6 ms·

Sadly, the New Yorker judges that its readers can handle terms such as "epipelagic" and "hadal", but not the reporting of depths in meters.

CogitoCogito 6y ago
> Sadly, the New Yorker judges that its readers can handle terms such as "epipelagic" and "hadal", but not the reporting of depths in meters. Are you complaining that they aren't reporting depths in both feet and meters? Or that they aren't reporting depths in only meters? Also why does it matter? Is the conversion that complicated?
- sandworm101 6y ago
  Because it is incongruous to toss around "epipelagic" to sound scientific, but then quote every unit of distance in feet/miles. But they also convert their photography to black and white to evoke oldschool print journalism, to evoke the nostalgia so loved by their target demographic. The New Yorker isn't the place for scientific reporting.
  - ubermonkey 6y ago
    I had no idea you were so plugged in to the intentions of the New Yorker editorial staff. In fact, not all photography in the New Yorker is black and white. >The New Yorker isn't the place for scientific reporting. That's a curious and largely indefensible statement not at all supported by facts. What subjects are within their legitimate remit, then?
    - sandworm101 6y ago
      >> What subjects are within their legitimate remit, then? Not science. Their stylistic goals are blatant in the work they produce, this article in particular. The language is very particular, the absence of any reference to the metric system in an allegedly scientific article is notable. And they do convert their photos. Every non-animated photo in this article is BW. Despite all the web trickery, this article still pretends to be a print publication.
      - ubermonkey 6y ago
        >Not science. Their stylistic goals are blatant in the work they produce, this article in particular. That's a pretty loose and fundamentally unsupported statement. >the absence of any reference to the metric system in an allegedly scientific article is notable. The metric system isn't magic. It's normal to use the system most familiar to the audience being addressed. It is definitely weird that you're so hung up on this. My assumption, based on your strange snark regarding TNY, is that you just dislike the magazine for some reason you probably haven't really examined. Fortunately, no one at the New Yorker is listening to you. Put simply, there is no better source of carefully researched and well written long-form nonfiction in the US. They cover history, politics, entertainment, culture, and (yes!) science, and they do it at an award-winning level. Their coverage of issues around medicine and health care has been and remains especially relevant and fascinating -- folks like Jerome Groopman and Atul Gawande (who is, by the way, a MacArthur fellow) produce tremendous pieces in this area, all of which are well worth your time unless you're just too invested in hating on the magazine because they said "foot" instead of "meter." > Every non-animated photo in this article is BW But every photo in the New Yorker is not in this article. >this article still pretends to be a print publication. That's pretty deliberate, and is also completely unrelated to your complaints about what subject matter is appropriate for the magazine.
  - irrational 6y ago
    Maybe they didn't even notice. It's not like the New Yorker is a science magazine or this was a science article. I didn't notice what unit of measurement was being used, but that is probably because I am accustomed to thinking in feet and miles. That might be the same with the New Yorker authors and editors. It probably didn't even occur to them.
  - CogitoCogito 6y ago
    > Because it is incongruous to toss around "epipelagic" to sound scientific, but then quote every unit of distance in feet/miles. The metric system is not more "scientific". It has certain convenient properties that make it easier to use under many situations, but it's not inherently better. Any "scientist" can make the trivial conversion to their system of choice. The New Yorker is clearly choosing to target a specific audience where they think that use of units is appropriate. Get over it.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
It's an American publication read mostly by Americans. While they passed up an opportunity to pander to the scientific community by using meters it is a wise choice to use typical American units since the numbers at play here are much larger than the quantities people deal with on a day to day basis. People have no intuitive way to understand depths of tens of thousands of feet so they need to relate it to things they know, airplane cruising altitudes, single digit numbers of miles, all of which are denominated in non-metric units, at least in the US. Adding a unit conversion just adds another step that makes it harder for your audience to relate. Picking the units that make conveying the message most efficient is an implied part of the jobs of the writer(s) and editor(s) who touched this article and they're paid to do it so it should come as no surprise that they did it. Obviously I don't speak for everyone but I don't think the scientific community is particularly peeved by a publication targeted at the general public using the units that it's audience uses.
ubermonkey 6y ago
Oh, please. It's an American publication writing for Americans, where most people think in feet and miles.
- vixen99 6y ago
  And indeed one only has to remember that an inch is exactly 2.54 centimeters. Anyone interested and able to read the article can surely make the trivial calculation.
  - ThinkingGuy 6y ago
    Or, as Americans in a certain age cohort may remember from Saturday morning educational cartoons: Measuring in metric / is not that hard. / A meter's just a little bit / more than a yard.
LeifCarrotson 6y ago
I think it's more an issue of bikeshedding than judgement: Editors and their boards are familiar enough (or think they know enough) about distances to issue blanket policies that might say "all distances should be reported in US customary units and/or familiar references such as football fields". Pelagic zones are obscure enough that there's no policy that says "Prefer 'light', 'murky', 'dark', 'pitch black', and 'in a hole' to the difficult sciencey terms".
jkmcf 6y ago
epipelagic isn't even in either of the MacOS dictionaries I have installed (British & American). To make it worse, MacOS tries to define it as a mis-spelled epileptic, overriding the "pelagic zone" which is more useful.

CogitoCogito 6y ago

> Sadly, the New Yorker judges that its readers can handle terms such as "epipelagic" and "hadal", but not the reporting of depths in meters. Are you complaining that they aren't reporting depths in both feet and meters? Or that they aren't reporting depths in only meters? Also why does it matter? Is the conversion that complicated?

sandworm101 6y ago
Because it is incongruous to toss around "epipelagic" to sound scientific, but then quote every unit of distance in feet/miles. But they also convert their photography to black and white to evoke oldschool print journalism, to evoke the nostalgia so loved by their target demographic. The New Yorker isn't the place for scientific reporting.
- ubermonkey 6y ago
  I had no idea you were so plugged in to the intentions of the New Yorker editorial staff. In fact, not all photography in the New Yorker is black and white. >The New Yorker isn't the place for scientific reporting. That's a curious and largely indefensible statement not at all supported by facts. What subjects are within their legitimate remit, then?
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    >> What subjects are within their legitimate remit, then? Not science. Their stylistic goals are blatant in the work they produce, this article in particular. The language is very particular, the absence of any reference to the metric system in an allegedly scientific article is notable. And they do convert their photos. Every non-animated photo in this article is BW. Despite all the web trickery, this article still pretends to be a print publication.
    - ubermonkey 6y ago
      >Not science. Their stylistic goals are blatant in the work they produce, this article in particular. That's a pretty loose and fundamentally unsupported statement. >the absence of any reference to the metric system in an allegedly scientific article is notable. The metric system isn't magic. It's normal to use the system most familiar to the audience being addressed. It is definitely weird that you're so hung up on this. My assumption, based on your strange snark regarding TNY, is that you just dislike the magazine for some reason you probably haven't really examined. Fortunately, no one at the New Yorker is listening to you. Put simply, there is no better source of carefully researched and well written long-form nonfiction in the US. They cover history, politics, entertainment, culture, and (yes!) science, and they do it at an award-winning level. Their coverage of issues around medicine and health care has been and remains especially relevant and fascinating -- folks like Jerome Groopman and Atul Gawande (who is, by the way, a MacArthur fellow) produce tremendous pieces in this area, all of which are well worth your time unless you're just too invested in hating on the magazine because they said "foot" instead of "meter." > Every non-animated photo in this article is BW But every photo in the New Yorker is not in this article. >this article still pretends to be a print publication. That's pretty deliberate, and is also completely unrelated to your complaints about what subject matter is appropriate for the magazine.
- irrational 6y ago
  Maybe they didn't even notice. It's not like the New Yorker is a science magazine or this was a science article. I didn't notice what unit of measurement was being used, but that is probably because I am accustomed to thinking in feet and miles. That might be the same with the New Yorker authors and editors. It probably didn't even occur to them.
- CogitoCogito 6y ago
  > Because it is incongruous to toss around "epipelagic" to sound scientific, but then quote every unit of distance in feet/miles. The metric system is not more "scientific". It has certain convenient properties that make it easier to use under many situations, but it's not inherently better. Any "scientist" can make the trivial conversion to their system of choice. The New Yorker is clearly choosing to target a specific audience where they think that use of units is appropriate. Get over it.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

It's an American publication read mostly by Americans. While they passed up an opportunity to pander to the scientific community by using meters it is a wise choice to use typical American units since the numbers at play here are much larger than the quantities people deal with on a day to day basis. People have no intuitive way to understand depths of tens of thousands of feet so they need to relate it to things they know, airplane cruising altitudes, single digit numbers of miles, all of which are denominated in non-metric units, at least in the US. Adding a unit conversion just adds another step that makes it harder for your audience to relate. Picking the units that make conveying the message most efficient is an implied part of the jobs of the writer(s) and editor(s) who touched this article and they're paid to do it so it should come as no surprise that they did it. Obviously I don't speak for everyone but I don't think the scientific community is particularly peeved by a publication targeted at the general public using the units that it's audience uses.

ubermonkey 6y ago

Oh, please. It's an American publication writing for Americans, where most people think in feet and miles.

vixen99 6y ago
And indeed one only has to remember that an inch is exactly 2.54 centimeters. Anyone interested and able to read the article can surely make the trivial calculation.
- ThinkingGuy 6y ago
  Or, as Americans in a certain age cohort may remember from Saturday morning educational cartoons: Measuring in metric / is not that hard. / A meter's just a little bit / more than a yard.

LeifCarrotson 6y ago

I think it's more an issue of bikeshedding than judgement: Editors and their boards are familiar enough (or think they know enough) about distances to issue blanket policies that might say "all distances should be reported in US customary units and/or familiar references such as football fields". Pelagic zones are obscure enough that there's no policy that says "Prefer 'light', 'murky', 'dark', 'pitch black', and 'in a hole' to the difficult sciencey terms".

jkmcf 6y ago

epipelagic isn't even in either of the MacOS dictionaries I have installed (British & American). To make it worse, MacOS tries to define it as a mis-spelled epileptic, overriding the "pelagic zone" which is more useful.