Liberalism and Empire

Paul Krugman had a column a few weeks ago called “Fall of the American Empire” about Donald Trump’s repudiation of “the values that actually made America great.” It is worth analyzing, because it is amusing and illustrative. Krugman believes that Trump is threatening to destroy America’s great “empire” and that this is bad, because our country’s “empire” is good and noble. Trump, Krugman suggests, is an aberrant departure from the lofty values and ideals that have guided our foreign policy for most of the past century. In fact, let’s have a look at a chunk of Krugman’s column so he can put things in his own words (please retain your guffaws until the end):

[W]e emerged from World War II with a level of both economic and military dominance not seen since the heyday of ancient Rome. But our role in the world was always about more than money and guns. It was also about ideals: America stood for something larger than itself — for freedom, human rights and the rule of law as universal principles. Of course, we often fell short of those ideals. But the ideals were real, and mattered. Many nations have pursued racist policies; but when the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal wrote his 1944 book about our “Negro problem,” he called it “An American Dilemma,” because he viewed us as a nation whose civilization had a “flavor of enlightenment” and whose citizens were aware at some level that our treatment of blacks was at odds with our principles… But what does American goodness — all too often honored in the breach, but still real — have to do with American power, let alone world trade? The answer is that for 70 years, American goodness and American greatness went hand in hand. Our ideals, and the fact that other countries knew we held those ideals, made us a different kind of great power, one that inspired trust. Think about it. By the end of World War II, we and our British allies had in effect conquered a large part of the world. We could have become permanent occupiers, and/or installed subservient puppet governments, the way the Soviet Union did in Eastern Europe. And yes, we did do that in some developing countries; our history with, say, Iran is not at all pretty. But what we mainly did instead was help defeated enemies get back on their feet, establishing democratic regimes that shared our core values and became allies in protecting those values. The Pax Americana was a sort of empire; certainly America was for a long time very much first among equals. But it was by historical standards a remarkably benign empire, held together by soft power and respect rather than force.

I have said before that Trump exceptionalism will kill every one of your brain cells. By this I mean that there is a strong liberal tendency to see Donald Trump as totally different from any president who came before him, and to end up defending the indefensible records of prior administrations in an attempt to prove just how radically Trump departs from precedent. Krugman’s column is a perfect example of this tendency. Because he wants to show that Trump has destroyed an America that was “actually great,” he has to rewrite the entire history of post-World War II American foreign policy. He has to dismiss unspeakable crimes as minor blips, and avoid mentioning countless instances of intervention that show American policy to have been anything but idealistic and principled.

Krugman says that the United States largely refrained from pursuing selfish interests, instead helping create democracies around the world because of our commitment to our values. While there were regrettable exceptions such as our “not at all pretty” actions in Iran (a bit of an understatement to describe engineering a coup and installing a dictator), we are largely a country where “goodness” and “greatness” go hand in hand, and who only interfered in “some” developing countries, mostly with “soft power.” (It’s soft! Like giving them a cuddle. Except they’re being cuddled with crippling economic sanctions.)

Perhaps the best place for Krugman to begin correcting his misimpression is the excellent Wikipedia article “United States Involvement in Regime Change.” He might learn quite a bit about how his country has pursued its noble democratic ideals over the past century or so, in “some” countries including Vietnam, Guatemala, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, Afghanistan, Bolivia, Congo, Grenada, Honduras, Chile, Brazil, and Cuba. The United States tried to replace foreign governments 72 times during the course of the Cold War alone. The history of the CIA in the 20th and 21st century is a history of assassination and torture, and a cursory look at the history of the agency shows that our interventions in other countries were bloody, secretive, and definitely not “benign.” Patrice Lumumba was the democratically-elected Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo. The CIA plotted his death, and collaborated with his eventual killers. Salvador Allende was the democratically-elected president of Chile. The United States fomented a coup against him, one that eventually led to thousands of Chileans being tortured and killed. Jacobo Árbenz was the democratically-elected president of Guatemala. The United States deposed him and installed a dictator. The United States supported the mass killing of leftists in Indonesia, death squads in Nicaragua, and continues to support the horrific human rights abuses committed by Saudi Arabia. (Barack Obama offered the country $115 billion dollars in weapons, which are used to massacre Yemenis attending wedding ceremonies.) I could spend all afternoon listing horrendous things that our “benevolent” empire has done, the dictators we have supported in the name of “democracy,” and our long history of interfering in foreign elections to subvert the democratic will of other countries’ people. But instead I’ll recommend Krugman pick up a copy of Understanding Power.

United States foreign policy has consistently been motivated by the “United States’ national interest,” not a concern for “democracy.” If we valued democracy, we wouldn’t meddle in elections in order to try to put leaders we like in power. But we have done this constantly. Very, very few U.S. policies are primarily motivated by a sympathetic concern for the welfare of other people, though they are usually framed this way. The Vietnam War, portrayed as an attempt to preserve “democracy,” was anything but. The U.S. didn’t give a fig about the will of the people of Vietnam, and many policymakers were motivated by little more than a desperate desire to avoid being “humiliated” or “losing a war.”

Here, then, Paul Krugman, part of the progressive wing of mainstream U.S. discourse, is openly arguing that the United States should have an “empire,” that its proper place is as the benevolent monarch of the world, elected by nobody but in charge of all. It doesn’t matter whether anybody wants this, it’s our right because we’re so “good.” Of course, the only way to portray ourselves as good involves sweeping almost the entire historical record under the rug. But we do say the word “democracy” a lot. (...)

It’s not surprising to see Paul Krugman defending American empire, although it’s a little remarkable to see him literally using the word “empire” as a positive. One of the central differences between liberalism and leftism is that liberals believe American dominance over the world is a good idea, but just needs to be run by decent people, while leftists believe that it’s impossible to talk of democracy while also imposing your will on others. Richard Seymour’s excellent book The Liberal Defense of Murder shows how liberals throughout recent history have used rhetoric about humanitarianism and democracy to justify nationalistic wars of aggression.

by Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs |  Read more:

Image: Paul Krugman, uncredited

[ed. I think NJR is consistently the best analyst/commentator we have going these days. See also: Why Public Libraries are Amazing and Just Stop Worrying and Embrace the Left.]

osaka Japan2018
via:

No Free Parking

In the list of things that have annoyed Las Vegas visitors, paying for parking is at the top, or close to it. Which might be why one of the biggest names on the Las Vegas Strip is backing off charging customers for parking—kind of.

What’s interesting—and maybe gives an insight into consumer behavior broader than parking—is precisely what visitors to Las Vegas get angry at. Changing payouts on blackjacks from 3:2 to 6:5, which shifts the house edge to about 2 percent? Outrage, threats to never return again.

Yet few people protest keno, which has a house edge of 20 to 35 percent. Those who know just avoid the game.

Likewise, few people loudly complain that the Wynn Buffet charges $20.99 for breakfast, when Palace Station charges $7.99, because presumably Wynn offers $13 more of a breakfast buffet experience than Palace Station. And there’s the location. If you’re vacationing or attending a convention at Wynn, the ten minute drive to Palace Station, coupled with the ten to 15 minutes on each side to park and walk to the restaurant, might be worth that extra $13, even if the hash browns aren’t. Taking a taxi or rideshare adds at least $10 to the equation, plus the time to hail and find a ride.

Convention catering is notoriously steeply-priced. At The Mirage, for example, a single Brazilian coconut shrimp will set the average meeting planner back $9.50, plus a 19 percent gratuity, four percent service charge, and 8.25 percent tax rate. That’s not for a plate of shrimp—that’s for a single shrimp. The minimum order of 50 pieces runs more than $636. While that price certainly scares a few groups away, someone must be paying for $1,100 veggie trays (which serve 75 people, tip, service, and tax included), since they haven’t lowered the price.

But Wynn’s buffet has always been pricy, and convention catering isn’t a bargain anywhere, much less Las Vegas. Keno has been a sucker game since it was invented. Blackjack, though, was almost universally a 3:2 game until a few years ago. And parking, on the Las Vegas Strip at least, was always free-until it wasn’t. People don’t mind paying too much for something that always has been expensive, but paying—even a nominal amount—for something they’ve long had for free can be a deal breaker.

Doomsday for acres of free parking at Las Vegas Strip casinos was in 2016, when MGM Resorts International began charging to park at 11 of its Las Vegas Strip properties (self-parking at Circus Circus remained, and remains, complimentary). Caesars Entertainment soon began charging at most of its properties, as did the Cosmopolitan and Wynn Las Vegas.

To say that visitors were outraged is putting it lightly. Prices in Las Vegas, especially on the Strip, are as high as they’ve ever been, and adding another charge on top of resort fees and deteriorating game odds was, many felt, a bridge too far. Making matters worse, parking rates have increased substantially since 2016.

Before ownership of Las Vegas Strip casinos was concentrated in a few companies’ hands, innovations like charging for what was once free were seldom attempted, since it would be easy for customers to avoid one property that did something they didn’t like. It’s a bit harder to do that when ten casinos roll out the same policy overnight. In this case, paid parking snowballed once MGM began it; since its neighbors did not want to see visitors parking in their garages to patronize MGM properties, although it’s doubtful that they were upset at the extra “free” money coming in. So, within a matter of months, paying for parking on the Strip became a reality.

Has paid parking hurt business on the Strip? According to MGM’s 2017 4th quarter report, both slot handle and occupancy fell slightly in 2017, the company’s first full year with pay parking. Revenues in other areas increased, but these are signs of that overall demand is not growing robustly. Overall, visitation to Las Vegas as a whole fell 1.6 percent, and total room occupancy slipped as well. While many operators have reported increases in total income, it certainly seems that paid parking is not inspiring more people to visit Las Vegas.

Which may be why Wynn Resorts, which started charging for self- and valet-parking in August 2017, recently announced it is retreating—somewhat—from parking fees.

Guests will still have to pass through gates at the parking garage and take a ticket. If they spend $50 or more, though, they are eligible for one day’s free parking. This isn’t going back to the good old days of easy come, easy go sliding in and out of garages at will, but it’s more of a retreat than any casino has offered on resort fees, which are more entrenched than ever and continue to escalate.

Why the change? Wynn Resorts spokesperson Deanna Petit-Irestone explains.

“Our guests choose to stay with us because of the attention we give to perfecting every detail of their experience,” she says, “and we came to believe that charging additional parking fees is counter to the personalized service we provide. This new policy directly reflects the way we know our guests want and deserve to be treated. The approachable spend amount ($50) is designed to ensure that parking remains plentiful for resort guests, while reducing parking overflow from neighboring businesses. Adding further value to the new policy is the ability to divide one total spend among several vehicles. For instance, if four visitors in four separate vehicles spend $200 at a restaurant, all four vehicles will be validated.”

The change in policy to allow validation is a sign that perhaps paid parking has not been the boon that some forecast it to be. As with resort fees and other upcharges, those who argue against it internally face an uphill battle, because proponents can point to actual dollars earned, while the other side can only hypothesize that parking charges are a drag on overall revenues. Of course, checking out online comments makes it clear that most customers despise paying for parking, but that’s not the kind of evidence that goes far in executive meetings.

Wynn’s reversal is the first sign that paid parking is not going away, but that it might be modified. Both Wynn and Encore are among the most expensive properties on the Strip, and if validating parking has a positive impact on visitation and spending, their competitors would strongly consider following suit. Allowing validation might make less money directly from parking, but if waiving a $12 parking fee is the tipping point that brings a customer in to spend $100 or more on a meal or, perish the thought, gamble, it’s hard to see how casinos would be missing out by doing so.

by David G. Schwartz, Forbes | Read more:
Image: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Confessions of An Unredeemed Fan

Amy Winehouse’s last big concert was in Belgrade, a month before she died. This was June of 2011. Billed as the beginning of her comeback tour, the gig turned into one of her most infamous train wrecks: when she came on stage, she was drunk beyond the point of making sense, beyond the point of standing — tripping and crouching, sitting down to take off her shoes, leaning into her bass guitarist and holding his hand. The crowd started heckling her early and didn’t let up. “Sing!” they shouted. “Sing! Sing!”

Her eyes were as large as a child’s, as if she’d been dropped into a life she had no idea how to live. Her life had been unmanageable for years. But the thing was, she had all this management: a promoter, a producer, a father. She was asleep when they put her on the plane to Serbia. She slept for the whole flight, woke up to her own life, and heard: Sing! Her fans loved her as long as she gave them what they needed — as long as she broke down so they could watch, as long as she picked herself back up again so she could give them her voice. Her backup guys in their orange suits didn’t know what to do with her.

The footage of Belgrade is nearly impossible to believe, but there it is, happening over and over again, as many times as you want to click the YouTube refresh button. Amy stumbles along in her tiny yellow dress with ragged stripes of black, a bruised banana. When she falls off an amp, her drummer’s smile stretches into something more like a grimace. Is this an oh-those-self-destructive-music-legends-how-they-fuck-up moment or an actually-this-woman-is-basically-committing-suicide-right-in-front-of-you moment? He isn’t sure what face to make. The public didn’t know what face to make for years. “She’s shit-faced,” says a voice on the YouTube video. “She doesn’t know where she is.” And then: “Look at her. Look at her.” At a certain point, her face changes. She’s not confused anymore, or scared. She’s smirking. Her smirk seems to say, I’m done with this. She throws the mic. Someone hands her another. One voice cries out: “Sing or give me my money back!”

She finally does sing, her voice barely audible above her music — above the song she’d written to turn her heartbreak into something beautiful, something profitable, your love goes and my love grows, the music that had turned her into a tabloid sensation it never seemed like she wanted to be. At a certain point, her voice is no longer audible above the noise of the crowd, the sounds of their frustration and desire, their voices reminding her of the words to her own song.

The public loved to see Amy fucking up. They loved to hate her, loved to judge her, loved to feel bad for her. They loved to relate to her, whatever the terms of that relation, because it brought them closer to her, and what they wanted most was access. The public loved to watch her falling apart. The darkness inside her was always spilling out. They got more of it than they wanted: She couldn’t sing for them in Belgrade. She couldn’t stay alive for them in London.

At a concert on the Isle of Wight, where she slurred her mumbled words behind a wheel bearing the title HMS Winehouse, she sang “Rehab,” her unrepentant rallying cry, and drank from a plastic cup of wine held close to her mouth. She had to choose between drinking and singing — moment by moment, on a physical, literal level: she couldn’t do both at once. She was already drunk. At the end of the song, she threw the cup and an arc of booze sprayed across the stage, streaking it like paint. No, no, no, she sang. She wouldn’t go to rehab. Instead, she was doing this.

There are thousands of comments on her YouTube clips, full of taffy strands of pity: It’s really sad to see a human being like this. Or else harsh strokes of judgment: She is the definition of trash, nice voice or not! She is a disgrace to music and all the hard-working musicians around the globe. Fifty years after the emergence of Morton Jellinek’s disease model of alcoholism, people are still trying to figure out if it’s a sickness or a sin: Addiction = retardation . . . the crowd was right to boo her . . . So many people dream of being a Singer and being on stage and Amy just threw it all away.

Someone else: I see someone with a broken heart. (...)

The soap opera version of the story went something like this: Amy’s drinking got out of control after a breakup with Blake, her no-good junkie boyfriend, and then her friends tried to make her go to rehab. She said, no, no, no, and then she wrote an album that blew up, fueled by the anthem of her refusal to get better. Her career went through the stratosphere and Blake fought to get her back. They were madly in love. They got married in Miami, and hugely addicted to crack back home in London. At the peak of her use, she was spending £16,000 a week on hard drugs.

After Amy almost overdosed, her friends and family staged an intervention at a Four Seasons in Hampshire. The doctor said if she had another seizure, she’d die. But she went on her US tour anyway. She and Blake kept doing drugs together till he went to prison. She won five Grammys but she wasn’t allowed to attend the ceremony because of all the drugs. In her acceptance speech — delivered at a club in London, where she was watching from afar — she said: “For my Blake, my Blake incarcerated.”

A YouTube video from six months after Blake’s incarceration shows Amy high on crack, playing with a bunch of newborn mice. Watching it is like falling into some one else’s terrible dream. “This one has a message for Blake,” Amy says, holding one of the wriggling furless mice on her finger. She gives us a squeaky mouse-voice, pleading: “Blake, please don’t divorce me.” The mouse-voice says: “I’m only a day old but I know what love is.”

Even after Amy finally stopped the hard drugs, she kept drinking. She and Blake got divorced, mouse pleas notwithstanding. She kept drinking, and kept singing, but never made another record. She stopped drinking, kept drinking, stopped drinking, kept drinking — until her body finally just gave up. When she died, her blood alcohol content was over .4 percent, five times the legal limit for drunk driving. The coroner ruled it “death by misadventure.”

The paparazzi loved Amy. They couldn’t get enough of her. They loved her beauty. They loved its blemishing even more. They didn’t just want her beehive hair; they wanted it ratty. They didn’t just want her eyeliner cat’s-eyes; they wanted them smeared. Their photos tried to zoom in on her cuts and bruises; the damage from her crack binges and booze benders. Little wounds were like openings in the tent flaps of her privacy. The camera got close on her wet flesh as if it were trying to get inside the wounds themselves, the closest thing to fucking that a camera could manage. The paparazzi wanted to get right into her bloodstream.

Amy once said to her husband: I want to feel what you feel. And that’s what the public wanted from her — to know what she felt, to get under her skin. But also they wanted to jump away again, hide under the safe cover of irony: What crawled into her hair and died there? one comedian wanted to know. She looks like a campaign poster for neglected horses. Her broke-down addict self was irritating. It was so fucking sad. OMG, it was funny.

Her addiction kept delivering physical evidence of her vulnerability, her bruises and her gashes and her emaciated body, and comedians kept delivering jokes so everyone could metabolize the horror of what was happening, like a five-year-long video of someone slowly dying in public.

by Leslie Jamison, Longreads | Read more:

Image: Shirlaine Forrest / Getty

Were We Destined to Live in Facebook’s World?

More than 2 billion people have come to accept that Facebook is, more or less, what a social network is. Its highly particular and historically contingent bundle of features and applications has become the yardstick by which all other networks (outside China) are measured.

But was this Facebook inevitable, or have the company and its users simply fallen into this particular configuration? For example, Facebook began as a simple desktop website in which people could connect to friends in a small number of universities through MySpace-like profiles. But then came the News Feed in 2006, which collected and ranked the different things your friends were doing (like posting new pictures or breaking up). People hated it, even according to the engineers who worked on it. “A lot of folks wanted us to shut News Feed down. And most other companies would have done precisely that, especially if 10% of their users threatened to boycott the product,” recalled Ruchi Sanghvi, an engineer on the original team, in 2016. They didn’t, though, because as Sanghvi explained, to their minds it “was actually working.” “Amidst all the chaos, all the outrage, we noticed something unusual,” she wrote on her Facebook page. “Even though everyone claimed they hated it, engagement had doubled.”

The “feed” format spread far and wide. And Facebook learned an important thing: It didn’t have to listen to what users said, when it could watch what they did. That’s guided decision after decision as the company morphed into the global powerhouse that it is.

But what if Facebook had shut down News Feed? Would Facebook have learned that its data might not reflect how users actually felt about a service they feel compelled to use? What if that decision flips the direction of both the social network and its internal processes?

Siva Vaidhyanathan is a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and the author of a new book, Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy. Vaidhyanathan has been a strenuous critic of the technology industry, and the book is best described by his own pithy summary: “The problem with Facebook is Facebook.” He’s spent the past several years reading and thinking with scholarly depth about not just how Facebook works, but why it was built the way that it was.

I asked him to explore the question of Facebook’s rise, both in its actual features as well as the historical circumstances that shaped the social network. An edited and condensed transcript of our conversation is below.

Alexis Madrigal: Thinking about how Facebook is welded together, did we need to have a social network that did or aspired to do everything?

Siva Vaidhyanathan: One of the reasons why there is nothing like it and there’s been nothing like it and there might never be anything like it is that Mark Zuckerberg never held back in his vision of what this could be. He never thought that he was going to build something that would be the next killer version of HotOrNot, a cute little experiment. He never thought, I’m gonna build a dating app. Because he had a much grander theory of human interaction, misinformed by the shallowest reading of network theory and sociology, that he thought: Well, let’s not stop at building the best dating app, let’s change the world. Let’s give people a way to manage their social relations in a rich way.

At some point, he decided that there is a universal principle here, and that is the principle of engagement. What we should really be paying attention to, what he will make sure we pay attention to, are the things that generate engagement. That was one of the core mistakes. You could measure engagement and you can’t measure things like depth of thought or kindness.

Madrigal: Do you see any other app out there that serves as a counterexample to how Facebook works?

Vaidhyanathan: Instagram is the best argument against Facebook in a bizarre way. At some point, Zuckerberg decided Instagram was worth acquiring because he realized the power of the image and social connection. Instagram was either a threat to future growth or an opportunity for future features to be folded in. But to this day, it remains a saner, cleaner experience and one that has had minimal political effect on the world. And it’s a great place to see puppies.

Madrigal: As we think about the institutional history of Facebook, what else could have happened?

Vaidhyanathan: 2011 was one inflection point. In spring of 2011, there’s this instant myth out there that Twitter and Facebook were instrumental in the overthrow of dictatorships and the establishment of democracies. Even though by 2013, it was pretty clear that they were just new dictatorships, the myth remained.

That insulated Facebook from self-criticism. It was easy to go to work at Facebook—whether you were Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg or someone working at the lower level of the Facebook Messenger project—and convince yourself you were improving the world.

If we’d been able to deflate that myth, we might have seen Facebook behave more modestly internally. But 2011 was an affirmation that the global vision of bringing people together was going to yield good things for humanity. (...)

Madrigal: For me, the biggest inflection point was when Facebook moved into the media realm in 2013, which we wrote about contemporaneously. They were becoming your “personalized newspaper,” the best-ever personalized newspaper. They never say that anymore, but they used to say it all the time. They also used to say they wanted to “rewire” different things, political systems, etc. And for me that is the moment when suddenly, they rewire the whole information sphere through Facebook. And that just didn’t have to happen, even for Facebook to become a huge powerful globe spanning company.

Vaidhyanathan: It didn’t have to happen. The power of an ideology that says social engineering is possible and therefore, we should do it—that’s pretty irresistible to a bunch of idealistic, half-educated young people. If you’re someone who looks around the world and says, “There are some big problems but almost all of them can be solved with one thing”—and that thing is better and deeper personal connections so that we can overcome differences. And we have these tools that we can design that can do that for people. Then, at that point, once you’ve accepted all that, it makes it really hard for you to question anything.

These ideological blinders ... were so pervasive in hacker culture in the 1990s. Coming out of the Cold War, there was this amazing moment, once we freed up the channels of communication and people could learn about the world and other people around them. That was the great potential for human flourishing. And there weren’t a lot of people who directly objected to that optimism. If some communication is good, then more must be better. (...)

Madrigal: Do you see any plausible scenario where Facebook declines in importance?

Vaidhyanathan: I think the only possibility of Facebook becoming less meaningful and important in people’s lives would occur among elites in North America and Western Europe. People who read The Atlantic or read long academic books about Facebook might reduce their usage. But I see nothing but growth and more dependence on Facebook and WhatsApp and Instagram in the rest of the world. Every day in so many ways, the United States matters less in the world. That’s not just Trump’s fault. It’s been a long-term process.

Look, if at some point, Facebook is allowed to compete with WeChat in China, then we’ve got a totally different game and what Americans think of Facebook will matter very little.

Madrigal: How do you mean?

Vaidhyanathan: Here is the nightmare scenario for Facebook that could bring them down. And it’s a worse situation than we have now. [Dominant Chinese social network] WeChat goes global. It bursts out of the confines of [China] and its diaspora and there is a functional version in 20, 50, 100 languages. Facebook could be in big trouble because WeChat does everything. WeChat is the operating system of a billion users. If you’re in China, you must use WeChat, almost everybody does. If you’re in China and you use WeChat, you are checking out library books, making doctor’s appointments, buying fast food. WeChat does what Facebook does and what Twitter does and what Instagram does and what your banking app does. Each of us has like, 60 apps on our phones and we use like, 7 of them. In China, you really only need the one.

What will then happen is that Facebook will double down on becoming the operating system of our lives. It will bolster the ways that its various functions work together. Instagram would be folded into Facebook and WhatsApp will be folded into Messenger. You can see Messenger looking more like WeChat all the time. If Facebook gets into China, it’ll introduce Messenger first.

Facebook breaks down and gives authoritarian states information about us and WeChat romps around the world, giving that information to the government of China. So, in that perverse way, serious competition for Facebook is a far worse scenario than we have now.

by Alexis Madrigal and Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: Christian Hartmann/Reuters
[ed. See also: EFF has published a detailed guide to regulating Facebook without destroying the internet (original link: here)]

Alaska at a Crossroads

Alaska at a Crossroads
via: (CNN)
[ed. I usually hate media interactives but this one is pretty good - an Alaska that most tourists never see.]

Gary Larson, The Far Side

via:

Man Bites Prawn

The first cold night of fall, I went to the Living Fish Center, a small, superbly named Koreatown restaurant in whose window a brilliant neon trout burns in permanent midleap. Inside, a school of scarlet fish stare dumbly out from their dim tank, and a bubbling glass raceway teeming with prawns runs just below the ceiling. I am always happy to see swimming prawns.

From its name I had always inferred Living Fish Center was a . . . vivarium, a Korean analogue to Maine lobster pounds or posh Chinatown seafood palaces, but inside, the restaurant seemed more like a roadhouse, really, a basic Korean cafe, sparsely populated with students and elderly Korean couples and knots of workers still in their technicians' overalls. A chef stood mute guard over what looked like a refrigerated counter borrowed from an ice cream parlor, and cards on each table advertised fantastically expensive dinners in blocky Hangool script.

A waitress handed me a plastic glass half-filled with tepid tea that tasted mostly of detergent, and slid a small dish of oily toasted-rice gruel onto the menu-imprinted place mat. "Eat this first," she said, shrugging. "Perhaps you will like it."

It wasn't particularly good. The rubbery squid sauteed in spicy-sweet bean sauce, the clumsy fish chowder churning in its black iron pot, and the sugared, fried seaweed were hardly better. On the Korean sashimi platter, the slabs of tuna were still frozen, the whitefish dull, and the salmon had the funny, off-orange color of marshmallow peanuts. (You wrap Korean sashimi in lettuce leaves with fermented bean paste, sliced serrano chiles and cloves of raw garlic, so the actual taste of the fish may be fairly irrelevant - I suspect shark chum would taste good with raw garlic and big bottles of cold Hite beer.) The slices of raw sea cucumber on the platter were fine, gooey and briny and fresh, but you can eat only so much of that stuff before your system goes into overload. (One friend insists that raw sea cucumber is exactly like sperm, though a bit crunchier.)

More dishes arrived, part of the typical Korean generosity, including a whole fried fish, a foil tray packed with sauteed onions and diced shellfish, and half of a fresh sea urchin, spines still describing circles in the air, packed with its mild, briny roe. (Fresh sea urchin bears the same relation to the stinky stuff you get at sushi bars that fresh bluefin tuna does to a can of Star Kist.)

It is never easy to intuit an Asian cafe's specialty on a first visit, and Seoul-food menus, where non-Koreans tend to be steered toward bland stews and grilled meat dishes, are often the most unfathomable of all. (A New York Times reporter, famous for her knowledge of Asian cooking, recently wrote about a Manhattan soontofu restaurant apparently without realizing that the restaurant served soontofu at all.)

It wasn't until we looked at the prawns leaping about the tank, and the chef behind the bar, and what seemed to be on the plates of half the customers, that we figured out what the restaurant's specialty might be. I said a couple of words to the waitress, and the chef came out from behind his counter and climbed up to the raceway containing the prawns.

He dipped a hand into the tank, rippling the still, clear water until some of the prawns sprang up to nip at his fingers. He plucked the liveliest specimens from the water and brought them back to his station, where he quickly removed most of their shells. A few seconds later, the prawns were served on a mound of crushed ice, heads intact and very much alive.

It was among the most unsettling experiences I have ever had in a restaurant, preparing to bite into a living creature as it glared back at me, antennae whipping in wild circles, legs churning, body contorting as if to power the spinnerets that had been so rudely ripped from its torso, less at that moment a foodstuff than a creature that clearly did not want to be eaten.

I have consumed thousands of animals in my lifetime: seen lambs butchered, snipped the faces off innumerable soft-shell crabs, killed and gutted my share of fish. I had, I thought, come to terms with the element of predation inherent in eating meat - and I am thankful to the beasts that have nourished me. But this was the first time I had ever come up against one of the most basic of nature's postulates: You live; your prey dies. In order to eat, you must first rip into living flesh . . . not by proxy, not from a distance, not with a gun or knife, but intimately, with your teeth.

I thought about the Hindu cabby who had driven me back into town from a Singapore seafood restaurant years ago, lecturing me the entire way on the spirituality inherent in a single prawn, and I thought about my vegan friends who refuse to eat anything that once had a face.

I bit into the animal, devouring all of its sweetness in one mouthful, and I felt the rush of life pass from its body into mine, the sudden relaxation of its feelers, the blankness I swear I could see overtaking its eyes. It was weird and primal and breathtakingly good, and I don't want to do it again.

by Jonathan Gold, LA Weekly |  Read more:

Image: Rocky Point Prawns
[ed. See also: A Look Back at the Gold Standard and What Will Los Angeles Do Without Jonathan Gold?]

Administration Announces Multibillion Stimulus For Farmers

Facing the brunt of President Trump's trade war with China, which threatens some $34 billion of US products and agriculture with duties, the White House has announced a $12 billion "short-term" stimulus plan to help US farmers hurt by China's "illegal" retaliatory tariffs.

The package, as expected, will consist of direct payments, food purchases and trade development - under a program already authorized under the Commodity Credit Corp act, which means Congressional approval is not required. Further details on the program will come by Labor Day, according to USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue and top officials.

Earlier in the day, Trump told a Veteran's group: "This country is doing better than it's ever done before, economically...It's all working out. Just remember: what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening."

As we reported earlier, China's retaliation against Trump's tariffs was a lefy on 545 categories of US products, ranging from soybeans, pork, chicken and seafood to sport-utility vehicles and electric vehicles, and as a result of plunging commodity prices, one group emerged as especially hard hit by the administration's tariffs: farmers.

Iowa Senator Joni Ernst appeared on CBS' "Face The Nation" warning that: "farmer ranchers are “always the first to be retaliated against” in these types of “trade negotiations," adding that farmers have been put in “very vulnerable position.”

Meanwhile, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig said that "there are real issues in our trade relationship with China that need to be addressed, but Iowa agriculture cannot continue to bear the brunt of the retaliation from our trading partners."

In short, America's farmers were getting ever more angry with Trump's policies.

"Soybeans are the top agriculture export for the United States, and China is the top market for purchasing those exports, The math is simple. You tax soybean exports at 25 percent, and you have serious damage to U.S. farmers."

Cheese producers were also hard hit, forced to discount their products to keep customers, with many putting orders put on hold and resulting in the biggest cheese inventory in US history.

"We have seen large drops in our dairy product sales prices at all levels," said Catherine de Ronde, economist for the Agri-Mark Inc. dairy cooperative. "It will create a significant backup of dairy products."

Not everyone is happy with Trump's emergency aid.

Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) slammed the plan in a Tuesday press release, which reads:

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today released the following statement regarding reports that the Trump administration is considering offering $12 billion in farm aid to ease the impact of tariffs recently implemented by the administration. 

"I am glad that the administration finally seems to understand that the Trump-Pence tariffs are hurting the American people," said Corker.

"These tariffs are a massive tax increase on American consumers and businesses, and instead of offering welfare to farmers to solve a problem they themselves created, the administration should reverse course and end this incoherent policy. We will continue to push for a binding vote here in Congress to reassert our constitutional role on national security-designated tariffs."

And responding to earlier reports of Trump's $12 billion stimulus plan, Senator Bob Sasse (R-NE) said that the Trump administration was "going to make it 1929 again."

The Nebraska senator said that Trump's trade war is "cutting the legs out from under farmers," and that the White House will now "spend $12 billion on gold crutches."

"America’s farmers don’t want to be paid to lose – they want to win by feeding the world," Sasse said in a statement. "This administration’s tariffs and bailouts aren’t going to make America great again, they’re just going to make it 1929 again."

As we noted earlier, under the White House plan, the money will be disbursed in at least three ways, coming through direct assistance, a food purchase and distribution program, and a trade promotion program.

The plan, which has been in the works for months, seeks to ensure U.S. farmers and ranchers — a key constituency for President Donald Trump and Republicans — don’t bear the brunt of an escalating trade fight with China, the European Union and other major economies.

by Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge |  Read more:

Image: via

Wasabi: Japanese Flavor

When we discuss Japanese food, wasabi (Japanese horseradish) has been an indispensable foodstuff since olden times. Even in Europe and the United States, it is now common for wasabi to be used in dishes amid the booming popularity of “washoku” (Japanese cuisine). Shedding light on wasabi that has become a worldwide foodstuff as a condiment originating in Japan, we take a closer look at the influences it has given to food culture and its attractiveness.

Part 1: Seeking ‘Japan's No.1’

Selected wasabi (Japanese horseradish) are assembled in Tokyo's Tsukiji market from throughout the country. In its vegetable and fruit sales floor, wasabi that line the storefront of long-established intermediate wholesaler Kushiya are especially conspicuous. They are priced at more than 20,000 yen (about $170) per kilogram, which is higher than tuna sold in the adjacent seafood sales floor.

This wasabi attracts customers not only in high-class sushi restaurants in central Tokyo but also overseas.

“If you know the flavors of ‘maguro’ (tuna) and ‘hirame’ (bastard halibut) served with this wasabi, you cannot eat them without it,” said Masahiro Sugimoto, president of Kushiya.

What wasabi elicits such high praise from the professional maven? We visited its producer, Keiichi Tashiro, 43, a farmer in Gotemba, Shizuoka Prefecture.

Exposing it to spring water

Tashiro's wasabi fields are dotted along a river that flows between the mountains. The area has an abundance of spring water, whose temperature ranges between 10 and 13 degrees throughout most of the year. His wasabi fields take in this spring water. The fields are slightly inclined so that the water spreads equally to the entire fields. However, each field differs in size and shape. He slightly changes the field depending on such factors as the amounts of sunlight and the tilt of the land.

There are various cultivation methods, and Tashiro is adopting a method called “ishiue” (stone on). It is called that because a stone is placed on a seedling when wasabi is grown.

“Another method is ‘chon-ue,’ whose word origin is said to be ‘chokon to ueru’ (planting it slightly). In addition, there is a cultivation method of protecting a seedling from outside elements by covering it with pipes,” he said.

In the ishiue method, wasabi is laid on its side, so it grows horizontally. As a result, almost all the parts of wasabi are exposed to spring water and become bright green.

Even a cultivation career of 20 years

Following in the footsteps of his father, Kaoru Tashiro, 78, Keiichi began to cultivate wasabi. His career has spanned about 20 years. However, he fails even now.

In 2016, wasabi grew to only about the size of the tip of a thumb in one field. He is raising a variety called “Mazuma,” which takes about a year and a half to one year and 10 months for the wasabi to grow from seedlings to a size large enough for shipping. The period from planting the seedling to harvesting is lengthy, unlike many other agricultural products.

Because of that, it is painful when wasabi have not grown large enough to be shipped at the time of harvesting.

“I don't know the clear reason for the failure. If my father cultivates it, he does not experience such a failure,” said Keiichi Tashiro.

What his father has that he does not have is intuition resulting from experience, which is important for growing wasabi.

According to Tashiro, three factors are indispensable for wasabi cultivation: abundant spring water, avoiding strong sunlight and soil with good permeability. Seeing the degrees in the growth of wasabi, he changes the amount of water when irrigating them, mixes soil to improve its permeability and covers the plant with black plastic sheets depending on the strength of the sunlight. These works have major influences on the growth of wasabi. And even if he continues to do the same work, wasabi does not necessarily grow as idealistically as hoped.

Conquering complete destruction

In September 2010, Tashiro's wasabi fields were completely destroyed by a flood caused by a typhoon. Reminders of those days remain around the area.

“It can't be helped because wasabi cultivation is influenced by nature,” said Kaoru Tashiro.

The Tashiros were forced to start to create wasabi fields from scratch. It took nearly six years to return the fields to their original state though Kaoru also made efforts to do so.

“As long as there are people who are waiting for my wasabi, I cannot stop cultivating it,” Tashiro said with a smile.

Best wasabi are ‘handsome’

Masahiro Sugimoto, president of long-established intermediate wholesaler Kushiya in the Tsukiji market, has continued to purchase the Tashiro's wasabi for more than 20 years since the days of the father, Kaoru.

Sugimoto has tasted the wasabi of almost all the major production areas, such as Izu (Shizuoka Prefecture), Nagano, Akita, Iwate and Okutama (Tokyo).

Among these, Sugimoto “fell in love” with Tashiro's wasabi.

“His wasabi is especially delicious and its appearance is also good.”

Sugimoto doesn't fall in love with wasabi unless it scores nearly complete points in all five categories of hue, aroma, adhesiveness, hot flavor and sweetness.

“Delicious wasabi becomes a fresh green color when it is grated. Its pungent aroma is also distinctive. It also has adhesiveness and has a strong, hot flavor. There is also a delicate sweetness that comes after a while. The biggest difference between Tashiro's wasabi and other wasabi is sweetness,” Sugimoto said.

Even among Tashiro's wasabi, there is a difference in prices shown by Sugimoto. The cheap ones are priced between 6,000 yen and 8,000 yen per kilogram while the best ones are priced at more than 20,000 yen. According to Sugimoto, the best wasabi are different in appearance, and he calls them “handsome.”

The characteristics of the appearances are as follows: They are straight in shape and have few convex or concave portions on their surfaces. The color of their stems is purple. The bumps, which are traces of leaves that fell, are the same. The distances between spiral lines that can be found if seen up close are also equal.

“Handsome wasabi are extremely delicious. If they are not so, I cannot show prices that are four times higher than those of conventional ones,” Sugimoto said.

Wasabi he has purchased from Tashiro are mostly sold out within a week. A chef has even traveled from New York to buy the wasabi from Sugimoto.

The Kushiya president believes that wasabi plays a role in enriching Japanese food culture.

“Wasabi is not a main ingredient in sushi or sashimi (slices of raw fish). In addition, it is free of charge when offered in restaurants, though it is more expensive than most of the main items when purchased. Despite that, there are chefs who recognize its value and buy it. That is because there are customers who seek it out,” he said.

He added, “There were times when customers said, ‘Give me tears’ when they ask for wasabi in sushi restaurants (because wasabi is so pungent that they often shed tears when they eat it). If they say so, chefs would be able to understand that. Such a play on words was born, which promoted communication. I think that wasabi also has such a power.”

by Tsukiji, Asahi |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

Why I’d Never Do a TED Talk

Picture this. A darkened auditorium, an attentive, cult-like audience staring ahead expectantly, hardly daring to breathe; a huge screen on which there is an image no one can decipher. And then, the person everyone has been waiting for strides confidently on to the spotlit stage, wearing a headset and carrying a PowerPoint remote, dressed immaculately and sporting a brand-new haircut. You can hear a pin drop as the presenter begins, “You think the world is round, but I am going to tell you to begin to believe it is actually square.”

Predictable, false and embarrassing; how I hate TED talks. And it’s not even because they’re named after a man. What I can’t abide is the way presenters pace around the stage, I hate the gravity with which they deliver their message, and being patronised by a smug, overconfident “thought leader” is pretty intolerable.

I have friends who have done TED talks, and have respectfully watched their efforts. But one minute in, I start to look away, cringing. Why are they so popular? Why do tickets for spectators sell for thousands of dollars? How come some folk clamber to get on the TED circuit, despite not being paid a penny for the privilege?

TED makes some pretty big claims: according to its website, its aim is to “foster the spread of great ideas, [by providing] a platform for thinkers, visionaries and teachers … Core to this goal is a belief that there is no greater force for changing the world than a powerful idea.” It’s difficult to know how it will change the world when style appears to be given a hundred times more thought than content. I imagine speakers rehearsing before the audition, checking hand gestures in the mirror in front of a bemused cat. Why do they all seem to perform identical gesticulations?

Those invited to be potential TED talkers are required to attend several auditions, and, if they are one of the chosen few, a number of rehearsals before they are deemed ready. I know one speaker who flew from London to New York just to audition to do TED, paying his own flight for the sheer privilege of performing a live advertorial and hopefully flogging a few books. The talks are so rehearsed that even the well-placed pauses and casual hair flicks look hideously false. TED-bots strut around the stage, posing, delivering well-crafted smiles and frowns. It’s like amateur dramatics for would-be intellectuals.

Many of the speakers state the blatantly obvious on a loop, sounding as though they have discovered the theory of relativity all over again. The pretentious gestures, rehearsed pauses and speech traits single them out from other public speakers. They appear to have learned the art of making the simplest ideas appear complex.

Let’s have a look at some of the topics tackled in these talks, only lightly paraphrased by me: “Why charity shops should replace posh designer shops”, “Why go fast when slow is better?” “Embracing openness and being yourself” (10,000 versions), “Schools kill creativity”, “Kids should teach themselves”, “How letting yourself be vulnerable, by someone about as vulnerable as Donald Trump, is the way to go”, “We have been tying our shoes wrong – here’s how to tie them right”, and my all-time favourite, “We are depressed because things are shit, therefore if things weren’t shit we wouldn’t be depressed, or need to take medication”.

I often give talks to both small and large audiences, and always feel nervous beforehand. This used to bother me, after decades of public speaking, but I then realised that being nervous is respectful of those who are there to hear me. Why would anyone wish to listen to some overconfident, over-rehearsed guru? Why would I want to subject them to a performance?

by Julie Bindel, The Guardian | Read more:

Image: PR
[ed. I avoid TED talks too (but could never articulate exactly why they all seem so grating). This is it. Didn't know about the extensive audition and rehearsal process.]

Maggie Taylor, Woman Who Loves Fish
via:

via:

Francesco Molinari Wins British Open in a First for Italy

[ed. Wonderful play. Congratulations Francesco!]
Image: Harry How/Getty

via:

How the Bottled Water Industry Conned Us All

Space is at a premium in Manhattan, but most supermarkets will devote at least half an aisle to water. There are various brands of purified and distilled water – which is essentially processed tap water marked up several hundred times from the stuff pumped into every New Yorker’s home. There’s water shipped from Alpine springs, or melted icebergs, or aquifers in remote Pacific islands, and you can find a vast range of “enhanced” waters, with proprietary electrolyte blends or mystical pH balances that make them exactly like water, but better. Few communities, it seems, are more credulous than New York health freaks.

Then again, maybe we’ve all been lured in by the marketing. Figures show that in 2017, sales of bottled water overtook those of fizzy drinks in the US. The same year in Britain, shoppers bought more water than cola for the first time.

Sugar taxes and health-consciousness have played a role – but they don’t explain why Western consumers are willing to buy something they can obtain just as easily, and more cheaply, from a tap.

I’ve spent most of my adult life with a water bottle clunking around in my handbag, as though I might be at risk of shrivelling up without warning should I stray too far from a tap. This fear of dehydration seems to be a modern phenomenon. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my grandparents drink water. They seem to subsist on tea and wine and look no more desiccated than the average nonagenarian. When offered water in a restaurant, my late maternal grandfather used to bellow, in his thick Dutch accent, “Vater? I don’t even like vater in my shoes!”

These days, it’s widely believed that we need to drink at least eight glasses of water a day, and that if you manage more all kinds of health benefits will accrue: clearer skin, a slimmer waist, pristine kidneys. There’s no scientific evidence that this is the case. You need drink only when you are thirsty, and tea and coffee will hydrate you as well as water, scientists say. And yet the myth persists.

The modern bottled water industry can trace its roots to the smart marketers of Perrier, who hired Orson Welles to narrate a 1979 television commercial for sparkling water. This was reborn as the beverage of choice for the modern sophisticate, and Perrier sales in the US rose from a couple of million in 1975 to more than 75 million by 1978. Since then, mineral water has often benefited from its close association with celebrity.

In 2014, New York magazine published an intentionally inane listicle featuring 33 quotes from famous people on drinking water. Beyoncé says she drinks a gallon a day; Elizabeth Hurley recommends drinking water whenever “you start to dream about toast and Marmite”. “I hate when I’m on a flight and I wake up with a water bottle next to me like ‘oh great now I gotta be responsible for this water bottle’,” Kanye West complains.

The real problem is that no one does feel responsible for their water bottles. According to the Guardian, a million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and less than half of these are recycled. They languish in landfill sites or leak into the ocean, killing sea-life and contributing to an enormous floating plastic island in the Pacific that is already three times the size of France. On top of the ecological senselessness of shipping water across the globe, experts at the University of Nottingham estimate that it requires 162 grams of oil and seven litres of water to make a one-litre plastic bottle.

by Sophie McBain, New Statesman | Read more:
Image: via

[ed. Sorry, total BS. Nobody was conned. Everyone just chooses convenience over conscience (people in Flint, Michigan excluded). Can't even be bothered to refill an empty bottle. See also: So You've Decided to Drink More Water.] 

Cleaning Up: Inside the Wildfire Debris Removal Job That Cost Taxpayers $1.3 Billion

Last Oct. 23, as the wildfires that ignited two weeks earlier still smoldered across Northern California, a few hundred survivors gathered at a press conference in downtown Santa Rosa to hear an update on their next major hurdle: getting rid of the ash, toxic debris and waste left behind where their homes used to stand.

One after another, federal, state, and local officials reassured the anxious crowd. They promised that their devastated homes would be cleared safely, carefully and quickly.

“Leadership at the highest level ... are prepared to give us whatever else we need to achieve the goal of being done with this cleanup in early 2018,” Eric Lamoureux, a regional administrator from the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, told the crowd. “Rest assured this is going to be done rapidly, efficiently and coordinated with you and your community leaders.”

Over the next seven and a half months, contractors worked across Sonoma, Mendocino, Napa and Lake counties, where they scraped 2 million tons of soil, concrete and burned-out appliances from 4,563 properties, loaded it all into dump trucks, and hauled it away.

In the end, the government-run program was the most expensive disaster cleanup in California history. The project, managed by the Army Corps of Engineers, totaled $1.3 billion, or an average of $280,000 per property. The bulk of that $1.3 billion comes from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), but state and local governments are also responsible for about $130 million. (...)

Contractors under investigation

As the fires burned across Northern California, Gov. Jerry Brown saw that the cleanup would be a massive undertaking. He asked the federal government for help, and the Army Corps of Engineers was tasked with overseeing the job.

The Army Corps hired three prime contractors that it often relies on to respond to hurricanes, floods and wildfires -- AshBritt Inc., based in Deerfield Beach, Florida, Environmental Chemical Corp. (ECC), based in Burlingame, California, and Ceres Environmental, based in Sarasota, Florida.

The Army Corps said these “turn-key” disaster contractors are awarded multimillion-dollar contracts after a rigorous bidding process. It’s their job to hire and manage the subcontractors, truck drivers and construction workers necessary to complete the cleanup work.

But some of these contractors have also faced allegations of waste and fraud going back more than a decade.

The Government Accountability Office found that AshBritt Inc. and Ceres Environmental have overcharged taxpayers going back to the Hurricane Katrina cleanup in 2005. Florida’s attorney general is currently investigating AshBritt, Ceres and ECC for alleged price gouging during the Hurricane Irma cleanup in 2017.

ECC had never done a wildfire cleanup job before.

And yet, these prime contractors were awarded $1.3 billion and given responsibility for one of the most complex debris cleanup jobs in the country since 9/11. (...)

'Gold falling from the sky'

Critics say many of the problems with the project -- high cost, safety lapses and over-excavation -- are linked to the primary incentive structure that the Army Corps put into place: paying by the ton.

Contracts reviewed by KQED show that the Army Corps of Engineers paid upward of $350 per ton for wildfire debris. Dan’s truck could haul about 15 tons. That’s more than $5,000 per load -- a powerful financial incentive to haul as much heavy material as possible as quickly as possible.

Dan said he saw workers inflate their load weights with wet mud. Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore said he heard similar stories of subcontractors actually being directed to mix metal that should have been recycled into their loads to make them heavier.

“They [contractors] saw it as gold falling from the sky,” Dan said. “That is the biggest issue. They can’t pay tonnage on jobs like this and expect it to be done safely.”(...)

Holes where homes used to be

Stephen Krickl’s Fountaingrove property sits on a vernal creek and boasts sweeping views of Sonoma’s rolling hills. He and his wife used to talk about how they didn’t deserve the place.

“To me this is like the greatest lot,” he said. “It’s beautiful here. It's the sky. I miss the sky."

Krickl pointed to where his home used to stand. It’s a 6-foot deep depression that he affectionately called his “pond”.

That “pond” was created when contractors removed the foundation, soil and an entire concrete pad for Krickl’s garage, leaving behind a large hole.

This is another side effect of the incentive structure of Army Corps contracts. Paying contractors by the ton incentivizes them to haul away as much dirt, rocks and concrete as they can.

“It's such a needless waste of our society's resources to pay by the ton,” said Sonoma County contractor Tom Lynch, who was an early and vocal critic of the program.

So many sites were over-excavated that the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services recently launched a new program to refill the holes left behind by Army Corps contractors. That’s estimated to cost another $3.5 million.

by Sukey Lewis, KQED |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

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For One Last Night, Make It a Blockbuster Night

He was the manager at Blockbuster and looked forward to coming to work. He loved his job, in all of its obsolescence. The silver name tag fastened to the breast of his long-sleeve dress shirt, the blue-and-yellow sign in the shape of a giant movie ticket towering above the road. The faded white paint on the windows, BLOCKBUSTER T-SHIRTS AND MORE; the three overnight drop slots, one just inside the door, arrows pointing to the rectangular hole where a small white pillow muffled the plastic thump of the movies. The stains on the store’s peeling facade and the movie posters taped on the inside glass, Jumanji and the Maze Runner sequel being the latest, and the last. The COMING SOON marquee affixed to the board on the wall behind the desk, Black Panther on 5/15, a film the entire town was buzzing about, a new release that would never arrive. And everything else that would either be sold or thrown in the trash: the monogrammed Blockbuster rug; the B-horror movies and Disney movies and TV series that weren’t available on Netflix; the striped corporate counters that smelled like cleaning spray; the giant plush polar bear atop the Coca-Cola cooler; and even the long, blue awning outside that he had no idea what anyone would do with, the awning that had been as ubiquitous to the world as the sunlight was to the summertime in Soldotna, Alaska.

He lived in the country with the wild green river, with the Moose Crossing signs on the roads, where he’d spent much of his life, where he’d rented DVDs to customers for 10 years. He could barely remember a life without Blockbuster. Without laminated cards and late fees and being kind to rewind when he was a kid. Then growing up to be on the other side of the counter at one of the last stores in the world, raising his own three children by letting them hang out there and work on homework and help put movies away in the evening hours after he picked them up from school.

It was the beginning of the summer, the beginning of the tourist season, the salmon season. The land had thawed and turned green. He was 37, living with his parents, at the moment avoiding the reality of what he would have to do next. Justin Trickel unlocked the door before noon on May 13 and began Sunday with the burden of information that he was asked not to broadcast, something that customers would eventually find out in a Facebook post on the Blockbuster Alaska page later that night — that without ceremony, the store was closing for rental business after 23 years. A message from his boss the general manager — “Justin and his crew have done a phenomenal job and will be greatly missed” — thanked everyone on the Kenai peninsula for their years of support, and turned into an online cenotaph of crying emoji and those little floating hearts broken in two: “NO!!! This sucks. … My grandma goes here weekly. … Technology has taken over everything. … the internet is wayyyy to [sic] expensive. … I hate the rental places in IGA and the other store the DVDs are always scratched up! … This is absolutely heart breaking. … This was my favorite thing to do. …”

“I’ll probably end up at Fred Meyer, or Safeway,” he sighed behind the counter, staring at the parking lot.

The hours had been good there. The pay was OK. There wasn’t much stress. The five employees beneath him all seemed to get along, sometimes drank beer and played board games together at each other’s houses after work. If there had ever been anything to complain about it was the parking lot. The shared lot with a Safeway and a Pizza Hut and a Sportsman’s Warehouse where he could see the kayaks glinting through the windows as he stared, and tourists in RVs and trucks blocked the handicap spaces in front of the store; he was always having to ask them to move.

He wasn’t exactly a people person. But he was pretty good at talking about movies. And that was the best part, wasn’t it? What still made Blockbuster better, what had made it essential in such a town and let it live almost a decade beyond its lifespan in the Lower 48 — the promise that on-demand had never been able to fulfill, what neither the Redbox knockoff at neighboring Safeway, or Amazon Prime, or Netflix and its recommendation algorithm had come close to replicating. If a customer was looking for something in particular, they could browse for it there and could share the language of movies with him, and he had seen just about everything — 10 free rentals for employees per week! — and if it was checked out he could suggest something in the same genre, perhaps with the same actress, steer them to the right aisle in maybe BASED ON A TRUE STORY or FAMILY GOLD.

“People are going to lose the personal touch,” he said. “There are some people who can’t get high-speed internet, and can get only dial-up. Some places that can’t get internet at all. A lot of people don’t have internet here, can’t get it. It’s so far out here, and when [the customers] come in, they get to talk to people — to us.”

He busied himself with tasks that broke up the time, as though if he just pretended the store wasn’t closing, maybe it wouldn’t. He opened DVD cases to make sure there was a movie inside, straightened the candy aisle, the popcorn buckets and Snickers bars and Hot Mama pickles and microwavable pork rinds that he would never order again. It would be worst in the coming winters, he knew. When he was working somewhere else, and the residents of Soldotna and Kenai and the little villages were forced by the cold to withdraw from the outside world. When everyone faced the winter with their blankets and Blockbuster movies, the harshest element there being the darkness itself. He didn’t know what people there would do for entertainment. They had always rented movies.

by Justin Heckert, The Ringer | Read more:

Image: Tumblr

[ed. I lived in Anchorage for 35 years. There were three places you could almost always count on running into someone you knew: REI, Barnes and Noble, and Blockbuster.]