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Showing posts from February, 2018

The Groffscars ("Oscars") of 2017

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Thanks to the  advent of MoviePass , I've decided to return to my high school cinephile days, and with them, a round up of the best of the year. But before I get into this, I must say, if you have not seen Black Panther yet, see it. It would rank toward the top of my list had it come out in 2017 (an d surely will be one of the tops in 2018). Without further ado, then, here are my top choices for 2017 in film: 8. Star Wars: The Last Jedi I love Star Wars  movies, and I'm not ashamed to say that the current round are worthy of recognition for their craftsmanship. This one in particular was a work of art in ways most Star Wars  movies are not. The plot was complex and ever-changing, and the visuals were brilliant. I'm happy to see major Hollywood franchises– Marvel , Star Wars , etc.–start putting solid directors behind the camera to make pop entertainment into pop art. (Warner Brothers, could we fire Zack Snyder and get a real director for the Justice League movies?) 

Fooling Ourselves into Believing Things

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A New York Times piece I'd had in my backlog writes about an issue most atheists struggle to understand: how does one come to believe something one does not believe? Can we make ourselves have faith? I was struck by the piece because as time has gone on, I've seen how real this phenomenon can be–and how it may even be something useful to rational people. I've experienced moments when I've thought of getting myself to believe something I did not believe or feel something I did not feel. Most saliently, as with most gay men, I tried to be straight. I took it a step further in college and did a program called the Vaad , which attempted to turn Yale students into Orthodox Jews. They were damn good at it, too, full of references to the surprisingly difficult fine-tuned universe argument and Kurt Vonnegut. Some people in the program did go on to go to Israel, study at Yeshiva, and so on, and from what I hear there are many others like that.  And of course, in some way

Data and Racism in Machine Learning?

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We often hear stories these days about racism in machine learning algorithms. The subtlety in these stories is often missing. I've been reading about this recently and found this quote very telling: A wave of scholarship, triggered by the ProPublica report , illuminated the statistical challenge at the heart of the argument: Given that the underlying “base rate” of rearrest is higher for blacks than for whites, it is mathematically inevitable that the burden of false positives will fall more heavily on black defendants than on white ones. In other words, given that more black defendants than white defendants actually do have a high risk of reoffending, a “high risk” label that is correct 70% of the time for both white and black defendants will still mis-label more black than white defendants as high risk. A study titled “Inherent Tradeoffs in the Fair Determination of Risk Scores” proved mathematically that when rearrest rates are not equal between races, a well-calibrated tool

The Humane Society and Sexual Harassment: Resources to Read

I thought of writing something myself in light of recent events at the Humane Society , which are reflective of deeper issues in the animal rights movement (ones that I have alternately witnessed, been a bystander to, tacitly facilitated, or spoken out against). Instead, I'm going to recommend women's writing on this subject: “Hey Man”: Language and Bro Culture in the Animal Protection Movement Carol Adams's Blog (Author of The Sexual Politics of Meat )  VINE Sanctuary/pattrice jones's Blog Encompass Movement I should say, also, that I'm proud to support an entirely female or trans organization, Wild Animal Suffering Research .