Tuesday, July 9, 2019
Robespierre’s Kitchen
Editor’s note: This post was originally written both to earnestly respond to a Wired article and to make fun of a much-derided Bret Stephens New York Times column. But the pages that New York Times column were printed on are now crumpled up in the bottom of a trash can and eventually that trash can and the things contained within it, like the street on which it resides and the era in which it exists, will all become one-thousandth an inch of sediment for future alien archaeologists to discover. But the central point of this post will still be true: no one should force anyone else to eat mayonnaise.
I was walking through a train station reading Bret Stephens’ latest column when I spotted a very famous celebrity whose work I admire. He greeted me with condolences: “Sorry to hear about the mayonnaise.”
Had my experience already become part of the public conversation? Earlier that day I had ordered a sandwich from a fine and respected NY eatery whose food I admire. I asked the waiter to “hold the mayo,” but when my club sandwich arrived the turkey was blanketed with the appalling stuff. I sent it back. The waiter apologized and a few minutes later brought me a pristine sandwich sans mayo.
I had barely time to swallow my first bite before I heard my fellow diners describing me as “a fucking idiot,” “the mayor of clowntown,” and “a total fart factory.” Their reactions were corroborated by my own sister, writing her hômage to mayo in Wired, who suggested I was a “hypocrite and a coward.” As the insults piled up into the hundreds, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d been cast in the role of Giles in some sort of gastronomic version of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.
It’s upsetting to be in the center of this type of maelstrom, however meaningless and inconsequential, simply because I had the temerity to voice an anti-mayo opinion. It could not simply be that I do not like mayo and wanted a sandwich without mayo. I had to be a “delusional circus freak who actually loves mayo but thinks he doesn’t.” Nobody likes to be slandered by so-called “friends” at a restaurant. Nobody wants to be the next Sebastian, a former friend of ours whose social life was nearly destroyed in 2015 because of his single, injudicious complaint about aioli.
The result has been a self-silencing of much of America. According to data from Quartz, mayonnaise is the most popular condiment in the country. In 2013, people spent $2 billion on mayo, which translates to $6 of mayo per person. But numbers can be misleading. For instance, I purchased no mayo in 2013. That means someone else must have spent more than $6 on mayo. Who was it? I don’t know! I don’t need to know. I don’t think they should be sent to prison. But similarly, I and the millions of people like me should not be sent to the mayo prison.
The data confirms what everyone with eyes and ears and a brain knows from their gut: In the proverbial land of the free, people who order something and ask them to hold the mayo live in mortal fear that it will still have mayo on it. In the ivory towers of the foodie intelligentsia, it is inconceivable that someone would not like mayo.
If you’re of a certain persuasion, you might think this isn’t such a bad thing. Mayonnaise is but one tool in a chef’s toolbox, one arrow in the chef’s quiver, one color on the chef’s palette, or taste on the chef’s palate. Chefs should not be burdened with odious restrictions that would curtail their creativity. Up to a point, you aren’t wrong. Everyone has felt sympathy for the chef who has to accommodate the large group that comes in just before closing time and has 15 different insane food restrictions. Thinking before you order is always good practice. I accept this.
America has long since passed the point of “up to a point.” Six years ago, I was in a restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and I ordered a BLT with no mayo. It arrived with mayo. I sent it back and when it returned it again had mayo on it. I couldn’t help but laugh! The waiter, mortified at first but warmed by my amusement, confided, “The chef really likes mayo.” When the third BLT finally had no mayonnaise, he whispered, “I hate mayo too.” I wonder now if in this current climate that friendly server whose candor I admired would be comfortable to make such an admission!
Reader, mayo wasn’t even listed as an ingredient on the menu.
by Ben Dreyfuss, Mother Jones | Read more:
I was walking through a train station reading Bret Stephens’ latest column when I spotted a very famous celebrity whose work I admire. He greeted me with condolences: “Sorry to hear about the mayonnaise.”
Had my experience already become part of the public conversation? Earlier that day I had ordered a sandwich from a fine and respected NY eatery whose food I admire. I asked the waiter to “hold the mayo,” but when my club sandwich arrived the turkey was blanketed with the appalling stuff. I sent it back. The waiter apologized and a few minutes later brought me a pristine sandwich sans mayo. I had barely time to swallow my first bite before I heard my fellow diners describing me as “a fucking idiot,” “the mayor of clowntown,” and “a total fart factory.” Their reactions were corroborated by my own sister, writing her hômage to mayo in Wired, who suggested I was a “hypocrite and a coward.” As the insults piled up into the hundreds, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d been cast in the role of Giles in some sort of gastronomic version of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.
It’s upsetting to be in the center of this type of maelstrom, however meaningless and inconsequential, simply because I had the temerity to voice an anti-mayo opinion. It could not simply be that I do not like mayo and wanted a sandwich without mayo. I had to be a “delusional circus freak who actually loves mayo but thinks he doesn’t.” Nobody likes to be slandered by so-called “friends” at a restaurant. Nobody wants to be the next Sebastian, a former friend of ours whose social life was nearly destroyed in 2015 because of his single, injudicious complaint about aioli.
The result has been a self-silencing of much of America. According to data from Quartz, mayonnaise is the most popular condiment in the country. In 2013, people spent $2 billion on mayo, which translates to $6 of mayo per person. But numbers can be misleading. For instance, I purchased no mayo in 2013. That means someone else must have spent more than $6 on mayo. Who was it? I don’t know! I don’t need to know. I don’t think they should be sent to prison. But similarly, I and the millions of people like me should not be sent to the mayo prison.
The data confirms what everyone with eyes and ears and a brain knows from their gut: In the proverbial land of the free, people who order something and ask them to hold the mayo live in mortal fear that it will still have mayo on it. In the ivory towers of the foodie intelligentsia, it is inconceivable that someone would not like mayo.
If you’re of a certain persuasion, you might think this isn’t such a bad thing. Mayonnaise is but one tool in a chef’s toolbox, one arrow in the chef’s quiver, one color on the chef’s palette, or taste on the chef’s palate. Chefs should not be burdened with odious restrictions that would curtail their creativity. Up to a point, you aren’t wrong. Everyone has felt sympathy for the chef who has to accommodate the large group that comes in just before closing time and has 15 different insane food restrictions. Thinking before you order is always good practice. I accept this.
America has long since passed the point of “up to a point.” Six years ago, I was in a restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and I ordered a BLT with no mayo. It arrived with mayo. I sent it back and when it returned it again had mayo on it. I couldn’t help but laugh! The waiter, mortified at first but warmed by my amusement, confided, “The chef really likes mayo.” When the third BLT finally had no mayonnaise, he whispered, “I hate mayo too.” I wonder now if in this current climate that friendly server whose candor I admired would be comfortable to make such an admission!
Reader, mayo wasn’t even listed as an ingredient on the menu.
by Ben Dreyfuss, Mother Jones | Read more:
Image: Mother Jones illustration; Hippolyte Lecomte
[ed. Not a fan of mayo or aioli.]
The Restaurant of Order Mistakes
Worldwide, dementia affects 47.5 million people with 9.9 million new cases each year. Recently, a pop-up restaurant in Tokyo spent 3 days in operation, changing the public’s perception of those suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s. The Restaurant of Order Mistakes, which was open in early June, was staffed by sufferers of these disorders.
Six smiling waitresses took orders and served food to customers, who came in knowing they may not get what they asked for. Each waitress suffers either from dementia or Alzheimer’s, hence the name of the restaurant. One waitress, who used to work in a school, decided to participate since she was used to cooking for children and thought she could do it. But, of course, the day was not without mistakes.
Monday, July 8, 2019
Americans Shocked to Find Their Rights Literally Vanish at U.S. Airports
If you’re traveling outside the United States this summer you might want to rethink taking your electronics along. Government agents have been detaining American citizens without arrest, searching, and in some cases downloading the entire contents of phones, tablets, laptops, and other devices. And this all happens without a warrant or access to an attorney.
“The border has become a rights-free zone for Americans who have to travel,” Senator Ron Wyden said in a statement to TAC. “The founders never could have imagined that the government would be able to sift through your entire digital life, from pictures to emails and even where you’ve been, just because you decide to take a vacation or travel for work.”
Border searches of electronic devices have exploded at an exponential rate in recent years: in 2018, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) searched over 33,295 smartphones, laptops, and other electronic devices; up nine percent from fiscal year 2017 and over six times the number searched in 2012. And that’s just the statistics from CBP; Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does not maintain records of the number of electronic device searches it conducts.
“The government is accessing all your private data,” Sophia Cope, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), told TAC. These “deeply intrusive” searches of electronic devices “reveal a lot about you: your emails, contacts, bank history, internet searches, medical history, social media usage, and political beliefs.”
The “border is not a Constitution-free zone,” said Cope. But right now, it’s essentially functioning as one, as laws that protect Americans privacy are being run over roughshod by agents at the border.
In a unanimous decision in 2014, the Supreme Court ruled that when a person has been arrested, law enforcement need a warrant to search their electronic devices.
But government agents at the border assert that they can search anyone’s device, at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all. CBP has largely been operating under its own rules; they say they do not need a warrant, or even probable cause, to conduct this digital invasion because of the “border search exception” to the Fourth Amendment’s requirement for probable cause or a warrant.
A lawsuit brought by EFF and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argues that these searches are in violation of the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
For travelers whose professions require they maintain the privacy of sensitive information, like journalists, attorneys, clergy, and doctors, the effect of these searches can be quite chilling. We have laws that preserve the privacy of patients and attorneys’ clients—even journalists are protected by shield laws in most states—but there’s no such protection when CBP seizes electronic devices.
“The border has become a rights-free zone for Americans who have to travel,” Senator Ron Wyden said in a statement to TAC. “The founders never could have imagined that the government would be able to sift through your entire digital life, from pictures to emails and even where you’ve been, just because you decide to take a vacation or travel for work.”
Border searches of electronic devices have exploded at an exponential rate in recent years: in 2018, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) searched over 33,295 smartphones, laptops, and other electronic devices; up nine percent from fiscal year 2017 and over six times the number searched in 2012. And that’s just the statistics from CBP; Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does not maintain records of the number of electronic device searches it conducts.“The government is accessing all your private data,” Sophia Cope, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), told TAC. These “deeply intrusive” searches of electronic devices “reveal a lot about you: your emails, contacts, bank history, internet searches, medical history, social media usage, and political beliefs.”
The “border is not a Constitution-free zone,” said Cope. But right now, it’s essentially functioning as one, as laws that protect Americans privacy are being run over roughshod by agents at the border.
In a unanimous decision in 2014, the Supreme Court ruled that when a person has been arrested, law enforcement need a warrant to search their electronic devices.
But government agents at the border assert that they can search anyone’s device, at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all. CBP has largely been operating under its own rules; they say they do not need a warrant, or even probable cause, to conduct this digital invasion because of the “border search exception” to the Fourth Amendment’s requirement for probable cause or a warrant.
A lawsuit brought by EFF and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argues that these searches are in violation of the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
For travelers whose professions require they maintain the privacy of sensitive information, like journalists, attorneys, clergy, and doctors, the effect of these searches can be quite chilling. We have laws that preserve the privacy of patients and attorneys’ clients—even journalists are protected by shield laws in most states—but there’s no such protection when CBP seizes electronic devices.
by Barbara Boland, The American Conservative | Read more:
Image: Michael Ball/Wikimedia Commons
Blindsided: Alaska’s University System Pleads for a Lifeline
More than a month after Alaska lawmakers settled on a plan to cut $5 million in support for the state’s universities, Gov. Mike J. Dunleavy shocked the state last month by using a veto to cut much deeper, taking away $130 million more from the system that gave him his master’s degree.
Mr. Dunleavy, a Republican in his first year as governor, has seized on a hawkish approach to budgeting, in order to fulfill a campaign promise to increase the amount of oil-revenue dividends the state pays each Alaska resident, to about $3,000 a year.
The governor’s slashing of state funding left university leaders blindsided and in turmoil. The university’s supporters have embarked on a desperate scramble to persuade lawmakers to override the governor’s line-item veto, which would reduce the operating funds the university system gets from the state by 41 percent.
With a special legislative session convening on Monday, they have just five days to do so before the cuts become official.
“I think people are actually frightened,” said Maria Williams, a professor who chairs the University of Alaska’s Faculty Alliance. “I’m frightened because I feel that what is happening is a drastic reshaping of the state of Alaska.”
The showdown in the Legislature this week comes at a time of economic trouble in the state. While much of the United States has benefited from robust economic growth in recent years, Alaska’s fortunes have been largely tied to those of the state’s declining oil and gas industry. Falling oil revenues have brought on a persistent recession that has forced the state to confront lingering questions about how to best revive its economy.
Faced with looming deficits, political leaders avoided imposing a state sales tax or personal income tax, and chose to reduce payouts from the oil dividend fund instead. But the reductions were unpopular with some voters, and Mr. Dunleavy won election last year promising not only to restore the full dividend payments for the future but to fight for catch-up payments to make up for past reductions.
Leaders of the University of Alaska system, which serves more than 26,000 students from Juneau to Fairbanks, expect the governor’s budget cut to result in the shuttering of some satellite campuses, the elimination of hundreds of staff and faculty positions and an unprecedented reduction in the number of students the system is able to serve.
Mr. Dunleavy, a former teacher who got a master’s in education from the University of Alaska system, said his cuts to the state budget, including those for the university system, were necessary to lay a better foundation for private-sector job growth. But Jim Johnsen, the president of the university, said a strong university system was necessary to develop innovators and training for a work force that is increasingly dependent on postsecondary education.
“There is really no strong state without a strong university,” Mr. Johnsen said. “It just doesn’t exist.”
Paying the dividend
During his campaign last year, Mr. Dunleavy vowed to balance the state’s budget while avoiding new taxes, and to provide Alaskans with bigger payouts from the Alaska Permanent Fund, which holds oil revenue for later distribution. Lawmakers gave each Alaskan a $1,600 dividend last year; an old formula for the payouts that the governor hopes to revive would yield payments of about $3,000 a person this year, according to Bryce Edgmon, the speaker of the State House.
To raise the dividend while lowering the state’s deficit, Mr. Dunleavy proposed a large budget cut for the university system earlier this year. But after the university system worked closely with lawmakers through the budget-writing process, the Alaska Legislature settled on a reduction of just $5 million in the $327 million of operating-budget support the state provides.
Mr. Johnsen, fearing that the governor might not stomach the Legislature’s plan, met with Mr. Dunleavy in late May and quietly provided him with a written plan that he regarded as a drastic alternative: A $49 million reduction spread over several years, with significant cuts to personnel and “a reduced capacity to serve our students and our state.” Mr. Johnsen said he thought that such a reduction would be a challenge that would force some difficult choices, but one that the university could handle.
“It was an interesting discussion,” Mr. Johnsen said in an interview about his talk with the governor. “He nodded his head. He stood up. He shook my hand. He said, ‘We’ll talk.’”
The governor used a line-item veto to cut the operating support the state gives the university by 41 percent. University leaders said the cut would sharply reduce the number of students the school could serve.
The next time they spoke was the morning of Mr. Dunleavy’s veto announcement, he said. Legislative leaders had also been left in the dark. (...)
Along with the cuts to the university, Mr. Dunleavy also used his veto to push deep spending reductions elsewhere in the state budget. He eliminated funding for the Alaska State Council on the Arts, for public television and radio, and for a benefits program for older people.
He also cut $334,700 from the state’s appellate court system, writing in a veto document that the amount reflected the cost of government-funded abortion services. Mr. Dunleavy disliked a state Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that struck down state regulations that would have curtailed abortion coverage under Medicaid.
Despite all the cuts, the governor did not manage to completely close the state’s budget gap, which has grown in recent years as oil prices and revenues have declined and the state’s economy has been in recession. With a gap of hundreds of millions of dollars still remaining, Mr. Dunleavy suggested in announcing the veto that more cuts could be coming.
“Next year, it’s our goal to complete this process,” Mr. Dunleavy said.
An uncertain vote
Overriding the governor’s veto would require a three-quarters majority of the state’s 60 representatives and senators. More than half of them are Republicans. [ed. Who are so dysfunctional they can't even decide where to meet.]
Republican Party officials have celebrated Mr. Dunleavy’s actions in recent days, among them the state chairman, Glenn Clary, who said last week that the governor understood that the state must live within its means.
“Alaska’s economic future is in good hands with our governor and his staff,” Mr. Clary said.
Mr. Dunleavy, a Republican in his first year as governor, has seized on a hawkish approach to budgeting, in order to fulfill a campaign promise to increase the amount of oil-revenue dividends the state pays each Alaska resident, to about $3,000 a year.
The governor’s slashing of state funding left university leaders blindsided and in turmoil. The university’s supporters have embarked on a desperate scramble to persuade lawmakers to override the governor’s line-item veto, which would reduce the operating funds the university system gets from the state by 41 percent.
With a special legislative session convening on Monday, they have just five days to do so before the cuts become official.“I think people are actually frightened,” said Maria Williams, a professor who chairs the University of Alaska’s Faculty Alliance. “I’m frightened because I feel that what is happening is a drastic reshaping of the state of Alaska.”
The showdown in the Legislature this week comes at a time of economic trouble in the state. While much of the United States has benefited from robust economic growth in recent years, Alaska’s fortunes have been largely tied to those of the state’s declining oil and gas industry. Falling oil revenues have brought on a persistent recession that has forced the state to confront lingering questions about how to best revive its economy.
Faced with looming deficits, political leaders avoided imposing a state sales tax or personal income tax, and chose to reduce payouts from the oil dividend fund instead. But the reductions were unpopular with some voters, and Mr. Dunleavy won election last year promising not only to restore the full dividend payments for the future but to fight for catch-up payments to make up for past reductions.
Leaders of the University of Alaska system, which serves more than 26,000 students from Juneau to Fairbanks, expect the governor’s budget cut to result in the shuttering of some satellite campuses, the elimination of hundreds of staff and faculty positions and an unprecedented reduction in the number of students the system is able to serve.
Mr. Dunleavy, a former teacher who got a master’s in education from the University of Alaska system, said his cuts to the state budget, including those for the university system, were necessary to lay a better foundation for private-sector job growth. But Jim Johnsen, the president of the university, said a strong university system was necessary to develop innovators and training for a work force that is increasingly dependent on postsecondary education.
“There is really no strong state without a strong university,” Mr. Johnsen said. “It just doesn’t exist.”
Paying the dividend
During his campaign last year, Mr. Dunleavy vowed to balance the state’s budget while avoiding new taxes, and to provide Alaskans with bigger payouts from the Alaska Permanent Fund, which holds oil revenue for later distribution. Lawmakers gave each Alaskan a $1,600 dividend last year; an old formula for the payouts that the governor hopes to revive would yield payments of about $3,000 a person this year, according to Bryce Edgmon, the speaker of the State House.
To raise the dividend while lowering the state’s deficit, Mr. Dunleavy proposed a large budget cut for the university system earlier this year. But after the university system worked closely with lawmakers through the budget-writing process, the Alaska Legislature settled on a reduction of just $5 million in the $327 million of operating-budget support the state provides.
Mr. Johnsen, fearing that the governor might not stomach the Legislature’s plan, met with Mr. Dunleavy in late May and quietly provided him with a written plan that he regarded as a drastic alternative: A $49 million reduction spread over several years, with significant cuts to personnel and “a reduced capacity to serve our students and our state.” Mr. Johnsen said he thought that such a reduction would be a challenge that would force some difficult choices, but one that the university could handle.
“It was an interesting discussion,” Mr. Johnsen said in an interview about his talk with the governor. “He nodded his head. He stood up. He shook my hand. He said, ‘We’ll talk.’”
The governor used a line-item veto to cut the operating support the state gives the university by 41 percent. University leaders said the cut would sharply reduce the number of students the school could serve.
The next time they spoke was the morning of Mr. Dunleavy’s veto announcement, he said. Legislative leaders had also been left in the dark. (...)
Along with the cuts to the university, Mr. Dunleavy also used his veto to push deep spending reductions elsewhere in the state budget. He eliminated funding for the Alaska State Council on the Arts, for public television and radio, and for a benefits program for older people.
He also cut $334,700 from the state’s appellate court system, writing in a veto document that the amount reflected the cost of government-funded abortion services. Mr. Dunleavy disliked a state Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that struck down state regulations that would have curtailed abortion coverage under Medicaid.
Despite all the cuts, the governor did not manage to completely close the state’s budget gap, which has grown in recent years as oil prices and revenues have declined and the state’s economy has been in recession. With a gap of hundreds of millions of dollars still remaining, Mr. Dunleavy suggested in announcing the veto that more cuts could be coming.
“Next year, it’s our goal to complete this process,” Mr. Dunleavy said.
An uncertain vote
Overriding the governor’s veto would require a three-quarters majority of the state’s 60 representatives and senators. More than half of them are Republicans. [ed. Who are so dysfunctional they can't even decide where to meet.]
Republican Party officials have celebrated Mr. Dunleavy’s actions in recent days, among them the state chairman, Glenn Clary, who said last week that the governor understood that the state must live within its means.
“Alaska’s economic future is in good hands with our governor and his staff,” Mr. Clary said.
by Mike Baker, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Joshua Corbett for The New York Times
[ed. I lived in Alaska for nearly 40 years and am just sick at what the state has become: short-sighted, greedy, entitled, and mean. Rather than institute a state income tax, sales tax, or any other kind of tax, the governor and majority Republican legislature continue to cut state services and programs, just to pass out (MORE) free money to every resident. It's the worst kind of political pandering. See also: A partial list of Dunleavy’s line-item budget vetoes (ADN); and, because this seems to be the direction they're heading: the Kansas Experiment (Wikipedia). God even seems to be sending them a message.]
Sunday, July 7, 2019
Fall; or, Dodge in Hell
Neal Stephenson’s New Novel — Part Tech, Part Fantasy — Dazzles
Straw poll: Who thinks we’re living in the Matrix?
On the one hand, are we really to believe a single human is responsible for the body of work — entertaining, brilliant, immense — that Neal Stephenson has produced over the past quarter-century? Turning out thousand-page novels every couple of years? It seems much more likely that a computer is behind all of this.
On the other hand, have you read Neal Stephenson? His mind is capable of going places no one else has ever imagined, let alone rendered in photorealist prose. And he doesn’t just go to those places; he takes us with him. The very fact of Stephenson’s existence might be the best argument we have against the simulation hypothesis.
His latest, “Fall; or, Dodge in Hell,” is another piece of evidence in the anti-Matrix case: a staggering feat of imagination, intelligence and stamina. For long stretches, at least. Between those long stretches, there are sections that, while never uninteresting, are somewhat less successful. To expect any different, especially in a work of this length, would be to hold it to an impossible standard. Somewhere in this 900-page book is a 600-page book. One that has the same story, but weighs less. Without those 300 pages, though, it wouldn’t be Neal Stephenson. It’s not possible to separate the essential from the decorative. Nor would we want that, even if it were were. Not only do his fans not mind the extra — it’s what we came for.
In this particular case, the extra stuff is also kind of the point. The mind-melting density of detail in Stephenson’s work can sometimes overwhelm or bog down the narrative, but in “Fall” it is very much in service of the book’s subject: reality, and how it might one day be simulated. How those simulations could be iterated and upgraded over time, through technological progress and at great financial cost, to an arbitrary degree of verisimilitude. How the resources of our “Meatspace” civilization would increasingly become inputs and raw material for the creation and improvement of a digital civilization (“Bitworld”), gradually sucking all of humanity into the Matrix in the process. Exploring the implications and possibilities of this, on a grand and granular scale, plays to Stephenson’s strengths. This is a case of author and substance and story and style all lining up; a series of lenses perfectly arranged to focus the power and precision of Stephenson’s laser-beam intellect.
The world-famous billionaire Richard “Dodge” Forthrast made his fortune developing T’Rain, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), much like World of Warcraft. In his later years, Dodge has settled down somewhat, attending to his gaming empire, while also managing to enjoy time with his family. (Pause here to note: Although “Fall” features several characters who have appeared in the Stephenson universe, including the Forthrast family, it is not a sequel to 2011’s “Reamde” and can be read as a stand-alone work.)
One morning, while undergoing a simple medical procedure, Dodge suffers an unusual complication that causes him to stop breathing. By the time doctors are able to get him on a ventilator, he is brain-dead.
Dodge’s last will and testament, written years earlier and semi-forgotten, sets off a chain of events (legal, familial, financial) that eventually lead to Dodge’s brain (or more specifically, its “connectome,” the totality of its data and structures and connections between every cell therein) being scanned and turned into digital information, which is then uploaded into the cloud until such time as technology improves to the point where Dodge’s consciousness is able to be restored — whatever that means.
Years go by. Technology, as it tends to do, improves. Dodge is eventually brought back to life, or a kind of virtual afterlife, in the “Bitworld” where he exists as ones and zeros. Initially inchoate, Dodge’s mind evolves, along with the digital environment he creates around him, a kind of information-age Genesis story that Stephenson describes evocatively.
From there, Stephenson begins to leap forward in time, in fits and starts, the story eventually spanning several decades. Along the way, he manages many sharp bits of social satire. An elaborate DDoS attack exploits the filter bubbles through which reality is mediated for large portions of the population. A portrait emerges of an America divided: the United States enclosing within it another nation, Ameristan, the borders of which are “not a line on a map,” impossible to demarcate and having “no official reality” but nevertheless all too real in effect. A country in which those with means can afford to hire personal “editors” whose “sole job was to filter incoming and outgoing information,” while those who can’t afford the privilege are more likely to have unfiltered exposure to “flumes … of porn, propaganda and death threats, 99.9 percent of which were algorithmically generated.”
For a good long while in the middle, the novel alternates between realms, digital and analog. Early choices, or sometimes relatively arbitrary initial conditions, end up shaping future events and technologies. In this case, the cosmology, topography and even the theology of an entire universe — Bitworld — affect Meatspace, and the two realms are linked in a feedback loop of cause and effect, resources and outcomes (dollars, computing power).
Without spoiling too much, the last quarter of the book, itself the length of a fairly decent-sized novel, reads like high fantasy — expertly written fanfic of some long-running swords-and-wizards epic. Or an exhaustive transcript of every turn, saving throw and dice roll of the most elaborate Dungeons and Dragons campaign of all time. Has Neal Stephenson flipped genres, mid-book? What is this fantasy doing in my science fiction? Although the action lags a bit in this final section, narratively it is the inevitable (if surprising) endpoint of the story that began all those years ago when Dodge died. No matter how far afield it might seem, it’s all of a piece, derived rigorously from Stephenson’s initial premises. This is hard sci-fi, but it goes so far in its speculative extrapolation toward that end of the spectrum that it hits the end, goes through and comes back around the other side. The result is a story that touches on society, technology, spirituality and even eschatology, a far-reaching attempt at a grand myth that is breathtaking in scope and ambition.
by Charles Yu, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Matthieu Bourel
Straw poll: Who thinks we’re living in the Matrix?
On the one hand, are we really to believe a single human is responsible for the body of work — entertaining, brilliant, immense — that Neal Stephenson has produced over the past quarter-century? Turning out thousand-page novels every couple of years? It seems much more likely that a computer is behind all of this.
On the other hand, have you read Neal Stephenson? His mind is capable of going places no one else has ever imagined, let alone rendered in photorealist prose. And he doesn’t just go to those places; he takes us with him. The very fact of Stephenson’s existence might be the best argument we have against the simulation hypothesis.His latest, “Fall; or, Dodge in Hell,” is another piece of evidence in the anti-Matrix case: a staggering feat of imagination, intelligence and stamina. For long stretches, at least. Between those long stretches, there are sections that, while never uninteresting, are somewhat less successful. To expect any different, especially in a work of this length, would be to hold it to an impossible standard. Somewhere in this 900-page book is a 600-page book. One that has the same story, but weighs less. Without those 300 pages, though, it wouldn’t be Neal Stephenson. It’s not possible to separate the essential from the decorative. Nor would we want that, even if it were were. Not only do his fans not mind the extra — it’s what we came for.
In this particular case, the extra stuff is also kind of the point. The mind-melting density of detail in Stephenson’s work can sometimes overwhelm or bog down the narrative, but in “Fall” it is very much in service of the book’s subject: reality, and how it might one day be simulated. How those simulations could be iterated and upgraded over time, through technological progress and at great financial cost, to an arbitrary degree of verisimilitude. How the resources of our “Meatspace” civilization would increasingly become inputs and raw material for the creation and improvement of a digital civilization (“Bitworld”), gradually sucking all of humanity into the Matrix in the process. Exploring the implications and possibilities of this, on a grand and granular scale, plays to Stephenson’s strengths. This is a case of author and substance and story and style all lining up; a series of lenses perfectly arranged to focus the power and precision of Stephenson’s laser-beam intellect.
The world-famous billionaire Richard “Dodge” Forthrast made his fortune developing T’Rain, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), much like World of Warcraft. In his later years, Dodge has settled down somewhat, attending to his gaming empire, while also managing to enjoy time with his family. (Pause here to note: Although “Fall” features several characters who have appeared in the Stephenson universe, including the Forthrast family, it is not a sequel to 2011’s “Reamde” and can be read as a stand-alone work.)
One morning, while undergoing a simple medical procedure, Dodge suffers an unusual complication that causes him to stop breathing. By the time doctors are able to get him on a ventilator, he is brain-dead.
Dodge’s last will and testament, written years earlier and semi-forgotten, sets off a chain of events (legal, familial, financial) that eventually lead to Dodge’s brain (or more specifically, its “connectome,” the totality of its data and structures and connections between every cell therein) being scanned and turned into digital information, which is then uploaded into the cloud until such time as technology improves to the point where Dodge’s consciousness is able to be restored — whatever that means.
Years go by. Technology, as it tends to do, improves. Dodge is eventually brought back to life, or a kind of virtual afterlife, in the “Bitworld” where he exists as ones and zeros. Initially inchoate, Dodge’s mind evolves, along with the digital environment he creates around him, a kind of information-age Genesis story that Stephenson describes evocatively.
From there, Stephenson begins to leap forward in time, in fits and starts, the story eventually spanning several decades. Along the way, he manages many sharp bits of social satire. An elaborate DDoS attack exploits the filter bubbles through which reality is mediated for large portions of the population. A portrait emerges of an America divided: the United States enclosing within it another nation, Ameristan, the borders of which are “not a line on a map,” impossible to demarcate and having “no official reality” but nevertheless all too real in effect. A country in which those with means can afford to hire personal “editors” whose “sole job was to filter incoming and outgoing information,” while those who can’t afford the privilege are more likely to have unfiltered exposure to “flumes … of porn, propaganda and death threats, 99.9 percent of which were algorithmically generated.”
For a good long while in the middle, the novel alternates between realms, digital and analog. Early choices, or sometimes relatively arbitrary initial conditions, end up shaping future events and technologies. In this case, the cosmology, topography and even the theology of an entire universe — Bitworld — affect Meatspace, and the two realms are linked in a feedback loop of cause and effect, resources and outcomes (dollars, computing power).
Without spoiling too much, the last quarter of the book, itself the length of a fairly decent-sized novel, reads like high fantasy — expertly written fanfic of some long-running swords-and-wizards epic. Or an exhaustive transcript of every turn, saving throw and dice roll of the most elaborate Dungeons and Dragons campaign of all time. Has Neal Stephenson flipped genres, mid-book? What is this fantasy doing in my science fiction? Although the action lags a bit in this final section, narratively it is the inevitable (if surprising) endpoint of the story that began all those years ago when Dodge died. No matter how far afield it might seem, it’s all of a piece, derived rigorously from Stephenson’s initial premises. This is hard sci-fi, but it goes so far in its speculative extrapolation toward that end of the spectrum that it hits the end, goes through and comes back around the other side. The result is a story that touches on society, technology, spirituality and even eschatology, a far-reaching attempt at a grand myth that is breathtaking in scope and ambition.
by Charles Yu, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Matthieu Bourel
There Should Be a Public Option for Everything
The struggle between capitalism and socialism is back. “America will never be a socialist country,” President Trump tells us, even as Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez champion democratic socialism. At the same time, a consensus is growing — from Ray Dalio, the billionaire hedge fund manager, to Joseph Stiglitz, the economist and Nobel winner — that capitalism needs major reforms if it is going to survive. Perhaps surprisingly, given the trend toward the privatization of public services over the last generation, American history offers a way forward: the public option.
Most Americans probably associate the idea of a public option with health care. When the Affordable Care Act was debated in 2010, proponents of a public option wanted anyone to be able to buy into a government health insurance option like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans. But the public option isn’t a recent policy innovation, it isn’t limited to health care and, historically speaking, it hasn’t even been particularly controversial as an approach to public policy.
Americans love public options and have relied on them for hundreds of years. We just don’t usually think of them with that label. A public swimming pool is a public option; many people have private swimming pools. A public library is a public option; many universities have private libraries. Public parks, public schools, public defenders in courtrooms — the list goes on. They are all public options, government provisions of goods and services that coexist with the private marketplace.
Throughout our history, Americans have turned to public options as a way to promote equal opportunity and reconcile markets with democracy. For example, public libraries allow anyone to read, check out books or surf the internet. This expands educational opportunities and guarantees access to information to everyone, but it doesn’t prevent people from buying books at the bookstore if they choose.
Public options also benefit competitive markets and make capitalism work better. Public options in the form of public schools guarantee that we have an educated work force, and services like public transit and the post office support economic activity. The public option also competes in the marketplace with private options, expanding choices for consumers and acting as a check on monopoly power in concentrated sectors.
And whether it’s a pickup game of basketball or a shared picnic table at a state park, public options bring together people from different walks of life. They also help make our democracy more vibrant by giving us a shared set of experiences and goals to talk over in the public sphere.
by Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne L. Alstott, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Tim Lahan
Most Americans probably associate the idea of a public option with health care. When the Affordable Care Act was debated in 2010, proponents of a public option wanted anyone to be able to buy into a government health insurance option like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans. But the public option isn’t a recent policy innovation, it isn’t limited to health care and, historically speaking, it hasn’t even been particularly controversial as an approach to public policy.Americans love public options and have relied on them for hundreds of years. We just don’t usually think of them with that label. A public swimming pool is a public option; many people have private swimming pools. A public library is a public option; many universities have private libraries. Public parks, public schools, public defenders in courtrooms — the list goes on. They are all public options, government provisions of goods and services that coexist with the private marketplace.
Throughout our history, Americans have turned to public options as a way to promote equal opportunity and reconcile markets with democracy. For example, public libraries allow anyone to read, check out books or surf the internet. This expands educational opportunities and guarantees access to information to everyone, but it doesn’t prevent people from buying books at the bookstore if they choose.
Public options also benefit competitive markets and make capitalism work better. Public options in the form of public schools guarantee that we have an educated work force, and services like public transit and the post office support economic activity. The public option also competes in the marketplace with private options, expanding choices for consumers and acting as a check on monopoly power in concentrated sectors.
And whether it’s a pickup game of basketball or a shared picnic table at a state park, public options bring together people from different walks of life. They also help make our democracy more vibrant by giving us a shared set of experiences and goals to talk over in the public sphere.
by Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne L. Alstott, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Tim Lahan
Saturday, July 6, 2019
Climate Change Update
Report: If Earth Continues To Warm At Current Rate Moon Will Be Mostly Underwater By 2400 (The Onion)
Image: uncredited
Thoughts on the Impromptu Kim-Trump Summit
1. South Korean President Moon Jae-in told journalists a week before the DMZ meeting between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump that it was likely to occur, and U.S. news reports also indicate that Trump’s tweeted invitation to the North Korean leader while in Osaka was not spontaneous.
2. Following Trump’s wild threats after his election to rain down “fire and fury” on the DPRK (and thus the entirety of the Korean Peninsula), South Korea and North Korea quickly joined together in an effort to cope with an obviously unstable, dangerous new world leader who could annihilate the whole Korean nation. In February 2017 a South Korean delegation delivered a letter from the North Korean leader to Trump proposing talks. South Korea has since played a de facto mediating role between the U.S. and Pyongyang, Moon repeatedly meeting with Kim and the two apparently coordinating relations with Trump.
3. Trump’s visit to Seoul after the Osaka G-20 summit had been announced in advance. Moon may himself have suggested that during the trip Trump meet Kim at the DMZ to indicate support for the ongoing process of normalized relations between north and south. (The U.S. press downplays or doesn’t grasp the significance of the two states’ declaration of the end to the state of war between them, and the launching of initiatives for rail links and expanded trade ties. Some pundits complain that South Korea is attempting to circumvent U.S. sanctions on the north. Pyongyang notes that since Seoul must obey the U.S., its own negotiations with the U.S. must be one-on-one, not mediated by the south.) Moon looked very pleased posing for photos with Kim and Trump at the DMZ.
4. Every student of Korean history knows that Korea’s fate has been largely determined by the relations between larger, more powerful neighboring nations: China, Japan and Russia. Since it occupied the southern part of the Korean Peninsula in 1945, the U.S. has also shaped that fate. China has been Korea’s historical protector, patron, and teacher; its ties with Korea are “as close as lips and teeth.” Japan has been Seoul’s antagonist, from the Wako pirate raids of the medieval period and the horrific Hideyoshi invasion in the 1590s to colonization in the twentieth century; Tokyo for its part has viewed Korea as “a dagger aimed at the heart of Japan.” Russia has been an opportunistic imperialist, hosting the Korean king in its Seoul legation in the 1890s during a period of instability, seeking trade advantages, installing Kim Il-song in the north in 1945.
All have an interest in maintaining stability on the peninsula. China dreads the prospect of a refugee crisis caused by war, and the reunification of Korea on U.S. imperialist terms. Russia is less concerned but keen on restoring full trade ties with both Koreas, and Putin is cultivating a reputation as a thoughtful statesman striving to facilitate peace (the Astana and Minsk processes, for example). So I would not be surprised if Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin, or both, urged Trump to reach out again to Kim. They are no doubt saying: “Look this is our part of the world; North Korea is much closer to us than you and its nukes threaten us more than you. But you scare us more than the DPRK. We too want disarmament, we just want no more wild threats but rather calm protracted negotiations.”
5. The U.S. media’s general dismissal of the DMZ photo opportunity—as a mere political stunt producing no substance other than to unnecessarily elevate Chairman Kim’s stature in the world—is driven by anti-Trump sentiment rather than a critical examination of its meaning. An MSNBC talking head just stated that if the U.S. accepts a freeze on the DPRK nuclear program, that would change the balance of power in the region and pose an immanent threat to the United States. This remains the norm in televised analysis. Increasingly Trump is depicted as a threat to national security due to his “coddling of dictators” or unwillingness to confront them, Hillary Clinton-style (in Syria). He’s accused of being unpredictable, mercurial, spontaneous, rude to his subordinates and dismissive of their advice. But worst of all from some critics’ standpoint is his failure to maintain the status quo requiring ongoing confrontation.
One doesn’t hear common sense: that this was a rational friendly gesture towards a country that Trump has rationally decided not to attack.
6. The absence of John Bolton, assigned to diplomatic tasks in Mongolia, suggests that Trump wanted to message Kim that, yes, he had heard the DPRK Foreign Ministry’s criticisms of that war-monger and wanted to signify a departure from Bolton’s belligerent line. That the U.S. press would leak the information that Trump might accept a nuclear freeze by the DPRK in return for some sanctions relief, and that Bolton would immediately respond with an angry tweet dissociating himself from that position, suggests that Bolton is on his way out, which can only be good.
7. Is it not obvious that the South Korean state, with twice the North’s population and many times its GDP, and a huge well-equipped military, does not require the presence of 25,000 U.S. troops and the visitation of nuclear-armed aircraft carriers to defend it from the north, which hosts no foreign troops? Shouldn’t the world support the demilitarization of the Korean Peninsula, and its peaceful gradual reunification? U.S. pundits want us to believe that U.S. troops everywhere in the world maintain “security” and “stability” and “defend our national interests.” (The latter should be understood to mean corporate interests, and geopolitical interests centering on capitalist profit.) But the Korean people would just as soon be left alone to work out their historical reconciliation, or assisted by interested parties (like the U.S. and China) in achieving that end. Trumps visit to the DMZ was welcomed by north and south Koreans, causing all to breathe easier.
2. Following Trump’s wild threats after his election to rain down “fire and fury” on the DPRK (and thus the entirety of the Korean Peninsula), South Korea and North Korea quickly joined together in an effort to cope with an obviously unstable, dangerous new world leader who could annihilate the whole Korean nation. In February 2017 a South Korean delegation delivered a letter from the North Korean leader to Trump proposing talks. South Korea has since played a de facto mediating role between the U.S. and Pyongyang, Moon repeatedly meeting with Kim and the two apparently coordinating relations with Trump.
3. Trump’s visit to Seoul after the Osaka G-20 summit had been announced in advance. Moon may himself have suggested that during the trip Trump meet Kim at the DMZ to indicate support for the ongoing process of normalized relations between north and south. (The U.S. press downplays or doesn’t grasp the significance of the two states’ declaration of the end to the state of war between them, and the launching of initiatives for rail links and expanded trade ties. Some pundits complain that South Korea is attempting to circumvent U.S. sanctions on the north. Pyongyang notes that since Seoul must obey the U.S., its own negotiations with the U.S. must be one-on-one, not mediated by the south.) Moon looked very pleased posing for photos with Kim and Trump at the DMZ.
4. Every student of Korean history knows that Korea’s fate has been largely determined by the relations between larger, more powerful neighboring nations: China, Japan and Russia. Since it occupied the southern part of the Korean Peninsula in 1945, the U.S. has also shaped that fate. China has been Korea’s historical protector, patron, and teacher; its ties with Korea are “as close as lips and teeth.” Japan has been Seoul’s antagonist, from the Wako pirate raids of the medieval period and the horrific Hideyoshi invasion in the 1590s to colonization in the twentieth century; Tokyo for its part has viewed Korea as “a dagger aimed at the heart of Japan.” Russia has been an opportunistic imperialist, hosting the Korean king in its Seoul legation in the 1890s during a period of instability, seeking trade advantages, installing Kim Il-song in the north in 1945.
All have an interest in maintaining stability on the peninsula. China dreads the prospect of a refugee crisis caused by war, and the reunification of Korea on U.S. imperialist terms. Russia is less concerned but keen on restoring full trade ties with both Koreas, and Putin is cultivating a reputation as a thoughtful statesman striving to facilitate peace (the Astana and Minsk processes, for example). So I would not be surprised if Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin, or both, urged Trump to reach out again to Kim. They are no doubt saying: “Look this is our part of the world; North Korea is much closer to us than you and its nukes threaten us more than you. But you scare us more than the DPRK. We too want disarmament, we just want no more wild threats but rather calm protracted negotiations.”
5. The U.S. media’s general dismissal of the DMZ photo opportunity—as a mere political stunt producing no substance other than to unnecessarily elevate Chairman Kim’s stature in the world—is driven by anti-Trump sentiment rather than a critical examination of its meaning. An MSNBC talking head just stated that if the U.S. accepts a freeze on the DPRK nuclear program, that would change the balance of power in the region and pose an immanent threat to the United States. This remains the norm in televised analysis. Increasingly Trump is depicted as a threat to national security due to his “coddling of dictators” or unwillingness to confront them, Hillary Clinton-style (in Syria). He’s accused of being unpredictable, mercurial, spontaneous, rude to his subordinates and dismissive of their advice. But worst of all from some critics’ standpoint is his failure to maintain the status quo requiring ongoing confrontation.
One doesn’t hear common sense: that this was a rational friendly gesture towards a country that Trump has rationally decided not to attack.
6. The absence of John Bolton, assigned to diplomatic tasks in Mongolia, suggests that Trump wanted to message Kim that, yes, he had heard the DPRK Foreign Ministry’s criticisms of that war-monger and wanted to signify a departure from Bolton’s belligerent line. That the U.S. press would leak the information that Trump might accept a nuclear freeze by the DPRK in return for some sanctions relief, and that Bolton would immediately respond with an angry tweet dissociating himself from that position, suggests that Bolton is on his way out, which can only be good.
7. Is it not obvious that the South Korean state, with twice the North’s population and many times its GDP, and a huge well-equipped military, does not require the presence of 25,000 U.S. troops and the visitation of nuclear-armed aircraft carriers to defend it from the north, which hosts no foreign troops? Shouldn’t the world support the demilitarization of the Korean Peninsula, and its peaceful gradual reunification? U.S. pundits want us to believe that U.S. troops everywhere in the world maintain “security” and “stability” and “defend our national interests.” (The latter should be understood to mean corporate interests, and geopolitical interests centering on capitalist profit.) But the Korean people would just as soon be left alone to work out their historical reconciliation, or assisted by interested parties (like the U.S. and China) in achieving that end. Trumps visit to the DMZ was welcomed by north and south Koreans, causing all to breathe easier.
by Gary Leupp, Counterpunch | Read more:
[ed. See also: North Korea Nuclear Freeze? Finally, a Realistic Proposal.]
Are You Really the ‘Real’ You?
Alex was a bouncer when he changed his mind about who he was. Or maybe he wasn’t a bouncer. Maybe he was only pretending.
In the year 2000, “reality TV” still sounded to most people like an oxymoron, a bizarre new genre that was half entertainment and half psychological warfare, where neither audience nor participants were quite sure which of them were the combatants.
The show Alex appeared on, Faking It, had a simple set-up: each week a participant with an archetypical identity would be tasked with learning a skill that jarred with that identity. The participant had four weeks to perfect that skill before being sent to a real event where they would have to pass undetected by experts asked to spot the imposter.
Elbow-patched Alex arrived on the programme as the toffee-nosed eldest son of an upper-class British family. He was 20 years old and as Oxbridge as it’s possible to imagine. If you took Bertrand Russell, bound him in leather and made him smoke a cigar made entirely of armchairs you’d still be several punt rides short. We meet him for the first time at his family’s country home, where he shows us around the grounds and introduces us to Roger, who is a horse.
Alex’s task on Faking It was to pass as a bouncer at one of London’s busiest nightclubs in the middle of Euro 2000. He is 5ft 6in and slight, with a body that kept a respectful distance from any image of athleticism. His clipped private-school consonants and eager-to-please eyes are obvious artefacts of a life spent very far from rowdy pubs. Alex is not deterred; he packs his clothes, says goodbye to his boyfriend Clinton, bids adieu to Roger, and sets out to fake it.
To help him act the part, he is provided with three advisers – kickboxing champion Tony, former police officer and security expert Charlie and voice coach William – and sent to live for a month with Tony on the 15th floor of a council block. Alex has never been to London before and as his taxi drives towards Tony’s flat, he stares out the window with his eyes and mouth open. “My God, look at this place. Laundrette – oh my God, there’s a – I don’t think I’ve ever seen a laundrette… There’s a mattress! There is a mattress, on the pavement… I’m going to get beaten, the absolute shit out of me, in this tie. And this jacket. Oh. My. God.”
How do you change your mind about who you really are? Presumably you start with a view about what your “true” self is and then go on to repudiate that view. But even that first step turns out to be remarkably difficult, because you have to work out what a “true” self could be. When Alex arrived on Faking It he thought he knew what his sense of “me-ness” looked like. It was marching him towards a future life in a big country house, going to horse trials, hunting and shooting. But as you’ve probably guessed, that isn’t how it worked out. Something about Faking It changed Alex’s mind about what his “true” self was really like.
How is that possible? What rational cogs are turning for people when they change their minds about who they are? Are beliefs about ourselves even the kind of thing we can be rational about, when we’re the ones who make those beliefs true? I had to ask Alex directly.
I found him in Australia, where he now lives. It’s been nearly 20 years since the programme first broadcast. His vowels have been hammered flat by years in Australia and he is not as affably eager to please. In some way I think I’d expected to know him, having seen him on TV, but when he says he’s changed he isn’t lying.
“Did going on the show really change your understanding of who you were?” I ask.
“Yes. Completely,” says Alex. ‘“After the show – or, after that experience, I don’t really look at it as a show any more – four or five weeks after I got back home to Oxford I left the UK and came to Australia. I literally dropped everything. I arrived in Australia with a backpack and not much else.”
Before that moment, Alex’s life had followed a predictable pattern. “And then the show was this sort of great chasm that broke that in my mind, and I went, ‘Hang on! I don’t have to do all those things any more. I don’t have to be someone’s son, or brother, or grandson, I can actually be… me.’ I wasn’t going on any mission of self-finding, because I didn’t realise I was lost.”
What is going on in this kind of mind-change? Is our sense of who we are a belief just like any other? More pressingly, how do we do it? Is it the kind of thing we can be persuaded into? What does it mean to have a belief about your true self? What even is a true self?
by Eleanor Gordon-Smith, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Michelle Thompson
In the year 2000, “reality TV” still sounded to most people like an oxymoron, a bizarre new genre that was half entertainment and half psychological warfare, where neither audience nor participants were quite sure which of them were the combatants.
The show Alex appeared on, Faking It, had a simple set-up: each week a participant with an archetypical identity would be tasked with learning a skill that jarred with that identity. The participant had four weeks to perfect that skill before being sent to a real event where they would have to pass undetected by experts asked to spot the imposter.Elbow-patched Alex arrived on the programme as the toffee-nosed eldest son of an upper-class British family. He was 20 years old and as Oxbridge as it’s possible to imagine. If you took Bertrand Russell, bound him in leather and made him smoke a cigar made entirely of armchairs you’d still be several punt rides short. We meet him for the first time at his family’s country home, where he shows us around the grounds and introduces us to Roger, who is a horse.
Alex’s task on Faking It was to pass as a bouncer at one of London’s busiest nightclubs in the middle of Euro 2000. He is 5ft 6in and slight, with a body that kept a respectful distance from any image of athleticism. His clipped private-school consonants and eager-to-please eyes are obvious artefacts of a life spent very far from rowdy pubs. Alex is not deterred; he packs his clothes, says goodbye to his boyfriend Clinton, bids adieu to Roger, and sets out to fake it.
To help him act the part, he is provided with three advisers – kickboxing champion Tony, former police officer and security expert Charlie and voice coach William – and sent to live for a month with Tony on the 15th floor of a council block. Alex has never been to London before and as his taxi drives towards Tony’s flat, he stares out the window with his eyes and mouth open. “My God, look at this place. Laundrette – oh my God, there’s a – I don’t think I’ve ever seen a laundrette… There’s a mattress! There is a mattress, on the pavement… I’m going to get beaten, the absolute shit out of me, in this tie. And this jacket. Oh. My. God.”
How do you change your mind about who you really are? Presumably you start with a view about what your “true” self is and then go on to repudiate that view. But even that first step turns out to be remarkably difficult, because you have to work out what a “true” self could be. When Alex arrived on Faking It he thought he knew what his sense of “me-ness” looked like. It was marching him towards a future life in a big country house, going to horse trials, hunting and shooting. But as you’ve probably guessed, that isn’t how it worked out. Something about Faking It changed Alex’s mind about what his “true” self was really like.
How is that possible? What rational cogs are turning for people when they change their minds about who they are? Are beliefs about ourselves even the kind of thing we can be rational about, when we’re the ones who make those beliefs true? I had to ask Alex directly.
I found him in Australia, where he now lives. It’s been nearly 20 years since the programme first broadcast. His vowels have been hammered flat by years in Australia and he is not as affably eager to please. In some way I think I’d expected to know him, having seen him on TV, but when he says he’s changed he isn’t lying.
“Did going on the show really change your understanding of who you were?” I ask.
“Yes. Completely,” says Alex. ‘“After the show – or, after that experience, I don’t really look at it as a show any more – four or five weeks after I got back home to Oxford I left the UK and came to Australia. I literally dropped everything. I arrived in Australia with a backpack and not much else.”
Before that moment, Alex’s life had followed a predictable pattern. “And then the show was this sort of great chasm that broke that in my mind, and I went, ‘Hang on! I don’t have to do all those things any more. I don’t have to be someone’s son, or brother, or grandson, I can actually be… me.’ I wasn’t going on any mission of self-finding, because I didn’t realise I was lost.”
What is going on in this kind of mind-change? Is our sense of who we are a belief just like any other? More pressingly, how do we do it? Is it the kind of thing we can be persuaded into? What does it mean to have a belief about your true self? What even is a true self?
by Eleanor Gordon-Smith, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Michelle Thompson
Friday, July 5, 2019
The Wild Ride at Babe.Net
In the spring of 2018, I visited the offices of the millennial/Gen-Z-oriented website babe.net, a sunny loft space in Williamsburg, just around the corner from Vice. Babe.net — now shuttered — was then at the frothy peak of its existence. I made sure to wear my coolest pants.
The site’s managing editor, Eleni Mitzali, a 24-year-old blonde with a sharp bob and half-a-dozen tiny earrings who told me she only listened to podcasts about business strategy and murder, offered me a doughnut while I waited for the day to start. I sat on a small couch, in front of a DIY wall-hanging of Rihanna photos, while Rihanna songs played on a nearby Sonos. Above an archway hung a tweet that a staffer had printed out and enlarged: Overheard in LA (at my dinner table): What the fuck is babe dot net? — Bridget Phetasy (@BridgetPhetasy) January 15, 2018.
Great question. Babe.net had been humming along, catering to an audience of about 4 million monthly viewers, before it burst through the wall of collective cultural consciousness on a Saturday night that January with both middle fingers up: “I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life,” read the instantly viral headline. Babe more typically was full of articles with perfectly demented headlines like: “What Your Favorite Sex Position Says About What Kind of Hoe You Are”; “We Asked Girls How They Prepare for Dick Appointments, and WOW You Guys Are Some Evil Geniuses”; “We Found ’Em: The Last Remaining Beauty Bloggers With Their Original Faces”; “I’m Pretty Sure Kendall Jenner Is Gay, and I Have Evidence for Days.” (And the follow-up, “Taylor Swift Is Gay and I Have Evidence for Days.”) The site once launched a nearly brilliant March Madness–style bracket ranking “ugly hot guys” on a scale of Adam Driver to Ed Sheeran. Its natural stance was nihilist: A babe.net writer asked Jonathan Cheban, a.k.a. “the FoodGod,” what Kim Kardashian’s butthole tasted like and received a belligerent email response that started “Listen to me you little lowlife” and escalated from there. The writer published the screenshots.
Babe launched in 2016 as a vertical of Tab Media, the brainchild of a 29-year-old British journalist named Jack Rivlin. He’d started the site in 2009 while still a 19-year-old student at Cambridge. The Tab, like Babe, relied on content from a network of unpaid student journalists to write a mix of first-person and reported pieces about being young, along with coverage of cultural topics that mattered to 18-to-24-year-olds. In 2017, Rivlin reportedly walked into a meeting with Rupert Murdoch, hung-over, with glitter left on his face from the previous weekend’s music festival — then, according to the Guardian, he walked out with millions of dollars in funding. (Murdoch was one of a handful of investors, including the Knight Foundation, but he didn’t have operational involvement in Tab Media.)
The company scaled up and churned out more copy: Tab Media was already operating on 80 campuses across the U.K. and the U.S., but it expanded its network of contributors and grew babe.net’s editorial team. Babe became its own millennial-pink website, with an independent staff and its own URL, in May 2017. It would have been “babe.com” — so named because that’s what the founding editors liked to call their friends — but the URL already belonged to a camgirl site.
Every internet era gets the insurgent women’s site it deserves. Jezebel broke new ground with an article about a tampon stuck up a writer’s vagina; xoJane, a microgeneration later, outdid that with a cat hairball found in the same cavity. The Betches defended their right, as feminists (or not, who cares), to Brazilian-wax their vaginas, via sorority-girl screeds. Like the Betches, babe.net certainly wasn’t built to be feminist in any kind of traditional sense (after all, Murdoch was a funder and anarchic page-view-getting was the ethos). And yet babe.net was created during an era when to be a woman saying just about anything online was now, theoretically, classified as feminist. When I asked them about it, the site’s writers described theirs as “not the brand of feminism where we have to unconditionally support every woman no matter what she does. Because women can be problematic too.”
The site was frequently and defiantly unsanitized and “real.” Editor Amanda Ross, who was in charge of all the writers, told me she gave new writers links to the old Gawker archives to read in order to nail the tone. (Rarely had the new writers, with an average age of approximately 23, heard of Gawker — much less did they know about its fall.) “It’s like, you know, women have to care about politics, and you have to care about your appearance, but just the right amount,” Ross explained. She had been appointed the editor of babe.net in the fall of 2017, after working with Tab Media for two months. “And you have to care about sexual health but sometimes I just like, Don’t want to use a condom, I wanna use Plan B instead, you know what I mean?”
Babe took a shit on the shibboleths of media, not to mention feminist thought. For a moment, readers were eager to engage in scat-play. But what was always unclear was how much the site’s writers — often with little or no journalistic experience or training — understood the traditions they were turning inside out or ignoring. Nor was it clear whether staff recognized the parallels between the gray-area #MeToo themes of its Ansari piece and the complicated sexual power dynamics of their own office, the ones that would partly lead to the collapse of the site.
Last spring, at the time of my visit, the staff was getting used to the increased attention (and criticism) that had come along with the traffic from the Ansari story. There were some growing pains, maybe even an identity crisis. The site, Ross told me, was pivoting to more serious investigative journalism, though it would still have the content the people craved, like “What percent hoe are you?”
“I turn 25 tomorrow,” she said, groaning. “I’m aging out of the demographic.” Ross sat in the middle of a long table, fielding pitches from her staff and typing on her computer, twirling one of the coils of her blonde mermaid waves. It felt like a TMZ on TV reboot.
“So I think I want to do a story where I ask men to be my slave on Tinder, like as reparations,” said Ari Bines. Bines was a few months into her job at Babe and had quickly become one of site’s top traffic-getters. During college, she’d started her own blog about being big and black; at Babe, she’d added “… and likes to fuck” to her personal brand.
“Yes! Assigned,” yelled Ross. A young woman with a cool-girl Soviet-era mullet pitched a man-in-the-street video asking men if they knew where the clitoris was. Another staff writer wanted to use the corporate card to buy a haunted doll from eBay — for a story, of course.
Katie Way, the reporter who had written the Ansari piece, said she was working on catching pedophiles on Reddit and launching a series of articles by a young woman she’d reported on, Skoop Hernandez, who was imprisoned for killing her mom’s abusive boyfriend. Babe.net had officially tapped Hernandez to be its prison correspondent.
Sitting in the Babe bullpen with the dozen or so staffers working there at the time felt like a version of All the President’s Men, but with Ariana Grande on the radio and schemes to take down fuckboys instead of corrupt politicians. As advertised by the site’s official slogan, for “girls who don’t give a fuck,” Babe women appeared really not to give a fuck. It was thrilling, invigorating — if terrifying — to watch. These kids would never want to work at, like, the Atlantic, would they?
“I would love to work at the Atlantic,” Way said.
At the end of the day, as they often did, the staff transitioned into Thirsty Tuesday happy hour at their regular haunt, an Irish pub called the Craic. It was a chance for them all to hang out and “put drinks on a card that isn’t ours, basically,” explained Ross.
She sat in the center like a sorority-house den mother (she had, in fact, been in a sorority) and held court as the evening slipped into night, and beers turned to shots, and trips to the bathrooms were taken in pairs. Everyone had tiny tattoos and seemed to genuinely like hanging out with each other. The social-media editor, Syra Aburto, taught me the secret to texting quickly when you have long acrylics on. Another staffer sat down next to me, sweetly sipping a tequila sour with a maraschino cherry. “Oh, don’t be fooled,” Ross called out to me, pointing to maraschino-cherry girl. “She’s cute but savage. She’s a Virgo!” Eventually, someone suggested Union Pool, another made a joke (or not) about needing cocaine, and I decided to leave.
I would find out later that most of that day had been carefully calibrated to impress me. “You know how a teacher decorates the classroom on parents’ visiting day?” Bines said recently, laughing. “It was like that.” The Rihanna poster, the framed enlargements of highly trafficked articles on the wall, even the “What the Fuck is babe.net” sign on the archway had all been hung just for my arrival. The U.S. tab.com staffers, who shared the office with babe.net, had been told to go work at another location for the day. Pitches for the features meeting had been prearranged, and my one-on-one meetings with the writers had been so heavily coached Mitzali and Ross could have been producers on The Bachelor. According to Way, things had been tense and chaotic around the time of my visit, as they’d been since the Aziz piece was published. Nobody really wanted to go to happy hour, another staffer told me. The idea of a reporter and photographer coming to the office set off waves of anxiety. But one thing about the day that was true to the actual dynamics of the workplace: The staff all socialized and drank together all the time. And it often got complicated.
by Allison P. Davis, The Cut | Read more:
Image: Amy Lombard
The site’s managing editor, Eleni Mitzali, a 24-year-old blonde with a sharp bob and half-a-dozen tiny earrings who told me she only listened to podcasts about business strategy and murder, offered me a doughnut while I waited for the day to start. I sat on a small couch, in front of a DIY wall-hanging of Rihanna photos, while Rihanna songs played on a nearby Sonos. Above an archway hung a tweet that a staffer had printed out and enlarged: Overheard in LA (at my dinner table): What the fuck is babe dot net? — Bridget Phetasy (@BridgetPhetasy) January 15, 2018.
Great question. Babe.net had been humming along, catering to an audience of about 4 million monthly viewers, before it burst through the wall of collective cultural consciousness on a Saturday night that January with both middle fingers up: “I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life,” read the instantly viral headline. Babe more typically was full of articles with perfectly demented headlines like: “What Your Favorite Sex Position Says About What Kind of Hoe You Are”; “We Asked Girls How They Prepare for Dick Appointments, and WOW You Guys Are Some Evil Geniuses”; “We Found ’Em: The Last Remaining Beauty Bloggers With Their Original Faces”; “I’m Pretty Sure Kendall Jenner Is Gay, and I Have Evidence for Days.” (And the follow-up, “Taylor Swift Is Gay and I Have Evidence for Days.”) The site once launched a nearly brilliant March Madness–style bracket ranking “ugly hot guys” on a scale of Adam Driver to Ed Sheeran. Its natural stance was nihilist: A babe.net writer asked Jonathan Cheban, a.k.a. “the FoodGod,” what Kim Kardashian’s butthole tasted like and received a belligerent email response that started “Listen to me you little lowlife” and escalated from there. The writer published the screenshots.Babe launched in 2016 as a vertical of Tab Media, the brainchild of a 29-year-old British journalist named Jack Rivlin. He’d started the site in 2009 while still a 19-year-old student at Cambridge. The Tab, like Babe, relied on content from a network of unpaid student journalists to write a mix of first-person and reported pieces about being young, along with coverage of cultural topics that mattered to 18-to-24-year-olds. In 2017, Rivlin reportedly walked into a meeting with Rupert Murdoch, hung-over, with glitter left on his face from the previous weekend’s music festival — then, according to the Guardian, he walked out with millions of dollars in funding. (Murdoch was one of a handful of investors, including the Knight Foundation, but he didn’t have operational involvement in Tab Media.)
The company scaled up and churned out more copy: Tab Media was already operating on 80 campuses across the U.K. and the U.S., but it expanded its network of contributors and grew babe.net’s editorial team. Babe became its own millennial-pink website, with an independent staff and its own URL, in May 2017. It would have been “babe.com” — so named because that’s what the founding editors liked to call their friends — but the URL already belonged to a camgirl site.
Every internet era gets the insurgent women’s site it deserves. Jezebel broke new ground with an article about a tampon stuck up a writer’s vagina; xoJane, a microgeneration later, outdid that with a cat hairball found in the same cavity. The Betches defended their right, as feminists (or not, who cares), to Brazilian-wax their vaginas, via sorority-girl screeds. Like the Betches, babe.net certainly wasn’t built to be feminist in any kind of traditional sense (after all, Murdoch was a funder and anarchic page-view-getting was the ethos). And yet babe.net was created during an era when to be a woman saying just about anything online was now, theoretically, classified as feminist. When I asked them about it, the site’s writers described theirs as “not the brand of feminism where we have to unconditionally support every woman no matter what she does. Because women can be problematic too.”
The site was frequently and defiantly unsanitized and “real.” Editor Amanda Ross, who was in charge of all the writers, told me she gave new writers links to the old Gawker archives to read in order to nail the tone. (Rarely had the new writers, with an average age of approximately 23, heard of Gawker — much less did they know about its fall.) “It’s like, you know, women have to care about politics, and you have to care about your appearance, but just the right amount,” Ross explained. She had been appointed the editor of babe.net in the fall of 2017, after working with Tab Media for two months. “And you have to care about sexual health but sometimes I just like, Don’t want to use a condom, I wanna use Plan B instead, you know what I mean?”
Babe took a shit on the shibboleths of media, not to mention feminist thought. For a moment, readers were eager to engage in scat-play. But what was always unclear was how much the site’s writers — often with little or no journalistic experience or training — understood the traditions they were turning inside out or ignoring. Nor was it clear whether staff recognized the parallels between the gray-area #MeToo themes of its Ansari piece and the complicated sexual power dynamics of their own office, the ones that would partly lead to the collapse of the site.
Last spring, at the time of my visit, the staff was getting used to the increased attention (and criticism) that had come along with the traffic from the Ansari story. There were some growing pains, maybe even an identity crisis. The site, Ross told me, was pivoting to more serious investigative journalism, though it would still have the content the people craved, like “What percent hoe are you?”
“I turn 25 tomorrow,” she said, groaning. “I’m aging out of the demographic.” Ross sat in the middle of a long table, fielding pitches from her staff and typing on her computer, twirling one of the coils of her blonde mermaid waves. It felt like a TMZ on TV reboot.
“So I think I want to do a story where I ask men to be my slave on Tinder, like as reparations,” said Ari Bines. Bines was a few months into her job at Babe and had quickly become one of site’s top traffic-getters. During college, she’d started her own blog about being big and black; at Babe, she’d added “… and likes to fuck” to her personal brand.
“Yes! Assigned,” yelled Ross. A young woman with a cool-girl Soviet-era mullet pitched a man-in-the-street video asking men if they knew where the clitoris was. Another staff writer wanted to use the corporate card to buy a haunted doll from eBay — for a story, of course.
Katie Way, the reporter who had written the Ansari piece, said she was working on catching pedophiles on Reddit and launching a series of articles by a young woman she’d reported on, Skoop Hernandez, who was imprisoned for killing her mom’s abusive boyfriend. Babe.net had officially tapped Hernandez to be its prison correspondent.
Sitting in the Babe bullpen with the dozen or so staffers working there at the time felt like a version of All the President’s Men, but with Ariana Grande on the radio and schemes to take down fuckboys instead of corrupt politicians. As advertised by the site’s official slogan, for “girls who don’t give a fuck,” Babe women appeared really not to give a fuck. It was thrilling, invigorating — if terrifying — to watch. These kids would never want to work at, like, the Atlantic, would they?
“I would love to work at the Atlantic,” Way said.
At the end of the day, as they often did, the staff transitioned into Thirsty Tuesday happy hour at their regular haunt, an Irish pub called the Craic. It was a chance for them all to hang out and “put drinks on a card that isn’t ours, basically,” explained Ross.
She sat in the center like a sorority-house den mother (she had, in fact, been in a sorority) and held court as the evening slipped into night, and beers turned to shots, and trips to the bathrooms were taken in pairs. Everyone had tiny tattoos and seemed to genuinely like hanging out with each other. The social-media editor, Syra Aburto, taught me the secret to texting quickly when you have long acrylics on. Another staffer sat down next to me, sweetly sipping a tequila sour with a maraschino cherry. “Oh, don’t be fooled,” Ross called out to me, pointing to maraschino-cherry girl. “She’s cute but savage. She’s a Virgo!” Eventually, someone suggested Union Pool, another made a joke (or not) about needing cocaine, and I decided to leave.
I would find out later that most of that day had been carefully calibrated to impress me. “You know how a teacher decorates the classroom on parents’ visiting day?” Bines said recently, laughing. “It was like that.” The Rihanna poster, the framed enlargements of highly trafficked articles on the wall, even the “What the Fuck is babe.net” sign on the archway had all been hung just for my arrival. The U.S. tab.com staffers, who shared the office with babe.net, had been told to go work at another location for the day. Pitches for the features meeting had been prearranged, and my one-on-one meetings with the writers had been so heavily coached Mitzali and Ross could have been producers on The Bachelor. According to Way, things had been tense and chaotic around the time of my visit, as they’d been since the Aziz piece was published. Nobody really wanted to go to happy hour, another staffer told me. The idea of a reporter and photographer coming to the office set off waves of anxiety. But one thing about the day that was true to the actual dynamics of the workplace: The staff all socialized and drank together all the time. And it often got complicated.
by Allison P. Davis, The Cut | Read more:
Image: Amy Lombard
[ed. Reminds me of Cat Marnell's memoir, 'How to Murder Your Life.']
Why TikTok is Facing Greater Scrutiny
The most downloaded app on the App Store for the last year makes almost no money, is barely understood by anyone over 25, and has already faced investigations, fines and bans on three continents.
TikTok’s success has taken regulators, parents and its competitors by surprise. But with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the UK now investigating the company over its handling of young users’ private data, can reality catch up with the viral smash?
At its core, TikTok is a video-sharing app. Users film themselves in 15-second clips, typically set to music, and upload them to be viewed by followers and strangers alike. If it seems like it came out of nowhere, that’s because in part, it did: the app as it is today is a merger of the original TikTok, which was launched internationally in September 2017, and the earlier viral sensation Musical.ly.
The latter had already become one of the most popular social media platforms for UK and US teenagers by the time it was purchased by TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, in November 2017, and its influence still pervades the platform to this day. More importantly, the merger meant TikTok ended up on the smartphones of more than 60 million users overnight.
ByteDance had experience of that sort of scale, however. The Chinese startup was already famous in its homeland for viral news app Toutiao, which hit 120 million daily users in 2017, as well as Douyin, the China-only version of TikTok that has been kept separate to comply with Beijing’s strict censorship regime.
That pre-existing scale also gave TikTok another weapon: a huge war chest. Before ByteDance was even earning revenue from the app, the company was the single largest advertiser on Snapchat, spending nearly $1bn (£800m) on app install ads on the messaging platform, according to the Wall Street Journal. That spending was recreated on Facebook, Instagram, poster campaigns and TV adverts.
As a result, according to analytics firm SensorTower, TikTok has been the No 1 app on the worldwide App Store for five consecutive quarters, with an estimated 500 million users worldwide. Even if TikTok’s spending dies off, it now has the momentum to survive, according to Emma Worth of the marketing firm Ralph Creative.
“The app itself offers something no other app does and that’s why it has become so successful: paid acquisitions just help more people know about it,” she said. “Young people are fed up with the narcissistic influencer movement on other channels, seeing ‘the perfect life’, ‘the perfect body’, the ‘perfect relationship’ and that’s why they’ve moved to TikTok.”
But with increased scale has come increased scrutiny. In February, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US fined the company $5.7m) £4.2m for collecting the personal data of children under 13 without parental consent. In April, TikTok was banned in India, where it claims to have more than 120 million monthly active users, over concerns that the app was being used to share sexually explicit material. The ban was lifted a week later.
The ICO is investigating because of the same data protection concerns as the FTC, but with additional focus on the controls available on the app’s direct messages. The UK watchdog fears that adults are able to send private messages to children they do not know.
It is the ability to live stream that worries the NSPCC and others.
TikTok’s success has taken regulators, parents and its competitors by surprise. But with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the UK now investigating the company over its handling of young users’ private data, can reality catch up with the viral smash?
At its core, TikTok is a video-sharing app. Users film themselves in 15-second clips, typically set to music, and upload them to be viewed by followers and strangers alike. If it seems like it came out of nowhere, that’s because in part, it did: the app as it is today is a merger of the original TikTok, which was launched internationally in September 2017, and the earlier viral sensation Musical.ly.
The latter had already become one of the most popular social media platforms for UK and US teenagers by the time it was purchased by TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, in November 2017, and its influence still pervades the platform to this day. More importantly, the merger meant TikTok ended up on the smartphones of more than 60 million users overnight.ByteDance had experience of that sort of scale, however. The Chinese startup was already famous in its homeland for viral news app Toutiao, which hit 120 million daily users in 2017, as well as Douyin, the China-only version of TikTok that has been kept separate to comply with Beijing’s strict censorship regime.
That pre-existing scale also gave TikTok another weapon: a huge war chest. Before ByteDance was even earning revenue from the app, the company was the single largest advertiser on Snapchat, spending nearly $1bn (£800m) on app install ads on the messaging platform, according to the Wall Street Journal. That spending was recreated on Facebook, Instagram, poster campaigns and TV adverts.
As a result, according to analytics firm SensorTower, TikTok has been the No 1 app on the worldwide App Store for five consecutive quarters, with an estimated 500 million users worldwide. Even if TikTok’s spending dies off, it now has the momentum to survive, according to Emma Worth of the marketing firm Ralph Creative.
“The app itself offers something no other app does and that’s why it has become so successful: paid acquisitions just help more people know about it,” she said. “Young people are fed up with the narcissistic influencer movement on other channels, seeing ‘the perfect life’, ‘the perfect body’, the ‘perfect relationship’ and that’s why they’ve moved to TikTok.”
But with increased scale has come increased scrutiny. In February, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US fined the company $5.7m) £4.2m for collecting the personal data of children under 13 without parental consent. In April, TikTok was banned in India, where it claims to have more than 120 million monthly active users, over concerns that the app was being used to share sexually explicit material. The ban was lifted a week later.
The ICO is investigating because of the same data protection concerns as the FTC, but with additional focus on the controls available on the app’s direct messages. The UK watchdog fears that adults are able to send private messages to children they do not know.
It is the ability to live stream that worries the NSPCC and others.
by Alex Hern, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters
Thursday, July 4, 2019
The Chance for Peace
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. […] Is there no other way the world may live?
—Dwight David Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953.
via: (Harper's)
[ed. See also: "When asked if the United States should have a military parade to show off its might, this was then-President Eisenhower’s response: ‘Absolutely not. We are the pre-eminent power on Earth. For us to try and imitate what the Soviets are doing in Red Square would make us look weak.’" (PolitiFact).]
The Impossible Dream
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.These words, from Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, are so familiar that it is easy to assume their meaning is obvious. The puzzle lies in the assertion that we have a right to pursue happiness. John Locke, in his Two Treatises of 1690, said we are all created equal and have inalienable rights, including those to life and liberty. But for Locke the third crucial right was the right to property. In Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, also published in 1690, he wrote about the pursuit of happiness, but it follows from his account there that there can be no right to pursue happiness because we will pursue happiness come what may. The pursuit of happiness is a law of human nature (of what we now call psychology), just as gravity is a law of physics. A right to pursue happiness is no more necessary than a right for water to run downhill.
—The Declaration of Independence
Jefferson meant, I think, that we have a right to certain preconditions that will allow us to pursue happiness: freedom of speech, so we can speak our minds and learn from others; a career open to talents, so our efforts may be rewarded; freedom of worship, so we may find our way to heaven; and a free market, so we can pursue prosperity. Read this way, Jefferson’s right to the pursuit of happiness is an elaboration of the right to liberty. Liberty means not only freedom from coercion, or freedom under the law—or even the right to participate in politics—it is also a right to live in a free community in which individuals themselves decide how they want to achieve happiness. The “public happiness” to which Jefferson aspired can therefore be attained, since public happiness requires liberty in this expanded sense, as Hannah Arendt would later note.Jefferson was well aware that being free to pursue happiness does not mean that everyone will be happy. And yet, as Adam Sternbergh explains, we trick ourselves into thinking we know what is needed to be happy: a promotion, a new car, a vacation, a good-looking partner. We believe this even though we know there are plenty of people with good jobs, new cars, vacations, and attractive partners, and many of them are miserable. But they, too, imagine their misery can be fixed by a bottle of Pétrus or a yacht or public adulation. In practice, our strategies for finding happiness are usually self-defeating. There’s plenty of empirical evidence to suggest that much of what we do to gain happiness doesn’t pay off. It seems that aiming at happiness is always a misconceived project; happiness comes, as John Stuart Mill insisted, as the unintended outcome of aiming at something else. “The right to the pursuit of happiness,” wrote Aldous Huxley, “is nothing else than the right to disillusionment phrased in another way.”
This problem is particularly acute in our modern consumer economy, in which political institutions, the economic system, and popular culture are all now primarily dedicated to the pursuit of happiness. This has had the perverse effect of creating a world of frustration and disappointment in which so many discover that happiness is beyond their grasp. The economy fails to deliver for the majority but urges everyone to spend beyond their means. We engage in “retail therapy,” spending for the momentary gratification of acquisition. We encounter advertisements that wrap themselves around us like a blizzard of snow, each promising that if we spend, and go on spending, we will be rewarded with endless delights. This spending helps drive climate change, which threatens to make the planet uninhabitable. Moreover, our sense of who we are seems to be increasingly detached from reality; we live out fantasy versions of ourselves, playing our own private form of air guitar. To constantly pursue something you can never catch is a form of madness. We have built this madness into the very structure of our lives. Every society in the world aims at economic growth, and every society encourages the endless accumulation of wealth. When it comes to wealth, we have great difficulty in saying enough is enough, because it is hard to know when we can safely say we have enough to face down every possible catastrophe.
How then have we come to build a whole culture around an impossible, futile, self-defeating enterprise?
The word happy in English originally simply meant lucky. Are you lucky? It’s always too soon to tell, till death closes your account. For the Greeks and Romans, happiness was linked to success: the happy man (barbarians, slaves, and women hardly counted) was someone good at living up to the ideals of manhood. Virtue, happiness, and success were inextricably intertwined, so that in the end they amounted to the same thing, the ultimate objective. An impartial observer could best judge if someone was virtuous, happy, or successful, because the standards were objective, not subjective. And just as one should withhold judgment on someone’s luck until they are safely dead, so the Greeks held that you could really tell if someone had been happy only when they were securely buried.
This all changed during the seventeenth century, when a few thinkers, Thomas Hobbes foremost, redefined happiness as a subjective experience, an emotional state. “The felicity of this life,” Hobbes wrote in 1651, does not consist, as the Epicureans claimed, “in the repose of a mind satisfied”:
For there is no such finis ultimus (utmost aim) nor summum bonum (greatest good) as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers. Nor can a man any more live whose desires are at an end than he whose senses and imaginations are at a stand. Felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter.To be happy, in Hobbes’ view, was to succeed in acquiring pleasurable experiences. And each individual was the sole judge of what is pleasurable. In order to acquire the means to future pleasure, we seek what Hobbes called power—money, status, influence, and friendship are all forms of power. There is no limit to our quest for pleasure and power, just as there is no limit to the merchant’s quest for money; Hobbes took Niccolò Machiavelli’s account of politics and generalized it as an account of human life. Machiavelli said human beings have insatiable appetites, and Hobbes constructed his psychology, moral philosophy, and political theory around this perception. We all, he claimed, endlessly compete with one another over limited resources. This statement seems obvious to us, so we are surprised to discover that the word competition was a new one in Hobbes’ time, as was the idea of a society in which competition is pervasive. In the pre-Hobbesian world, ambition, the desire to get ahead and do better than others, was universally condemned as a vice; in the post-Hobbesian world, it became admirable, a spur to improvement and progress.
The appetite for pleasure, as understood by Hobbes, has two disturbing features. First, it never ends until death. There is no stable condition that counts as being happy; there are only fleeting experiences that must be renewed constantly. We are (though Hobbes doesn’t use the phrase) in an endless pursuit of happiness, and in order to attain happiness, we are in pursuit of the power and wealth that we believe will make it possible. Second, we take an imaginary pleasure now in our future pleasures. And since happiness is subjective, imaginary pleasures are just as authentic as real ones. Thus fantasy and reality become interchangeable.
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
Regulating Big Tech Makes Them Stronger, So They Need Competition Instead
It is hard to find anyone cheering for a world dominated by a few giants. It is even harder to find anyone who thinks that Big Tech stands any chance of being toppled. Both the right and the left clamour for a break-up of the biggest web platforms, notably in America—from the trustbusting manifesto pledge by Elizabeth Warren, a democratic senator, to the followers of Alex Jones, a right-wing commentator, who was recently banned from several social-media sites.
Monopoly break-ups are the disused weapons of antitrust. Like stone pyramids, they seem a relic of history, a lost art from a fallen civilisation. Yet they are exceptionally hard to do politically. So if break-ups belong to the past, how can society tame Big Tech? The question has fresh salience as America’s Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission divvy up which agency will handle possible antitrust investigations of companies like Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon.
In the absence of a political faith in break-ups, modern trustbusters are operating on the assumption that Big Tech will dominate in perpetuity—and placing upon the incumbents the state-like duties to police bad user activities, from fomenting terrorist violence to infringing copyright. Yet this raises a new problem: complying with these rules would be so expensive that only a handful of (mostly American) companies could afford it. This snuffs out any hope of a big incumbent being displaced by a nascent competitor.
As a creator who derives the bulk of his living from giant media companies, it has been hard for me to watch those companies—and other creators who should really know better—act as cheerleaders for a situation in which the Big Tech firms are being handed a prize beyond measure: control over what is, in effect, a planetary, species-wide electronic nervous system. (...)
Creating state-like duties for the big tech platforms imposes short-term pain on their shareholders in exchange for long-term gain. Shaving a few hundred million dollars off a company's quarterly earnings to pay for compliance is a bargain in exchange for a world in which they need not fear a rival growing large enough to compete with them. Google can stop looking over its shoulder for the next company that will do to it what it did to Yahoo, and Facebook can stop watching for someone ready to cast it in the role of MySpace, in the next social media upheaval.
These duties can only be performed by the biggest companies, which all-but forecloses on the possibility of breaking up Big Tech. Once it has been knighted to serve as an arm of the state, Big Tech cannot be cut down to size if it is to perform those duties.
Over the past 12 months there has been a radical shift in the balance of power on the internet. In the name of taming the platforms, regulators have inadvertently issued them a “Perpetual Internet Domination Licence”, albeit one that requires that they take advice from an aristocracy of elite regulators. With only the biggest tech companies able to perform the regulatory roles they have been assigned because of complexity and cost, they officially become too big to fail, and can only be nudged a little in one direction or another by regulators drawn from their own ranks.
Monopoly break-ups are the disused weapons of antitrust. Like stone pyramids, they seem a relic of history, a lost art from a fallen civilisation. Yet they are exceptionally hard to do politically. So if break-ups belong to the past, how can society tame Big Tech? The question has fresh salience as America’s Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission divvy up which agency will handle possible antitrust investigations of companies like Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon.
In the absence of a political faith in break-ups, modern trustbusters are operating on the assumption that Big Tech will dominate in perpetuity—and placing upon the incumbents the state-like duties to police bad user activities, from fomenting terrorist violence to infringing copyright. Yet this raises a new problem: complying with these rules would be so expensive that only a handful of (mostly American) companies could afford it. This snuffs out any hope of a big incumbent being displaced by a nascent competitor.As a creator who derives the bulk of his living from giant media companies, it has been hard for me to watch those companies—and other creators who should really know better—act as cheerleaders for a situation in which the Big Tech firms are being handed a prize beyond measure: control over what is, in effect, a planetary, species-wide electronic nervous system. (...)
Creating state-like duties for the big tech platforms imposes short-term pain on their shareholders in exchange for long-term gain. Shaving a few hundred million dollars off a company's quarterly earnings to pay for compliance is a bargain in exchange for a world in which they need not fear a rival growing large enough to compete with them. Google can stop looking over its shoulder for the next company that will do to it what it did to Yahoo, and Facebook can stop watching for someone ready to cast it in the role of MySpace, in the next social media upheaval.
These duties can only be performed by the biggest companies, which all-but forecloses on the possibility of breaking up Big Tech. Once it has been knighted to serve as an arm of the state, Big Tech cannot be cut down to size if it is to perform those duties.
Over the past 12 months there has been a radical shift in the balance of power on the internet. In the name of taming the platforms, regulators have inadvertently issued them a “Perpetual Internet Domination Licence”, albeit one that requires that they take advice from an aristocracy of elite regulators. With only the biggest tech companies able to perform the regulatory roles they have been assigned because of complexity and cost, they officially become too big to fail, and can only be nudged a little in one direction or another by regulators drawn from their own ranks.
by Cory Doctorow, The Economist | Read more:
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