hooser
1d ago
Clear commitment to a shared future helps. Seven months apart is not that long in light of years of marriage. My husband and spend several months apart while engaged, and I know married couples who spend a few years working in different states (and even countries).
Does anything prevent the two of you from getting engaged?
hooser
4d ago
Sounds like you are most excited by the possibility of switching to HR. You can:
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(1) Get the SHRM-CP (Society for Human Resource Management Certified Professional) certification. You can do it on your own time and at your own pace.
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(2) Ask your employer to either transfer into their HR full-time, or to take on more HR tasks. If the latter, ask that your title reflect this new responsibility.
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(3) Document all the HR-adjacent tasks you have already done, and keep documenting it. Use the documentation to negotiate (2).
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(4) If for some reason you look into (1) and decide against it, "Professional in Human Resources" certificate from Human Resource Standards Institute is also good.
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(5) If you are working through (1) or (4): learn how to use an AI to help you learn. I recommend Claude. Don't let it do your thinking for you, but do use it as a broadly knowledgeable tutor who sometimes goes off the rocker (so validate any concrete piece of info you absolutely need to rely on).
Good luck!
hooser
5d ago
and currently am doing my PhD in Baltimore
Let's have some straight talk about the unspoken expectations of PhD and beyond.
Successfully finishing and defending your dissertation means very little if you haven't used your time while in the PhD program to establish a strong professional network. Without the latter, all you have is an extra line on your CV (or resume), and there are plenty of others out there with a similar or more impressive-sounding line in their CV. This is true even if you turn your dissertation into several publications, and even if those publications actually find readers beyond Reviewers #1 and #2. None of that is a substitute for a strong professional network.
Fortunately, building a strong professional network in graduate school coincides precisely with your desire for a community. Right now, you have fellow PhD students in relatively close physical proximity and in sufficiently close sub-fields / fields, pursuing similar-enough goals. All want to successfully complete their dissertations. All are working on something that (at least at the beginning) they found interesting. Quite a few of them will be your future professional colleagues. Building a strong professional network starts with organizing your fellow PhD students into a mutually supportive network.
Does your department have a weekly graduate student seminar, where grad students can present an interesting article or some partial progress on their dissertation? If yes, attend it and present in it, and hang out afterwards to casually discuss stuff with the presenter. If not, organize it. Ask your department head for pizza funds, chances are pretty good they'd be thrilled that someone is willing to take on the organizational task.
Are you in a program with too few grad students? Well, are there grad students in adjacent programs? It's very useful to be able to talk about your research to people outside of your field, and a bit of cross-discipline pollination goes a long way. Again, ask for pizza funds.
Have the seminar repeat at a regular time, so people get used to it being a thing. If weekly is too frequent, have it bi-weekly. Or first and third Thursday of the month. Invite undergrads that are heading into similar fields. Invite professors; quite a few appreciate the opportunity for low-stress chats about something in or close to their field. If there are local people in the industry that are relevant to your field, invite them too; industry people can bring boots-on-the-ground perspective that academics miss.
Do you or your fellow PhD students take classes? If yes, do they have informal study sessions? If yes, make a point to attend those. If no, organize one. It could start small: just you and one other student, and then make it generally known that others are welcome. Have it at a regular time and place, and be consistent about showing up.
Have you stopped by the office of every professor in your department to chat about their research? Do that. Ask also about the social aspects of their field: Where are the people who work in that field? Is it a more-or-less cohesive group, or are there rival factions? What conferences / forums do people in this field use to informally exchange ideas? Which journals do they value, and which are junk?
Are there local or regional conferences in your field? Do go to those. Preferably, organize some of your fellow PhD students to come with you. If there aren't... maybe there are, but you don't know it. Chat with your professors. Baltimore is plenty big, and it's close to so many other centers of academia.
And yes, by all means go running and attend church. Touch grass. Do what you need to keep healthy and grounded. But understand that, at this juncture, those are unlikely to be the communities that you'll keep.
hooser
6d ago
I'm fine with accepting that Saul of Tarsus is not only a historical figure, but that the legends about him are sufficiently close to what happened to that figure in reality (+/- miracles). I am fine with having a high likelihood of a historical Jesus, and that this man was an object of a cult following, though I find it unlikely that the historical Jesus would match the Jesus of Christian mythology to any reasonable degree. I doubt the existence of a historical Judas, he's too convenient as a one-stop-scapegoat literary character.
For the purposes of the game hydroacetylene proposed, I am primarily interested in the literary characters of Jesus, Paul, and Judas, and I would consider their historicity only because it makes the read-the-Bible-as-if-it-has-unreliable-narrator more plausible. They can then write some "tell it like it really was" books.
hooser
7d ago
Let's say that for two out of the three of these figures, there is a lack of evidence outside of biblical literary traditions, which could well be apocryphal.
hooser
7d ago
Can I bring back semi-historical figures? Because I would love to bring back Saul of Tarsus (aka Saint Paul), Judas Iscariot, and Jesus of Nazareth, and have them simultaneously do the talk-show/podcast circuit to promote their various new books:
- "The Art of Sacred Sass"
- "Kiss & Tell"
- "Loaves and Fishes: a Cook Book"
hooser
7d ago
I’m currently just thinking about how weird all of this is.
This here, this is a great place to be. When the world feels weird, that's a palpable sign that something is the matter with my internal model of the world. And that's as it should be! If my internal model of the world is so snug and secure that I feel not a twinge of discomfort, of puzzle, of wonder, that's when I am most in danger in getting blindsided when that internal model falls short of reality. And the plain fact is that my internal model of the world will always fall short of reality. So the best I can do is to hold my model lightly, play with it, and always be willing to adjust it as new information arises.
As to a story that places my consciousness into the grand scheme of things, I am quite partial to the one from "The Elephant in the Brain". The "I" -- that feeling of consciousness -- is not the captain of this mind/body, is not even the team leader, but is rather the spokesman--the spokesman of a generally disorganized cabal pretending to be a well-organized administration. The cabal does something, and "I" stand in front of the members of the press and spin it as best as "I" can.
I like this story because, paradoxically, it gives me agency.
"I" can't compel the cabal against the cabal's wishes. "I" am not even directly privy to the inner politics of the cabal: "I" don't really know why the cabal did what it did. But "I" do have influence on the cabal, because the cabal cares about self-image and public-image, and "I" am the one who goes in front of the members of the press and spins those stories. So if, as part of a story about "myself" (especially to actual other people), "I" commit myself to some action in the future (an action not immediately salient so as to not step on any of the cabal's current sore points, and one that's not too difficult), then the cabal is incentivized in following through that commitment to avoid negative publicity.
I got into the habit of daily jogging this way.
It's not easy to start jogging. The inertia of habit is against you, and the activity isn't rewarding. If you aren't already used to it, sustained cardiovascular exercise feels bad. You are out of breath, you feel nauseous, and (at least for me jogging) you feel distracted by the jagged vision produced by the bouncing eyeballs. That's quite a barrier to overcome.
So "I" spun it, and "I" spun it hard. "I" told stories of heroic effort, of commitment, of taking on the unpleasant hard tasks for the greater good. "I" advertised my intentions to my spouse and my friends, and "I" updated them on my progress and setbacks. Two months it took me to stop hating the actual act of jogging (though even then I felt great afterwards). After another two months, jogging got kind of enjoyable. Now, it's a habit, and I get the jogging itch if I skip a day.
hooser
8d ago
A quick cross-cultural comparison: Wife-beating is common in Eastern-European cultures (say, 1-in-10 couples). A stereotypical Russian phrase, uttered by a Russian wife about to get beaten, is "Just don't punch the stomach!". It's reasonable to suppose that, in the past, the rate at which pregnant women got beaten was higher than now.
I recon that the force experienced from a car deceleration is smaller than an occasional drunken punch on the womb.
hooser
9d ago
Meta ends its DEI program (internal memo, Ars Technica verification). The company is disbanding its DEI team. It will no longer use "diverse slate hiring" (intentional seeking-out of candidates of particular underrepresented minorities). It is "sunsetting our supplier diversity efforts", which probably means that they will no longer privilege minority/women-owned suppliers.
It is ending the perception that it has representation goals. Yes that's convoluted, but how else does one interpret this statement:
"We previously ended representation goals for women and ethnic minorities. Having goals can create the impression that decisions are being made based on race or gender. While this has never been our practice, we want to eliminate any impression of it."
The stated reason for the shift in policy:
The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing. The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI. It reaffirms longstanding principles that discrimination should not be tolerated or promoted on the basis of inherent characteristics.
That is, they expect to no longer be sued based on "disparate impacts", but possibly sued based on preferential treatments. This... makes sense for a company to do. McDonalds is doing it; Walmart did it more than a month ago.
I expect more companies to follow suit (quietly or loudly). My question is: are there any corporate for-profit true-believers who will stick with the DEI initiatives? Ben and Jerry's, maybe?
hooser
10d ago
Day 14 part 2 asked to find the first output configuration containing a christmas tree. This is essentially impossible to solve independently for an LLM since the problem didn't even specify what the christmas tree would look like and there are many plausible ways to draw a christmas tree with pixel art.
I thought about how to solve it in an automated way, and came out with the following approach. I figured that any recognizable pixel art of a christmas tree will have a lot of straight lines or filled-in spaces. So:
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For a configuration of robots, count the number of robots that have two other robots right next to them in a straight line. (E.g., for a robot in position (x,y), are there also robots on (x-1,y-1) and (x+1,y+1)?)
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Collect this measure for n-th move, for n from 0 to 10000.
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Submit n with the highest measure.
(If that's not the answer: repeat for another 10000 moves, etc. Turned out this wasn't necessary.)
hooser
16d ago
More than a decade ago--before this war--I happened to go back to Kiev/Kyiv for the first and possibly the last time. My older brother, more familiar with the place and with better recollection, guided us to the particular nine-story apartment building we used to live in. Its yard used to have an old chestnut tree, The Climbing Tree, the one that only the older kids could climb, the one with a straight trunk too wide to hug and too smooth for footholds, whose lowest branch was just low enough that I could touch it when I jumped.
That tree was still there. That lowest branch was now chest-level. No child climbed it.
hooser
27d ago
Yes, and those are the "successful" graduates.
My niece goes to Cupertino HS. She claims to suffer "trauma", like 50%+ of her classmates. Her psychologist agrees (just like the psychologists of those 50%+ of her classmates do).
The amount of pressure those students heap on themselves, on top of the high expectations of the parents, seriously distorts their perception of reality. What does it mean to be "successful"? Is it enough to graduate HS and get a job / start a family? No, of course not. A "successful" person successfully founds a start-up, or at the very least goes to one of the universities on The List, where they will successfully found a start-up (or, as a distant second, get a highly remunerative PMC career).
And the alternative? If you don't have it in you to write that killer app by the age of 15, if you gods-forbid don't get into any of the universities on The List... well, that's it, you failed. And indeed you did, if your definition of "success" is to have the means to continue to live in the Bay Area. And no, you didn't make those nice networking connections with the "successful" classmates--they are not interested in burdening their networks with failures.
Fortunately, the Bay Area culture also offers a ready alternative to owning your failure: you are a Person with Disability, it's not your fault. My niece is on all the trendy spectra.
My niece is a bright girl, and I have urged that she come live with me for a while in the Flyover Country and go to a regular school for a change. Recalibrating would do her a world of good. Alas, no luck so far.
hooser
27d ago
Now, with the pardoning of guys like Kaboni Savage and Iouri Mikhel,...
Their sentences were commuted to life in prison with no possibility of parole. That's no pardon. In the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, that would have been the you-don't-get-to-be-a-martyr (unlike-your-brother).
hooser
30d ago
I don't know about all flavors of communism, but Soviet Union ideal was that everyone eat at canteens.
hooser
30d ago
Where before the expectation was to dress formally in the office, now "smart casual" rules the day (if that)
It's useful to have a bit of historical perspective of what's considered acceptable or necessary. For example, the tuxedo--currently the most formal of men's wear--was originally casual-wear among upper-class:
The tuxedo ... traces its origins back to 1865 when Prince Edward VII introduced it as a stylish alternative to the traditional tailcoat. This groundbreaking garment, initially referred to as a "dinner jacket," was tailored by Henry Poole & Co. and featured a sleek black jacket paired with matching pants, which made it ideal for dining and more casual occasions.
It took about two decades for the tux to get accepted as formal wear--in US, which as now are far more into being informal:
The tuxedo gained popularity in the United States in 1886, thanks to James Brown Potter and his wife Cora, who famously wore it to the Autumn Ball in Tuxedo Park, New York. This event marked a pivotal moment in fashion history, as the tuxedo began to shift from informal evening wear to an accepted form of formal dress.
Another example: the corset. I remember watching a Perry Mason episode (thought I can't remember which one) where the female witness gets scolded for not wearing a corset to court. The exact quote: "Save the jingle for the husband." That's either late 1950's or early 1960's.
Another example: jeans, which were worker's clothes.
I am very happy that, when I go in public, I am not expected to put on a corset and stockings and wear heeled pumps, à la 1950's. My knees thank me that I can wear sneakers; my legs are much warmer in the winter in jeans or warm cargo pants, and it's nobody's business what underwear--if any--I choose to wear. If that means that I have to encounter people who chose to go out in crocks, sweatpants and a tube-top, then that's a trade-off I am willing to take.
While we are at it, I will also throw in the Chinese foot binding:
It has been estimated that by the 19th century 40–50% of all Chinese women may have had bound feet, rising to almost 100% among upper-class Han Chinese women.
There are many historical examples of norms and expectations that are either arbitrary or actively counterproductive. Therefore, when a current norm or expectation is getting relaxed, I would examine it on its own merit before decreeing it bad. Is a business suit really superior than "smart casual" for all white-collar work?
(Personal anecdote: I know an NVIDIA software engineer whose boss explicitly warned him to not wear a tie to work. In software engineering lore, the shirt-and-tie is associated with the famous IBM dress-code for its engineers, and therefore it's associated with stodgy, inflexible corporate ethos.)
hooser
1mo ago
On the rare days that I am interested in an update on wars / conflicts, I go to the Institute for the Study of War. They provide in-depth analysis (a blog length) based on available public info, and they have pretty good interactive maps.
hooser
1mo ago
Do any women here have any advice for how they'd like this subject broached if they were on the receiving end of the conversation
OK, I qualify. It's much more effective to ask what her body can do (in terms of physical activity) rather than what her body looks like. If, despite her skinniness and near-veganism, she's strong as an ox and endures like a camel, then there is no problem with her diet.
Do the two of you do any physical activity together (other than intimacy) which puts her strength and endurance to the test? Do you go for long hikes? Swim? Play tennis? Climb? Go hunting? Clear debris? Dig ditches? If she does any physical activity that brings her to the brink of her strength or endurance, then improving her strength / endurance is a motivator. If, on the other hand, she avoids any activity that requires strength / endurance because she has none, you have an opportunity to start doing an activity with her at the beginner level. Not long hikes, but going for a walk. Not swim but splash in the pool. Not climb but gentle scramble. Once she starts doing the physical activity (with the motivator being your shared company), and she gets to enjoy doing the activity (positive reinforcement is a hell of a trainer), then she'll be in the position where she'd value increasing her strength / endurance.
As for looks: once your girl is into a physical activity, she'll put on the muscle, look less skinny, and (yes) feel better.
hooser
1mo ago
If you value these questions as highly as I do, and you value high-quality work on these questions, then there is a tangible ROI in paying people to work on this stuff full time.
Only if the incentives of that work align with not only producing high-quality work on these questions, but also effectively disseminating the results. Current incentives in academia do not.
Yes, some academics still produce great work (aimed at others in their sub-field). The work of disseminating their result even among their sub-field peers is a challenge due of the deluge of poor-quality stuff that everyone (including them) puts out to inflate their publication record.
I have been in enough hiring and promotion committees to witness first-hand that most committee members (a) will count the number of publications, taking into account the frequency and recency of them, and the quality of the journals based on SJR metrics, and (b) will not even bother reading any of the works if the applicant is even in a slightly different sub-field, but instead rely on the blurbs in reference letters / external reviewers, which (b1) tend to be way too nice and uncritical, and (b2) tend to do about as good a job conveying the actual qualifications of the candidate in their field as we professors do when we write a letter of recommendation for a student's grad school application.
(And gods-forbid that the candidate tries something interdisciplinary and we couldn't find a reviewer with decent knowledge of both fields. Or collaborates with someone outside their field. In math at least, that tends to look like this: the mathematician use some low-level mathematics to make a reasonable model in the context provided by other collaborators; if the reviewer is a mathematician without much knowledge of the other field, the reviewer isolates the mathematical model, realizes that it's pretty low-level math, and reports that in the review. The hard part of the collaboration is the endless back-and-forth with the non-mathematicians to get them to elucidate what, specifically, they want to model, and to commit to particular measurements and parameters. None of that work comes through in the review of the final polished publication, and is certainly not apparent to any pure mathematician.)
As a result, those who rise in an academic field must go through several such filters: at least one successful tenure-track hire; successful tenure review; successful full-professor review, and any reviews in-between. The process selects for those who stay firmly in the confines of their sub-field, making numerous and safe publications. By the time one gets through these filters, one might as well stay in that lane where it's safe and comfortable, and where one has already achieved some level of prominence and prestige.
At that point one becomes the cog that perpetuates the system: one gets swamped by requests for reviews (manuscripts submitted to a journal that published your work; external review of a tenure / promotion candidate; letters of recommendation for junior colleague; letters of recommendation for students). That's a shit-ton of work, and one feels obliged to take on some of it (to keep ones connections), so one develops streamline methods for quickly writing those reviews. Which results in more bland, overly-positive-while-saying-little-of-substance reviews that others then rely on for admittance/publication/hiring/tenure/promotion. And because they know (and you know) the worth of those reviews, everyone falls back on something concrete like the JSR metrics, which feeds the Goodhart's law and further dilutes the few high-quality works that do indeed get produced and published.
So no, the current academic system's incentives do not align with producing a few but high-quality explorations into important questions.
hooser
1mo ago
Similarly, pulled from recent news, why would anyone spend a million dollars on studying if cocaine makes Japanese quail more sexually active?
Because both quail and quail eggs are delicious. Farmers raising quail for food, or quail hens for eggs, are definitely interested in what makes quail more sexually active, especially if it can be made economically viable to incorporate into feed.
hooser
1mo ago
The replication crisis, while bad in itself,
The replication crisis (e.g., in psychology) is very good for the field and for humanity: it more accurately reflects the true state of the field, compared to what we thought. The theory of replication is why psychology bills itself a science; the root problem was that replication wasn't done in practice. If every new result required two replications before being tentatively accepted as possibly describing something real, then psychology wouldn't have a replication crisis, it would just have replication, as a science should.
(On the contrary, beware any field that claims the status of science and either doesn't have the practice of replication baked in, or isn't having a replication crisis. I am looking at you, Sociology. Away to the humanities with you.)
The statistic to I like to keep in mind is: 6%. That's the proportion of all proposed medical treatments that start the FDA stage-I trials that successfully make it past stage-III to FDA approval. It takes serious financial backing to start stage-I (which is when one tests the treatment on a handful of healthy adults to check for adverse effects), so only the most promising treatments that have solid theory for why they should work, and which have been extensively tested in the lab and (if appropriate) on animals, even start the FDA medical approval process.
So I recon that the strongest academic theories in psychology are maybe epistemologically on par with the pre-FDA-stage-I medical theories. If someone were to actually put serious money in backing as rigorous a test for an application of such a theory as the one required by the FDA, then I expect that only 6% would make it.
hooser
1mo ago
I was gonna read the philosophical paper and scoff at its navel-grazing, but turns out it's quite interesting and got me thinking about applications of its ideas to AI.
To argue his thesis (that just cause you "obviously" feel stuff (generalized Moore argument) doesn't necessarily mean that you actually subjectively experience it in the moment), he distinguishes between the subjective experience (phenomenal), the behavioral aspects associated with the experience (functional), and the value we assign to the experience (normative).
I don't know what it's like to be you (or anybody other than myself). So even if the generalized Moore argument feels compelling to me when applied to myself (I feel stuff, so obviously I have phenomenal experiences), it takes a generalizational leap for me to also apply it to you (I am human, and others are human, so their experiences are probably like mine). That's even though I have lots of evidence that other people don't feel like me, and don't experience the world like I do. Still, it's safer to err on treating everyone like Player Characters in their own right and assume that they also feel stuff (phenomenal), because otherwise they'll think badly of me (normative) and gang up against me (functional).
But what about AI? It's not going to think badly of me and gang up on me if I treat it like it doesn't have feelings. I can adjust levels of politeness in my prompts if I think it will make a difference in the output (functional), and disregard the normative notions of proper communication.
(Of course, the same idea applied to animals. Well, I wasn't going to donate to PETA anyway.)
Come to think of it, I have heard versions of these ideas before... in Theravada Buddhism. Does it count as being "state-sponsored" if the founder was a prince?
hooser
1mo ago
I agree that such critical reflection is important, I disagree that government funding is either necessary or sufficient to promote such reflection. If anything, it seems to me that government funding is more likely to corrupt either the critical or the reflective part of it. Such corruption can happen by the State funding its apologists. See, for example, just about anything officially published in the USSR on the well-being of soviet people.
Such corruption can also happen by elite-group capture, which is what is happening now. While I don't know how specifically the Marsden Fund was administered, but I know how other such funds work, and I don't expect anything different here. If they give grants in [$academic field] for [$purpose], they get some prominent people in [$academic field] (as prominent as they can get, at least) to evaluate applications for their worthiness in [$academic field] and their adherence to [$purpose]. So in fact all such Funds purposely start out as elite-group capture: who else would you ask to evaluate a chemistry proposal but chemists? And that's fine, so long as you can trust [$academic field] to fruitfully pursue [$purpose]. But once the field gets an influx of members who are diverting the field from [$purpose], and they rise to prominence within the field, then they will become the evaluators who determine where funding goes, and it will go away from [$purpose].
At that point, if you care about [$purpose], start by turning off the funding spigot.
hooser
1mo ago
The Science post screwed up the link to the announcement, here's one that works. Despite Science's spin, the overall reporting is accurate. Let me de-spin it a bit, with quotes from the original announcement:
“The Government has been clear in its mandate to rebuild our economy. We are focused on a system that supports growth, and a science sector that drives high-tech, high-productivity, high-value businesses and jobs,” [says the Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology]. “I have updated the Marsden Fund Investment Plan and Terms of Reference to ensure that future funding is going to science that helps to meet this goal.”
An elected government chooses a popular priority--economic growth--and a ministry aligns with that priority.
The new Terms of Reference outline that approximately 50 per cent of funds will go towards supporting proposals with economic benefits to New Zealand. “The Marsden Fund will continue to support blue-skies research, the type that advances new ideas and encourages innovation and creativity and where the benefit may not be immediately apparent. ..."
So the applications to this fund should either make a reasonable case that they will benefit NZ economically, or that they have some potential to lead to that. That's in line with the priority the elected government has established for itself (economic growth).
“The focus of the Fund will shift to core science, with the humanities and social sciences panels disbanded and no longer supported. ..."
I can see why humanities and social scientists would be upset: nobody likes to have their source of funding taken away. I have but two questions: (1) do they disagree with the current elected government prioritizing economic growth, or (2) do they argue that the humanities and social science projects funded by this fund lead to economic growth as well as the core science projects?
If the disagreement is with the first question, then the response is: elections have consequences. New Zealand economy is doing poorly, people are worried, they elect a government with a mandate to grow the economy. While other goals have value, they have lost priority.
Is there any argument on the second front? The Science article hints at the possibility:
The cuts and priority changes suggest officials don’t realize commercially viable research is often underpinned by discoveries in fundamental science, says Nicola Gaston, co-director of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology at the University of Auckland.
... but there is absolutely no follow-up or development of this argument. In fact, it's clear that "fundamental science" of the kind that an Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology is likely to do indeed will continue to be funded, and likely at a higher rate than before now that the funds are not going towards social science / humanities. Unless, despite the name, that institute is pursuing non-core, non-fundamental-science projects (e..g, "How would an advance in nanotech affect [$historically-disadvantaged-minority]?" or "Indigenous knowledge of microchips").
That brief hint of a beginning of an argument is followed by a conflation of economics and social cohesion, and then by how this will impact Maori-led research. So bupkis.
Your argument is at least more developed: you think that growing the economy through pursuing advances in science and tech leads to decrease in well-being of the population. I wonder, though: New Zealanders adopt science and tech products made elsewhere, and (let's take your claim at face value for the moment) suffer the social consequences anyway. Isn't that strictly worse than having NZ companies develop the product domestically, and at least capturing the economic benefits of the product?
hooser
1mo ago
Oh I see. Yes, I think so. Many of the congregations around where I live are very welcoming of newcomers, and seem even more so with people who were never religious. The devout protestants I know seem especially susceptible to simple redemption narratives ("I grew up an atheist, but now..."), and would have fewer questions for someone like that who wants to join their congregation. With someone like me, they'd want to know how I came to grok that the denomination of my youth isn't the right Christian faith while theirs is.
What an impressive propaganda technique. That's my one-line review to the "Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat", and I mean it most sincerely. I really am impressed.
This quote from a New York Times film critic serves both as a quick plot summary and as the main impression the film conveys:
Let's focus on the "well-researched" part, the part that lends the film a documentary gravitas, the propaganda technique I so admire.
The documentary is a collage of footage, archival audio and video clips, and quotes with careful citations that briefly appear on screen. It doesn't have a narrator--except occasionally it does, like from 22:56 to 24:19, where English text quoting In Koli Jean Bofane's Congo.Inc overlays archival footage while the said author reads his work in original French:
Here's the beauty: "Congo Inc." is a work of fiction. It is a novel. It is not, and never claimed to be, an accurate and contextualized account of history, nor is it subject to the kind of critique for accuracy that a work of non-fiction would receive.
The technique allows the film to convey the impression of historical gravitas while absolving it of any responsibility for truth, accuracy, or context. What is there to criticize? All the film does is feature a Belgian writer connected to Congo by birth and some years of residence, reading from his work. It's a work of fiction--so what, when the main theme of the film is to suggest the interweaving of art and politics. The film's omission of the category of the work is completely in line with their omission of such information about their other sources. Surely the film has done its due diligence by accurately citing the sources, thus providing any interested viewer with the requisite information to establish the necessary level of epistemology for the content of any citation it happens to feature. If anything, it's a mark of respect for the sophistication of the viewer that the film doesn't bother contextualizing these works, since surely the viewer is quite familiar with both the history of Sub-Saharan Africa in general, and prominent literary works of authors with Sub-Saharan African ties in particular.
Yes, its Sundance Festival Special Jury Award for Cinematic Innovation is well-deserved. I look forward to future adaptations of this technique, where documentaries about the CIA quote John Grisham's novels, and documentaries about the Catholic Church quote "The Da Vinci Code".
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