Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Could the FDIC Seize Bank Deposits During a Crisis?
As we noted last week, one of the biggest problems for the Central Banks is actual physical cash.
The financial system is predominantly comprised of digital money. Actual physical Dollars bills and coins only amount to $1.36 trillion. This is only a little over 10% of the $10 trillion sitting in bank accounts. And it’s a tiny fraction of the $20 trillion in stocks, $38 trillion in bonds and $58 trillion in credit instruments floating around the system.
Suffice to say, if a significant percentage of people ever actually moved their money into physical cash, it could very quickly become a systemic problem.
Indeed, this is precisely what caused the 2008 meltdown, when nearly 24% of the assets in Money Market funds were liquidated in the course of four weeks. The ensuing liquidity crush nearly imploded the system.
Because of this, Central Banks and the regulators have declared a War on Cash in an effort to stop people trying to get their money out of the system.
One policy they are considering is to put a carry tax on physical cash meaning that your Dollar bills would gradually depreciate once they were taken out of the bank. Another idea is to do away with actual physical cash completely.
Perhaps the most concerning is the fact that should a “systemically important” financial entity go bust, any deposits above $250,000 located therein could be converted to equity… at which point if the company’s shares, your wealth evaporates.
Indeed, the FDIC published a paper proposing precisely this back in December 2012. Below are some excerpts worth your attention.
So… if a large bank fails in the US, your deposits at this bank would either be “written-down” (read: disappear) or converted into equity or stock shares in the company. And once they are converted to equity you are a shareholder not a depositor… so you are no longer insured by the FDIC.
So if the bank then fails (meaning its shares fall)… so does your deposit.
by Phoenix Capital Research, Zero Hedge | Read more:
Image: Rick Wilking
The financial system is predominantly comprised of digital money. Actual physical Dollars bills and coins only amount to $1.36 trillion. This is only a little over 10% of the $10 trillion sitting in bank accounts. And it’s a tiny fraction of the $20 trillion in stocks, $38 trillion in bonds and $58 trillion in credit instruments floating around the system.
Suffice to say, if a significant percentage of people ever actually moved their money into physical cash, it could very quickly become a systemic problem.
Indeed, this is precisely what caused the 2008 meltdown, when nearly 24% of the assets in Money Market funds were liquidated in the course of four weeks. The ensuing liquidity crush nearly imploded the system.Because of this, Central Banks and the regulators have declared a War on Cash in an effort to stop people trying to get their money out of the system.
One policy they are considering is to put a carry tax on physical cash meaning that your Dollar bills would gradually depreciate once they were taken out of the bank. Another idea is to do away with actual physical cash completely.
Perhaps the most concerning is the fact that should a “systemically important” financial entity go bust, any deposits above $250,000 located therein could be converted to equity… at which point if the company’s shares, your wealth evaporates.
Indeed, the FDIC published a paper proposing precisely this back in December 2012. Below are some excerpts worth your attention.
This paper focuses on the application of “top-down” resolution strategies that involve a single resolution authority applying its powers to the top of a financial group, that is, at the parent company level. The paper discusses how such a top-down strategy could be implemented for a U.S. or a U.K. financial group in a cross-border context…
These strategies have been designed to enable large and complex cross- border firms to be resolved without threatening financial stability and without putting public funds at risk…
An efficient path for returning the sound operations of the G-SIFI to the private sector would be provided by exchanging or converting a sufficient amount of the unsecured debt from the original creditors of the failed company into equity. In the U.S., the new equity would become capital in one or more newly formed operating entities.
…Insured depositors themselves would remain unaffected. Uninsured deposits would be treated in line with other similarly ranked liabilities in the resolution process, with the expectation that they might be written down. (ed. http://www.fdic.gov/about/srac/2012/gsifi.pdf)In other words… any liability at the bank is in danger of being written-down should the bank fail. And guess what? Deposits are considered liabilities according to US Banking Law. In this legal framework, depositors are creditors.
So… if a large bank fails in the US, your deposits at this bank would either be “written-down” (read: disappear) or converted into equity or stock shares in the company. And once they are converted to equity you are a shareholder not a depositor… so you are no longer insured by the FDIC.
So if the bank then fails (meaning its shares fall)… so does your deposit.
by Phoenix Capital Research, Zero Hedge | Read more:
Image: Rick Wilking
The Calm Before the Storm
Even as protests spread across the Middle East in early 2011, the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria appeared immune from the upheaval. Assad had ruled comfortably for over a decade, having replaced his father, Hafez, who himself had held power for the previous three decades. Many pundits argued that Syria’s sturdy police state, which exercised tight control over the country’s people and economy, would survive the Arab Spring undisturbed. Compared with its neighbor Lebanon, Syria looked positively stable. Civil war had torn through Lebanon throughout much of the 1970s and 1980s, and the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005 had plunged the country into yet more chaos.
But appearances were deceiving: today, Syria is in a shambles, with the regime fighting for its very survival, whereas Lebanon has withstood the influx of Syrian refugees and the other considerable pressures of the civil war next door. Surprising as it may seem, the per capita death rate from violence in Lebanon in 2013 was lower than that in Washington, D.C. That same year, the body count of the Syrian conflict surpassed 100,000.
Why has seemingly stable Syria turned out to be the fragile regime, whereas always-in-turmoil Lebanon has so far proved robust? The answer is that prior to its civil war, Syria was exhibiting only pseudo-stability, its calm façade concealing deep structural vulnerabilities. Lebanon’s chaos, paradoxically, signaled strength. Fifteen years of civil war had served to decentralize the state and bring about a more balanced sectarian power-sharing structure. Along with Lebanon’s small size as an administrative unit, these factors added to its durability. So did the country’s free-market economy. In Syria, the ruling Baath Party sought to control economic variability, replacing the lively chaos of the ancestral souk with the top-down, Soviet-style structure of the office building. This rigidity made Syria (and the other Baathist state, Iraq) much more vulnerable to disruption than Lebanon.
But Syria’s biggest vulnerability was that it had no recent record of recovering from turmoil. Countries that have survived past bouts of chaos tend to be vaccinated against future ones. Thus, the best indicator of a country’s future stability is not past stability but moderate volatility in the relatively recent past. As one of us, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, wrote in the 2007 book The Black Swan, “Dictatorships that do not appear volatile, like, say, Syria or Saudi Arabia, face a larger risk of chaos than, say, Italy, as the latter has been in a state of continual political turmoil since the second [world] war.”
The divergent tales of Syria and Lebanon demonstrate that the best early warning signs of instability are found not in historical data but in underlying structural properties. Past experience can be extremely effective when it comes to detecting risks of cancer, crime, and earthquakes. But it is a bad bellwether of complex political and economic events, particularly so-called tail risks—events, such as coups and financial crises, that are highly unlikely but enormously consequential. For those, the evidence of risk comes too late to do anything about it, and a more sophisticated approach is required.
Thus, instead of trying in vain to predict such “Black Swan” events, it’s much more fruitful to focus on how systems can handle disorder—in other words, to study how fragile they are. Although one cannot predict what events will befall a country, one can predict how events will affect a country. Some political systems can sustain an extraordinary amount of stress, while others fall apart at the onset of the slightest trouble. The good news is that it’s possible to tell which are which by relying on the theory of fragility.
Simply put, fragility is aversion to disorder. Things that are fragile do not like variability, volatility, stress, chaos, and random events, which cause them to either gain little or suffer. A teacup, for example, will not benefit from any form of shock. It wants peace and predictability, something that is not possible in the long run, which is why time is an enemy to the fragile. What’s more, things that are fragile respond to shock in a nonlinear fashion. With humans, for example, the harm from a ten-foot fall in no way equals ten times as much harm as from a one-foot fall. In political and economic terms, a $30 drop in the price of a barrel of oil is much more than twice as harmful to Saudi Arabia as a $15 drop.
For countries, fragility has five principal sources: a centralized governing system, an undiversified economy, excessive debt and leverage, a lack of political variability, and no history of surviving past shocks. Applying these criteria, the world map looks a lot different. Disorderly regimes come out as safer bets than commonly thought—and seemingly placid states turn out to be ticking time bombs.
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Gregory F. Treverton, Foreign Affairs | Read more:
But appearances were deceiving: today, Syria is in a shambles, with the regime fighting for its very survival, whereas Lebanon has withstood the influx of Syrian refugees and the other considerable pressures of the civil war next door. Surprising as it may seem, the per capita death rate from violence in Lebanon in 2013 was lower than that in Washington, D.C. That same year, the body count of the Syrian conflict surpassed 100,000.
Why has seemingly stable Syria turned out to be the fragile regime, whereas always-in-turmoil Lebanon has so far proved robust? The answer is that prior to its civil war, Syria was exhibiting only pseudo-stability, its calm façade concealing deep structural vulnerabilities. Lebanon’s chaos, paradoxically, signaled strength. Fifteen years of civil war had served to decentralize the state and bring about a more balanced sectarian power-sharing structure. Along with Lebanon’s small size as an administrative unit, these factors added to its durability. So did the country’s free-market economy. In Syria, the ruling Baath Party sought to control economic variability, replacing the lively chaos of the ancestral souk with the top-down, Soviet-style structure of the office building. This rigidity made Syria (and the other Baathist state, Iraq) much more vulnerable to disruption than Lebanon.
But Syria’s biggest vulnerability was that it had no recent record of recovering from turmoil. Countries that have survived past bouts of chaos tend to be vaccinated against future ones. Thus, the best indicator of a country’s future stability is not past stability but moderate volatility in the relatively recent past. As one of us, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, wrote in the 2007 book The Black Swan, “Dictatorships that do not appear volatile, like, say, Syria or Saudi Arabia, face a larger risk of chaos than, say, Italy, as the latter has been in a state of continual political turmoil since the second [world] war.”
The divergent tales of Syria and Lebanon demonstrate that the best early warning signs of instability are found not in historical data but in underlying structural properties. Past experience can be extremely effective when it comes to detecting risks of cancer, crime, and earthquakes. But it is a bad bellwether of complex political and economic events, particularly so-called tail risks—events, such as coups and financial crises, that are highly unlikely but enormously consequential. For those, the evidence of risk comes too late to do anything about it, and a more sophisticated approach is required.
Thus, instead of trying in vain to predict such “Black Swan” events, it’s much more fruitful to focus on how systems can handle disorder—in other words, to study how fragile they are. Although one cannot predict what events will befall a country, one can predict how events will affect a country. Some political systems can sustain an extraordinary amount of stress, while others fall apart at the onset of the slightest trouble. The good news is that it’s possible to tell which are which by relying on the theory of fragility.
Simply put, fragility is aversion to disorder. Things that are fragile do not like variability, volatility, stress, chaos, and random events, which cause them to either gain little or suffer. A teacup, for example, will not benefit from any form of shock. It wants peace and predictability, something that is not possible in the long run, which is why time is an enemy to the fragile. What’s more, things that are fragile respond to shock in a nonlinear fashion. With humans, for example, the harm from a ten-foot fall in no way equals ten times as much harm as from a one-foot fall. In political and economic terms, a $30 drop in the price of a barrel of oil is much more than twice as harmful to Saudi Arabia as a $15 drop.
For countries, fragility has five principal sources: a centralized governing system, an undiversified economy, excessive debt and leverage, a lack of political variability, and no history of surviving past shocks. Applying these criteria, the world map looks a lot different. Disorderly regimes come out as safer bets than commonly thought—and seemingly placid states turn out to be ticking time bombs.
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Gregory F. Treverton, Foreign Affairs | Read more:
Image: Rami Zayat
Women Shift Gears in Motorcycle Culture
[ed. Last year there were more women than men in my MSF course.]
But, organically and spontaneously through social media – especially Instagram – a new generation of female bikers is finding and inspiring each other with a shared set of ideals: adventure, companionship and the freedom of the road.“I think we’re seeing a kind of onset of a kind of powerful women being trendy,” said Lanakila “Lana” MacNaughton. She and four more female riders were handpicked by Harley-Davidson and given motorcycles to ride 9,000 miles across the country, re-creating a 1915 ride pioneered by the mother and daughter team Avis and Effie Hotchkiss.
“I don’t think that’s really ever been seen,” said MacNaughton. “For us it’s about, for us – being on the front of the bike rather than being on the back of the bike, and establishing ourselves as strong women instead of in the background.” {...}
MacNaughton said: “This ride is a representation of shifting perspectives of women in society right now ... Definitely there’s a nod to feminism, but I think, for me, at the root it’s about sharing it with the motorcycle community.”
Truly, it’s the sharing that brought female motorcyclists across the country together and into loosely bound groups such as the Litas or Brooklyn’s Miss-Fires. Female-only riding and camping events, such as Babes in MotoLand in north-west Illinois and Dream Roll in Washington state, are cropping up.
“I started it back in December, so recently, and it’s crazy – like, there are so many girl riders that just came out of the woodwork,” said Haggett. She, like many other female motorcyclists the Guardian interviewed, rode alone until recently. “I’ve been riding for six years, and then I rode alone for four, and then I met guys who ride, and rode with them, and just in the past year started riding with other girls.
“Instagram was part of it, which sounds so stupid. It’s just social media, but at the same time the visibility into who’s doing what – six years ago I wasn’t really on Instagram, didn’t post any bike photos, and so honestly I didn’t see girls around riding, and I didn’t know girls riding, and so I didn’t really have a choice,” Haggett said.
Truly, it’s the sharing that brought female motorcyclists across the country together and into loosely bound groups such as the Litas or Brooklyn’s Miss-Fires. Female-only riding and camping events, such as Babes in MotoLand in north-west Illinois and Dream Roll in Washington state, are cropping up.
“I started it back in December, so recently, and it’s crazy – like, there are so many girl riders that just came out of the woodwork,” said Haggett. She, like many other female motorcyclists the Guardian interviewed, rode alone until recently. “I’ve been riding for six years, and then I rode alone for four, and then I met guys who ride, and rode with them, and just in the past year started riding with other girls.
“Instagram was part of it, which sounds so stupid. It’s just social media, but at the same time the visibility into who’s doing what – six years ago I wasn’t really on Instagram, didn’t post any bike photos, and so honestly I didn’t see girls around riding, and I didn’t know girls riding, and so I didn’t really have a choice,” Haggett said.
by Jessica Glenza , The Guardian | Read more:
Image: via:
The Time is Now for Competitive Gaming
[ed. See also: The future of sports is streamimg.]
Fast-forward to 2015. The biggest esports tournament of the year hands out more than $18 million in cash prizes to its competitors. Each member of the winning team, playing a game called Dota 2, becomes an overnight millionaire. Over 4 million viewers tuned in to watch the final. And that number pales in comparison to the more than 32 million who followed the race for the Summoner’s Cup in another esport, League of Legends.These aren’t a few local gaming phenoms who’ve spent too many hours with an NES controller in hand. These competitors train day in, day out, like any other athletes. They’re backed by rich organizations and sponsored by billion-dollar companies. Their exploits play out not in dusty ballrooms but in major stadiums and arenas. The game has changed, and there’s no going back.(...)
Sure, comparing sports like football and basketball to popular video games like Counter-Strike or League of Legends might seem silly. But they’re not so different. Ultimately, they’re all made-up games based on an arbitrary set of rules that are dictated within a particular venue for competition. The point isn’t the presence or lack of physicality. It’s in allowing us to challenge one another.
Nowadays, it’s about a lot more than that. It’s about business. No commodity is hotter in the modern media landscape than sports. In an era of DVR and DVDs, where commercials can be skipped with the click of a button, live content is king. And no media product is better suited for live consumption than sports. Fans want to be part of moments as they unfold, not a few days later. That adds immense value to live sports programming in the eyes of media broadcasters. The NFL will cumulatively collect $27 billion by the end of the 2022 season with its current network broadcasting contracts with media companies including CBS Corp., 21st Century Fox, and NBC Universal.
This isn’t limited to football. Across the world, sporting leagues are making bank with pricey contracts. It’s something that esports stands to benefit from as much as any other competitive avenue.
In fact, esports may well be on the cutting edge of the future of sports broadcasts. With a few exceptions, competitive gaming has always lived exclusively on the Internet. Esports broadcasting has evolved alongside online streaming platforms. The biggest of these, Twitch, launched as a direct result of game streaming’s sudden popularity.
Once a mere spinoff of the groundbreaking streaming platform Justin.tv, Twitch soon found its niche among gamers interested in sharing their favorite hobby with other like-minded users. Twitch surpassed Justin.tv in popularity after only two years. The company has since grown into an online powerhouse, notably being gobbled up by Amazon for $970 million. The ever-growing streaming platform serves more than 100 million unique viewers per month. By the end of 2014, those users were consuming more than 16 billion minutes of live and original content on a monthly basis. And the foundation of that success is esports.
For all of its money, the NFL is struggling to acclimate itself to the dawning era of online streaming. Streaming content is the unquestioned future, and while many of the biggest players in traditionally televised sports struggle to understand it, the esports industry has already mastered it.
In fact, esports and Twitch’s successes have come completely independent of the traditional media landscape. That’s led some in esports to actively campaign against the industry expanding to traditional channels. Sure, some longtime proponents of competitive gaming might crave vindication from the mainstream, like when ESPN broadcast a collegiateHeroes of the Storm tournament earlier this month. But what’s the long-term benefit? Esports are at the cutting edge of the future of broadcasting. So why step backward just to be seen in the same light as other sports?
by Jared Wynn, The Kernal | Read more:
Image: J. Longo
Monday, August 17, 2015
Donald Trump Through the Ages
The ancestry of Donald Trump stretches back to the Ancient World. Listen, as several of Trump’s forebears recount some of the most famous moments in history.
So this is, maybe, a week after the Ides of March. I’m in Rome. I got a new coliseum there. Great coliseum. I build a lot them. Make a lot of money. Very successful.
So I’m in Rome. And Brutus and his cabal ask me to say a few words about Caesar. Really, begging me to say something about him. And Brutus is an honorable guy. So, I’m like, “Sure. Whatever.”
But then right before my speech, Brutus comes up to me — he’s real nervous, Brutus — and he says, “Whatever you do in your speech, don’t blame me for Caesar’s death.”
I think, “That’s odd.” But, whatever. Brutus is an honorable guy.
So I deliver this speech. Great speech. Tremendous speech. It’s about Caesar. He’s dead. Lot of emotions. Really brings down the house. I get rave reviews for the speech. Rave reviews. Everybody loves it.
But then, weeks later, the media is saying I said these things that I never said. Awful things.
I’ll give you an example: The New Rome Times, which is losing money left and right. Unreadable. Total trash. Hates the empire. But the New Rome Times says that I came to praise Caesar, which is totally false.
What I said was — and this is a direct quote — “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” Not to praise him. How they get the exact opposite out of that, I don’t know. But that’s the media for you. (...)
I would have people come up to me all the time and say, “Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, you should lead our troops. You should have lead.” And I should have, because I would have ended the war, Day One.
I would have gone up to King George III, whom I know. I would have said, “Georgie, we’re leaving.”
He’d cry, he’d beg, he’d try to convince us to stay. I’d say, “No, no, no. Here’s the way it works: We leave, you get nothing, that’s the deal” And then I’d turn to the French, and I’d say, “And you … Thanks for the help. Now give us a statue. A woman. But not an ugly one.”
Papers would be signed the next morning.
People ask me all the time, because I love women so much. They say, “Mr. Trump, what do we need to do to help women?” Because we have to protect their health, we have to. So I say, “Two words … Wandering. Uteruses.” Because they’re everywhere. Everywhere. Wandering over here, wandering over there. Even mention it and women go into hysterics. If I were in charge, I would bring back the uteruses. I would bring them all back. From China. From Mexico. From Japan. From wherever they wander. “Making Uteruses Great Again”, that would be my motto.
The Death of Julius Caesar
So this is, maybe, a week after the Ides of March. I’m in Rome. I got a new coliseum there. Great coliseum. I build a lot them. Make a lot of money. Very successful.
So I’m in Rome. And Brutus and his cabal ask me to say a few words about Caesar. Really, begging me to say something about him. And Brutus is an honorable guy. So, I’m like, “Sure. Whatever.”But then right before my speech, Brutus comes up to me — he’s real nervous, Brutus — and he says, “Whatever you do in your speech, don’t blame me for Caesar’s death.”
I think, “That’s odd.” But, whatever. Brutus is an honorable guy.
So I deliver this speech. Great speech. Tremendous speech. It’s about Caesar. He’s dead. Lot of emotions. Really brings down the house. I get rave reviews for the speech. Rave reviews. Everybody loves it.
But then, weeks later, the media is saying I said these things that I never said. Awful things.
I’ll give you an example: The New Rome Times, which is losing money left and right. Unreadable. Total trash. Hates the empire. But the New Rome Times says that I came to praise Caesar, which is totally false.
What I said was — and this is a direct quote — “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” Not to praise him. How they get the exact opposite out of that, I don’t know. But that’s the media for you. (...)
The American Revolution
I would have people come up to me all the time and say, “Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, you should lead our troops. You should have lead.” And I should have, because I would have ended the war, Day One.
I would have gone up to King George III, whom I know. I would have said, “Georgie, we’re leaving.”
He’d cry, he’d beg, he’d try to convince us to stay. I’d say, “No, no, no. Here’s the way it works: We leave, you get nothing, that’s the deal” And then I’d turn to the French, and I’d say, “And you … Thanks for the help. Now give us a statue. A woman. But not an ugly one.”
Papers would be signed the next morning.
19th-Century Medical Science
People ask me all the time, because I love women so much. They say, “Mr. Trump, what do we need to do to help women?” Because we have to protect their health, we have to. So I say, “Two words … Wandering. Uteruses.” Because they’re everywhere. Everywhere. Wandering over here, wandering over there. Even mention it and women go into hysterics. If I were in charge, I would bring back the uteruses. I would bring them all back. From China. From Mexico. From Japan. From wherever they wander. “Making Uteruses Great Again”, that would be my motto.
by John Flowers, McSweeny's | Read more:
Image: Gage Skidmore, Wikipedia
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Don't Hate the Phone Call, Hate the Phone
One of the ironies of modern life is that everyone is glued to their phones, but nobody uses them as phones anymore. Not by choice, anyway. Phone calls—you know, where you put the thing up to your ear and speak to someone in real time—are becoming relics of a bygone era, the “phone” part of a smartphone turning vestigial as communication evolves, willingly or not, into data-oriented formats like text messaging and chat apps.
The distaste for telephony is especially acute among Millennials, who have come of age in a world of AIM and texting, then gchat and iMessage, but it’s hardly limited to young people. When asked, people with a distaste for phone calls argue that they are presumptuous and intrusive, especially given alternative methods of contact that don’t make unbidden demands for someone’s undivided attention. In response, some have diagnosed a kind of telephoniphobia among this set. When even initiating phone calls is a problem—and even innocuous ones, like phoning the local Thai place to order takeout—then anxiety rather than habit may be to blame: When asynchronous, textual media like email or WhatsApp allow you to intricately craft every exchange, the improvisational nature of ordinary, live conversation can feel like an unfamiliar burden. Those in power sometimes think that this unease is a defect in need of remediation, while those supposedly afflicted by it say they are actually just fine, thanks very much.
But when it comes to taking phone calls and not making them, nobody seems to have admitted that using the telephone today is a different material experience than it was 20 or 30 (or 50) years ago, not just a different social experience. That’s not just because our phones have also become fancy two-way pagers with keyboards, but also because they’ve become much crappier phones. It’s no wonder that a bad version of telephony would be far less desirable than a good one. And the telephone used to be truly great, partly because of the situation of its use, and partly because of the nature of the apparatus we used to refer to as the “telephone”—especially the handset. (...)
Today, the industrial design of mobile phones has only exacerbated the unreliability and awkwardness of telephony. But there was a time when phone design was central to the feeling of intimacy and warmth and comfort we once associated with the telephone.
The Western Electric model 500 was the most popular telephone model of the 20th century, issued by Bell System and its subsidiaries from 1950 until the breakup of the Bell monopoly in 1984. It’s the phone you think of when you think of telephones, and its silhouetted handset shape remains the universal icon for “phone”—even on your iPhone’s telephone app. Like its predecessors and successors in the Bell System, the 500 was designed by Henry Dreyfuss, the mid-century industrial designer also responsible for the Honeywell T87 thermostat, the J-3 Hudson locomotive, and the Polaroid SX-70—all icons of their eras and well beyond.
The 500 wasn’t the first telephone to use the basic handset shape; versions existed since the 1870s, and by the 1930s, the combined design had replaced the “candlestick” style that preceded it, with its separated mouthpiece and receiver. Initially, the handset was considered too heavy and awkward for home use, where the delicate but light candlestick offered more facile and welcoming handling. But over time, the combined handset’s convenience and stability made it central to the experience of telephony. The Western Electric 500 did (and still does) hold the laurel for this achievement.
The 500 handset is solid and hefty while not being too heavy to lift and hold for long periods. That it could be held at all, and that we would enjoy holding it—this is an unsung virtue of the handset. Whether grasped at its center like a handle, cradled at the rounded mouthpiece base with the thumb and forefinger, or wedged between the ear and the shoulder to allow the use of both hands freely, the 500 handset conforms to the ergonomics required for listening and speaking.
It sounds like an idiotic tautology of an observation, until you think about cell phones by comparison. The mobile phone in general and the smartphone in particular are designed to be carried first, and spoken into second. Some versions over the decades have been more adept as telephone handsets. 1983’s Motorola DynaTAC 8000X was large and square, almost too large to be easily held or carried. By 1996, the Motorola StarTAC (the first clamshell “flip” phone) offered a thoughtful compromise between portability and usability. And the 1998 Nokia 5110, the most popular “candybar” phone, still had enough heft and form to feel like a phone handset while also being pocketable, to a point.The handset made telephony a tactile activity as much as an auditory one.
But over the first decade of the new millennium, the BlackBerry, the Treo, the RAZR, the iPhone, and the various Android handsets shrunk and thinned the smartphone into the flat, rectangular standard we know today. It’s perfect for carrying and tapping and pocketing, but it’s awful for talking through. (...)
Today, we have an alternative for long-distance intimacy: the capacitive touch screen. On your iPhone or your Galaxy, tactility can be achieved directly, by touching the cool screen to warm it, by swiping or stroking through a text chat. Your fingers can linger even if not for functional reasons. True, iMessage and Facebook Messenger might seem more aloof and impersonal than calling by voice, but today’s smartphone user is right to identify those experiences as the sensual, tactical successors to the telephone handset with its duplex of truncated 3 kHz voices echoing inside.
That time has ended, it seems. As for its replacement? I can’t deny that your touchscreen is private and alive and responsive. It’s where rapport and affection now live, for better and worse. Perhaps my chagrin in making this concession doesn’t come from a nostalgic regret for the end of the telephone’s life as a technology of intimacy, but out of lament that so few of the engineers and designers working on its replacement seem to deploy the deliberateness and care of Henry Dreyfuss or Bernard Oliver. Instead of the next PCM or Western Electric 500 handset, we get a thousand startups trying to flip their derivative chat app, or a cloying, hackneyed method for sending pictures of hearts from your new smartwatch, or a baby-faced billionaire’s dubious promise to “connect us” while reselling our attention.
The distaste for telephony is especially acute among Millennials, who have come of age in a world of AIM and texting, then gchat and iMessage, but it’s hardly limited to young people. When asked, people with a distaste for phone calls argue that they are presumptuous and intrusive, especially given alternative methods of contact that don’t make unbidden demands for someone’s undivided attention. In response, some have diagnosed a kind of telephoniphobia among this set. When even initiating phone calls is a problem—and even innocuous ones, like phoning the local Thai place to order takeout—then anxiety rather than habit may be to blame: When asynchronous, textual media like email or WhatsApp allow you to intricately craft every exchange, the improvisational nature of ordinary, live conversation can feel like an unfamiliar burden. Those in power sometimes think that this unease is a defect in need of remediation, while those supposedly afflicted by it say they are actually just fine, thanks very much.But when it comes to taking phone calls and not making them, nobody seems to have admitted that using the telephone today is a different material experience than it was 20 or 30 (or 50) years ago, not just a different social experience. That’s not just because our phones have also become fancy two-way pagers with keyboards, but also because they’ve become much crappier phones. It’s no wonder that a bad version of telephony would be far less desirable than a good one. And the telephone used to be truly great, partly because of the situation of its use, and partly because of the nature of the apparatus we used to refer to as the “telephone”—especially the handset. (...)
Today, the industrial design of mobile phones has only exacerbated the unreliability and awkwardness of telephony. But there was a time when phone design was central to the feeling of intimacy and warmth and comfort we once associated with the telephone.
The Western Electric model 500 was the most popular telephone model of the 20th century, issued by Bell System and its subsidiaries from 1950 until the breakup of the Bell monopoly in 1984. It’s the phone you think of when you think of telephones, and its silhouetted handset shape remains the universal icon for “phone”—even on your iPhone’s telephone app. Like its predecessors and successors in the Bell System, the 500 was designed by Henry Dreyfuss, the mid-century industrial designer also responsible for the Honeywell T87 thermostat, the J-3 Hudson locomotive, and the Polaroid SX-70—all icons of their eras and well beyond.
The 500 wasn’t the first telephone to use the basic handset shape; versions existed since the 1870s, and by the 1930s, the combined design had replaced the “candlestick” style that preceded it, with its separated mouthpiece and receiver. Initially, the handset was considered too heavy and awkward for home use, where the delicate but light candlestick offered more facile and welcoming handling. But over time, the combined handset’s convenience and stability made it central to the experience of telephony. The Western Electric 500 did (and still does) hold the laurel for this achievement.
The 500 handset is solid and hefty while not being too heavy to lift and hold for long periods. That it could be held at all, and that we would enjoy holding it—this is an unsung virtue of the handset. Whether grasped at its center like a handle, cradled at the rounded mouthpiece base with the thumb and forefinger, or wedged between the ear and the shoulder to allow the use of both hands freely, the 500 handset conforms to the ergonomics required for listening and speaking.
It sounds like an idiotic tautology of an observation, until you think about cell phones by comparison. The mobile phone in general and the smartphone in particular are designed to be carried first, and spoken into second. Some versions over the decades have been more adept as telephone handsets. 1983’s Motorola DynaTAC 8000X was large and square, almost too large to be easily held or carried. By 1996, the Motorola StarTAC (the first clamshell “flip” phone) offered a thoughtful compromise between portability and usability. And the 1998 Nokia 5110, the most popular “candybar” phone, still had enough heft and form to feel like a phone handset while also being pocketable, to a point.The handset made telephony a tactile activity as much as an auditory one.
But over the first decade of the new millennium, the BlackBerry, the Treo, the RAZR, the iPhone, and the various Android handsets shrunk and thinned the smartphone into the flat, rectangular standard we know today. It’s perfect for carrying and tapping and pocketing, but it’s awful for talking through. (...)
Today, we have an alternative for long-distance intimacy: the capacitive touch screen. On your iPhone or your Galaxy, tactility can be achieved directly, by touching the cool screen to warm it, by swiping or stroking through a text chat. Your fingers can linger even if not for functional reasons. True, iMessage and Facebook Messenger might seem more aloof and impersonal than calling by voice, but today’s smartphone user is right to identify those experiences as the sensual, tactical successors to the telephone handset with its duplex of truncated 3 kHz voices echoing inside.
That time has ended, it seems. As for its replacement? I can’t deny that your touchscreen is private and alive and responsive. It’s where rapport and affection now live, for better and worse. Perhaps my chagrin in making this concession doesn’t come from a nostalgic regret for the end of the telephone’s life as a technology of intimacy, but out of lament that so few of the engineers and designers working on its replacement seem to deploy the deliberateness and care of Henry Dreyfuss or Bernard Oliver. Instead of the next PCM or Western Electric 500 handset, we get a thousand startups trying to flip their derivative chat app, or a cloying, hackneyed method for sending pictures of hearts from your new smartwatch, or a baby-faced billionaire’s dubious promise to “connect us” while reselling our attention.
by Ian Bogost, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: Ian Bogost
Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace
On Monday mornings, fresh recruits line up for an orientation intended to catapult them into Amazon’s singular way of working.
They are told to forget the “poor habits” they learned at previous jobs, one employee recalled. When they “hit the wall” from the unrelenting pace, there is only one solution: “Climb the wall,” others reported. To be the best Amazonians they can be, they should be guided by the leadership principles, 14 rules inscribed on handy laminated cards. When quizzed days later, those with perfect scores earn a virtual award proclaiming, “I’m Peculiar” — the company’s proud phrase for overturning workplace conventions.
At Amazon, workers are encouraged to tear apart one another’s ideas in meetings, toil long and late (emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they were not answered), and held to standards that the company boasts are “unreasonably high.” The internal phone directory instructs colleagues on how to send secret feedback to one another’s bosses. Employees say it is frequently used to sabotage others. (The tool offers sample texts, including this: “I felt concerned about his inflexibility and openly complaining about minor tasks.”)
Many of the newcomers filing in on Mondays may not be there in a few years. The company’s winners dream up innovations that they roll out to a quarter-billion customers and accrue small fortunes in soaring stock. Losers leave or are fired in annual cullings of the staff — “purposeful Darwinism,” one former Amazon human resources director said. Some workers who suffered from cancer, miscarriages and other personal crises said they had been evaluated unfairly or edged out rather than given time to recover.
Even as the company tests delivery by drone and ways to restock toilet paper at the push of a bathroom button, it is conducting a little-known experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers, redrawing the boundaries of what is acceptable. The company, founded and still run by Jeff Bezos, rejects many of the popular management bromides that other corporations at least pay lip service to and has instead designed what many workers call an intricate machine propelling them to achieve Mr. Bezos’ ever-expanding ambitions.
“This is a company that strives to do really big, innovative, groundbreaking things, and those things aren’t easy,” said Susan Harker, Amazon’s top recruiter. “When you’re shooting for the moon, the nature of the work is really challenging. For some people it doesn’t work.”
Bo Olson was one of them. He lasted less than two years in a book marketing role and said that his enduring image was watching people weep in the office, a sight other workers described as well. “You walk out of a conference room and you’ll see a grown man covering his face,” he said. “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.”
Thanks in part to its ability to extract the most from employees, Amazon is stronger than ever. Its swelling campus is transforming a swath of this city, a 10-million-square-foot bet that tens of thousands of new workers will be able to sell everything to everyone everywhere. Last month, it eclipsed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the country, with a market valuation of $250 billion, and Forbes deemed Mr. Bezos the fifth-wealthiest person on earth.
Tens of millions of Americans know Amazon as customers, but life inside its corporate offices is largely a mystery. Secrecy is required; even low-level employees sign a lengthy confidentiality agreement. The company authorized only a handful of senior managers to talk to reporters for this article, declining requests for interviews with Mr. Bezos and his top leaders.
However, more than 100 current and former Amazonians — members of the leadership team, human resources executives, marketers, retail specialists and engineers who worked on projects from the Kindle to grocery delivery to the recent mobile phone launch — described how they tried to reconcile the sometimes-punishing aspects of their workplace with what many called its thrilling power to create.
They are told to forget the “poor habits” they learned at previous jobs, one employee recalled. When they “hit the wall” from the unrelenting pace, there is only one solution: “Climb the wall,” others reported. To be the best Amazonians they can be, they should be guided by the leadership principles, 14 rules inscribed on handy laminated cards. When quizzed days later, those with perfect scores earn a virtual award proclaiming, “I’m Peculiar” — the company’s proud phrase for overturning workplace conventions.At Amazon, workers are encouraged to tear apart one another’s ideas in meetings, toil long and late (emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they were not answered), and held to standards that the company boasts are “unreasonably high.” The internal phone directory instructs colleagues on how to send secret feedback to one another’s bosses. Employees say it is frequently used to sabotage others. (The tool offers sample texts, including this: “I felt concerned about his inflexibility and openly complaining about minor tasks.”)
Many of the newcomers filing in on Mondays may not be there in a few years. The company’s winners dream up innovations that they roll out to a quarter-billion customers and accrue small fortunes in soaring stock. Losers leave or are fired in annual cullings of the staff — “purposeful Darwinism,” one former Amazon human resources director said. Some workers who suffered from cancer, miscarriages and other personal crises said they had been evaluated unfairly or edged out rather than given time to recover.
Even as the company tests delivery by drone and ways to restock toilet paper at the push of a bathroom button, it is conducting a little-known experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers, redrawing the boundaries of what is acceptable. The company, founded and still run by Jeff Bezos, rejects many of the popular management bromides that other corporations at least pay lip service to and has instead designed what many workers call an intricate machine propelling them to achieve Mr. Bezos’ ever-expanding ambitions.
“This is a company that strives to do really big, innovative, groundbreaking things, and those things aren’t easy,” said Susan Harker, Amazon’s top recruiter. “When you’re shooting for the moon, the nature of the work is really challenging. For some people it doesn’t work.”
Bo Olson was one of them. He lasted less than two years in a book marketing role and said that his enduring image was watching people weep in the office, a sight other workers described as well. “You walk out of a conference room and you’ll see a grown man covering his face,” he said. “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.”
Thanks in part to its ability to extract the most from employees, Amazon is stronger than ever. Its swelling campus is transforming a swath of this city, a 10-million-square-foot bet that tens of thousands of new workers will be able to sell everything to everyone everywhere. Last month, it eclipsed Walmart as the most valuable retailer in the country, with a market valuation of $250 billion, and Forbes deemed Mr. Bezos the fifth-wealthiest person on earth.
Tens of millions of Americans know Amazon as customers, but life inside its corporate offices is largely a mystery. Secrecy is required; even low-level employees sign a lengthy confidentiality agreement. The company authorized only a handful of senior managers to talk to reporters for this article, declining requests for interviews with Mr. Bezos and his top leaders.
However, more than 100 current and former Amazonians — members of the leadership team, human resources executives, marketers, retail specialists and engineers who worked on projects from the Kindle to grocery delivery to the recent mobile phone launch — described how they tried to reconcile the sometimes-punishing aspects of their workplace with what many called its thrilling power to create.
by Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Ruth Fremson
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, Die Infusionsthierchen als Vollkomene Organismen.
via:
[ed. I love rotifers.]
Eazy E
How NWA came straight outta Compton and went mainstream.
[Ed. Not strictly NWA, but Eazy E was a member. The jaw-dropping misogyny and swagger in this song still cracks me up... like the lemon to the lime and the bumble to the bee.]
Interview With The Vampires
First of all, there’s no biting – that’s neither safe nor sanitary – and with too many vital arteries, the neck isn’t the favored spot. Transactions aren’t carnages leaving the victim lifeless behind in a dark alley, and nor do vampires sleep in coffins or burn in daylight. They’re generally cool with garlic. Most of them don’t even have fangs.
Instead, modern vampires get their sustenance from inch-long incisions made by a sterilized scalpel on a fleshy part of the body that doesn’t scar. Though the vampire may suck it up directly from the source, medically trained personnel usually perform the procedure. There’s paperwork too: “donors” don’t just have to consent, but also provide health certificates proving the absence of blood-borne diseases. Still, feeding is a sensual and sacred ritual.
The people who claim to be vampires are in the thousands worldwide, with demographics transcending borders, class, race and gender. And increasingly, researchers study them.
“We’re people you pass on the street and likely socialize with on a daily basis,” says Merticus, the 37-year-old founding member of Atlanta’s Vampire Alliance. “We often keep this aspect of our life secret for fear we’ll be misunderstood and to safeguard against reprisals from what society deems taboo.”
Merticus has identified as a real vampire since 1997, and speaks eloquently and passionately about what vampirism is and what it is not. (“Not a cult, a religion, a dangerous practice, a paraphilia, an offshoot of the BDSM community, a community of disillusioned teenagers and definitely not what’s depicted in fictional books, movies or television.”)
An antique dealer by profession, married with two dogs, he’s one of exceptionally few vampires to be open about his identity (“I hide in plain sight,” he explains). For almost a decade, he has personally worked with academics, social scientists, psychologists, lawyers, law enforcement agencies and others on how to best approach, research and understand the vampire subculture.
An Atlanta native, he is known as Merticus both legally and personally – even on his Starbucks card. And while he mostly dresses head-to-toe in black, he doesn’t don colored lenses or fang prosthetics. In fact, he is keen to say he isn’t into it because vampirism is “cool”. Real vampires don’t care much for pop culture buzz, and most don’t look the stereotype (only some 35% of real vampires are into goth, he claims). Some even sneer at the “lifestylers” (also known as “fashion vampires” and “posers”).
Apart from the societal taboos attached to the practice, consuming human blood is generally not advisable: not only can it carry a range of diseases – including Hepatitis, HIV and parasites – but also hazardous amounts of iron. Indeed, modern vampires often insist that their cravings are not voluntary – life would have been easier without them – but something they’re born with. Yet, it isn’t necessarily sexual: though they can and do overlap, real vampirism should not be confused with blood fetishism.
Insiders refer to the realization of one’s vampiric nature as an awakening. It isn’t like the dramatic process often portrayed in movies, and one isn’t be “turned” through vampires bites. For most vampires, it’s a gradual and frightening process, normally manifesting itself in puberty or possibly following trauma. Through trial and error, vampires learn what curbs their hunger.
No one knows what causes haematomania, the craving to drink blood. Those who experience it describe it as an intense thirst-like sensation, an addiction with withdrawal-like symptoms. Animal blood or rare steaks may act as substitutes, but for most vampires nothing beats fresh blood. Frequency and amount vary but for many a few teaspoons once a week is enough. This, naturally, is supplemented with a normal diet: after all, real vampires are humans with human needs.
“Most people are able to maintain healthy energy levels through diet, exercise, social interactions and the occasional cappuccino,” says Mertucus. “We’ve had to develop alternative means to sate our energy needs.”
Not all drink blood, either. The community generally acknowledges two types of vampires: the blood vampires (“sanguinarians”) and the psychic or energy vampires who drain of “life-force” (also known as prana or chi) rather than blood from others.
“We do not identify with fictional characters, supernatural powers, or immortality, nor do we have any difficulty distinguishing between fantasy and reality,” Merticus says, adding that if anything, pop culture is catching up to them.
Real vampires, he says, have existed as an organized community for nearly 30 years, and in solitary for far longer. As there is no “test” for vampirism, everyone is welcome and it’s a remarkably diverse crowd, ranging from doctors, lawyers, soldiers, scientists, soldiers, artists, teachers and parents of all age, gender, ethnicity and religion. Some chose to align with like-minded through courts and houses, though the majority, he says, do not.
If there’s one thing real vampires seem to have in common, it is their reluctance to tell the world about who, and what, they are.
by Kim Wall, The Guardian | Read more:
Image; Alarmy
Friday, August 14, 2015
How To Have An Actual Conversation With A Woman
I know the headline may have ruffled your peacock feathers, but please, hear me out. Many men do not know how to have a conversation, and it would behoove our communities, our country, and dare I say the entire human race if this disconnect could be bridged. I’m not referring to suaveness in the pickup department or clever introductory lines. I mean an old-fashioned, no-frills exchange that uses words to indicate something on the order of I’m interested in your multidimensionality as a fellow human being and would like to achieve greater insight into your infinite subjectivity. Don’t be intimidated: It’s easier than you may think, albeit (apparently) non-intuitive. Let’s get started.
Because this isn’t about hitting on folks you don’t know, this advice presumes you already have a relationship with the person in question—or at the very least, her phone number.
Initiate. A texted hi is a lame way to start. No one on the planet except maybe your mother is excited to get a hi from you. Hi makes it obvious you’re only willing to do the bare minimum to call attention to your existence, and that the other person will have to do all the conversational heavy lifting. The only good response to hi is another hi, and then it’s only four seconds in and you’re both already bored as hell, ready to scroll through Instagram or watch the “Bitch Better Have My Money” video for the 60th time.
What really makes a conversation is enthusiasm. Be excited to talk to this person, whether that excitement stems from the sheer awesomeness of her existence or from finally having the right audience (her) for sharing something hilarious you saw last night. Don’t try to force it—just be honest. Not to get heavy, but why do you like having this person in your life? They get your jokes, they share the best remixes, they love you and make you feel good about yourself? If something made you think of her, say so. If you miss hanging out with her, say that. Keep in mind that it won’t kill you to use exclamation points every now and then.
Maybe you’re trying to play it cool in front of someone you have a crush on, and your approach is to be the Disaffected Brooding Sensitive Guy. But trust me, this rule of thumb still applies. You can get worked up about something in front of her without giving away your crush. Enthusiasm is contagious, and a very close cousin to charisma. (And charisma is just style plus friendly confidence mixed with super-advanced conversation skills.)
by Charlotte Shane, Adequate Man | Read more:
Image: Tara Jacoby
Because this isn’t about hitting on folks you don’t know, this advice presumes you already have a relationship with the person in question—or at the very least, her phone number.Initiate. A texted hi is a lame way to start. No one on the planet except maybe your mother is excited to get a hi from you. Hi makes it obvious you’re only willing to do the bare minimum to call attention to your existence, and that the other person will have to do all the conversational heavy lifting. The only good response to hi is another hi, and then it’s only four seconds in and you’re both already bored as hell, ready to scroll through Instagram or watch the “Bitch Better Have My Money” video for the 60th time.
What really makes a conversation is enthusiasm. Be excited to talk to this person, whether that excitement stems from the sheer awesomeness of her existence or from finally having the right audience (her) for sharing something hilarious you saw last night. Don’t try to force it—just be honest. Not to get heavy, but why do you like having this person in your life? They get your jokes, they share the best remixes, they love you and make you feel good about yourself? If something made you think of her, say so. If you miss hanging out with her, say that. Keep in mind that it won’t kill you to use exclamation points every now and then.
Maybe you’re trying to play it cool in front of someone you have a crush on, and your approach is to be the Disaffected Brooding Sensitive Guy. But trust me, this rule of thumb still applies. You can get worked up about something in front of her without giving away your crush. Enthusiasm is contagious, and a very close cousin to charisma. (And charisma is just style plus friendly confidence mixed with super-advanced conversation skills.)
by Charlotte Shane, Adequate Man | Read more:
Image: Tara Jacoby
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