genderneutralmilkhotel

Still alive

Wed, 19 Dec 2018 03:48:32 GMT

Still alive and actually resting during the winter break for the first time since I started grad school. Got a new entry up at The Wordpress. This time I'm trying something a little different and instead of doing an essay on technology and culture, I've typed up a quick explanation of four sentiment analysis tools that do not require a download and are COMPLETELY ACCESSIBLE TO TOTAL BEGINNERS WITH NO TECH OR SOFTWARE BACKGROUND!

A Dabbler’s Guide to Sentiment Analysis 101

This week I am trying something a little different. In lieu of a post on theoretical or cultural questions poised by some technological innovation or another, I wrote up a short introduction to open source sentiment analysis software, a post meant for complete beginners. I am currently experimenting with a biweekly (twice a week) posting schedule alternating long and short posts. We’ll see if this is the most efficient set up!

While I am aware of the many, many, MANY different tools out there (see Oxford LibGuides Text Analysis Tools), I limit myself to these four for the sake of brevity. The four are: Hedonometer, Story Lab, Socialmention, and Tweet Sentiment Visualization. Though elementary, these platforms are good starting points for those who have never done any sentiment analysis or basic data mining before, as they require no computer skills except the ability to type and do not required download. I hope to provide a more sophisticated tutorial at some point in the future. I do not have time to go over what sentiment analysis “is,” so I suggest familiarizing yourself with the concept if necessary.

Read more...

comments

Experiment: Fandom Cross-posting

Sun, 16 Dec 2018 23:58:20 GMT

Since I am new to Dreamwidth, I am going to experiment and see if this is a good platform for formatting fandom meta posts should Tumblr collapse tomorrow. Particularly I want to keep my meta on the movie Thor:Ragnarok and the rest of the Asgard-centric part of the MCU (mostly through that movie) and the Haruhi Suzumiya franchise since it is SO hard to find a fandom for the later and hard to find a niche for the former I like.

thegirlwithmanynames if you're still up for talking Haruhi, headcanons, and interpretations, I'm always all ears. Also if there's anyone else in this fandom on Dreamwidth or Pillowfort then we should totally start a small group.

This post is in response to a piece of (really good) meta about Itsuki Koizumi by echo-from-the-void on Tumblr that I have not posted because I'd never repost someone else's work. Their post can be found (w/my response in the thread) here.

The role of a mysterious transfer student

echo-from-the-void:

It’s no secret Koizumi is my favorite character. I think he is the one character who Tanigawa seems to care for the least and yet almost accidentally turns into the most well-written in the final volume. I have several theories on that…and of course my own headcanons since it looks the serious is on permanent hiatus.

(Post that turned into an essay under cut holy shit that got long)
( Read more... )

comments

Cross-Posting: Sorry to Burst Your Bubble (1/3): Filter Bubbles 101.

Sun, 16 Dec 2018 21:41:32 GMT

Excerpt:
Your Echo Chamber is Destroying Democracy.” “The Filter Bubble Explains Why Trump Won and You Didn’t See It Coming (The Cut).” “Journalists and Trump Voters Live in Parallel Universes.” These are just three choice examples of news publications that have factored filter bubbles as an agent in the destruction of democracy in the age of Trump and why Trump’s election caught many off guard. Filter bubbles, so the common wisdom goes, contribute to the kind of social homophily that stalls democratic debate, eases the rise of fascism, and leads readers to trust media sources based on partisan or ideological identification rather than epistemological rigor...For these reasons, there is a potential to create algorithmic “parallel universes” in which audiences cannot agree on the shared facts necessarily to have productive political dialogue. Therefore, drawing from influential political theorist John Dewey, Pariser declares that “filter bubble” is danger to democracy.

comments

Mod introduction from blueinred (Cross Post)

Wed, 12 Dec 2018 18:47:05 GMT

Cross-posted from blueinred . Original post here.

-----------
Welcome!

In the case that this blog eventually gathers members, I think it would be nice if we each had an introduction post just so that we know each other better -- maybe a little about how each of us became interested in this topic, and (if your comfortable) state or national background if pertinent, and anything else you want to share. No one is obligated to share anything you're not comfortable with.

So I'll start! I'm SA and I grew up between Athens, GA, and a 3,000 person town in north Georgia no one has ever heard of. I currently live in Austin, TX. I'm a grad student studying technology, politics, and critical theory.

I became interested in this subject due to my own background in the rural south and my frustration with media narratives that framed the south as monolithically conservative and inherently "un-win-able" for progressives, as this narrative does not deal with problems like voter suppression, gerrymandering, racial diversity in the rural southeast, etc. I am also interested in learning about cultural differences between different parts of the midwest, southeast, and southwest.

I migrated to Dreamwidth in the ongoing Tumblr crisis on 12/10/2018 and created this particular group on 12/11/2018.

Hope I meet some of y'all soon!

comments

When the Center Cannot Hold: Tumblr’s Puritanical Bots and Algorithms as Moralizing Frameworks

Tue, 11 Dec 2018 22:39:13 GMT

Cross-posted from Wordpress.

"This is not a post about why the announcement that Tumblr would be purged of adult content on December 17, 2018 is dumb and harmful. We all know that it is stupid. We all know a Puritanical purge does nothing to protect child trafficking victims and it is using the cultural fixation on “the innocence of the child” (not too get too Lee Edelman here) as its rationale, presumably under the assumption that this rational is so culturally sacred that no one would dare reject it despite, again, it not helping children in any way... No, this is about algorithmic sorting as a moralizing framework. How they make meaning out of the social reality they are created to compute based on the values encoded into them and in doing so "encode" these values in the performative infrastructure that makes up our world."

Read more....

comments

So here we are

Tue, 11 Dec 2018 05:53:16 GMT

Hi y'all, this is SA from genderneutralmilkhotel on Tumblr. Since some people are doing a mass migration from Tumblr, I'm currently trying this site out although I don't think I've been here since LJ was a thing back in the ontd_startrek days.

For anyone stumbling across, cool, nice to meet y'all. I'm SA. 27. They/them pronouns.

Basically I'm not convinced I'll find a medium that captures the way I think writing as gloriously as those Pale Fire-esque tag essays on Tumblr. Here, however, I am hoping that if Mastodon captures the Twitter-esque parts of circulation that maybe Dreamwidth might help with the archiving. We'll see.

Instagram currently kafkinated. I might take this down later.

I am also on Mastodon at neutralmilk@cdmx.rocks

I am setting up a Pillowfort account.

I am a graduate student in the humanities who does a lot of interdisciplinary research in technology, cultural studies, and philosophy and critical theory. But while I am going to try to blog more about that stuff in a causal, non-academese way here, I mostly rant blog here happens on my Tumblr tech tag.

comments