Pepsi's New Ad Is a Total Success

[ed. See also: How Pepsi's ad backfired for Kendall Jenner.]

Before it’s an ad for shampoo or cat food or cola, every advertisement is first an ad for capitalism.

Without a privately-controlled industry jockeying to compete with one another for consumer dollars, there’s no need for advertising. People would wash their hair with Shampoo, and feed their cats with Cat Food, and quench their thirst with Cola. Without competition, there would be no need to advertise in the first place. Especially when it comes to commodities. There are some differences between colas—the taste and the ingredients, for example. But the main difference is on the can rather than in it. The branding, and the sensibilities that branding conveys.

Yesterday, Pepsi released an ad that takes a strong, if bizarre, brand position on contemporary politics. In the spot, dubbed “Jump In,” Kendall Jenner abandons a photo shoot to join a passing march. To do so, she sheds a blonde wig and slips in among a diverse throng of variously-toned participants in a seemingly-innocuous protest. Eventually, Jenner meets an equally innocuous policeman keeping order. She hands him a cold Pepsi, and the crowd of protesters rejoices. “Live for Now,” the spot concludes, topped by the Pepsi brand mark.

The ad has been almost universally panned online. A tone-deaf take on “protest as brunch.” An absurdist parody of the long, unfinished project of civil-rights activism in America. A trivialization of today’s street unrest.

All these criticisms are dead-on. But they don’t matter, because the ad is an undeniable success. Yes, true, it coopts the politics of protest, particularly as they surround race relations in America today. But that’s not the ad’s goal, so the public’s objection is ultimately irrelevant to Pepsi’s mission. The ad’s point is to put the consumer in a more important role than the citizen anyway. And to position Pepsi as a facilitator in the utopian dream of pure, color-blind consumerism that might someday replace politics entirely. (...)

Critics aren’t wrong to see the protest as a milquetoast mockery of the real agitation for social justice in the streets in America. In particular, the ad neuters one of the most memorable images of protest in recent memory, that of a woman facing-off with riot police in a mid-2016 Baton Rouge demonstration.

But the ad’s interpretive possibilities don’t end with this explanation. It’s equally possible to understand the Pepsi protest as a march for the power of Pepsi branding instead of social justice. It may seem preposterous or even revolting to advance this interpretation, but that doesn’t make it any less viable. After all, the ad ends with a clear admission of the march’s purpose: to deliver ice-cold Pepsi cola to the (prominently unmilitarized) police who quirkily mistook an innocent, branded march for a political protest.

At a time when so much is worthy of protest, it might seem insane to imagine a big company like Pepsi greenlighting such a tone-deaf take. But it’s equally likely that Pepsi is banking on this exact social anxiety as an invitation for branded levity. Today’s political climate is distressing for many people in America. For some of them, the answer to such distress is protest and agitation. But for others, salve comes in dreaming of a near future in which all that anxiety melts away, like a cool soda quenching a big thirst. (...)

The genius of this decision is that it satisfies everyone. The Kardashian fanatics got their Kendall Jenner fix. The agitators get to feel that they have successfully redressed a big brand company; a minor victory in a time of so many defeats. The earnest, probably-white folk who enjoyed Pepsi’s alternative to constant politicization got their saccharine status-quo—and now they also get a branded excuse to issue a counter-offensive against the progressives who insisted on bringing politics into innocuous soft drinks (surely it’s coming). The media get their scoops, and their thinkpieces (like this one). And these outcomes, incompatible though they are, all return attention to Pepsi—which is all it really wanted in the first place.

by Ian Bogost, The Atlantic |  Read more:

Image: PepsiCo

Trump's Terrible Moment of Truth in Syria

Last November, a few days before the U.S. Presidential election, I was among a group of American reporters and researchers who visited Damascus, Syria, to interview President Bashar al-Assad and his foreign minister, Walid Muallem. At a meeting with the group, Muallem was asked which candidate he favored, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

“I hope they will not elect anybody,” he said.

Muallem laughed at his own joke. He wasn’t serious. Both Muallem and his boss very much wanted Trump to win, hoping that, if he did, some of the pressure on their regime, which has been ostracized around the globe for committing war crimes, would ease up. Assad and Muallem had every reason to think that Trump would give them a more sympathetic hearing than they’d receive from a Clinton Administration. During the campaign, while Clinton was promising to get tough on Assad, Trump had praised him, if for no other reason than that he was battling the Islamic State. Trump had also made numerous positive references to Vladimir Putin, Russia’s leader and Assad’s most important international ally. There was talk, after Trump’s election, of a possible rapprochement with Syria, perhaps facilitated by Putin. And, indeed, the Washington Post reported on Monday that, earlier this year, the Blackwater founder Erik Prince met secretly in the Seychelles with a confidant of Putin to discuss, among other things, a possible deal on Syria.

“I don’t like Assad at all,’’ Trump said in a Presidential debate in October. “But Assad is killing isis. Russia is killing isis and Iran is killing isis.”

The trouble, of course, was that while Assad may indeed have been killing isis, he was also killing Syrian civilians—and so prolifically that most Western governments, including the United States, long ago severed diplomatic relations with Assad’s government and called on Assad to step down. Most notoriously, in 2013, the Assad regime was accused by Western governments of using poison gas in the Damascus suburb of East Ghouta, an attack that killed at least fourteen hundred people and wounded more than three thousand, most of them civilians. And though President Barack Obama had previously publicly drawn a “red line” over the use of chemical weapons in Syria, and threatened to respond militarily if it were crossed, he decided, at the last moment, to refrain from any military action, securing instead a promise from Assad to turn over the country’s chemical weapons. It was one of the most significant moments of Obama’s Presidency, and one that Trump and other Republicans ridiculed.

Now comes the moment of truth for President Trump. Sources inside Syria are reporting that a sarin-gas attack in Idlib Province killed dozens of civilians and injured hundreds more on Tuesday. In a statement, Trump blamed Assad’s regime, called the attack “reprehensible,” and said that it “cannot be ignored by the civilized world.” He also described the attack as a “consequence of the past Administration’s weakness and irresolution.”

What happens now? Trump’s comment put forward no clear policy or planned response. During a press briefing on Tuesday, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, strongly suggested that the Administration is preparing a military response in order to punish the Syrian government and deter it from carrying out any more chemical-weapons attacks.

The Obama Administration took plenty of actions against the Assad government, including sending arms to rebel groups. But Obama’s other aim, in addition to destroying isis, was to avoid a collapse of the Syrian state—the kind that might happen if the United States were to directly attack the Assad regime. Obama feared that the ensuing vacuum in Damascus would be filled by the likes of isis and the Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra. When Obama looked at Damascus in 2013, he saw Baghdad in 2003.

by Dexter Filkins, New Yorker |  Read more:

Image: Getty
[ed. Well, he's already blamed Obama, so that's out of the way. Next item on the day's agenda: this.]

Tiger Woods and the Amazing 1997 Masters

It’s Masters week, the annual ritual of thrilling golf, whispered commentary, blooming magnolias, white-suited caddies, and “patrons” in Bermuda shorts. (For the sensitive souls who run Augusta National Golf Club, which has hosted the tournament since 1934, the “fans” is too redolent of beer-swilling frat boys.)

Twenty years ago this month, a young man named Tiger Woods blitzed his way around Augusta, taking down the other players, the racial prejudice that has long attended golf, and the very expectations of what was possible in the sport. The shock of his performance wasn’t merely in seeing a twenty-one-year-old phenom defeat the rest of the field by twelve shots, beating the previous record of nine shots that Jack Nicklaus had set in 1965. It was the preternaturally calm demeanor that Woods displayed, and the manner in which he dismantled a course that had long been regarded as one of the world’s most difficult.

Colin Montgomerie, who was then one of the leading golfers in the world, was paired with Woods on Saturday, the third day of the four-day tournament. Woods shot seven under par—“the easiest sixty-five I’ve ever seen,’’ Montgomerie called it recently. “From the second hole onwards, I thought, ‘Hang on a minute. This is something extraordinary,’ ” he said. “This is a game that I had not seen before, and none of us had.” On Sunday, Woods shot three under par, and on the back nine his round turned into a victory procession. “From the 13th to the 18th, the people supported him like crazy,” his playing partner Costantino Rocca recalled. “I don’t know if anyone remembered I was on the golf course. It was good for him, not for me.’’

For those who would like to see Woods’s victory again, or who were too young to see it the first time around, the Masters is streaming the original CBS Sports broadcast of Sunday’s final round on its Web site. To watch the three-hour tape is to be reminded of how green Augusta National is, how white the crowds were (and are to this day), and how young, talented, and self-assured Woods was.

On the video, you can see Woods standing on the tee at the famous par-five thirteenth hole. At that point, he had a ten-shot lead over his closest competitor that weekend, Tom Watson. Standing tall, a steel-shafted three wood in hands, Woods lashed the ball straight down the middle of the fairway and bent over to pick up his tee. “You couldn’t walk that out there any better than that,” the late Ken Venturi commented.

Before going after his ball, Woods flashed his caddie, Mike (Fluff) Cowan, a quick, close-mouthed smile—a smile of youth and limitless confidence. Although he was barely old enough to drink legally, Woods had already won three professional tournaments, and going into Augusta he believed he could triumph there. In fact, he expected to win. “There are a few tournaments throughout my career where I felt, ‘Just don’t screw it up,’ ” he told USA Today a couple of weeks ago. “That was one of them.”

With the advantage of a young, limber body and a free-flowing swing that generated tremendous club-head speed, Woods drove the ball thirty or forty yards farther than most other players. He was also a great iron player and a fabulous putter. When the three elements of his game came together, as they did that week at Augusta, he was unbeatable. On the fifteenth hole, after driving his tee shot three hundred and one yards, he arrowed a mid-iron over the creek in front of the green. The shot landed about twenty feet behind the hole, setting up a two-putt birdie that extended his lead to eleven shots. “How good does it get?” Venturi asked. “You don’t want to play him on holes like this, he’ll own you. And he’s owning everybody today.”

During the twelve and a half years that followed his Masters coming-out party, Woods won another sixty-six tournaments on the P.G.A. Tour, including thirteen more major championships. The members at Augusta, seeing what he had done to their beloved course, lengthened it considerably, laid down new rough, and planted trees in areas where previously there had been none. This effort to “Tiger-proof” Augusta didn’t prevent Woods from winning the Masters three more times. But, as other venues copied Augusta’s example, Woods’s 1997 victory changed the very game, creating the conditions for the rise of a generation of “bombers” who also hit the ball a mile—players like Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy, and Jason Day.

by John Cassidy, New Yorker |  Read more:

Image: Gary Hershorn/Reuters/Alamy
[ed. Watching the video again, it's startling how much people age in 20 years.]

How Seattle Is Dismantling a NIMBY Power Structure

For decades, activist homeowners have held virtual veto power over nearly every decision on Seattle’s growth and development.

In large and small ways, these homeowners, who tend to be white, more affluent and older than the average resident, have shaped neighborhoods in their reflection — building a city that is consistently rated as one of the nation’s most livable, as well as one of its most expensive.

Now — in the face of an unprecedented housing crisis and a dramatic spike in homelessness — that may be starting to change.

Last July, Mayor Ed Murray and the director of the city’s Department of Neighborhoods, Kathy Nyland, announced that Seattle was cutting formal ties with, and funding for, the 13 volunteer Neighborhood District Councils that had been the city’s chief sounding boards on neighborhood planning since the 1990s. Through this bureaucratic sleight of hand, Murray and Nyland signaled their intent to seek more input and feedback from lower-income folks, people of color and renters — who now make up 54 percent of the city — and away from the white baby boomers who have long dominated discussions about Seattle’s future. The message: We appreciate your input, but we’re going to get a second opinion.

A few months later, the Department of Neighborhoods doubled down on its commitment to community engagement, putting out a call for volunteers to serve on a new 16-member Community Involvement Commission, which will be charged with helping city departments develop “authentic and thorough” ways to reach “all” city residents, including underrepresented communities such as low-income people, homeless residents and renters. Finally, DON will also oversee and staff a second new commission, the Seattle Renters’ Commission, which will advise all city departments on policies that affect renters and monitor the enforcement and effectiveness of the city’s renter protection laws.

The shakeup has rattled traditional neighborhood groups, which have grown accustomed to outsized influence at City Hall, and invigorated some groups that have long felt ignored and marginalized by the city.

The shift toward a more inclusive neighborhoods department, and neighborhood planning process, is more than just symbolic; it’s political. The homeowner-dominated neighborhood councils have typically argued against land use changes that would allow more density (in the form of townhouses and apartment buildings) in and near Seattle’s traditional single-family neighborhoods, which make up nearly two-thirds of the city. Including more renters and low-income people in the mix could dilute, or even upend, those groups’ agendas.

“Our city has changed dramatically since our district councils system was created three decades ago, and we have seen them over time become less and less representative not only of their neighborhoods but of Seattle itself,” Murray said last year.

His statement echoed a point Nyland made in a memo to the City Council back in May: “We have heard from residents active in the system that ‘District Councils work for us.’ … However, they don’t work for everyone.” (...)

Nyland’s reform can be traced back to a 2009 audit of the district councils that found an obsolete system that did not reflect the city’s true demographics. “The system is dominated by the presence of longtime members whose point of view is overly dominant at both the district council and city neighborhood council levels and potentially not representative of their communities,” the city audit found. “The district councils in general are not sufficiently representative of the communities they nominally represent,” it concluded.

The disconnect was even deeper in 2016, when a report by the neighborhoods department found that while the population of Seattle was becoming younger, more diverse and more evenly split between homeowners and renters, “residents attending district council meetings tend to be 40 years of age or older, Caucasian and homeowners.”

“If you’ve ever gone to some of these community meetings, they’re just deadly dull, and the same 25 people have been there for 100 years,” City Council Member Sally Bagshaw says.

At a meeting of the Ballard District Council in northwest Seattle immediately after the announcement, district council members seemed shell-shocked by the city’s decision to cut them off. Sitting around a horseshoe of tables at the area’s branch library in northwest Seattle, they took turns grousing about the change. One member argued that the mostly white, mostly middle-aged council should be considered diverse, because “this group represents homeowners, environmental groups, businesses and other organizations.” “We have people here from every state,” he added. Another suggested that the city had made the move in haste, without a plan to replace the councils. “If you’re going to get rid of the current plan, you need to have a new plan in place before you get rid of the old one,” he said.

At another recent meeting of the group formerly known as the Magnolia/Queen Anne District Council, which represents a wealthy enclave just south of Ballard, one member asked plaintively, “Why do we have to encourage certain groups to come? Why can’t it just be an open forum?”

In a sense, traditional neighborhood groups are right to feel threatened. Nyland’s announcement, coupled with her department’s new emphasis on outreach to communities that have rarely had a say in city decisions, represents a fundamental shift in the very definition of the “neighborhoods” department. By emphasizing outreach to underserved groups such as renters, immigrants and refugees, Nyland is shaking up traditional notions of community engagement and redefining community as something based not on geographic proximity, but on personal and cultural affinity.

by Erica C. Barnett, Next City | Read more:
Image:Alex Garland

Costco Members Get Deeper Discounts on $100 Google Play Codes

If you are a member of the Costco wholesale warehouse retailer, you already know you can get deep discounts on lots of bulk items. That also includes purchasing Google Play e-codes. At the moment, Costco is running a promotion where its members can get a $100 Google Play code for an even bigger discount.

Normally, the discount for a $100 Google Play code from Costco would be down to $92.99, or a price cut of $7.01. However, from now until April 16, there will be an additional $10 discount taken for the Google Play e-codes, bringing the price down to just $82.99. The code is delivered via email and is limited to five codes per customer. You can use it to purchase items on the Google Play Store, including apps, movies, TV shows, books, and music. You can also use it to purchase subscriptions to some of Google’s services, including YouTube Red and adding more storage to Google Drive.

by John Callaham, Android Authority |  Read more:

Image: Costco

Why You Feel the Urge to Jump

Have you ever stood in a high place and felt the urge to jump? Judith Dancoff did one beautiful, clear day on Deception Pass Bridge, a narrow two-lane causeway that ribbons between two islands north of Seattle. If she followed her compulsion to leap, death at the bottom of the steep ocean gorge 180 feet below would be almost certain.

A novelist known for literary flights of fancy, she did not feel suicidal—and never had. Though normally fearful of heights, she strangely was not afraid then, though Deception Pass Bridge is ranked among the scariest in the world. Its slender concrete span cantilevers over jagged cliff-tops and reportedly wobbles in high winds, with only a minimalist 1935 railing separating you from distant roiling waters.

None of that registered with Dancoff, who was also unaware of the bridge’s history of attracting jumping. Instead, she saw herself as if in a dream, climbing onto the pedestrian railing then diving off. She was so unnerved that she sat down cross-legged on the pavement to stop herself. “It was terrifying because of the possibility of doing it,” she later recalled. “I felt a bit foolish. I thought, ‘where did that come from?’ ”

The seemingly irrational, but common urge to leap—half of respondents felt it in one survey—can be so disturbing that ruminators from Jean-Paul Sartre (in Being and Nothingness) to anonymous contributors in lengthy Reddit sub-threads have agonized about it. While the French philosopher saw a moment of Existentialist truth about the human freedom to choose to live or die, ramp_tram called it “F***king stupid” when he had to plaster himself to the far wall of a 14th-floor hotel atrium away from the balcony railing because “I was deathly afraid of somehow jumping off by accident.”

The French explain it as L’Appel du Vide, or call of the void. Are they just French, or can the void really beckon you to kill yourself? New science on balance, fear, and cognition shows that the voice of the abyss is both real and powerful. Heights, it turns out, are not exactly what they seem.

by Jessica Seigel, Nautilus |  Read more:

Image: Amit Chattopadhyay / Wikipedia

[ed. I live a few miles from this bridge and you could not pay me enough to walk over it... the vertigo and urge to jump are just too great (even driving on it gives me the creeps).]

Saving the World

[ed. It's hard to find much to laugh about in politics these days, but this was awesome:
 http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/president-trumps-son-law-jared-kushner-travels-iraq-46557547]

I'll try to post a video when it's available.

[ed. See also: Jared Kushner, Man of Steel]

Gonzaga's Brand of Winning Leads University's Broader Growth

In the summer of 1998, Gonzaga University was a small private college in Eastern Washington that barely made a blip on the public consciousness, even within its own region.

To shake things up, administrators decided to change the school's visual identity. The school colors went from light blue and white to a deep navy. The odd-looking mascot — a bulldog in a sailor's cap — needed an update, too, so it became the snarling canine with the spiked collar of today.

A new brand was born.

"We made a conscious decision to change who we were," Gonzaga athletic director Mike Roth said. "We decided we wanted people to see us differently, too, and to do that we had to change the way things looked. We sat down that summer and decided, we need a new logo. We made it and thought, 'That's pretty cool.'"

The logo got a huge boost of popularity the next men's basketball season, when the scrappy Bulldogs made a run to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament, becoming synonymous with success as the program continued to grow.

Under the guidance of coach Mark Few, Gonzaga became a national powerhouse, reaching the NCAA Tournament 19 straight times with multiple trips to the Sweet 16.

That snarling bulldog is now on the sport's biggest stage as Gonzaga gets set to play mighty North Carolina in Monday night's national championship game.

"We don't pretend or think we're anywhere near the level with the tradition of Carolina or Duke or Kentucky," Few said. "But at the same time, I think we do feel we've been a national entity for quite some time. The product, the brand, the players, the team that we're putting out there on the floor we feel can compete with anybody in the country on any given night."

The basketball program's success has brought national attention to a school in the inland Northwest that likely would have otherwise remained mostly anonymous outside of Spokane, Washington.

The more the basketball team won, the more people became interested in learning about Gonzaga and Spokane. That interest turned into a familiarity as the Zags continued to win.

With that exposure came massive growth on the campus along the Spokane River.

Enrollment has nearly doubled to 7,800 over the past 20 years, with the number of full-time faculty up 55 percent. New buildings dot the campus, with more under construction, including the Volkar Center for Athletic Achievement next door to The Kennel, where the Zags play. Budgets have increased as the school's endowment has climbed over $200 million.

"The visual part of that brand has been out there for a long time and when people see that mark, they think Gonzaga basketball and that helps the brand of the institution beyond that," Roth said. "We want them to see that, wow, that's a great place to get an education, wow, that's a great place to be an engineer, they have a great school for business.

"To me, that's what we've been able to accomplish over all these years with this basketball program," Roth said. "The brand has given people the window in Gonzaga University and now even a window into Spokane."

by John Marshall, AP |  Read more:

Image: David J. Phillip/AP via:
[ed. Go Zags. Update: Alas, not to be.]

via:

The Struggle is Real for Millennial Homebuyers

After years of many experts lamenting how Millennials weren't interested in becoming homeowners, it turns out many are actually diving in. But they're facing a lot of competition.

Millennials are the largest group of homebuyers, according to Ellie Mae, a software company that analyzes mortgage data. In January, Millennials represented around 45% of all purchase loans, up from 42% the same month in 2016.

And many expect more Millennial house hunters to jump into the market this spring buying season.

But their path to homeownership won't be easy.

"Millennials are mostly first-time buyers and they are competing against repeat buyers who have more buying leverage and experience," said Javier Vivas, manager of economic research for Realtor.com. He added that Millennials recently became the dominant group of users searching for homes on the website.

New buyers this spring will also be up against buyers who started looking last year, but still haven't bought a home.

A shortage of available homes has driven up prices -- particularly among starter homes that tend to fall within first-time buyers' budgets.

There were 3% fewer homes on the market in February compared to a year ago, according to a recent report from Zillow, and home values are up nearly 7%.

That's led to bidding wars and fierce competition, especially in the lower end of the market.

When Andy Greene and his wife Jenna began looking for their first home together near Columbus, Ohio, they found themselves in a super competitive market.

"We would get a notification that a house went on the market. You had to go see it that night ... you had to go the same day it was out," said Greene.

They thought they found their perfect home early in their search and put in an offer. But they weren't the only ones. The seller received 13 bids.

Despite going $10,000 above the asking price, the Greenes were not the winning bidders.

"It was a little defeating," said Greene. "It made us wonder if we were actually going to be able to make it work and second guessing if we could find something we could afford."

by Kathryn Vasel, CNN | Read more:
Image: markk

Dirty Birds (Dutch Harbor, AK)
Image: Corey Arnold

The Other Favorites

[ed. Fun Beatles song (to play, not sing), inspired by Paul McCartney's dog Martha. Here are a couple other excellent versions: Gerald Edward and Laurence Juber (instrumental). Also, another fine tune from these guys: Folsom Prison Blues. Nice to see the next generation stepping up.]

Major Disappointment

As Lexi Thompson walked up the 18th fairway on Sunday at the L.P.G.A.’s first major of the year, she was serenaded by loud chants of “Lex-i,” leading her eyes to well with tears. It was an incongruous moment that reflected an intensely emotional day in which the popular Thompson won new fans because of the way she lost the tournament.

Thompson, 22, appeared to be cruising to her second major championship when she was informed at the end of the 12th hole that she was being assessed a four-stroke penalty. It was a result of an infraction that a viewer had noticed while watching Saturday’s third-round telecast.

Just like that, Thompson’s two-stroke lead at the ANA Inspiration became a two-stroke deficit.

Despite the startling setback, Thompson regrouped well enough to force a playoff with So Yeon Ryu, who won with a birdie on the first extra hole, the par-5 18th. That came after Thompson narrowly missed an eagle putt on the last hole of regulation that would have delivered her the victory.

It was the second major title for Ryu, who also won the 2011 United States Women’s Open in extra holes. Thompson closed with a five-under-par 67 and Ryu a 68 as both finished at 14 under at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, Calif. And yet all those numbers ended up as footnotes to the consternation fostered by the four-stroke penalty.

“I wasn’t expecting what happened today,” Thompson said afterward as tears rolled down her face.

“But I’ll learn from it,’’ she added.

The long-hitting Thompson was told about the penalty as she made her way to the 13th tee after a bogey at 12 had whittled her lead. An L.P.G.A. rules official walked alongside her and explained the four-stroke penalty: two strokes for improperly replacing her ball on the second-to-last green of her third round, which meant she had then played the ball from the wrong spot, and two more for signing an incorrect scorecard.

A television viewer had contacted tournament officials as the final round was underway to bring attention to Thompson’s actions Saturday on the 17th green, when she marked her ball and placed it back down roughly a half-inch from the original spot. Thompson’s initial reaction to being told about the penalty, as captured during the final-round television broadcast, was, “Is this a joke or something?” Shaking her head, she added, “That’s just ridiculous.”

Battling her emotions the rest of the way, Thompson somehow bounced back to play the final six holes in two under par. “I am proud just the way I played coming in,” said Thompson, who told the rules official, Sue Witters, that she had not intentionally placed her ball in the wrong spot on the hole in question.

It did not matter. In the rules of golf, action trumps intent. If not for a rules change last year, Thompson would have been disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard. “For her to come back, I got goose bumps talking about it,” said Suzann Pettersen, who tied for third. “It shows what character she has.”

It was the second time in as many years that a player holding the lead on the final day of a major was assessed a penalty after a television viewer noticed a rules infraction involving the leader.

by Karen Crouse, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Gary A. Vasquez/USA Today Sports, via Reuters

[ed. This is crazy. What other sport allows some random tv viewer to call in and report a missed penalty - from a day earlier!?]

Politics 101

When the President Is Ignorant of His Own Ignorance

The Empty Supreme Court Confirmation Hearing

The Hidden Monopolies That Raise Drug Prices

Indivisable: A Practical Guide for Resisiting the Trump Agenda (pdf)

Trump's Business Network Reached Alleged Russian Mobsters

The entire coal industry employs fewer people than Arby’s

The Only Article You Need To Read About Why Trump Voters Are Angry

No Sympathy for the Hillbilly

Compassion and Politics

Mario Wagner
via:

Gwyneth Paltrow Eats Dumb

I’ve been warning you for about a year now that octopuses are aliens, to be feared but also revered, and only eaten if you’re sure you can live with the concept of eating a very smart hand-brain. Apparently Gwyneth Paltrow has caught on to this, writing to her L.A.-based goop staff on Slack:

They have more neurons in their brains than we do. I had to stop eating them because I was so freaked out by it. They can escape from sea world and s — by unscrewing drains and going out to sea. #tangent.

They do have a lot of neurons, GP, but not more than we do. They also have three hearts and motherfucking SUCTION CUPS on their arms!!! Many widely acclaimed books have been written about these cunning cephalopods, and many of them address the idea of intelligence, consciousness, and a lot of other collegiate-sounding topics.

If you’re going to go down the intelligence road, we should probably talk about pigs. The issue of abstaining from eating animals because is so thorny, because where do you draw the line? Don’t plants have sophisticated lives too? And what about pigeons, a.k.a. squab? Food preferences aren’t really logical or even terribly defensible in a court of law. They can be moralistic, sure, but they won’t be consistent. As Natalie Angier wrote in 2009:

I stopped eating pork about eight years ago, after a scientist happened to mention that the animal whose teeth most closely resemble our own is the pig. Unable to shake the image of a perky little pig flashing me a brilliant George Clooney smile, I decided it was easier to forgo the Christmas ham. A couple of years later, I gave up on all mammalian meat, period. I still eat fish and poultry, however and pour eggnog in my coffee. My dietary decisions are arbitrary and inconsistent, and when friends ask why I’m willing to try the duck but not the lamb, I don’t have a good answer. Food choices are often like that: difficult to articulate yet strongly held. And lately, debates over food choices have flared with particular vehemence.

So don’t eat or not eat something because Gwyneth Paltrow does or doesn’t. First off, you probably can’t afford to if it’s like, magic powder that you have to add to your matcha smoothie every morning. And second, you should wade through these decisions and feelings by yourself. I have a hard time knowingly eating factory-farmed meat or dairy, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t done it. I realize that an easy way to rid myself of this anxious burden of deciding what is “okay” or “ethically consistent” to eat would be to just never mind about vertebrates entirely, or at least the mammals to start and maybe just keep the chordata because of the omega-3s, but the anxious burden is frankly the thing that makes me feel alive and human.

It is extremely amazing that humans get to sit at a restaurant and be like, “Should I eat this thing that I know is delicious, particularly when grilled to a sweet char, and which I would never make for myself at home because it’s a pain in the ass to handle and prepare plus I don’t even own a grill? Or should I abstain from eating it because I have read literally hundreds of articles about how cool these creatures are, like, is it morally inconsistent to be in awe of something and eat it anyway?” This is the privilege of being a human and I think the only way to not be a monster about it is to stay curious about your motives. At least you’ll have made a conscious choice.

by Silvia Killingsworth, The Awl |  Read more: 

Image: uncredited

[ed. Yes, no problem. They might be one of smartest animals on the planet, but also one of the tastiest, especially with a little wasabi and soy sauce (as they say on Twitter... #respect). It doesn't matter whether they're alien or indigenous (I'm pretty sure they'd do the same to us if they had the chance).]

Walter Becker

via:

House of Cards

On the first day of March 2017, the combined market capitalization of U.S. nonfinancial and financial stocks reached $34 trillion. Those trillions of dollars in paper wealth filter down to the investment statements of millions of investors, reflected in quotes on computer screens and blotches of ink on paper. Over the completion of the current market cycle, we estimate that roughly half of U.S. equity market capitalization - $17 trillion in paper wealth - will simply vanish. Nobody will “get” that wealth. It will simply disappear, like a game of musical chairs where players think they've won by finding chairs as the music stops, and suddenly feel them dissolving as if they had never existed in the first place.

As I noted in 2015, because equities are correlated with other assets, the total private net worth of U.S. households and corporations tends to change by about $1.50 for every dollar that U.S. equity market capitalization changes. With total U.S. private net worth currently at about $120 trillion, it would currently take an equity market loss of only about 20% to wipe out $10 trillion in U.S. private net worth (0.2 x 1.5 x 34). By contrast, an expected 50% loss of U.S. equity market capitalization over the completion of this market cycle (a decline that would not even bring historically reliable valuation metrics below their long-term historical norms), would produce an expected loss of over $25 trillion in U.S. total private net worth.

To understand how paper wealth vanishes, recognize that market capitalization is merely the product of two objects: the number of shares outstanding, and the price of those shares. For example, there are currently nearly 9 billion shares of General Electric outstanding. If a dentist in Poughkeepsie sells a single share of GE to some buyer, just 10 cents below the price of the preceding trade in the stock, fully $900 million dollars of market capitalization is instantly erased from the U.S. stock market as a result of that one $30 stock trade. Nobody “got” the $900 million. The lost market capitalization didn't "go into" bonds, or real estate, or gold, or cash on the sidelines, or anything else. It just plain vanished. Conversely, if our dentist buys a single share just 10 cents above the preceding trade in the stock, fully $900 million dollars of market capitalization is instantly “created” as a result of that one $30 stock trade.

Because of those fluctuations, investors across the nation imagine that they are actually gaining or losing “wealth” as market capitalization appears and vanishes. They alternately celebrate and suffer because they can’t distinguish wealth from the illusion of wealth. When one understands how ephemeral market capitalization can be, it may become clear why I’m so adamant about the actual claim that investors actually obtain by owning a share of stock.

See, the actual “wealth” inherent in a share of stock is embodied in the very long-term stream of future cash flows that the company will actually deliver into the hands of investors over time. As long as a share of stock is outstanding, somebody has to hold it at every point in time, and that long-term stream of cash flows is actually what’s being traded. Everyone who owns the stock owns a divided claim to those cash flows. Investors don’t get to claim those future cash flows until they actually buy, and they don’t get to claim the market price until they actually sell. Put another way, the only investor who has a reliable claim to the current market price is an investor who is selling at that price.

Let’s pause to recognize the opportunity, and the risk, that investors face at the obscene levels of valuation that have been created by years of Fed-induced yield-seeking speculation, coupled with Wall Street’s enthusiasm over largely imaginary prospects for a sustained acceleration in economic growth (more on that below). The chart below presents the market capitalization of U.S. equities (left scale, $billions). The thin line shows the ratio of market capitalization to corporate gross value added (right scale) to offer an additional valuation perspective. On this measure, current valuations now rival those of the 2000 market extreme, standing at more than double the historical norm (including the bubble period since the late-1990’s), and about 160% above pre-bubble norms. Put simply, the U.S. equity market could lose $17 trillion in value - over 50% of its market capitalization - even without taking reliable valuation measures below their historical norms. (...)

I have no pointed market expectations over the very near-term here. We presently observe further deterioration in equity market internals, but we've also seen a bit of improvement in interest-sensitive measures. Overall, I view valuations as obscene, measures of overextended prices and sentiment as dangerous, and market internals as negative, but short-term narratives about taxes, health care and so forth are wild cards with regard to day-to-day market behavior. My near-term views will become more pointed if we observe fresh deterioration in either equity-market or credit-sensitive measures. On every other horizon - intermediate-term, full-cycle, and long-term (10-12 years), I am thoroughly convinced that the U.S. equity market is a house of cards.

by John P. Hussman, PhD., Hussman Funds |  Read more:

Image: Hussman Strategic Investors

With Floating Farm, New York Looks to the Future of Public Parks

If you always thought Central Park needed more edible plants, you're in luck.

Come April, a farm full of fruit trees and other crops will float to locations in three New York City boroughs, and visitors will be invited to enjoy nature by literally picking, snipping, and sowing to their hearts' content. Located on a 5,000-square-foot barge, "Swale" will include 4,000 square feet of solar-powered growing space, including a perennial garden, an aquaponics area, and an apple orchard sponsored by Heineken USA's Strongbow Apple Ciders atop a large man-made hill. (The hill allows deeper root space for fruiting trees.)

The project will be open to the public, but it’s more interactive exhibit than floating Central Park; only 75 people can board at once, and docents will usher guests around the grounds. Free educational workshops will include “painting with plants” and “dying natural fabrics,” and volunteers will always be on hand to explain how thoughtful permaculture planning can create a virtually self-sustaining farm.

But founder Mary Mattingly’s goals go far beyond providing city dwellers with a high-design place to forage for mushrooms in their next attempt at Beef Bourgignon.

She wants to make people work harder for public spaces, and public spaces work harder for people. She wants to create a model for sustainable urban farming. She wants to create an educational space. And she wants to eradicate the problem of food deserts in blighted urban neighborhoods.

“We don’t have much access to stewardship in New York City,” Mattingly told Bloomberg, “so we wanted to highlight and cultivate opportunities around that idea. People care for spaces that they can pick food from.”

That's exactly what appealed to the approving committee at the New York City Parks Department. "We are trying to prioritize community engagement," said Bram Gunther, co-director of the Urban Field Station, who cited a growing field of study that believes that community involvement, empowerment, and land management must all go hand in hand. "This project will act like a magnet, in a way, and inspire people to civic action," he added.

That's exactly Mattingly's plan. Eventually, she hopes community investment (and city grants) will take the project from floating farm to philanthropic powerhouse. She’d like to use it as a springboard to raise awareness of such food deserts as Hunts Point in New York's South Bronx, where, Mattingly says, “10,000 trucks pass through each day, and everyone has asthma, and nobody has access to fresh food.” In her perfect world, Swale becomes a conduit to a public park in the Bronx, where “people could pick food 24 hours a day.”

Here’s the only issue with that: Public policy in New York makes that kind of project legally impossible—or close to it—as it currently stands. And on a trial run last summer, Swale barely raised enough funds to keep itself going for a second season. Its manifestation this year in the East River was made possible by the partnership with Strongbow, which has made it a brand pillar to conserve and create orchards around the world. Before Mattingly can sustain entire neighborhoods, she’ll need to sustain Swale itself.

There’s reason to believe in the project, though. First, there’s Mattingly’s own record: In 2009, she spent half a year creating and living aboard a fully self-sustained ecosystem on a barge in New York, which partially inspired the Swale project.

Then there’s the success of other so-called “food farms” around the country.

In Hawaii, the Malama Kauai Food Forest supplies several underserved schools and food banks—to the tune of 37,000 pounds of fruit and 1,000 volunteer hours in the last two and a half years. In North Carolina, the George Washington Carver Edible Park anchored a major urban revitalization project near downtown Asheville, replacing a trash-filled lot with a natural source for plums, figs, chestnuts, and pawpaws, among other things. The list extends to Massachusetts, Colorado, Alaska, Seattle, and beyond.

With the exception of a nascent project in London, no other food forest has cropped up in such an urban setting. Certainly, no other initiative has as striking a design. So Swale should drum up interest. And with an advocate like Mattingly at its helm, converting interest into action should be a real possibility. Even if she fails to create her public farm in the South Bronx, she will likely open up a dialogue that can lead to lasting public policy impacts.

by Nikki Ekstein, Bloomberg |  Read more:

Image: swaleproject

[ed. If this sounds like some kind of New Age wacko deal, imagine massive floating parks along your waterfront providing peaceful contemplation and barriers against storm surges. Might be the future.]