So You Want to Learn Physics…

Introduction to the Second Edition

Nearly six years ago, I sat down at my desk and typed up a detailed guide for anyone who wanted to learn physics on their own. At the time, I had no idea how many people would read it and use it — my only goal was to put the information out there in a clear and straightforward way so that anyone who wanted to learn physics would have the self-study curriculum they needed. Since then, over six hundred thousand people have turned to this guide to study physics.

 

According to the emails I’ve received from readers, many of you have gone on to get undergraduate degrees in physics after following the curriculum in this guide (some of you are even now in graduate programs!), but the majority of those who have bookmarked and followed this guide — even all the way to the end! — have done so out of pure curiosity and for the sheer joy of understanding the incredible universe we inhabit.

The success of this guide is, I believe, a testament to two things.

First, that one of the most impactful things you can do is to share what you know with others, even if it doesn’t seem like a lot. I wasn’t able to become a professional physicist, but I was able to use my knowledge of undergraduate and graduate-level physics to type up a comprehensive and accessible curriculum that has helped hundreds of thousands of people learn physics. That’s pretty remarkable. If you are wondering what you have to offer the world, I hope you will think of this guide and consider what you might know that you can share with others.

Second, that there are so many people in the world who want to understand physics but are unable to study it formally in a university setting for any number of reasons. These same people are very serious about learning physics, and not for any career purposes but simply because they want to understand the universe, and they are and have been dreadfully underserved and underestimated by the academic physics community (who do not take them seriously because they aren’t studying at colleges and universities) and by the authors of contemporary and popular physics books and the publishers of those same books (who mostly just sell them books that assume most readers can never and will never really understand physics). When I wrote the first edition of this guide, I was pretty sure there were a lot more people out there who really wanted to learn physics — real physics — than academic physicists and publishers believed, and those were the people I wanted to help. As it turns out, there were even more of you than I could ever have imagined!

Well, after almost six years and lots of reader feedback, I decided that it was finally time to make a (lightly) updated version of this guide. I went back through the emails and comments I’ve received over the years, and then made a list of the most popular requests. I skimmed through all the books in the curriculum and a few new ones as well. I updated textbook editions, added more undergraduate-level electives, added a section of graduate-level electives, and made a few other small changes — all in the hope that this new version will be even more useful than the first.

As I wrote in the first edition: “Remember that anyone can learn physics…Whether you turn it into a hobby or a career, the pure joy of understanding the universe around us is one of the most beautiful experiences you can ever have in life.”

Godspeed!

You can still find the first edition here, on my old website:

Introduction to the First Edition

Over the past few years, ever since writing a blog post called “If Susan Can Learn Physics, So Can You,” I've been contacted by people from all backgrounds who are inspired and want to learn physics, but don't know where to start, what to learn, what to read, and how to structure their studies. I've spoken with single mothers who want to go back to school and study physics, tenured philosophy professors who want to learn physics so that they can make significant and informed contributions to philosophy of physics, high school students who want to know what they should read to prepare for an undergraduate education in physics, and people in dozens of various careers who want to really, really learn and understand physics simply for the joy of it.

This post is a condensed version of what I've sent to people who have contacted me over the years, outlining what everyone needs to learn in order to really understand physics.

The general physics education given in U.S. universities is divided into what is learned at the undergraduate level and what is covered in graduate courses, and I've divided my list in a similar way. Because each subject is built upon the previous subjects and the mathematics becomes more complex and difficult, it's important to learn each topic in the order presented below.

If you work through the all of the textbooks in the Undergraduate Physics list of this post, and master each of the topics, you'll have gained the knowledge equivalent of a Bachelor's Degree in Physics (and will be able to score well on the Physics GRE). If you work through the graduate core of the Graduate Physics textbooks, you'll have the equivalent knowledge of obtaining a Master's Degree in Physics. A PhD in Physics requires the graduate coursework as well as several years of research and a thesis, and the experience involved in a PhD isn't something that can be gained independently of a PhD program.

Remember that anyone can learn physics. It's no different from learning programming, from learning a musical instrument, from reading great literature. Whether you turn it into a hobby or a career, the pure joy of understanding the universe around us is one of the most beautiful experiences you can ever have in life.

by Susan Rigetti | Read more:
Image via:

We're in a Behavioral Sink

Back in the 1950s, this guy named John B. Calhoun built a rat paradise. Actually, he built several. He gave the rats everything they needed to live in peace and harmony. Then he sat back and watched.

He wanted to see what they'd do.

They didn't disappoint.

Or, I guess, they did.

Every single time, the rats ruined everything for themselves and each other. They never reached their carrying capacity, not even close. They overcrowded each other on purpose. They started competing for resources and fighting for no reason. It didn't matter how much food Calhoun gave them. It didn't matter how comfortable or how sanitary he made it. The rats always hit a social or psychological tipping point. After that, everything went to hell in a handbasket.

Calhoun's greatest failure was rat paradise 25.

It grew to about 2,000 rats and then fell all the way down to 27 before the end of the experiment. The nondominant beta rats started attacking each other, even when they had plenty of food and even girlfriends.

The females ran away.

They hid.

Even the dominant females started wounding their own babies and kicking them out of their nests before they were old enough to survive on their own. The mere presence of a dominant male triggered violent behavior. Eventually, the population became completely unproductive.

Nobody wanted to work anymore...

Their social bonds disintegrated. The rats became dysfunctional, violent, and withdrawn. Only a handful survived.

Those rats made it by cutting ties with civilization. They moved to remote areas of the paradise. They didn't do much except eat, sleep, and groom. They wandered around the edges, I guess for exercise.

Calhoun called them the beautiful ones.

After rat civilization collapsed, the beautiful ones kept their distance from each other. They didn't try to mate or rebuild.

They left each other alone.

Calhoun called these events behavioral sinks. It wasn't exactly a failure, either. He gained insights that we can learn from.

We're living through a behavioral sink right now.

Look around...

Corporations have been nurturing our worst impulses for a hundred years. They've conditioned generations of Americans to chase happiness through consumption. We even have a name for it:

Retail therapy.

When we discover the lie at the heart of consumerism, they throw a bunch of mindfulness seminars at us. They tell us we'd be happier living on a ranch or a farm, then they buy up all the farms. They tell us to spend more time with family, then they berate us for working from home.

No wonder we're going crazy. (...)

Look at how we're acting. We're voluntarily crowding into the least habitable cities and states. Look at the population growth in places like Texas, Arizona, and Florida. People should be trying to get out.

Instead, they're packing in.

We've got a big problem with angry young men who think they're doomed to spend the rest of their lives as incels. They're driving away women with their own crappy attitudes, but they don't see it. Young women are giving up. Some of them are just trying to get through one day at a time. Others think they can solve their problems by wearing seventeen friendship bracelets.

As a society, we’re not okay…

We're actually doing worse than the rats. We've created a handful of rich rats and allowed them to hoard all of our cheddar.

by Jessica Wildfire, Ok Doomer |  Read more:

Image: ShotPrime Studio

[ed. Note: Not the Rat Park study by Bruce K. Alexander in the late 70s that focused on addiction. This one is by John P. Calhoun looking at overcrowding and population densities. See also: The War for Normal (OD).]

Nutpicking

”If the best evidence of wackjobism you can find is a few anonymous nutballs commenting on a blog, then the particular brand of wackjobism you're complaining about must not be very widespread after all."
                                                                                                              —Kevin Drum


Nutpicking is the fallacious tactic of picking out and showcasing the nuttiest member(s) of a group as the best representative(s) of that group — hence, "picking the nut".

This fallacy is committed when an arguer cherry picks a poor representative of a group to use as an ad hominem against them. For example, anti-feminists frequently paint people who support feminism as "feminazis" by highlighting examples of ridiculous or cringeworthy behavior from select individuals, rather than critiquing points addressed in mainline feminist writings.

In other words: every movement has crazies, but not every movement is crazy. The proper questions are: "Does this movement promote crazies?" and "Does this movement have proportionately more crazies?"

The word is, cleverly, both a variation on the word "cherry picking" and a portmanteau of "nut" and "nitpicking" coined by Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum (and is thus sometimes called Kevin's Law or Drum's Law).

In scholarly circles, "nutpicking" is called the weak-man fallacy.  (...)

Basis

Nutpicking combines elements of several other fallacies; it primarily relies on guilt by association, as it seeks to tarnish a group's reputation by associating it with what the "nut" is saying or doing, knowing that their statements or actions are generally considered to be unacceptable, if not outright reprehensible. Secondly, it is a type of ad hominem, as it attacks an opponent's character (via the negative association), rather than countering the opponent's actual views or arguments.

The advent of the Internet (especially in conjunction with Sturgeon's Law) has made nutpicking far easier due to the massive expansion of recorded, publicly available and searchable material. Similar to Skarka's Law, it's practically always possible to find some random whackjob whose opinions can be associated with your opponent's school of thought, and it's certainly much easier than it would have been in ancient Greece.

Politics

The practice of nutpicking is employed most frequently in political debates as a method of invoking a false equivalence or tu quoque, where one side sifts through the blogs of people "on the other side" to hold up a nutty comment to say "You guys do it too!".

by RationalWiki |  Read more:

[ed. Hadn't heard this one before. Certainly widespread.]

I Would Prefer Not To

I’d prefer not to write about the future course of the economy, because who knows what comes next.

And I don’t need to write about the coverage, because a U.S. Senator has made the point so concisely and well. Brian Schatz, a Democrat of Hawaii, used the vestigial Xitter to make this point yesterday:

What is he referring to? An endless series of stories, most frequently in the New York Times but also in the WaPo and public broadcasting, which follow the following narrative arc:

• Report: Latest figures show things getting better for the economy. (Unemployment, inflation, supply chain, stock values, you name it). [ed. Medicare drug pricing reform]

• Economic “analysis”: But things probably will get worse.

• Political “analysis”: Why do people feel so bad about the economy? And why that’s a problem for Biden.

Here is how this shows up in news play. A headline this past week from the NYT: 

And one the week before:

One from Politico this month:

And one from The Atlantic:

For whatever reason, the Wall Street Journal’s news—not editorial—pages have been much better in this regard.

Why do people feel so “bad” about an economy that by all measurable indicators is getting so much better? Gee, I dunno.

by James Fallows, Breaking the News |  Read more:

Images X, NYT, Politico, The Atlantic

[ed. Glad to see Mr. Fallows has a Substack now (see also: the post following this one, about flight safety). Another post worth reading: Forgotten Americans (of a different type), and the essay it references: The Media Still Doesn’t Get Biden Voters (The Bulwark):]

Conservative and mainstream media don’t agree on much, but one point of consensus is that everyone should work harder to understand Trump supporters. The implicit message: You don’t have to agree with the populist right, but you should be listening to, empathizing with, and engaging them more.

A common style of this coverage is the safari to “Trump Country,” in which journalists from various outlets, most of whom live in big metropolitan areas, go to a rural community or Rust Belt town and talk to Trump voters, often white, working-class men in diners. The resulting articles are often tautological—basically “Trump Supporters Support Trump”—and framed as if explaining to liberals who might think that Trump’s failures will cause some voters to abandon him that they won’t. A great example is a May 2019 New York Times story titled “There’s No Boom in Youngstown, but Blue-Collar Workers Are Sticking With Trump.” It’s such a well-trod trope that it’s inspired parodies and running jokes.  (...)

Reporters don’t do safaris to “Biden Country,” seeking to understand the voters who put him in the White House. (...)

As Bad as It Gets Without Body Bags

Two days ago I wrote about the latest airline “close call.” It happened before dawn this past Saturday, in near zero-visibility conditions, at the Bergstrom Airport in Austin.

—A Boeing 767 flown by FedEx was cleared to land, on a “Cat III” approach that allows an airliner to touch down safely even if the pilots cannot see the runway. Meanwhile a Boeing 737 flown by Southwest was cleared to take off from that same runway, directly in the descending airplane’s path.

—It appears that quick action and situational awareness by the FedEx crew prevented a mass-casualty disaster.

I’m writing today to highlight two online assessments of the incident. The first one greatly clarifies what happened and how things went wrong. The second argues that this should be seen not as an isolated mishap but as a warning sign.

1) ‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin.

The aviation site VASAviation has a useful YouTube animation that matches radio transmissions with an approximation of where the two planes were. You can watch it on the embedded version above (used with permission) or at this link.

Here is a viewer’s guide to what you’re seeing and hearing. The three voices you’ll hear are:

Austin Tower, the controller clearing the planes to land and take off.
FedEx 1432 Heavy, the Boeing 767 getting ready to land.
Southwest 708, the Boeing 737 getting ready to take off.

• Time 0:11, FedEx: The FedEx plane makes its inbound call. The crucial information it conveys is that it is on a “Cat III ILS” approach to Runway 18 Left in Austin. Cat III is essentially an auto-land procedure. Precise signals from beacons on the runway guide the plane (via its autopilot) all the way down, even through fog so thick that pilots never see the ground.

• Time 0:20, Tower: The Austin controller clears the FedEx plane to land. He gives them “RVR” readings — Runway Visibility Range. They indicate that visibility is very poor.

• Time 0:38, Southwest: Southwest announces that it is holding short of the same runway, and “we’re ready.” In aviation parlance this would mean: We’ve been through all the checklists and procedures, we’re all set to give it the gas and go.

• Time 0:42, Tower: The controller reads the same RVR information to Southwest. This takes until time 0:56. Then the controller says there’s a “heavy 767” three miles out for landing, and clears Southwest for takeoff.

I don’t know exact 767 approach speeds for this stage of flight, but it would cover 3 miles in hardly any time.

This transmission is sure to be the focus of attention. Why not add the familiar terms “cleared for immediate takeoff” or “cleared for takeoff, no delay”? (I have heard both of these phrases hundreds of times.) Why not tell Southwest “hold for landing traffic”, which I’ve also heard countless times? Why didn’t Southwest itself request a hold? Investigators will ask.

• Time 1:15, FedEx: The FedEx crew asks, “confirming we are cleared to land Runway 18 Left?” Meaning: “You know you’ve just put a plane in front of us, right?”

• Time 1:20, Tower: Confirms FedEx is cleared to land, lets them know that a 737 will be departing “before your arrival.”

• Time 1:54, Tower: “Southwest 708, confirm on the roll?” Note that this comes 34 seconds after the previous transmission, and nearly a minute after the tower cleared Southwest for takeoff. In that minute, the FedEx plane has covered most of the distance to the airport. Presumably the visibility is so bad that the tower can’t even see the Southwest plane sitting on the runway. So the tower controller is asking: Hey, are you moving?

Southwest immediately replies, “rolling now.”

Investigators will also want to find out what the Southwest crew was doing through this time, in the minute after saying “we’re ready” and while knowing that another plane was about to land.

• Time 2:14, FedEx: “SOUTHWEST, ABORT!” This is the most unusual transmission in the series, because it involves one air crew (rather than the controllers) giving instructions to another.

Presumably at just this instant the FedEx crew has glimpsed the runway and seen the Southwest airliner directly ahead. On the chance that Southwest is not yet going fast enough for takeoff, FedEx is apparently hoping the other plane can slam on its brakes and stay on the runway. That way the Southwest plane would not fly up into their immediate path. FedEx is already beginning their “missed approach” climb away from danger.

• Time 2:21, FedEx: “FedEx is on the go.” This immediately follows the “abort!” call to Southwest. The FedEx crew is avoiding the collision by aborting their own landing. This message indicates that they are executing the standard “missed approach” procedures, starting with a rapid climb.

Up to this point the FedEx crew has taken total responsibility for the situation: asking about the danger with its earlier “confirming cleared to land” call; trying to warn Southwest once that plane came into view; immediately climbing away from the airport. At this point neither the tower nor Southwest has weighed in. It’s not clear that the tower controller has any idea where the Southwest plane is or what it is doing.

• Time 2:29, Tower: “Southwest 708, you can turn right when able.” The tower controller has heard the “abort” request; apparently he thinks that Southwest is still on the ground (and presumably he cannot see it); and he means for Southwest to get off the runway and turn onto a taxiway.

Southwest instantly replies “Negative.” Usually the aviation lingo would be “unable.” But aviation protocol also dictates this priority-list in emergencies: Aviate, navigate, communicate—in that order. Southwest is climbing out, and the planes are on a course to collide — though perhaps neither Southwest nor the controllers realize that. Niceties of terminology don’t matter.

• Time 2:50, Tower: Finally the controller starts giving the two planes instructions to keep them out of the other’s way. You can listen through the end of the tape. The FedEx crew is The Right Stuff-style unflappable the whole time.

What went awry here? That will be for investigators to work out. But based on current info, the group that did everything it could and more was that cockpit crew for FedEx. Admiration to them.

2. ‘Safety Systems Gone Wrong’

I’ve written countless times about the amazing safety record of modern U.S. airlines, about the redundant “what if?” protocols that keep problems from becoming disasters; about the relentless aviation-world commitment to learn from errors.

On his site “WWVB: What Would Vannevar Blog?”, a retired air traffic controller argues that these recent runway incursions are signs of deeper and more dangerous problems.

I encourage you to read the whole thing. But the gist is below. The “Tenerife” he refers to is the deadliest disaster in aviation history, when one 747 ran into another on a foggy runway.

This Austin situation is awful. As bad as it gets without body bags….

This was a total system failure. These airplanes were not separated by any good fortune of serendipitous timing. The only thing preventing another Tenerife was the FedEx crew's situational awareness and the breath of god.

American aviation is a system with different parts and priorities, checks and balances, and really quite a bit of public transparency. This system, like all systems, can be studied and improved. The people who study the American ATC system have been shouting for at least twenty years that the next major airplane disaster will look like a particular scenario.

by James Fallows, Breaking the News |  Read more:

Image: YouTube

[ed. See also: In the Air, on Thin Ice? (BtN); also, Bad Breaks? Or a System That's Breaking? (BtN); and, America has the world’s safest air travel but sucks so bad at car safety (Vox).]

What Consumers Earn in Interest Income vs. What they Pay in Interest Expense

Treasury bills up to six month all yield over 5.5%. One-year T-bills yield around 5.4%. This is money that is deemed to have no credit risk, and minuscule duration risk. Lots of FDIC-insured brokered CDs (sold through a broker), and some CDs sold directly by banks are offered at around 5.5%. Money-market funds yield over 5%. FDIC-insured high-yield savings accounts yield over 4%. Consumers have many trillions of dollars in these investments, especially older consumers that are more conservative with their nest egg.

And after having gotten ripped off for years by the Fed’s interest-rate repression and QE, and after having gotten screwed by their banks that pay 0.2%, they’re taking their money where the income is, and this movement of funds has forced banks to pay more or lose deposits and collapse, and interest income has surged.

Consumers, lots of consumers, with many trillions of dollars in these instruments are finally breathing a sigh of relief, and they’re spending some of this money, which is in part why consumer spending has grown, despite the higher interest rates.

On the other side are the consumers that are paying higher interest rates on money they borrow. But 70% of household debt is in mortgages, and after the refinancing boom in 2020 through 2021, the typical mortgage is a 30-year with a fixed rate of about 3% or even less. Those rates won’t change: 70% of the consumer debt won’t get higher interest rates until the homeowner sells the home, and the buyer has to get a 7.2% mortgage, but purchases of previously owned homes have plunged; or unless the homeowner refinances the loan, but refis have collapsed.

With the biggest portion of household debt just about locked in at these 3% rates, only new auto loans, interest-bearing credit-card debt, personal loans, etc. have seen higher interest rates and higher interest payments.

So how much more interest income did consumers earn from higher interest rates on their interest-bearing assets, and how much more in interest payments did they make due to these higher rates on their debts?

Interest income earned by consumers on their assets jumped to $1.82 trillion seasonally adjusted annual rate in Q2, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Note, this is their interest income on tens of trillions of dollars in interest-paying assets. This income was up by $175 billion since the beginning of 2022, when the Fed started hiking interest rates (red in the chart below).

Interest payments on consumer debt rose to $462 billion seasonally adjusted annual rate in Q2, up by $180 billion since the Fed started hiking interest rates (green): (...)

In other words: higher interest rates are not constraining consumer spending in aggregate: they constrain the spending of some consumers, and are filling the wallets of other consumers.

This additional spending power is particularly important for retirees who are on a fixed income, such as Social Security or a pension. If they have $300,000 in savings, two years ago they earned nearly nothing from it, and now they’re earning $15,000 in interest income a year, and they’re plowing some of that interest income back into the economy, creating new demand.

by Wolf Richter, Wolf Street |  Read more:

Image: Wolf Street

[ed. Finally, all us risk averse chickens may be getting a break. Even one month CDs are going for 5.40% now. See also: Entire Housing Market, Buyers and Sellers, May Have Shrunk by 20% to 25% because of the 3% Mortgages; and, The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America, August Update:]

Jazz Kissa

We Need More Jazz Vinyl Cafés (HB):

"If you’re unfamiliar with the jazz vinyl café concept, don’t feel bad. They don’t get a lot of attention outside of Japan—where they are known as jazz kissa (ジャズ喫茶)."

Images: uncredited
[ed. A favored occupation of many of Haruki Murakami's protagonists.]

Loyalty-Test

Would your partner cheat? These ‘Testers’ will give you an answer. Loyalty-Test, a paid online service, was created to help you trap your partner. But what is it actually testing?

Caden Redmond, a college student in West Palm Beach, Fla., was on TikTok in April flirting with a woman living in South America. While writing to her via direct message, he told her he had never been to her home country but was planning a trip soon.

The conversation was going smoothly. He asked if she would show him around when he arrived; she said that would be cool. He called her cute, and she called him cute back. At one point, she said she “can’t wait” for him to get there.

Moments later, he took screenshots of their conversation, blocked the woman’s account and sent the images to her boyfriend.

“I just texted him and was like, ‘Hey, she said she wants to go out,’” Mr. Redmond said in a phone interview. “I sent him screenshots and he said, ‘OK, that’s enough, thank you.’”

Mr. Redmond, 19, was hired by the man to test his girlfriend’s loyalty, and according to him, she failed, leading her boyfriend to dump her. All the arrangements to lay the trap were made through Loyalty-Test, a service that allows people to hire “testers” to flirt with their significant others online to see whether they respond to the romantic advances or remain faithful.

Mr. Redmond charges $100 a test and has conducted five since joining the site this spring. Sometimes it takes just one DM exchange; other times it’s two to three days of online conversation: He determines what is included in his flat fee on a case-by-case basis. He only tests women, he said, and he doesn’t share any sexually explicit messages or private information of his customers and wouldn’t conduct tests on behalf of anyone he knows personally.

“I don’t aim to make people cheat,” said Mr. Redmond, who is a running back for Keiser University’s football team and a TikTok and Instagram creator. “I just do it because I’ve been cheated on, and I feel like if someone wants to know, they should know from someone who is actually not going to take their girlfriend.”

“That’s part of the job: Never follow through,” he added.

Since beginning in January, Loyalty-Test has brought aboard 30 testers — like ride-share drivers, they are free to take on as many or as few clients as they wish — and has been used by roughly 1,000 anxious customers who are unsure about their partners’ loyalty, according to Brandan Balasingham, 27, the website’s founder. (...)

To get people to sign up as testers and customers, Mr. Balasingham posted listings on job sites like Indeed, Handshake and Backstage. He also searched for microinfluencers to promote the service. He offered a $20 signing bonus to anyone who signed up as a tester, he said, and ran ads on Google with terms like “how can I test my husband?”

It doesn’t take much to be approved to be a tester: just an active Instagram account (it doesn’t have to use a real name) and an agreement to abide by Loyalty-Test’s terms. (...)

“We have a huge variety of testers,” he said. “And on the website, you can filter it down to whatever your partner would be interested in.”

by Gina Cherelus, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Getty

[ed. Liars, lying to liars for liars. Little wonder dating has become such a minefield these days.]

Martin Scorsese - You Gotta Be Serious

American Express Commercial

via: YouTube

I Wanna Hold Your Hand

Paul McCartney on the anniversary of George Harrison's death.

via: Ted Gioia, X, Facebook

From Dance Floor to Dashboard: How Techo is Helping Change the Sound of Cars

Electric vehicles are giving automobile companies a chance to reinvent how cars sound – and many are turning to producers to help them create radically new sound palettes.

“I’m driving in a black on black in black Porsche 924.” With these words in his classic 1985 track, “Night Drive (Thru-Babylon),” Juan Atkins made explicit the nascent connection between techno and cars.

It was not unprecedented. The first major piece of electronic pop music, Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn,” was about driving down the highway, and Gary Numan evoked cars as safe spaces in his landmark “Cars.”

But Atkins, recording as Model 500, connected the dots between the Detroit automobile assembly lines, the man/machine fusion of the automobile, and techno production, itself a kind of cyborg relationship between musician and electronic instrument.

The Sound of Silence

With the rise in popularity of electric vehicles (EV), car manufacturers are taking the opportunity to redefine the sound of the automobile. Aside from tires rolling on pavement, EV are almost completely quiet. There’s no engine noise because there’s no combustion engine. Because of various safety concerns, EV are required to make some kind of sound to alert pedestrians to their presence. Just what form that sound will take, however, is up to the companies themselves.

While some manufacturers have stuck with the old script, synthesizing the sound of old-school engines, others are getting more creative. There are cars with samples of the human voice as part of the ‘engine’ noise. Another incorporates a didgeridoo. These are not machine sounds but essentially human sounds. And the people championing this redefinition of how a car should sound are often electronic musicians.

The Challenge of Electric

Richard Devine straddles two worlds. He’s known as a musician but he’s also a sound designer. This includes cars. He’s lent his talents to Jaguar, on the C-X75 prototype and I-PACE, working on both engine and interior sounds.

“I use many applications (for sound design),” Richard explains, “but for these projects, I used mostly digital synthesis-based systems like Symbolic Sound’s Kyma, a hardware and software environment for creative sound design, live performance, and scientific exploration, and other programs like Spear (Sinusoidal Partial Editing Analysis and Resynthesis).”

While Kyma and SPEAR are high-end, professional applications (sound designers have long used Kyma in major Hollywood films, for example), Richard also employed software that we as electronic music producers will know: Max/MSP and Native Instruments Reaktor. “I also used Max/MSP and Reaktor a bit in the design phase, as most of what I had to design was based on additive synthesis. Furthermore, I needed to reproduce specific harmonics and the easiest way to do that was a combination of real-time synthesis, resynthesis, and additive synthesis.” Yes, there are Reaktor and Max/MSP sounds in Jaguar cars. (...)

As cars are dynamic, the sound engine has to be as well.

The sound design is more involved than just chucking a few waveforms into a sample player. Cars are almost like instruments; they respond dynamically to the driver and provide immediate feedback.“ The system used a combination of samples and real-time synthesis to be played and controlled by the user as they would press the acceleration pedal,” explains Richard. “I spent many months analyzing the sound of previous Jaguar combustion-based engines. I did a harmonic analysis study of those engine recordings so I could take a bit of the past and incorporate that sound into the new system. It still had that signature purr of an older Jaguar that the customers had been accustomed to but with an updated, futuristic sound.”

by Adam Douglas, Attack |  Read more:
Image: Richard Devine

[ed. Probably like the difference between real drumming and a drum machine.]

Nail Houses

In the dynamic landscape of urban development and expansion, nail houses have emerged as intriguing symbols of resistance and individuality. Derived from the Chinese term "dingzihu" (钉子户), which translates to "nail house" in English, the phenomenon has gained significant attention in Japan. These unique structures represent the determination of property owners who refuse to yield to the pressure of modernization and urbanization. This essay explores the origin, significance, and impact of Japanese nail houses on the urban landscape and society.

The concept of nail houses originated in China during the early 21st century, but the idea quickly spread to other Asian countries, including Japan. The term "nail house" refers to a standalone building, usually a residential property, which continues to stand amidst rapid urban development despite facing pressure from developers and authorities to vacate or make way for new construction projects. The name "nail house" originates from the idea that these houses are like stubborn nails refusing to be removed from the ground.

Several factors contribute to the emergence of nail houses in Japan. One of the primary reasons is the country's rapid urbanization and continuous efforts to modernize infrastructure. As Japanese cities expand to accommodate the growing population and economic activities, old neighborhoods often face redevelopment, leading to displacement and demolishing of older buildings.

Another significant factor is the Japanese cultural value attached to properties. Owning a piece of land or a house has historically been seen as a symbol of stability, success, and family heritage. For some property owners, their houses have been in their families for generations, making it emotionally challenging to let go of their homes.

Japanese nail houses are symbolic expressions of resistance against the overwhelming force of urbanization. In the face of lucrative offers and pressure from developers and local authorities, the owners of these properties choose to stand their ground and protect their right to remain in the place they call home. In doing so, they become symbols of resilience, determination, and individuality.

 by Lonely Robot Theme |  Read more:

Images: uncredited

[ed. Imagine what determination this took. h/t]

Paid Late, or Never: Painters, Builders and Realtors Hit by China’s Property Crisis

Paid Late, or Never: Painters, Builders and Realtors Hit by China’s Property Crisis (NY Times)
Image: Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Keng Wai Lee and Marco Araldi — Aurum 8, 2022

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Tetsutaro Kamatani — Threesome, 2023

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Wish You Weren’t Here!

How tourists are ruining the world’s greatest destinations.

In the 20 years running up to Covid, international tourism doubled, to 2.4 billion arrivals in 2019. Overall, tourism last year was at 63% of its pre-Covid levels. Every place has its own post-Covid recovery story: Thailand has taken a while and is, at a state level at least, very welcoming to visitors; France has yet to see the same numbers of Chinese and Japanese visitors as before; in Paris – the most popular destination in the world – numbers this year are expected to be almost exactly as they were four years ago, 38.5 million. But people increasingly don’t want a bounce back. Tourist transport accounts for 5% of global emissions, and people are flying into the heatwaves those create. It is all a bit on the nose.

“I think it really helps to think of travelling as a kind of consumption,” says Frederik Fischer, CEO and founder of the social enterprise Neulandia, which connects creative digital workers to rural communities in Germany. “If you only consume another country, or you only consume a city, I’m not sure you’re really doing a benefit to the people and the place.”

Every location has a different challenge with tourists. On Catalan beaches, it may be that they are wearing too many clothes; in Barcelona, there are simply too many people. Whether that turns the entire place into a giant hotel (9.5 million people stayed in Barcelona’s hotels in 2019, a fivefold increase on 1990) or a human traffic-jam (one-way walking systems have been introduced in Barcelona’s city centre), it is impossible to imagine that being a pleasant, livable experience for the host citizens.  (...)

Amsterdam is at the vanguard of the stay-away movement. The city council decided this summer to close the cruise ship terminal in the city centre, specifically citing its sustainability goals. But there is always a subtext, which is often the text, with Dutch imprecations about tourism, which is that people (especially British people) go there specifically to behave like animals. There possibly isn’t a city in the world, medieval or not, that could cope with a visit from a group of Britons who had gone there specifically to get off their heads for 72 hours without stopping. An online campaign launched in the spring, with ads triggered whenever anyone in the UK entered “stag party Amsterdam” or “pub crawl Amsterdam” into a search engine, warned people of the possible consequences – fines, arrests, hospitalisation, making life completely miserable for residents – of hedonistic frenzy. The deputy mayor for economic affairs, Sofyan Mbarki, released a statement at the time: “Visitors are still welcome, but not if they misbehave and cause nuisance. As a city, we are saying: we’d rather not have this, so stay away.”

Other cities can increasingly relate to this. A video did the rounds this week in which a woman walks across the Trevi fountain in Rome to fill her water bottle. In June, a guy was filmed carving his and his girlfriend’s names into the Colosseum. Before you even consider the destinations that people go to specifically to behave badly – Aiya Napa, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Ghent (the Belgian city is considering banning stag party-friendly beer bikes) – there is always this problem that, as Cornish business owner Mati Ringrose says: “When you go on holiday, it’s not your place, it’s not your community, so you act completely differently, and out of character.” It cannot go unremarked that British tourists are notorious for this. The streets of “Europe’s latest booze hotspot”, Split, in Croatia, are festooned with signs in English warning of fines for public drinking, vomiting and urinating. One girl complained to a reporter this week that the fines were unfair, as she was quite likely to vomit, having had too many “anus burners” (shots of tequila, orange juice and tabasco). (...)

What people often object to about visitors, whether they are tourists, expats, retirees or digital nomads, is what they do to property prices. Lisbon is the prime example of a city altered beyond recognition, to many people’s eyes denatured by an influx of people who could just afford higher rents. Michael Oliveira Salac, who is half-British, half-Portuguese and splits his time between London and the Algarve, says it was a combination of tourists and nomadic financial technology workers, who, between creating Airbnb demand and being able to afford much higher long-term rents, forced Lisbon residents out of the city. The minimum wage in Portugal is €760 (£650) a month. It is not possible to compete with an influx of people paying €1,000 a month for a two-bed and laughing about how cheap that is. That creates a cascade effect, Oliveira Salac says. “The main avenue, where there used to be old multibrand boutiques, now Gucci has come in, Prada has come in, so that’s shot the rents up.” The newcomers “want sushi, they want Thai food, they want vegan. The old lot can’t cater to that, so they’ve shut down. Lisbon has lost its soul.” And that picture has played out in Porto, even in some towns in the Algarve: Portugal sits on this axis, where it is comparatively cheap, very beautiful and in the right time zone for a lot of nomads, which from a resident’s perspective is a curse, like sitting on a fault line. (...)

You have to wonder whether it is worth it. Ringrose, who runs a shop in Redruth in Cornwall, isn’t technically homeless because she lives in a van with her seven-month-old child, but she says even parking charges have skyrocketed. “I have so many friends in emergency housing, it’s insane,” she says. In the summer, Cornish resort towns such as St Ives are so crowded that Ringrose has a disabled friend who has to move out because she can’t get down the street. Then, in the winter, she says: “There are whole towns that you go in and there’s no lights on half the year. There’s nothing open. There are no pubs there. Whole swathes of what used to be communities are shut down. It massively affects the mentality of the county.”

by Zoe Williams, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image: Composite: Getty Images/Guardian Design
[ed. What if you could completely start over? Design a city that's just the right mix. How would you do it? Exhibit #1: Lahaina, Hawaii.]

Death of the Slow Dance?

How the One-Time Rite of Passage Has Evolved for Gen Z

In a viral clip that went on to dominate social media for weeks on end, Grammy-winning R&B icon Usher proceeds with business as usual at his My Way Las Vegas residency. He spots Emmy-winning actor Keke Palmer in the crowd, serenades her, and the two share a brief but respectful slow dance. His hand never goes below her waist, and her hand never leaves his shoulder.

And yet, following the video hitting social media, madness ensued. From misogynistic expectations of women’s self-presentation post-motherhood to discussions of the ins and outs of live performance etiquette, the clip unleashed a Pandora’s Box of discourse.

Millions of people inevitably shared their opinions, but an especially fervent disapproval of the interaction arose amongst straight men, particularly young straight men. What was once a key element of the American cultural fabric and a commonplace, uncontroversial practice had become the center of a firestorm of discomfort, disapproval, and outright rejection. What happened to the slow dance? How did this simple rite of passage and communal experience for young people come to mean and represent something completely different than what it did just one generation ago?

Most DJs agree that the dominant sound of slow dance songs has long been R&B, particularly soulful downtempo numbers that center romance and love as the chief emotions of the moment. But just as streaming has hyper-individualized music consumption and discovery, so has technology when it comes to the slow dance — at least according to DJ Stylus, a 30-year career DJ.

“I came into DJing because it was this magical thing that happened where you put music together in this interesting way that makes for a unique shared experience that is unique to that specific moment,” he says. “But what I’ve found is that technology … fragments the communal experience. So, it’s almost like people are having these performative moments through their devices, for people that aren’t even really sharing in what’s happening. We’re all together, but we’re alone.”

Much handwringing has been done regarding Gen Z and its relationship to the ever-quickening pace of technological advancement. There is also the fact that a significant portion of Gen Z has spent some of its formative social years — the end of high school and the beginning of college — isolated and alone due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns. Those years, which normally house key rites of passage like prom and many people’s first adult parties, were snatched from millions of young people. Slow dancing has proven to be such a culturally rich experience largely because of how the practice funnels heightened levels of intimacy and vulnerability into core memories — a phenomenon that is harder for Gen Z to cultivate because of the unprecedented omnipresence of technology in their lives. (...)

Like every generation before them, Gen Z operates in a sea of juxtapositions and contradictions. While this is far from their fault, as much as social media has connected the world, it has also exposed the uglier side of society with more immediacy and a wider reach than ever before. Meme culture and reaction pictures and videos epitomize this; so many of those images are taken and circulated without the consent or knowledge of the subject, and no one wants to become the next meme on an Internet that remembers everything. Given that it has mostly grown up in the presence of phones, Gen Z is acutely aware of the dynamics at play when it comes to the convergence of social media and public spaces, and that hypervigilance undercuts the tenderness of the slow dance.

As with most things in life, the slow dance didn’t just disappear on a random Tuesday. “It wasn’t like it was an overnight drop off, but it’s been a combination of things that have kind of led to it,” says DJ R-Tistic, one of the DJs that helped jumpstart the recent wave of slow dance discourse on Twitter. Classic slow dance songs still get played at the functions young people frequent, and young people are still getting on the dance floor, so all the necessary elements are present. Nonetheless, the dominance of the traditional slow dance has steadily waned. “I actually did an event for Pretty Little Thing the other day, and that’s one of the younger crowds I’ve had in a minute,” says DJ R-Tistic. “There were a lot of 23–25-year-olds, and all they want to do is twerk.” 

by Kyle Denis, Billboard |  Read more:

Image: YouTube

[ed. Eh. No. See also: The Death of the Slow Dance (and Other Emerging Trends) (Honest Broker):]

"Not long ago, these songs—played at slow tempos in dimly-lit dance halls—were how couples explored intimacy in a risk-free environment. This was so popular that guys paid to dance with total strangers. (...)

There’s a paradox here. The younger generation is sexually liberated but, according to another DJ, slow dancing is “too intimate and scary.” (...)

Journalist Kyle Denis tries to explain this situation:

Ironically, the once-chaste act of slow dancing may now be more taboo among young people, because of the intensity of its intimacy. When you are slow dancing, you are face to face with another person, staring into their eyes for an extended period of time. That is a stark difference from most approaches to twerking, where a woman’s back is to another person’s front, as a song that emphasizes the casualness of sexual interactions blasts in the background.

This phenomenon deserves more investigation, and maybe even statistical research. I’d be curious, for example, to see what actual dancers have to say about front-to-front versus front-to-back musical courtship."

How to Flirt, According to a Bartender

There are not a lot of professions left where “being a good flirt” is a healthy and celebrated characteristic — and that’s probably a good thing. But bartenders? Well, they still get to have fun if they want to. That’s why we consider this 35-year-old bisexual bartender in Tribeca an expert. “Flirting is a life skill I was born with,” she says. “So why not convert that into a job that pays well and sometimes results in mind-blowing sex with the exact person I planned to seduce and sleep with?” She estimates that she goes on about one date a month with a customer. “I’ve never been the hottest girl at the bar, as a customer or a bartender,” she says. “And yet, I know that at any bar or party I can get anyone I want.” Here are her tips.

1. Don’t give your life story.

I try to be low-key alluring. Just interesting and conversational enough that someone is curious about you, but still reserved enough that they need to know more. Make them wonder if you’re straight or queer; make them wonder if you’re smart or dumb; make them wonder if you’re monogamous or poly. You can show a flash of your true self, of course, but don’t reveal too much, not until they’re invested in you and you are dating.

Here’s an example: The other night I was bartending and a guy came in to have a drink before his date, which was at a restaurant nearby. He wanted to take the edge off and ordered a beer. I was like, “Let me guess … you have a first date tonight?” I just knew. Anyway, he unloaded all this shit about the perils of online dating. We laughed. We commiserated a little, just enough that he knew I was single and available-ish. But I didn’t share anything about myself, really. I intentionally held back. He doesn’t need to know that I’m looking to fall in love, that I’m worried about getting older and not having kids … hell no! This approach is the polar opposite of being desperate.

Who knows what happened on his date, but he followed me on Insta later that night and has since asked me to dinner. Boom.

2. Eye contact really works — but make it subtle.

Rule No. 1, don’t be too aggressive with your eyes. Don’t stare! Don’t be scary! Let them catch you checking them out, then quickly look away. You’re just planting a little seed. And if you’re chatting, remember that your eyes are a reflection of your inner life, so if you’re truly engaged, it will show in your eyes.

3. Try some light touch.

Here’s where you have to remember that straight men, specifically, are very simple creatures. If you touch their knee, they’re going to respond and they’re going to probably want to fuck you. I’m not saying that’s a good thing — these guys can be total buffoons when you’re just being friendly and they assume it means you’re gonna bang. But let’s assume this is a straight-male buffoon who you’re actually interested in. A little knee touch, mid-story, is a good move. You’re telling him about your best friend from college who made millions of dollars off her vegan skin-care line but secretly she gets drunk and eats Chick-fil-A every night, and he’s laughing. You touch his knee, like, “I know, right?” It’s like a quick brush of the leg. He’s yours after that.

If it’s a woman you’re flirting with, you can always be like, “Wait, let me fix this piece of hair” and just brush her bangs to the left a bit. Hair, ears, neck — works for me and works for most women. But be delicate and make it fast! You need to take the temperature. And by all means, if the person seems uncomfortable by being touched, even for a millisecond, apologize immediately and don’t do it again!

(In my experience, if you’re queer, you’re going to be better than most at the flirt game. You’re going to cut through the bullshit more naturally. You’re going to say, “Are you single? I think you’re really sexy.” And voilà: It’s either happening or it’s not.)

by Alyssa Shelasky, The Cut | Read more:
Image: Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photos: Getty

The Bee Sting

In the next town over, a man had killed his family. He ’d nailed the doors shut so they couldn’t get out; the neighbours heard them running through the rooms, screaming for mercy. When he had finished he turned the gun on himself.

Everyone was talking about it – about what kind of man could do such a thing, about the secrets he must have had. Rumours swirled about affairs, addiction, hidden files on his computer.

Elaine just said she was surprised it didn’t happen more often. She thrust her thumbs through the belt loops of her jeans and looked down the dreary main street of their town. I mean, she said, it’s some­ thing to do.

Cass and Elaine first met in Chemistry class, when Elaine poured io­dine on Cass’s eczema during an experiment. It was an accident; she’d cried more than Cass did, and insisted on going with her to the nurse. They’d been friends ever since. Every morning Cass called to Elaine’s house and they walked to school together. At lunchtime, they rolled up their long skirts and wandered around the supermarket, listening to music from Elaine’s phone, eating croissants from the bakery section that were gone by the time they got to the checkout. In the evening, they went to each other’s houses to study.

Cass felt she’d known Elaine for ever; it made no sense that they had not always been friends. Their lives were so similar it was almost eerie. Both girls came from well­-known families in the town: Cass’s father, Dickie, owned the local Volkswagen dealership, while Elaine’s dad, Big Mike, was a businessman and cattle farmer. Both girls were of slightly above­-average height; both were bright, in fact they were consistently at the top of their class. Both intended to leave here some day and never come back.

Elaine had golden hair, green eyes, a perfect figure. When she bought clothes online, they always fitted perfectly, as if they’d been made with her in mind. Writing about her in her journal, Cass used words like grace and style. She had what the French called je ne sais quoi. Even when she was clipping her toenails, she looked like she was eating a peach.

When Cass came round to Elaine’s house, they would sit in her bed­ room with the carousel lamp on and look at the Miss Universe Ireland website. Elaine was thinking seriously about entering, though not for the title itself so much as the opportunities it might offer. The previous year’s winner was now brand ambassador for a juice company.

Cass thought Elaine was prettier than any of the contestants pictured online. But it was tricky. Each of the girls competing to be Miss Universe Ireland, and from there to be Miss Universe for the world/universe overall, had an adversity they had overcome. One had been a refugee from a war in Africa. Another had needed surgery when she was a small girl. A very thin contestant had once been very fat. The adversity had to be something bad, like a learning disability, but not really bad, like being chained up in a basement for ten years by a paedophile. Cass’s eczema would be a perfect adversity; they wondered, if she held her skin up against Elaine’s long enough, whether she could pass it on to her. But it didn’t seem to work. Elaine said the adversity requirement was unfair. When you think about it, it’s almost like a kind of discrimination, she said.

The housekeeper knocked on the door to say it was time for Elaine’s swimming lesson. Elaine rolled her eyes. The swimming pool was always full of Band­Aids and old people. Coming from here, she said. If that isn’t an adversity, I don’t know what is.

Elaine hated their town. Everyone knew everyone, everybody knew your business; when you walked down the street people would slow down their cars to see who you were so they could wave at you. There were no proper shops; instead of McDonald’s and Starbucks, they had Binchy Burgers and Mangan’s Café, where the owners worked behind the counter and asked after your parents. You can’t even buy a sausage roll without having to tell someone your life story, she complained.

The smallness wouldn’t have been so bad if the townsfolk had had a little more sophistication. But their only interest, besides farming and the well­being of the microchip factory, was Gaelic games. Football, hurling, camogie, the county, the Cup, the under­-21s – that was all any­ one ever talked about. Elaine hated GAA. She was bad at sports, in spite of her grace. She was always the last up the rope in gym class; in games, she confined herself to the sidelines, where she scowled, flicked her hair, and wafted reluctantly back and forth with the general direction of play, like a lovely frond at the bottom of a noisy, grunting ocean.

The Tidy Towns Committee, of which Cass’s mother was a member, was always shiteing on about the natural beauty of the area, but Elaine did not accept this. Nature in her eyes was almost as bad as sports. The way it kept growing ? The way things, like crops or whatever, would die and then next year they came back ? Did no one else get how creepy that was?

I’m not being negative, she said. I just want to live somewhere I can get good coffee and not have to see nature and everyone doesn’t look like they were made out of mashed potato.

Cass didn’t care for GAA either, and she agreed about the general lack of je ne sais quoi. For her, though, the presence of Elaine was enough to cancel out the town’s faults.

She had never felt so connected to someone. When they messaged each other at night – sometimes they’d stay up till two in the morning – they got so in synch it was almost like they were the same person. If Elaine texted Cass to say WTF was up with that jumper today, she would know immediately whose jumper she was talking about; a single, unexplained word, bagatelle or lickout, could make her laugh so loud that her dad would hear from across the landing and come in and tell her to go to sleep. In some ways, that was the best time of all – better even than being together. As she lay in bed, messages flying back and forth between them, Cass would feel like she was flying too, far above the town, in a pure space that belonged completely to her and her best friend.

Most days they went to Elaine’s after school, but sometimes, for a change of scene, Elaine would want to come to Cass’s instead. She liked to hang out in the kitchen talking to Imelda – that’s what she called Cass’s mother, ‘Imelda’, so casually and naturally that after a while Cass started doing it too. You are so working those jeggings, Imelda, she’d say. Oh, you think so? Cass’s mam/‘Imelda’ would say, and she’d lean over with impossible willow-­like grace to examine the back of her own thighs. I wasn’t sure about the stripes. The stripes are what make it, Elaine would say conclusively, and Imelda would look happy.

Cass’s mother was a famous beauty. She too had blonde hair and green eyes. It’s so weird that she’s your mam, Elaine said. Doesn’t it make more sense that I should be her daughter?

Then we’d be sisters! Cass said.

No, I mean, instead of you, Elaine said.

Cass wasn’t sure what to do with that. But the fact remained that Elaine got on better with her mother than she did. Imelda liked to give Elaine face creams to try out; they traded beauty secrets and product advice. Cass was a bystander in these conversations. Nothing works on her skin, Imelda said, because of the eczema. It’s a real adversity, Elaine agreed. (...)

Cass did not totally get the Imelda­-worship. In her view, Elaine was much prettier than her mother. Yeah, but your mam’s got to be at least, like, thirty-­four, Elaine said. I mean, she’s really kept her looks.

Elaine felt that her own mother hadn’t aged well, and had once con­fessed her ‘greatest fear’ was that her looks too would be transitory, and that she would spend the rest of her life as one of the lumpen potato­ people she saw shuttling their shopping trolleys through the Lidl car park.

It was true: even now, as a mother of two, Imelda had an electrifying effect on people. When she walked down the street women would cock their heads and gaze at her adoringly, as if at some dazzling athletic dis­play. Men would stop, and stammer, their pupils dilating and their mouths quivering in half­-formed O’s, as if trying to push out some ineffable word.

Cass’s own effect was not electrifying, and when she told people that Imelda was her mother, they would stare at her a moment as if trying to solve a puzzle, then pat her hand sympathetically, and say, It’s after your father you take, so.

Elaine said it wasn’t just about looks. Imelda also had mystique, magnetism.

I can’t believe she married your dad, she said candidly.

Cass too sometimes had trouble believing it – that her dad, who was so thoughtful, so sensitive, had fallen for Imelda’s 100 per cent superfi­cial allure like every other chump. She didn’t want to devalue her mother in Elaine’s eyes. At the same time, she didn’t know how Elaine could think Imelda had mystique. To spend time with her mother was to get a running commentary on the contents of her mind – an incessant barrage of thoughts and sub­-thoughts and random observations, each in itself insignificant but cumulatively overwhelming. I must book you in for electrolysis for that little moustache you’re getting, she’d say; and then while you were still reeling, Are those tulips or begonias? There ’s Marie Devlin, do you know she has no sense of style, none whatsoever. Is that man an Arab? This place is filling up with Arabs. Where ’s this I saw they had that nice chutney? Kay Connor told me Anne Smith’s lost weight but the doctor said it was the wrong kind. I thought it was supposed to be sunny today, that’s not one bit sunny. Who invented chutney, was it Gorbachev? And on, and on – listening to her was like walking through a blizzard, a storm of frenzied white nothings that left you snow-­blind.

Frankly, she would have preferred that Elaine stayed away from her house altogether, that after school they only went to Elaine’s, where Elaine’s housekeeper, Augustina, would make them iced coffees, and they’d sit in Elaine ’s bedroom looking at the Miss Universe Ireland web­ site, swapping sex tips they had never used, ranking the best­-looking boys from the secondary school down the road.

At the same time, she knew she should be thankful for her mother’s undeniable glamour – thankful to have something in her life that her friend envied, especially now.

by Paul Murray, LitHub | Read more:
Image: The Bee Sting, Farrar Straus and Giroux

Hernan Bas, Conceptual artist #28 (He’s been steadily infusing a weeping willow with additional malaise for his future burial site), 2023

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Clare Woods (British, 1972), Silent Breakdown, 2022
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Socialite, Widow, Jeweller, Spy

How a GRU Agent Charmed Her Way Into NATO Circles in Italy

Three minutes before midnight on 14 September 2018, the cell phone of Andrey Averyanov began to ring. Despite the late hour, phone records show Maj. General Averyanov, the commander of the GRU’s clandestine operations unit 29155, was still in his office at Russia’s military intelligence service headquarters at Khoroshevskoe Shosse 76 in Moscow.

Earlier that day, Bellingcat and its Russian investigative partner, The Insider, had published an investigation into the cover identities of “Ruslan Boshirov” and “Alexander Petrov”, two undercover GRU spies implicated in the Novichok poisoning of Sergey and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, England. The investigation had blown the lid on a glaring hole in the GRU’s tradecraft: for nearly a decade, Russia’s military intelligence agency had furnished their spies with consecutively numbered passports, allowing investigative journalists who had acquired data commonly leaked onto Russia’s black market to uncover other spies by simply tracing such batches of numbers.

 

In the hours after Bellingcat’s publication that day, Averyanov had received several phone calls from his top boss – the GRU’s chief Igor Kostyukov. Similarly, Averyanov himself had reached out to many of his subordinates who had been travelling on such passports – including the two spies involved with the failed Montenegro coup in 2016.

The midnight caller was the head of GRU’s Department 5, or the so-called Illegals program – a little-known department that planted military spies around the world under false identities. The two GRU officers talked for just over two minutes.A Note on Call Record Metadata

In 2019 in the course of investigating the Skripal poisoning, we obtained metadata from call records of Maj. General Andrey Averyanov. These records, spanning the period from mid 2017 to late 2019, shed light on an expansive network of spies run by Russia’s military intelligence. The call data contains location, time and calling party data but no content of the communications.

The next day, 15 September 2018, a woman with a long, Latin-sounding name bought a one-way ticket from Naples, Italy, to Moscow. For around a decade, this individual had travelled the world as a cosmopolitan, Peru-born socialite with her own jewellery line. Later that evening, she landed in Moscow and is not known to have left Russia since. She flew on a passport from one of the number ranges Bellingcat had outed the previous day – in fact, hers only differed by one digit from the passports on which Boshirov and Petrov’s GRU boss had flown to Britain just six months earlier.

The name on her passport was Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera, and as Bellingcat and its investigative partners have discovered, she was a GRU illegal whom friends from NATO offices in Naples had for years believed was a successful jewellery designer with a colourful backstory and chaotic personal life.

by Christo Grozev, Bellingcat | Read more:
Image: Marcelle D’Argy Smith
[ed. Don't know about you, but this kind of 'investigative' journalism feels deeply creepy to me (with numerous, mysterious unnamed sources). Of course she was a spy (or appears to be). So, the question is... now what? Or maybe, so what? See also: The Last Hour of Prigozhin’s Plane (Wired):]

“Looking at the information that is either available or not available is not enough,” says Tanya Lokot, an associate professor in digital media and society at Dublin City University who researches internet and media freedom. Lokot says it’s essential to consider the context of any information published from official Russian sources or in Telegram channels. For instance, she says, it is important to scrutinize why certain information—such as a list of names—may have been released at a particular time.

Lokot says it is also important to understand the motives of whoever is in control of this kind of information and how and when they decide to release it, as that helps shape a bigger narrative. “How they are presenting this incident and the fallout from this incident is really important to understand because it helps us also understand how they’re trying to control the information space to make sure that it fits their broader strategic narrative,” she says."