Wednesday, February 13, 2019
Where Not to Travel in 2019, or Ever
My name is John!” shouted John Allen Chau from his kayak in November 2018 as he paddled toward strangers on the beach of North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal. “I love you and Jesus loves you!” In response, the people on the remote Indian island strung arrows in their bows. The twenty-six-year-old American missionary and self-styled explorer had elected himself saviour of the souls of the Sentinelese, an Indigenous tribe that aggressively resists contact with the outside world. Save for sporadic visits from an anthropologist with India’s Ministry of Tribal Affairs in the 1960s to ’90s, and two Indian fishermen who were killed in 2006 for venturing too close, the Sentinelese have rarely interacted with outsiders over the past century, making them immunologically vulnerable. Unfazed by the genocidal threat his germs posed and fresh out of missionary boot camp, Chau made repeated attempts to land—ignoring arrows and Indian law—in an effort to bring the Gospel to the Sentinelese. He didn’t survive. That he’s since been celebrated online as a martyr by Christian fundamentalists is sad but not surprising. More alarming is that Chau has been recognized, in profaner circles, for his spirit of adventure.
The New York Times ran with a headline straight out of Hollywood: “Isolated Tribe Kills American With Bow and Arrow on Remote Indian Island.” The article opens with “John Allen Chau seemed to know that what he was about to do was extremely dangerous,” emphasizing the risk and daring of the American’s undertaking. Only the fourth paragraph mentions a Bible, finally revealing the nature of Chau’s illegal mission: converting an Indigenous tribe, against its wishes, to Christianity.
Media coverage of Chau’s acts was disturbing because it didn’t come off as coverage of a crime—at least, not of his crime. Other major news outlets similarly valorized Chau’s legally and morally corrupt foray, highlighting his conviction as if tone-deaf temerity were a quality to admire. Laudatory remarks also came from within the adventure community. “Religious motivations of his trip aside,” Ken Ilgunas, author of This Land Is Our Land and Trespassing Across America, posted publicly on Facebook with a link to the Times article, “this guy seemed like a true adventurer at heart, and I feel a sense of kinship with anyone who dreams of going where they’re not allowed.”
As someone who has been called an adventurer before, I feel more of a sense of kinship with the person on Twitter who suggested this fix for the Times headline: “Remote Community Faces Biological Terror Threat From U.S. Religious Extremist Killed by Local Authorities.” To extol or glamorize any aspect of what Chau did risks condoning a brand of colonialism that should be anachronistic by now, and not just among missionaries. In fact, Chau’s evangelism is too easy a target, and it’s one that eclipses his more fundamental transgression.
So imagine that Chau wasn’t a missionary. Pretend he was just a sturdily secular young man with a winning smile and robust Instagram following, a dreamer who longed to go where he wasn’t allowed—and, to get there, ignored pointed suggestions that he wasn’t welcome. Does a lack of religious zeal change the tenor of his expedition?
Not at all. For what is still missing from this scenario is consent. In its place is a sense of entitlement as extreme as it is commonplace. Chau’s escapade, in the name of God or not, was nothing more than a violation: he was just another person who believed that the world was his to do whatever he wanted in and with.
We tend to admire people who take risks and pursue dreams, but context puts a crucial warp on these platitudes. Surely it is not enough, in the abstract, to be adventurous or a dreamer or determined in the face of adversity. Rather, what are your adventurousness and dreaming and determination in service of? It was the Almighty, in Chau’s case, but what he really seemed to venerate was the small god of self-gratification. In this respect, when it comes to travellers of the most extreme as well as the most ordinary sort, Chau was no solo crusader.
This is true in a strictly religious sense: the Christian website Finishing the Task (ftt), for example, compiles the world’s remaining heathens-apparent into a convenient database, enabling freelance spiritual swashbucklers like Chau to advance the dark project of divine imperialism. “Here you can find the list of the world’s unengaged, unreached people groups that have no known full-time workers involved in evangelism and church planting!” the site enthuses. “Our goal is to remove a people group once it is confirmed that a solid church planting strategy, consistent with evangelical faith and practice, is under implementation.” According to the New York Times, Chau learned of the Sentinelese through the Joshua Project, which sources some of its data on “unengaged” people groups from the ftt list. When Chau’s death was reported in the media, 963 groups, including the Sentinelese, were on the prioritized-for-ministry list. ftt has since updated its list to only 343 groups, and the Sentinelese, post-Chau, are no longer among them.
Similar lists exist for the secular. If a missionary website didn’t galvanize the young American to seek out the Sentinelese, he might have found inspiration in Fodor’s or Reader’s Digest. Both outlets (among countless others) have run variations on a “top coolest places you can’t go” article, with North Sentinel Island listed alongside the Lascaux caves and the Svalbard seed vault as some of the world’s trendiest forbidden places. For self-styled explorers, other lists detail off-limits mountains, with sacred Navajo or Tibetan sites or havens of endangered species presented as alluring territory for adventurous dreamers. Climbing on certain peaks has been banned at the request of Indigenous peoples, yet these lists blithely urge readers to “click through and keep dreaming.”
Because there’s nothing wrong with dreaming, right? Or is there? Dreams can nurture a sense of entitlement that eventually finds expression, in some form, in reality. The average tourist might not add North Sentinel Island to their bucket list, but they probably share, to some degree, Chau’s longing to experience the outer edges of the world and a wilful blindness to the impact of being there. A certain breed of traveller craves visiting “untouched” places and interacting with “authentic” peoples, and a certain breed of tour operator promises to deliver you to and among them—for a price. Or rather two: one you fork over and one the place or people you visit must pay.
Survival International, a non-profit that works for tribal peoples’ rights, has documented a troubling rise in the popularity of “human safaris,” in which tourists seek out fleeting, zoo-like glimpses of uncontacted Indigenous peoples. In the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, part of the same archipelago as North Sentinel, you could, until recently (and possibly still), peer out of a tour bus at the Jarawa, a group of hunter-gatherers through whose traditional forest territory the Andaman Trunk Road was built. Similar sightings of Peruvian and Brazilian Indigenous tribes are available if you quietly ask the right guide. And, if these experiences aren’t thrilling enough, several organizations offer “first contact” treks, including ones in Papua New Guinea to visit “undiscovered tribes” who have “never seen a white man.”
Done well, tourism focused on local peoples can give them more control over their destiny and widen the hearts and minds of travellers to the wonders and complexities of the world. Done poorly, tribal tourism denies people the dignity of being left alone—denies them, even, recognition as people. Either way, travel has a tendency to bring out the Chau in all of us. We want what we want when we go abroad, which often is the untouched, the authentic—even as our arrival, by definition, undermines those very qualities in a place or of a culture and contributes to the slow, involuntary conversion of one way of life into another.
by Kate Harris, The Walrus | Read more:
Image: Sean Lewis
The New York Times ran with a headline straight out of Hollywood: “Isolated Tribe Kills American With Bow and Arrow on Remote Indian Island.” The article opens with “John Allen Chau seemed to know that what he was about to do was extremely dangerous,” emphasizing the risk and daring of the American’s undertaking. Only the fourth paragraph mentions a Bible, finally revealing the nature of Chau’s illegal mission: converting an Indigenous tribe, against its wishes, to Christianity.
Media coverage of Chau’s acts was disturbing because it didn’t come off as coverage of a crime—at least, not of his crime. Other major news outlets similarly valorized Chau’s legally and morally corrupt foray, highlighting his conviction as if tone-deaf temerity were a quality to admire. Laudatory remarks also came from within the adventure community. “Religious motivations of his trip aside,” Ken Ilgunas, author of This Land Is Our Land and Trespassing Across America, posted publicly on Facebook with a link to the Times article, “this guy seemed like a true adventurer at heart, and I feel a sense of kinship with anyone who dreams of going where they’re not allowed.”As someone who has been called an adventurer before, I feel more of a sense of kinship with the person on Twitter who suggested this fix for the Times headline: “Remote Community Faces Biological Terror Threat From U.S. Religious Extremist Killed by Local Authorities.” To extol or glamorize any aspect of what Chau did risks condoning a brand of colonialism that should be anachronistic by now, and not just among missionaries. In fact, Chau’s evangelism is too easy a target, and it’s one that eclipses his more fundamental transgression.
So imagine that Chau wasn’t a missionary. Pretend he was just a sturdily secular young man with a winning smile and robust Instagram following, a dreamer who longed to go where he wasn’t allowed—and, to get there, ignored pointed suggestions that he wasn’t welcome. Does a lack of religious zeal change the tenor of his expedition?
Not at all. For what is still missing from this scenario is consent. In its place is a sense of entitlement as extreme as it is commonplace. Chau’s escapade, in the name of God or not, was nothing more than a violation: he was just another person who believed that the world was his to do whatever he wanted in and with.
We tend to admire people who take risks and pursue dreams, but context puts a crucial warp on these platitudes. Surely it is not enough, in the abstract, to be adventurous or a dreamer or determined in the face of adversity. Rather, what are your adventurousness and dreaming and determination in service of? It was the Almighty, in Chau’s case, but what he really seemed to venerate was the small god of self-gratification. In this respect, when it comes to travellers of the most extreme as well as the most ordinary sort, Chau was no solo crusader.
This is true in a strictly religious sense: the Christian website Finishing the Task (ftt), for example, compiles the world’s remaining heathens-apparent into a convenient database, enabling freelance spiritual swashbucklers like Chau to advance the dark project of divine imperialism. “Here you can find the list of the world’s unengaged, unreached people groups that have no known full-time workers involved in evangelism and church planting!” the site enthuses. “Our goal is to remove a people group once it is confirmed that a solid church planting strategy, consistent with evangelical faith and practice, is under implementation.” According to the New York Times, Chau learned of the Sentinelese through the Joshua Project, which sources some of its data on “unengaged” people groups from the ftt list. When Chau’s death was reported in the media, 963 groups, including the Sentinelese, were on the prioritized-for-ministry list. ftt has since updated its list to only 343 groups, and the Sentinelese, post-Chau, are no longer among them.
Similar lists exist for the secular. If a missionary website didn’t galvanize the young American to seek out the Sentinelese, he might have found inspiration in Fodor’s or Reader’s Digest. Both outlets (among countless others) have run variations on a “top coolest places you can’t go” article, with North Sentinel Island listed alongside the Lascaux caves and the Svalbard seed vault as some of the world’s trendiest forbidden places. For self-styled explorers, other lists detail off-limits mountains, with sacred Navajo or Tibetan sites or havens of endangered species presented as alluring territory for adventurous dreamers. Climbing on certain peaks has been banned at the request of Indigenous peoples, yet these lists blithely urge readers to “click through and keep dreaming.”
Because there’s nothing wrong with dreaming, right? Or is there? Dreams can nurture a sense of entitlement that eventually finds expression, in some form, in reality. The average tourist might not add North Sentinel Island to their bucket list, but they probably share, to some degree, Chau’s longing to experience the outer edges of the world and a wilful blindness to the impact of being there. A certain breed of traveller craves visiting “untouched” places and interacting with “authentic” peoples, and a certain breed of tour operator promises to deliver you to and among them—for a price. Or rather two: one you fork over and one the place or people you visit must pay.
Survival International, a non-profit that works for tribal peoples’ rights, has documented a troubling rise in the popularity of “human safaris,” in which tourists seek out fleeting, zoo-like glimpses of uncontacted Indigenous peoples. In the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, part of the same archipelago as North Sentinel, you could, until recently (and possibly still), peer out of a tour bus at the Jarawa, a group of hunter-gatherers through whose traditional forest territory the Andaman Trunk Road was built. Similar sightings of Peruvian and Brazilian Indigenous tribes are available if you quietly ask the right guide. And, if these experiences aren’t thrilling enough, several organizations offer “first contact” treks, including ones in Papua New Guinea to visit “undiscovered tribes” who have “never seen a white man.”
Done well, tourism focused on local peoples can give them more control over their destiny and widen the hearts and minds of travellers to the wonders and complexities of the world. Done poorly, tribal tourism denies people the dignity of being left alone—denies them, even, recognition as people. Either way, travel has a tendency to bring out the Chau in all of us. We want what we want when we go abroad, which often is the untouched, the authentic—even as our arrival, by definition, undermines those very qualities in a place or of a culture and contributes to the slow, involuntary conversion of one way of life into another.
by Kate Harris, The Walrus | Read more:
Image: Sean Lewis
The Two Codes Your Kids Need to Know
A few years ago, the leaders of the College Board, the folks who administer the SAT college entrance exam, asked themselves a radical question: Of all the skills and knowledge that we test young people for that we know are correlated with success in college and in life, which is the most important? Their answer: the ability to master “two codes” — computer science and the U.S. Constitution.
Since then they’ve been adapting the SATs and the College Board’s Advanced Placement program to inspire and measure knowledge of both. Since the two people who led this move — David Coleman, president of the College Board, and Stefanie Sanford, its chief of global policy — happen to be people I’ve long enjoyed batting around ideas with, and since I thought a lot of students, parents and employers would be interested in their answer, I asked them to please show their work: “Why these two codes?”
Their short answer was that if you want to be an empowered citizen in our democracy — able to not only navigate society and its institutions but also to improve and shape them, and not just be shaped by them — you need to know how the code of the U.S. Constitution works. And if you want to be an empowered and adaptive worker or artist or writer or scientist or teacher — and be able to shape the world around you, and not just be shaped by it — you need to know how computers work and how to shape them.
With computing, the internet, big data and artificial intelligence now the essential building blocks of almost every industry, any young person who can master the principles and basic coding techniques that drive computers and other devices “will be more prepared for nearly every job,” Coleman and Sanford said in a joint statement explaining their initiative. “At the same time, the Constitution forms the foundational code that gives shape to America and defines our essential liberties — it is the indispensable guide to our lives as productive citizens.”
So rather than have SAT exams and Advanced Placement courses based on things that you cram for and forget, they are shifting them, where they can, to promote the “two codes.”
In 2016, the College Board completely revamped its approach to A.P. computer science courses and exams. In the original Computer Science course, which focused heavily on programming in Java, nearly 80 percent of students were men. And a large majority were white and Asian, said Coleman. What that said to women and underrepresented minorities was, “How would you like to learn the advanced grammar of a language that you aren’t interested in?”
Turned out that was not very welcoming. So, explained Coleman, they decided to “change the invitation” to their new Computer Science Principles course by starting with the question: What is it that you’d like to do in the world? Music? Art? Science? Business? Great! Then come build an app in the furtherance of that interest and learn the principles of computer science, not just coding, Coleman said. “Learn to be a shaper of your environment, not just a victim of it.” (...)
Besides revamping the government course and the exam on that subject, Coleman and Sanford in 2014 made a staple of the regular SAT a long reading comprehension passage from one of the founding documents, such as the Constitution, or another important piece of democracy, like a great presidential speech. That said to students and teachers something the SAT had never dared say before: Some content is disproportionately more powerful and important, and if you prepare for it you will be rewarded on the SAT.
Since then they’ve been adapting the SATs and the College Board’s Advanced Placement program to inspire and measure knowledge of both. Since the two people who led this move — David Coleman, president of the College Board, and Stefanie Sanford, its chief of global policy — happen to be people I’ve long enjoyed batting around ideas with, and since I thought a lot of students, parents and employers would be interested in their answer, I asked them to please show their work: “Why these two codes?”
Their short answer was that if you want to be an empowered citizen in our democracy — able to not only navigate society and its institutions but also to improve and shape them, and not just be shaped by them — you need to know how the code of the U.S. Constitution works. And if you want to be an empowered and adaptive worker or artist or writer or scientist or teacher — and be able to shape the world around you, and not just be shaped by it — you need to know how computers work and how to shape them.With computing, the internet, big data and artificial intelligence now the essential building blocks of almost every industry, any young person who can master the principles and basic coding techniques that drive computers and other devices “will be more prepared for nearly every job,” Coleman and Sanford said in a joint statement explaining their initiative. “At the same time, the Constitution forms the foundational code that gives shape to America and defines our essential liberties — it is the indispensable guide to our lives as productive citizens.”
So rather than have SAT exams and Advanced Placement courses based on things that you cram for and forget, they are shifting them, where they can, to promote the “two codes.”
In 2016, the College Board completely revamped its approach to A.P. computer science courses and exams. In the original Computer Science course, which focused heavily on programming in Java, nearly 80 percent of students were men. And a large majority were white and Asian, said Coleman. What that said to women and underrepresented minorities was, “How would you like to learn the advanced grammar of a language that you aren’t interested in?”
Turned out that was not very welcoming. So, explained Coleman, they decided to “change the invitation” to their new Computer Science Principles course by starting with the question: What is it that you’d like to do in the world? Music? Art? Science? Business? Great! Then come build an app in the furtherance of that interest and learn the principles of computer science, not just coding, Coleman said. “Learn to be a shaper of your environment, not just a victim of it.” (...)
Besides revamping the government course and the exam on that subject, Coleman and Sanford in 2014 made a staple of the regular SAT a long reading comprehension passage from one of the founding documents, such as the Constitution, or another important piece of democracy, like a great presidential speech. That said to students and teachers something the SAT had never dared say before: Some content is disproportionately more powerful and important, and if you prepare for it you will be rewarded on the SAT.
by Thomas L. Friedman, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Sarah Blesener
[ed. This is probably one of the most depressing things I've read in a long time (and that's saying something). I seriously doubt coding will be any more relevant in the future than learning a foreign language is now, probably less so with AI everywhere. How about encouraging curiosity, creativity, thoughtfulness and sociability to prepare students for a lifetime of learning in a variety of interests rather than one specific skill set? And, if we really want to give kids a leg up maybe we should fix our dysfunctional economic, social and political systems first. See also: What is Eduction For? (Current Affairs).]
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Burning Man Is Not A Festival
Hi! Marian Goodell, here. We’re gearing up for Black Rock City 2019, and are about to begin this year’s ticket sales. More important than ticket sales is the work we all do and should do to be good representatives of Burning Man culture on and off the playa.
As CEO of the nonprofit Burning Man Project, I do a lot of listening. People enthusiastically share their Burning Man experiences, ideas, and concerns with me. Lately, participants have been talking about some alarming changes in the culture of Burning Man in Black Rock City, and their speculation as to who and what is causing them.
This past November I attended an academic symposium in Switzerland on the spread of Burning Man culture. A presenter from Finland shared several dozen observations and quotes from his participant interviews. The following really struck me:
“I am disappointed with the attitudes of the mutant vehicle and art car folks. Their gatekeepers are very discriminatory on who they let ride. I was actually told, ‘No, it’s too late for old people to be out, anyway,’ ‘you’re not pretty enough,’ and ‘we’re only picking up hot girls right now.’ I asked other camp members and heard similar stories. One gay couple said they had tried for 3 years to get on a vehicle and they were denied every time.” -Retired Artist, Male, 70
That just broke my heart. How did we get here? Who thinks saying this is okay on or off the playa? This isn’t Burning Man.
After Black Rock City 2018, our Communications Team compiled examples of commodification and exploitation of Black Rock City and Burning Man culture. The report is 55 pages long. We’ve been observing some troubling trends for a few years, but this report stunned me.
Surely you’ve seen examples. Whether it’s commercial photo shoots, product placements, or Instagram posts thanking “friends” for a useful item, attendees including fashion models and social media “influencers” are wearing and tagging brands in their playa photos. This means they are using Black Rock City to increase their popularity; to appeal to customers and sell more “stuff.”
Is this okay? How could it be? Isn’t this commodification? Even if the intention is to express gratitude, isn’t this an exploitation of the Black Rock City community? What about our principle of Decommodification? It’s fair to say this behavior has been around for a while. Posts of gratitude cross referenced with hashtags started off slow and innocently enough, but are now wildly out of control. Failing to make clear what behavior is unacceptable has compounded the problem. I recently heard rumors of more than one product or business launch happening on playa in 2018. Seriously, people. This really isn’t Burning Man.
One of the most distressing trends is the increase of participants (both new and experienced) who don’t seem invested in co-creating Black Rock City, and are attending as consumers. Mass consumption in our default world, ticket scarcity and some elaborate luxury camps have contributed to the rise of a playa “convenience culture.” In some cases, camps or companies are offering “all inclusive” pre-packaged Burning Man experiences, claiming they will preemptively meet all of their client’s needs. Burning Man is anything but convenient, and therein lies its transformative potential!
Black Rock City requires significant investments of time, energy, and resourcefulness. Part of what makes Burning Man unique and powerful is that everyone has to work hard to be there. Planning, securing a ticket, packing, building, organizing, contributing, and engaging are part of the journey everyone should experience. Though it manifests differently for each one of us, personal effort is integral to the social agreement we make with our fellow community members when we decide to participate in Burning Man.
Whether it is in Black Rock City or elsewhere around the world, Burning Man is not built for you, it is built by you. Burning Man is not a festival. The invitation to participate is more than an invitation to have an amazing experience. It’s about CREATING that experience for yourself and those around you.
Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of people who are doing it RIGHT. There are tens of thousands of generous, thoughtful, creative individuals who put in significant time and effort to create an extraordinarily engaging experience that is beyond anything on this planet. But some people just aren’t getting what Burning Man culture is all about, and we are all responsible for changing that.
by Marian Goodell, Burning Man Journal | Read more:
Image: Scott London
[ed. Comments section is worth the price of admission. See also: (Non) Newsflash: Burning Man Is Not a Backdrop for Your Product. Also, this, this and this.]
As CEO of the nonprofit Burning Man Project, I do a lot of listening. People enthusiastically share their Burning Man experiences, ideas, and concerns with me. Lately, participants have been talking about some alarming changes in the culture of Burning Man in Black Rock City, and their speculation as to who and what is causing them.
This past November I attended an academic symposium in Switzerland on the spread of Burning Man culture. A presenter from Finland shared several dozen observations and quotes from his participant interviews. The following really struck me:
“I am disappointed with the attitudes of the mutant vehicle and art car folks. Their gatekeepers are very discriminatory on who they let ride. I was actually told, ‘No, it’s too late for old people to be out, anyway,’ ‘you’re not pretty enough,’ and ‘we’re only picking up hot girls right now.’ I asked other camp members and heard similar stories. One gay couple said they had tried for 3 years to get on a vehicle and they were denied every time.” -Retired Artist, Male, 70
That just broke my heart. How did we get here? Who thinks saying this is okay on or off the playa? This isn’t Burning Man.After Black Rock City 2018, our Communications Team compiled examples of commodification and exploitation of Black Rock City and Burning Man culture. The report is 55 pages long. We’ve been observing some troubling trends for a few years, but this report stunned me.
Surely you’ve seen examples. Whether it’s commercial photo shoots, product placements, or Instagram posts thanking “friends” for a useful item, attendees including fashion models and social media “influencers” are wearing and tagging brands in their playa photos. This means they are using Black Rock City to increase their popularity; to appeal to customers and sell more “stuff.”
Is this okay? How could it be? Isn’t this commodification? Even if the intention is to express gratitude, isn’t this an exploitation of the Black Rock City community? What about our principle of Decommodification? It’s fair to say this behavior has been around for a while. Posts of gratitude cross referenced with hashtags started off slow and innocently enough, but are now wildly out of control. Failing to make clear what behavior is unacceptable has compounded the problem. I recently heard rumors of more than one product or business launch happening on playa in 2018. Seriously, people. This really isn’t Burning Man.
One of the most distressing trends is the increase of participants (both new and experienced) who don’t seem invested in co-creating Black Rock City, and are attending as consumers. Mass consumption in our default world, ticket scarcity and some elaborate luxury camps have contributed to the rise of a playa “convenience culture.” In some cases, camps or companies are offering “all inclusive” pre-packaged Burning Man experiences, claiming they will preemptively meet all of their client’s needs. Burning Man is anything but convenient, and therein lies its transformative potential!
Black Rock City requires significant investments of time, energy, and resourcefulness. Part of what makes Burning Man unique and powerful is that everyone has to work hard to be there. Planning, securing a ticket, packing, building, organizing, contributing, and engaging are part of the journey everyone should experience. Though it manifests differently for each one of us, personal effort is integral to the social agreement we make with our fellow community members when we decide to participate in Burning Man.
Whether it is in Black Rock City or elsewhere around the world, Burning Man is not built for you, it is built by you. Burning Man is not a festival. The invitation to participate is more than an invitation to have an amazing experience. It’s about CREATING that experience for yourself and those around you.
Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of people who are doing it RIGHT. There are tens of thousands of generous, thoughtful, creative individuals who put in significant time and effort to create an extraordinarily engaging experience that is beyond anything on this planet. But some people just aren’t getting what Burning Man culture is all about, and we are all responsible for changing that.
by Marian Goodell, Burning Man Journal | Read more:
Image: Scott London
[ed. Comments section is worth the price of admission. See also: (Non) Newsflash: Burning Man Is Not a Backdrop for Your Product. Also, this, this and this.]
Why the Wall Will Never Rise
The brush country along the Rio Grande on the Texas-Mexico border grows thick: a jagged, tangled landscape of thorny trees, prickly pear, and grass so tall, it can hide a horse. Eight-foot rattlesnakes blend into rocks. Feral hogs wallow beneath mesquite thickets.
If President Donald Trump ever gets the funding for his long-promised wall, he will have to plot a course through Texas. But he will never make it all the way through here, the 800-mile stretch from Laredo to nearly El Paso. There will be no “concrete structure from sea to sea,” as the president once pledged. Taking this land would constitute an assault on private property and require a veritable army of lawyers, who, I can assure you, are no match for the state’s powerful border barons. (...)
Starting in 2006, when Congress passed the Secure Fence Act, the federal government used eminent domain to seize these plots and put up barriers, as high as 18 feet. More than 345 condemnation suits by the federal government resulted in a strip of land 128 miles long, according to a 2017 investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Yet dozens of cases are still tied up in court, and settlements have been wildly unequal: A retired schoolteacher got $21,500 for two acres; a lawyer and banker who hired one of the state’s biggest law firms got nearly $5 million for just six acres.
The cost has been staggering. The most recent 33 miles in the valley have set back taxpayers $641 million, or $19.4 million a mile, for a hodgepodge of fences, vehicle barriers, and some bollard fencing—with lots of gaps. And no one can really say, definitively, whether this project is worthwhile. To date, no federal agency has systematically audited what all the barriers cost and what, if any, effect they’ve had.
“First, this suggests that this is all theater. There is no operational decision making about what will actually work, because there’s not really a security crisis,” says Denise Gilman, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “Instead, these federal agencies rush, saying, ‘We’ve just got to get the wall up,’ when what we need is real, targeted law enforcement.”(...)
Here is the final, insurmountable barrier to Trump’s wall here: money. The government has already paid nearly $1 million an acre for that six-acre plot in the Rio Grande Valley, potentially setting a precedent. If the Trump administration seized 700 miles of private land along the border, one mile wide—640 acres per square mile—the tab could come to $448 billion. Nearly 20 times the wall itself.
by Richard Parker, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: Adrees Latif/Reuters
[ed. Glad to see someone finally figured this out (acquisition and eminent domain issues). Also, wildlife impacts from loss of habitat.]
If President Donald Trump ever gets the funding for his long-promised wall, he will have to plot a course through Texas. But he will never make it all the way through here, the 800-mile stretch from Laredo to nearly El Paso. There will be no “concrete structure from sea to sea,” as the president once pledged. Taking this land would constitute an assault on private property and require a veritable army of lawyers, who, I can assure you, are no match for the state’s powerful border barons. (...)
Starting in 2006, when Congress passed the Secure Fence Act, the federal government used eminent domain to seize these plots and put up barriers, as high as 18 feet. More than 345 condemnation suits by the federal government resulted in a strip of land 128 miles long, according to a 2017 investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Yet dozens of cases are still tied up in court, and settlements have been wildly unequal: A retired schoolteacher got $21,500 for two acres; a lawyer and banker who hired one of the state’s biggest law firms got nearly $5 million for just six acres.The cost has been staggering. The most recent 33 miles in the valley have set back taxpayers $641 million, or $19.4 million a mile, for a hodgepodge of fences, vehicle barriers, and some bollard fencing—with lots of gaps. And no one can really say, definitively, whether this project is worthwhile. To date, no federal agency has systematically audited what all the barriers cost and what, if any, effect they’ve had.
“First, this suggests that this is all theater. There is no operational decision making about what will actually work, because there’s not really a security crisis,” says Denise Gilman, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “Instead, these federal agencies rush, saying, ‘We’ve just got to get the wall up,’ when what we need is real, targeted law enforcement.”(...)
Here is the final, insurmountable barrier to Trump’s wall here: money. The government has already paid nearly $1 million an acre for that six-acre plot in the Rio Grande Valley, potentially setting a precedent. If the Trump administration seized 700 miles of private land along the border, one mile wide—640 acres per square mile—the tab could come to $448 billion. Nearly 20 times the wall itself.
by Richard Parker, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: Adrees Latif/Reuters
[ed. Glad to see someone finally figured this out (acquisition and eminent domain issues). Also, wildlife impacts from loss of habitat.]
The Kind of Policy We Must Never Make Again
Detroit’s public schools suffer from widespread maintenance issues. Facilities need half a billion dollars worth of repairs, which officials admit are simply not going to happen in the short run. Here’s a 2016 description of “appalling” conditions at a local elementary school:
The gym is closed because half of the floor is buckled and the other half suffered so much rainwater damage from the dripping ceiling that it became covered with toxic black mold. Instead of professionally addressing the problem, a black tarp simply was placed over the entire area like a Band-Aid. That area of the school has been condemned. The once beautiful pool sits empty because no one has come to fix it. The playground is off-limits because a geyser of searing hot steam explodes out of the ground. What do our kids do for exercise with no gym, playground or pool? They walk or run in the halls.
It’s with these steam geysers and moldy gyms in mind that we should evaluate the “Race to the Top” (RTT), the Obama administration’s signature education policy initiative. RTT gave $4.3 billion in funding to U.S. schools through a novel mechanism: Instead of giving out the aid based on how much a state’s schools needed it, the Department of Education awarded it through a competition. Applications “were graded on a 500-point scale according to the rigor of the reforms proposed and their compatibility with four administration priorities: developing common standards and assessments; improving teacher training, evaluation, and retention policies; creating better data systems; and adopting preferred school-turnaround strategies.”
Note what the disproportionate focus is here: quantitative measurement and assessment procedures. Race To The Top emphasized teacher evaluations, the introduction of new technology, the collection and sharing of data, and other “innovations” thought to more efficiently produce student achievement. When the administration promoted RTT, assessment and data collection were spoken of first, along with “revising evaluation and compensation policies to encourage effectiveness.” The Obama administration also wanted states to adopt policies favorable to charter schools—Education secretary Arne Duncan said explicitly that “States that do not have public charter laws or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools will jeopardize their applications under the Race to the Top Fund.”
The Race to the Top was an overwhelming success, if success is defined as getting states to adopt the policies the Obama administration wanted. The majority of U.S. states instituted at least some of the reforms RTT rewarded. Ordinarily, it is very difficult for a president to alter state-level education policies, but RTT almost coerced states into following Obama’s recommendations. It was introduced in the immediate aftermath of the Great Recession, and states needed the money desperately. With potential rewards in the hundreds of millions, they had little choice but to change their practices and compete for the extra funds that were being dangled in front of them.
There is something deeply objectionable about nearly every part of Race To The Top. First, the very idea of having states scramble to compete for federal funds means that children are given additional support based on how good their state legislatures are at pleasing the president, rather than how much those children need support. Michigan got no Race to the Top money, and Detroit’s schools didn’t see a penny of this $4.2 billion, because it didn’t win the “race.” This “fight to the death” approach (come to think of it, a better name for the program) was novel, since “historically, most federal education funds have been distributed through categorical grant programs that allocate money to districts on the basis of need-based formulas.” Here, though, one can see how Obama’s neoliberal politics differed in its approach from the New Deal liberalism of old: Once upon a time, liberals talking about how to fix schools would talk about making sure all teachers had the resources they needed to give students a quality education. Now, they were importing the competitive capitalist model into government: Show results or find yourself financially starved.
The focus on “innovation,” data, and technology is misguided, too. Innovation is not necessarily improvement—it’s easy to make something new that isn’t actually any better. The poor learning outcomes of online courses are evidence that sometimes the old methods are best. An Obama administration report on how schools innovated in response to RTT is mostly waffle about “partnering with stakeholders” but also contains descriptions of “21st century” measures like the following:
The majority of Race to the Top states reported to the RSN that they are using or expanding their use of social media communication to keep stakeholders engaged and informed. Ohio, for example, embraced Twitter to communicate with teachers, principals and district leaders during its annual state conference in 2012. “One of the keys to success on Twitter is tweeting a lot — five to seven times a day — morning, noon and at night,” said Michael Sponhour, executive director of communications and outreach for the Ohio Department of Education (ODE). Ohio measures its success on Twitter by the number of tweets that are “retweeted” by its followers; about 70 percent of ODE’s tweets are retweeted, he said.
So people at state departments of education are being paid to tweet morning, noon, and night, with nearly ⅓ of the tweets not getting so much as a single retweet, while St. Louis’ beautiful old public school buildings are closed, abandoned, and auctioned off. Delaware “was able to use RTT funds to place data coaches in every school,” even as the steam pipe kept leaking onto that playground in Detroit. (...)
Shockingly (or not), the Obama Department of Education didn’t even know that the policies it was promoting would actually work. When it came time, in 2016, to assess what RTT had actually managed to accomplish, the administration conceded that “a vast literature examining the effectiveness of the types of policies promoted by RTT provides no conclusive evidence on whether they improve student outcomes” and that “no experimental studies have examined the relationship between RTT-promoted policies and practices and student outcomes, and non-experimental studies found mixed results.” They didn’t even know whether new assessment methods, more liberal charter policies, streamlined curriculums, etc. would actually do anything for kids. But they made states do it anyway. There was no evidence that it helped students, and it seems as if a good portion of the $4.3 billion was squandered, or at least didn’t begin to reach the students who could have used it most. (With 4 billion dollars you could pay a year’s salary for 80,000 teachers.)
To me, the entire value system behind the RTT is mistaken. I actually think we should be careful about conceding that education is about “student achievement.” Personally, I think education is about introducing young people to the world, helping them achieve wisdom and understanding, and cultivating their curiosity, thoughtfulness, sociability, and creativity. The Obama administration’s view seemed to be that education is about improving math and reading outcomes in order to prepare students for college. (And college exists to prepare students for jobs—see Obama’s infamous disparaging comment about the economic value of an art history major.) The narrowly “instrumental” view of education has been embraced by libertarians and “progressive” Education Reformers alike, who both seem to accept the premise that schools should be pumping as much Skill into students as possible as efficiently as possible.
The gym is closed because half of the floor is buckled and the other half suffered so much rainwater damage from the dripping ceiling that it became covered with toxic black mold. Instead of professionally addressing the problem, a black tarp simply was placed over the entire area like a Band-Aid. That area of the school has been condemned. The once beautiful pool sits empty because no one has come to fix it. The playground is off-limits because a geyser of searing hot steam explodes out of the ground. What do our kids do for exercise with no gym, playground or pool? They walk or run in the halls.
It’s with these steam geysers and moldy gyms in mind that we should evaluate the “Race to the Top” (RTT), the Obama administration’s signature education policy initiative. RTT gave $4.3 billion in funding to U.S. schools through a novel mechanism: Instead of giving out the aid based on how much a state’s schools needed it, the Department of Education awarded it through a competition. Applications “were graded on a 500-point scale according to the rigor of the reforms proposed and their compatibility with four administration priorities: developing common standards and assessments; improving teacher training, evaluation, and retention policies; creating better data systems; and adopting preferred school-turnaround strategies.”
Note what the disproportionate focus is here: quantitative measurement and assessment procedures. Race To The Top emphasized teacher evaluations, the introduction of new technology, the collection and sharing of data, and other “innovations” thought to more efficiently produce student achievement. When the administration promoted RTT, assessment and data collection were spoken of first, along with “revising evaluation and compensation policies to encourage effectiveness.” The Obama administration also wanted states to adopt policies favorable to charter schools—Education secretary Arne Duncan said explicitly that “States that do not have public charter laws or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools will jeopardize their applications under the Race to the Top Fund.”The Race to the Top was an overwhelming success, if success is defined as getting states to adopt the policies the Obama administration wanted. The majority of U.S. states instituted at least some of the reforms RTT rewarded. Ordinarily, it is very difficult for a president to alter state-level education policies, but RTT almost coerced states into following Obama’s recommendations. It was introduced in the immediate aftermath of the Great Recession, and states needed the money desperately. With potential rewards in the hundreds of millions, they had little choice but to change their practices and compete for the extra funds that were being dangled in front of them.
There is something deeply objectionable about nearly every part of Race To The Top. First, the very idea of having states scramble to compete for federal funds means that children are given additional support based on how good their state legislatures are at pleasing the president, rather than how much those children need support. Michigan got no Race to the Top money, and Detroit’s schools didn’t see a penny of this $4.2 billion, because it didn’t win the “race.” This “fight to the death” approach (come to think of it, a better name for the program) was novel, since “historically, most federal education funds have been distributed through categorical grant programs that allocate money to districts on the basis of need-based formulas.” Here, though, one can see how Obama’s neoliberal politics differed in its approach from the New Deal liberalism of old: Once upon a time, liberals talking about how to fix schools would talk about making sure all teachers had the resources they needed to give students a quality education. Now, they were importing the competitive capitalist model into government: Show results or find yourself financially starved.
The focus on “innovation,” data, and technology is misguided, too. Innovation is not necessarily improvement—it’s easy to make something new that isn’t actually any better. The poor learning outcomes of online courses are evidence that sometimes the old methods are best. An Obama administration report on how schools innovated in response to RTT is mostly waffle about “partnering with stakeholders” but also contains descriptions of “21st century” measures like the following:
The majority of Race to the Top states reported to the RSN that they are using or expanding their use of social media communication to keep stakeholders engaged and informed. Ohio, for example, embraced Twitter to communicate with teachers, principals and district leaders during its annual state conference in 2012. “One of the keys to success on Twitter is tweeting a lot — five to seven times a day — morning, noon and at night,” said Michael Sponhour, executive director of communications and outreach for the Ohio Department of Education (ODE). Ohio measures its success on Twitter by the number of tweets that are “retweeted” by its followers; about 70 percent of ODE’s tweets are retweeted, he said.
So people at state departments of education are being paid to tweet morning, noon, and night, with nearly ⅓ of the tweets not getting so much as a single retweet, while St. Louis’ beautiful old public school buildings are closed, abandoned, and auctioned off. Delaware “was able to use RTT funds to place data coaches in every school,” even as the steam pipe kept leaking onto that playground in Detroit. (...)
Shockingly (or not), the Obama Department of Education didn’t even know that the policies it was promoting would actually work. When it came time, in 2016, to assess what RTT had actually managed to accomplish, the administration conceded that “a vast literature examining the effectiveness of the types of policies promoted by RTT provides no conclusive evidence on whether they improve student outcomes” and that “no experimental studies have examined the relationship between RTT-promoted policies and practices and student outcomes, and non-experimental studies found mixed results.” They didn’t even know whether new assessment methods, more liberal charter policies, streamlined curriculums, etc. would actually do anything for kids. But they made states do it anyway. There was no evidence that it helped students, and it seems as if a good portion of the $4.3 billion was squandered, or at least didn’t begin to reach the students who could have used it most. (With 4 billion dollars you could pay a year’s salary for 80,000 teachers.)
To me, the entire value system behind the RTT is mistaken. I actually think we should be careful about conceding that education is about “student achievement.” Personally, I think education is about introducing young people to the world, helping them achieve wisdom and understanding, and cultivating their curiosity, thoughtfulness, sociability, and creativity. The Obama administration’s view seemed to be that education is about improving math and reading outcomes in order to prepare students for college. (And college exists to prepare students for jobs—see Obama’s infamous disparaging comment about the economic value of an art history major.) The narrowly “instrumental” view of education has been embraced by libertarians and “progressive” Education Reformers alike, who both seem to accept the premise that schools should be pumping as much Skill into students as possible as efficiently as possible.
by Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs | Read more:
Image: uncredited
Monday, February 11, 2019
If San Francisco Is So Great, Why Is Everyone I Love Leaving?
I'm driving down the 101 toward San Francisco International Airport. A gray blanket of fog pours over the hills in the distance, smothering what would be a luminous California sunset. Eleanor is sitting next to me in the passenger seat taking deep breaths. She does not like to fly.
I hesitate, then finally ask what’s on her mind, cutting the air between us. “I don’t want to put any pressure on you, but since this is the last time we’ll be hanging out for a while, I feel like we have drifted apart over the last year. Is there something I did wrong? Is there something you want to tell me? You know, before you leave?”
We are driving to her one-way flight bound for Pittsburgh. She’s moving out of the San Francisco Bay Area, where we have both lived since we were kids. Our parents, who were themselves mixed transplants from New England and other parts of California, settled in the Bay in the ’70s and ’90s. Eleanor and I met in high school—two weirdos who recognized each other’s outsider-looking-in approach to the world. Now on the cusp of 30, we have 16 years of friendship between us. We did a podcast together. She went to work with me the day after my father died. We have gotten lost in the desert together, twice (before smartphones). On separate occasions, we have cleaned up each other’s vomit. We were once referred to as “hetero life mates.” And today she is leaving. (...)
Setting aside for a moment Oakland’s own gentrification culture war (which would be another 20-minute essay), it is a two-hour drive away from Eleanor’s home in Stinson. It should only be an hour, but the traffic on the 580 moved from “rush-hour average” to “perpetual nightmare” sometime in 2014. With a regular work week, you don’t often have four hours to spare for a round-trip drive to see a friend—even the one who wouldn’t leave your side when your dad died.
by Diana Helmuth, Medium | Read more:
Image: Leonard Peng/Curbed
I hesitate, then finally ask what’s on her mind, cutting the air between us. “I don’t want to put any pressure on you, but since this is the last time we’ll be hanging out for a while, I feel like we have drifted apart over the last year. Is there something I did wrong? Is there something you want to tell me? You know, before you leave?”
We are driving to her one-way flight bound for Pittsburgh. She’s moving out of the San Francisco Bay Area, where we have both lived since we were kids. Our parents, who were themselves mixed transplants from New England and other parts of California, settled in the Bay in the ’70s and ’90s. Eleanor and I met in high school—two weirdos who recognized each other’s outsider-looking-in approach to the world. Now on the cusp of 30, we have 16 years of friendship between us. We did a podcast together. She went to work with me the day after my father died. We have gotten lost in the desert together, twice (before smartphones). On separate occasions, we have cleaned up each other’s vomit. We were once referred to as “hetero life mates.” And today she is leaving. (...)Setting aside for a moment Oakland’s own gentrification culture war (which would be another 20-minute essay), it is a two-hour drive away from Eleanor’s home in Stinson. It should only be an hour, but the traffic on the 580 moved from “rush-hour average” to “perpetual nightmare” sometime in 2014. With a regular work week, you don’t often have four hours to spare for a round-trip drive to see a friend—even the one who wouldn’t leave your side when your dad died.
Had we drifted? Of course we had. But it was more than the traffic and geography that was the source of my guilt. I felt I had played into the system that was financially and culturally kicking her out. And I’d realized it for the first time just as she was leaving. (...)
Moving, especially moving across the country, is an enormous, yet hardly uncommon, life shift. Leaving one’s hometown to forge a better future in a new city is one of the most traditional adult rites of passage that we as Americans have. Eleanor and I had a few friends who left the Bay around 2012 and 2013 for career opportunities, to be with a spouse, or to take a rare internship. We wished them well. It was hard, but normal. We were in our early 20s.
There’s something not normal, however, about the number of people who have taken flight out of California in the past year or so.
If you go to Austin, New Orleans, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, and Denver—to name just a few—you can easily find folks transplanted from other cities and states. You can also easily find a band of locals bemoaning, specifically, the “fucking Californians” who are flooding their home, driving up rents, installing yoga studios, polluting the local vibe with new technology, and generally making everything suck while sipping kale juice. We’re threatening Austin’s weirdness and erasing Bozeman’s cowboys. We seem to be everywhere you look, ruining other cities, apparently by not staying where we ought to—back in California.
It would appear we are fleeing California like it’s on fire (which, actually, it literally is lately); only large quantities of “foreign” people moving into one area typically disrupt culture and incite hatred like that. Yet San Francisco rent continues to lead the nation based on white-hot demand. This doesn’t really make sense.
Moving, especially moving across the country, is an enormous, yet hardly uncommon, life shift. Leaving one’s hometown to forge a better future in a new city is one of the most traditional adult rites of passage that we as Americans have. Eleanor and I had a few friends who left the Bay around 2012 and 2013 for career opportunities, to be with a spouse, or to take a rare internship. We wished them well. It was hard, but normal. We were in our early 20s.
There’s something not normal, however, about the number of people who have taken flight out of California in the past year or so.
If you go to Austin, New Orleans, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, and Denver—to name just a few—you can easily find folks transplanted from other cities and states. You can also easily find a band of locals bemoaning, specifically, the “fucking Californians” who are flooding their home, driving up rents, installing yoga studios, polluting the local vibe with new technology, and generally making everything suck while sipping kale juice. We’re threatening Austin’s weirdness and erasing Bozeman’s cowboys. We seem to be everywhere you look, ruining other cities, apparently by not staying where we ought to—back in California.
It would appear we are fleeing California like it’s on fire (which, actually, it literally is lately); only large quantities of “foreign” people moving into one area typically disrupt culture and incite hatred like that. Yet San Francisco rent continues to lead the nation based on white-hot demand. This doesn’t really make sense.
by Diana Helmuth, Medium | Read more:
Image: Leonard Peng/Curbed
Dropgangs, or the Future of Darknet Markets
The problems of darknet markets have triggered an evolution in online black markets.
To prevent the problems of customer binding, and losing business when darknet markets go down, merchants have begun to leave the specialized and centralized platforms and instead ventured to use widely accessible technology to build their own communications and operational back-ends.
Instead of using websites on the darknet, merchants are now operating invite-only channels on widely available mobile messaging systems like Telegram. This allows the merchant to control the reach of their communication better and be less vulnerable to system take-downs. To further stabilize the connection between merchant and customer, repeat customers are given unique messaging contacts that are independent of shared channels and thus even less likely to be found and taken down. Channels are often operated by automated bots that allow customers to inquire about offers and initiate the purchase, often even allowing a fully bot-driven experience without human intervention on the merchant’s side.
The use of messaging platforms provides a much better user experience to the customers, who can now reach their suppliers with mobile applications they are used to already. It also means that a larger part of the communication isn’t routed through the Tor or I2P networks anymore but each side - merchant and customer - employ their own protection technology, often using widely spread VPNs.
The other major change is the use of “dead drops” instead of the postal system which has proven vulnerable to tracking and interception. Now, goods are hidden in publicly accessible places like parks and the location is given to the customer on purchase. The customer then goes to the location and picks up the goods. This means that delivery becomes asynchronous for the merchant, he can hide a lot of product in different locations for future, not yet known, purchases. For the client the time to delivery is significantly shorter than waiting for a letter or parcel shipped by traditional means - he has the product in his hands in a matter of hours instead of days. Furthermore this method does not require for the customer to give any personally identifiable information to the merchant, which in turn doesn’t have to safeguard it anymore. Less data means less risk for everyone.
The use of dead drops also significantly reduces the risk of the merchant to be discovered by tracking within the postal system. He does not have to visit any easily to surveil post office or letter box, instead the whole public space becomes his hiding territory.
Cryptocurrencies are still the main means of payment, but due to the higher customer-binding, and vetting process by the merchant, escrows are seldom employed. Usually only multi-party transactions between customer and merchant are established, and often not even that.
Marketing and initial vetting of both merchant and customer now happens in darknet forums and chat channels that themselves aren’t involved in any deal anymore. In these places merchants and customers take part in the discussion of best procedures, methods and prices. The market connects and develops best practices by sharing experience. Furthermore these places also serve as record of reputation, though in a still very primitive way.
Other than allowing much more secure and efficient business for both sides of the transaction, this has also led to changes in the organizational structure of merchants:
Instead of the flat hierarchies witnessed with darknet markets, merchants today employ hierarchical structures again. These consist of procurement layer, sales layer, and distribution layer. The people constituting each layer usually do not know the identity of the higher layers nor are ever in personal contact with them. All interaction is digital - messaging systems and cryptocurrencies again, product moves only through dead drops.
The procurement layer purchases product wholesale and smuggles it into the region. It is then sold for cryptocurrency to select people that operate the sales layer. After that transaction the risks of both procurement and sales layer are isolated.
The sales layer divides the product into smaller units and gives the location of those dead drops to the distribution layer. The distribution layer then divides the product again and places typical sales quantities into new dead drops. The location of these dead drops is communicated to the sales layer which then sells these locations to the customers through messaging systems.
To prevent theft by the distribution layer, the sales layer randomly tests dead drops by tasking different members of the distribution layer with picking up product from a dead drop and hiding it somewhere else, after verification of the contents. Usually each unit of product is tagged with a piece of paper containing a unique secret word which is used to prove to the sales layer that a dead drop was found. Members of the distribution layer have to post security - in the form of cryptocurrency - to the sales layer, and they lose part of that security with every dead drop that fails the testing, and with every dead drop they failed to test. So far, no reports of using violence to ensure performance of members of these structures has become known.
This concept of using messaging, cryptocurrency and dead drops even within the merchant structure allows for the members within each layer being completely isolated from each other, and not knowing anything about higher layers at all. There is no trace to follow if a distribution layer member is captured while servicing a dead drop. He will often not even be distinguishable from a regular customer. This makes these structures extremely secure against infiltration, takeover and capture. They are inherently resilient.
by Anonymous, Opaque.link | Read more:
Image: via
To prevent the problems of customer binding, and losing business when darknet markets go down, merchants have begun to leave the specialized and centralized platforms and instead ventured to use widely accessible technology to build their own communications and operational back-ends.
Instead of using websites on the darknet, merchants are now operating invite-only channels on widely available mobile messaging systems like Telegram. This allows the merchant to control the reach of their communication better and be less vulnerable to system take-downs. To further stabilize the connection between merchant and customer, repeat customers are given unique messaging contacts that are independent of shared channels and thus even less likely to be found and taken down. Channels are often operated by automated bots that allow customers to inquire about offers and initiate the purchase, often even allowing a fully bot-driven experience without human intervention on the merchant’s side.
The use of messaging platforms provides a much better user experience to the customers, who can now reach their suppliers with mobile applications they are used to already. It also means that a larger part of the communication isn’t routed through the Tor or I2P networks anymore but each side - merchant and customer - employ their own protection technology, often using widely spread VPNs.The other major change is the use of “dead drops” instead of the postal system which has proven vulnerable to tracking and interception. Now, goods are hidden in publicly accessible places like parks and the location is given to the customer on purchase. The customer then goes to the location and picks up the goods. This means that delivery becomes asynchronous for the merchant, he can hide a lot of product in different locations for future, not yet known, purchases. For the client the time to delivery is significantly shorter than waiting for a letter or parcel shipped by traditional means - he has the product in his hands in a matter of hours instead of days. Furthermore this method does not require for the customer to give any personally identifiable information to the merchant, which in turn doesn’t have to safeguard it anymore. Less data means less risk for everyone.
The use of dead drops also significantly reduces the risk of the merchant to be discovered by tracking within the postal system. He does not have to visit any easily to surveil post office or letter box, instead the whole public space becomes his hiding territory.
Cryptocurrencies are still the main means of payment, but due to the higher customer-binding, and vetting process by the merchant, escrows are seldom employed. Usually only multi-party transactions between customer and merchant are established, and often not even that.
Marketing and initial vetting of both merchant and customer now happens in darknet forums and chat channels that themselves aren’t involved in any deal anymore. In these places merchants and customers take part in the discussion of best procedures, methods and prices. The market connects and develops best practices by sharing experience. Furthermore these places also serve as record of reputation, though in a still very primitive way.
Other than allowing much more secure and efficient business for both sides of the transaction, this has also led to changes in the organizational structure of merchants:
Instead of the flat hierarchies witnessed with darknet markets, merchants today employ hierarchical structures again. These consist of procurement layer, sales layer, and distribution layer. The people constituting each layer usually do not know the identity of the higher layers nor are ever in personal contact with them. All interaction is digital - messaging systems and cryptocurrencies again, product moves only through dead drops.
The procurement layer purchases product wholesale and smuggles it into the region. It is then sold for cryptocurrency to select people that operate the sales layer. After that transaction the risks of both procurement and sales layer are isolated.
The sales layer divides the product into smaller units and gives the location of those dead drops to the distribution layer. The distribution layer then divides the product again and places typical sales quantities into new dead drops. The location of these dead drops is communicated to the sales layer which then sells these locations to the customers through messaging systems.
To prevent theft by the distribution layer, the sales layer randomly tests dead drops by tasking different members of the distribution layer with picking up product from a dead drop and hiding it somewhere else, after verification of the contents. Usually each unit of product is tagged with a piece of paper containing a unique secret word which is used to prove to the sales layer that a dead drop was found. Members of the distribution layer have to post security - in the form of cryptocurrency - to the sales layer, and they lose part of that security with every dead drop that fails the testing, and with every dead drop they failed to test. So far, no reports of using violence to ensure performance of members of these structures has become known.
This concept of using messaging, cryptocurrency and dead drops even within the merchant structure allows for the members within each layer being completely isolated from each other, and not knowing anything about higher layers at all. There is no trace to follow if a distribution layer member is captured while servicing a dead drop. He will often not even be distinguishable from a regular customer. This makes these structures extremely secure against infiltration, takeover and capture. They are inherently resilient.
by Anonymous, Opaque.link | Read more:
Image: via
Sunday, February 10, 2019
Love Bites
Looking to get yourself a present this Valentine's Day? The El Paso Zoo has you covered. It will name a cockroach after your ex and then feed it to a meerkat live on camera.
You can message the zoo on Facebook with your ex's name, then wait patiently for February 14 to watch the roach get devoured during the "Quit Bugging Me" meerkat event, which will live-stream on Facebook and the zoo's website. The names of those exes will also be displayed around the meerkat exhibit and on social media starting February 11. The zoo calls it "the perfect Valentine's Day gift."
"This is a fun way to get the community involved in our daily enrichment activities," El Paso Zoo event coordinator Sarah Borrego told CBS News. "The meerkats love to get cockroaches as a snack and what better way to celebrate Valentine's Day than by feeding them a cockroach named after your ex!"
by Sophie Lewis, CBS News | Read more:
Image: via
You can message the zoo on Facebook with your ex's name, then wait patiently for February 14 to watch the roach get devoured during the "Quit Bugging Me" meerkat event, which will live-stream on Facebook and the zoo's website. The names of those exes will also be displayed around the meerkat exhibit and on social media starting February 11. The zoo calls it "the perfect Valentine's Day gift.""This is a fun way to get the community involved in our daily enrichment activities," El Paso Zoo event coordinator Sarah Borrego told CBS News. "The meerkats love to get cockroaches as a snack and what better way to celebrate Valentine's Day than by feeding them a cockroach named after your ex!"
by Sophie Lewis, CBS News | Read more:
Image: via
Whose Facade Is It, Anyway?
In a routine that defined 2017, T spent a bright, warm May morning at a chemotherapy treatment at the Lewis Cancer and Research Pavilion, then came home to recuperate on the couch next to her living room windows. Outside, a woman was bouncing around on the sidewalk in front of the colorful trio of homes. Laughing and shouting art direction to her photographer across the street, she was an arm’s length from T’s seafoam green shutters and thin window glass. When we came by for dinner that evening, T told us about the photoshoot, the commotion, and how, eventually, she’d pulled herself up and peered out the front door to give this girl and her friend “a look,” which seemed to scare them off. The three of us giggled over it.
A couple weeks later, a family friend sent us an Instagram post. Travel blogger Michelle Halpern—a 30-something “matcha-obsessed Libra” with nearly 60,000 Instagram followers at the time—was caught mid-skip just outside T’s living room on Rainbow Row, mugging to the camera. The caption on her May 15, 2017, post read:
A little story behind the Insta: This was about 3 seconds before the little old lady living in the green house came out and scowled at me for taking pictures in front of her home (which mind you is famous in Savannah and mentioned on all of the trolley tours). If it were me, I would have taken advantage of the tourist attention and started a mimosa stand or something!...What’s your opinion on regulations around locals’ homes that are popular in the area? I totally understand the desire for privacy but at the same time if your home is as pretty as this, you can’t expect people to ignore it, can you?Over a hundred comments flooded in: “I think if a house is pretty, people should expect others to admire it!” “Especially if it’s famous enough to be mentioned in a tour, they’ve gotta let it go!” “Yeah really they shouldn’t live in such a pretty house.” “If it’s this beautiful, always take the pic!” was the clear consensus. And people were wild about the mimosa stand concept.
About six responses of 104 mused tepidly over questions of privacy and nuisance. The comments that received the warmest reception from Halpern, though, were more like @amanda.sulek’s: “I think the lady should have been outside enjoying the beautiful weather instead of inside yelling at people having fun,” to which Halpern responded, “Totally agree Amanda! Hoping I don’t turn into a curmudgeon someday.”T, the “little old lady” in question, was a physician, a daughter and granddaughter of physicians. She was a graduate of University of North Carolina Medical School at Chapel Hill, a loyal member of Savannah’s Christ Church congregation, chair of its Flower Guild, and an avid gardener devoted to native flora and pollinators. She was an active participant in the effort to preserve and advocate for Savannah’s history, which allows us to enjoy it today. For many years, she volunteered at Hospice of Savannah.
Hospice of Savannah is where T was—and where we were with her—when her battle with a bone marrow cancer called multiple myeloma ended in early 2018.
Of course, no one who chimed in, Halpern included, could have known how beloved T was, what kind of day she was having, how far she was at that moment from opening a sidewalk mimosa stand. Still, the caption and comments felt insensitive, entitled, and like the crossing of some undrawn ethical line. Why not let a confrontation like this dissolve in quietude? Why share the photograph? Why, after being so rattled by a scold, use the image of the house in a very public commercial partnership with One Kings Lane, and insist on roasting the homeowner in the comments? When I reached out to Halpern for this piece, she declined to comment.
Halpern’s brand, Live Like It’s the Weekend, asks the question: “Wouldn’t it be freaking awesome if people [...] felt free to follow their passions every day, not just on the weekends?” Her curated target audience is the “creative female traveler,” her feed a litany of styled jet-setting and starry-eyed wonder. Sometimes she breaks to reflect on the personal, disclosing a struggle in a caption, reminding us that we shouldn’t assume a person is as they appear—that they may not be the look they’re giving you. For Halpern, discussing the personal details of her life—including the difficult ones—is right on brand. She shares her thoughts openly with her followers, right alongside a post plugging a jumpsuit she loves or a spa she just visited. And her followers seem to love it.
They liked the post of T’s house too (1,581 times, last I checked), but to identify a private home and evaluate the behavior of its owner to an audience of 60,000 isn’t the same as evaluating a resort stay or an outfit, things given to her or that she paid for. The act ate at me, and at T’s family. What right did she have?
by Alexandra Marvar, Curbed | Read more:
Image: Bethany Robertson
Saturday, February 9, 2019
Dinosaur Jr.
Hey, look over your shoulder
Hey, it's me gettin' older
Always thought I
Should've told you
It's alright,
But it's sure gettin' colder I know you're
Over my shoulder I know now you'll get to hold her
You're gone (...)
[ed. Because it's great. See also: A 25-Year-Old Dinosaur Jr. Song Is a Hit in Japan. Nobody Knows Why. (Pitchfork)]
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