Data

Data and gear should be mass nouns, like water. You don’t have a water; you have a few drops, a river, a stream, or an ocean. You have water, maybe liters of it, maybe gallons, maybe hogsheads and half butts, but you don’t get a water unless a water is a unit of it in a fixed quantity. People do say things like, ‘Pass me a water.’ They mean a water bottle or glass, always in a unit.

I don’t have a datum; I’ve got a data point. I’ve got gigs and gigs of them. I have good data, bad data, garbage data, and big data.

Fearless Girl

Outside the NYSE is the Fearless Girl statue. It’s a little girl staring fearlessly, pretty much exactly what it’s named.

Nearby is the Charging Bull

I’m nominally in favor of both, though that may overstate my feelings. I don’t have strong emotions either way, but I’m pro-art and the sculptures are both nifty. Some people have strong feelings toward the Fearless Girl. They identify with her or support people who do. Other people really dislike the Charging Bull, and you can find notes from both Occupy Wall Street and more religious writers. I think the bull is impressively dynamic. Art is supposed to make people feel things, and both of these sculptures do. So they’re a success.

The girl was originally installed right in front of the bull, so that she was staring it down moments before it trampled/gored her to death. Di Modica was not a fan of that. I understand completely. Context isn’t everything, but it is huge, and there’s a wild difference between a bull in isolation, running, and a bull about to trample some kid. Conversely, if she did stare the bull down, that would make the animal much less powerful and fearsome, which influences the way the bull is interpreted.

Now Di Modica just showed up and installed the bull, so he doesn’t have a whole lot of complaining room when Visbal showed up and installed the girl. But I get it. Since the bull is a physical thing and somewhat unique, changing how it is interpreted forever, ie installing another sculpture facing it, would bother me if I was the creator. Yeah, I know there are other copies of the bull, but they’re elsewhere. To me, the uniqueness of the situation is part of the sculpture.

Dualities in Grammar

So another weird little thing about grammar is dualities. I’ll limit this to English and Latin, but they’re everywhere.

In English/Latin, the genitive case represents both connection and possession. So if you’re talking about a thing you own, you use the genitive. This is my toaster. But you do the same thing addressing a noun that exists in relation to something else, such as a parent.

This is my parent.

Likewise, nouns that can exist in relation to another word have that relation disclosed by the genitive.

This is my child. This is my boss. This is my employee.

But these constructions cannot take both meanings, as even if you could own an employee, you could not then own your boss. Ownership goes one way, so it can’t be both. But the grammar is the same, because genitive does both ownership and relationship.

Now the conjunction of ownership and relationship is an interesting one and worth thinking about, but the practical concern that there’s only one case for both purposes is somewhat simpler.

Likewise, apologizing has two purposes. One is to take responsibility for the suffering of others, acknowledge it, and affirm you’re not going to cause it again, and another is merely acknowledgement. The latter does have a little bit of ‘I support your suffering,’ but it’s mostly acknowledgement.

I was walking along and saw a bit of a gathering on the street, so walked over to see what was going on. A guy said his brother-in-law had just died, and they were having a gathering in his honor. It was outdoors because of Covid. I said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

Obviously I didn’t kill his brother-in-law, but apologizing has that clumsy duality.

What makes that one work is that the guy was in that headspace, so he got it immediately. He understood. Me, not being in the headspace, felt the alienation of suddenly being immersed in it. So I felt like an outsider, but he felt like some polite stranger was trying to be respectful.

A few takeaway points of that:
1) People generally think better of you than you might expect. If you’re polite and there’s an obvious polite meaning, people will often default to that one.
2) Some senses of alienation don’t really exist. You may feel alienated from people, but often that’s alienation to a strange setting.
Both 1 and 2 tend to imply things aren’t as bad as they feel.

And to tie that back to dualities in grammar, those confusions are inescapable in human interactions.