Good Design is Ruining American Flags

Clan Flag Map of Japan In 1603 At The Dawn Of The Tokugawa Shogunate (via)

Good design is ruining American flags (Works in Progress)

Image: Reddit user gabsdebrito

The 25 nicest flags in America according to the North American Vexillological Association. Source: North American Vexillological Association.

Escaping the Ogallala Trap

There is a closing window to stop driverless cars from creating omnigridlock.

Self-driving cars are not a hypothetical future but a familiar part of the urban background in San Francisco. I have driven in them several times and the novelty of seeing a steering wheel turn itself has pretty much worn off. During 2026, Waymo service will expand to Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Orlando, and Miami, joining Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix.

Right now, self driving is a premium experience, more expensive than a human driver, in part because Waymo uses new cars, and in part because there are still relatively few Waymos on the road, spreading operational overheads thickly on a small fleet. Over time, Waymo and its competitors will become cheaper than human-driven taxis.

You make driving fun

Self-driving cars need not look like traditional cars inside. Normal cars are heavy and bulky, in large part due to safety requirements. Despite sharing the road with human drivers, Waymos already have 80 percent fewer accidents. When self-driving cars become 90 percent of the cars on the road, they will be able to platoon and join up into little trains, saving the space usually spent on gaps between vehicles and doubling road capacities.

They can be more comfortable as well. The Volkswagen GEN.TRAVEL has seats that fold out into flat beds, with passenger restraints for safe sleeping while moving and lighting designed to generate natural circadian rhythms. The Volvo 360c offers a first-class private cabin with a classic Volvo touch: a special safety blanket that acts like a seatbelt, usually loose and comfortable but tightening instantly on impact. In theory it can be an entertainment space or a mobile office too. Simpler, working versions of this idea, like the Amazon Zoox, are already driving around Las Vegas and San Francisco.

With imagination, you can see how a wide range of functions could be performed in a car: working, sleeping, eating, and even socializing, effectively bringing back the bar cars once enjoyed by New York commuters to Connecticut. I already buy cans of beer for long train rides with my friends. Train lines created entirely new seaside resorts like Atlantic City in the US, and Heringsdorf, Ahlbeck, and Bansin in Germany. Just imagine the trips people would make with the ability to effectively travel business class in their cars, driving overnight.

Our gridlocked future

Autonomous vehicles are the centrifugal water pump of the roads. Just like the Ogalalla Aquifer, most roads are currently free at the point of use. And just like the Ogalalla Aquifer, they will be overused if we do not charge for the privilege of drawing on them. Anyone who needs to get where they’re going quickly will be stuck in traffic with all the people enjoying a beer, working from a mobile office, or having a nap. There will be total gridlock.

Though taxes on fuel and registering cars are universal across the developed world, imposing charges at the point of use has been trickier. It took New York City 60 years to impose congestion pricing, and it was almost revoked several times along the way. London’s congestion charge has survived, but attempts to extend it out of the very inner core have not. Dutch voters destroyed per-mile charges, the Kilometerheffing, in 2010. Hong Kongers rejected such a scheme in the 1980s, despite an effective trial.

These attempts failed for a range of reasons. But a major one is that they aimed to change the rules of the game for everyone at the same time, creating a lot of people who lost out under the policy while giving them nothing in exchange.

by Ben Southwood, Works in Progress | Read more:
Image: Getty

AI in Biology

If you wind your way through a quiet, wooded suburb outside of The City, you’ll reach a harbor. Situated on a hill overlooking the water, there is a Temple of Science. This Temple is centered around a task of the utmost importance: preserving a magical thread that connects the past, present, and future of the life sciences.

On one end, there is a gentle tug from the ghosts of Barbara McClintock, Martha Chase, and Alfred Hershey, reminding you of their elegant experiments that became part of the canon of genetics. Farther along, figures like Jim Watson grip the thread more fervently as they advocate for the centrality of their discoveries in the birth of molecular biology. If you put one hand in front of the other and continue to follow where it takes you, you’ll pass through the rise of genomics and end up on the frontier of biology.

Of course, I’m talking about Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. For over one hundred years, this little research institute in Long Island, New York has punched well above its weight. CSHL played a critical role in multiple paradigm shifts in biology—including genetics, molecular biology, and genomics—as evidenced by the eight Nobel Prizes awarded to researchers from “The Lab” over the years. When normalizing for size, the Nature Index ranked CSHL as the most prolific biomedical research institution in the world.

I’ll never forget my first visit to The Lab. In February of 2020, I flew from Seattle to interview for the CSHL graduate school program. Famously (among researchers on the grad school interview circuit), they would arrange for each recruit to be picked up in a black car from the airport.

The campus itself, which is a direct physical representation of the magical thread that The Lab preserves, is equally memorable. A cluster of pristinely maintained colonial buildings, each painted white, borders the water. Above them is the Upper Campus, consisting of darker, modern renditions of the same pattern. Scientific art installations—like the Waltz of the Polypeptides or a gazebo with a phage structure on the tip—can be found along the walking trails.

Over the course of three days, I hurried around The Lab for a wide range of activities, including eleven interviews with faculty—two to three times the number that most other graduate school programs typically scheduled. It was wonderful and intense.

Ultimately, I was persuaded to go west for graduate school. Thankfully, there are many reasons to continue coming back to CSHL, which has been described as “the crossroads of biology.” Each year, they host dozens of conferences and courses that draw top researchers from around the world.

But one particular conference stands out in importance. Since 1933, CSHL has hosted an annual Symposium on Quantitative Biology. Reginald Harris, who conceived of the conference, wrote that the “primary motive of the conference symposia is to consider a given biological problem from its chemical, physical and mathematical, as well as from its biological aspects.” In retrospect, this was visionary.

Over the next several decades, chemists and physicists would revolutionize the life sciences. In 1944, Erwin Schrödinger, a leading physicist, wrote What is Life?, a book exploring open questions in biology through a new lens. It inspired many researchers and students, including a young James Watson, to pursue biological research. In 1953, at the 20th annual CSHL Symposium, Watson presented the structure of DNA for the first time in public.

For obvious reasons, this gave the CSHL Symposia a sort of “mythic quality” moving forward. This reputation compounded quickly. Over the next 15 years, the pioneers of molecular genetics would travel each year to present their most important discoveries—such as the central dogma and the genetic code—at CSHL.

The tradition continues to this day. Each year, the Symposium is organized around a topic considered to represent the frontier of life sciences research.

Which brings us to the topic of the 90th Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Symposium on Quantitative Biology: AI in Biology.

Readers of this newsletter are not strangers to the fact that AI is reshaping biology. The tools derived from breakthroughs such as AlphaFold have been adopted by seemingly all biologists at this point. But it was stunning to see these advances celebrated so prominently in this venue. It felt historical.

As Bruce Stillman, CSHL’s current President, pointed out in his opening remarks, this topic connects back to the very origin of the Symposia—as the name suggests. Harris had spotted the emergence of a new quantitative paradigm in biology. Between then and now, molecular genetics did in fact transform biology into an information science.

It’s becoming more clear each day that the next chapter of this story is AI. Sydney Brenner, one of the most central figures of molecular biology, gave one of the most incisive criticisms of the field in his Nobel Prize lecture: “We’re drowning in a sea of data and starving for knowledge.” AI is starting to change that equation.

For five days, top researchers in the field shared updates on their efforts to use machine learning to decipher the mechanisms of DNA, RNA, proteins, cells, tissues, organs (especially the brain), and how information flows between these different biological scales. And there were examples of how AI agents might be able to autonomously carry out some of this research—which was met with a combination of excitement and anxiety from attendees.

It was one of the most compelling conferences I’ve ever attended, so I want to share some of what I saw. Before jumping in, this requires a few quick notes on the format of the event.

First, attending a Symposium feels like drinking from a scientific firehose—by design. CSHL is truly a Temple, or maybe even a monastery. Most attendees stay on campus and don’t leave for the duration of the conference. Talks are back-to-back all day in the main auditorium, followed by communal meals and poster sessions that run throughout the evening. It’s non-stop. My goal isn’t to give an exhaustive blow-by-blow, but to highlight some of the themes and topics I found most exciting.

Second, following in the tradition of Watson, many researchers share more new and unpublished data than is typical at other conferences. To respect this tradition, I’m going to focus on the data shared that has already been published, with more high-level descriptions of new research directions and results.

With all that said, let’s get into it! [...]

Agents, Agents, Agents

Maybe I’m in a bubble in San Francisco, but it’s hard not to constantly hear about AI agents in the year 2026. It’s strange to think, but it’s been three and a half years since ChatGPT was first released. That’s long enough for many humans to feel frustrated by the shortcomings of what was once magic. Now, we want these models to do work for us, and to carry out longer, more complex projects that require reasoning.

There are now many efforts to develop systems for “agentic science,” where AI models are able to autonomously develop new hypotheses, design experiments, and analyze results. This concept was another recurring theme at the symposium.

Pushmeet Kohli hit on this the first evening. The last third of his talk focused on DeepMind’s efforts to build an AI Co-Scientist, which they published a new paper on last month. Given a research goal by a human scientist, this system develops a research plan and then kicks off a “tournament” of agents competing to develop new hypotheses. Agents within this system have different tasks. Some are designed to “reflect” on the ideas being generated. Others are tasked with “evolving” them.

While the goal is hypothesis generation, the AI Co-Scientist itself is no longer just a hypothetical. DeepMind has already given early access to academic researchers working in a wide variety of biomedical domains. Kohli highlighted a high profile example where the Co-Scientist was able to predict a new mechanism of bacterial gene transfer before the result was published in the literature.

by Elliot Hershberg, The Century of Biology | Read more:
Image: uncredited/CSHL

[ed. See also: What’s new in biology: June 2026 (Works in Progress).]

Merganser Speed Trials

The Modern Efficiency of Squid Fishing

How Japanese Fishermen Use Robots To Catch Billions Of Squid (IE).

Video: YouTube

[ed. For calamari lovers. Squid fishing has gotten pretty efficient these days (and they land some big ones!). I remember catching them at night with my brothers in Kona, to use as bait for over-night tuna fishing (Ika Shibi). We'd go a ways offshore, put out a parachute anchor, then turn on the floodlights to attract them to the boat. Soon there'd be hundreds of them darting in and out of the light, coming from nowhere, out in the middle of the ocean. Using a multi-pronged snagging jig we'd catch our needed supply in no time. Fun! But wierd too - being surrounded by darkness except for the lights illuminating a small circle around the boat. It felt like fishing in a swimming pool.]

Cape Verde Blue Sharks
Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images
via: Where is Cape Verde? Meet the tiny African island nation upsetting World Cup giants (Guardian)

[ed. Love this photo - pure joy.]

Authenticity in Music

Today I’m sharing one of the “big” essays that define my life’s work as a critic—a piece I’ve worked on for years. I’m publishing it here in its entirety for the first time.

It’s my response to the debunking and ridicule frequently targeted at the concept of authenticity in music, which modern critics often dismiss as a kind of marketing gimmick or ideological construction.

Unlike them, I take authenticity seriously—as something we crave for a good reason. Some performers possess it, while others do not.

This is not a small thing. And if we don’t come to grips with this hidden source of power in songs, we will never understand where our music comes from or what it can mean for us today. [...]

There’s an humorous quote, well known among actors, circulated in many variants and attributed over the years to everyone from Jean Giraudoux to Groucho Marx: “The secret to success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” That pretty sums up the prevailing elite view of sincerity and authenticity in the creative world—where they are dismissed as poses played out in public as part of the show, without deeper significance.

When Trilling dissected these various terms for his Harvard audience, he saw authenticity as operating at a higher level than sincerity, as demanding a more strenuous allegiance to the dictates of the inner life. You act sincerely, but authenticity must be more than an act. By the same token, the loss of authenticity represents a much deeper malaise than insincerity.

So we ought to be concerned if we have learned to live without the concept of authenticity. If authenticity has truly been debunked, what takes it place? And if there’s nothing to replace it, how do we deal with the empty hole where it was supposed to exist, as a kind of guarantee or validation of our external actions? That poses a problem, and not just for aesthetics and music-making.

II

Music plays a surprisingly large role in the history of the divided self, and has repeatedly been highlighted by the most influential thinkers as intimately connected with inauthenticity. In fact, the entire history of Western philosophy begins with a firm conviction that music has a direct cause-and-effect linkage with our psyches and souls, such that the wrong songs degrade both individual behavior and social well-being.

This view not only figures prominently in Plato and Aristotle, but even has roots back with the pre-Socratics, especially Pythagoras who holds a double position as an originator of Western philosophical thought and inventor of musical tuning systems. What an odd coupling of skills! At first glance, it makes no sense that a famous tuner of musical instruments would also figure as the most esteemed source, in his day, of theories about the meaning of life, but for Pythagoras and his successors in the ancient world this connection was an obvious one. The good life was constantly endangered by the wrong choice of playlist—and even your life could fall out of tune.

For these thinkers, music is capable of both positive and negative effects in character formation. But for most of them, the dangers of song took on far greater significance than the healthy attributes. This is obviously true in history of religious thought—a whole book would be necessary to convey even the basic variations of this aversion to sinful songs—but it’s just as true in the highest circles of European intellectual life. Take Nietzsche, for example. When he set up his influential opposition between the Apollonian and Dionysian, with the former representing control and order and the latter embodying chaos and disruption, he associated the Dionysian explicitly with the power of music. [...]

Are songs really to blame for the divided personality? Is there something in music that, in its very essence, tends to inauthenticity? If so, we may be forced to abandon our quest of authentic music from the very outset—that would be like searching for the proverbial lead balloon or praising the much ballyhooed ‘deafening silence.’ Authentic music would be little more than an oxymoron, an amusing subject to speculate about, but never found in practice.

Yet even when you put aside the philosophy books, and talk to casual music fans you find the same conviction. There’s a widespread belief that great musicians are unbalanced, or even crazy. In fact, music is one of the few spheres of human endeavor in which the word insane is used as a term of highest praise.

I’ve even heard musicians grumble that they are punished by fans if they lead a balanced and controlled—or what Nietzsche might call an Apollonian—life. They can never match the mystique captured by their peers who spend time in prison, rehab, mental institutions and other places of confinement for those whose edginess has gone beyond the edge.

Even the most casual words we use in reference to music imply its causal connection with inauthenticity. We talk of a musician “playing” an instrument—the very same word we use for actors who “play” a role. The inescapable notion embedded in this terminology is that the very moment when the performance begins, artists are already separated from their true, authentic selves.

There are only three professions in which work is literally play. In acting, sports and music, we never use the verb work. You play football, you don’t work it. You play guitar, you don’t work those six strings. You play a role, you if someone said you worked at it, that would imply a failure to bring it to life. What a marvelous thing to consider: the notion that work gets transformed into play. You could never imagine other professions gaining this same distinction. No coal miner would ever claim to play the mine. The very notion is ludicrous. Yet the same conceptual shift that turns work into play for these three vocations also imparts a sense of unreality and pretense to them. Life on the stage is not real life. It is, in fact, staged—another example where the words we use points to our subconscious attitudes.

This is much more than a matter of words and etymologies. I’ve seen even the most rudimentary techniques of music turned into a pathway to inauthenticity. When I was growing up in Los Angeles, the livelihood of almost every professional musician in town depended on adaptability to the wide range of commercial opportunities at hand. There might be better music cities than LA, but could any other town match the range of music gigs: on any given day you might get enlisted for Hollywood film soundtracks, commercial jingles for advertising, TV theme songs, pop and rock record sessions, symphony orchestras, jazz jam sessions, along with the usual fare of weddings, bar mitzvahs, school dances, cruise ships, and other casual bookings. Authenticity wasn’t called for in this ecosystem—in fact, it was a definite handicap. You weren’t supposed to have deeply-held musical values; what you monetized was your flexibility and versatility.

I was never very happy with the aspect of my home town’s musical culture. But I’ve seen it spread throughout the entire world in the intervening years. The main culprit is the ever-expanding scope of music education, with thousands of guitarists, keyboardists, vocalists, horn players, drummers and other performers now getting degrees each year from institutions that instill this same kind of versatility in their graduates. Almost the first thing that comes out of the mouth of a music educator in the current day is some mantra about mastering a wide range of performance styles. Today I will teach you the Afro-Cuban montuno. Tomorrow we start on Baroque counterpoint. And from a purely commercial and professional perspective, who can deny the value? Who wants to stand up for ignorance? Who wants to take the side of inflexibility?

Yet there is always a cost when you sacrifice your own artistic personality for the demands of the marketplace. The word we most often us to describe that lost quality is authenticity.

by Ted Gioia, The Honest Broker |  Read more:

Image: Rob Verhorst/Redferns via

Walter Becker

Slow Motion Disaster

Water in the Colorado River is dwindling to levels that haven’t been seen in decades, and the seven states whose residents and farmers depend on the river can’t agree on a fair way to divide up what’s left.

Negotiations are going nowhere despite more than six months of ongoing talks, plus cajoling by the Trump administration, which twice gathered governors in hopes of a breakthrough that never came. States are already sniping at aspects of a water-use plan the federal Bureau of Reclamation is set to unveil this summer and impose later this year, and they’re threatening to sue each other over water deliveries, raising the prospects of prolonged legal battles just as Western states face demands to sharply reduce water use.

The river’s system of reservoirs and canals was designed for the climate and population of a century ago. It has strained to adapt to a declining water supply and enormous growth in communities in the river basin, despite improvements in efficiency that mean even booming cities are using less water than in the past. Water rights that may date back to the arrival of European settlers also complicate matters. And a year of extreme drought is making it even harder to decide how much each state can draw from the Colorado.

It is not for lack of effort.

“We have invested time, effort and money in trying to facilitate a multistate agreement,” Scott Cameron, the acting commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, said in an interview this month, moments after signing a deal that could one day augment the basin’s supply using desalinated water from a plant in Carlsbad, Calif.

But a day later, Cameron told a conference of water experts in Boulder that states have repeatedly rejected proposals for compromise. He said he doesn’t expect any state to be pleased with the measures the federal government is expected to take to delay or prevent reservoirs from dropping to critical lows in the short term.

“I think we’ve succeeded in making everyone unhappy, and maybe making everyone mad,” he said.

About 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of cropland depend on the Colorado for drinking water and irrigation, but its flow has gradually diminished over the past two decades as the climate becomes warmer and more arid across the West. Now the arcane system of water rights governing the river entitles each state and Mexico to far more water than is actually available. The rules prioritize the longest-established uses of water, in many cases dating to the 1850s and 1860s.

But the states have been unable to agree upon water cuts that would reflect the new reality.

In the river’s lower basin — which includes growing urban areas in California, Arizona and Nevada; vast agricultural operations; and the nation’s largest reservoir, Lake Mead — communities have agreed to significant reductions in recent years. A new proposal that the states are asking the federal government to consider would curtail use even more, but the lower basin states and tribal nations have asked upstream communities in New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming to cut back, too.

But anytime winter snowpack in the river’s headwaters is meager, the upper basin is forced to use less water, so those states have resisted committing to permanent annual water use cuts. While a 1922 compact divides the United States’ share of the river’s flow equally between the two basins, the less-populated upper basin consumes significantly less water each year than the lower basin.

The stalemate between the basins has deepened as the stakes rise. An existing water-use plan expired this winter, and the states missed key deadlines to agree on a new one, which must be in place by October to avoid chaos and confusion in water deliveries.

A mild winter and extreme spring heat left winter snowpack so depleted that Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir, which straddles the upper and lower basins, risked falling below levels critical for hydropower until federal officials began emergency actions to shift water around and keep dams generating electricity. [...]

So far, Trump administration officials have resisted imposing any plan unilaterally, though Cameron said the bureau had “not been passive.” It has offered $454 million for water conservation projects across the basin, using money left over from the Inflation Reduction Act, which was passed under President Joe Biden and included $4 billion for drought response in the West. Cameron said less than $100 million is left to help pay for more water savings.

“We have floated, three times, solutions that we thought represented something that the seven states could agree on,” Cameron said. “Turns out we were wrong.”

With the states unable to agree, the federal government is set to put new guidelines in place. Cameron said he expects Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose department includes the Reclamation Bureau, to release a plan in July to govern use of the river for the next decade. Before that plan becomes final, it would need approval from a White House that has so far not gotten very involved in Western water issues.

A draft plan released in January included a range of options, some of which would make significant cuts across the lower basin, where the federal government’s control of reservoirs gives it more power to cut off flows. The alternatives would force water shortages, mostly in the lower basin, based upon reservoir conditions. They include varying levels of cutbacks that would leave some risks of unplanned emergency water shortages in the lower basin.

Arizona is especially vulnerable because of its heavy reliance on the reservoirs and its relatively junior water rights.

As the talks stall, the threat of litigation is looming larger, even though negotiators have said they are hoping to avoid court battles that would undoubtedly be lengthy, expensive and unpredictable. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, warned Wednesday on Capitol Hill that he would seek to block federal drought relief funds from any states that sue over Colorado River water.

In Arizona and Colorado, state officials have been readying lawyers and setting aside public funds for a legal fight over water. Earlier this year, television ads paid for by a coalition of Arizona water users warned that the state is “being targeted” with crippling cuts. Officials in both states said litigation was a real possibility.

In public comments submitted in response to the federal proposal, the states have hinted at contradictory legal interpretations of the 1922 compact, offering dueling arguments that both suggest that the Trump administration was at risk of violating that document. In dispute is whether the compact requires upper basin states to deliver a set amount of water downstream, regardless of conditions, or if the compact simply bars those upstream states from using more than they are officially allotted. [...]

Because the 1922 agreement is only about 1,700 words long, Entsminger suggested that the states might never agree on what exactly each of them is entitled to — and that was all the more reason for them to find common ground without resorting to litigation.

by Scott Dance, Seattle Times/NY Times |  Read more:

Image:Chet Strange /The New York Times
[ed. For a fictional and nightmarish vision of what a full blown water fight between states might devolve into, see: The Water Knife. For a detailed historical account (along with all the back-stabbing and dirty dealing) that produced water allocations and the sprawling cities we see now in the West, see: Cadillac Desert.]

Jerry Jeff Walker

[ed. Father's Day, 2026.]

SignalTrace: New Levels of Surveillance

If you thought Flock cameras were concerning, meet what comes next. 

A company called Leonardo has developed a system called ELSAG SignalTrace. It broke into public awareness just days ago and is already being marketed to law enforcement agencies across the country. It makes Flock Safety look modest by comparison. 

Here is what SignalTrace does: 

It clips sensors directly onto existing license plate reader cameras — the same poles, the same hardware already installed in your community. No new infrastructure required. A software and sensor upgrade is all it takes. 

Every time you drive past one of these upgraded cameras, the sensor sweeps up the unique electronic identifiers of every device in your vehicle. Your cell phone. Your smartwatch. Your wireless headphones. Your fitness tracker. Your laptop. Your tablet. Your car's own infotainment system. Your tire pressure sensors. Your vehicle's Bluetooth hotspot. 

And your pet's microchip. 

Every one of those devices emits a signal. SignalTrace captures those signals, timestamps them, ties them to your license plate, and stores them in a searchable database for future investigative use. The result is what Leonardo calls an electronic fingerprint — a unique profile built not from your face or your name, but from the constellation of devices you carry with you every day. 

Leonardo announced the ELSAG EOC Plus patent as early as May 2024, describing it as an electronic detection system for identifying people of interest through electronic device signatures. SignalTrace is the commercial product built on that foundation. The patent came first. The marketing came after. The sales calls are happening now. 

Here is where it gets worse. 

SignalTrace is explicitly designed to track vehicles even when the license plate cannot be read. If your plate is obscured, dirty, or misread — it does not matter. The system identifies your vehicle by the electronic fingerprint of the devices inside it instead. The plate reader becomes optional. The surveillance does not. 

The strategic advantage for police agencies is adoption friction. SignalTrace can be pitched as an extension of an existing ALPR ecosystem rather than a wholly separate surveillance buildout. That is exactly what happened with Flock. License plate readers went in first. Video came later through a software update. Nobody voted on the expansion. Nobody was told. SignalTrace follows the same playbook — attach to existing infrastructure and expand what it captures without requiring a new procurement process, a new vote, or a new public conversation. 

Who is Leonardo and why does their background matter? 

Leonardo US Cyber and Security Solutions is not a Silicon Valley startup. It is the American subsidiary of Leonardo S.p.A. — one of the largest aerospace, defense, and security conglomerates in the world, headquartered in Rome, Italy. Recent public market estimates place Leonardo S.p.A.'s market capitalization at approximately €29.76 billion — roughly $32 billion USD. For context that is nearly four times Flock Safety's valuation. [...]

What is ELSAG — and why SignalTrace is more dangerous than it sounds. 

ELSAG is Leonardo's license plate recognition product line — the company's core law enforcement technology that has been deployed across American communities for over two decades. ELSAG cameras are what you think of when you picture a standard license plate reader. Fixed cameras on poles. Mobile units mounted on patrol vehicles. Solar powered. Cellular connected. Reading plates and logging vehicle data. 

ELSAG is already deployed in all fifty states. Virginia State Police is a documented customer. Leonardo holds statewide procurement contracts in New York, Maryland, New Mexico, Ohio, and Pennsylvania among others, and is listed on the federal GSA schedule available to agencies nationwide. Their cameras are already on street poles and patrol vehicles across the country — quietly, routinely, and largely without public awareness. 

SignalTrace is not a new camera. It is not a new company. It is an upgrade — a sensor that clips directly onto ELSAG cameras already in the field and adds a new layer of data collection on top of the license plate reading that was already happening. The same pole. The same hardware. A new sensor attached to it that now also sweeps up every electronic device signal in every passing vehicle. 

That is precisely what makes it so significant. The deployment barrier is almost zero. Any law enforcement agency that already has Leonardo ELSAG cameras can add SignalTrace capability without purchasing new infrastructure, without a new procurement process, and — depending on how their existing contract is written — potentially without returning to their city council for approval. Sound familiar? It should. It is the exact same function creep mechanism that allowed Flock Safety to add video streaming, vehicle fingerprinting, and AI people search to cameras that were originally sold as simple plate readers. 

The infrastructure goes in first. The capabilities expand later. The public finds out last — if at all. [...]

The data retention problem. 

With Flock we at least know the default data retention period is 30 days — though the contract language grants Flock a perpetual license to use that data regardless. With SignalTrace the situation is more opaque. Leonardo's product materials state that all data collected may be uploaded to the EOC server and archived for future queries and analysis — with no published retention limit. How long does Leonardo store your electronic fingerprint? Who has access to it? Can it be shared with other agencies or federal entities? Can it be purchased by data brokers? Leonardo's materials do not answer these questions. That silence is itself an answer. 

The retail and private deployment problem. 

Leonardo is actively marketing SignalTrace to shopping malls, retail centers, and private businesses — not just law enforcement. Their materials describe deploying SignalTrace in parking lots and inside shopping centers to track individuals involved in organized retail crime. By identifying and correlating electronic devices carried by suspects, retailers can gain critical insights into criminal patterns. 

That means SignalTrace sensors could be on private property you visit every day — your grocery store parking lot, your shopping mall, your workplace — operated by a private company with no law enforcement oversight, no warrant requirement, no public accountability, and no notification to you. Your electronic fingerprint captured every time you park your car. Stored indefinitely. Shared with whoever the private operator decides to share it with. 

The no-plate-needed problem — and what it means for pedestrians. 

The implication of being able to track a vehicle by its electronic fingerprint without reading the plate goes further than most people realize. Deliberately obscuring your plate — which some people do to avoid surveillance — provides zero protection against SignalTrace. The sensor does not need the plate. It reads your phone. 

More critically — the sensor does not know or care whether the device it is reading is inside a vehicle or in the pocket of a pedestrian walking past the pole. A person walking down the sidewalk past a SignalTrace-equipped camera is emitting the same Bluetooth and Wi-Fi signals as a person driving past in a car. The system's sensors capture signals from whatever passes within range. Whether that includes pedestrian device capture is not addressed in Leonardo's public materials. The fact that it is not addressed is worth noting. [...]

SignalTrace does not aggregate your vehicle's movements. It aggregates your personal electronic identity — every device you carry, every signal you emit — and ties it permanently to a location, a timestamp, and a plate number. It does not track your car. It tracks you. Personally. Individually. Every time you pass a sensor, whether you are suspected of anything or not. 

by BlackBetty (Anonymous), X |  Read more:

Image: Natasha Eliya/Michigan Daily via

[ed. Public service announcement. Are they actually able to do this with the weak signal of wifi and Bluetooth? Wouldn't be surprised. See also: SignalTrace just weaponized your AirPods against license plate readers nationwide (Cambridge Analytica).]

Catherine Abel
via:

In Praise of Shadows

What incredible pains the fancier of traditional architecture must take when he sets out to build a house in pure Japanese style, striving somehow to make electric wires, gas pipes, and water lines harmonize with the austerity of Japanese rooms—even someone who has never built a house for himself must sense this when he visits a teahouse, a restaurant, or an inn. For the solitary eccentric it is another matter, he can ignore the blessings of scientific civilization and retreat to some forsaken corner of the countryside; but a man who has a familiy and lives I the city cannot turn his back on the necessities of modern life—heating, electric lights, sanitary facilities— merely for the sake of doing things the Japanese way. The purist may rack his brain over the placement of a single telephone, hiding it behind the staircase or in a corner of the hallway, wherever he thinks it will least offend the eye. He may bury the wires rather than hang them in the garden, hide the switches in a closet or cupboard, run the cords behind a folding screen. Yet for all his ingenuity, his efforts often impress us as nervous, fussy, excessively contrived. For so accustomed are we to electric lights that the sight of a naked bulb beneath an ordinary mild glass shade seems simpler and more natural than any gratuitous attempt to hide it. Seen at dusk as one gazes out upon the countryside from the window of a train, the lonely light of a bulb under an old-fashioned shade, shining dimly from behind the white paper shoji of a thatch-roofed farmhouse, can seem positively elegant. [...]

Whenever I sit with a bowl of soup before me, listening to the murmur that penetrates like the faroff shrill of an insect, lost in contemplation of flavors to come, I feel as if I were being drawn into a trance. The experience must be something like that of the tea master who, at the sound of the kettle, is taken from himself as if upon the sigh of the wind in the legendary pines of Onoe. 

It has been said of Japanese food that it is a cuisine to be looked at rather than eaten. I would go further and say that it is to be meditated upon, a kind of silent music evoked by the combination of lacquerware and the light of a candle flickering in the dark. Natsume Sōseki, in Pillow of Grass, praises the color of the confection yōkan; it is not indeed a color to call forth meditation? The cloudly translucence, like that of jade; the faint, dreamlike glow that suffuses it, as if it had drunk into its very depths the light of the sun; the complexity and profundity of the color— nothing of the sort is to be found in Western candies. How simple and insignificant cream-filled chocolates seem by comparison. And when yōkan is served in a lacquer dish within whose dark recesses its color is scarcely distinguishable, then it is most certainly an object for meditation. You take its cool, smooth substance into your mouth, and it is as if the very darkness of the room were melting on your tongue; even undistinguished yōkan can then take on a mysteriously intriguing flavor. 

In the cuisine of any country efforts no doubt are made to have the food harmonize with the tableware and the walls; but with Japanese food, a brightly lighted room and shining tableware cut the appetite in half. The dark miso soup that we eat every morning is one dish from the dimly lit houses of the past. I was once invited to a tea ceremony where miso was served; and when I saw the muddy, claylike color, quiet in a black lacquer bowl beneath the faint light of a candle, this soup that I usually take without a second thought seemed somehow to acquire a real depth, and to become infinitely more appetizing as well. Much the same may be said of soy sauce. In the Kyoto-Osaka region a particularly thick variety of soy is served with raw fish, pickles, and greens; and how rich in shadows is the viscous sheen of the liquid, how beautifully it blends with the darkness. White foods too—white miso, bean curn, fish cake, the white meat of fish—lose much of their beauty in a bright room. And above all there is rice. A glistening black lacquer rice cask set off in a dark corner is both beautiful to behold and a powerful stimulus to the appetite. Then the lid is briskly lifted, and this pure white freshly boiled food, heaped in its black container, each and every grain gleaming like a pearl, sends forth billows of warm steam—here is a sight no Japanese can fail to be moved by. Our cooking depends upon shadows and is inseparable from darkness. 

I possess no specialized knowledge of architecture, but I understand that in the Gothic cathedral of the West, the roof is thrust up and up so as to place its pinnacle as high in the heavens as possible—and that herein is thought to lie its special beauty. In the temples of Japan, on the other hand, a roof of heavy tiles is first laid out, and in the deep, spacious shadows creates by the eaves the rest of the structure is built. Nor is this true only of temples; in the palaces of the nobility and the houses of the common people, what first strikes the eye is the massive roof of tile or thatch and the heavy darkness that hangs beneath the eaves. Even at midday cavernous darkness spreads over all beneath the roof’s edge, making entryway, doors, walls, and pillars all but invisible. The grand temples of Kyoto—Chion’in, Honganji—and the farmhouses of the remote countryside are alike in this respect: like most buildings of the past their roofs give the impression of possessing far greater weight, height, and surface than all that stands beneath the eaves. 

In making for ourselves a place to live, we first spread a parasol to throw a shadow on the earth, and in the pale light of the shadow we put together a house. There are of course roofs on Western houses too, but they are less to keep off the sun than to keep off the wind and the dew; even from without it is apparent that they are built to create as few shadows as possible and to expose the interior to as much light as possible. If the roof of a Japanese house is a parasol, the roof of a Western house is no more than a cap, with as small a visor as possible so as to allow the sunlight to penetrate directly beneath the eaves. There are no doubt all sorts of reasons—climate, building materials—for the deep Japanese eaves. The fact that we did not use glass, concrete, and bricks, for instance, made a low roof necessary to keep off the driving wind and rain. A light room would no doubt have been more convenient for us, too, than a dark room. The quality that we call beauty, however, must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty’s ends. 

And so it has come to be that the beauty of a Japanese room depends on a variation of shadows, heavy shadows against light shadows—it has nothing else. Westerners are amazed at the simplicity of Japanese rooms, perceiving in them no more than ashen walls bereft of ornament. Their reaction is understandable, but it betrays a failure to comprehend the mystery of shadows. Out beyond the sitting room, which the rays of the sun can at best but barely reach, we extend the eaves or build on a veranda, putting the sunlight at still greater a remove. The light from the garden steals in but dimly through paper-paneled doors, and it is precisely this indirect light that makes for us the charm of a room. We do our walls in neutral colors so that the sad, fragile, dying rays can sink into absolute repose. The storehouse, kitchen, hallways, and such may have a glossy finish, but the walls of the sitting room will almost always be of clay textured with fine sand. A luster here would destroy the soft fragile beauty of the feeble light. We delight in the mere sight of the delicate glow of fading rays clinging to the surface of a dusky wall, there to live out what little life remains to them. We never tire of the sight, for to us this pale glow and these dim shadows far surpass any ornament. And so, as we must if we are not to disturb the glow, we finish the walls with sand in a single neutral color. The hue may differ from room to room, but the degree of difference in color as in shade, a difference that will seem to exist only in the mood of the viewer. And from these delicate differences in the hue of the walls, the shadows in each room take on a tinge particularly their own. 

Of course the Japanese room does have its picture alcove, and in it a hanging scroll and a flower arrangement. But the scroll and the flowers serve not as ornament but rather to give depth to the shadows. We value a scroll above all for the way it blends with the walls of the alcove, and thus we consider the mounting quite as important as the calligraphy or painting. Even if the greatest masterpiece will lose its worth as a scroll if it fails to blend with the alcove, while a work of no particular distinction may blend beautifully with the room and set off to unexpected advantage both itself and its surroundings. Wherein lies the power of otherwise ordinary work to produce such an effect? Most often the paper, the ink, the fabric of the mounting will possess a certain look of antiquity, and this look of antiquity will strike just the right balance with the darkness of the alcove and room. 

We have all had the experience, on a visit to one of the great temples of Kyoto or Nara, of being shown a scroll, one of the temple’s treasures, hanging in a large, deeply recessed alcove. So dark are these alcoves, even in bright daylight, that we can hardly discern the outlines of the work; all we can do is listen to the explanation of the guide, follow as best we can the all-but-invisible brush strokes, and tell ourselves how magnificent a painting it must be. Yet the combination of that blurred old painting and the dark alcove is one of absolute harmony. The lack of clarity, far from disturbing us, seems rather to suit the painting perfectly. For the painting here is nothing more than another delicate surface upon which the faint, frail light can play; it performs precisely the same function as the sand-textured wall. This is why we attach such importance to age and patina. A new painting, even one done in ink monochrome or subtle pastels, can quite destroy the shadows of an alcove, unless it is selected with the greatest care. 

A Japanese room might be likened to an inkwash painting, the paper-paneled shoji being the expanse where the ink is thinnest, and the alcove where it is the darkest. Whenever I see the alcove of a tastefully built Japanese room, I marvel at our comprehension of the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of shadow and light. For the beauty of the alcove is not the work of some clever device. An empty space is marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that the light drawn into its forms dim shadows within emptiness. There is nothing more. And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquility holds sway. The “mysterious Orient” of which Westerners speak probably refers to the uncanny silence of these dark places. And even we as children would feel an inexpressible chill as we peered into the depths of an alcove to which the sunlight had never penetrated. Where lies the key to this mystery? Ultimately it is the magic of shadows. Were the shadows to be banished from its corners, the alcove would in that instant revert to mere void. 

This was the genius of our ancestors, that by cutting off the light from this empty space they imparted to the world of shadows that formed there a quality of mystery and depth superior to that of any wall painting or ornament. The technique seems simple, but was by no means so simply achieved. We can imagine with little difficulty what extraordinary pains were taken with each invisible detail—the placement of the window in the shelving recess, the depth of the crossbeam, the height of the threshold. But for me the most exquisite touch is the pale white glow of the shoji in the sturdy bay; I need only pause before it and I forget the passage of time. 

The sturdy bay, as the name suggests, was originally a projecting window built to provide a place for reading. Over the years it came to be regarded as no more than a source of light for the alcove; but most often it serves not so much to illuminate the alcove as to soften the sidelong rays from without, to filter them through paper panels. There is a cold and desolate tinge to the light by the time it reaches these panels. The little sunlight from the garden that manages to make its way beneath the eaves and through the corridors has by then lost its power to illuminate, seems drained of the complexion of life. It can do no more than accentuate the whiteness of the paper. I sometimes linger before these panels and study the surface of the paper, bright, but giving no impression of brilliance. 

In temple architecture the main room stands at a considerable distance from the garden; so dilute is the light there that no matter what the season, on fair days or cloudy, morning, midday, or evening, the pale, white glow scarcely varies. And the shadows at the interstices of the ribs seem strangely immobile, as if dust collected in the corners had become a part of the paper itself. I blink in uncertainty at this dreamlike luminescence, feeling as though some misty film were blunting my vision. The light from the pale white paper, powerless to dispel the heavy darkness of the alcove, is instead repelled by the darkness, creating a world of confusion where dark and light are indistinguishable. Have not you yourselves sensed a difference in the light that suffuses such a room, a rare tranquility not found in ordinary light? Have you never felt a sort of fear in the face of the ageless, a fear that in that room you might lose all consciousness of the passage of time, that untold years might pass and upon emerging you should find you had grown old and gray?

by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, (Leete’s Island Books, 1977) |  Read more:

Image: Wikipedia

[ed. When I realized this famous Tanizaki essay was published in 1933, I thought surely it must be out of copyright by now. And here it is. From Wikipedia:]

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In Praise of Shadows (陰翳礼讃, In'ei Raisan) is an essay by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki about Japanese aesthetics. Tanizaki's observations include cultural notes on customs and tradition, people, historical places and buildings, discussion of various materials and craft techniques, as well as food and even unusual recipes as seen through the author's metaphorical lens of light and shadow. [...]

The essay consists of 16 sections that discuss traditional Japanese aesthetics in contrast with change. Comparisons of light with darkness are used to contrast Western and Asian cultures. The West, in its striving for progress, is presented as continuously searching for light and clarity, while the subtle and subdued forms of East Asian art and literature are seen by Tanizaki to represent an appreciation of shadow and subtlety, closely relating to the traditional Japanese concept of sabi. In addition to contrasting light and dark, Tanizaki further considers the layered tones of various kinds of shadows and their power to reflect low sheen materials like gold embroidery, patina and cloudy crystals. In addition, he distinguishes between the values of gleam and shine.

The text presents personal reflections on topics as diverse as architecture and its fittings, traditional crafts, finishes, jade, food, cosmetics and mono no aware (the art of impermanence). Tanizaki explores in close description the use of space in buildings, lacquerware by candlelight, monastery toilets and women in the dark of a brothel. The essay acts as "a classic description of the collision between the shadows of traditional Japanese interiors and the dazzling light of the modern age".

Bridesmaid Boxes - the Influencer-ification of the Bridal Party

Bachelorette parties and bridesmaid proposal boxes look increasingly like brand trips and PR mailers.

It had started with four words — “Will you marry me?” — which led Alaina to make a proposal of her own. About three months after her fiancé got down on one knee, a “complete surprise on an otherwise regular Sunday afternoon,” holding an elongated cushion-cut diamond, Alaina posed a question of her own. Five words this time, and six gift bags.

Each bag was tied together with a personalized silk ribbon that read each bridesmaid-to-be’s name and was filled with custom-monogrammed makeup, toiletries, travel perfumes (Kilian Paris’s Love, Don’t Be Shy), and other goodies you’d find stocked at Sephora — and some you wouldn’t, like mini-shooters and Crate & Barrel glasses. Inside, a note on beautiful cardstock made the same request, verbalized to her lifelong friends: “Will you be my bridesmaid?”

They had taken her only about three hours to complete. And about $345 — per box.

For Alaina, it was a reasonable price “given that these women have been with me for my whole life, and they’ll be spending a similar amount to attend the wedding festivities,” the 28-year-old says. Her inspiration for these ceremonial boxes, and what to include inside, was “Instagram, of course.”

The internet is awash with these so-called bridesmaid proposal boxes, a now-ceremonial way of asking the person who loved you through every season of life, through every bad ex and bad haircut, to stand beside you on your big day — wrapped in tissue paper or embossed with a custom monogram. Each bag is seeded with photogenic products like full-size Nécessaire bodywashes, expensive lip oils, and silk pillowcases. Sometimes, during a scroll, you’ll even catch a box with Maison Margiela Replica candles ($72) that match the scent, or vibe, of the wedding each of the girls is enlisted to participate in.

It stretches beyond the proposal box, too, as bachelorette parties now have welcome bags and curated itineraries. It all feels like a sliver of influencer culture unsurprisingly encroaching on the wedding universe: These moments are looking more sponsored than bridal.

Charissa, a 36-year-old New York–based bride-to-be, says that’s exactly the point: for these gift bags to feel like a brand present or mailer. Charissa gave her six bridesmaids Moët & Chandon and handwritten notes (done by an Etsy calligrapher for $30 per note, wax seal and all) during such pre-wedding events because she wanted the experience to feel elevated, like something you’d get at a luxury hotel. Like something you’d see brides doing for their girls on Instagram.

“I never felt like I had to do it — I wanted to,” she says, adding that if her friends are spending money to celebrate her, she wants to spoil them in return with a curated experience.

For some brides, the bridesmaid proposal box is simply the first installment in a fully branded wedding universe, one that begins long before invitations go out. What starts with a proposal to join the bride at the altar often extends into the destination bachelorette party, where trips come with themes (“Palms and Prosecco,” “Million-Dollar Cowgirl”) because it’s no longer enough to just go to Palm Springs or Jackson Hole. You now have to play into the larger concept, too.

That often means a chunk of the cost quietly falls to the bridesmaids. Sometimes it’s buying entirely new outfits to dress for the theme; other times it’s funding it outright. “There’s, like, a fully cohesive aesthetic rollout before a trip even begins,” says Mallory, 28, a Chicago-based attendee of four weddings this year — three of which she’s in. As a result, she’s become “deeply” familiar with personalization sites like Minted and Zazzle, where bridesmaids create custom branding for the weekend. “Custom logos are printed on everything: Champagne bottles, menus, posters, itineraries,” she says, which can sometimes total anywhere from $250 to $300 for a bride who is all in. “And the other times when the brides pay for it, we’re still expected to match the theme.”

Kate, 31, says she had “already shelled out thousands for the bride’s plane ticket to St. Pete for her bachelorette, plus meals and a chartered boat,” but what really sent her over the edge was the “$80 Venmo request from the maid of honor for matching ‘Bride Tribe’ sunglasses, T-shirts, and palm-tree earrings.” She adds that she never agreed to the Amazon and Shein orders but was charged anyway.

At least the bride is expected to reward such falling in line. At a bachelorette party’s rented Airbnb, you can expect balloons and matching PJs she’s laid on the bed for her girls; L.L.Bean totes stuffed with costly lip balm or eye masks. Mason Pearson brushes are in the bathroom — or, if the budget doesn’t stretch that far, Wet Brushes will do. An embroidered cowboy hat for their arrival in Aspen; matching Alo sets for a group workout no one particularly asked for. “That’s $397.90 per girl,” one TikTok commenter points out in a video of one of these tote bags with similar-style products. [...]

If you can’t charter a private plane to St. Barts like influencer Danielle Pheloung, better known as @acquiredstyle, for her “Acquired a Husband” bachelorette, the very least you can do, according to TikTok, is DM brands for freebies. This usually looks like brides or bridesmaids directly messaging businesses or PR contacts on Instagram with a quick pitch (“We’re planning a bachelorette trip — would love to try your product”) in hopes of getting gifted items in exchange for tags or social posts. “I reached out to 425 companies to ask for PR,” says @endo.adeno.girlie in one of many viral videos explaining how to do it, telling her followers which specific brands will send free products. Videos like hers follow a simple logic: The more products you can get for free, the less likely anyone is to get hit with a moan-inducing post-bachelorette Venmo request. Michelle, 29, calls herself a “failed maid of honor” because her group didn’t cold-email enough brands for freebies after watching TikToks that explained how to score sponsored Liquid IV packets and hangover kits in exchange for social-media exposure. [...]

Lindsay, 28, a Michigan-based bride who is getting married in August, says she “understands” how it’s easy to get carried away; when you’re freshly engaged, you want every moment to feel as big as the proposal or the wedding. “I don’t regret it, no,” she says, looking back at the Dutch chocolates and silk pillowcases that she gifted to each bridesmaid. The bridesmaid proposal is something she will remember forever, because she was able to present the boxes at a girls’ lunch, with a table reserved for the most important people in her life. “But it does add up fast. And now, with hindsight, I realize I could’ve maybe budgeted it differently.”

by Morgan Sullivan, The Cut |  Read more:

Image: The Cut/Getty

[ed. Influencer-ification. How to take a nice ceremony and turn it into a (more) stress-filled nightmare.]

How Everthing Became Left or Right “Coded”

In America today, there are conservative and liberal jeans (Levi Strauss versus Wrangler), beer (Heineken versus Coors), and footwear (Birkenstocks versus cowboy boots). The MAGA movement itself is seen as tied to Kid Rock and eating steak.

In an era when partisan division is so febrile that acceptance of political violence has grown and violent political attacks are on the rise — the Charlie Kirk assassination being the latest of great note — it is hard to remember that it wasn’t always so.

As recently as the 1950s, Americans were politically calm — so calm that a committee of the American Political Science Association urged the two parties to accentuate their differences, to provide a “true choice.” In 1964, Barry Goldwater campaigned for president as the Republican who would provide “a choice, not an echo” and was badly defeated for his pains. Some political scientists applauded the political apathy of the era as both a sign of popular satisfaction and a shock absorber for the system. Four generations on, there seems to be too much party difference and too little political apathy.

Why have we gotten to a place where even open-toed sandals are left-wing?

Simple answers might point to combative politicians, President Donald Trump above all, to aggressive social movements like the Tea Party and Black Lives Matter, or to changes in the media such as the rise of cable television and then online feeds like Facebook and TikTok. But the key dynamic, many researchers have found, is the increasing proportion of Americans for whom political affiliation is central to their identities — to what they think, to what they feel, to who they feel they are.

I need to stop right here: This assertion does not directly apply to most Americans. In 2024, only 30 percent of Americans described themselves as “strong” Democrats or Republicans (only about half even claimed a political party). The largest chunk of Americans are not partisans. About politics, they care little, talk little, consume little, and know little — and they vote little (although when they vote they determine who holds power, the partisans being evenly divided).

Still, the politicization of so many Americans matters even for the apolitical. The latter are the audience for the political theater — which Americans find “exhausting” — and when they do vote, usually only every four years, they are presented with polarized options. For the nation as a whole, it means less constructive cooperation and more animosity and anger. 

Still, the politicization of so many Americans matters even for the apolitical. The latter are the audience for the political theater — which Americans find “exhausting” — and when they do vote, usually only every four years, they are presented with polarized options. For the nation as a whole, it means less constructive cooperation and more animosity and anger. [...]

A different story of political polarization

But politicization entails much more than the parties dividing on policies. Politicization has now gone beyond shaping many Americans’ stances on issues or even their cultural tastes, to shaping who they are — whom they date (and marry and befriend), what communities they join, what religious faiths they profess, what life-and-death choices they make.

In the last several decades or so, more Americans have sorted or changed their views on many disparate policies — for instance, on immigration, abortion, war, climate, gender, and crime — to better fit with their identities as Democrats or Republicans. Views on abortion, so deeply tied to one’s moral intuitions, provide a dramatic example. In the early 1970s, Republicans were about as likely as Democrats to agree in the NORC/University of Chicago General Social Survey that it should be possible for “a pregnant woman to obtain a legal abortion if she is married and does not want any more children.” Fifty years later, overall American opinion had not changed, but Republican support for such abortions had dropped by about 20 percentage points and Democratic support had increased by about 15 points; abortion had become a defining party issue. Similarly, in 1997 members of the two parties had, as recorded by a Gallup poll, the same level of concern about whether the effects of global warming had begun; by 2021, there was a 53-point gap between increasingly worried Democrats and increasingly sanguine Republicans.

One way this polarization could happen is that people switched parties to fit their evolving views on subjects such as abortion or the climate. Some of that surely happened. But much research shows that people as or more often switched their views to fit their political identity. This shows up in studies that follow people over several years and find that people often change their positions on a substantive topic after they first change their political affiliation, having adopted the new affiliation perhaps because of political events unrelated to that topic or because of new personal circumstances such as a marriage, a new job, or a new neighborhood. In other words, to follow the abortion example, many became Republicans (perhaps because of racial beliefs or new friends) and then became pro-life.

Increasingly, even survey respondents’ reports of what is real, such as whether the economy is getting better or worse or whether inequality is growing, vary by party. Party has become so important that opinions on how much racial discrimination exists now differ more between Democrats and Republicans than between Black people and white people; views of income inequality differ more by party than by individuals’ incomes.

Political position has come, for more Americans, to connect with all sorts of tastes far beyond government policy— e.g., listening to Kid Rock or Beyoncé, going to museums or playing golf, watching Curb Your Enthusiasm or Antiques Roadshow. Consumption as political signaling — for example, coffee branded by political affiliation — has been vividly demonstrated in (my own) Berkeley, California: First, high rates of Tesla ownership displaying climate liberalism (as well as displaying a healthy bank account), and then high rates of protests against Tesla, displaying DOGE-fighting liberalism.

Some of this politicization might be dismissed as simply posturing, owning the libs, or what pollsters call “expressive responding.” But the politicization goes deeper than that.

Party affiliation seems to increasingly determine, and not just reflect, Americans’ important personal decisions. Much of the discussion about “affective polarization” — that more Democrats and Republicans nowadays actually hate the other side — started with a study reporting that more Americans were displeased in 2010 than were in 1960 with the prospect of gaining a son- or daughter-in-law of a different party. Years later, many single Americans rule out dating someone with differing political views.

A 2020 survey found that about half of both Democrats and Republicans have intimate social networks made up exclusively of people who share their politics. Survey respondents often see more agreement with the people in their lives than actually exists, but nonetheless, this homogeneity is substantial and has increased. (Social homogeneity, in turn, encourages partisanship and hostility.)

Such political homogeneity results in part from who individuals choose to spend time with and who they choose to avoid. Strong partisans prefer to be with the like-minded and to avoid conversations with the unlike-minded. And they tend to drop friends (not so much family) who disagree with them politically. By one estimate, 15 percent of Americans “have ended a friendship over politics.” Political homogeneity also results in part from the influence of family, friends, and neighbors to conform to their views.

Political identity affects people in less explicit ways, too. Americans have increasingly segregated themselves geographically — not primarily because they are seeking neighbors who are fellow party members, although some of that is going on, but because the reasons people move — or decide not to move — increasingly connect with party. Those, for example, who like large houses and big yards tend to end up in red neighborhoods, while those who like to walk to local amenities tend to end up in blue neighborhoods. Both ways, party and neighborhood have become more linked. A 2021 study concluded that many “voters live with virtually no [local] exposure to voters from the other party.”

Yet more striking, Americans have increasingly lined up what they profess religiously to fit what they profess politically. Religion and politics have long been entangled in the United States — in 19th-century fights over alcohol prohibition, Sunday postal service, and which version of the Bible should be read in public schools, for instance; this was Americans’ faith driving their politics. For about 30 years now, politics have been joining with religion and, importantly, political identity is driving expressions of faith.

It first became clear in the 2000s that those identifying as Democrats, liberals, and moderates were leaving organized religion and describing themselves as having no religion (as “nones”) in great part as a reaction against what they saw as the conservative politicization of the church, especially on lifestyle issues.

Then, evidence in the last decade or so accumulated that more conservatives were starting to profess faith, especially evangelical faith, probably for mirror-image reasons: to reject the secularism associated with liberal positions such as supporting gender transition. Ryan Burge, the dynamo researcher of Graphs about Religion, suggested to me that the recent leveling off of the growth of “nones” might be explained by conservatives’ view that non-affiliation had “become so linked to left-wing politics.” These conservatives “are functionally non-religious… but they still can’t bear to not ID as Christian on a survey.” That political affiliation has come to alter a significant number of Americans’ religious identities is profound testimony to the politicization of many Americans’ lives.

And then there is politics’ connection to life-and-death decisions. As might be expected, left and right differ on many health-related matters — childhood vaccines, cancer preventatives, and the dangers of tackle football, for example. But left and right also differ in health behavior, from diet, such as how much meat people eat, to exercise. One result is that residents of red counties more often tend to be obese than residents of blue counties, even taking into account race, poverty, and education.

The most tragic example was the Covid-19 pandemic. People in red states, where the vaccines were most resisted, died at higher rates than those in blue states; individual Republicans died at higher rates than individual Democrats. Hundreds of thousands of deaths can likely be attributed to political identity.

So what happened?

Seventy years ago, gender, race, and region determined Americans’ lifestyles, fortunes, and identities more than they do now; educational attainment and, increasingly, politics have become the key answer for many people to who they are.

by Claude S. Fischer, Vox | Read more:
Image: NurPhoto via Getty Images

Jagannath Paul
via: