Jordie Hoffman

Condominas visiting with his friends (Mrs. H’SRang) in the bon Sa Luk, Krong No commune, Lak district.

Condominas spoke out against inequality and colonization and stood with American anthropologists in opposing the Vietnam War. An incredible storyteller and humorist, he was known to say, "Come on, courage, we’ll get them!" at the end of phone calls, but the “them” in question was never named. (3/3)

The front cover of the English translation of Condominas book "We Have Eaten the Forest".

Georges Condominas pictured in a loincloth with some villagers during the sacrifice of the buffalo in Sar Luk, 1948. (Picture taken by Jacques Chirac)

His famous book “We Have Eaten the Forest” recounted his stay with the Mnong Gar, from the Vietnamese highlands. Noted for its meticulous attention to detail and inclusion of traditional oral verse, the book stood out in its time for its fidelity to the villagers' lived experience. (2/3)

Georges Condominas sitting in a chair smoking a lit cigar.

I am in Paris right now, the final home of Georges Condominas, so I saw it fitting to mention it is his birthday today! He is famous for his avant-garde ethnographic writing style, which would now be akin to reflexive ethnography. 🧵 (1/3)

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Ultimately, dandyism is meant to provoke questions on how identity and representation intersect with race, class, gender, sexuality, and power. If he hasn't already, I would very much be interested in @dieworkwear.bsky.social doing a breakdown on this fascinating political aesthetic.

Rihanna in a skirt-suit designed by Marc Jacobs at the MET Gala.

LaKeith Stanfield in a belted Ferragamo robe coat at the MET Gala.

BIPOC men in zoot suits being taken into custody in Los Angeles during the riots in 1943.

The theme for the 2025 Met Gala was based on Black dandyism in the Western world. There is a lot of rich history here that I only scratched the surface of. The Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 are another example of BIPOC dandysim.

Old newspaper clipping describing the Silent Parade. It reads: "3,500 Negroes Join In A Silent Parade Impressive protest against lynching made by men, women and children marching on Fifth Avenue. Leaders among the Negroes of New York City decided that a silent parade would be the most dramatic and effective way to make felt the protest of their race against injustice and inhumanity, whether growing out of lynch law, race riots, segregation or disfranchisement."

A photograph of the parade featuring Black men marching in suits holding signs promoting safety and democracy in America.

Racial discrimination has been opposed by Black dandyism. Famously, in 1917, the Silent Protest Parade featured over ten thousand Black Americans in formal wear, protesting slavery and the recent East St. Louis massacre.

Botz-Bornstein, T. (2023). Daoism, dandyism, and political correctness. State University of New York Press.

Philosopher Thorsten Botz-Bornstein describes dandies as "an anarchist who does not claim anarchy," using life's conventions, like gender and socioeconomic norms, to oppose capitalism's demands for conformity.

Caricature of an Incroyable and a Merveilleuse (the most flamboyant, stylish members of the jeunesse dorée). Incroyable were men known for their eccentric clothes. Merveilleuses were women who wore revealing Greek-inspired clothes with extravagant accessories.

However, in France, dandyism was seen as a political statement of jeunesse dorée (Gilded Youth) who used aristocratic style to stand apart from both the conformist bourgeoisie and the radical working-class sans-culottes (literally "without breeches”).

Beau Brummell, born to a family of achieved middle-class status, was a famous dandy known to be the “arbiter of British men's fashion”.

I also did not know about the rich history behind the word, but did some digging... “Dandy” was used to describe self-made men who imitated aristocratic style, regardless of class or social status, largely in late 18th and early 19th-century Britain.

Ray Hames made foundational contributions to human behavioral ecology in topics as diverse as food & labor exchange, human ecology, marriage, kinship, & parental investment, & served HBES & other societies in multiple roles. Congrats to Ray for winning the HBES Lifetime Achievement Award!

YouTube video by vlogbrothers Moving to Hope from Hopelessness (3 ways)

"All of the times in my life when I have felt hopeless, there has been hope. I just haven’t been able to feel it."
youtube.com/watch?v=oBgH...

A European robin perched on a handrail.

The same European robin perched on an overturned pot of grass.

A European robin! While very cute, male robins are known to attack other small birds without provocation and even their own reflection.

Projected Outcomes of Removing Fluoride From US Public Water Systems This cost-effectiveness analysis evaluates a large sample of US children to determine the associations of fluoridation cessation with oral health and national dental care costs.

New research shows water de-fluoridation “disproportionately affects uninsured children.” Glad to see Calgary bringing fluoridated water back! Great news for the dental health of kids in low-income households.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

THE GAP by Ira Glass I think it was in the time of spring 2012, when I came across David Shiyang Liu's lovely piece of work about Ira Glass. It was the most inspiring and motivating…

"For the first couple of years that you are making stuff, what you are making isn’t so good...But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you."
vimeo.com/85040589

Shifting Patterns of Social Interaction: Exploring the Social Life of Urban Spaces Through A.I. Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

Colleagues at MIT on the evolution of street life:

"...the average walking speed has increased by 15%, while the time spent lingering ... has halved."

"...the frequency of group encounters declined ... urban residents increasingly view streets as thoroughfares rather than as social spaces."

Photos are in from #uofucsbs research day. Featuring my ongoing master’s project about bias in ML models that predict BMI from photographs.

Evolutionary anthropologist Vivek Venkataraman and renowned scientist David Sloan Wilson dig into how early human societies developed.

🔗Don't miss out, come along! www.prosocial.world/events/democ...

#Evolution #Biology #Academic #Podcast #History #Science #ProSocial

A grassy hill with pink flowers alongside a gravel trail leading to a stone house.

A patch of purple and green growth

A bright blue sky overlooking a rocky beach.

A photo from the rocky beach of the ocean with seaweed and grassy hills in the backdrop.

Plantufrøðiligur urtagarður on another gorgeous day :)

What do these findings tell us? GPT-4, especially when personalized, could be more effective than other humans at shifting opinions in text-based debate. But the impact is modest, and the context matters. (7/7)

The authors note: it’s unclear whether the belief they were talking to a machine caused the attitude shift or whether persuasive arguments led participants to guess they were talking to an ML model. (6/7)

Why? One explanation is that interacting with a machine reduces ego defensiveness and perceived social judgment, lowering identity-based resistance to ways of thinking. Another may be that participants subconsciously attribute greater expertise or neutrality to ML. (5/7)

It is important to note that the actual magnitude of attitude change per person was relatively small (e.g., often less than one full point on a 5-point Likert scale). So, even effective arguments only nudged people slightly. (4/7)

Even when GPT-4 wasn’t personalized, participants who believed they were debating a machine showed a +37.4% increase in the odds of persuasion. (3/7)

In most human-human debates, arguing only makes people double down, aka the backfire effect. But when debating a minimally personalized GPT-4 (with access to basic demographics), the odds of being persuaded increased by +81.2% compared to human-human debates. (2/7)

New research shows LLMs may outperform humans in shifting others' opinions. But these results come with some important caveats… (1/7) 🧵

Tonight London time 18:30 with Vivek Venkataraman.
Everyone welcome, just join the Zoom!

An important reminder that measles vaccines save millions of lives every year across the world.

The measles vaccine is arguably the most life-saving vaccine in use.

Our latest article from @scientificdiscovery.dev and @spoonerf.bsky.social: ourworldindata.org/measles-vacc...

Sources (4/4):
www.epi.org/publication/...
www.jstor.org/stable/40580...
www.weforum.org/reports/futu...

Instead of trying to stop companies from adopting AI, a cost-cutting move they’ll make regardless, we should equip workers and students with the skills to use it. As new industries emerge, people whose jobs were displaced can use this support to shift into future roles. (3/4)