Saturday, August 5, 2017
Lexington Lab Band
[ed. Best Cover Band Ever (BCBE). See also: New Kid in Town, Voodoo Child, Josie, Driven to Tears, Crazy on You (and more). Have a nice weekend.]
An Honest Business News Update
NEW YORK – The S&P 500 closed at a new high on Wednesday in what analysts hailed as the accumulated result of several hundred million people waking up every morning hoping to solve problems and improve their lives.
The index finished up 4 points. Goldman Sachs strategist Bill Blake said the move was the result of unidentified marginal buyers being a little bit more motivated than unidentified marginal sellers. “We’ve now had 241 years of people in daily competitive pursuits to do things a little better, and those benefits add up over time. Mix that with some good luck and where we happen to be in the business cycle, and here we are,” he said. “My job is to sound smart, but you can explain this stuff to a five year old,” he laughed.
Corporations earned $5.89 billion in after-tax profits. Financial advisors and middlemen took in $710 million in fees. The difference, Blake said, would accrue to investors over time.
Analysts warned of several metric tons of dopamine and cortisol careening through the global economy, which they said created a near certainty of poor financial decisions. At some point, Blake said, these bad decisions create social proof and feed on each other, leading to recessions. “When is the next recession?” he asked. “I don’t know. Whenever the second mortgage you took out to buy a boat to appease your insecurity convinces your brother in-law to do the same, and his boat gives the boat salesman enough misguided confidence to become a day trader, and then all three of you crack under a collective bout of geopolitical bad luck or something. But we’ll move on.”
About 9,000 new businesses formed on Wednesday. Another 8,200 dissolved. Analysts expect the trend to continue, calling it an “unmistakable example of basic capitalism.”
Fifty-five million American children went to school Wednesday morning, leveraging the compounded knowledge of all previous generations. Analysts expect this to lead to a new generation of doctors, engineers, and problem solvers more advanced than any other in history. “This just keeps happening over and over again,” one analyst said. “Progress for one group becomes a new baseline for the next, and it grows from there.”
Three dozen political pundits yelled at each other on TV in front of an audience of 75 million. Meanwhile, a couple hundred million people were reasonable and productive in front of an audience of zero. (...)
* Nothing, and yet everything, about this post is accurate.
by Morgan Housel, Collaborative Fund | Read more:
Image: Camila Demasio
The index finished up 4 points. Goldman Sachs strategist Bill Blake said the move was the result of unidentified marginal buyers being a little bit more motivated than unidentified marginal sellers. “We’ve now had 241 years of people in daily competitive pursuits to do things a little better, and those benefits add up over time. Mix that with some good luck and where we happen to be in the business cycle, and here we are,” he said. “My job is to sound smart, but you can explain this stuff to a five year old,” he laughed.Corporations earned $5.89 billion in after-tax profits. Financial advisors and middlemen took in $710 million in fees. The difference, Blake said, would accrue to investors over time.
Analysts warned of several metric tons of dopamine and cortisol careening through the global economy, which they said created a near certainty of poor financial decisions. At some point, Blake said, these bad decisions create social proof and feed on each other, leading to recessions. “When is the next recession?” he asked. “I don’t know. Whenever the second mortgage you took out to buy a boat to appease your insecurity convinces your brother in-law to do the same, and his boat gives the boat salesman enough misguided confidence to become a day trader, and then all three of you crack under a collective bout of geopolitical bad luck or something. But we’ll move on.”
About 9,000 new businesses formed on Wednesday. Another 8,200 dissolved. Analysts expect the trend to continue, calling it an “unmistakable example of basic capitalism.”
Fifty-five million American children went to school Wednesday morning, leveraging the compounded knowledge of all previous generations. Analysts expect this to lead to a new generation of doctors, engineers, and problem solvers more advanced than any other in history. “This just keeps happening over and over again,” one analyst said. “Progress for one group becomes a new baseline for the next, and it grows from there.”
Three dozen political pundits yelled at each other on TV in front of an audience of 75 million. Meanwhile, a couple hundred million people were reasonable and productive in front of an audience of zero. (...)
* Nothing, and yet everything, about this post is accurate.
by Morgan Housel, Collaborative Fund | Read more:
Image: Camila Demasio
The Ethics of Adjusting Your Assets to Qualify for Medicaid
At any given moment, there is a large group of citizens who want nothing more than to make absolutely certain that they are impoverished enough to qualify for Medicaid sooner rather than later. Someday, you might be one of them.
Welcome to the (perfectly legal) world of Medicaid planning, the plain-vanilla term for the mini-industry of lawyers and others who help people arrange their financial lives so they don’t spend every last dime on a nursing home. Once properly impoverished under the law, then Medicaid, which gets funding both from your state and the federal government, picks up the tab.
Whatever twists and turns the health insurance debates in Washington take, Medicaid will be at the center, and the program will probably affect you and your family more than you know. After all, if you run out of money in retirement, it is Medicaid that pays for most of your nursing home or home-based care.
The bill that contains the caps that Republican senators have proposed, which would remake Medicaid, seems for now to have a low chance of passing. But even if no bill survives, politicians on both sides of the aisle fear what demographics will do to the program’s costs. Most Americans haven’t saved enough to pay for decades of post-retirement living expenses and years of expensive end-of-life care, so it stands to reason that Medicaid will come under increasing strain.
In my first Medicaid column on June 30, I asked for your questions about the program, aging and long-term care, and you sent me more notes about the ethics of Medicaid planning than on nearly any other topic. About half of you were outraged by the ethical implications, and the rest wanted to know where you could sign up for it.
The debate is not new, though it happens to be the rare topic on which the editorial boards of The New York Times (“Pretending to Be Poor”) and The Wall Street Journal (“Medicaid for Millionaires”) have agreed over the decades.
What are we talking about when we talk about Medicaid planning? First, you have to qualify. So let’s begin by putting a fat “generally” in front of every statement below, along with a warning that you should not try this at home alone. A lawyer experienced in the field is a necessity.
Medicaid eligibility for long-term care can differ by state and also by marital status. Generally, you can’t have income higher than $2,205 per month per person, including Social Security. Asset restrictions of just a few thousand dollars also apply, unless you’re a spouse who is not receiving care, in which case you can have up to $120,900 while your husband or wife qualifies for Medicaid. Homes don’t count in the asset calculation, though there is a cap on home equity if you’re single that is either $560,000 or up to $840,000, depending on the state. The Medicaid officials in your state can also tap your estate for repayment under certain circumstances.
To get within those limits, lawyers may encourage gifts to family members (though if they are within five years of a Medicaid application, there can be penalties), annuity purchases, trusts of various sorts and a certain type of long-term care insurance that can shield some assets from the Medicaid calculation once you’ve made a claim.
There are dozens of other nuances, maybe hundreds. Did I mention the need for a qualified lawyer? If you want to do some homework first, the book “How to Protect Your Family’s Assets From Devastating Nursing Home Costs” will give you a sense of what questions you need to ask.
However, you may want nothing to do with this. It would not surprise K. Gabriel Heiser, the lawyer who wrote the book. He’s heard from colleagues over the years who wanted no part of this work. This confused him, he said in an interview this week, given that many of them handled estate planning for wealthier clients. There, they helped people avoid paying millions to the government, whereas Mr. Heiser’s work merely helps clients get the government to pay a few hundred thousand for care on their behalf.
That bit of relativism, however, does not erase a basic fact: Anyone who engages in legal Medicaid planning is attempting to qualify for a government program for the indigent when they do have at least some assets that could pay for their care.
Welcome to the (perfectly legal) world of Medicaid planning, the plain-vanilla term for the mini-industry of lawyers and others who help people arrange their financial lives so they don’t spend every last dime on a nursing home. Once properly impoverished under the law, then Medicaid, which gets funding both from your state and the federal government, picks up the tab.
Whatever twists and turns the health insurance debates in Washington take, Medicaid will be at the center, and the program will probably affect you and your family more than you know. After all, if you run out of money in retirement, it is Medicaid that pays for most of your nursing home or home-based care.
The bill that contains the caps that Republican senators have proposed, which would remake Medicaid, seems for now to have a low chance of passing. But even if no bill survives, politicians on both sides of the aisle fear what demographics will do to the program’s costs. Most Americans haven’t saved enough to pay for decades of post-retirement living expenses and years of expensive end-of-life care, so it stands to reason that Medicaid will come under increasing strain.In my first Medicaid column on June 30, I asked for your questions about the program, aging and long-term care, and you sent me more notes about the ethics of Medicaid planning than on nearly any other topic. About half of you were outraged by the ethical implications, and the rest wanted to know where you could sign up for it.
The debate is not new, though it happens to be the rare topic on which the editorial boards of The New York Times (“Pretending to Be Poor”) and The Wall Street Journal (“Medicaid for Millionaires”) have agreed over the decades.
What are we talking about when we talk about Medicaid planning? First, you have to qualify. So let’s begin by putting a fat “generally” in front of every statement below, along with a warning that you should not try this at home alone. A lawyer experienced in the field is a necessity.
Medicaid eligibility for long-term care can differ by state and also by marital status. Generally, you can’t have income higher than $2,205 per month per person, including Social Security. Asset restrictions of just a few thousand dollars also apply, unless you’re a spouse who is not receiving care, in which case you can have up to $120,900 while your husband or wife qualifies for Medicaid. Homes don’t count in the asset calculation, though there is a cap on home equity if you’re single that is either $560,000 or up to $840,000, depending on the state. The Medicaid officials in your state can also tap your estate for repayment under certain circumstances.
To get within those limits, lawyers may encourage gifts to family members (though if they are within five years of a Medicaid application, there can be penalties), annuity purchases, trusts of various sorts and a certain type of long-term care insurance that can shield some assets from the Medicaid calculation once you’ve made a claim.
There are dozens of other nuances, maybe hundreds. Did I mention the need for a qualified lawyer? If you want to do some homework first, the book “How to Protect Your Family’s Assets From Devastating Nursing Home Costs” will give you a sense of what questions you need to ask.
However, you may want nothing to do with this. It would not surprise K. Gabriel Heiser, the lawyer who wrote the book. He’s heard from colleagues over the years who wanted no part of this work. This confused him, he said in an interview this week, given that many of them handled estate planning for wealthier clients. There, they helped people avoid paying millions to the government, whereas Mr. Heiser’s work merely helps clients get the government to pay a few hundred thousand for care on their behalf.
That bit of relativism, however, does not erase a basic fact: Anyone who engages in legal Medicaid planning is attempting to qualify for a government program for the indigent when they do have at least some assets that could pay for their care.
by Ron Lieber, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Robert Neubecker
There Is Someone In There
Academic study of dolphin intelligence got off to a rickety start that cost it about a decade. In some sense it has never recovered from its first publicly noted researcher, who cloaked dolphins with a mystical allure they’ve never quite shaken. On the other hand, dolphins have earned a bit of mystique.
In the late 1950s and ’60s, neurophysiologist and brain researcher John C. Lilly presented us with creatures whose gigantic brains made them our superiors. It was an improvement on the idea that whales felt nothing but an inexplicable urge to swallow humans. But Lilly, too, was wrong. John Lilly pronounced that an animal with a brain the size of a sperm whale’s must have a “truly godlike” mind. We’ll leave aside the question of what a “godlike” mind would be and what a whale would do with one. Lilly mistakenly assumed that brain size translated directly to thinking ability. (...)
Scientists rightly scorned John Lilly. His insistence that we could crack dolphin communication — by teaching them English — proved wrong. But his image of dolphins as superior to humans grabbed the imagination of the public, which remains captivated, waiting for a sign that they’re on a higher plane. Perhaps we hope that somehow, someday, someone better will deliver us from our own evils. (...)
Like human babies, infant dolphins babble sequences of whistles that become more organized as they grow. At anywhere between one month and two years, bottlenose, Atlantic spotted, and other dolphins develop their own distinctive individual “signature whistles.” Signature whistles are a name they create for themselves. The sound is distinctive, and the dolphin doesn’t change it, ever. They use it to announce themselves.
Dolphins who hear their own signature whistled by another dolphin call back. They don’t respond to a dolphin who whistles a third dolphin’s signature call. In other words, they call each other by name, and they answer when they hear their own name called. Dolphins call their close friends’ names when they are separated. No other mammal seems to do that (that we know of). Dolphins more than ten miles away can hear each other if water conditions are right. Atlantic spotted dolphins seemingly use names to call together several individuals. When groups meet at sea, they exchange names (but not, so far as is known, phone numbers).
Dolphins remember and recognize one another’s signature whistles for their whole lives. In the experiment that showed this, captive bottlenose dolphins heard recorded signature whistles of dolphins with whom they’d been housed as long as twenty years earlier. They remembered and responded even if they’d known each other only a short while before being separated. The experimenter, Jason Bruck, concluded, “Dolphins have the potential for lifelong memory for each other.” That was the first formal study showing social memory lasting twenty years in a nonhuman.
Dolphins at the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, in Mississippi, were trained to help keep their pools clean by trading litter for fish. A dolphin named Kelly realized that she got the same size fish for bringing a big sheet of paper as for a small piece. So, under a weight at the bottom of the pool, she hid any paper that blew in. When a trainer passed, she tore off a piece of paper to trade for a fish. Then she tore off another piece, got another fish. Into the economy of litter, she’d rigged a kind of trash inflation rate that kept the food coming. Similarly, in California, a dolphin named Spock got busted for tearing pieces off a paper bag he’d stuffed behind one of the pool’s underwater pipes, using each shred to buy another fish.
One day, a gull flew into Kelly’s pool, and she grabbed it and waited for the trainers. The humans seemed to really like birds; they traded her several fish for it. This gave Kelly a new insight, and a plan: During her next meal she took the last fish and hid it. When the humans left, she brought the fish up and baited more gulls, to get even more fish. After all, why wait to scrounge an occasional piece of accidental paper when you could become a wealthy commercial bird-fishing dolphin? She taught this to her youngster, who taught other youngsters, and so the dolphins there become professional gull baiters. (...)
Insight, innovation, planning, culture.
In 1979 Diana Reiss started working with a captive bottlenose dolphin named Circe. When Circe did the behavior that Reiss was looking for, Circe got verbal praise and some fish. When she didn’t, she got a “time-out,” in which Reiss stepped back or turned away to indicate that Circe had not performed “correctly.” (Time-outs are now considered outdated; they can frustrate intelligent creatures.) Circe didn’t like tail fins left on her mackerel, and by spitting out the pieces with tails, she essentially trained Reiss to cut them off. One day a few weeks into training, Reiss absentmindedly gave Circe an untrimmed tail section. Circe waved her head from side to side the way we might indicate “No,” spat out the fish, swam to the other side of the pool, positioned herself upright, and just looked at Reiss for a short time. Then she came back. Circe the dolphin had given Reiss the human a time-out.
Astonished but skeptical, Reiss planned an experiment. Six times over several weeks, Reiss purposely fed Circe a tail section with the fin on. Circe gave Reiss four more time-outs. Those were the only times Circe behaved that way. Circe had not only learned “reward” and “no reward; time-out” for her own behavior; she had conceptualized the time-out as a way of communicating the idea “That’s not what I’ve asked for” and used it to correct her human friend.
In the late 1950s and ’60s, neurophysiologist and brain researcher John C. Lilly presented us with creatures whose gigantic brains made them our superiors. It was an improvement on the idea that whales felt nothing but an inexplicable urge to swallow humans. But Lilly, too, was wrong. John Lilly pronounced that an animal with a brain the size of a sperm whale’s must have a “truly godlike” mind. We’ll leave aside the question of what a “godlike” mind would be and what a whale would do with one. Lilly mistakenly assumed that brain size translated directly to thinking ability. (...)
Scientists rightly scorned John Lilly. His insistence that we could crack dolphin communication — by teaching them English — proved wrong. But his image of dolphins as superior to humans grabbed the imagination of the public, which remains captivated, waiting for a sign that they’re on a higher plane. Perhaps we hope that somehow, someday, someone better will deliver us from our own evils. (...)Like human babies, infant dolphins babble sequences of whistles that become more organized as they grow. At anywhere between one month and two years, bottlenose, Atlantic spotted, and other dolphins develop their own distinctive individual “signature whistles.” Signature whistles are a name they create for themselves. The sound is distinctive, and the dolphin doesn’t change it, ever. They use it to announce themselves.
Dolphins who hear their own signature whistled by another dolphin call back. They don’t respond to a dolphin who whistles a third dolphin’s signature call. In other words, they call each other by name, and they answer when they hear their own name called. Dolphins call their close friends’ names when they are separated. No other mammal seems to do that (that we know of). Dolphins more than ten miles away can hear each other if water conditions are right. Atlantic spotted dolphins seemingly use names to call together several individuals. When groups meet at sea, they exchange names (but not, so far as is known, phone numbers).
Dolphins remember and recognize one another’s signature whistles for their whole lives. In the experiment that showed this, captive bottlenose dolphins heard recorded signature whistles of dolphins with whom they’d been housed as long as twenty years earlier. They remembered and responded even if they’d known each other only a short while before being separated. The experimenter, Jason Bruck, concluded, “Dolphins have the potential for lifelong memory for each other.” That was the first formal study showing social memory lasting twenty years in a nonhuman.
Dolphins at the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, in Mississippi, were trained to help keep their pools clean by trading litter for fish. A dolphin named Kelly realized that she got the same size fish for bringing a big sheet of paper as for a small piece. So, under a weight at the bottom of the pool, she hid any paper that blew in. When a trainer passed, she tore off a piece of paper to trade for a fish. Then she tore off another piece, got another fish. Into the economy of litter, she’d rigged a kind of trash inflation rate that kept the food coming. Similarly, in California, a dolphin named Spock got busted for tearing pieces off a paper bag he’d stuffed behind one of the pool’s underwater pipes, using each shred to buy another fish.
One day, a gull flew into Kelly’s pool, and she grabbed it and waited for the trainers. The humans seemed to really like birds; they traded her several fish for it. This gave Kelly a new insight, and a plan: During her next meal she took the last fish and hid it. When the humans left, she brought the fish up and baited more gulls, to get even more fish. After all, why wait to scrounge an occasional piece of accidental paper when you could become a wealthy commercial bird-fishing dolphin? She taught this to her youngster, who taught other youngsters, and so the dolphins there become professional gull baiters. (...)
Insight, innovation, planning, culture.
In 1979 Diana Reiss started working with a captive bottlenose dolphin named Circe. When Circe did the behavior that Reiss was looking for, Circe got verbal praise and some fish. When she didn’t, she got a “time-out,” in which Reiss stepped back or turned away to indicate that Circe had not performed “correctly.” (Time-outs are now considered outdated; they can frustrate intelligent creatures.) Circe didn’t like tail fins left on her mackerel, and by spitting out the pieces with tails, she essentially trained Reiss to cut them off. One day a few weeks into training, Reiss absentmindedly gave Circe an untrimmed tail section. Circe waved her head from side to side the way we might indicate “No,” spat out the fish, swam to the other side of the pool, positioned herself upright, and just looked at Reiss for a short time. Then she came back. Circe the dolphin had given Reiss the human a time-out.
Astonished but skeptical, Reiss planned an experiment. Six times over several weeks, Reiss purposely fed Circe a tail section with the fin on. Circe gave Reiss four more time-outs. Those were the only times Circe behaved that way. Circe had not only learned “reward” and “no reward; time-out” for her own behavior; she had conceptualized the time-out as a way of communicating the idea “That’s not what I’ve asked for” and used it to correct her human friend.
by Carl Safina, The Sun | Read more:
Image: via:
Friday, August 4, 2017
Here’s How to Survive a Possible North Korea Nuclear Strike in Hawai‘i
Hawai‘i residents are used to scrambling to the grocery store to stock up on bottled water and disaster supplies in preparation for a hurricane. Now the Hawai‘i State Department of Defense recommends stocking up on a 14-day emergency food supply to prepare for a possible missile attack from North Korea.
“Everyone can prepare for this type of hazard the same way they would prepare for another natural disaster,” says Lt. Col. Charles Anthony, Hawai‘i state Department of Defense spokesman. “Their emergency preparedness kit should be virtually identical.”
And, since hurricane season runs June through November, most people are already prepared. North Korea threatening to nuke Honolulu, where the U.S. Pacific Command is based, is nothing new. However, the recent news of North Korea firing a new ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan is cause for concern since North Korea’s state-run media previously identified Hawai‘i and Alaska as possible targets.
To alert folks to the different threat, the state’s Emergency Management Agency announced it will begin each month testing using an “attack-warning” wailing siren that hasn’t been used since the Cold War ended in the 1980s.
Hawai‘i is more likely to be struck by a Category 4 hurricane than get hit by a nuke, but the possibility is still out there. “We need to make sure we prepare the public for that threat,” Anthony says. [ed. What!?]
Translation: Don’t panic or write it off. So, what is the best way to prepare for a ballistic missile strike?
Here’s a hint: If you hear the sirens, duck and take cover. There are no designated fallout shelters in Honolulu, so go inside a nearby building and stay there. If you’re at home, then stay home, Anthony says. Just avoid windows and, whatever you do, the department warns, “DO NOT look at the flash of light.” Following the detonation, the department recommends remaining in the shelter until “you are told it is safe to leave or two weeks (14 days) have passed, whichever comes first.”
“Everyone can prepare for this type of hazard the same way they would prepare for another natural disaster,” says Lt. Col. Charles Anthony, Hawai‘i state Department of Defense spokesman. “Their emergency preparedness kit should be virtually identical.”
And, since hurricane season runs June through November, most people are already prepared. North Korea threatening to nuke Honolulu, where the U.S. Pacific Command is based, is nothing new. However, the recent news of North Korea firing a new ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan is cause for concern since North Korea’s state-run media previously identified Hawai‘i and Alaska as possible targets. To alert folks to the different threat, the state’s Emergency Management Agency announced it will begin each month testing using an “attack-warning” wailing siren that hasn’t been used since the Cold War ended in the 1980s.
Hawai‘i is more likely to be struck by a Category 4 hurricane than get hit by a nuke, but the possibility is still out there. “We need to make sure we prepare the public for that threat,” Anthony says. [ed. What!?]
Translation: Don’t panic or write it off. So, what is the best way to prepare for a ballistic missile strike?
Here’s a hint: If you hear the sirens, duck and take cover. There are no designated fallout shelters in Honolulu, so go inside a nearby building and stay there. If you’re at home, then stay home, Anthony says. Just avoid windows and, whatever you do, the department warns, “DO NOT look at the flash of light.” Following the detonation, the department recommends remaining in the shelter until “you are told it is safe to leave or two weeks (14 days) have passed, whichever comes first.”
by Dianne Lee, Honolulu Magazine | Read more:
Image: Stefan Krasowski, Flicrkr via cc by 2.0
[ed. I feel like crying.]
Cogito Zero Sum
What do we really mean when we say we’re “entitled to our opinions”? So many questions have been asked over the past year with the hope that the answers to them may help us better understand how our dangerously absurd political moment came to be. But this question is way more revealing than most.
I’ve been fortunate enough to design and teach my own college courses exploring, from literary, historical, and philosophical angles, the many complex processes that led to a Donald Trump presidency. But, as a teacher of argumentative writing, I’ve also been given a window through which to observe some of those processes in action, to see how their effects manifest in the peculiar ways people—namely, my students—think and act. In classes where argumentation is the center of gravity for everything else we do, my students and I begin every term by discussing whether or not, in our classroom and in the world at large, we are, in fact, entitled to our opinions.
On a purely literal level, the first implication of this common refrain is that, no matter how out of wack your opinion may be, you’re entitled to have it—no one can physically stop you. Sure. That’s reasonable, if kind of banal. (You can physically punish or silence people who have certain opinions, but can you actually stop them from having the opinions in the first place?) But, as it’s generally understood, the second implication of the phrase is more troublesome.
As Patrick Stokes, Senior Lecturer at Deakin University, explains it, the phrase suggests that you’re “entitled to have your views treated as serious candidates for the truth.” As if there’s a social law that says all opinions are equal and all deserve, by right, to be treated equally. This is where lines start to blur—when opinions themselves are seemingly given their own protective rights—and the common refrain that people are “entitled to their opinions” absorbs into itself the pseudo-noble cliché that we must always “respect other people’s opinions.” For Stokes, the obvious problem is that this kind of customary treatment devalues the ways that opinions are supposed to earn serious consideration through logical argumentation, persuasion, rigorous research, and expertise. When these are thrown out the window, people start to expect that their views deserve to not only be taken seriously, but to also be protected from serious challenges, because, well, it’s their opinion.
As Stokes argues, this shared belief that every opinion has an equal claim to being right or true leads to the twisted state of things we have today where, say, anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories or climate change denialism are given plenty of media time and mainstream consideration even when it can be shown that some of their claims are verifiably wrong and have serious negative consequences. Stokes, in other words, is on to something here, but the problem goes much deeper. This prevailing situation hinges less on differing opinions that claim, by their own merits, to be “serious candidates for the truth” and more on the ways that opinions have been given cultural and political protection in the “free market of ideas.” Opinions have been subsumed under the various and more totalizing categories of identity, which are understood to be “off limits.”
Looking back on this tumultuous election year, it seems clear that our political culture is marked, at the micro level, by the fusion of a given person’s opinion and what they perceive to be their singular, permanent, and authentic self. (I know that sounds like highfalutin, farty, pseudo-philosophical B.S., but just bear with me for a minute.) Like race, wingspan, or nationality, a person’s political opinions are now treated as if they are hardwired into their being—they are part of one’s fundamental, seemingly unchanging essence. When I talk with many Trump supporters, for example, or staunch Democrats, they share a striking tendency to describe themselves as individuals who are anything but malleable. They seem to deny that their journey to becoming who they are today might have involved being convinced and even reshaped by the things they’ve chosen to politically affiliate with. Instead, theirs is a story of homecoming. In response to the question, “Why do you support X?” I’ve heard countless personal parables from people who, like every children’s-book character ever, detail how they discovered a place where people like them belonged. (...)
Moreover, it makes sense that the endgame of this process isn’t to justify the righteousness of an argumentative position but to assert that position’s right to exist in the social museum of tolerance. For instance, most of my new students understand that a basic requirement of argumentative papers is to include something called a “counterargument.” So many of them simply take this to mean that they must acknowledge that other viewpoints on the matter at hand exist. At the beginning, students can rarely conceptualize how such counterarguments may derive from conflicts with the logic or evidence bolstering their own arguments; instead, nine times out of ten, they can only imagine these counterarguments coming from assumed interlocutors who quite simply think differently than they do.
In their assigned classwork, students are pushed to express what is otherwise a general condition for social actors today, who daily demonstrate the leap from I-think-therefore-I-am to I-am-therefore-what-I-think. It is really no wonder that, from classrooms to social media pages to newsrooms, strong challenges to individuals’ argumentative positions feel more like personal, existential attacks than anything else. Even if others are responding to your viewpoint with researched facts and deductive reasoning, the idea that they are arguing against your viewpoint in the first place means that they are challenging the very tissue of who you are.
by Maximillian Alvarez, The Baffler | Read more:
Image: Rene Descartes, Wikimedia Commons
I’ve been fortunate enough to design and teach my own college courses exploring, from literary, historical, and philosophical angles, the many complex processes that led to a Donald Trump presidency. But, as a teacher of argumentative writing, I’ve also been given a window through which to observe some of those processes in action, to see how their effects manifest in the peculiar ways people—namely, my students—think and act. In classes where argumentation is the center of gravity for everything else we do, my students and I begin every term by discussing whether or not, in our classroom and in the world at large, we are, in fact, entitled to our opinions.
On a purely literal level, the first implication of this common refrain is that, no matter how out of wack your opinion may be, you’re entitled to have it—no one can physically stop you. Sure. That’s reasonable, if kind of banal. (You can physically punish or silence people who have certain opinions, but can you actually stop them from having the opinions in the first place?) But, as it’s generally understood, the second implication of the phrase is more troublesome.As Patrick Stokes, Senior Lecturer at Deakin University, explains it, the phrase suggests that you’re “entitled to have your views treated as serious candidates for the truth.” As if there’s a social law that says all opinions are equal and all deserve, by right, to be treated equally. This is where lines start to blur—when opinions themselves are seemingly given their own protective rights—and the common refrain that people are “entitled to their opinions” absorbs into itself the pseudo-noble cliché that we must always “respect other people’s opinions.” For Stokes, the obvious problem is that this kind of customary treatment devalues the ways that opinions are supposed to earn serious consideration through logical argumentation, persuasion, rigorous research, and expertise. When these are thrown out the window, people start to expect that their views deserve to not only be taken seriously, but to also be protected from serious challenges, because, well, it’s their opinion.
As Stokes argues, this shared belief that every opinion has an equal claim to being right or true leads to the twisted state of things we have today where, say, anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories or climate change denialism are given plenty of media time and mainstream consideration even when it can be shown that some of their claims are verifiably wrong and have serious negative consequences. Stokes, in other words, is on to something here, but the problem goes much deeper. This prevailing situation hinges less on differing opinions that claim, by their own merits, to be “serious candidates for the truth” and more on the ways that opinions have been given cultural and political protection in the “free market of ideas.” Opinions have been subsumed under the various and more totalizing categories of identity, which are understood to be “off limits.”
Looking back on this tumultuous election year, it seems clear that our political culture is marked, at the micro level, by the fusion of a given person’s opinion and what they perceive to be their singular, permanent, and authentic self. (I know that sounds like highfalutin, farty, pseudo-philosophical B.S., but just bear with me for a minute.) Like race, wingspan, or nationality, a person’s political opinions are now treated as if they are hardwired into their being—they are part of one’s fundamental, seemingly unchanging essence. When I talk with many Trump supporters, for example, or staunch Democrats, they share a striking tendency to describe themselves as individuals who are anything but malleable. They seem to deny that their journey to becoming who they are today might have involved being convinced and even reshaped by the things they’ve chosen to politically affiliate with. Instead, theirs is a story of homecoming. In response to the question, “Why do you support X?” I’ve heard countless personal parables from people who, like every children’s-book character ever, detail how they discovered a place where people like them belonged. (...)
Moreover, it makes sense that the endgame of this process isn’t to justify the righteousness of an argumentative position but to assert that position’s right to exist in the social museum of tolerance. For instance, most of my new students understand that a basic requirement of argumentative papers is to include something called a “counterargument.” So many of them simply take this to mean that they must acknowledge that other viewpoints on the matter at hand exist. At the beginning, students can rarely conceptualize how such counterarguments may derive from conflicts with the logic or evidence bolstering their own arguments; instead, nine times out of ten, they can only imagine these counterarguments coming from assumed interlocutors who quite simply think differently than they do.
In their assigned classwork, students are pushed to express what is otherwise a general condition for social actors today, who daily demonstrate the leap from I-think-therefore-I-am to I-am-therefore-what-I-think. It is really no wonder that, from classrooms to social media pages to newsrooms, strong challenges to individuals’ argumentative positions feel more like personal, existential attacks than anything else. Even if others are responding to your viewpoint with researched facts and deductive reasoning, the idea that they are arguing against your viewpoint in the first place means that they are challenging the very tissue of who you are.
by Maximillian Alvarez, The Baffler | Read more:
Image: Rene Descartes, Wikimedia Commons
Thursday, August 3, 2017
Dream Daddy
A month ago, if most people had tried to predict what kind of videogame would become the game of the summer, very few of them would have guessed "queer dating simulator." Yet, Dream Daddy did just that, with a pair of stunning usurpals: Not only did it replace beloved first-person shooter Overwatch as the most-discussed videogame on Tumblr for the first time in more than nine months, but it shot to the top of Steam's global sales chart, unseating battle-royal phenomenon PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Not bad for a tiny game, created by two people, that upends so many notions about what works in a game—and about gamers themselves.
You don't just date dads in Dream Daddy, though; you are one. The game casts you in the role of a single father who has just moved to a new town with his teenage daughter. Although the two of you have been on your own for a while, the death of your spouse—you can specify if they were male or female—clearly still weighs on your mind. You meet six other dads who just happen to live in the same suburban cul-de-sac, and with a little help from a Facebook analogue called Dadbook, the dating begins.
The result is something as sincere and funny as it is heart-rending, a self-aware, deeply humanistic game whose witty script makes even the most groan-worthy dad puns seem to sparkle. It’s a subversion of dating sims that is not just the best dating sim I’ve ever played but also one of the best games of the year.
At first glance, the game's romantic roster looks like a who’s who of sexy stereotypes: the bad boy, the jock, the sensitive artist, the clean-cut hunk. Spend a little more time with them, however, and these facades dissolve, revealing complicated men whose passions, secrets and struggles cannot be neatly contained in cookie-cutter character types. Yes, the Goth Dad enjoys cloaks and long walks in graveyards, and the Jock Dad loves getting in his reps at the gym—but they both struggle to cope with rebellious children, shattered marriages, and the parts of their lives that they are ashamed to share with the world.
Leighton Gray, a 19-year-old student at the Savannah College of Art and Design who created, cowrote, and art-directed Dream Daddy, is queer herself; when she and cowriter Vernon Shaw sat down to develop the game, she says, defying stereotypes was at the forefront of their minds: “We wanted to set up expectations and knock them down.”
A Romance Game Actually About Romance
Those complex characterizations not only make the story far more interesting, they render obsolete the usual rules of dating sims. For all of the genre's seeming emphasis on romance, dating sims often contain a reductively transactional notion of love and sex, relying on a mechanic that independent game developer Arden once described as “kindness coins”: Put enough compliments or gifts into the object of your affection and receive sex in return. “A lot of times with dating sims it’s a matter of getting a read on the character’s personality and telling them exactly what they want to hear,” Gray says. “That's a really frustrating way to play a game.”
Dream Daddy, though, encourages players not to think about romance as a game at all. You can try to impress the music nerd or the academic with knowledge you don't have, but chances are your fakery will fall flat. You might think that the best way to win points with a standoffish dad is through sarcasm; once you learn his backstory, however, you find that what he really wants is kindness. The heartaches and emotional wounds of the men you pursue are not obstacles to be overcome en route to sex, but rather fragments of real humanity that make them even more lovable—and often force you to reexamine your own intentions.
During the resolution of one storyline, you're given an option when comforting one of the dads in a moment of personal crisis: You can tell him what he wants to hear or tell him what he needs to hear. If you prioritize your desire to “win” sex over the well-being of your vulnerable friend—to treat him like a game rather than a person—the result is guilt-inducing, even a little tragic.
Dream Daddy is an unabashedly queer game, but not performatively so; it's far more interested in being than announcing. Some of the dads have had relationships with women before, some with men, but there's no agonizing about their sexual orientation and no more mention of it than there would be in a traditionally heterosexual romance. They simply follow their hearts, and any obstacles they face are a result of emotional and personal complications, not struggles with their identities. “We were determined to not make any of the dads' individual paths about their sexuality or have their sexuality be their defining trait," Gray says. "We can have narratives that are about queer people that are not necessarily about being queer. It’s about these relationships.”
You don't just date dads in Dream Daddy, though; you are one. The game casts you in the role of a single father who has just moved to a new town with his teenage daughter. Although the two of you have been on your own for a while, the death of your spouse—you can specify if they were male or female—clearly still weighs on your mind. You meet six other dads who just happen to live in the same suburban cul-de-sac, and with a little help from a Facebook analogue called Dadbook, the dating begins.
The result is something as sincere and funny as it is heart-rending, a self-aware, deeply humanistic game whose witty script makes even the most groan-worthy dad puns seem to sparkle. It’s a subversion of dating sims that is not just the best dating sim I’ve ever played but also one of the best games of the year.At first glance, the game's romantic roster looks like a who’s who of sexy stereotypes: the bad boy, the jock, the sensitive artist, the clean-cut hunk. Spend a little more time with them, however, and these facades dissolve, revealing complicated men whose passions, secrets and struggles cannot be neatly contained in cookie-cutter character types. Yes, the Goth Dad enjoys cloaks and long walks in graveyards, and the Jock Dad loves getting in his reps at the gym—but they both struggle to cope with rebellious children, shattered marriages, and the parts of their lives that they are ashamed to share with the world.
Leighton Gray, a 19-year-old student at the Savannah College of Art and Design who created, cowrote, and art-directed Dream Daddy, is queer herself; when she and cowriter Vernon Shaw sat down to develop the game, she says, defying stereotypes was at the forefront of their minds: “We wanted to set up expectations and knock them down.”
A Romance Game Actually About Romance
Those complex characterizations not only make the story far more interesting, they render obsolete the usual rules of dating sims. For all of the genre's seeming emphasis on romance, dating sims often contain a reductively transactional notion of love and sex, relying on a mechanic that independent game developer Arden once described as “kindness coins”: Put enough compliments or gifts into the object of your affection and receive sex in return. “A lot of times with dating sims it’s a matter of getting a read on the character’s personality and telling them exactly what they want to hear,” Gray says. “That's a really frustrating way to play a game.”
Dream Daddy, though, encourages players not to think about romance as a game at all. You can try to impress the music nerd or the academic with knowledge you don't have, but chances are your fakery will fall flat. You might think that the best way to win points with a standoffish dad is through sarcasm; once you learn his backstory, however, you find that what he really wants is kindness. The heartaches and emotional wounds of the men you pursue are not obstacles to be overcome en route to sex, but rather fragments of real humanity that make them even more lovable—and often force you to reexamine your own intentions.
During the resolution of one storyline, you're given an option when comforting one of the dads in a moment of personal crisis: You can tell him what he wants to hear or tell him what he needs to hear. If you prioritize your desire to “win” sex over the well-being of your vulnerable friend—to treat him like a game rather than a person—the result is guilt-inducing, even a little tragic.
Dream Daddy is an unabashedly queer game, but not performatively so; it's far more interested in being than announcing. Some of the dads have had relationships with women before, some with men, but there's no agonizing about their sexual orientation and no more mention of it than there would be in a traditionally heterosexual romance. They simply follow their hearts, and any obstacles they face are a result of emotional and personal complications, not struggles with their identities. “We were determined to not make any of the dads' individual paths about their sexuality or have their sexuality be their defining trait," Gray says. "We can have narratives that are about queer people that are not necessarily about being queer. It’s about these relationships.”
by Laura Hudson, Wired | Read more:
Image: Game Grumps
You’ve Never Heard of HNA Group. Here’s Why You Will.
On a warm summer night in Paris, hundreds of executives, bankers, diplomats, and French officials walk the red carpet snaking up the steps of the Petit Palais museum—a sumptuous Beaux Arts building in the heart of the French capital, with sculptures and paintings set around a manicured garden. Under 200-year-old frescoes, the guests dine on lobster, duck, and white-chocolate mousse, prepared by a top French chef, washed down with grand cru Bordeaux, and topped off with entertainment from the Peking Opera. Three large red letters affixed to the ornate gates offer a clue about who’s throwing the invitation-only affair: HNA.
To the hundreds of people passing by, the name HNA probably means nothing. But to the business world at large, the presence of those three letters is another sign—if any is needed—that a little-known Chinese conglomerate with provincial roots has, in just a few years, transformed into a powerful global player with tentacles stretching across the planet.
HNA Group, headquartered in Hainan in southern China, still lacks the brand-name status it eagerly seeks. That’s despite the fact that it has plowed tens of billions of dollars into buying up foreign assets since 2015, on every continent—including $5.66 billion in just the past six months, according to the tracking firm Dealogic. By the company’s estimation, its investments in the U.S. alone have reached $35 billion.
Over the past two years, about $1 trillion has flowed out of China, as Chinese individuals and companies, having made fortunes at home and with state-owned banks willing to lend, invested elsewhere. Among those companies, one of the most aggressive has been HNA. Its dealmaking in some ways highlights how a mere handful of Chinese groups have snapped up dozens of Western assets, especially since the 2008 economic crisis, while at the same time leaving unanswered questions over ownership and transparency.
In the case of HNA, its executives have crisscrossed the globe in a frenetic buying spree, making deals through a labyrinth of subsidiaries in China and abroad. The purchases have included household names for Americans and Europeans. Among them are Minnesota-based Carlson Hotels—owner of the Radisson and Park Plaza hotels—which HNA bought outright last December for an undisclosed sum. In March of this year, it bought 25% of Hilton Worldwide Holdings (HLT, +0.39%), the hotel group, from Blackstone for $6.5 billion. And in May it increased its stake in Deutsche Bank to become its biggest shareholder, with its stake worth about $3.7 billion.
The list goes on: HNA owns the airline catering giant Gategroup and the aviation servicing giant Swissport. In April of this year, HNA’s Dublin-based aircraft leasing subsidiary, Avolon Holdings—which HNA bought in 2016—acquired the aircraft leasing arm of the New York financial firm CIT Group for $10 billion, turning HNA into the world’s third-largest lessor of planes. And its U.S. real estate holdings include 245 Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, which it bought in March this year for $2.2 billion.
In December, HNA went to California and bought Ingram Micro, the Irvine-based company that is the world’s biggest distributor of technology products, with operations in about 160 countries. The price: $6 billion—in cash.
There are plenty of other purchases that, by HNA’s outsize standard, seem almost forgettable: eight golf courses purchased in Washington State for $137.5 million last October, for instance. In January, HNA Capital, one of the group’s subsidiaries, spent about $200 million for a majority stake in the New York hedge fund SkyBridge Capital, according to HNA. That deal might have gone unnoticed had the seller not been Anthony Scaramucci, a key financial backer of President Donald Trump. (...)
As it swallows new businesses and properties, HNA is making a rapid ascent up Fortune’s Global 500 rankings. The company first appeared on the list in 2015, at No. 464. Last year it jumped to No. 353. And this year it’s No. 170, with some $53 billion in revenue—a nearly 80% gain over the previous 12 months. Add in a full year of Ingram Micro, which last year had some $42 billion in sales, and HNA Group should easily crack the top 100 of the Global 500 in 2018.
But HNA’s thirst for growth seems far from sated. That was clear when the company’s top executives met Fortune over several days in late June. It was a rare window into the privately held (and private) company. The execs described goals that seemed wildly ambitious, until one considers that HNA started from scratch just 24 years ago—making it younger than Apple (AAPL, -0.92%), for example, by a full 17 years.
Indeed, the man who runs HNA today is set on its becoming one of the world’s biggest companies, period. “We have a target to be in the top 10,” says HNA’s CEO Adam Tan (his Chinese name is Tan Xiangdong), sitting in his hotel suite in Paris the morning after the company’s spectacular dinner, a charity event that takes place in a different city every year, on the birthday of the company’s billionaire founder and chairman, Chen Feng.
The Paris dinner kicked off HNA’s “International Week” in Paris, in which major clients, bankers (including from Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan), and business partners converged on the city over several days for meetings. At the National Golf course near Versailles, outside Paris, HNA launched the first HNA Open de France, a European PGA tour it now sponsors. All of that is valuable branding for a company grasping for the top. Tan, known universally in the company simply as Adam, says he doesn’t know how long it will take for HNA to become one of the world’s biggest companies. But he’s confident that it will get there. It helps, he admits, that business is booming at the moment. “Earning money is so easy,” he says, laughing. “We are now the geniuses.”
by Vivienne Walt, Fortune | Read more:
Image: HNA Group
To the hundreds of people passing by, the name HNA probably means nothing. But to the business world at large, the presence of those three letters is another sign—if any is needed—that a little-known Chinese conglomerate with provincial roots has, in just a few years, transformed into a powerful global player with tentacles stretching across the planet.
HNA Group, headquartered in Hainan in southern China, still lacks the brand-name status it eagerly seeks. That’s despite the fact that it has plowed tens of billions of dollars into buying up foreign assets since 2015, on every continent—including $5.66 billion in just the past six months, according to the tracking firm Dealogic. By the company’s estimation, its investments in the U.S. alone have reached $35 billion.Over the past two years, about $1 trillion has flowed out of China, as Chinese individuals and companies, having made fortunes at home and with state-owned banks willing to lend, invested elsewhere. Among those companies, one of the most aggressive has been HNA. Its dealmaking in some ways highlights how a mere handful of Chinese groups have snapped up dozens of Western assets, especially since the 2008 economic crisis, while at the same time leaving unanswered questions over ownership and transparency.
In the case of HNA, its executives have crisscrossed the globe in a frenetic buying spree, making deals through a labyrinth of subsidiaries in China and abroad. The purchases have included household names for Americans and Europeans. Among them are Minnesota-based Carlson Hotels—owner of the Radisson and Park Plaza hotels—which HNA bought outright last December for an undisclosed sum. In March of this year, it bought 25% of Hilton Worldwide Holdings (HLT, +0.39%), the hotel group, from Blackstone for $6.5 billion. And in May it increased its stake in Deutsche Bank to become its biggest shareholder, with its stake worth about $3.7 billion.
The list goes on: HNA owns the airline catering giant Gategroup and the aviation servicing giant Swissport. In April of this year, HNA’s Dublin-based aircraft leasing subsidiary, Avolon Holdings—which HNA bought in 2016—acquired the aircraft leasing arm of the New York financial firm CIT Group for $10 billion, turning HNA into the world’s third-largest lessor of planes. And its U.S. real estate holdings include 245 Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, which it bought in March this year for $2.2 billion.
In December, HNA went to California and bought Ingram Micro, the Irvine-based company that is the world’s biggest distributor of technology products, with operations in about 160 countries. The price: $6 billion—in cash.
There are plenty of other purchases that, by HNA’s outsize standard, seem almost forgettable: eight golf courses purchased in Washington State for $137.5 million last October, for instance. In January, HNA Capital, one of the group’s subsidiaries, spent about $200 million for a majority stake in the New York hedge fund SkyBridge Capital, according to HNA. That deal might have gone unnoticed had the seller not been Anthony Scaramucci, a key financial backer of President Donald Trump. (...)
As it swallows new businesses and properties, HNA is making a rapid ascent up Fortune’s Global 500 rankings. The company first appeared on the list in 2015, at No. 464. Last year it jumped to No. 353. And this year it’s No. 170, with some $53 billion in revenue—a nearly 80% gain over the previous 12 months. Add in a full year of Ingram Micro, which last year had some $42 billion in sales, and HNA Group should easily crack the top 100 of the Global 500 in 2018.
But HNA’s thirst for growth seems far from sated. That was clear when the company’s top executives met Fortune over several days in late June. It was a rare window into the privately held (and private) company. The execs described goals that seemed wildly ambitious, until one considers that HNA started from scratch just 24 years ago—making it younger than Apple (AAPL, -0.92%), for example, by a full 17 years.
Indeed, the man who runs HNA today is set on its becoming one of the world’s biggest companies, period. “We have a target to be in the top 10,” says HNA’s CEO Adam Tan (his Chinese name is Tan Xiangdong), sitting in his hotel suite in Paris the morning after the company’s spectacular dinner, a charity event that takes place in a different city every year, on the birthday of the company’s billionaire founder and chairman, Chen Feng.
The Paris dinner kicked off HNA’s “International Week” in Paris, in which major clients, bankers (including from Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan), and business partners converged on the city over several days for meetings. At the National Golf course near Versailles, outside Paris, HNA launched the first HNA Open de France, a European PGA tour it now sponsors. All of that is valuable branding for a company grasping for the top. Tan, known universally in the company simply as Adam, says he doesn’t know how long it will take for HNA to become one of the world’s biggest companies. But he’s confident that it will get there. It helps, he admits, that business is booming at the moment. “Earning money is so easy,” he says, laughing. “We are now the geniuses.”
by Vivienne Walt, Fortune | Read more:
Image: HNA Group
The Man Trap
Nathan, a successful lawyer in Manhattan, hardly seems like a candidate for sympathy. His midtown office is smart, his suit is natty and he earns a decent living negotiating contracts and intellectual-property rights for players in the city’s dynamic entertainment industry. Divorced and in his late 40s, he speaks fondly of his teenage children and is delighted with his fiancée, whom he will marry in a few weeks’ time. His life is good, he assures me, and he is thriving in his career. So it is only with some hesitation that he admits something he has never discussed before, not even with his closest friends: “In the society that I live in, as a professional in New York City, I think it is easier being a woman than being a man.”
This is not to say that being a woman is easy, Nathan hastily adds. He understands why many are frustrated by “the way they are expected to do it all, to have a career and be moms, it’s a whole contradictory bundle of things.” It’s just that few women seem to notice that men, too, are struggling with a similarly burdensome bundle. “As the man, there’s this tacit expectation that I’m going to be the earner and the person who kills bugs and fixes things around the house. At the same time, I’m going to be responsive to feelings and helpful with cooking and the children and those kinds of things.” Unlike his two long-term female partners, who pursued personally rewarding careers that offered enough flexibility to be available to their children, Nathan felt obliged to pursue work that offered a pay cheque large enough to support a family. “For the last 20-plus years I’ve been chained to a desk,” he says. “I’m in a profession that I’m happy to be in, but if I were a 20-year-old and told I could do anything I wanted with my life, I’m not sure I’d be doing this.” Nathan speaks enviously of female friends who decided to leave their professional careers when they became mothers. “They weren’t perceived as failures. If anything, they were told ‘That’s so great, you’re choosing to be a mom, that’s the most important thing in the world.’ That is not an option open to men.”
Nathan is not alone in his misgivings. Between 1977 and 2008 the percentage of American fathers in dual-earner couples who suffered from work-family conflicts jumped from 35% to 60%. The percentage of similarly vexed mothers grew only slightly, from 41% to 47%. Young men who get stuck supporting a family often report high levels of stress and sadness that they aren’t spending more time with their kids.
Because men – and especially white, professional men – occupy a uniquely privileged place in society, Nathan is reluctant to discuss his feelings openly. “I’ve never expressed this to any of the women in my life, and I think it’s best that I don’t,” he says. He is right to be wary. Most conversations about gender inequities characterise men like Nathan as part of the problem. Women around the world may be graduating from college at higher rates than men, but they have yet to achieve similar rates of success in their careers. The uneven burdens of parenthood appear to be to blame. Although men in rich countries spend far more time cooking, cleaning and child-rearing than ever before, their efforts continue to be dwarfed by those of women. In America, for example, mothers devote nearly twice as much time to child care and housework as their male partners. Even couples with grand plans for an egalitarian partnership typically revert to more traditional roles after the birth of a child. A new study of the time-diaries of highly educated dual-earning American couples found that new fathers enjoyed up to three-and-a-half times as much leisure as their female partners, as mothers who worked full time were still stuck with the lion’s share of unpaid labour.
Feminists have long argued that men see little need to help out more at home because they already enjoy all the benefits of marriage and fatherhood without having to put in the extra work. “Even though it’s shifting drastically, marriage is still a pretty good deal for men in terms of the actual labour they capture from their wives,” says Scott Coltrane, a sociologist at the University of Oregon. Coltrane has found that after controlling for variables like age and education, married American men earn significantly more than their unmarried or divorced male peers, and their earnings go up with every child they have. Marriage seems to make men more productive at work because it allows them to outsource much of the housekeeping to their wives. Women, however, see no such “marriage premium”, and their earnings tend to go down with every new child. These parenthood effects can be seen across a variety of Western countries; they are greater in gender-conservative countries such as Austria and Germany, and weaker in more progressive countries, such as Sweden. This imbalance at home would seem to explain why the rate of female employment, after rising like gangbusters from the 1960s through the 1980s, slowed through the 1990s and has levelled off since the 2000s.
In order for more mothers to flourish in paid employment, more fathers need to pick up some of the slack at home. But, as Nathan’s frustration makes plain, this is not as simple as it sounds.
Women may not be moving as fast into male-dominated worlds as feminists would like, but they have moved much faster than men have into female-dominated ones. To understand better this asymmetry, we need to look more closely at the relative value we place on masculinity and femininity.
Most people assume that gender is simply a scheme for classifying differences or a template for guiding the behaviour of children. The reality is more pernicious. We typically prize the attributes we associate with men, such as competence, strength, virility and stoicism, and underestimate the qualities we associate with women, like warmth, tenderness and compassion. We usually see masculinity in terms of power and dominance and femininity in terms of softness and subservience. We defer to men and indulge women. In other words, gender is not merely a bunch of traits embodied by individuals, but a subtle stratification system that often advantages men and disadvantages women.
All of this means there are far more incentives for women to act masculine than there are for men to act feminine. Women who behave like their male colleagues may be disliked for being “pushy” or “bitchy”, but these penalties are offset by the fact that they are also likely to enjoy more power and greater financial rewards. When men adopt the jobs and behaviours associated with women, however, they typically experience a loss of status with fewer perks and more social sanctions, especially from other men. “It’s seen as an unknowable crisis if men want to step down,” explains Barbara Risman, head of the department of sociology at the University of Illinois in Chicago. “It’s not just being more like women, it’s seen as being less than men. Because women are seen as less than men.”
Once we see masculinity as an elite fraternity that confers special privileges, it becomes clearer why its membership is so strictly policed. Not every man qualifies. The hazing begins early. We teach girls that they can be whatever they want to be, and wipe their tears away when they struggle. But we teach boys that they need to toughen up, shake it off and take things “like a man”. Parents are often charmed when their young girls eschew dolls and dresses to play sport and build things, as if their daughters are already learning how to “lean in” at the playground. But many find it unsettling when their young boys want to trade a football for a tutu.
As these children grow older, boys will often go to punishing lengths to prove their masculinity to each other, whereas girls enjoy a much wider gamut of acceptable behaviour. “If we’re keeping score about who has it worse, girls actually have it much better when it comes to the definition of femininity,” says Lisa Damour, a psychologist who works closely with adolescents. “You can be a tomboy and that’s cool. You can be into make-up and that’s cool. But boys operate in an exceedingly narrow margin for what’s considered masculine.” When boys stray from this script, they typically get bullied or abused. Their status as men is at once so valuable and so precarious that it must be won over and over again.
This is not to say that being a woman is easy, Nathan hastily adds. He understands why many are frustrated by “the way they are expected to do it all, to have a career and be moms, it’s a whole contradictory bundle of things.” It’s just that few women seem to notice that men, too, are struggling with a similarly burdensome bundle. “As the man, there’s this tacit expectation that I’m going to be the earner and the person who kills bugs and fixes things around the house. At the same time, I’m going to be responsive to feelings and helpful with cooking and the children and those kinds of things.” Unlike his two long-term female partners, who pursued personally rewarding careers that offered enough flexibility to be available to their children, Nathan felt obliged to pursue work that offered a pay cheque large enough to support a family. “For the last 20-plus years I’ve been chained to a desk,” he says. “I’m in a profession that I’m happy to be in, but if I were a 20-year-old and told I could do anything I wanted with my life, I’m not sure I’d be doing this.” Nathan speaks enviously of female friends who decided to leave their professional careers when they became mothers. “They weren’t perceived as failures. If anything, they were told ‘That’s so great, you’re choosing to be a mom, that’s the most important thing in the world.’ That is not an option open to men.”
Nathan is not alone in his misgivings. Between 1977 and 2008 the percentage of American fathers in dual-earner couples who suffered from work-family conflicts jumped from 35% to 60%. The percentage of similarly vexed mothers grew only slightly, from 41% to 47%. Young men who get stuck supporting a family often report high levels of stress and sadness that they aren’t spending more time with their kids.Because men – and especially white, professional men – occupy a uniquely privileged place in society, Nathan is reluctant to discuss his feelings openly. “I’ve never expressed this to any of the women in my life, and I think it’s best that I don’t,” he says. He is right to be wary. Most conversations about gender inequities characterise men like Nathan as part of the problem. Women around the world may be graduating from college at higher rates than men, but they have yet to achieve similar rates of success in their careers. The uneven burdens of parenthood appear to be to blame. Although men in rich countries spend far more time cooking, cleaning and child-rearing than ever before, their efforts continue to be dwarfed by those of women. In America, for example, mothers devote nearly twice as much time to child care and housework as their male partners. Even couples with grand plans for an egalitarian partnership typically revert to more traditional roles after the birth of a child. A new study of the time-diaries of highly educated dual-earning American couples found that new fathers enjoyed up to three-and-a-half times as much leisure as their female partners, as mothers who worked full time were still stuck with the lion’s share of unpaid labour.
Feminists have long argued that men see little need to help out more at home because they already enjoy all the benefits of marriage and fatherhood without having to put in the extra work. “Even though it’s shifting drastically, marriage is still a pretty good deal for men in terms of the actual labour they capture from their wives,” says Scott Coltrane, a sociologist at the University of Oregon. Coltrane has found that after controlling for variables like age and education, married American men earn significantly more than their unmarried or divorced male peers, and their earnings go up with every child they have. Marriage seems to make men more productive at work because it allows them to outsource much of the housekeeping to their wives. Women, however, see no such “marriage premium”, and their earnings tend to go down with every new child. These parenthood effects can be seen across a variety of Western countries; they are greater in gender-conservative countries such as Austria and Germany, and weaker in more progressive countries, such as Sweden. This imbalance at home would seem to explain why the rate of female employment, after rising like gangbusters from the 1960s through the 1980s, slowed through the 1990s and has levelled off since the 2000s.
In order for more mothers to flourish in paid employment, more fathers need to pick up some of the slack at home. But, as Nathan’s frustration makes plain, this is not as simple as it sounds.
Women may not be moving as fast into male-dominated worlds as feminists would like, but they have moved much faster than men have into female-dominated ones. To understand better this asymmetry, we need to look more closely at the relative value we place on masculinity and femininity.
Most people assume that gender is simply a scheme for classifying differences or a template for guiding the behaviour of children. The reality is more pernicious. We typically prize the attributes we associate with men, such as competence, strength, virility and stoicism, and underestimate the qualities we associate with women, like warmth, tenderness and compassion. We usually see masculinity in terms of power and dominance and femininity in terms of softness and subservience. We defer to men and indulge women. In other words, gender is not merely a bunch of traits embodied by individuals, but a subtle stratification system that often advantages men and disadvantages women.
All of this means there are far more incentives for women to act masculine than there are for men to act feminine. Women who behave like their male colleagues may be disliked for being “pushy” or “bitchy”, but these penalties are offset by the fact that they are also likely to enjoy more power and greater financial rewards. When men adopt the jobs and behaviours associated with women, however, they typically experience a loss of status with fewer perks and more social sanctions, especially from other men. “It’s seen as an unknowable crisis if men want to step down,” explains Barbara Risman, head of the department of sociology at the University of Illinois in Chicago. “It’s not just being more like women, it’s seen as being less than men. Because women are seen as less than men.”
Once we see masculinity as an elite fraternity that confers special privileges, it becomes clearer why its membership is so strictly policed. Not every man qualifies. The hazing begins early. We teach girls that they can be whatever they want to be, and wipe their tears away when they struggle. But we teach boys that they need to toughen up, shake it off and take things “like a man”. Parents are often charmed when their young girls eschew dolls and dresses to play sport and build things, as if their daughters are already learning how to “lean in” at the playground. But many find it unsettling when their young boys want to trade a football for a tutu.
As these children grow older, boys will often go to punishing lengths to prove their masculinity to each other, whereas girls enjoy a much wider gamut of acceptable behaviour. “If we’re keeping score about who has it worse, girls actually have it much better when it comes to the definition of femininity,” says Lisa Damour, a psychologist who works closely with adolescents. “You can be a tomboy and that’s cool. You can be into make-up and that’s cool. But boys operate in an exceedingly narrow margin for what’s considered masculine.” When boys stray from this script, they typically get bullied or abused. Their status as men is at once so valuable and so precarious that it must be won over and over again.
by Emily Bobrow, The Economist | Read more:
Image: Shout
Wednesday, August 2, 2017
Don’t Be Evil.
They were gods.
In 3150 BC, a man named Menes united Upper and Lower Egypt. His people took control of the Nile River, beginning the 3,000 year reign of the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. What made Ancient Egypt the first historic civilization were geopolitics:
In 3150 BC, a man named Menes united Upper and Lower Egypt. His people took control of the Nile River, beginning the 3,000 year reign of the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. What made Ancient Egypt the first historic civilization were geopolitics:
- Egypt’s natural desert borders protected it from invaders.
- The Nile River was a natural network that connected the civilization.
The river made it possible to mass produce food in epic proportions. The Pharaohs controlled the Nile River and taxed the farmers for access in the form of food. They stockpiled food stores that they distributed to mitigate local famine and floods. They quelled revolts because they could summon troops with speed.
By controlling the Nile River, this small group of humans became living gods on earth. Their people built hundreds of pyramids over the course of their reign in their honor. Each pyramid sentenced ten thousand farmers to thirty years of hard excruciating labor.
They are gods.
The Internet was not the first network to supposedly change everything forever. In 1910 under Theodore Vail, AT&T connected the nation with a monopoly of telephone wires. Like Google’s early “Don’t Be Evil” policy under Larry and Sergei, Vail’s AT&T served the public good. At the time, people perceived AT&T with the same technological reverence as they do with Google today. The telephone, radio, television, and film all started out as freely accessible networks. Now they’re all closed systems controlled by monopolies or cartels.
The Internet is simply repeating another cycle driven by human nature. What once began as a utopian network to bring people together is now controlled by The Four.
Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple.
Our four Pharaohs effectively rule over almost all gates to the Nile River of your time: The Internet.
For access, you have no choice but to pay the toll with your attention and your data.
Google is after your mind.
Google knows every question you’ve ever asked the Internet (Search). He knows what you’ve done and what you will do (Calendar). He knows where you’ve gone and where you are going (Waze, Maps). He knows every website you’ve ever visited (Chrome, Analytics) — even the ones in incognito. He’s probably reading your Gmail, your Google Docs, and your Hangouts. He can even predict what you’ll want before you tell him (Google Now).
Google spends billions building free software to collect millions of your data points. He’s captured your mind by using all that data to understand what you’re thinking better than you do. And he sold you, and others like you, to his advertisers for $79 billion last year.
Facebook is after your heart.
Facebook knows your real name and can recognize your face from any photo. She can accurately predict your interests from your location, age, education, and occupation. She has a deep understanding of who you care about, how you know them, and how close you are with them. She tracks how often you message them and interact with them. She knows what you like to read, everything you like, and everything you care about.
Facebook spends billions of dollars to ensure you’re perpetually distracted and addicted. Her algorithms use your like and click history to curate content so you never stop scrolling. Every time that little red notification appears, you have to check the number of likes you got. The last time you looked was seven minutes ago. You often catch yourself scrolling on autopilot not knowing how you got there. Facebook is enabling your addiction to capture your attention and your heart. She sold you, and others like you, for $27 billion last year. Google and Facebook combined are monopolizing the global ad market.
Amazon is after your gut consumption.
Over the last million years, more of our species have died from starvation than any other ailment. We’re hardwired with one basic instinct: the need for MORE. We can never get enough.
Amazon Prime has turned the world’s fastest growing retailer into a subscription service. 64% of US households now have Prime. He’s inserted a direct feeding tube of stuff into the wealthiest households of the world. Services such as same-day free shipping has hooked him into your home. He’s ensured your need to increase consumption and renew your recurring subscription. Quitting would cause withdrawals.
Now with the acquisition of Wholefoods ($13B), he’s conquered perishables. 55% of all product searches in the US now start from Amazon and he accounts for nearly half of US online retail sales. Amazon is a search engine attached to a warehouse. Armed with your consumption data, he convinces you to buy more.
Apple is after your reproduction instinct.
Luxury brands are how you signal your ability to attract and keep a mate. As a man, you demonstrate that you can absorb costs without endangering survival. As a woman, you’re deterring romantic rivals from poaching your relationship partner.
Former Burberry CEO, Angela Ahrendts, and YSL CEO, Paul Deneve, transformed Apple into a luxury retail brand. Your iPhone signals you’re wealthier, better-educated, and more attractive than an Android user. She convinces you that you’re a loser if you haven’t traded for the latest version of the iPhone. You own her Airpods, iPad, MacBook, and Apple Watch so your entire outfit matches. The data you leave on your Apps, iTunes, and iCloud lock you into her ecosystem so that you need to keep buying Apple. She has managed to marry the profit margins of Ferrari with the production volumes of Toyota. She is the most profitable company in the world.
The war for future control.
As the Internet expands to all aspects of our lives, we’re witnessing a corporate war for control.
The following are some of the current battlefronts in the war to control your access to the Internet:
Your digital collar and leash.
The iPhone has already secured Apple’s control of mobile. We’ve moved off the browser and instead use apps from Apple’s App Store to access the Internet on our phones. To avoid getting shut out, Google gives away Android to phone and tablet manufacturers (Samsung, LG). Facebook acquired Whatsapp ($19B) and Instagram ($1B) to hold onto our mobile attention. To capture developing countries, Facebook is giving away free wireless Internet. Though there’s a caveat — they have to use Facebook to access it.
Infiltration of your home has begun.
Google (Nest) is watching your house through security cameras, thermostats, and smoke alarms. Google Home and Amazon Echo listen to everything you’re saying. They also can control your house as you begin collecting smart appliances. Apple is secretly working on her own Siri-based Echo competitor: Homepod.
Keeping your eyes glued.
You’ve cancelled traditional cable television because you’re using Apple TV and Google Chromecast. Amazon’s $4.5 billion original content budget only trails Netflix’s $6 billion. Google is chasing Amazon Prime and Netflix with his own YouTube Red. Amazon’s NFL streaming is attacking traditional television’s last stand — live sports. Amazon bought Twitch ($970MM)because e-sports is surpassing traditional professional sports.
Total Internet immersion experience.
Facebook bought Oculus ($2B) because she believes virtual reality is the next Internet gateway. Google wants to avoid being shut out by Oculus and Hololens (Microsoft), so he’s giving away Google Daydream by packaging it with the Android. Apple is secretly working on her own Augmented Reality product. Apple Glasses are inevitable.
The future of transportation without a steering wheel.
Google will be giving away Waymo’s self-driving platform to car manufacturers (Fiat Chrysler). He knows you will spend your idle travel time using your self-driving car to search the Internet. Apple is also secretly working on her own self-driving technology. Tesla, Uber, and Lyft hope to join The Four with this move.
Beware of the prince.
Vail built AT&T’s network as a public service to improve the lives of its customers. Yet, AT&T eventually used its monopolistic advantages to tax customers without adding value. A public company must report to shareholders who care about short-term profit. It’s structurally impossible for Vail’s successors to have a founder’s idealism and authority to ignore their demands.
Though Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Bezos are still on their thrones, the founders of Apple and Google have passed on their scepters. The FCC is repealing net neutrality. Our Four Pharaohs will utterly control your Nile while you build their pyramids. Could the Internet be closed and predatory in the next 10 years?
Absolutely.
by Will Chang, Medium | Read more:
Image :Scott Galloway’s The Four
By controlling the Nile River, this small group of humans became living gods on earth. Their people built hundreds of pyramids over the course of their reign in their honor. Each pyramid sentenced ten thousand farmers to thirty years of hard excruciating labor.
They are gods.
The Internet was not the first network to supposedly change everything forever. In 1910 under Theodore Vail, AT&T connected the nation with a monopoly of telephone wires. Like Google’s early “Don’t Be Evil” policy under Larry and Sergei, Vail’s AT&T served the public good. At the time, people perceived AT&T with the same technological reverence as they do with Google today. The telephone, radio, television, and film all started out as freely accessible networks. Now they’re all closed systems controlled by monopolies or cartels.
The Internet is simply repeating another cycle driven by human nature. What once began as a utopian network to bring people together is now controlled by The Four.Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple.
Our four Pharaohs effectively rule over almost all gates to the Nile River of your time: The Internet.
For access, you have no choice but to pay the toll with your attention and your data.
Google is after your mind.
Google knows every question you’ve ever asked the Internet (Search). He knows what you’ve done and what you will do (Calendar). He knows where you’ve gone and where you are going (Waze, Maps). He knows every website you’ve ever visited (Chrome, Analytics) — even the ones in incognito. He’s probably reading your Gmail, your Google Docs, and your Hangouts. He can even predict what you’ll want before you tell him (Google Now).
Google spends billions building free software to collect millions of your data points. He’s captured your mind by using all that data to understand what you’re thinking better than you do. And he sold you, and others like you, to his advertisers for $79 billion last year.
Facebook is after your heart.
Facebook knows your real name and can recognize your face from any photo. She can accurately predict your interests from your location, age, education, and occupation. She has a deep understanding of who you care about, how you know them, and how close you are with them. She tracks how often you message them and interact with them. She knows what you like to read, everything you like, and everything you care about.
Facebook spends billions of dollars to ensure you’re perpetually distracted and addicted. Her algorithms use your like and click history to curate content so you never stop scrolling. Every time that little red notification appears, you have to check the number of likes you got. The last time you looked was seven minutes ago. You often catch yourself scrolling on autopilot not knowing how you got there. Facebook is enabling your addiction to capture your attention and your heart. She sold you, and others like you, for $27 billion last year. Google and Facebook combined are monopolizing the global ad market.
Amazon is after your gut consumption.
Over the last million years, more of our species have died from starvation than any other ailment. We’re hardwired with one basic instinct: the need for MORE. We can never get enough.
Amazon Prime has turned the world’s fastest growing retailer into a subscription service. 64% of US households now have Prime. He’s inserted a direct feeding tube of stuff into the wealthiest households of the world. Services such as same-day free shipping has hooked him into your home. He’s ensured your need to increase consumption and renew your recurring subscription. Quitting would cause withdrawals.
Now with the acquisition of Wholefoods ($13B), he’s conquered perishables. 55% of all product searches in the US now start from Amazon and he accounts for nearly half of US online retail sales. Amazon is a search engine attached to a warehouse. Armed with your consumption data, he convinces you to buy more.
Apple is after your reproduction instinct.
Luxury brands are how you signal your ability to attract and keep a mate. As a man, you demonstrate that you can absorb costs without endangering survival. As a woman, you’re deterring romantic rivals from poaching your relationship partner.
Former Burberry CEO, Angela Ahrendts, and YSL CEO, Paul Deneve, transformed Apple into a luxury retail brand. Your iPhone signals you’re wealthier, better-educated, and more attractive than an Android user. She convinces you that you’re a loser if you haven’t traded for the latest version of the iPhone. You own her Airpods, iPad, MacBook, and Apple Watch so your entire outfit matches. The data you leave on your Apps, iTunes, and iCloud lock you into her ecosystem so that you need to keep buying Apple. She has managed to marry the profit margins of Ferrari with the production volumes of Toyota. She is the most profitable company in the world.
The war for future control.
As the Internet expands to all aspects of our lives, we’re witnessing a corporate war for control.
The following are some of the current battlefronts in the war to control your access to the Internet:
Your digital collar and leash.
The iPhone has already secured Apple’s control of mobile. We’ve moved off the browser and instead use apps from Apple’s App Store to access the Internet on our phones. To avoid getting shut out, Google gives away Android to phone and tablet manufacturers (Samsung, LG). Facebook acquired Whatsapp ($19B) and Instagram ($1B) to hold onto our mobile attention. To capture developing countries, Facebook is giving away free wireless Internet. Though there’s a caveat — they have to use Facebook to access it.
Infiltration of your home has begun.
Google (Nest) is watching your house through security cameras, thermostats, and smoke alarms. Google Home and Amazon Echo listen to everything you’re saying. They also can control your house as you begin collecting smart appliances. Apple is secretly working on her own Siri-based Echo competitor: Homepod.
Keeping your eyes glued.
You’ve cancelled traditional cable television because you’re using Apple TV and Google Chromecast. Amazon’s $4.5 billion original content budget only trails Netflix’s $6 billion. Google is chasing Amazon Prime and Netflix with his own YouTube Red. Amazon’s NFL streaming is attacking traditional television’s last stand — live sports. Amazon bought Twitch ($970MM)because e-sports is surpassing traditional professional sports.
Total Internet immersion experience.
Facebook bought Oculus ($2B) because she believes virtual reality is the next Internet gateway. Google wants to avoid being shut out by Oculus and Hololens (Microsoft), so he’s giving away Google Daydream by packaging it with the Android. Apple is secretly working on her own Augmented Reality product. Apple Glasses are inevitable.
The future of transportation without a steering wheel.
Google will be giving away Waymo’s self-driving platform to car manufacturers (Fiat Chrysler). He knows you will spend your idle travel time using your self-driving car to search the Internet. Apple is also secretly working on her own self-driving technology. Tesla, Uber, and Lyft hope to join The Four with this move.
Beware of the prince.
Vail built AT&T’s network as a public service to improve the lives of its customers. Yet, AT&T eventually used its monopolistic advantages to tax customers without adding value. A public company must report to shareholders who care about short-term profit. It’s structurally impossible for Vail’s successors to have a founder’s idealism and authority to ignore their demands.
Though Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Bezos are still on their thrones, the founders of Apple and Google have passed on their scepters. The FCC is repealing net neutrality. Our Four Pharaohs will utterly control your Nile while you build their pyramids. Could the Internet be closed and predatory in the next 10 years?
Absolutely.
by Will Chang, Medium | Read more:
Image :Scott Galloway’s The Four
Angel Olsen
I quit my dreaming the moment that I found you I started dancing just to be around you Here's to thinking that it all meant so much more I kept my mouth shut and opened up the door I wanted nothing but for this to be the end For this to never be a tied and empty hand If all the trouble in my heart would only mend I lost my dream I lost my reason all again It's not just me for you, I have to look out too I have to save my life I need some peace of mind I am the only one now I am the only one now I am the only one now You may not be around You may not be around You may not be around I am the only one now I am the only one now I am the only one now I am the only one now
Hot Potatoes and Dutch Tulips
At the height of the technology bubble, the median of the most reliable market valuation measures we follow (those most strongly correlated with actual subsequent S&P 500 total returns) briefly reached an apex 178% above historical norms that had been regularly approached or breached over the completion of every market cycle in history. That level of valuation implied a prospective market loss of (1/(1+1.78)-1 = ) -64% as the bubble collapsed. In real-time, I suggested, based on related measures, that prospective market losses would likely be tiered, with tech stocks losing about -83%, the S&P 500 losing more than half of its value. As it happened, the 2000-2002 collapse took the S&P 500 down by 50%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index lost an oddly precise -83%. Smaller capitalization stocks suffered less extensive losses due to better valuations, as they had materially lagged the large-cap indices during the late-stages of that bubble.
Attempting to “stimulate” the economy from the recession that followed, the Federal Reserve cut short-term interest rates to just 1%, provoking an episode of yield-seeking speculation, where yield-starved investors created demand for higher-yielding mortgage-backed securities, and a weakly-regulated Wall Street rushed to create new “product” to meet the demand (by lending to anyone with a pulse). At its peak, the resulting bubble took the median of the most reliable market valuation measures we follow to a level more than 95% above their historical norms, implying a prospective market loss on the order of -49% as that bubble collapsed.
While I've written about numerous valuation measures over time, the most reliable ones share a common feature: they focus on identifying "sufficient statistics" for the very, very long-term stream of cash flows that stocks can be expected to deliver into the hands of investors over time. On that front, revenues are typically more robust "sufficient statistics" than current or year-ahead earnings. See Exhaustion Gaps and the Fear of Missing Out for a table showing the relative reliability of a variety of measures. In April 2007, I estimated that an appropriate valuation for the S&P 500 stood about 850, roughly -40% lower than prevailing levels. By the October peak, the prospective market loss to normal valuation had increased to about -46%. As it happened, the subsequent collapse of the housing bubble took the S&P 500 about -55% lower. In late-October 2008, as the market plunge crossed below historically reliable valuation norms, I observed that the S&P 500 had become undervalued on our measures.
Again attempting to “stimulate” the economy from the recession that followed, the Federal Reserve cut short-term interest rates to zero in recent years, provoking yet another episode of yield-seeking speculation, where yield-starved investors created demand for virtually every class of securities, in the hope of achieving returns in excess of zero. Meanwhile, Wall Street, suffering from what J.K. Galbraith once called the “extreme brevity of the financial memory,” convinced itself yet again that the whole episode was built on something more solid than quotes on a screen and blotches of ink on paper. At last week’s highs, the median of the most reliable market valuation measures we follow reached an extreme that placed them 170% above their historical norms, implying a prospective market loss on the order of -63% in what I fully expect to be the collapse of the third speculative bubble since 2000. Notably, there is only a single week in history where the median valuation on our most reliable measures exceeded the level we just observed. That was the week of March 24, 2000, which set the peak of the tech bubble. Unlike the 2000-2002 retreat however, the damage to paper values over the completion of the current cycle is likely to spare few sectors, as the median valuation across individual stocks is at a record high, and far beyond the 2000 peak. (...)
By the completion of the current cycle, investors will likely relearn how erroneous and irrelevant it was to worry about “selling too early” in an extremely overvalued market. It’s worth remembering now that by the end of the 2000-2002 decline, the entire total return of the S&P 500, in excess of Treasury bills, had been wiped out all the way back to May 1996. By the end of the 2007-2009 collapse, the entire total return of the S&P 500, in excess of Treasury bills, had been wiped out all the way back to June 1995. Likewise, my expectation is that the completion of the current market cycle will wipe out the total returns of the S&P 500, in excess of Treasury bill returns, all the way back to roughly October 1997 (from the standpoint of of the recent bull market advance, that would also erase the entire total return of the S&P 500, in excess of Treasury bill returns, since late-2009). This outcome would not even require the most reliable valuation measures to breach historical norms that they have revisited in virtually every market cycle, even those associated with very low interest rates. See Durable Returns, Transient Returns for a reminder of how all of this works.
Having correctly anticipated and watched major collapses unfold in prior market cycles, my sense is that many investors are likely thinking “I can always get out if the news gets bad and a steep loss starts to unfold.” More likely, what will actually happen is that the first market loss off the top will be a nearly vertical drop on the order of 12-14% and will be associated with virtually no meaningful news at all, and most investors will consider the decline far too steep to make selling worthwhile. A subsequent advance from that low, whether it recovers a third, or a half, or nearly all of the loss, will reinforce that mentality. Except for outright crashes like 1987, steep market losses are regularly punctuated by fast, furious advances that restore hope, and then give way to a fresh cascade of losses. If possible, get some charts and go through a few past market collapses day-by-day (blocking out the right side so it’s not clear what happened next), and you’ll get a feel for this constant flux between fear and relief, all the way down.
Attempting to “stimulate” the economy from the recession that followed, the Federal Reserve cut short-term interest rates to just 1%, provoking an episode of yield-seeking speculation, where yield-starved investors created demand for higher-yielding mortgage-backed securities, and a weakly-regulated Wall Street rushed to create new “product” to meet the demand (by lending to anyone with a pulse). At its peak, the resulting bubble took the median of the most reliable market valuation measures we follow to a level more than 95% above their historical norms, implying a prospective market loss on the order of -49% as that bubble collapsed.
While I've written about numerous valuation measures over time, the most reliable ones share a common feature: they focus on identifying "sufficient statistics" for the very, very long-term stream of cash flows that stocks can be expected to deliver into the hands of investors over time. On that front, revenues are typically more robust "sufficient statistics" than current or year-ahead earnings. See Exhaustion Gaps and the Fear of Missing Out for a table showing the relative reliability of a variety of measures. In April 2007, I estimated that an appropriate valuation for the S&P 500 stood about 850, roughly -40% lower than prevailing levels. By the October peak, the prospective market loss to normal valuation had increased to about -46%. As it happened, the subsequent collapse of the housing bubble took the S&P 500 about -55% lower. In late-October 2008, as the market plunge crossed below historically reliable valuation norms, I observed that the S&P 500 had become undervalued on our measures.
Again attempting to “stimulate” the economy from the recession that followed, the Federal Reserve cut short-term interest rates to zero in recent years, provoking yet another episode of yield-seeking speculation, where yield-starved investors created demand for virtually every class of securities, in the hope of achieving returns in excess of zero. Meanwhile, Wall Street, suffering from what J.K. Galbraith once called the “extreme brevity of the financial memory,” convinced itself yet again that the whole episode was built on something more solid than quotes on a screen and blotches of ink on paper. At last week’s highs, the median of the most reliable market valuation measures we follow reached an extreme that placed them 170% above their historical norms, implying a prospective market loss on the order of -63% in what I fully expect to be the collapse of the third speculative bubble since 2000. Notably, there is only a single week in history where the median valuation on our most reliable measures exceeded the level we just observed. That was the week of March 24, 2000, which set the peak of the tech bubble. Unlike the 2000-2002 retreat however, the damage to paper values over the completion of the current cycle is likely to spare few sectors, as the median valuation across individual stocks is at a record high, and far beyond the 2000 peak. (...)
By the completion of the current cycle, investors will likely relearn how erroneous and irrelevant it was to worry about “selling too early” in an extremely overvalued market. It’s worth remembering now that by the end of the 2000-2002 decline, the entire total return of the S&P 500, in excess of Treasury bills, had been wiped out all the way back to May 1996. By the end of the 2007-2009 collapse, the entire total return of the S&P 500, in excess of Treasury bills, had been wiped out all the way back to June 1995. Likewise, my expectation is that the completion of the current market cycle will wipe out the total returns of the S&P 500, in excess of Treasury bill returns, all the way back to roughly October 1997 (from the standpoint of of the recent bull market advance, that would also erase the entire total return of the S&P 500, in excess of Treasury bill returns, since late-2009). This outcome would not even require the most reliable valuation measures to breach historical norms that they have revisited in virtually every market cycle, even those associated with very low interest rates. See Durable Returns, Transient Returns for a reminder of how all of this works.
Having correctly anticipated and watched major collapses unfold in prior market cycles, my sense is that many investors are likely thinking “I can always get out if the news gets bad and a steep loss starts to unfold.” More likely, what will actually happen is that the first market loss off the top will be a nearly vertical drop on the order of 12-14% and will be associated with virtually no meaningful news at all, and most investors will consider the decline far too steep to make selling worthwhile. A subsequent advance from that low, whether it recovers a third, or a half, or nearly all of the loss, will reinforce that mentality. Except for outright crashes like 1987, steep market losses are regularly punctuated by fast, furious advances that restore hope, and then give way to a fresh cascade of losses. If possible, get some charts and go through a few past market collapses day-by-day (blocking out the right side so it’s not clear what happened next), and you’ll get a feel for this constant flux between fear and relief, all the way down.
by John P. Hussman Ph.D., Hussman Funds | Read more:
ASMR Star (Quietly) Reaches a Major Milestone
Deep in the dungeons of YouTube subcultures, past the bicycling dogs and wannabe musicians, down the disgusting hall of extraction videos and around the corner from makeup tutorials, you’ll find the eerily quiet, softly-lit realm of ASMR. Its hushed videos of people whispering into the camera, or slowly running their hands over fabric, once a niche craze, have risen in popularity, and last week the ASMR community reached a major milestone when its biggest star hit one million subscribers.
In her (quiet) thank you video, Maria, the woman behind the popular Gentle Whispering ASMR account, told her audience: “It’s a huge milestone not just for my channel, but for our whole ASMR community.”
Maria started the account in 2011. In her videos, the 30-year-old Russian-American whispers positive affirmations, folds towels, brushes hair, or slowly turns the pages of a book, anything to trigger ASMR, or the autonomous sensory meridian response. For some, these videos do nothing. (Personally, all the mellow, quiet sounds puts me on edge, and hearing the saliva behind people’s whispers makes me cringe.) But for others, these soft sounds can induce a pleasant tingling down their spine and the back of their skull, as well as a feeling of deep relaxation. Some people call it a “head orgasm,” which is an unfortunate term for what sounds like a pleasant enough experience.
But despite all the talk of tingles and orgasms, ASMRtists, the people who create ASMR videos, insist its not a fetish.
“It comes off as a little bit creepy just because of the nature of whispering, but when it comes down to it, you can sexualize anything,” says Lilliana, the Pittsburgh-based ASMRtist behind the Lily Whispers ASMR YouTube account, which has over 150,000 subscribers.
While relatively little is known about ASMR (the term was only coined in 2010) some of its followers claim its calming effect has helped them with feelings of anxiety. Maria started listening to videos to help her relax following her divorce in 2009, and Lilliana said it helped with anxiety her freshman year of college.
“It works and I strongly believe that it works,” Lilliana said.
by Madeleine Aggeler, The Cut | Read more:
Image:YouTube/Gentle Whispering ASMR
In her (quiet) thank you video, Maria, the woman behind the popular Gentle Whispering ASMR account, told her audience: “It’s a huge milestone not just for my channel, but for our whole ASMR community.”Maria started the account in 2011. In her videos, the 30-year-old Russian-American whispers positive affirmations, folds towels, brushes hair, or slowly turns the pages of a book, anything to trigger ASMR, or the autonomous sensory meridian response. For some, these videos do nothing. (Personally, all the mellow, quiet sounds puts me on edge, and hearing the saliva behind people’s whispers makes me cringe.) But for others, these soft sounds can induce a pleasant tingling down their spine and the back of their skull, as well as a feeling of deep relaxation. Some people call it a “head orgasm,” which is an unfortunate term for what sounds like a pleasant enough experience.
But despite all the talk of tingles and orgasms, ASMRtists, the people who create ASMR videos, insist its not a fetish.
“It comes off as a little bit creepy just because of the nature of whispering, but when it comes down to it, you can sexualize anything,” says Lilliana, the Pittsburgh-based ASMRtist behind the Lily Whispers ASMR YouTube account, which has over 150,000 subscribers.
While relatively little is known about ASMR (the term was only coined in 2010) some of its followers claim its calming effect has helped them with feelings of anxiety. Maria started listening to videos to help her relax following her divorce in 2009, and Lilliana said it helped with anxiety her freshman year of college.
“It works and I strongly believe that it works,” Lilliana said.
by Madeleine Aggeler, The Cut | Read more:
Image:YouTube/Gentle Whispering ASMR
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