Sunny Saturday linkpost

[dolorosa_12]

It was warm, it was sunny, the farmers market in the centre of town was flooded with far too many people, but I can't bring myself to get too worked up about it because I just feel so relaxed and happy. We flung open the curtains, and filled the house with flowers.

I come bearing a few links.

The more observant among you may have noticed that I no longer live in Cambridge. This is (sadly) a product of the ridiculous housing market in this part of the world. When Matthias and I decided we wanted to buy a house, we basically had the option of either living on the very outskirts of Cambridge in what would probably be a house needing a lot of work, and have to spend hours every day commuting by (slow, unreliable) bus into work, or moving to one of the surrounding villages on the trainline and buying a much nicer house that would not need to be gutted and renovated from the ground up. Add to that the fact that both of our workplaces are basically not going to return us to full-time work in the office even after the pandemic is over, and the decision was obvious. We moved to Ely, which is fifteen minutes away from Cambridge on the train. While I miss some things about living in Cambridge, it was definitely the right decision.

All that by way of preamble to say that the house was finally in a presentable enough state for me to do a photo tour. I've posted three batches of photos over on Instagram at ronnidolorosa. Batch one, batch two, batch three.

Also via Instagram, a link to a wonderful photo essay (in a rather pretentious travel magazine) about the gorgeous ocean baths of Sydney. I miss the sea — and specifically the Sydney sea — so much!

Via a convoluted sequence of links in Dreamwidth, I stumbled upon this Tumblr post, which argues something I've long been struggling to articulate — my frustration and discomfort with anti-intellectualism on the left. It comes from a different place to the right-wing equivalent, but it's just as misinformed and damaging. It being a Tumblr post, I find it a touch on the polemical side, but it summarises a lot of things I've long felt, and gave me a satisfying jolt of recognition.

I also particularly enjoyed Amal El-Mohtar's newsletter this week, not least because the ritual she describes (Friday evening walks, take-away, and WandaVision) closely resembles my own Saturday evening pandemic ritual (take-away, and films), and because she is so overwhelmed with love for WandaVision, like me.

Edited to add the link to the first trailer for the Grishaverse Netflix show! In terms of the original books I only really love the Six of Crows duology (the ending of the original trilogy makes me incredibly angry, and the new series mainly focuses on characters in whom I'm not hugely interested), but the trailer is reminding me of all my intense Darklina feelings (because of course I've never met a heroine/villain ship I didn't like), and I'm very much looking forward to the series!

Watch on YouTube

I hope your Saturdays have been filled with light, both physical and metaphorical.

Comments

[raven]

I really like that post about anti-intellectualism on the left, it chimed very loudly with me! I think there is also a depressing trend of anti-intellectualism among a certain kind of tumblr leftie about the social sciences and also about academia in general that's related. I saw a tumblr post a while back with thousands and thousands of likes that said something like "economics is astrology for white men" - which has so much that's infuriating about it I don't know where to start! and then, the idea that you can know a lot about a subject from tumblr, and blog posts online, and twitter and whatnot, isn't wrong exactly and online resources may well have a queer lens or an anti-patriarchal lens that mainstream textbooks don't have? but the idea that "reading about it online as a teenager" can replace "many years of intensive and rigorous study with other scholars" does hack me off. Possibly you did not need all my thoughts and feelings on this subject but that is definitely a rant that's been brewing for a while!

[dolorosa_12]

Rant away — I enjoyed reading your thoughts on this.

the idea that you can know a lot about a subject from tumblr, and blog posts online, and twitter and whatnot, isn't wrong exactly and online resources may well have a queer lens or an anti-patriarchal lens that mainstream textbooks don't have? but the idea that "reading about it online as a teenager" can replace "many years of intensive and rigorous study with other scholars" does hack me off.

This is it, exactly. I guess what I find frustrating about criticism of academia from the left — especially of humanities and social sciences academia — is that what these people are really criticising is misogyny, or racism, or transphobia, or homophobia, or precarious zero-hours teaching contracts and the employment crisis facing postgraduate students. But instead of criticising these things, they end up criticising academic study and expertise themselves. I expect criticism of the humanities from the right, but at least right-wing criticisms (as dangerous as they are) have a kind of ideological consistency.

Another example of criticism from the left that just makes me despair: I work as an academic librarian in a medical subject area, and as a result I work with a lot of medical researchers and NHS staff on various projects. One such project last year led to the changing of diagnostic criteria for COVID to include a loss of taste and smell, and the data from our project was presented to the UK government in order to formalise this change in criteria. But when all this was announced, it was accompanied by ridicule and incomprehension from the general public — not because they disbelieved us, but because COVID patients had been speaking about this symptom for months at that point, so they thought our study was just confirming something everyone already knew. And all this just showed a fundamental lack of understanding of the importance of rigour, and of following a specific method to systematically collect and synthesise data in an unbiased way — and that this takes time. We can't just randomly take the word of some person on Twitter saying they have those symptoms!

Obviously there are a lot of other problems here — a failure of communication on the part of the experts, and a lack of understanding of the scientific method, not just in this case but in general. But it was absolutely emblematic of these broader issue of anti-intellectualism, and contempt for expertise.

[raven]

That is so interesting (and infuriating!) about the Covid diagnostic criteria. I confess I had had some of that same general public reaction, and thank you for explaining that of course smart people know what they're doing - and of course I do know that scientific rigour is important and that the reductive response of social media is rarely the correct one and it's seductive anyway. I write laws for a living, and I hear a lot of echoes of this in the way people talk on twitter about lockdown restrictions and say things like "well why don't they make it SIMPLE". And of course what they're not seeing is that it can't be simple because it's not simple - restrictions on people's behaviour need enforcement provisions, and penalties, and exemptions, and exemptions to exemptions, and scope for amendment, and they need to not infringe on people's fundamental rights! And yet the prevailing narrative becomes "idiotic bureaucratic shambles" rather than "complex solution to once-in-a-century complex problem". (Plus the people who write the laws are just as tired and cranky as everyone else, but that's a different problem!)

[chestnut_pod]

Thank you for sharing those images of your lovely house! I find it so interesting to see the things that are considered standard home architecture in places unfamiliar to me. Mazel tov once again on the move, and here's to many happy years in your new home!

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you! I'm glad you liked them — and yes, 'standard' architecture is really regionally specific. (For example, you may be able to see that in all the bathroom photos, the showers are electric showers with a box you switch on at the wall, rather than just hot and cold taps that you turn to adjust the temperature. This is something I've only ever seen in the UK, and is unheard-of in Australia, where I'm from.)

[pauraque]

The new place looks great!

Though the Tumblr thread makes some good points, I would also add that it's a pretty big overgeneralization to say that "if you want to know what happened to sculptures from antiquity, Abrahamic faiths happened to them". In Egyptian history, at least, purposeful destruction and defacing of artifacts long predates the involvement of Abrahamic faiths. An example would be the religious upheavals associated with the reign of Akhenaten--long story short, he banned the traditional polytheistic worship and ordered many religious sites and inscriptions to be defaced, but later he and his ideas fell out of favor and his political opponents defaced his monuments and erased his name from inscriptions. This all happened in the 14th century BCE.

But I guess it just goes to prove the point, yet again, that social media posts aren't necessarily a strong basis for gaining a full and nuanced understanding of academic topics.

[chestnut_pod]

Also re:Abrahamic religions, I do wish people --tumblrers, academics, grad school edgelords-- would just say what they meant instead of Abrahamic or (gag) Judeo-Christian or what have you, which in 98.5 percent of cases is inaccurately broad or narrow or just plain inaccurate. Just SAY the Ottomans and the French mucked around a bunch in Egypt, dash it all! Pretty sure the British didn't steal the Elgin marbles just 'cause Anglicanism; there *may* have been ulterior motives there. Love to know when the Druze and Bahá'i got around to destroying a bunch of sculptures! Curious to understand where Judaism fits into this weird analysis -- obviously you can't have both existed in antiquity making your own art AND been Abrahamic. But totally, religion is all the same and has no sociological complexity at all. Love it.

[pauraque]

Oh absolutely, I agree. That was definitely on my mind as I was writing my comment--because, yeah, obviously Judaism existed at the time I was talking about, so if you take the quote I pulled from the Tumblr thread at face value, then you'd have to conclude that Judaism was somehow to blame for Egyptians from different politico-religious factions wrecking each other's stuff? The whole "Abrahamic faiths did it" framing flattens the nuance so much and conflates so many disparate worldviews and time periods that nothing makes sense anymore. And it just gets worse the more layers you try to peel off it.

[dolorosa_12]

The new place looks great!

Thank you very much.

I agree with you re: the Tumblr post (this is my issue with its polemicism — it's polemical in a very Tumblr-y way, and ends up proving the very point it was trying to highlight).

[superborb]

I found that tumblr post quite interesting, thanks for linking. I do think the devaluation of expertise is coming from all aspects of our society, not restricted to political leaning. I find it interesting that the post was so limited to hums, considering that I've seen it for every academic field including the sciences

[dolorosa_12]

I suspect it was limiting to the humanities because it was criticising the specific leftwing criticism of academia (which doesn't tend to criticise STEM subjects, just assumes there's some vast conspiracy going on in university history departments to pretend that people in the past were all straight, white and Christian). Whereas the right-wing criticism of the humanities is that studying history should whitewash the past and make people feel good about their ancestors and their country, and pesky historians are always trying to undermine people's patriotic feelings. I'm simplifying a lot, but that's basically the essence of it.

I agree with you that the devaluation of expertise is coming from all sides, and it has really terrible consequences.

[rose_griffes]

Yay, house! I enjoyed seeing the pics.

I'm excited for the Shadow and Bone trailer, but I was more satisfied with the trilogy ending than you were, so not all that surprising.

It's been so pleasant to see so much positivity for WandaVision in so many places. I'm enjoying it.

[dolorosa_12]

I'm glad you liked the house pics!

I'm also pleased to know that others are keenly anticipating the Shadow and Bone adaptation, and enjoying WandaVision!

[corvidology]

Love the house pictures! :D

[dolorosa_12]

I'm glad you liked them!

[lokifan]

Oh yeah, I've seen that left-wing anti-intellectualism post before, and I totally agree. Bigger problem on the right but 100% a problem on the left too, and v concerning.

[dolorosa_12]

It's definitely concerning, because it leads to an erosion of trust of expertise, which, as we've seen in the past year, can be really, really dangerous.