Monday, February 15, 2016
The Digital Iceberg
Fashion brands are adapting their marketing strategies for a digital reality that goes far deeper than online sales.
On the opening night of the Frieze Art Fair, Chanel’s Mademoiselle Privé, a museum-like exhibition promising “an enchanted journey through the house’s creativity,” touched down, quite fittingly, at the Chelsea gallery owned by British-Iraqi advertising legend Charles Saatchi.
The latest in a string of public marketing spectacles staged by major luxury brands, the exhibition — designed by the same team that creates Chanel’s blockbuster runway shows — attracted a star-studded opening night crowd, including Stella Tennant, Julianne Moore and Lily-Rose Depp, along with a cadre of industry insiders and top Chanel clients. But the brand’s real target was the much wider audience following the action on their social media feeds. “I think what is fantastic with this exhibition is that, from scratch, everything has been thought of digitally,” says Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel’s president for fashion.
A DIGITAL TIPPING POINT
The focus on digital is linked to shifting buying behaviour. In the five-year period from 2009 to 2014, online sales of luxury goods grew four times faster than offline sales. In fact, in 2014, nearly all luxury market growth came from e-commerce, with online sales registering the sharpest spike on record, reaching €14 billion, up 50 percent from 2013, according to a report by McKinsey & Company, a global consulting firm which predicts a “tipping point” in luxury e-commerce. The firm expects the share of luxury sales occurring online to triple in the next 10 years, from roughly 6 percent today to 18 percent in 2025, making e-commerce the world’s third largest luxury market after China and the US.
But e-commerce is just the tip of the digital iceberg. What lurks below the surface of shifting buying behaviour is a change that’s harder to track, but even more colossal. According to recent data presented by Michael J. Wolf, founder and chief executive of technology and strategy consulting firm Activate, the average American spends more time on digital media and technology than work or sleep. And, already, nearly three quarters of all luxury goods purchases, even if they take place in physical stores, are influenced by what consumers do online, according to McKinsey. “My assumption in the long term would be 99 percent,” says Nathalie Remy, who leads the firm’s fashion and luxury goods practice for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “Ninety-nine percent of purchases will be influenced by digital in one way or other.”
A NEW MARKETING MODEL
In response, fashion brands have been rethinking where they advertise, shifting media buys from offline to online. “The spend in digital nowadays, even for the conservative brands, is over 15 or 20 percent. And for some brands that embrace digital in a higher way, it is more than 50 percent,” says Mario Ortelli, a senior luxury goods analyst at Sanford C. Berstein. But simply buying more digital ad space is what Remy calls “the easy part.” Changing not just where but how brands communicate and connect with consumers is more challenging.
The Internet has rewired media, upending the traditional relationship between companies and consumers, and forcing brands to rewrite their marketing strategies. In the pre-Internet era, when media was a monologue to a passive, captive audience paging through a print magazine, for instance, the dominant marketing model was built on interruption, paid reach and repetition. Fashion brands mostly built their marketing strategies around seasonal print campaigns. “Before, you made one campaign per season. You had the same campaign that you put in Vogue or the Financial Times for three months,” says Ortelli.
But media today is fundamentally different. Rather than a monologue, it’s a ‘multilogue’ unfolding in real time across a network of media-technology platforms where consumers are voluntary, active participants, meaning brands can no longer monopolise the conversation and, instead, must forge symbiotic, reciprocal relationships with others. “Online, you don’t completely own your way of communicating, because people can copy and paste, they can comment and share and so really it becomes an ecosystem,” continues Ortelli.
The ascendance of digital has also contributed to a rise in the number of touchpoints between consumers and brands, who now come into continuous contact with each other across a much wider range of platforms, from Instagram to e-commerce sites, resulting in more complex, non-linear paths to purchase. But according to McKinsey, which conducted a recent study on “the luxury consumer decision journey” across 21 touchpoints, ranging from Internet search to social media to store visits, luxury shoppers overwhelmingly tend to purchase from brands with which they are already familiar. Indeed, unlike in other sectors, like consumer electronics, for example, where active product evaluation plays a much bigger role in shaping customer preference, more than three quarters of luxury goods purchases come from the handful of brands that were already being considered by shoppers at the very beginning of their purchase journeys.
“The implication here is that luxury brands need to continue building their pre-eminence over time in order to be at the top of a consumer’s mind whenever a purchase occasion occurs,” reports McKinsey. “This process is more of a marathon than a sprint, requiring long-term building of brand awareness, reputation and category relevancy in a powerful and consistent manner.”
In this new reality, where media is networked and constant brand-building is more critical than ever, marketing success is less about simply reallocating ad spend and more about earning attention and distribution by nurturing the platforms where consumers spend time with emotional content experiences they will voluntarily seek out and share. “In terms of mindset, it's a major shift from simply buying the best advertising space to creating content,” says McKinsey’s Remy.
On the opening night of the Frieze Art Fair, Chanel’s Mademoiselle Privé, a museum-like exhibition promising “an enchanted journey through the house’s creativity,” touched down, quite fittingly, at the Chelsea gallery owned by British-Iraqi advertising legend Charles Saatchi.
The latest in a string of public marketing spectacles staged by major luxury brands, the exhibition — designed by the same team that creates Chanel’s blockbuster runway shows — attracted a star-studded opening night crowd, including Stella Tennant, Julianne Moore and Lily-Rose Depp, along with a cadre of industry insiders and top Chanel clients. But the brand’s real target was the much wider audience following the action on their social media feeds. “I think what is fantastic with this exhibition is that, from scratch, everything has been thought of digitally,” says Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel’s president for fashion.
A DIGITAL TIPPING POINT
The focus on digital is linked to shifting buying behaviour. In the five-year period from 2009 to 2014, online sales of luxury goods grew four times faster than offline sales. In fact, in 2014, nearly all luxury market growth came from e-commerce, with online sales registering the sharpest spike on record, reaching €14 billion, up 50 percent from 2013, according to a report by McKinsey & Company, a global consulting firm which predicts a “tipping point” in luxury e-commerce. The firm expects the share of luxury sales occurring online to triple in the next 10 years, from roughly 6 percent today to 18 percent in 2025, making e-commerce the world’s third largest luxury market after China and the US.But e-commerce is just the tip of the digital iceberg. What lurks below the surface of shifting buying behaviour is a change that’s harder to track, but even more colossal. According to recent data presented by Michael J. Wolf, founder and chief executive of technology and strategy consulting firm Activate, the average American spends more time on digital media and technology than work or sleep. And, already, nearly three quarters of all luxury goods purchases, even if they take place in physical stores, are influenced by what consumers do online, according to McKinsey. “My assumption in the long term would be 99 percent,” says Nathalie Remy, who leads the firm’s fashion and luxury goods practice for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “Ninety-nine percent of purchases will be influenced by digital in one way or other.”
A NEW MARKETING MODEL
In response, fashion brands have been rethinking where they advertise, shifting media buys from offline to online. “The spend in digital nowadays, even for the conservative brands, is over 15 or 20 percent. And for some brands that embrace digital in a higher way, it is more than 50 percent,” says Mario Ortelli, a senior luxury goods analyst at Sanford C. Berstein. But simply buying more digital ad space is what Remy calls “the easy part.” Changing not just where but how brands communicate and connect with consumers is more challenging.
The Internet has rewired media, upending the traditional relationship between companies and consumers, and forcing brands to rewrite their marketing strategies. In the pre-Internet era, when media was a monologue to a passive, captive audience paging through a print magazine, for instance, the dominant marketing model was built on interruption, paid reach and repetition. Fashion brands mostly built their marketing strategies around seasonal print campaigns. “Before, you made one campaign per season. You had the same campaign that you put in Vogue or the Financial Times for three months,” says Ortelli.
But media today is fundamentally different. Rather than a monologue, it’s a ‘multilogue’ unfolding in real time across a network of media-technology platforms where consumers are voluntary, active participants, meaning brands can no longer monopolise the conversation and, instead, must forge symbiotic, reciprocal relationships with others. “Online, you don’t completely own your way of communicating, because people can copy and paste, they can comment and share and so really it becomes an ecosystem,” continues Ortelli.
The ascendance of digital has also contributed to a rise in the number of touchpoints between consumers and brands, who now come into continuous contact with each other across a much wider range of platforms, from Instagram to e-commerce sites, resulting in more complex, non-linear paths to purchase. But according to McKinsey, which conducted a recent study on “the luxury consumer decision journey” across 21 touchpoints, ranging from Internet search to social media to store visits, luxury shoppers overwhelmingly tend to purchase from brands with which they are already familiar. Indeed, unlike in other sectors, like consumer electronics, for example, where active product evaluation plays a much bigger role in shaping customer preference, more than three quarters of luxury goods purchases come from the handful of brands that were already being considered by shoppers at the very beginning of their purchase journeys.
“The implication here is that luxury brands need to continue building their pre-eminence over time in order to be at the top of a consumer’s mind whenever a purchase occasion occurs,” reports McKinsey. “This process is more of a marathon than a sprint, requiring long-term building of brand awareness, reputation and category relevancy in a powerful and consistent manner.”
In this new reality, where media is networked and constant brand-building is more critical than ever, marketing success is less about simply reallocating ad spend and more about earning attention and distribution by nurturing the platforms where consumers spend time with emotional content experiences they will voluntarily seek out and share. “In terms of mindset, it's a major shift from simply buying the best advertising space to creating content,” says McKinsey’s Remy.
by Vikram Alexei Kansara, Business of Fashion | Read more:
Image: Shutterstock
How Marshawn Lynch Changed Seattle Sports Forever
On the noisiest sports day of the year, Marshawn Lynch stole the national spotlight without saying a word. With just a photo of a hanging pair of cleats along with a peace sign emoji, he was gone. Retired from a game that thrust him into a spotlight he was never ready for, that demanded things he was never willing to give.
On the field, Lynch was as compelling a player as you’ll see. Violent, explosive, tenacious, dynamic, unyielding and utterly self-sacrificing. On the sidelines, Lynch was as captivating a sideshow as you’ll ever see. Tummy aches, halftime siestas, an insatiable sweet tooth, and an all-around weirdo.
And then there was off the field.
From the start, Lynch did it his way. In an era where few could escape the spotlight, and even fewer wanted to, Lynch did what no other sports star has managed to do in the last decade: remain a total mystery. No interviews, no desperate calls for attention, no subtweets. And we loved him for it. The more he shied away from the spotlight, the more mythical he became.
It would be one thing if Lynch was just a self-obsessed hermit, but he wasn’t. Part of his genius was how he steadfastly refused to be anything other than himself, and still parlayed his obstinate aloofness into cult hero status and all the attendant branding dollars. In an era where the “look at me! look at me! look at me!” tactics for brand-building are as tired as they are shameless, Lynch built an empire around his anti-hero antics (“I’m just here so I won’t get fined”) and his one-of-a-kind parlance (“I’m just ‘bout that action, boss”).
Whenever Lynch let us catch a glimpse of him, be it on the field or his glorious video game sessions with Conan O’Brien, it was appointment viewing.
Years from now, when the book is written on this golden generation of Seattle Seahawks football, there will be plenty of credit to share: Pete Carroll for changing the culture, John Schneider for constructing a winning roster, Russell Wilson for raising the bar offensively, Kam Chancellor for raising it defensively, Earl Thomas and Richard Sherman for affording the team unique schematic flexibility, and so on. But ultimately, the engine that made this entire team go — the best player on the best Seattle team we’ll see in our lifetimes — was Lynch, the one who started the turnaround, and rekindled Seattle’s love affair with the Seahawks.
by Ross Richendrfer, Sports Illustrated | Read more:
Image: Marshawn Lynch
On the field, Lynch was as compelling a player as you’ll see. Violent, explosive, tenacious, dynamic, unyielding and utterly self-sacrificing. On the sidelines, Lynch was as captivating a sideshow as you’ll ever see. Tummy aches, halftime siestas, an insatiable sweet tooth, and an all-around weirdo.
And then there was off the field.
From the start, Lynch did it his way. In an era where few could escape the spotlight, and even fewer wanted to, Lynch did what no other sports star has managed to do in the last decade: remain a total mystery. No interviews, no desperate calls for attention, no subtweets. And we loved him for it. The more he shied away from the spotlight, the more mythical he became.It would be one thing if Lynch was just a self-obsessed hermit, but he wasn’t. Part of his genius was how he steadfastly refused to be anything other than himself, and still parlayed his obstinate aloofness into cult hero status and all the attendant branding dollars. In an era where the “look at me! look at me! look at me!” tactics for brand-building are as tired as they are shameless, Lynch built an empire around his anti-hero antics (“I’m just here so I won’t get fined”) and his one-of-a-kind parlance (“I’m just ‘bout that action, boss”).
Whenever Lynch let us catch a glimpse of him, be it on the field or his glorious video game sessions with Conan O’Brien, it was appointment viewing.
Years from now, when the book is written on this golden generation of Seattle Seahawks football, there will be plenty of credit to share: Pete Carroll for changing the culture, John Schneider for constructing a winning roster, Russell Wilson for raising the bar offensively, Kam Chancellor for raising it defensively, Earl Thomas and Richard Sherman for affording the team unique schematic flexibility, and so on. But ultimately, the engine that made this entire team go — the best player on the best Seattle team we’ll see in our lifetimes — was Lynch, the one who started the turnaround, and rekindled Seattle’s love affair with the Seahawks.
by Ross Richendrfer, Sports Illustrated | Read more:
Image: Marshawn Lynch
'Narconomics': How The Drug Cartels Operate Like Wal-Mart And McDonald's
When Tom Wainwright became the Mexico correspondent for The Economist in 2010, he found himself covering the country's biggest businesses, including the tequila trade, the oil industry and the commerce of illegal drugs.
"I found that one week I'd be writing about the car business and the next week I'd be writing about the drugs business," Wainwright tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "I gradually came to see that the two actually were perhaps more similar than people normally recognize."
During the three years he spent in Mexico and Central and South America, Wainwright discovered that the cartels that control the region's drug trade use business models that are surprisingly similar to those of big-box stores and franchises. For instance, they have exclusive relationships with their "suppliers" (the farmers who grow the coca plants) that allow the cartels to keep the price of cocaine stable even when crop production is disrupted.
"The theory is that the cartels in the area have what economists call a 'monopsony,' [which is] like a monopoly on buying in the area," Wainwright says. "This rang a bell with me because it's something that people very often say about Wal-Mart."
Wainwright describes his new book, Narconomics, as a business manual for drug lords — and also a blueprint for how to defeat them. When it comes to battling the cartels, Wainwright says governments might do better to focus on controlled legalization rather than the complete eradication of the product.
"The choice that I think we face isn't really a choice between a world without drugs and a world with drugs," he says. "I think the choice we face really is between a world where drugs are controlled by governments and prescribed by pharmacists and doctors, and a world where they're dealt by the mafia, and given that choice, I think the former sounds more appealing."
"I found that one week I'd be writing about the car business and the next week I'd be writing about the drugs business," Wainwright tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "I gradually came to see that the two actually were perhaps more similar than people normally recognize."During the three years he spent in Mexico and Central and South America, Wainwright discovered that the cartels that control the region's drug trade use business models that are surprisingly similar to those of big-box stores and franchises. For instance, they have exclusive relationships with their "suppliers" (the farmers who grow the coca plants) that allow the cartels to keep the price of cocaine stable even when crop production is disrupted.
"The theory is that the cartels in the area have what economists call a 'monopsony,' [which is] like a monopoly on buying in the area," Wainwright says. "This rang a bell with me because it's something that people very often say about Wal-Mart."
Wainwright describes his new book, Narconomics, as a business manual for drug lords — and also a blueprint for how to defeat them. When it comes to battling the cartels, Wainwright says governments might do better to focus on controlled legalization rather than the complete eradication of the product.
"The choice that I think we face isn't really a choice between a world without drugs and a world with drugs," he says. "I think the choice we face really is between a world where drugs are controlled by governments and prescribed by pharmacists and doctors, and a world where they're dealt by the mafia, and given that choice, I think the former sounds more appealing."
by Terry Gross, NPR | Read more:
Image: AFP/AFP/Getty Images
Sunday, February 14, 2016
The Pirate Bay of Science
Researcher illegally shares millions of science papers free online to spread knowledge
[ed. See also: Want to Change Academic Publishing? Just Say No.]
A researcher in Russia has made more than 48 million journal articles - almost every single peer-reviewed paper every published - freely available online. And she's now refusing to shut the site down, despite a court injunction and a lawsuit from Elsevier, one of the world's biggest publishers.
For those of you who aren't already using it, the site in question is Sci-Hub, and it's sort of like a Pirate Bay of the science world. It was established in 2011 by neuroscientist Alexandra Elbakyan, who was frustrated that she couldn't afford to access the articles needed for her research, and it's since gone viral, with hundreds of thousands of papers being downloaded daily. But at the end of last year, the site was ordered to be taken down by a New York district court - a ruling that Elbakyan has decided to fight, triggering a debate over who really owns science.
"Payment of $32 is just insane when you need to skim or read tens or hundreds of these papers to do research. I obtained these papers by pirating them,"Elbakyan told Torrent Freak last year. "Everyone should have access to knowledge regardless of their income or affiliation. And that’s absolutely legal."
If it sounds like a modern day Robin Hood struggle, that's because it kinda is. But in this story, it's not just the poor who don't have access to scientific papers - journal subscriptions have become so expensive that leading universities such as Harvard and Cornell have admitted they can no longer afford them. Researchers have also taken a stand - with 15,000 scientists vowing to boycott publisher Elsevier in part for its excessive paywall fees.
Don't get us wrong, journal publishers have also done a whole lot of good - they've encouraged better research thanks to peer review, and before the Internet, they were crucial to the dissemination of knowledge.
But in recent years, more and more people are beginning to question whether they're still helping the progress of science. In fact, in some cases, the 'publish or perish' mentality is creating more problems than solutions, with a growing number of predatory publishers now charging researchers to have their work published - often without any proper peer review process or even editing.
For those of you who aren't already using it, the site in question is Sci-Hub, and it's sort of like a Pirate Bay of the science world. It was established in 2011 by neuroscientist Alexandra Elbakyan, who was frustrated that she couldn't afford to access the articles needed for her research, and it's since gone viral, with hundreds of thousands of papers being downloaded daily. But at the end of last year, the site was ordered to be taken down by a New York district court - a ruling that Elbakyan has decided to fight, triggering a debate over who really owns science.
"Payment of $32 is just insane when you need to skim or read tens or hundreds of these papers to do research. I obtained these papers by pirating them,"Elbakyan told Torrent Freak last year. "Everyone should have access to knowledge regardless of their income or affiliation. And that’s absolutely legal."
If it sounds like a modern day Robin Hood struggle, that's because it kinda is. But in this story, it's not just the poor who don't have access to scientific papers - journal subscriptions have become so expensive that leading universities such as Harvard and Cornell have admitted they can no longer afford them. Researchers have also taken a stand - with 15,000 scientists vowing to boycott publisher Elsevier in part for its excessive paywall fees.
Don't get us wrong, journal publishers have also done a whole lot of good - they've encouraged better research thanks to peer review, and before the Internet, they were crucial to the dissemination of knowledge.
But in recent years, more and more people are beginning to question whether they're still helping the progress of science. In fact, in some cases, the 'publish or perish' mentality is creating more problems than solutions, with a growing number of predatory publishers now charging researchers to have their work published - often without any proper peer review process or even editing.
by Fiona Macdonald, Science Alert | Read more:
Image: Sergei25/Shutterstock.com
What Romance Really Means After 10 Years of Marriage
[ed. See also: Love and Death]
I'm an advice columnist, so sometimes people ask me about how they can "keep the romance alive" in their marriages. This stumps me a little because, by "romance," I know they mean the traditional version, the one that depends on living inside a giant, suspenseful question mark. This version of romance is all about that thrilling moment when you think that someone may have just materialized who will make every single thing in the world feel delicious and amazing and right forever and ever. It springs forth from big questions, like "Can I really have what I've been looking for? Will I really feel loved and desired and truly adored at last? Can I finally be seen as the answer to someone else's dream, the heroine with the glimmering eyes and sultry smile?" And this version of romance peaks at the exact moment when you think, Holy Christ, I really am going to melt right into this other person (who is a relative stranger)! It really IS physically intoxicating and perfect! And it seems like we feel the exact same way about each other! Traditional romance is heady and exciting precisely because — and not in spite of the fact that — there are still lingering questions at the edges of the frame: "Will I be enough for this person? Will she stop wanting me someday? Is he as amazing as he seems/feels/tastes?"
But once you’ve been married for a long time (my tenth anniversary is in a few months!), a whole new kind of romance takes over. It’s not the romance of rom-coms, which are predicated on the question of “Will he/she really love me (which seems impossible), or does he/she actually hate me (which seems far more likely and even a little more sporting)?" Long-married romance is not the romance of watching someone’s every move like a stalker, and wanting to lick his face but trying to restrain yourself. It’s not even the romance of “Whoa, you bought me flowers, you must REALLY love me!” or “Wow, look at us here, as the sun sets, your lips on mine, we REALLY ARE DOING THIS LOVE THING, RIGHT HERE.” That’s dating romance, newlywed romance. You’re still pinching yourself. You’re still fixated on whether it’s really happening. You’re still kind of sort of looking for proof. The little bits of proof bring the romance. The question of whether you’ll get the proof you require brings the romance. (The looking for proof also brings lots of fights, but that’s a subject for another day.)
After a decade of marriage, if things go well, you don’t need any more proof. What you have instead — and what I would argue is the most deeply romantic thing of all — is this palpable, reassuring sense that it’s okay to be a human being. Because until you feel absolutely sure that you won’t eventually be abandoned, it’s maybe not 100 percent clear that any other human mortal can tolerate another human mortal. The smells. The sounds. The repetitive fixations on the same dumb shit, over and over. Even as you develop a kind of a resigned glaze of oh, this again in, say, marital years one through five, you also feel faintly unnerved by your own terrible mortal humanness.
Or you should feel that way. (...)
And now I’m going to tell you my most romantic story of all. I was very sick out of the blue with some form of dysentery. It hit overnight. I got up to go to the bathroom, and I fainted on the way and cracked my ribs on the side of the bathtub. My husband discovered me there, passed out, in a scene that … well, imagine what would happen if you let Todd Solondz direct an episode of Game of Thrones. Think about what that might look like. I’m going to take your delicate sensibilities into account and resist the urge to paint a clearer picture for you.
My husband was not happy about this scene. But he handled it without complaint. That is the very definition of romantic: not only not being made to feel crappy about things that are clearly out of your control, but being quietly cared for by someone who can shut up and do what needs to be done under duress. That is the definition of sexy, too. People think they want a cowboy, because cowboys are rugged and macho and they don't whine. But almost anyone can ride a stallion across a beautiful prairie and then come home and eat a giant home-cooked steak without whining about it. Entering into a Todd Solondz–directed Game of Thrones dysentery scene, though, will try the most stalwart and unflinching souls among us.
Now let’s tackle something even darker and more unpleasant, the seeming antithesis of our modern notion of romance: Someone is dying in their own bed, and someone’s spouse is sitting at the bedside, holding the dying person’s hand, and also handling all kinds of unspeakable things that people who aren’t drowning in gigantic piles of cash sometimes have to handle all by themselves. To me, that’s romance. Romance is surviving and then not surviving anymore, without being ashamed of any of it.
Because survival is ugly. Survival means sometimes smelling and sounding the wrong way. It’s one thing for a person to buy you flowers, to purchase a nice dinner, to PROVE that they truly, deeply want to have some good sweet-talky time and some touching time alone with you, and maybe they’d like to do that whole routine forever and ever and ever. That’s a heady thing. Really? Me? Forever? YOUR HEART SINGS. And you imagine eating out at nice restaurants, and screwing, and eating out and screwing and eating out and screwing. It's like that Bongwater song about Pretty Woman, where romance boils down to "sucking and shopping and sucking and shopping and sucking and shopping!" Romance, in this view, is like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, except he's repeating the same sexily suspenseful moment over and over again.
True romance, though, is more like the movie True Romance: Two deluded, lazy people face a bewildering sea of filth and blood and gore together, but they make it through somehow, some way, without losing their minds completely.
I'm an advice columnist, so sometimes people ask me about how they can "keep the romance alive" in their marriages. This stumps me a little because, by "romance," I know they mean the traditional version, the one that depends on living inside a giant, suspenseful question mark. This version of romance is all about that thrilling moment when you think that someone may have just materialized who will make every single thing in the world feel delicious and amazing and right forever and ever. It springs forth from big questions, like "Can I really have what I've been looking for? Will I really feel loved and desired and truly adored at last? Can I finally be seen as the answer to someone else's dream, the heroine with the glimmering eyes and sultry smile?" And this version of romance peaks at the exact moment when you think, Holy Christ, I really am going to melt right into this other person (who is a relative stranger)! It really IS physically intoxicating and perfect! And it seems like we feel the exact same way about each other! Traditional romance is heady and exciting precisely because — and not in spite of the fact that — there are still lingering questions at the edges of the frame: "Will I be enough for this person? Will she stop wanting me someday? Is he as amazing as he seems/feels/tastes?"
But once you’ve been married for a long time (my tenth anniversary is in a few months!), a whole new kind of romance takes over. It’s not the romance of rom-coms, which are predicated on the question of “Will he/she really love me (which seems impossible), or does he/she actually hate me (which seems far more likely and even a little more sporting)?" Long-married romance is not the romance of watching someone’s every move like a stalker, and wanting to lick his face but trying to restrain yourself. It’s not even the romance of “Whoa, you bought me flowers, you must REALLY love me!” or “Wow, look at us here, as the sun sets, your lips on mine, we REALLY ARE DOING THIS LOVE THING, RIGHT HERE.” That’s dating romance, newlywed romance. You’re still pinching yourself. You’re still fixated on whether it’s really happening. You’re still kind of sort of looking for proof. The little bits of proof bring the romance. The question of whether you’ll get the proof you require brings the romance. (The looking for proof also brings lots of fights, but that’s a subject for another day.)After a decade of marriage, if things go well, you don’t need any more proof. What you have instead — and what I would argue is the most deeply romantic thing of all — is this palpable, reassuring sense that it’s okay to be a human being. Because until you feel absolutely sure that you won’t eventually be abandoned, it’s maybe not 100 percent clear that any other human mortal can tolerate another human mortal. The smells. The sounds. The repetitive fixations on the same dumb shit, over and over. Even as you develop a kind of a resigned glaze of oh, this again in, say, marital years one through five, you also feel faintly unnerved by your own terrible mortal humanness.
Or you should feel that way. (...)
And now I’m going to tell you my most romantic story of all. I was very sick out of the blue with some form of dysentery. It hit overnight. I got up to go to the bathroom, and I fainted on the way and cracked my ribs on the side of the bathtub. My husband discovered me there, passed out, in a scene that … well, imagine what would happen if you let Todd Solondz direct an episode of Game of Thrones. Think about what that might look like. I’m going to take your delicate sensibilities into account and resist the urge to paint a clearer picture for you.
My husband was not happy about this scene. But he handled it without complaint. That is the very definition of romantic: not only not being made to feel crappy about things that are clearly out of your control, but being quietly cared for by someone who can shut up and do what needs to be done under duress. That is the definition of sexy, too. People think they want a cowboy, because cowboys are rugged and macho and they don't whine. But almost anyone can ride a stallion across a beautiful prairie and then come home and eat a giant home-cooked steak without whining about it. Entering into a Todd Solondz–directed Game of Thrones dysentery scene, though, will try the most stalwart and unflinching souls among us.
Now let’s tackle something even darker and more unpleasant, the seeming antithesis of our modern notion of romance: Someone is dying in their own bed, and someone’s spouse is sitting at the bedside, holding the dying person’s hand, and also handling all kinds of unspeakable things that people who aren’t drowning in gigantic piles of cash sometimes have to handle all by themselves. To me, that’s romance. Romance is surviving and then not surviving anymore, without being ashamed of any of it.
Because survival is ugly. Survival means sometimes smelling and sounding the wrong way. It’s one thing for a person to buy you flowers, to purchase a nice dinner, to PROVE that they truly, deeply want to have some good sweet-talky time and some touching time alone with you, and maybe they’d like to do that whole routine forever and ever and ever. That’s a heady thing. Really? Me? Forever? YOUR HEART SINGS. And you imagine eating out at nice restaurants, and screwing, and eating out and screwing and eating out and screwing. It's like that Bongwater song about Pretty Woman, where romance boils down to "sucking and shopping and sucking and shopping and sucking and shopping!" Romance, in this view, is like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, except he's repeating the same sexily suspenseful moment over and over again.
True romance, though, is more like the movie True Romance: Two deluded, lazy people face a bewildering sea of filth and blood and gore together, but they make it through somehow, some way, without losing their minds completely.
by Heather Havrilesky, The Cut | Read more:
Image: Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft via:
A Country Breaking Down
[ed. See also: What Happened to the Great Urban Design Projects?]
It would be helpful if there were another word for “infrastructure”: it’s such an earnest and passive word for the blood vessels of this country, the crucial conveyors and connections that get us from here to there (or not) and the ports that facilitate our trade (or don’t), as well as the carriers of information, in particular broadband (if one is connected to it), and other unreliable structures. The word “crisis” is also overused, applied to the unimportant as well as the crucial. But this country has an infrastructure crisis.
The near-total failure of our political institutions to invest for the future, eschewing what doesn’t yield the quick payoff, political and physical, has left us with hopelessly clogged traffic, at risk of being on a bridge that collapses, or on a train that flies off defective rails, or with rusted pipes carrying our drinking water. Broadband is our new interstate highway system, but not everyone has access to it—a division largely based on class. Depending on the measurement used, the United States ranks from fourteenth to thirtieth among all nations in its investments in infrastructure. The wealthiest nation on earth is nowhere near the top.
Congress’s approval last December of a five-year bill to spend $305 billion to improve the nation’s highway system occasioned much self-congratulation that the lawmakers actually got something done. But with an increase in the gasoline tax politically off-limits, the means for paying for it are dubious and uncertain. This was the longest-term highway bill passed since 1998 and the thirty-fifth extension of an authorization of highway construction since 2005. Some of the extensions of the highway program approved by Congress lasted for only three months. The previous extension was for just over three weeks. Such practices don’t allow for much planning of the construction or repair of highways and bridges and mass transit systems.
Our political myopia has put us in actual physical danger as we go about the mundane business of getting about. We let essential structures and facilities deteriorate or go unbuilt. A politician is more likely get in trouble with constituents for spending federal money than for not spending federal money. Moreover, as a rule Washington politicians, whether in office for two or four or six years, aren’t keen on spending for something that doesn’t have a near-term payoff—perhaps a structure that they can dedicate and even get their names inscribed on.
The water pipes underneath the White House are said to still be made of wood, as are some others in the nation’s capital and some cities across the country. We admire Japan’s and France’s “bullet trains” that get people to their destination with remarkable efficiency, but many other nations have them as well, including Russia, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. A friend of mine recently rode on the Turkish bullet train and noted that the coffee in his full cup didn’t spill. Last year, Japan demonstrated its new maglev train, which, using electromagnets, levitates above the tracks, and can go about an amazing 375 miles per hour, making it the fastest train in the world. The fastest commercially used maglev, in Shanghai, goes up to 288 miles per hour. But the United States hasn’t a single system that meets all the criteria of high-speed rail. President Obama has proposed a system of high-speed railroads, which has gone nowhere in Congress.
It would be helpful if there were another word for “infrastructure”: it’s such an earnest and passive word for the blood vessels of this country, the crucial conveyors and connections that get us from here to there (or not) and the ports that facilitate our trade (or don’t), as well as the carriers of information, in particular broadband (if one is connected to it), and other unreliable structures. The word “crisis” is also overused, applied to the unimportant as well as the crucial. But this country has an infrastructure crisis.
The near-total failure of our political institutions to invest for the future, eschewing what doesn’t yield the quick payoff, political and physical, has left us with hopelessly clogged traffic, at risk of being on a bridge that collapses, or on a train that flies off defective rails, or with rusted pipes carrying our drinking water. Broadband is our new interstate highway system, but not everyone has access to it—a division largely based on class. Depending on the measurement used, the United States ranks from fourteenth to thirtieth among all nations in its investments in infrastructure. The wealthiest nation on earth is nowhere near the top.Congress’s approval last December of a five-year bill to spend $305 billion to improve the nation’s highway system occasioned much self-congratulation that the lawmakers actually got something done. But with an increase in the gasoline tax politically off-limits, the means for paying for it are dubious and uncertain. This was the longest-term highway bill passed since 1998 and the thirty-fifth extension of an authorization of highway construction since 2005. Some of the extensions of the highway program approved by Congress lasted for only three months. The previous extension was for just over three weeks. Such practices don’t allow for much planning of the construction or repair of highways and bridges and mass transit systems.
Our political myopia has put us in actual physical danger as we go about the mundane business of getting about. We let essential structures and facilities deteriorate or go unbuilt. A politician is more likely get in trouble with constituents for spending federal money than for not spending federal money. Moreover, as a rule Washington politicians, whether in office for two or four or six years, aren’t keen on spending for something that doesn’t have a near-term payoff—perhaps a structure that they can dedicate and even get their names inscribed on.
The water pipes underneath the White House are said to still be made of wood, as are some others in the nation’s capital and some cities across the country. We admire Japan’s and France’s “bullet trains” that get people to their destination with remarkable efficiency, but many other nations have them as well, including Russia, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. A friend of mine recently rode on the Turkish bullet train and noted that the coffee in his full cup didn’t spill. Last year, Japan demonstrated its new maglev train, which, using electromagnets, levitates above the tracks, and can go about an amazing 375 miles per hour, making it the fastest train in the world. The fastest commercially used maglev, in Shanghai, goes up to 288 miles per hour. But the United States hasn’t a single system that meets all the criteria of high-speed rail. President Obama has proposed a system of high-speed railroads, which has gone nowhere in Congress.
by Elizabeth Drew, NY Review of Books | Read more:
Image: Allen Brisson-Smith/The New York Times/Redux
Sociability, Golf Courses, and the Performance of Institutional Investors
Abstract
We hypothesize that prestigious golf courses attract golfers and visitors from across the country, providing greater opportunities for nearby investors to build social connections. Our evidence suggests that institutional investors located near prestigious golf courses earn significantly better benchmark- and risk-adjusted returns. This reflects the benefits of sociability as our findings are stronger for golf courses with reciprocal guest policies that allow wider participation and increase when major golf championships rotate to the state. Their portfolios reveal hallmarks of active trading – higher concentration, greater selectivity, more frequent turnover – and include more distant stocks. To establish a causal link, we exploit the fact that golf is a weather-dependent outdoor activity. We find that their outperformance occurs during times of low precipitation around golf courses, evaporating when bad weather keeps golfers off the greens.
by Chishen Wei and Lei Zhang, Nanyang Technological University | Read more: (pdf)
Image: markk
The Internet of Way Too Many Things
At a design conference recently, I was introduced to Leeo, a new product that I initially understood to be a reboot of something really in need of a redesign: the smoke detector. As the designer explained his process, I quickly came to understand that Leeo was nothing of the sort. It was a gadget, a night light that “listens” for your smoke detector to go off and then calls your smartphone to let you know your house might be on fire.
So, to “improve” a $20 smoke alarm, the designer opted to add a $99 night light and a several-hundred-dollar smartphone.
This is not good design.
Alas, Leeo is no isolated case, but rather representative of a whole spectrum of products designed for the so-called Smart Home, products integral to the much-lauded, much-misunderstood Internet of Things. (You know, that thing where a bunch of other things will be connected to the Internet.)
Like you, I once had many products that each fulfilled a separate function: a landline, a cellphone, a camera, a video recorder, a stereo, a calendar. Now, I have one product that does all of those things — a smartphone. This level of product integration was a revolution in product design. We can debate the extent to which technology does or doesn’t improve our lives, but it is fair to say that in terms of usability, convenience and sustainability, one product doing the work of five or six is a win.
Not, however, if you’re in the business of selling stereos or cameras. Or monetizing the data obtained from their use.
A veritable museum of Leeo-ish products is currently on display in San Francisco at Target’s Open House, a new store designed to attract folks before they head to the multiplex upstairs — but more specifically, to give Target a piece of the plethora of disruptive innovation happening in the Bay Area by helping start-ups bring their products to market.
What the products on display have in common is that they don’t solve problems people actually have. Technology is integrated not because it is necessary, but because the technology exists to integrate it — and because it will enable companies to sell you stuff you never knew you were missing.
So, to “improve” a $20 smoke alarm, the designer opted to add a $99 night light and a several-hundred-dollar smartphone.
This is not good design.Alas, Leeo is no isolated case, but rather representative of a whole spectrum of products designed for the so-called Smart Home, products integral to the much-lauded, much-misunderstood Internet of Things. (You know, that thing where a bunch of other things will be connected to the Internet.)
Like you, I once had many products that each fulfilled a separate function: a landline, a cellphone, a camera, a video recorder, a stereo, a calendar. Now, I have one product that does all of those things — a smartphone. This level of product integration was a revolution in product design. We can debate the extent to which technology does or doesn’t improve our lives, but it is fair to say that in terms of usability, convenience and sustainability, one product doing the work of five or six is a win.
Not, however, if you’re in the business of selling stereos or cameras. Or monetizing the data obtained from their use.
A veritable museum of Leeo-ish products is currently on display in San Francisco at Target’s Open House, a new store designed to attract folks before they head to the multiplex upstairs — but more specifically, to give Target a piece of the plethora of disruptive innovation happening in the Bay Area by helping start-ups bring their products to market.
What the products on display have in common is that they don’t solve problems people actually have. Technology is integrated not because it is necessary, but because the technology exists to integrate it — and because it will enable companies to sell you stuff you never knew you were missing.
Saturday, February 13, 2016
Antonin Scalia (March, 1936 - February, 2016)
[ed. Wow. This is really big. It'll be interesting to see how a new appointment eventually plays out (I think I can guess). ed. And so it begins.]
French Law Forbids Food Waste By Supermarkets
France has become the first country in the world to ban supermarkets from throwing away or destroying unsold food, forcing them instead to donate it to charities and food banks.
Under a law passed unanimously by the French senate, as of Wednesday large shops will no longer bin good quality food approaching its best-before date. Charities will be able to give out millions more free meals each year to people struggling to afford to eat.
The law follows a grassroots campaign in France by shoppers, anti-poverty campaigners and those opposed to food waste. The campaign, which led to a petition, was started by the councillor Arash Derambarsh. In December a bill on the issue passed through the national assembly, having been introduced by the former food industry minister Guillaume Garot.
Campaigners now hope to persuade the EU to adopt similar legislation across member states.
The law has been welcomed by food banks, which will now begin the task of finding the extra volunteers, lorries, warehouse and fridge space to deal with an increase in donations from shops and food companies.
Supermarkets will also be barred from deliberately spoiling food in order to stop it being eaten by people foraging in stores’ bins. In recent years, growing numbers of families, students, unemployed and homeless people in France have been foraging in supermarket bins at night to feed themselves. People have been finding edible products thrown out just as their best-before dates approached.
Some supermarkets doused binned food in bleach, reportedly to prevent food poisoning from items taken from bins. Other supermarkets deliberately binned food in locked warehouses for collection by refuse trucks. (...)
Until now French food banks received 100,000 tonnes of donated goods, 35,000 tonnes of which came from supermarkets. Even a 15% increase in food coming from supermarkets would mean 10m more meals being handed out each year, Bailet said.
Food banks and charities will, for their part, be obliged to collect and stock the food in properly hygienic conditions and distribute it with “dignity”. This means the food must be given out at a proper food bank or centre, where human contact and conversation is fostered, rather than, for example, simply organised as handouts on the street.
Crucially the law will also make it simpler for the food industry to give some excess products directly to food banks from factories. Until now, if a dairy factory made yoghurts carrying the brand name of a supermarket, it had been a long, complex process to donate any excess to charity. Now it would be faster and easier. “That is very important for food banks because this is a real source of quality products, coming straight from the factory,” Bailet said. (...)
Of the 7.1m tonnes of food wasted in France annually, 67% is binned by consumers, 15% by restaurants and 11% by shops. Each year 1.3bn tonnes of food are wasted worldwide.
by Angelique Chrisafis , The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Graham Turner
Under a law passed unanimously by the French senate, as of Wednesday large shops will no longer bin good quality food approaching its best-before date. Charities will be able to give out millions more free meals each year to people struggling to afford to eat.
The law follows a grassroots campaign in France by shoppers, anti-poverty campaigners and those opposed to food waste. The campaign, which led to a petition, was started by the councillor Arash Derambarsh. In December a bill on the issue passed through the national assembly, having been introduced by the former food industry minister Guillaume Garot.Campaigners now hope to persuade the EU to adopt similar legislation across member states.
The law has been welcomed by food banks, which will now begin the task of finding the extra volunteers, lorries, warehouse and fridge space to deal with an increase in donations from shops and food companies.
Supermarkets will also be barred from deliberately spoiling food in order to stop it being eaten by people foraging in stores’ bins. In recent years, growing numbers of families, students, unemployed and homeless people in France have been foraging in supermarket bins at night to feed themselves. People have been finding edible products thrown out just as their best-before dates approached.
Some supermarkets doused binned food in bleach, reportedly to prevent food poisoning from items taken from bins. Other supermarkets deliberately binned food in locked warehouses for collection by refuse trucks. (...)
Until now French food banks received 100,000 tonnes of donated goods, 35,000 tonnes of which came from supermarkets. Even a 15% increase in food coming from supermarkets would mean 10m more meals being handed out each year, Bailet said.
Food banks and charities will, for their part, be obliged to collect and stock the food in properly hygienic conditions and distribute it with “dignity”. This means the food must be given out at a proper food bank or centre, where human contact and conversation is fostered, rather than, for example, simply organised as handouts on the street.
Crucially the law will also make it simpler for the food industry to give some excess products directly to food banks from factories. Until now, if a dairy factory made yoghurts carrying the brand name of a supermarket, it had been a long, complex process to donate any excess to charity. Now it would be faster and easier. “That is very important for food banks because this is a real source of quality products, coming straight from the factory,” Bailet said. (...)
Of the 7.1m tonnes of food wasted in France annually, 67% is binned by consumers, 15% by restaurants and 11% by shops. Each year 1.3bn tonnes of food are wasted worldwide.
by Angelique Chrisafis , The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Graham Turner
Rethinking Recycling
Criticize recycling and you may as well be using a fume-spewing chainsaw to chop down ancient redwoods, as far as most environmentalists are concerned. But recent research into the environmental costs and benefits and some tough-to-ignore market realities have even the most ardent of recycling fans questioning the current system.
No one is saying that using old things to make new things is intrinsically a bad idea, but consensus is building around the idea that the system used today in the United States on balance benefits neither the economy nor the environment.
In general, local governments take responsibility for recycling. The practice can deliver profits to city and county budgets when commodity prices are high for recycled goods, but it turns recycling into an unwanted cost when commodity markets dip. And recycling is not cheap. According to Bucknell University economist Thomas Kinnaman, the energy, labor and machinery necessary to recycle materials is roughly double the amount needed to simply landfill those materials.
Right now, that equation is being further thrown off by fluctuations in the commodity market. For example, the prices for recycled plastic have dropped dramatically, which has some governments, many of which have been selling their plastic recyclables for the last several years, re-thinking their policies around the material now that they may have to pay for it to be recycled. It’s a decision being driven not by waste management goals or environmental concerns, but for economic reasons that could feasibly change in the next couple of years.
Not only that, but in some cases recycling isn’t even what’s best for the environment.
The solution, according to economists, activists and many in the design community, is to get smarter about both the design and disposal of materials, and shift responsibility away from local governments and into the hands of manufacturers.
Material World
Because most people dispose of used aluminum, paper, plastic and glass in the same way — throw them into a bin and forget about them — it’s easy to think that all recycled materials are created equal. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Each material has a unique value, determined by the rarity of the virgin resource and the price the recycled material fetches on the commodity market. The recycling process for each also requires a different amount of water and energy and comes with a unique (and sometimes hefty) carbon footprint.
All of this suggests it makes more sense to recycle some materials than others from an economic and environmental standpoint.
A recent study by Kinnaman provides research to back up that assertion. Using Japan as his test case — because the country makes available all of its municipal cost data for recycling — Kinnaman evaluated the cost of recycling each material, the energy and emissions involved in recycling, and various benefits (including simply feeling good about doing something believed to have an environmental or social benefit). He came to the controversial conclusion that an optimal recycling rate in most countries would probably be around 10 percent of goods.
But not just any 10 percent, Kinnaman cautions. To get the most benefit with the least cost, we should be recycling more of some items and less — or even none — of others. “Although the optimal overall recycling rate may be only 10%, the composition of that 10% should contain primarily aluminum, other metals and some forms of paper, notably cardboard and other source[s] of fiber,” he wrote in a follow-up piece in The Conversation. “Optimal recycling rates for these materials may be near 100% while optimal rates of recycling plastic and glass might be zero.”
by Amy Westervelt , Ensia | Read more:
Image :iStockphoto.com/ChrisSteer
No one is saying that using old things to make new things is intrinsically a bad idea, but consensus is building around the idea that the system used today in the United States on balance benefits neither the economy nor the environment.
In general, local governments take responsibility for recycling. The practice can deliver profits to city and county budgets when commodity prices are high for recycled goods, but it turns recycling into an unwanted cost when commodity markets dip. And recycling is not cheap. According to Bucknell University economist Thomas Kinnaman, the energy, labor and machinery necessary to recycle materials is roughly double the amount needed to simply landfill those materials.Right now, that equation is being further thrown off by fluctuations in the commodity market. For example, the prices for recycled plastic have dropped dramatically, which has some governments, many of which have been selling their plastic recyclables for the last several years, re-thinking their policies around the material now that they may have to pay for it to be recycled. It’s a decision being driven not by waste management goals or environmental concerns, but for economic reasons that could feasibly change in the next couple of years.
Not only that, but in some cases recycling isn’t even what’s best for the environment.
The solution, according to economists, activists and many in the design community, is to get smarter about both the design and disposal of materials, and shift responsibility away from local governments and into the hands of manufacturers.
Material World
Because most people dispose of used aluminum, paper, plastic and glass in the same way — throw them into a bin and forget about them — it’s easy to think that all recycled materials are created equal. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Each material has a unique value, determined by the rarity of the virgin resource and the price the recycled material fetches on the commodity market. The recycling process for each also requires a different amount of water and energy and comes with a unique (and sometimes hefty) carbon footprint.
All of this suggests it makes more sense to recycle some materials than others from an economic and environmental standpoint.
A recent study by Kinnaman provides research to back up that assertion. Using Japan as his test case — because the country makes available all of its municipal cost data for recycling — Kinnaman evaluated the cost of recycling each material, the energy and emissions involved in recycling, and various benefits (including simply feeling good about doing something believed to have an environmental or social benefit). He came to the controversial conclusion that an optimal recycling rate in most countries would probably be around 10 percent of goods.
But not just any 10 percent, Kinnaman cautions. To get the most benefit with the least cost, we should be recycling more of some items and less — or even none — of others. “Although the optimal overall recycling rate may be only 10%, the composition of that 10% should contain primarily aluminum, other metals and some forms of paper, notably cardboard and other source[s] of fiber,” he wrote in a follow-up piece in The Conversation. “Optimal recycling rates for these materials may be near 100% while optimal rates of recycling plastic and glass might be zero.”
by Amy Westervelt , Ensia | Read more:
Image :iStockphoto.com/ChrisSteer
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