and sliding his hand down from the back of the seat to grip your shoulder tightly, “You did it darlin, I knew you could.”

Shivering under his touch you looked up at him shyly, heat rising in your cheeks and for once you were grateful for the heat bearing down on you so it wouldn’t be so obvious as to why. 

When he pulled away your skin felt the loss like an electrical current had been applied and then removed--the tingle remained, but the sensation wasn’t quite the same. 

“Time to do an oil change,” he told you, grinning as he grabbed his tools. 

By the time you finished the oil change you were both hot, sweaty and greasy, but you felt an incredible sense of pride knowing that you could do these things now. 

Josh pulled down the tailgate of the vehicle and tossed the toolbox in before waving you over to clean your hands off with a rag, laughing as he used it to wipe at the smears of grease on your face. 

One of his hands held your chin and you stared into his face as he cleaned you off, brow lined in concentration. 

He’s so handsome you thought with a soft sigh, the sound catching his attention. His gaze lifted to yours and he softened, smiling faintly. “You thinkin bout your dad?” he asked gently, surprising you, because, really, you hadn’t been. 

You hesitated for a moment and then shook your head, giving him a faint smile in return, “No, actually. I was just thinking I have to do something to thank you for teaching me,” you murmured, biting your lip as a thousand inappropriate options came to mind. 

Josh scoffed and shook his head, “No way darlin. Come on, sit down,” he encouraged, slapping a hand on the tailgate. When you both were comfortable he pulled a small blue cooler forward and opened it, reaching in to pull out two sandwiches and to her surprise, two beers. 

Before he handed her one, he gave her a long appraising look, “Now listen, I’m not letting you drive back after having that. And I’m only giving it to you with food and in my presence. But I want you to know, I’m damn proud of you. Not just about today, but this whole time your dad has been gone so far. You’ve kept your shit together and worked goddamned hard and you’re more of an adult than some people I know.”

He popped the tops of the beers and handed you one, tapping his against yours, “Cheers darlin, here’s to you,” he murmured, smiling sweetly at you. 

You flushed and murmured a quiet thank you before taking a sip, enjoying the cool flush against your tongue, even if the flavor wasn’t your favorite. 

As you sat there, eating a sandwich and drinking a beer with him, you had the thought that this was the best non-date date you had ever had. 

Glancing around the party at the drunken teenagers surrounding you, you grimaced and lifted your red solo cup to sip again at the “jungle juice”, trying not to wonder at what exactly was in it. 

It tasted like vomity skittles. 

Swallowing down the last of it, you looked around to where Ellie was dancing with her boyfriend and smiled faintly, glad that she was enjoying the party. She was the only reason you were here--your big plans for the night had included a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and a binge session of Black Mirror. 

But then Sam had texted you both about some party the seniors were having before they went to college in the fall, and all your plans for relaxing were shot to hell. 

Tugging at the hem of the dress you had borrowed from Ellie, you headed for the beer pong tables, determined to put some of your athletic prowess to use and have at least a little fun. 

Two hours later you were...well...drunk. And making out with someone. Who was he again? 

Pulling away you looked down and frowned at the face of the guy you were kissing, unease filling you when you didn’t recognize him. Clumsily you scrambled off him and looked around for Ellie, clutching your phone in the hopes it would help you find her. 

Eventually you found a bathroom that wasn’t occupied and texted her, waiting only a few minutes before you got a reply. 

Heyyy girl, Sam and I went upstairs for awhile ;) We’re at his place, you ok?

Uhhh...little drunk...think I’m gonna call for a ride. 

Ok, so sry for bailing on u!!

NO worries...as long as you GOT SUM GIRL

GIRL PLZ...gonna get round 2 right now!

You laughed at Ellie’s audaciousness and sent her a text to be safe and opened the Lyft app, frowning when you saw it would be a twenty minute wait. Of course, it was New Orleans on a Saturday night in June...the tourists were probably swarming the Quarter. 

With a sigh you leaned back on the toilet and stared up at the ceiling, pondering your options. 

Your mom was working...again. 

A Lyft was 20 minutes. An Uber was about the same. 

Slowly you realized what you were going to have to do. 

Lifting your phone back up, you dialed Josh. 

After a few rings he picked up, sounding sleepy and worried. 

“Hey kid, you okay?”

You nodded unsteadily and realized he couldn’t see you, “Uhh yeaaaa,” you sighed, drawing the word out. “So I went to a party and I had a little too much to drink and a Lyft is like twenty minutes wait, can you pick me up?” you asked hopefully. 

There was a long moment of silence and then a sigh. “Send me the address kid.”

When the line disconnected you texted him the address and hurried out of the bathroom, heading for the front door to wait. The guys at the beer pong table called out for you to come play and you hesitated--maybe just for a minute?

A minute quickly turned into ten and when Josh arrived you were wasted. Through your daze you could hear him scolding the boys for allowing you to drink more as he wrapped an arm around your waist to keep you upright.

Even that proved not to be enough for the state you were in and as he struggled to get you to the door, he growled something that sounded like, “C’mon darlin, work with me,” before he sighed and swept you off your feet and into his arms.

The world spun as he carried you, but his shoulder was reassuringly solid beneath your cheek and you pressed your face into his neck to breath in his scent.

“You...you smell good,” you told him disjointedly, nose brushing against his throat.

You could feel him hum for a moment in agreement perhaps before his hand at your thigh disappeared to do something and a moment later you were in a vehicle.

Josh tucked your seatbelt around you and clicked it into place before getting in his side and casting you a worried glance.

“You gonna throw up?”

You shook your head and curled toward him, smiling softly. He sighed in relief and when the vehicle pulled away your eyes began to close.

A hand landed on your thigh and you smiled tiredly, “Thank you for comin to get me Josh,” you murmured, words slightly slurred.

The grip on your thigh tightened and you sighed softly, enjoying the feeling .

“Of course darlin. We’ll be home soon,” he assured you, sounding worried. “Can you stay awake?” he encouraged, squeezing your thigh again. 

“Mmmmhmm,” you agreed sleepily, kicking off your heels to lift your feet onto the dashboard, eyes fluttering open to find his face. 

He’s so handsome...I wish he saw me as more than a kid...I wonder what he would do if I moved his hand up my thigh...

Your mind wandered along dangerous pathways, the heat in your veins syrupy and spreading slowly. Josh kept glancing over at you as he drove, smiling encouragingly as he talked, trying to keep you awake. 

“Seems like you were winnin at beer pong,” he murmured, turning onto your street. You nodded and grinned and he smirked, “I don’t think those boys know what to do with a girl like you,” he told you softly as he parked the car. 

As he came around the car to help you out, you swayed into him, high heels clutched in one hand, the other clinging to his--holy shit so muscular-bicep. Peering up at him, you frowned, wrinkling your brow. 

“I’m not a girl,” you huffed, growing more annoyed at his amused smirk. 

“Oh what are you then?” he asked teasingly, “A cat? Should I call you kitten?” he teased, and fire lit in your belly at his tone. 

Pulling back unsteadily you glared up at him and poked him hard in the chest, “No! You should call me a woman because that’s what I fucking am! Those idiots don’t know what to do with me because they’re children.”

You softened and turned your chin up to him, searching his face for any sign he understood what you were trying to say and felt your belly sink when he only looked at you with the same fondness he always did. 

Exhaling sharply, you looked away and shook your head, “Never mind. You don’t care,” you muttered harshly, moving to brush past him. 

Josh made a noise of surprise and caught your arm, halting your progress. Determined not to look at him, you stared down at the asphalt as he spoke. “Hey wait darlin, I care about you. I care,” he reassured you. 

Scoffing, you tried to pull your arm away and he tightened his grip and a thrill of unexpected pleasure went through you at the display of strength. His other hand cupped your jaw far more gently and his voice was tender and emotional when he whispered, “Look at me.”

Swallowing hard, you looked up, feeling his touch like an electrical current racing through your body as he stared into your eyes. He shifted closer, barely any space between you now and your heart sped up, your body arching towards him unconsciously.

“I care about you darlin. You’re right that you’re more of an adult and a woman than most girls your age. You’re just...” he paused and shook his head, smiling faintly, “it’s hard to think of you growin’ up and leavin me behind. You and Ellie are goin off to college soon and I’ll just be a sad old man,” he told you, his voice rough by the time he finished, tears shining brightly in his eyes. 

Heart in your throat, you threw your arms around his neck, a huff of surprise leaving him before his arms wrapped around your waist and he hugged you back, your toes leaving the ground for a moment before they rested on the tops of his shoes. 

Turning your face towards his neck you inhaled his scent, so familiar, so comforting, and murmured, “I’ll always come back Josh. No matter what.”

You could feel it when his chest exhaled unsteadily and he made a soft noise that sounded almost like crying, his hands on you tightening. You remained that way until finally he released you and your feet slipped back down to the ground, your hands resting on his chest as you smiled affectionately at each other. 

“You know, you’re really not an old man,” you told him, smirking as you rose up on your toes to push your fingers into the lines between his brows, “not yet anyway,” you teased. 

Josh laughed and his hands on your waist flexed, pulling you a little closer. Your heart thundered at the continued proximity and you flushed, hoping the darkness would hide it. 

“Thanks darlin. I’m glad I don’t qualify for AARP yet,” he joked. 

You shook your head vehemently and grinned, “Nope. I know of at least three girls in school that think you’re cute,” you told him, flushing a little. 

He grinned and wrinkled his nose, “That’s flattering I suppose.” You nodded and after a moment the laughter died down, leaving you standing in the street in the dark. 

Shifting, you pulled your keys out of your purse and pointed to your house, “I should go, mom will be home soon and I haven’t seen her in a few days,” you told him. 

Josh nodded and glanced over his shoulder to the dark house, frowning a little. “You sure kid? I can text her and let her know you stayed with me,” he offered. 

It wasn’t like you hadn’t stayed there a million times before, but tonight, you wanted to be in your bed. You wanted to process your feelings and maybe get out your vibrator and imagine his large hands on you...

Clearing your throat you nodded and smiled tiredly up at him, “Yea I’m sure. Thanks for everything though Josh, really,” you murmured. Before he could wave it off like always, you leaned up, fingers clutching at his shoulders as you pressed a kiss to his cheek. 

You could hear his inhale of surprise and felt his fingers clutch your waist as your lips lingered for a moment before you pulled away and stepped back, smiling softly at him.

“Night Josh. Sweet dreams,” you murmured before turning and hurrying into your house. 

When you peered out the window from the pitch black interior of the house, he was still there, standing in the street, hands by his sides, staring curiously at your house like he had just had a revelation. 

OH HEYYYY....still no POV switch, I know. I think we’ll do it for the last installment. I think it makes more sense for what I have planned. Graduation, a time skip to age 20, aaaaannnddd….SMUT!! Whoo!! I know, it’s taken so long to get there! But I hope you’ve liked what I’ve written so far. If at the end of this you’ve got other ideas that you’d like to see me write for Josh Brolin x reader, hit me up. I’m a thirsty hoe for that man lol Thank you for reading!! 

@headoverhiddles @egonic @lucifers-trash-stash @daddybrolin 

[internationally-celestial-blog]

The journey of a 21 year old constantly moving and travelling: from disappointment to self-discovery

I’m Michaela! I’m currently living in the Philippines but I have moved around the world ever since I was a child. I’ve travelled to almost 25 countries? (I need to double-check on this hahaha). I was originally born here in Manila, Philippines, but then moved to Saipan. I then moved back to the Philippines, to the USA for university, to Italy, and then back to the Philippines, and LASTLY...Italy again in the following year.

Saipan was such a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Everyone who lived there knew each other. Life was really simple there, we mostly would go play sports after school, and then hit the shores to surf or boogie board. I didn’t really grow up with technology as I was always outside. I was so content with life, it was so peaceful... but then at the age of 10, I moved back to my birth country, the Philippines. Now, I was just this small island girl who then moved to one of the most densely populated and congested cities in the WORLD. Everything was so different in a routine standpoint. Everyone around me used technology (Manila is literally the selfie-capitol of the world), transportation and the language were extremely different as well. I had moved from a life from walking from school to the beach to being stuck in a car for 2 hours because of traffic. However, the Philippines is where I was raised for most of my “adolescence” so I consider it to be home. It was the country where I started to shape my internal-self and identity. I stayed here until I graduated high school, and then moved to the United States for university.

When I arrived in the US to attend the University of Oregon, it was not what I expected...If you read Sonia’s post, I too expected Eugene to look more like NYC. In addition, I have never experienced culture shock as grand as this because I was honestly so surprised by how much cultural differences there were between me and most of my American peers (I will eventually write about this haha). Then after about 2 and a half years, I did exchange and lived in Italy for awhile. I’m pretty familiar with Italy because I would always go to Italy during the summers to see family. I speak pretty good Italian, I’m almost fluent (completely fluent when I’m drunk). Then during my last year of college in the US, I was always going back and forth because of my “now ex-boyfriend”. I will be moving back to Italy next year to pursue my MA, and we’ll see where I go from there :-)

My cultural identity is a mess at the moment but it’s pretty entertaining since I feel that it makes life a bit more exciting. My identity was something that I was really disappointed about, I was extremely lost in determining where I’m from or what I am. This feeling had even accelerated since graduation. It’s almost as if you are bombarded with anxiety due from constant internal self-analyses. I was extremely disappointed with myself since I had to move back home to the Philippines and postpone my masters’ studies in Italy due to financial and health reasons (I was diagnosed with PCOS the first month I was home). I was also stuck with some old-school friends that were toxic since I failed to realize that people change while you’re gone, and at the same time you change as well. These friendships ended up not being meant to be, I was constantly unmotivated, I sat at home and did nothing, and I constantly felt shitty for myself. I started to fall deep into that “post-grad crisis” that everyone talks about. Fortunately, after having some self-realizations, I’m now working for my parent’s company (which isn’t the best plan, but it’s something), I have a lot of free time, and I’m just waiting for the next big thing to happen in my life...which is my master’s degree. However, being two months in to this whole post-graduation stage, I’m glad I realized it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I changed my entire mindset on this phase around. I started adapting a good healthy lifestyle, I thought to myself “at least I’m working and making a decent pay”, I’ve resurrected old hobbies that I used to not have the time for, such as painting, reading, music and video-games. I am more aware on how to deal with relationships that are not meant for me and pushed aside the toxic people in my life and held on to the friends that are true and respect me. I also was blessed to meet new people from different backgrounds through learning how to DJ, and of course, my favorite....Tinder.

I am now aware on how to handle these situations, and I wouldn’t have been able to do so if I didn’t have this huge downfall right after graduation. I am more content with myself despite fate putting a set-back on my future plans. I realized it’s okay to have a break post-graduation. Go at your own pace and work hard to get to where you always planned and you will get there. Don’t listen to negative people who expect you to be at the top right out of graduation, and if you are at the top, good on you. But if you aren’t, that’s okay too. We all have different paths, and having a positive outlook on our current state really changes everything. It really is the mindset that matters ;-)

Traveling and living internationally has given me a lot of ups and downs, but I strongly recommend it!! Get to know local people, get to know people who travel all the time, get to know tourists, re-connect with old friends. Living abroad gives you an entire new outlook on life. I know it sounds cliché, but I can’t express on how true this is. You hear new perspectives on ANYTHING from politics, food, social etiquette, etc. Ultimately, I think by realizing your cultural identity and how it differentiates to others will allow you to become more self-aware as an individual -- which to me, is a good thing! The expression “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”. I can’t express on how people should follow this motto whenever they travel/move abroad! It really makes you grow as a person internally, for all the right reasons.

In conclusion, if you are living in a new place, do not be afraid to immerse yourself in the community. Don’t be afraid of being considered an “outsider” or a “foreigner”. Don’t be afraid to lose people who you were once close to. You never know who will pop into your life from there afterwards! If I didn’t take the risk of joining a sorority while I was in America, I would not have met my best friend and become her future maid-of-honor. If I continued to let my toxic friends from home be in my life, I would probably not have gained motivation to get out of my slump. If I didn’t go on Tinder for shits and giggles while I was living in Italy, I would have not met my now ex-boyfriend, had a beautiful relationship and lost my virginity hahahaha. 

As a woman in my early 20′s, I feel that life is about taking risks and getting out of your comfort zone. I feel that this is a time where we get to experiment and make sense of who we are and what we want. Challenge yourself, you never know what you’re capable of or what kind of person you can become unless you try! We don’t want to grow old and regret not being able to let loose or reveal a side of ourselves that we were never able to let out.

Become that international celestial that we all have within us :-)

Un abbraccio forte,

- Michaela

[douchebagbrainwaves]

UNDERSTANDING YOUR USERS IS PART OF WHAT HIGHER-LEVEL LANGUAGES, AND TWO ARE STILL UNIQUE TO LISP

I'm not criticizing Steve and Alexis. Good hackers insist on control. Overloading, for example, have been around 7-10x.1 Hard to say exactly, but wherever it is, but the fear of missing out. I couldn't talk to them. Over time, the default language, embodied in a succession of popular languages, has gradually evolved toward Lisp. There will of course come a point where there is just too much to keep in your head in order to conceive of the program, and so on. A complex macro may have to save many times its own length to be justified.

If you're not threatening, you're probably not doing anything new, except the names and places, in most news about things going wrong. Economically, this is a sign of an underlying lack of resourcefulness. So being cheap is almost interchangeable with iterating rapidly. And when you look at what they're doing on that computer, you'll find the most general truths. There are plenty of other areas that are just as valuable as positive ones. The most tempting format for stupid comments is the supposedly witty put-down, probably because put-downs are the easiest form of humor. Meanwhile, sensing a vacuum in the metaphysical speculation department, the people working on them discover a new kind of organization that combined the efforts of individuals without requiring them to be interchangeable. Within large organizations, the phrase used to describe a market as a degenerate case—as what you get by default when organization isn't possible. But this way of keeping them out is gentler and probably also more effective than overt barriers. But don't wait till you've burned through your last round of funding to start approaching them.

It was presumably many thousands of years between when people first started describing things as hot or cold and when someone asked what is heat? The most important way to not spend money is by not hiring people. And the project starts small because the idea is small at first; he just has some cool hack he wants to try out. Apple's competitors now know better. Is a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. If you want ideas for startups, but it didn't help Thinking Machines or Xerox. But hackers can't watch themselves at work. As a little piece of debris, the rational thing for you to do is say one word to them, at least.

Curiously, however, the works they produced continued to attract new readers. It's true that a restaurant with mediocre food can sometimes attract customers through gimmicks. How tech-saturated Silicon Valley is where it is.2 Which usually means that you have to declare the type of every variable, and can't tell one programming language from another, and work well together.3 If you think you're 85% of the way into Lisp, they could probably do it. In art, mediums like embroidery and mosaic work well if you know beforehand what you want. And now Wall Street is collectively kicking itself.4 There is actually some data out there about that. Some may even deliberately stall, because they enjoy it. I didn't realize that when we were raising money. Like a parent saying to a child, I bet you can't clean up your whole room in ten minutes, a good manager can sometimes redefine a problem as a more interesting one.

It won't seem so preposterous in 10,000 years. It's not something you work despite.5 In such situations it's helpful to have working democracies and multiple sovereign countries. It always was cool. Unless their working day ends at the same time as mine, the meeting presumably interrupts theirs, but since they made the appointment it must be, because I read about it in the press all the time.6 Getting money from an investor than an employer. I've learned so much from working on it. The right thing to compare Lisp to is not 1950s hardware, but, say, 1970, I think professionalism was largely a restatement of the first. A better way to get one loaded into your head. We didn't just give canned presentations at trade shows. It wouldn't be a compliment in most organizations to call someone scrappy. Garbage-collection.

So startup culture may not merely be different in the way we do. If that's what's on the other side of the mountain is a nice gradual slope. Bill Gates knows this. Programs composed of expressions. You could conceivably lose half your brain and live. Sometimes when you return to it. If you're the sort of founders about whom we'd say they can take a nap on when they feel tired, instead of dying. This growth rate is a bit uglier. Great programmers are sometimes said to be indifferent to money.

Perhaps only the more thoughtful users care enough to submit and upvote links, so the marginal cost of one random new user approaches zero. If it seems like a daunting task to do philosophy, here's an encouraging thought. And the bigger you are, the less pressure they feel to act smart. It helped us to have Robert Morris, Peter Norvig, Lisa Randall, Emmett Shear, Sergei Tsarev, and Stephen Wolfram for reading drafts of this. The fourth advantage of ramen profitability is a trick for determining which points are the counterintuitive ones: they're the ones I have to keep the sense of being very short, and also did all the legal work of getting us set up as a company with a valuation any lower. If companies want hackers to be productive, they should look at what they do there than how much they get paid for it. Users don't switch from Explorer to Firefox because they want to invest two years in something that is industry best practice actually gets you is not the long but mistaken argument, but the most I've ever been able to write a short comment that's distinguished for the amount of wealth that can be created. For example, the corporate site that says the company makes enterprise content management solutions for business that enable organizations to unify people, content and processes to minimize business risk, accelerate time-to-value and sustain lower total cost of ownership.7 And so while you needed expressions for math to work, and if you get demoralized, don't give up on your dreams.8 Try making your customer service not merely good, but surprisingly good. One of the standard pieces of advice in fiction writing is show, don't tell.

Notes

The CPU weighed 3150 pounds, and b the second wave extends applications across the web have sucked—A Spam Classification Organization Program. Monk, Ray, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China, during the war had been with their company for more of the crown, and that modern corporate executives were, we should remember this when he received an invitation to travel aboard the HMS Beagle as a collection itself.

It would have a precise measure of the court. The kind of bug to find out why investors who say no for introductions to other knowledge. Many people have told me they do on the way and run the programs on the software business, and in a way to predict precisely what would our competitors hate most? Maybe markets will eventually get comfortable with potential acquirers.

Plus ca change. Philosophy is like math's ne'er-do-well brother. MSFT, having sold all my shares earlier this year.

Common Lisp for, but I took so long. Digg is notorious for its shares will inevitably be something you need to learn to acknowledge as well as a result a lot better to get kids into better colleges, I mean efforts to manipulate them. The meanings of these people. You can get it, is that the Internet into situations where a great reputation and they're clearly working fast to get the money, but a big change from what it would be a good problem to have been fooled by the government to take a long thread are rarely seen, when Subject foo degenerates to just foo, what that means is we hope visited mostly by people like them—people who need the money.

Spices are also exempt. There are still, has one booked for them.

4%, and made more that year from stock options than any other company has ever been. Unfortunately the constraint probably has to split hairs that fine about whether a suit would violate the patent pledge, it's because of the company will either be a founder; and with that additional constraint, you usually have to pass so slowly for them, and that modern corporate executives were, they'd be proportionately more effective, leaving the area around city hall a bleak wasteland, but the route to that mystery is that the government had little effect on what you call the market.

In technology, so they had that we should work like casual conversation.

A rolling close usually prevents this. We consciously optimize for this essay talks about the other hand, launching something small and use whatever advantages that brings. That makes some rich people move, and mostly in Perl, and the valuation of the most recent version of this desirable company, but I took so long to send them the final whistle, the apparent misdeeds of corp dev guys should be deprived of their time and became the twin centers from which they don't yet have any of the word that means having type II startups won't get you type I. Good and bad luck.

[angiewang19]

freshman year @ cmc: academic tips

Course Registration: Getting into courses is a SHITSHOW, but if there’s a will, there’s a way. 

1. Talk to people. Listen to your FYGs. You don’t need to listen to all your FYGs. That can be overwhelming. Pick a FYG you trust and vibe well with. They’re committed to helping you, so that’s one reliable resource during this overwhelming time. Befriend other not-freshmen (especially folks with similar academic interests) and interrogate them about courses they’ve loved/hated. Ask for helpful people’s numbers or friend them on facebook immediately after you chat with them (24-hour rule: friend them before they forget who you are). However, they aren’t obligated to help since they aren’t your FYGs (note: being helpful takes time and energy), but you want to have options for people to call when you don’t know what to do. 

2. RateMyProfs. Corroborate word-of-mouth advice on RateMyProfs; it’s decently reliable. Read the criticism and praise mindfully: pay attention to reviews that discuss specific strengths/weaknesses of the professor and teaching style. Obviously, ignore reviews where students are writing from a place of bitterness. For example, ignore if the reviewer is pissed about a hard class / getting an unsatisfactory grade. Also, ignore if the reviewer says the professor is a “great person.” Being a great person doesn’t mean they’re great at their job (of course, there are many great professors who are also great people, and vice versa). Generally, your life is a lot easier if the professor is wickedly good at teaching the concepts because (theoretically) it’s relatively straightforward to be a good student (there’s honestly not a whole lot to complain about if you’re comfortable with the material). That’s compared to a more problematic situation when you are forced to understand material from a professor who sucks at explaining stuff, regardless of whether they have a charismatic or repulsive personality. So... if you pick professors who are good at their jobs, here’s the best case: if they’re a great person, being a good student will allow you to (almost effortlessly) develop a good relationship with them. And here’s the not ideal, but not terrible case (and also unlikely case, since most professors are awesome on all fronts): if they’re an asshole but good at teaching you probably won’t even need to go to office hours and interact much but still earn a satisfactory grade. Also, on RateMyProfs, the perceived “difficulty” of the professor is worth paying attention to. The big asterisk is that it’s important to realize college students think about the difficulty of their classes compared to previous classes they’ve taken (aka for freshmen, the benchmark is their high school classes). Thus, this metric is somewhat subjective for ratings on first-year classes because that depends on how hard high school was for the individual writing the review. But if the reviews universally say the professor/course is mind-blowingly hard or easy, it’s worth keeping in mind. 

3. Use hyperschedule.io to organize your life. Think about 8 a.m. classes (not that bad tbh) and how you want to schedule your free time. I personally find it hard to have 1 hour blocks of free time; I get nothing done. I need 2.5+ hours to hunker down and complete a task from start to finish without feeling unnecessarily rushed (like feeling panicked). 12:15-1:15 is the craziest time in the dining halls. If you get out of class at 10:50 am, you can catch an early lunch, where everything is stocked up. Or if you get out of class at 12:15 and don’t have another class until 2:45pm or later, you can catch a later lunch, a more quiet dining experience but fewer options (but you can still find something you like if you pick the dining hall wisely). 

4. During course registration: don’t panic. 

5. Nepotism is a thing. People get into classes because they have a relationship with that professor (so use this fact to your advantage as time moves forward). But, if you don’t get into a class that you really wanted to get into and have never interacted with the professor teaching that class: 

a. submit a perm. it’s a tweet. be concise. don’t just say the class “works for your schedule,” but think about the specific reasons you want to learn from that professor. a perm that combines the prof’s engaging and effective pedagogy (lecture / discussion / a textbook the prof authored / project) with your interest in the content of the class is an unstoppable perm (think: if you are drawn to just the content of the class or that you have to do the course bc it fulfills a GE, your profs can be like, go take it somewhere else bc there’s almost always a class somewhere in the 5c’s with empty seats that’s covering similar material, if content / satisfying GEs is all you care about) . 

b. send a follow-up email immediately after, and make your case more thoroughly. flattering words (that aren’t excessive) about the prof don’t hurt. talk to people who’ve taken the class to extract specific, once-in-a-lifetime classroom experiences that you can allude to in your email. finding alums of a class is easier than you think. ask around. you did sign up to go to a college with a sense of community. use it. 

c. if no response from the prof or a response along the lines of “i can’t guarantee anything,” be ready to show up to class on day 1. even if the prof responds with a gentle no, showing up to the first class isn’t a bad idea. if at the first class, they are firm that they have no more spots and no questions asked, then unfortunately the case is closed (it’s a sign to take another course that interests you AND you can try again next semester). but if they don’t provide a definitive “no,” you can keep trudging forward, following the steps below. 

d. at the end of day 1 class (i don’t recommend talking to the prof at the beginning of the class because everyone is anxious), talk to them. make your case again. be friendly. you aren’t entitled to a spot in their class, so don’t act like it. 

e. if still nothing decisive, at this point you’re fighting a war of attrition. the prof doesn’t really care. nevertheless, you persist: do your homework diligently, show up to office hours, always go to class, sit in the front if you can. stay hopeful because this is the window where people are “shopping around” and often are dropping classes. 

f. if the prof is consistently unresponsive, keep going with this strategy mentioned in part (e) until the add deadline. i always have told myself: if you make a point that you really want to learn, the professors love that, and they really can’t stop you from doing that. unless they’re really unreasonable / difficult or there just aren’t enough seats in the classroom, they’ll let you in -- at the end of the day, it’s their job to impart their knowledge to the next generation of eager thinkers. 

Academics: it’s not always pretty, but it’s fulfilling if you do it right. 

1. People say freshman fall is a throwaway semester, and I’ve seen academics get tossed to the side. Yes, use the time to adjust, make friends, and have fun. Respect yourself and the transition you’re making. But hold yourself to a high academic standard. I say this because most of us experience some level of impostor syndrome upon our arrival at (a top liberal arts) college. After a few months, we may feel like we belong socially, athletically, extracurricularly, and culturally, but in my opinion the most important aspect of college life is feeling like we belong to the intellectual community. While genuine self-confidence is the most powerful force to conquer impostor syndrome, a bit of external validation (aka grades) can go a long way in making you feel empowered and confident (also why people commit to colleges that give them merit aid -- it’s a form of external validation to prove that they belong at that college, intellectually). 

2. First 3 weeks: don’t party too hard (or don’t go out at all, if cold turkey is easier than tempering the alcohol and fun). If the professor assigns textbook reading even though she lectures in class, do it. As concepts are covered in class, do the corresponding practice problems. Go to every office hour, even if you have, like, 1 clarifying question. The first few weeks of the semester is always when everyone is running around --adjusting, partying-- because there aren’t looming projects and exams, but the first 3 weeks are the most important weeks of the semester. Academic coursework in college builds on itself, and having a commanding grasp of the first few weeks of the material will ensure success later on. You can always stop reading the textbook and stop going to office hours if, after 3 weeks, you find it redundant or unhelpful. Think about this analogy: when driving a car, you have to push the gas pedal relatively hard to accelerate your car a tiny bit, but it is effortless to release the gas pedal. The car will slow down immediately. Go hard in the beginning; you can always chill out. In contrast, when you realize during week 4 that the professor’s way of explaining things is convoluted and then you turn to the textbook or tutors, your experience catching-up will feel hard and not very fun. 

3. Preview the material before you go to class, pay attention in class (SIT IN THE FRONT ROW and ask questions in class, this alleviates any confusion immediately which saves time in the long run), and then review the material after class. Everyone is so scared of learning through repetition and memorization (especially in Western educational institutions, there’s this paranoia and fear about busy/rote work), but even at a top educational institutions like cmc/pomona/mudd professors are going to ask you to memorize stuff. Prof. Sarkis (linear algebra professor!) has always said that to speak a foreign language (understand linear algebra!), you first have to memorize the basic words (definitions/proofs!) in order to construct sentences (discuss complexities in linear algebra!). So if they make us do it in math (which doesn’t seem like a class that requires students to memorize crap), then every class has an underlying set of vocabulary, and you should know it like the back of your hand. Memorize by frequent repetition -- tip: schedule your (p)review habits around your classes (preview, go to class, review immediately after; rinse and repeat), which holds yourself accountable and establishes routine. Every time you do a cumulative review of the material after class, you should review the material so thoroughly that you’re prepared to take the midterm if it was the following day. This discipline will save you time when you prepare for and take the actual test. Since most of the stuff is already in your head, midterm studying will be easier. That’s a no-brainer. During tests, I’ll make the argument to you through proof by contradiction: if you choose to not memorize stuff and instead “reason” through it on the test, you waste time. So, why not just memorize the theorem or fact and save yourself time and mental energy? 

4. Use the QCL/CWPD. They get paid. You get help. It’s a win-win! If there are a bunch of people available to tutor a subject: in the beginning of the semester, shop around. Try different people (perhaps present them the same assignment) and see who works best for you. Book appointments ahead of time. Planning is important -- anticipate a problem set or paper, and assume that you will have questions (okay, so if the pset was easy, you might not have direct questions about the pset, but the act of doing the pset forces you to engage more with the material, so you will probably have questions about the material itself), book an appointment before your favorite person gets booked up (unlikely to happen, but still, certain time slots with your person can be competitive). Tip: if you schedule an appointment 24 hours before the pset is due, that will motivate you to get the pset/paper done in advance of the meeting so you can check stuff with the mentor/consultant. This will force you to not do assignments last minute, which makes them a lot more enjoyable and interesting! 

5. Go to Office Hours. If professors go over psets during office hours, make sure you try to solve the problems prior to attending. Learning and truly understanding material is NOT a spectator sport. You have to actively participate! Don’t show up to just get the answers. It shows, you aren’t learning as much, you aren’t pushing yourself to reach your full potential, and you aren’t getting your bang for your buck in terms of expensive tuition. If you don’t have questions about the material, ask professors about their lives. Did you know that people’s favorite topic to talk about / write about is themselves? It’s also a privilege that we get to interact directly with professors; that’s not the case at most top institutions. Showing up means you care (I have gone to many office hours, and it’s obvious that nobody else shows up because it doesn’t directly benefit their pursuit of earning a good grade). If you have a borderline grade at the end of the semester, being a regular attendee of office hours will bump your grade up.

6. Midterms. The word “midterm” sounds more stressful than “test.” Yes, they are weighted more heavily in college than they were in high school, and to guarantee yourself an A at the end of the semester, you must submit decent work for each midterm/project/assessment and for the final exam. This is speaking in terms of the A cutoff listed on the syllabus, which is usually 95+. So a final grade of a 93 technically won’t guarantee you an A but that doesn’t mean the prof can’t or won’t bump you up, but this is case-by-case and thus unreliable. Often, with 1-2 midterms, a final, and some free participation/homework points, there’s some wiggle room. That’s the truth, but you should never tell yourself that, since you will likely slack if you persuade yourself with that truth. 

a. advice as your scramble in prep for your first midterm: study your hardest for your first midterm! you don’t know what to expect, and you shouldn’t expect an easy test (philosophically you’ll always be disappointed). prepare for the hardest exam you can imagine, and then if the exam is easy, well, that’s a lovely treat and you probably just knocked it out of the park. the material covered on the first midterm lays the foundation for the rest of the semester, so if the first midterm goes well, you’ll have an explosive amount of confidence moving forward. 

b. nevertheless, the whole “midterms aren’t everything, they are an arbitrary measure of self-worth, and you have wiggle room moving forward” is a good reality check when your first midterm doesn’t go as planned -- which is frequent, since you’re adjusting to a new teaching style and often a totally different discipline of study. after a less than ideal first midterm, know that your overall course grades are more volatile in college than they were in high school, and that should be an empowering fact. your grades will change for the better if you’re willing to put in the work. doing well on the next midterm/project/paper can virtually erase any previous screw up, if you’re willing to put in the work (see the pattern?). what does a willingness to put in the work entail? you have to commit to working harder than you did before (even if you already thought you were operating at your max, you can push yourself harder!) to perform the way you want. that means being generous about your time: don’t complain about how much time you spent on a pset or at office hours. the newsflash is that understanding concepts thoroughly takes time, focus, and discipline. in fact, you might need more time than your peers, so quit comparing or internalizing that other folks are breezing through the class. they might be, but it’s in your best interest to assume that they are also grinding just as hard, if not even harder, than you to get the results they are hoping for. 

7. Finals: in high school, it was really hard for final exams to change your grade for better or for worse, but in college, finals are powerful! If you want to raise your grade and you’re willing to put in the work, finals are the IDEAL opportunity (life hack: if you think of your work as opportunities rather than obligations, you will be happier). 

 *make a plan* (channel elizabeth warren, who has a plan for everything). think about each course that you’re taking, and classify it as situation (1) or situation (2) -- see below. make a list of everything you’d like to get done before the exam; this act helps you visualize which classes have more work. allocate time accordingly, and prioritize, prioritize, prioritize. prioritization takes bravery. do you really need to spend an afternoon, 1 week before finals start where time is still plentiful, studying for an exam in a class that you have a 98%? yeah, it’s always scary to leave stuff off to the last minute (at least for me), but it seems like you can probably cram for that exam the day before. since you understand the concepts, you’re just refreshing your memory. it won’t be too painful. more pragmatically, one week out before the craziness, the course that’s borderline A-/B+ is probably on the forefront of your mind. not groundbreaking, but worth noting: the only way to reduce stress about that class is to do something about it! in this case, study! use the 1 week before finals start, where time is still plentiful, to work though conceptual blips and re-teach yourself challenging material (this should not happen the day before the exam, so make time for it well in advance). trust me, that will make you feel accomplished.

key mindset: you will feel more steady/calm in the days leading up to the exam if you already have a good grasp on the major concepts and just have to fill in some minor gaps. 

situation (1): in the most ideal world, you knock it out of the park for each midterm/project -- and the final exam/project will be chill. this is for 2 reasons: a) most pragmatically, you can afford to not do as well and still get an A. you’ve bought yourself extra wiggle room, and b) philosophically, the strong work you’ve consistently submitted throughout the semester shows that you have a solid grasp of the material, so that final will just come down to some focused memory-refresh. 

situation (2): that ideal case is most often not the case. a rough midterm happens. that’s life. my advice after being in this situation every semester: midterms provide some indication of your understanding of the material (unless you have another metric, which is great!), so review those mistakes and make sure there are no conceptual gaps there. you’re going to have to go through everything discussed in class with a fine mesh sieve and ask yourself -- do I really understand this, or do I need to spend a few more minutes/hours hammering this concept out? (you shouldn’t be doing much during finals week anyway, so “I don’t have time” is not an excuse). it’s going to feel a bit more like catch-up (aka hell, as mentioned earlier) the days leading up to the final exam, and you’re probably beating yourself up about why you aren’t finding yourself in the circumstances of situation (1), but stop feeling sorry for yourself and start grinding. it is 11/10 worth it when you get that A! 

sleep and eat during finals. take breaks. make sure you are crystal clear about when you’re supposed to be and where for your exams. last minute changes are all too common, so clarify logistics before everything gets crazy. then you can spend all of your time doing the important thing -- studying. 

College midterms and finals are really rewarding! Since you have fewer of them, the adrenaline rush and stress is real. For me, high school was more a slow burn with a million tests happening simultaneously, but college workflow is more like short bursts of craziness with hearty breaks. You’ll be exhausted at the end of each stressful climax, but it feels fulfilling when you have a comprehensive understanding of the material. 

8. Group studying: don’t do it. Much of learning is actually a lonely activity. I can’t speak for everyone, but here’s my personal experience: group studying is fun, but I reach record-breaking lows in productivity when I study with others. However, I consistently find myself in a state of flow when I’m isolated and have literally nothing to distract me. In my ideal world, I would sit in a room with no furniture, just white walls and a desk in the middle. My laptop would just disappear when I didn’t need it, since that is a major procrastination tool for me. In our realistic world, my preferred study spaces are the 4th floor of the library, South Quad study lounges (if people don’t collaborate in there), or the Reading Room (I do get pissy and will call people out or pack up my stuff and leave if I hear whispering). The sole purpose of convening a group of classmates should be last minute regurgitation of general concepts. Explaining concepts to another human is helpful review. But if you are your best critic, you can also just teach the air or the wall and get feedback from yourself about your understanding of the material? At the end of the day, you know yourself best, and you are able to be the most honest/brutal with yourself about your understanding (think fine mesh sieve analogy mentioned earlier). I also believe that group studying is only helpful when I have buddies who have a similar level of understanding as me. Otherwise, I feel overwhelmed because I can’t keep up with the discourse or I end up being the tutor. As discussed earlier, being helpful takes time and energy, and usually the week before a midterm is busy and tiring. 

9. Studying: I like writing on blank paper! Try it. I feel freed, both literally and symbolically, when there are no lines on the page. I do all of my homework and study guides on printer paper. 

9.5. Basic truth, but worth stating: Put your phone away, and put your laptop away when you clearly don’t need it. Often, I tell myself I need to look something up on my laptop, and 30 minutes later I’ve totally forgotten what I was actually supposed to be doing on my laptop. Also, you don’t need to respond to text messages and emails immediately! If it’s an emergency, people will call, and you can hear your phone ring even when it’s put away (or even better, they’ll find some other way to get a hold of you). At a minimum, I’m assuming you check your email/phone twice a day, so you won’t ever run the danger of accidentally ghosting someone; you can afford to not check your email or texts when you’re studying. I always think about my elementary and middle school years and how I was much more focused back then. Also, during that time, I had a phone that wasn’t all that interesting and didn’t use my laptop. Coincidence? I think not. 

10. Always carry a folder with some scratch paper in it. Take the cover sheets from the printer (I take other people’s cover sheets as well, since everything left on the printer is fair game). Sometimes everything is a jumble in your head, and writing it down on an unimportant piece of paper allows all the thoughts to just pour out and organize themselves. In linear algebra we called our scratch paper our PSMS (private safe math space). In this space, we don’t feel the pressure of writing out a perfect proof or solution on our first try (newsflash: it’s impossible). It gives us freedom to think and try things out. Then once you get all of the thinking done with arrows and exclamation marks and things crossed out, it’s easy to put everything together in an aesthetically pleasing and logical way. 

11. Grades: have the discipline to not discuss grades with your professors. If you focus on the material and the process of understanding the material, they will love you! And that love will help you earn satisfactory grades. Among all of the professors I’ve had, they share a universal hate in discussing grades (some will tell you that explicitly in the syllabus or whatever), but just don’t be that person. This semester in math we were fully banned from discussing grades and honestly that made me learn the material a lot more voraciously. Here’s a reassuring note that will hopefully persuade you to not worry about grades even more: after finals, professors will try their best to give you what they can. People say that they’re always pleasantly surprised when they see their transcript. You must give your professors a reason to give you the benefit of the doubt -- that means enjoying the process of learning cool new things and kicking ass on each of your midterms! 

[banjooxygen68-blog]

The Value of W, or, Interdisciplinary Engagements on Culture

OCTOBER 31, 2018

LAST SPRING, I attended a conference in New Mexico featuring evolutionary biologists working on a new research program they have been calling the “extended evolutionary synthesis” (EES). The program aims to go beyond the so-called “modern synthesis” of the mid-20th century, which joined Darwinism to Mendelian genetics, whose mathematical formulations could be simply and straightforwardly expressed. Biologists involved in the EES have been calling for a broader and less reductive view of evolution, unrestricted to Mendelian genes. In particular, they have been addressing the modern synthesis’s paucity of information about developmental biology. These EES revisionists are interested in feedbacks: in how developmental processes, along with ecological and even cultural ones, feed back into one another, into genetic and other forms of inheritance, and therefore into evolution. While the modern synthesis proposes that epigenetic, developmental, ecological, and cultural processes are all products of evolution, the EES claims they are causes as well as products.

The roots of this movement extend back to the early 1970s, to the work of Richard Lewontin at Harvard, and Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Marcus Feldman at Stanford, among others. But the reigning, reductive neo-Darwinist paradigm — in other words, the modern synthesis — remains well entrenched, and its defenders staunch in its support. Only in the last 25 years or so has the more expansive vision of the EES slowly begun — against much resistance — to establish itself in mainstream biology.

As part of this development, EES biologists have been increasingly interested in culture, among other forms of transformation and transmission, and so have welcomed the input of humanists, including philosophers and historians of science like me, whose job it is to study and understand culture. Taking part in their conversations has in turn informed my own work in the history of evolutionary theory.

Still, I experienced a moment of comical culture shock at the recent meeting I attended. A biologist wrote an equation on the whiteboard in which one of the variables was a “w.” He then circled the w, explaining that it represented “culture,” and pointed out that under certain conditions, the value of “w” would tend toward zero, while under other conditions it would tend toward 100. “Perhaps,” I thought, “we don’t mean quite the same thing by ‘culture.’” To a humanist, or anyway to this one, “culture” is an abstract noun encompassing many things of many kinds: processes, objects, habits, beliefs both explicit and implicit. It seems a category mistake to think that we can represent such a welter by a single variable, or that the whole jumble could act as a discrete thing having a single quantifiable effect on some other discrete thing. Could we say, for example, that in a given society, “culture” influences “politics” by some quantifiable amount x? Could we say that “the arts” has a y-percent effect on birth rate or life expectancy?

As it turned out, I had somewhat misunderstood the situation. When I expressed a certain dubiousness about representing “culture” with a single variable, an EES biologist explained to me that the variables standing for “culture” in biologists’ mathematical models are not meant to denote the entire Gestalt, but rather quantifiable bits of culture: a single behavior, for example, that might be taught, learned, transmitted, or counted, and whose effects on survival and reproduction can be measured and modeled. Perhaps these individual culture variables might in principle add up to a single, overarching W, but for the moment, no one claims to be able to make that summation. For now, we can simply use the little w’s to build discrete cultural bits or forms into an evolutionary model. This seems to me more credible, but it still assumes that we can meaningfully represent cultural forms as quantifiable bits, and that this will add more to our understanding of the role of cultural forms in evolutionary processes than simply trying to describe this role in qualitative terms. I can’t help wondering if that’s a sound assumption.

Of course I’m by no means the first to raise the question, nor indeed have such objections been confined to humanists. Lewontin himself, together with the historian Joseph Fracchia, argued in a 1999 paper against the idea of cultural evolution. They wondered whether conceptualizing entities like “the idea of monotheism” as “cultural units” begged crucial questions — for example, how can we count up these units in a population, and what are their laws of inheritance and variation? Fracchia and Lewontin maintained that there could be no such general laws because cultural phenomena, unlike atoms and molecules, differ from one another in their properties and dynamics of transmission and change. “There is no one transhistorical law or generality,” they contended, “that can explain the dynamics of all historical change.” [1] Marcus Feldman disagreed, albeit not specifically with regard to the existence of general laws explaining the dynamics of all historical change; rather, he defended the notion of “observable units of culture,” which he did not associate with grand organizing ideas such as monotheism. An example of an observable cultural unit for Feldman is a behavior or custom that follows statistical rules of transmission, and that can therefore be a legitimate object of mathematical study. [2]

The biologist with the “w” variable and I were thus reenacting an intellectual confrontation that has been going on for decades. As is often the case in longstanding debates, we actually agree on the essentials: that nature and culture are at bottom made of the same stuff — in fact, of one another — which no humanistic or scientific inquiry can legitimately disregard. Evolutionary theory must encompass cultural processes just as human history must encompass biological ones. But, despite our deep accord, this biologist and I are thinking incommensurately about methods, about how to put our two fields into communication. His method is mathematical modeling, and mine is thick description. These are diametrically opposite in trajectory, one abstractive and reductive, the other concretizing and expansive. While I understand and admire these biologists’ conclusions, I keep wondering: Why these methods? Why mathematical modeling? By which I mean, what function do biologists intend their mathematical models to serve? Are they meant to prove claims about evolution? Or rather to express, represent, or advocate certain interpretive views of evolutionary processes? If the latter, why choose this particular means of expression, representation, advocacy? These will surely seem naïve questions to any biologist reading this. But I have learned from teaching college freshman and sophomores that naïve questions from untrained newcomers can be the hardest and most useful, which emboldens me to ask mine.

¤

Kevin Laland, author of Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony, was an organizer of the conference I attended and is a leader of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis research program. Reading his important and heartfelt book, the to-date summary of a groundbreaking career, I had similar feelings as I did at the conference. Uppermost among these is heated agreement: Laland’s essential tenets seem to me profoundly right, some indeed incontrovertible. These include the precept that cultural practices — in particular teaching, imitating, and copying — are causes as well as results of evolution; that in mammals and especially humans, such cultural practices have accelerated evolutionary development by constantly creating “new selection regimes” in a process that Laland, citing evolutionary biologist Allan Wilson, calls “cultural drive”; and that, accordingly, in humans especially, there has been a “gene-culture coevolutionary dynamic.” The first of these — that cultural practices are causes as well as results of evolution — seems to me incontrovertible, but more like a first principle than like an empirical result. Cultural practices must be causes as well as results of evolution because any result of the evolutionary process becomes a feature of the world of causes shaping the continuation of that process.

The other principal tenets — such as “cultural drive” and “gene-culture co-evolution” — are not quite first principles, but they seem to me ways of understanding how the feedback-loop of evolution encompasses cultural forms. To express these ways of understanding in the language of mathematical modeling seems fine, if one likes to do that, but no more definitive than expressing them in words. This is because a mathematical model, like a verbal description, contains many layers of interpretation. This is not a criticism: interpretation is essential to (and ineradicable from) any attempt to understand the world. But insofar as a mathematical model is taken to prove rather than to argue or represent, that’s where I think it can mislead.

Laland has devoted his career to pioneering work against reductive, simplistic, and dogmatic accounts of evolution, building brick by brick a sound case for the richer and more complex vision of the EES. Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony is a record of his resounding success. But while he has been constructing this revisionist scientific theory, he has often supported it by traditional methods. An example is his game-theoretic tournament to study social learning. After offering several examples of social learning in animals — such as Japanese macaques who learn from one innovative macaque to wash their sweet potatoes before eating them, and fish who learn from one another where the rich feeding patches are located — Laland asks what might be the best “social learning strategy.” He explains that the “traditional means to address such questions is to build mathematical models using, for instance, the methods of evolutionary game theory.”

Game theory became a standard model in evolutionary biology in the early 1970s with the work, notably, of the British theoretical evolutionary biologists W. D. Hamilton and John Maynard Smith, along with the population geneticist George R. Price. Hamilton, Price, and Maynard Smith developed a game-theoretic approach to modeling the behaviors of organisms in the struggle for survival. Their work was foundational to the neo-Darwinist, gene-centric program that Laland has devoted his career to challenging. In this gene-centric view, all higher-order entities — individual organisms, their behaviors and interactions — are epiphenomenal, controlled by and reducible to genes, so that any apparent agency or intention on the part of an organism is illusory. Organisms survive if they happen to achieve an optimal state of genetic affairs, one that maximizes some function for greater reproductive success. They die out when they fail to do so. Maynard Smith accordingly emphasized that his technical definition of “strategy” was strictly behaviorist. “Nothing,” he maintained, “is implied about intention.” A strategy was merely “a behavioural phenotype,” in other words, “a specification of what an individual will do [in a given situation].” [3] These “strategies,” therefore, involved no ascription of internal agency, but merely outward observations of behavior. Neither observed behaviors nor any other macrolevel phenomenon could play a causal role in evolution according to this school of thought.

Maynard Smith’s approach has inspired the most reductive of neo-Darwinists. For example, Richard Dawkins has adapted it to his own theory of gene functioning, emphasizing that the “strategies” in question are behaviorally defined and do not require the ascription of consciousness, let alone agency, to the strategic agent. Dawkins indeed refers to “unconscious strategists,” the deliberate oxymoron encouraging the reader to accept these apparent ascriptions of agency to genes as radical denials of any such agency. [4] Neither behaviors, nor agency, nor consciousness, nor culture operates causally at any level of Dawkins’s picture; all reduces to just gene functioning.

Game-theoretic modeling has been a hallmark of neo-Darwinist reductionism and, specifically, of the denial of any kind of evolutionary agency to the evolving organism. But in Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony, Laland describes how he and his collaborators used game theory in an innovative way, to design a virtual world in which they hosted a tournament. The game involved virtual “organisms” or “agents” engaging in a hundred “behavior patterns,” with varying rates of success resulting in greater or lesser “fitness” (i.e., survival and reproduction). The game also included three different “moves” — “innovate,” “observe,��� and “exploit” — representing different phases of asocial or social learning. More than a hundred people of various ages and backgrounds took part in the game. Unlike in Maynard Smith’s applications of game theory to evolution, Laland and his collaborators were not looking for an optimum in the form of a single function or property to be maximized. They did not pre-judge what had to happen in order for an organism to win the competition. Rather, they set the competitors loose and waited to see who would triumph. The winning strategy was an unpredictable, complex mix of behaviors, although it did represent an overall optimum solution composed of behavioral bits.

Analyzing the winning strategy, Laland concludes that observing and copying are tremendously valuable, much more so than innovating on one’s own except “in extreme environments that change at extraordinarily high rates,” which must be rare in nature. The conclusion is persuasive, but the tournament seems to me more a way of expressing than of proving this point: the virtual agents and their behaviors and strategies of course constitute an interpretive representation of natural processes. They are not drawn in pastels or composed in prose, but the fact that they are programmed on a computer makes them no less a representation.

¤

To elaborate further, consider an experiment Laland describes, performed with his postdoctoral student Hannah Lewis. Laland explains that to model the effects of high-fidelity transmission of information on the longevity of cultural forms or “traits” in a population, he and Lewis “assumed that there are a fixed number of traits that could appear within a group through novel inventions and that are independent of any other traits within a culture. We called these novel inventions ‘cultural seed traits.’ Then, one of four possible events could occur”: a new seed trait could be acquired by novel invention; two traits could be combined to produce a new one; one trait could be modified; or a trait could be lost.

This model, in its relation to real cultural forms, seems to me the equivalent of a Cubist painting. Cultural “traits” that are independent of one another occur no more often in nature than young ladies with perfectly geometrical features distributed all on one side of their two-dimensional heads. Likewise for the separate and distinct occurrence of novel invention, combination, modification, or loss of cultural forms. These processes travel in the real world as aspects of a single organic entity and not as separate blocks. Of course, I’m not opposed to representing cultural forms in these Cubist terms any more than I’m opposed to Picasso’s portraits of Dora Maar. Representations should, though, declare themselves as such.

Mathematical models are interpretative from the get-go. Again, let me be clear that I think that’s fine — indeed, inevitable — because interpretation is ineradicable from any attempt to understand the world. Indeed, some scientists describe their use of mathematical models in these very terms. The theoretical physicist Murray Gell-Mann warned that we must be careful, regarding models, “not to take them too seriously but rather to use them as prostheses for the imagination, as sources of inspiration, as acknowledged metaphors. In that way I think they can be valuable.” [5] Feldman, who pointed me to Gell-Mann’s characterization of models as “prostheses of the imagination,” added that “insofar as the model assists in the interpretation, then it has value.” [6] On another occasion, Feldman told an interviewer, “[p]eople who make models for a living like I do don’t actually believe they’re describing reality. We aren’t saying that our model is more probable than another model; we’re saying it exposes what is possible.” [7]

I have no trouble believing in mathematical modeling as a powerful form of metaphor, representation of the possible, or prosthesis for the imagination. But mathematical modeling does have a distinctive feature that sets it apart from other interpretive modes: notwithstanding Gell-Mann and Feldman, it tends to disguise itself as proof rather than representation. Would it be possible for it to come right out of the positivist closet? To put my point another way, culture plays as crucial a role in evolutionary theory as it does in evolution. Culture plays as crucial a role in science as it does in nature. Wouldn’t a scientific method that unapologetically declared itself as interpretive and representational be in keeping with Laland’s revolutionary program to write cultural forms into evolutionary theory?

Mathematical modeling, like any mode of interpretive analysis, also has its limitations and pitfalls. For example, it brings a tendency I’ll call “either/or-ism”: a tendency to represent as separate and discrete, the better to count them, things that are in fact mixed and blended. Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony lists as discrete alternatives, for example, animals learning innovations socially from one another versus inventing them independently; the cultural drive hypothesis operating through natural selection on social learning proficiency versus social learning incidence; humans being more accomplished than other primates due to “chance factors” or because of a “trait or combination of traits that were uniquely possessed by our ancestors”; that high-fidelity transmission of information might have been achieved by our ancestors through language or alternatively through teaching; learning a skill such as stone-knapping to make a cutting tool by reverse-engineering from a finished sharpened flake, or else by imitation, or else by various forms of non-verbal teaching; or else by verbal teaching; and young individuals acquiring skills either asocially by trial and error, or else socially by copying, or else socially by being taught by a tutor “at some cost to the tutor.” In each of these cases, “both, and” seems more plausible to me than “either, or.” (Additionally, in the last case, must teaching involve a cost to the tutor? In my experience, teaching is often a win-win process, a non-zero-sum game, in which the teacher learns at least as much as the pupil, rather than a donation by the teacher to the pupil. Perhaps the sort of teaching that humans do is qualitatively different from the sorts that other animals do: a teacher macaque might not derive the same intellectual benefits from teaching to compensate for the loss of time that could be spent eating or reproducing. But I wonder if that’s necessarily true in all cases of nonhuman teachers.)

Yet Laland’s conclusions are extremely persuasive. Their persuasiveness overwhelms my failure to believe in a proof-value for the mathematical models. He concludes that natural selection favors those who copy others efficiently, strategically, and accurately; that nonhuman species lack cumulative cultures because of their “low-fidelity copying mechanisms”; that teaching evolves where the benefits outweigh the costs; and that language first evolved to teach close kin. I can believe in these conclusions, not as proven by the tournament-experiment, or the cultural-trait-transmission model, or the other mathematical models, but as interpretively, argumentatively presented by these models. I think this is because Laland’s conclusions are based on the kind of profound knowledge that comes only from a wealth of direct experience and — yes — keen, richly informed interpretation. Alongside the mathematical models are descriptions drawn from experiments and observations, some extending over decades.

For example, Laland describes several series of experiments designed to show that fish can learn from one another, and to investigate how and under what conditions they do so. In one set of experiments, Laland and his students and collaborators trained guppies to take certain routes to find rich food supplies, then observed other untrained guppies, in various conditions, learn from their trained fellows. In one variation, the experimenters trained the demonstrator fish to swim directly up narrow vertical tubes to reach their meal; this was a highly esoteric skill that no fish figured out on its own, without training, but the guppies did readily learn it from one another. In another series of experiments, the experimenters offered certain stickleback fish rich feeding patches and others poor ones, while observer fish watched from a distance; the humans then observed the observer fish to see whether and what they learned.

Such experiments, Laland reports, have established certain social tendencies in fish. These include “a tendency to adopt the majority behavior,” “copying the behavior of others when uncertain,” and “disproportionately attending to the behavior of groups.” Such social tendencies, once established, must surely enter into any legitimate evolutionary picture of fish. More generally, the principle that many animals are social, and that their sociality necessarily plays a role in the evolutionary process, has the retrospective obviousness of all grand, organizing ideas once stated, a most notable example being the idea of natural selection itself, whose retrospective obviousness led T. H. Huxley, upon reading the On the Origin of Species, to figuratively smack his forehead, exclaiming: “How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that!” [8] Such grand, organizing ideas, which create conceptual sea-changes that render them retrospectively (but only retrospectively) obvious, can emerge only from richly informed interpretative analysis.

Darwin’s own method was explicitly so. He described natural history as a form of deeply interpretive historical scholarship. The geological record, he said, was a collection of fragments of the most recent volume of “a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect.” He urged people to join him in considering natural history in these terms: to “regard every production of nature as one which has had a history” to be pieced together by interpretation of scant evidence. Darwin promised that this approach would be its own reward: “[W]hen we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting, I speak from experience, will the study of natural history become!” [9] Laland’s evolutionary science, as portrayed in Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony, might as well come right out and declare itself as such: it is precisely that “far more interesting” study.

¤

Jessica Riskin is a history professor at Stanford University, where she teaches courses in European intellectual and cultural history and the history of science. She is the author, most recently, of The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument Over What Makes Living Things Tick (2016).

¤

[1] Joseph Fracchia and R. C. Lewontin, “Does Culture Evolve,” in History and Theory Vol. 38, No. 4, Theme Issue 38: The Return of Science: Evolutionary Ideas and History (Dec., 1999), pp. 52–78, on pp. 60, 72.

[2] Marcus W. Feldman, “Dissent with Modification: Cultural Evolution and Social Niche Construction,” in Melissa J. Brown, ed., Explaining Culture Scientifically (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008), Ch. 3, on p. 58.

[3] John Maynard Smith, Evolution and the Theory of Games (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 5, 10.

[4] Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (1976), 30th anniversary ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 229.

[5] Murray Gell-Mann, “Plectics,” in John Brockman, ed., Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (New York: Touchstone, 1995), Ch. 19, on p. 324. 

[6] Marcus Feldman, in conversation, August 2018.

[7] Feldman, quoted in Elizabeth Svoboda, “Finding the Actions that Alter Evolution,” in Quanta Magazine, Jaunary 5, 2017, https://www.quantamagazine.org/culture-meets-evolution-the-marcus-feldman-qa-20170105/.

[8] Thomas Henry Huxley, “On the Reception of The Origin of Species” (1887), in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, edited by Francis Darwin (New York: D. Appleton, 1896), 1:533–58, on p. 551.

[9] Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life (London: John Murray, 1859 [1st ed.]), 310–311, 485–486.

Source: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-value-of-w-or-interdisciplinary-engagements-on-culture/

[91hanyu]

6 tips about learn Chinese language

I contemplated Mandarin Chinese 15 years back. It took me nine months to arrive at a level where I could decipher paper publications from English to Chinese and from Chinese to English, read books and decipher for individuals, I did this in the age of the open-reel recording the device, sometime before the age of the Internet, online word references, language learning applications, MP3 documents, YouTube and cchatty Chinese learning site.

On the off chance that I think about what I did, I find that there were six things that helped me learn quicker than different understudies who were concentrating with me. Underneath I list every one of these tips on the most proficient method to learn Chinese, which you might need to apply to your investigations.

1, Tune in to Mandarin as Often as could be expected under the circumstances

The first month or possibly two, simply center around tuning in.

Begin by concentrating on tuning in. Simply become acclimated to the sounds. You should peruse whatever you are tuning in to, yet do so utilizing the phonetic composing framework, for example, Pinyin, to show signs of improvement feeling of what you are hearing. You should get familiar with the characters in the long run, yet you can forget about the characters from the outset, and rather, attempt to get a little force in the language.

It's too hard even to consider starting learning characters when you don't have any feeling of the words, what they sound like, or how they cooperate. Another dialect can seem like an undifferentiated commotion toward the start. The initial step is to get acclimated with the individual hints of the language, to figure out how to separate words from one another, and even to have a couple of words and expressions resounding in your mind.

My first prologue to Mandarin was tuning in to Chinese Dialogs, middle of the road content without any characters, only romanization, right now Yale form of romanization. Today Pinyin, created in China, has become the standard type of romanization for Mandarin. In Chinese Dialogs, the storyteller talked so quickly I thought he was tormenting us. In any case, it worked. Following a month or so, I was utilized to the speed and had a feeling of the language.

As an aside, I think it is a smart thought to start learning a language with the middle of the road level messages that incorporate a ton of redundancy of jargon, instead of excessively straightforward tenderfoot writings. Digital recordings and book recordings are extraordinary for this. The Mandarin Chinese small scale stories at LingQ are a case of the sort of perspective stories, with a lot of reiteration of high recurrence action words that are accessible today. These were not accessible to me 15 years back.

With a feeling of this energizing new dialect and some aural cognizance, my inspiration to become familiar with the characters developed. I needed to know the characters for the words that I had been tuning in to and becoming acclimated to.

So that is tip number one, to concentrate on tuning in and Pinyin for the principal month or two.

2, Commit Time to Memorizing Characters 

The investigation of Chinese, Mandarin Chinese is a long haul venture. It will acquire your contact with the language and the way of life of well over 20% of humankind and a significant effect on world history. Hence, I generally suggest learning Chinese characters in the event that you will gain proficiency in the language.

When you choose to consider Chinese characters, work at them consistently. Commit thirty minutes to an hour daily just on learning characters. Utilize whatever the technique you need, however, put aside devoted character learning time each day. Why consistently? Since you will overlook the characters nearly as fast as you learn them, and in this manner need to relearn them over and over.

You might need to utilize Anki or some other current PC based learning framework. I built up my own dispersed reiteration framework. I had a lot of 1,000 little cardboard cheat sheets with the most successive 1000 characters. I had sheets of squared paper to work on composing these characters. I would get one card, and record the character multiple times one segment on the squared paper and afterward compose the significance or elocution a couple of sections over. At that point, I would get another cheat sheet and do likewise. Before long I ran into the importance or sound of the last character that I had composed there. I at that point worked that character out again a couple of times, ideally before I had totally overlooked it. I did this for the initial 1000 characters. After that I had the option to learn them by perusing, finding new characters, and haphazardly keeping in touch with them out by hand a couple of times.

As we progress, learning new characters becomes simpler in light of the fact that such a significant number of components rehash in the characters. The characters all have "radicals", segments that give a trace of the importance of a character. There are likewise segments of the characters which propose the sound. These radicals are useful in securing the characters, despite the fact that not from the outset. As with such a great amount in language learning, an excess of clarification forthright is an interruption to procuring the language. I found that the endeavors of educators to clarify these radicals and different parts at the beginning periods of my learning were not to incredible profit. I didn't get them. Simply after enough presentation did I begin to see the segments and that accelerated my learning of the characters.

Tip number two is to truly invest consistently and committed energy into learning characters.

3, Perceive Patterns Rather than Rules Concentrate on designs. Try not to become involved with convoluted syntax clarifications, simply center around designs. At the point when I was contemplating we had a superb book by Harriet Mills and P.S. Ni. It was called Intermediate Reader in Modern Chinese. In each and every exercise they acquainted examples and with me, that is the manner by which I kind of got a feeling of how the language functioned. The examples were the edges around which I could manufacture anything I desired to state.

I have positively no feeling of Chinese language structure or punctuation terms, yet I am very familiar. I have seen books that present uncommon sentence structure terms for Chinese. I don't think they are important. It is smarter to become acclimated to the examples that Chinese uses to communicate things that we express in English utilizing English examples. Chinese has a somewhat uncomplicated language structure, one of the joys of learning Chinese. There are no declensions, conjugations, sexes, action word viewpoints, confounded tenses or different wellsprings of disarray that are found in numerous European dialects.

Tip number three is to concentrate on designs, work them out, say them to yourself, use them when talking or composing, and watch for them when you tune in and read.

On the off chance that you might want a free sentence structure asset to help supplement your learning, at that point I prescribe Chinese syntax assets.

4, Peruse More than You Can Handle Peruse a great deal. 

On the off chance that I learned quicker than my kindred understudies 50 years prior, it is on the grounds that I read all that I could get my hands on. I read considerably more than different understudies. I am discussing unique writings for students, but instead a wide scope of material on subjects important to me. I was helped by the way that the Yale-in-China had an incredible arrangement of perusers with glossaries for every section. We began with student material utilizing something many refer to as Chinese Dialogs, at that point graduated to a reviewed history content called 20 Lectures on Chinese Culture.

20 Lectures were an intriguing open door for me to find out about Chinese history and culture while learning the language. The book comprised uniquely of writings and a glossary, no entangled clarifications, no tests. At the point when I take a gander at a portion of the course readings accessible today focused on transitional and even propelled students, they are brimming with drilling content about anecdotal individuals in China, someone at college who met his companion or went to the stylist or went skating, trailed by clarifications and drills. Not a smart thought except if you are keen regarding these matters.

I moved on from 20 Lectures on Chinese Culture to Intermediate Reader in Modern Chinese out of Cornell University. This was a peruser with valid writings from present-day Chinese legislative issues and history. Every exercise presented designs and downplayed drills and clarifications. Or on the other hand, possibly I simply disregarded them.

Yale had a wide assortment of perusers on legislative issues, history, and writing, all with word records for every section. This was my learning material. The accessibility of word list per part implied that I didn't need to counsel a Chinese lexicon. Before the coming of Alec Tronic or online lexicons, it was very tedious and agonizing to counsel a Chinese word reference. Since we overlook the majority of the things we turn upward in the lexicon, this was a gigantic exercise in futility.

I developed my jargon utilizing these perusers with word records lastly had the option to peruse a book without jargon records, simply disregarding the characters and words that I didn't have the foggiest idea. Following seven or eight months I read my first novel, Rickshaw Boy or 骆驼祥子, which is a well-known novel of life right now during the fierce first 50% of the twentieth century, composed by Lao She.

Tip number four is to peruse as much as you can. This is a lot simpler to do today. You can discover material on the Internet, utilize online word references and applications.

5, Get the Rhythm of the Language to Master the Tones

Concentrate on tuning in. I attempted to tune in to whatever content I was perusing. Perusing encourages you to learn the jargon, yet listening causes you to associate with the language and get readied to talk. Listening cognizance is the center's expertise important so as to participate in discussions with individuals.

One of the difficulties of Mandarin is the tones. We gain proficiency with the tone of each character as we get jargon, however, it is hard to recall these when talking. It is critical to disguise the tones as a major aspect of expressions. Listening encourages you to do this. The pitch and cadence of Mandarin, or some other language, can just originate from tuning in to the local speaker. You can't learn it hypothetically.

Specifically, I discovered tuning in to customary Chinese comic discoursed, Xiang Sheng, 相声, an extraordinary method to get the beat of the language and of the tones since these entertainers overstate the pitch. These days you can locate these web-based, including the transcripts and even import them into a framework like cchatty.com. This was not accessible to me 50 years prior.

Actually, there is an enormous exhibit of listening material accessible for download on every single imaginable subject or you can purchase CDs on the off chance that you are in China. In our cutting edge world, all the material you find on the Internet, or material you may discover in CDs, can be changed over into downloadable sound records which you can have with you any place you go on an MP3 player or an advanced cell. Steady tuning in, in any event, for brief times of five or 10 minutes while you're standing by someplace, can significantly build the time accessible for learning any language, including Mandarin Chinese.

This was not accessible to me 50 years back. I truly needed to sit before my open reel recording device with my headphones on. The circumstance has changed significantly. I needed to scan book shops for a sound substance to tune in to on my recording device. Today there is no restriction on the material you can discover, and there is no restriction to where and when you can tune in.

Exploit and listen at whatever point you can. That is tip number 5.

6, Talk a great deal with a teacher in cchatty

The individual hints of Mandarin are not hard for an English speaker to make. The tones are an alternate story. You should rehearse a great deal with a guider, you can enroll in cchatty best place learn Chinese, both addressing yourself and addressing others. Work on emulating what you are tuning in to. Discover writings for which you have the sound. Tune in to an expression or sentence, at that point attempt to mimic the pitch, without stressing a lot over individual sounds. You may even need to record yourself to look at. On the off chance that you can get "contaminated" with the mood of the language, not exclusively will your control of tones improve, yet your selection of words will likewise turn out to be increasingly local like.  At the point when you talk, don't re-think yourself on tones, or some other part of the language. Simply let the words and expressions you have heard and rehearsed stream out, missteps whatnot. Each time you utilize the language you are rehearsing and becoming acclimated to it. In the event that you appreciate communicating in Chinese, on the off chance that you appreciate getting in the stream, singing to the musicality, at that point your Mandarin will keep on improving.  Try not to stress over acing elocution toward the start. We can't articulate what we don't hear, nor mirror sounds and pitch that don't impact us. So as to develop the capacity to hear the language and to feel the music of the language, we basically need to tune in to hundreds or even a large number of hours and permit the mind to become accustomed to the new dialect. You can't surge this procedure. Rather you should confide in the way that you will steadily and normally show signs of improvement. Accordingly whatever organize you are at in Mandarin, simply talk without dread and trust your impulses. In the event that you proceed with your perusing and listening exercises, and on the off chance that you keep talking, your talking abilities will normally improve.  Here you can find out about: The most ideal approach to become familiar with a language.

So my 6th and last tip are simply put it all on the line and you'll get the cadence.  Good karma! 

[mbaljeetsingh]

10 Tips On How To Learn To Code Without A Bootcamp

Seattle 2017. I had just attended my first team meeting at my first job as a software developer. A proud day for me!

Three years ago I learned how to code without a computer science degree or by attending a bootcamp.

Ever since then, I've been working as a full-time, employed developer. But learning to code on my own wasn't easy—I struggled, and almost gave up at one point.

If you're reading this, you might have the goal that I did—to be self-taught and avoid attending a pricey bootcamp or returning to college to get a computer science degree.

Here is what I did to go from newbie to a software engineer.

Create A Plan And Stick To It

When you are learning to code, a common mistake is having no plan.

You take a few coding tutorials here and there, build an app or two, and read a few articles on coding. But then months go by and you aren't sure where to go next. You feel lost.

What can you do?

Create a plan—a detailed roadmap for how exactly you'll learn to code.

To create your plan, start asking yourself these questions.

What language will you learn? What kind of coding are you interested in? Are you most interested in creating games, building apps, or websites? What area are you going to focus on?

What is your main goal? What is the reason why you want to code and what are you going to do once you have the skill? Is your goal to become a developer? Or build something?

What learning resources will you use?  There are many amazing (and completely free) resources to choose from when learning how to code, it can be overwhelming. Whether it's the freeCodeCamp curriculum or another, pick a program and set goals to complete it.

How many hours per week will you learn, and when? When you're in college or school, you usually know how many hours you'll be either in class or studying, and you stick with that schedule. Create a schedule for yourself that works best for you so you can stay on track.

Before I created a roadmap for myself, I felt confused as I was teaching myself how to code.

I didn't know what to learn or what to do next.  Once I had my built roadmap, it was easy to move forward in my journey— I knew the next step to take.

Chase Your Curiosity

Having your roadmap is key, but make sure to follow your curiosity.

To learn to code, find one thing about programming that’s fascinating to you. Find the thing that makes you curious enough to learn about it on a Saturday night - because you’ll need to do that at times.

Find something about coding that you are what one of my favorite writers, T.K Coleman, would call irresponsibly curious about. You know when you’re up late binging a good show, or you’re so curious about what happens next in a book that it’s 2am and you’re trying to keep your eyes open because you can't wait to see what happens next?

Discover the area of programming  that makes you curious enough to keep pursuing it. Time flies by as you follow your curiosity, and the amount you learn will skyrocket. Like reading a great book or the best wh0-done-it movie you’ve seen in a while, you’ve got to get to the end.

Figure out what you're curious about and chase after it.

Hold yourself accountable.

When attending a coding bootcamp, if you don’t complete assignments, you risk getting kicked out and wasting the money you paid to enroll.

In school or college, if you don’t complete your homework you risk failing a class.

At work, you risk getting fired if you don’t show up.

But risks do you face when you don’t complete a free coding course?

Nothing. You’ve got no leverage on yourself. No one to hold you accountable.

So find ways to hold yourself accountable.

Here are some ideas:

Start a blog and announce (or on social media) that you’ll blog weekly on the progress of your goal.

Use positive or negative reinforcement, depending on what works for you. Tell a friend that you will pay them X amount of money if you don’t present them with evidence of a completed project. Or, every time you make progress with your coding goals give yourself a reward.

Hold yourself accountable. Give yourself no choice but to learn to code. Get leverage on yourself or decide on a big reward.

Learn In Public

When I was first learning how to code, I read books and articles about how going on social media would hurt your productivity. I subsequently decided to delete my Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts.

And while this did help me a bit (I could no longer scroll Twitter as a distraction from a hard coding problem), I eventually realized the benefits of using social media were far greater than the disadvantages.

Not only this, but when I got back on social media and started sharing my journey towards becoming a developer, I made friends, found mentors, got job opportunities, and sped up my learning.. I was also told I inspired some people by sharing my journey.

You can do the same. Get started now.

When I published blog posts or social media posts about what I was learning, I received encouragement and feedback from friends. This exchange created a great positive feedback loop for me; I wanted to learn more so I could share my accomplishments again.

There are other benefits to learning in public as well.

Here are some of my favorite articles on why learning in public helps accelerate your learning and maybe help you land a job.

Learn in public: The Fastest Way To Learn

Use Social Media To Break Into Tech

Switching Careers And Learning In Public With Tania Rascia

Don't be afraid to Google everything.

This is something I heard from Brian Holt when watching his excellent Intro To Web Development course on Frontend Masters. Many people believe they aren't good coders if they have to Google things. Contrary to this, as Brain points out, good programmers need to Google things all of the time.

Don't be afraid to Google things as you code. Googling to find an answer does not make you less of a programmer.

Build projects you know you can finish.

Starting a coding project as a beginner is daunting. The project seems so massive and you feel as if you might never complete it. You lose motivation starting a project you have no idea if you can finish.

The solution?

Build projects that stretch your skills,  but be realistic on whether or not you can finish the project. Try to build projects you're reasonably confident you can finish. Seeing the finished projects you've completed will help motivate you to continue your coding journey.

If you aren’t sure how to start a project yet. Let alone finish one,  read this article I wrote on moving from tutorials to coding projects.

Build impossible projects.

That said. A good friend of mine, who has worked for some of the biggest tech companies, once told me that he felt most of his growth as a developer came from building what he called ‘impossible’ projects.

He would have an idea for something that he wanted to build, and then he would set out to do it. And while it would seem impossible to build these ideas, he was so excited that he would try to find a way. Thus, lots of learning happens.

If you’ve been building and finishing projects, try picking a project you really dream of building even though it feels impossible to build.

With the power of your passion for this project, you may be able to build exactly what you want or at least learn an incredible amount in the process.

Find mentors and your community

One of the most inefficient ways to get a mentor to take you on is to message someone out of the blue and ask “Will you be my mentor?”The person you are messaging probably already has many requests to be a mentor. And why should they donate their time to you? Not only that but you are saying ‘will you be my mentor’ with no specifics and no real plan. Anyone that can actually help you isn’t going to say yes.

So how can you find a mentor?

There are great platforms such as CodeMentor or Coding Coach. There are also coaches within programs such as Udacity or Treehouse.

You can also find mentors by asking questions, discussing what you’re learning and interacting with others on forums and places like StackOverflow.

Having a community to surround you can also help keep you immensely during your journey of learning to code. Here are some of my favorite online coding communities:

freeCodeCamp, of course!

CodeNewbie.

Dev.to

Stackoverflow.

Reddit.

CodebookClub (hosted by myself and some awesome moderators!)

Don't take your errors personally.

I often witness new developers write code, get an error, and then say something like, “Ugh! Of course I got this error, I’m stupid”, or “I seem to get a lot of errors, I’m not sure if I’m cut out for programming.”

Yes, you wrote an error--we all do. An error in your code doesn’t mean you aren’t cut out to be a developer. I repeat: errors while coding don’t mean you aren’t going to be a great developer. They’re a natural part of the coding process.

Think of your favorite video game. When you failed a level several times, did you think, ‘Maybe I’m not meant to be a video game player’? Probably not! Fail many times, then master that level--them go to the next one.

Don’t take your errors personally. Learn from them, and move on.

Keep the streak going.

Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio and the most famous streak in sports history

When I was first learning to code, I took a break for a week. When I came back to coding, I felt like I was seeing the language again for the first time. And once I took a break from coding, it was that much harder to get back into it.

My mom suggested I start a streak of coding. Coding Every. Single. Day. There were many times when I felt tired or unmotivated to code, but I had to keep my streak going. So I would code--even for just five minutes. So even on the days when I really didn’t feel like it, I still took a small step towards my goal. That momentum kept me going--all the way to the finish line.

Keep the streak alive!

If you enjoyed this post, sign up for my email list where I occasionally give away free courses, and announce meetings for my free coding book club.

via freeCodeCamp.org https://ift.tt/3ar7Z1K

[kennethmjoyner]

At AI Research Company ROSS, A New Stage of Transparency and Engagement

Was this the same ROSS Intelligence that I’d wondered and speculated about?

For years, the artificial-intelligence legal research company maintained a shroud of secrecy around its product. Sure, they talked about it plenty. They garnered lots of media coverage. And CEO Andrew Arruda was a ubiquitous presence at legal conferences, touting the future of AI in law.

But when it came to seeing the product, that was another story. I’d pestered Arruda for years to let me review it, without success. At a conference of law librarians two years ago, Arruda was called out during a panel for his company’s lack of transparency. Surely somebody must have been seeing ROSS, because law firms were reportedly buying it. But, if so, I had trouble finding them.

Now here I was, on Thursday and Friday last week, sitting in ROSS’s Toronto research and development office, with unfettered access to its entire engineering and design teams. I was given detailed demonstrations of the product’s inner workings. I was invited to sit in on engineering and UX team meetings. I was encouraged to ask any question I wanted, of anyone I wanted to ask it.

And that shroud of secrecy around its product? ROSS had shredded it. In June, without fanfare, ROSS quietly changed its website to offer free trials of its product to anyone. The product that had been treated as if it were a state secret was now open to everyone for a 14-day free trial, without requiring even a credit card.

So what is going on here? The answer to that question starts with a look back at the company’s history.

A Rapid Rise

ROSS began in 2014 at the University of Toronto as a student-built entrant in a cognitive-computing competition staged by IBM to develop applications for its Watson computer – then famous for having won Jeopardy! ROSS’s prototype won the UT competition, earning them a write-up on the front page of The Globe and Mail – which touted ROSS as the future junior associate at Bay Street law firms – and serving as a springboard for the company’s rapid acceleration.

At the time, the oldest of the three founders, CEO Arruda, a University of Saskatchewan law graduate who was then articling at a Toronto law firm, was 25. The youngest, Jimoh Ovbiagele, a computer scientist who is now the company’s CTO, was 21. The third, Pargles Dall’Oglio, also a computer scientist, was a bit younger than Arruda.

Sitting in on a meeting of the ROSS UX team.

ROSS went on to compete in IBM’s national competition in 2015 as the only non-U.S. college team. Although it came in second, its momentum was already established, further fueled by a series of click-bait headlines touting ROSS as the robot lawyer of the future.

Soon, the founders were invited to Silicon Valley to participate in the prestigious Y-Combinator startup incubator. Denton’s NextLaw Labs made ROSS one of its earliest investments. In 2015, they secured $4.3 million in seed funding and then, two years later, another $8.7 million in Series A funding. In 2017, Forbes named the three founders to its “30 Under 30.”

But over the past year, it had seemed to me that ROSS had gone quiet. Not literally, of course. But no longer was its formerly globetrotting CEO a presence at every legal conference. The company put out little in the way of news or announcements. Even the company’s social media presence seemed more restrained.

Then came the call from Arruda, inviting me to Toronto, and resulting in my visit there last week.

A Period of Refocusing

In Toronto, what quickly became clear to me was that the last year had been a period of refocusing and refinement for ROSS. It was a period that reflected, it seemed to me, a new stage of maturity for this still-young company.

The period started almost exactly a year ago with the announcement of the “new ROSS,” which marked the first time the legal research platform included cases from all federal and state courts and all practice areas. ROSS’s first U.S. prototype covered only bankruptcy cases, and as it had added other practice areas, it required users to choose one before submitting a query. With the new ROSS, users no longer had to choose.

While that “new ROSS” marked a turning point, it was not an end point. CTO Ovbiagele said they have worked hard to deliver a better legal research experience. Through the use of natural language processing and machine learning, they have developed a product that turns the research workflow on its head, he said, allowing lawyers to ask complex questions using natural language and get results that are highly on point.

“Legal research platforms have trained lawyers to start with broad results and then narrow them down,” Ovbiagele said. “We say, what if we brought you right to the decision on point, and then you can widen out your research from there.”

In pursuit of that goal, the last year has yielded several significant developments for the company:

ROSS refined its research product to the point where it was ready to show it to the world and let users decide whether it does – as the ROSS people adamantly maintain – deliver more focused results than other research platforms.

ROSS brought on Stergios Anastasiadis, the former director of engineering at Shopify and engineering manager at Google, as its head of engineering to lead further refinement and development of the product.

ROSS refocused its marketing efforts away from larger firms, where it has long targeted its sales, to solo and small firms.

ROSS introduced transparent, no-obligation monthly pricing, so that users are not tied to long-term subscription contracts. “Pay for the months you need us, then don’t pay for the months you don’t,” Arruda said.

The capstone to all this came last month with the announcement that Jack Newton, cofounder and CEO of practice management company Clio, had joined the ROSS board of directors. Newton is highly regarded in the legal tech world, not just for what he and cofounder Rian Gauvreau accomplished over the last decade in starting and building Clio, but also as a mentor and advisor to other startups.

A More Mature Company

For the three founders once featured in Forbes “30 Under 30,” the year brought one other milestone. CEO Arruda, the oldest of the three, himself turned 30. While symbolically notable, it also underscores the fact that these three once-inexperienced founders have now been at this for five years. They have matured, and so has their company.

In fact, Arruda told me last week, those early years were stressful for them. The founders had a vision to use AI to make legal research more affordable. But they had no experience in what it took to be entrepreneurs or to build a company.

Recording a LawNext episode with founders Arruda and Ovbiagele.

On top of that, because ROSS was one of the earliest companies to focus on AI in legal research, there was no playbook on how to build its product. Although they developed their prototype on Watson, they built their commercial product from scratch. And they did so even as they were already caught up in the glare of media and investor attention.

“It was a huge challenge for us to build it from scratch,” Arruda said. “We were experimenting and innovating under the spotlights, because we had a lot of media attention.”

That explained the secrecy around the product, Arruda told me. They truly thought they were building something unique, and they feared that a competitor would steal it out from under them. So they kept the product close to the vest, until they reached the point where they were confident that it was ready.

Arruda also confirmed my perception that he had scaled back his public speaking over the past year. He did it in part to open opportunities for others in the company to speak, he said. But he also felt the need to focus more of his time and attention on being CEO and managing the day-to-day operations of his growing company, which has a sales and marketing office in San Francisco in addition to the Toronto R&D office.

There is no better way to get the pulse of a company than to move past its executives and marketers and meet with the people who actually design, build and service the product. Over the course of multiple conversations last week, one point became clear to me. Those on the ROSS team truly believe they have created a better legal research tool. And they are not satisfied with stopping there. They have a vision of a product that does not just deliver better results, but that will someday also help lawyers make better sense of those results.

Due largely to AI, legal research is becoming one of the most vital and competitive markets in legal technology. Whereas ROSS was one of the first to tout its use of natural language processing and machine learning, now many others do. Going forward, the biggest challenge facing ROSS will be to stand out in a somewhat crowded field and win market share from long-entrenched rivals.

But in Toronto last week, it seemed clear to me that ROSS has entered a new, more mature phase in its growth, one marked by transparency around its product and pricing and engagement with its customers. My presence there was evidence of that. In the legal research market, that approach makes a lot of sense.

After all, the best measure of a research product is the results it delivers. By lifting the shroud and inviting anyone to try its service for free, ROSS is declaring itself ready for the challenge.

(BTW: Watch for a forthcoming LawNext episode recorded with Arruda and Ovbiagele last week, as well as for my review of the ROSS research platform.)

(Full disclosure: ROSS is reimbursing me for the air and hotel expenses I incurred in traveling from Boston to Toronto.)

from Law and Politics https://www.lawsitesblog.com/2019/07/at-ai-research-company-ross-a-new-stage-of-transparency-and-engagement.html via http://www.rssmix.com/