Tovly's Blog

Data is Singular

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Throughout the history of English¹, people who think too highly of themselves have prescribed how people should speak and write. These include prescriptions like "don't end sentences with a preposition" and "avoid singular they". For the most part, these prescriptions seem to have failed in infiltrating spoken English. Similarly, in much written English, these prescriptions were either never adopted or are starting to be abandoned. For instance, the NYT style guide states that "we must also guard against a reflexive traditionalism that would make The Times seem fusty or out of touch. Language changes, and we should carefully and judiciously reckon with those changes".²

However, there is one prescription that has held on for dear life, stubbornly refusing to die: plural data. If you haven't noticed or encountered this, it's when the word data is used as a plural noun, e.g. "the data are convincing". The argument for this usage, like many prescriptivist arguments, stems from Latin. Originally, data was the plural of datum, meaning a singular piece of data (e.g. a numerical result). However, in the vast majority of usage, data has come to be viewed as a mass noun meaning "information" and thus treated as singular. Despite this shift, plural usages of data abound. Particularly in academic writing, where the term data is often used and traditional writing norms have significant sway.

This usage may seem harmless enough but it has a few negative consequences. First, at a surface level, it makes the writing seem stilted and old-fashioned. This, in turn, can have the effect of making the authors seem distant, elitist, and unrelatable. This seems unwise, especially at a time when academia is coming under attack for being out-of-touch with the ordinary person (somewhat unfairly I think). Second, it can be jarring, taking the reader out of the flow, making them reparse the sentence, and altogether slowing and impeding understanding. I've actually heard this second point used in argument for prescriptive usage. For instance, my advisor once asked me to change a sentence to match some prescriptive form so I don't jar the reader as the prescriptive usage was the norm, even if my advisor didn't personally agree with the prescription. I would argue that the reverse effect, being jarred by the prescriptive form, can be even more significant, especially when the prescriptive usage deviates significantly from common usage. When I see data used as a plural noun, my reading flow is immediately shaken.

Ultimately, abandoning the plural usage of data could be a small step toward making writing, particularly academic writing, clear, relatable, and natural. Formal and academic writing have already made great strides in shedding some of the most onerous prescriptive shackles like avoiding singular they and sentence-ending prepositions. Taking this one further step would significantly align common and formal English in a beautiful and powerful harmony.³

And in other languages
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I would argue the traditionalism that the Times talks about was largely never tradition in spoken language but only in written language. Thus, the changes the Times might make do not really reflect "language changes" but rather shifting attitudes about the alignment between spoken and written language and the ills of prescriptivism. Interestingly, the Times style guide is still definitely out of touch in certain areas, for instance proscribing singular "they".
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I realize this whole polemic may sound prescriptivist itself. However, I'm not saying you should not use plural data if you treat it is a plural in your spoken language. Though, if you do treat data as plural in your speech, I would consider reflecting on whether you acquired this usage later in life as a sign of education, rather than from your underlying natural speech.
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Books are Overrated

Sat, 20 Jun 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I’m in the middle of reading “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jared Diamond. It’s an interesting enough read, but my progress through it has been painfully slow. It’s been a month of reading, even though I’m sure I could devour it within a day if I really wanted to. In fact, I’m a voracious binge media consumer, regularly absorbing years worth of a series in short periods of time. I watched all of Game of Thrones in two weeks (during finals no less). I read all of the Avatar Comics (~1000 pages) in a couple days. I churned through roughly 40 episodes (~17 hours) of the Revolutions podcast over a few weeks. In short, when I enjoy a series, regardless of the medium, I consume it quickly. Thus, my slow progress through “Guns, Germs, and Steel” puzzled me. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy the content. When I was reading the book, I was deeply engaged and fascinated. Then, I remembered that CGP Grey had produced two small video adaptations of portions of the book. These had been some of my favorite videos; yet, when covered similarly in the book, I was clearly less engaged. Thus, I began to think that the disparity lay not in the content but rather in the medium: a book.¹

From the development of writing in the late 3000s BCE until the developments of the phonograph and movie camera in the 1800s, the written word was our only method of recording language. From the beginning, this written language was the domain of the elite. Literacy was reserved for the scribes who were afforded the training needed to read and write in these incredibly complex writing systems. Only very recently has this literacy spread to the masses: as recently as 1900, 79% of humans were illiterate.

I suspect that this entrenched elitism has given books their veneer of superiority over other mediums. Time and time again, I hear, implicitly and explicitly, a call to read books over consuming other media. Think of the parent telling their child to “get off your damn phone and read a book!”. Think of the celebrities proudly sharing their book lists. Think of the attempts to read one book a week and how it “changes your life”. Now, for learning readers, I do think books serve as a good reading development tool. They force the learner to work through a lengthy and possibly complex narrative, building their reading comprehension. But for everyone else, is a book inherently superior to other media? I cannot see a reason why it would be. For one thing, books tend to be among the most verbose media. Sure, a season of a TV show might take as much time to consume as a book, but often much more happens in that same time. The book often describes the narrative in painstaking detail, devoting paragraphs of flowery text to the imagery and characterization. By contrast, a video can simply display the imagery and characterization, saving an immense amount of time. Of course, many find beauty in the language of books themselves, a beauty different from and not replaceable by similar techniques in other media. I don't deny this true enjoyment and appreciation. But, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Thus, to take this particular love of some and apply it to all as a normative assertion is unfair.

Essentially, power to those who love books, but just because you do does not mean books themselves are automatically a superior medium. I don't think these book lovers are the ones creating this societal pressure though. Instead, I suspect it comes with books' age and history far outstripping other media. With this age and association with the elite, books have been elevated above other media, particularly with regard to intellectual achievement and stimulation. I hope we can step back and pursue a more holistic outlook on the media landscape without entrenched notions of superiority.

The word I'm looking for here is closer to "novel" but that implies fiction. I want to include prose works of book-length, but exclude things like textbooks. Is there a word for this? Perhaps "literature" but I feel this also implies fiction.
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The Precariousness of Bitly

Sun, 17 May 2020 22:49:06 GMT

White-spotted puffer (a pufferfish is the mascot of Bitly). This image is by Bricktop and Togabi and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Bitly is a service that shortens links. Got a long weird URL like https://feedly.com/j/collection/content/user/417c116754b-81d4-4d15-9ac6-0816e92e0aa1/category/global.all? Pop it into bit.ly and you get a nice short url like https://bit.ly/3cnkrkQ, perfect for some compact space like Twitter.

But there’s something strange about Bitly. Is it their pufferfish logo? No that’s a bit weird but kinda cute. Is it the fact that when you change one letter in a bit.ly URL, you’re likely to land at some random site? No, that’s just fun.

No, the mysterious part about Bitly is their shortening domain itself: bit.ly. What does this .ly signify? After all, you can’t just slap any two letter combo at the end of domain, it has to be created for some purpose. Well, it’s a country code top level domain, like many popular domains such as .co (Columbia), .io (British Indian Ocean Territory) and .fm (Federated States of Micronesia).¹ But where does .ly hail from? Libya of course. And this is where Bitly gets into a tricky situation.

You see, these country code top level domains can be subject to arbitrary restrictions imposed by the country associated with them.² For instance, .ly “domain names must not contain obscene, scandalous, indecent, or contrary to Libyan law or Islamic morality words, phrases nor abbreviations”.³ Although this regulation seems to apply only to the domain name itself, it seems to have been extended to the content of the websites themselves. For instance, in 2010 vb.ly the “Internet’s first and only sex-positive URL shortener” was deleted because “Pornography and adult material aren’t allowed under Libyan Law”.⁴ Thus, the Libyan government has ultimate authority over this process and is not friendly to free speech nor is it stable (Libya has been embroiled in a civil war since 2014 and another civil war occurred in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring).

Now you may be thinking, Bitly must be more safe that vb.ly was, right? After all vb.ly was strongly associated with content the Libyan government was not a fan of, whereas bit.ly is much more generic. However, in 2010, after bit.ly was registered, a new regulation went into effect requiring all new .ly domain registrations under 4 characters have a local presence in Libya.⁵ Existing domains like bit.ly were grandfathered in and allowed to remain, as they have for the past 10 years.

Given that bit.ly has remained untouched for the last 10 years, their domain seems relatively safe. However, it is certainly not completely safe and, at any point, the Libyan government could involve Bitly in court proceedings or outright delete their domain; this is especially precarious given the unstable nature of the Libyan government. For most companies, this loss of domain would be a real concern with negative impacts. Even if they avoid .ly domains, their domain is never completely secure. For instance, the U.S government has seized domains of all kinds, including .com domains, although for more narrow reasons like criminal activity. However, for most sites this would not be catastrophic. For instance, if Youtube suddenly lost youtube.com, people who still wanted to use it would do a quick Google search, learn that Youtube has moved to newtube.com, and move on. Sure, a major disruption that causes frustration and some loss of users, but not the end of the company.

However, for bit.ly, a loss of domain would be absolutely catastrophic. The core of their product consists of bit.ly links. If these links were suddenly broken, countless links on the internet would break and their reputation would be immensely tarred, perhaps irreparably. Bitly spokespeople have said that the threat is not serious and that they have backup domains like Bitly.com.⁶ Of course, such backup domains would not help the many existing bit.ly links. Thus, to me it seems like an unwise move to start a link shortener company with an .ly domain. Granted, the domain was registered before Libya’s civil wars began, but Gaddafi was in power then and his government was an oppressive censor. At this point, bit.ly is way too heavily invested in its domain to switch, but if you’re thinking of purchasing a domain, use extreme caution with .ly or other country code domains.

What do you think? Is a worry about country code domains legitimate, or, am I being overly paranoid? Let me know in the comments.

Note: This post was originally written as a script for narrating a Youtube video, hence its different style from my other posts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ListofInternettop-leveldomains#Countrycodetop-level_domains
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As far as I can tell ICANN, the international body that handles domains, has said little about these restrictions. In general, they defer to governments stating that they are “not a governmental or law enforcement agency and [have] no law enforcement authority” and that they “comply with the court order and require its contracted parties to do the same”: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/faqs-84-2012-02-25-en#42
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I’m not sure if these regulations were created by the company administering the .ly domains or the Libyan government. Regardless, they’re in force.
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It seems that vb.ly did not itself host such content but simply provided a link shortening service to such content. Thus, the legality and details of this deletion seem a bit murky. It seems that the government took offense with an image on the landing page of the site: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/oct/08/Bitly-libya
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https://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2010/10/the-ly-domain-space-to-be-considered-unsafe/
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-libyan-connection-behind-ly-url-shorteners/2011/04/11/AFCo8xjD_story.html
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The Myth of the Introvert

Sun, 09 Feb 2020 00:26:39 GMT

Photo by Joshua Eckstein

I’ve often been presented with a narrative that I like to call the “the myth of the introvert.” The explanation goes something like this:

Shy people are not just uncomfortable in public situations, they enjoy and require significant periods of social isolation to thrive. There is nothing wrong with this, and we shouldn’t criticize people for this behavior, e.g. by judging someone for leaving a party early or refusing a social event.

On its face, I agree with this premise. If someone truly enjoys being alone, it’s rude to judge them for minimizing their social activities. The issue I have with this narrative is that it oversimplifies personalities, like all personality classifications do. It places sociability on a rigid spectrum that many do not fit into. For instance, some people, like me, may be shy but thrive on social interaction. Perhaps I could be dissatisfied with too much social interaction but if that is the case, I’m nowhere near that point yet. During most downtime, I’d rather be hanging out with friends than doing something fun by myself; I’d guess that is the case for many people. Yet, if I go to a social event, especially one with unfamiliar people, I’m likely to leave before others. This is all to say that a variety of contextual factors affect behavior and “personalities.” Thus, am I an “introvert” or “extrovert”? The distinction seems pointless to me.

Perhaps I am just projecting my own experiences, after all, it’s difficult to get into the mind of others. However, I suspect that the narrative of the introvert is also a coping mechanism and form of rationalization. Wikipedia lists some great examples of rationalization like: “I didn’t get the job that I applied for, but I really didn’t want it in the first place.” These thoughts serve to take dissatisfaction and justify it as a positive phenomenon. Initially, this can be viewed as having a positive result, after all, the rationalizer gains a positive view of the situation and their mood may be improved. However, in the long term, this rationalization obscures the root cause of the issue. This, in turn, deters the rationalizer from understanding, acknowledging, and ultimately addressing the issue. This may occur when people apply the narrative of introversion to themselves. When alone, perhaps feeling lonely, they can posit that “My issue is not a lack of effort to socialize and be sociable, I’m just an introvert so I need this social isolation.” For some people, this may be true. But for others, I suspect that this thought masks dissatisfaction and hinders effort and change. After all, achieving your desires, even social ones, is difficult and takes work. If such efforts seem too difficult or scary, or past attempts have failed, an escapist narrative is an appealing rationalization.

Ultimately, I want to begin a discussion about this narrative because I believe its use as a rationalization technique can be harmful. Unfortunately, I have no data to back this up but if you’re a psychologist, I’d love to see a study on this! Likewise, if you’ve seen this rationalization in the real world, let me know in the comments; I’m interested to see if this belief is more widespread or if I’m just being a complete aggrandizing idiot.

As a final point, I want to be clear that this oversimplification is not a crisis or a significant harm upon people in the way that heteronormative labels or restrictions can be. However, I hope that by discarding the labels of “introvert” and “extrovert” we can reduce their use as rationalization tools and encourage people to seek out their best lives, however difficult such a pursuit may be.

It Could Always be Worse

Thu, 31 Oct 2019 14:42:51 GMT

This doesn’t exactly match the fable but, thanks to the ridiculous length of copyright laws, illustrations from 1881 will have to do.

Whenever I’m listening to someone complain about their life (thankfully not often) I’m always tempted to throw out one of my favorite idioms: “it could always be worse.” I love to illustrate the power of this expression by recounting a Yiddish fable¹ about a farmer and his crowded house. The poor desperate farmer goes to his rabbi complaining about how his one-room hut is too crowded given his six children and that the noise is driving him crazy. To the farmer’s surprise, the rabbi recommends he bring a few animals into his house, which unsurprisingly, does not improve the farmer’s mood. He returns to the rabbi who recommends taking in even more animals. This cycle of animal buildup continues until the rabbi recommends taking all of the animals out of his house. Finally, in a physical state no different from the one he started in, the farmer remarks that his house is “‘so quiet, so roomy, so peaceful’.”

While a cute and sympathetic fable, people tend not to be especially receptive to its message: “it could always be worse.” When I, sparingly, express this thought I’ve gotten replies, both directly and indirectly, that “sure, it could always be worse but I don’t care about this general mantra right now; what I really want is some combination of specific advice for my current situation and generally sympathy.” Additionally, they may think that I’m diminishing their negative situation by painting it as minuscule compared to the plight of others. Granted, sometimes specific advice and sympathy can be helpful. However, often I find this stream of life complaints to be a more general negative characterization of one’s life, of the quality of life compared to others or what could have been. Given these thoughts, the perspective of “it could always be worse” is essential. Instead of asserting that their specific problem is minuscule, I’m trying to provide them with a suggestion to step back and consider their broad characterizations about their life.

Sit down and close your eyes. Imagine (or for some, remember) the pangs of hunger as you struggle to afford food. Imagine the excruciating pain of an illness for which you cannot access medical care. Imagine the gripping fear of a firefight outside your home. Just imagine. Sink into the visual and emotional perspective of someone else. It’s painful, but it’s also enlightening, like a good cry. Realize the world is shit. Sure, as a whole it’s getting better and one day we may be able to largely solve the world’s problems. In that time, we’ll simply look back at history with the same techniques to realize the world was shit. In some future utopia/dystopia were there are no problems except that all of history is erased, we can imagine a possible world that could be shit.

I guess I love this phrase, “it could always be worse,” because I find the imaginative exercise I described to be so cathartic². In a way, that seems kind of twisted. Am I not boosting my mood by imagining the misery of others? While a clinical measure of my mood might show an improvement, that’s not the point. The point is an act of normalization (in the mathematical not sociological sense). This exercise helps reframe the magnitude of my concerns and complaints and simultaneously develop sympathy for those in need.

So next time you’re upset about your life or some particular aspect of it, stop for a moment and take a step back. Compare your situation to a diverse set of others, real and imagined. If you live in a generally privileged environment, imagine not having that privilege. You don’t even have to imagine real people, trust me, the dark depths of your mind can construct some vicious possibilities; although, there is plenty of misery in the world to draw on. Enjoy your life as it currently exists. After all, it could always be worse.

The story supposedly originates in Poland. Here are two retellings by Margot Zemach and Aaron Zerah. If you’d like an illustrated version there is It Could Always Be Worse: A Yiddish Folk Tale by Margot Zemach, which again because of ridiculous copyright laws, will only become freely distributable in the U.S. in 2064. Annoyingly, the story seems to have no canonical name; I propose “The Farmer and the Crowded House” mimicking Aesop-like titles.
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Many people might call this catharsis a realization of privilege. I’ve avoided using this term so far to avoid shutting out people who’ve (unnecessarily) been prescribed extremely negative views about that term. Some may unsympathetically view this as pandering to an audience which deserves no attention; however, I think it’s fine to try and change someone’s opinion about a subject while skirting around a charged, however legitimate, term. We can never hope to change closed minds or shift entrenched opinions without making some attempt to ease people into new ideas. Many may have superficially negative views of the term privilege just because of their environment without a deeper view of what the term might entail. Also, when people use the term privilege they usually have an external focus, as in “realize others may not have the privilege you have”; my focus is more internal, as in using realization of your privilege to normalize the criticism of your own life.
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Clover and Pretentiousness

Thu, 24 Oct 2019 15:16:37 GMT

Ad for “Tunisian Breakfast Bowl” at Clover in the Harvard Science Center

¹I recently walked by Clover, a fast-ish food chain in the Boston area, and noticed an ad for a “Tunisian Breakfast Bowl”: essentially the classic Mediterranean/North African dish shakshuka. Tunisian Breakfast Bowl, why would they rename this a classic dish? This stood out to me all the more because Clover has long done a similar renaming with one of their most popular dishes: renaming falafel to “chickpea fritter.” My first thought was that these renamings are some attempt at unnecessary pretentiousness. Clover is not just selling a “falafel,” a food that might be seen as a cheap unfancy street food, they’re selling exquisitely crafted chickpea fritters. I’m comfortable with things labeled as “pretentious” when that pretentiousness conveys information compactly, e.g. advanced vocabulary. This may actually be the case with chickpea fritter as it tells you exactly what it is² without presupposing you know the term “falafel”; although, I think falafel³ is popular enough nowadays that many people know what it is. Tunisian Breakfast Bowl, on the other hand, provides little info except for its possible (probable) origin⁴. Additionally, withholding the canonical names for these dishes might simultaneously be a kind of reverse pretentiousness or paternalism, an assumption that customers cannot bother or have the ability to learn a new foreign term.

Not only would using canonical names encourage customers to learn more, removing that air of pretentiousness or paternalism could also aid in improving Clover’s image. Anecdotally, Clover unfairly has a bad reputation especially with Harvard students. I think this stems mainly from a lack of interaction and thus a lack of knowledge about the high food quality. After all, when someone has access to a dining hall with free food⁵, who can blame them for avoiding purchasing food. But students do purchase food, whether it be for a late night snack or due to distance from the d-hall, and from my experience, they have some aversion to Clover. Sure, Clover’s vegetarian and somewhat healthy food may be a turnoff compared to the greasy satisfaction of Tasty Burger or Kong; those barriers are only partially surmountable with time and gradual cultural acceptance.⁶ However, a more adjustable turnoff is the somewhat pretentious or paternalistic branding and practices⁷ which, however small and reasonable, may be receiving an unreasonable amount of attention from potential customers.

While I can’t know the exact reasons for Clover’s naming choices I encourage Clover to change these dish names to falafel and shakshuka. Or, at the very least, A/B test them: if sales are unaffected or even improve, I think many would welcome the change.^∞

I wanted to call this article “Clover and Pretension” but I feared people would think I was talking about heart disease by confusing hypertension and pretension😬. Also, is the word “pretension” pretentious? It’s usage seems much smaller than “pretentiousness.”
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And highlights a decently common allergen.
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Apparently not popular enough as Chrome’s spellcheck doesn’t recognize it 😢🧆🥙#inUnicodeButNotSpellcheck.
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As with many classic dishes, there are conflicting accounts of its origin but many sources point to a North African origin, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakshouka, https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1014721-shakshuka-with-feta, and https://www.chowhound.com/food-news/198606/what-is-shakshuka-and-where-did-it-come-from/.
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The vast majority of undergraduates at Harvard are on the meal plan; I’ve never met a single one who wasn’t. Harvard has extremely generous financial aid (that also covers meal plans and housing) and almost everyone lives on campus so the high rate of meal plans makes sense.
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For the record, I love vegetarianism and healthy food. I also love Clover’s food.
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Can we talk about the small sizes and limited types of coffee drinks (e.g. no lattes)? I guess that’s for another post.
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Can’t you tell I love footnotes (and emojis … and parentheticals … and never ending a thought) 😅?
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