Friday, January 17, 2020
Thursday, January 16, 2020
Should Public Transit Be Free?
Dionisia Ramos gets on the 37 bus twice a day, rooting through her handbag to dig out the fare and drop it into the slot, so it came as a shock several months ago when the bus driver reached out his hand to stop her.
“You don’t have to pay,” he said. “It’s free for the next two years.”
Ms. Ramos had never heard of anything like this: Someone was paying her bus fare? At 55, she lives on a monthly unemployment check for $235. So saving $2.40 a day, for her trip to and from community college, past the hulking mills of Lawrence’s industrial past — that meant something.
Since a pilot program began in September, use of the buses has grown by 24 percent, and the only criticism Ms. Ramos has of the Massachusetts city’s experiment with fare-free transit is that it is not permanent.
“Transportation should be free,” she said. “It’s a basic need. It’s not a luxury.”
That argument is bubbling up in lots of places these days, as city officials cast about for big ideas to combat inequality and reduce carbon emissions. Some among them cast transportation as a pure public good, more like policing and less like toll roads.
The City Council in Worcester, Massachusetts’ second-largest city, expressed strong support last week for waiving fares for its buses, a move that would cost between $2 million and $3 million a year in lost fares. And fare-free transit is the splashiest policy recommendation of Michelle Wu, a Boston City Council member who is expected by many to run for mayor in 2021.
Larger experiments are underway in other parts of the country. The cities of Kansas City, Mo., and Olympia, Wash., both declared that their buses would become fare-free this year.
The argument against fare-free transit is a simple one: Who is going to pay for it?
In communities where ridership has been falling, the cost of waiving fares may be less than expected.
Mayor Daniel Rivera of Lawrence, intrigued after hearing his friend Ms. Wu speak about fare-free transit, asked his regional transit authority how much was collected on three of the city’s most-used bus lines. The answer was such a small amount — $225,000 — that he could offset it from the city’s surplus cash reserves.
“What I like is the doability of this, the simplicity of it,” Mr. Rivera said. “We are already subsidizing this mode of transportation, so the final mile is very short. It isn’t a service people need to pay for; it’s a public good.”
Around 100 cities in the world offer free public transit, the vast majority of them in Europe, especially France and Poland.
A handful of experiments in the United States in recent decades, including the cities of Denver and Austin, were viewed as unsuccessful because there was little evidence that they removed cars from the road; new riders tended to be poor people who did not own cars, according to a 2012 review by the National Academies Press.
But in another sense, they were successful: They increased ridership right away, with rises between 20 and 60 percent in the first few months. That statistic accounts for its revival among a new wave of urban progressives, who see transit as a key factor in social and racial inequality.
“You don’t have to pay,” he said. “It’s free for the next two years.”
Ms. Ramos had never heard of anything like this: Someone was paying her bus fare? At 55, she lives on a monthly unemployment check for $235. So saving $2.40 a day, for her trip to and from community college, past the hulking mills of Lawrence’s industrial past — that meant something.
Since a pilot program began in September, use of the buses has grown by 24 percent, and the only criticism Ms. Ramos has of the Massachusetts city’s experiment with fare-free transit is that it is not permanent.“Transportation should be free,” she said. “It’s a basic need. It’s not a luxury.”
That argument is bubbling up in lots of places these days, as city officials cast about for big ideas to combat inequality and reduce carbon emissions. Some among them cast transportation as a pure public good, more like policing and less like toll roads.
The City Council in Worcester, Massachusetts’ second-largest city, expressed strong support last week for waiving fares for its buses, a move that would cost between $2 million and $3 million a year in lost fares. And fare-free transit is the splashiest policy recommendation of Michelle Wu, a Boston City Council member who is expected by many to run for mayor in 2021.
Larger experiments are underway in other parts of the country. The cities of Kansas City, Mo., and Olympia, Wash., both declared that their buses would become fare-free this year.
The argument against fare-free transit is a simple one: Who is going to pay for it?
In communities where ridership has been falling, the cost of waiving fares may be less than expected.
Mayor Daniel Rivera of Lawrence, intrigued after hearing his friend Ms. Wu speak about fare-free transit, asked his regional transit authority how much was collected on three of the city’s most-used bus lines. The answer was such a small amount — $225,000 — that he could offset it from the city’s surplus cash reserves.
“What I like is the doability of this, the simplicity of it,” Mr. Rivera said. “We are already subsidizing this mode of transportation, so the final mile is very short. It isn’t a service people need to pay for; it’s a public good.”
Around 100 cities in the world offer free public transit, the vast majority of them in Europe, especially France and Poland.
A handful of experiments in the United States in recent decades, including the cities of Denver and Austin, were viewed as unsuccessful because there was little evidence that they removed cars from the road; new riders tended to be poor people who did not own cars, according to a 2012 review by the National Academies Press.
But in another sense, they were successful: They increased ridership right away, with rises between 20 and 60 percent in the first few months. That statistic accounts for its revival among a new wave of urban progressives, who see transit as a key factor in social and racial inequality.
by Ellen Barry, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Greta Rybus
What’s So Fascinating About Weird Children’s TV Shows?
Pepi Nana stirs, and sits up in bed.
“Tiddle toddle, tiddle toddle,” she says, flapping her arms, and blinking a pair of enormous round eyes. She walks over to the desk, sits down, and, using the oversized pencil in her front pocket, scribbles a letter to the Moon.
“Tiddle toddle, please come to tea, and we can have a story. Yours lovingly, out of the window, Pepi Nana.”
She steps onto the balcony of her toy house, kisses the letter and watches it flutter up into the night sky. What Pepi Nana doesn’t know is that on the Moon lives a waxy-looking creature with coal-black eyes called Moon Baby. He has a fixed smile and a blue Mohican. He reads her letter, pulls up the hood of his dressing-gown, and flies out of his crater towards Earth…
Most people have a favourite TV show from childhood. If you’re a parent, there’s also probably a show that your children adore but you find strange, or even a bit creepy. Right now, for many parents, that show is Moon and Me. It follows the night-time exploits of a mismatched set of dolls – including Pepi Nana, a soft pink onion called Mr Onion, and the milky, clown-like Colly Wobble – who come to life whenever the Moon shines.
My 1.5-year-old nephew doesn’t share this scepticism. As the episode we’re watching unfolds, he moves closer and closer to the screen, smiling, cooing, pointing and saying “Wow”. My eight-year-old daughter stares in slack-jawed wonder at it all.
What is it about these pre-school TV shows that makes them so captivating for young viewers, but so strange to adult eyes? As a mother, I’ve worried whether watching television at a young age is a healthy childhood experience or a mind-rotting activity stunting my children’s development. The fact that I don’t understand these shows hasn’t helped.
But weirdness, it turns out, can be a good thing.
Young children’s minds process information differently from adults’ – what’s weird for us is often highly engaging for them. A better understanding of these differences could help create healthier, more engaging television programmes, boosting children’s understanding of the world as well as keeping them entertained. And it could also help us parents to make better decisions about the type of television we let our children watch.
Moon and Me, it turns out, is a product of research, informed by a collaboration between the co-creator of the hit show Teletubbies – Andrew Davenport – and Dylan Yamada-Rice, a researcher specialising in children’s education and storytelling, to study how children interact with toy houses.
“Tiddle toddle, tiddle toddle,” she says, flapping her arms, and blinking a pair of enormous round eyes. She walks over to the desk, sits down, and, using the oversized pencil in her front pocket, scribbles a letter to the Moon.
“Tiddle toddle, please come to tea, and we can have a story. Yours lovingly, out of the window, Pepi Nana.”
She steps onto the balcony of her toy house, kisses the letter and watches it flutter up into the night sky. What Pepi Nana doesn’t know is that on the Moon lives a waxy-looking creature with coal-black eyes called Moon Baby. He has a fixed smile and a blue Mohican. He reads her letter, pulls up the hood of his dressing-gown, and flies out of his crater towards Earth…
Most people have a favourite TV show from childhood. If you’re a parent, there’s also probably a show that your children adore but you find strange, or even a bit creepy. Right now, for many parents, that show is Moon and Me. It follows the night-time exploits of a mismatched set of dolls – including Pepi Nana, a soft pink onion called Mr Onion, and the milky, clown-like Colly Wobble – who come to life whenever the Moon shines.My 1.5-year-old nephew doesn’t share this scepticism. As the episode we’re watching unfolds, he moves closer and closer to the screen, smiling, cooing, pointing and saying “Wow”. My eight-year-old daughter stares in slack-jawed wonder at it all.
What is it about these pre-school TV shows that makes them so captivating for young viewers, but so strange to adult eyes? As a mother, I’ve worried whether watching television at a young age is a healthy childhood experience or a mind-rotting activity stunting my children’s development. The fact that I don’t understand these shows hasn’t helped.
But weirdness, it turns out, can be a good thing.
Young children’s minds process information differently from adults’ – what’s weird for us is often highly engaging for them. A better understanding of these differences could help create healthier, more engaging television programmes, boosting children’s understanding of the world as well as keeping them entertained. And it could also help us parents to make better decisions about the type of television we let our children watch.
Moon and Me, it turns out, is a product of research, informed by a collaboration between the co-creator of the hit show Teletubbies – Andrew Davenport – and Dylan Yamada-Rice, a researcher specialising in children’s education and storytelling, to study how children interact with toy houses.
by Linda Geddes, BBC | Read more:
Image: Alarmy
The Rise of Japan's 'Super Solo' Culture
A decade ago, many Japanese were so embarrassed to be seen eating alone in the school or office cafeteria that they’d opt to eat in a bathroom stall. Appearing friendless was a no-no, leading to what became known as “benjo meshi” – taking a “toilet lunch”.
But many think Japan is changing in a big way. One of those people is Miki Tateishi, a bartender in Tokyo. She works at Bar Hitori, a cosy spot in the Shinjuku nightlife district that is designed for solo drinkers.
The bar, which opened in mid-2018, represents an unusual opportunity in conformity-driven Japan – to go out and drink by yourself. And it’s doing well: instead of hiding in toilet stalls, people are stepping out and embracing being seen solo.
“Some people want to enjoy being alone, others want to build a new community,” says Tateishi. She believes the bar’s “solo only” policy helps potential guests who might otherwise get turned off by big groups or regulars. Customers can strike up conversation with each other in a laid-back environment that accommodates about a dozen people. The flowing booze and tight quarters make for easy interactions.
“I think this is rare,” says Kai Sugiyama, a 29-year-old who works for a manufacturing company, from his barstool. “I feel Japanese people live a life in a group, so people want to do things with other people. We don’t have much culture of doing things alone.”
Yet Hitori – hitori means “one person” – is by no means the only example of how businesses are changing to accommodate people who want to do things by themselves. From dining to nightlife to travel, new options catering specifically to individuals have popped up in recent years. It’s known as the “ohitorisama” movement: people boldly choosing to do things alone, the opinions of others be damned.
The power of one
Loosely translated, “ohitorisama” means something like “party of one”. Search for the hashtag on Instagram in Japanese and you’ll find hundreds of thousands of photos: plated restaurant meals for one, cinema hallways, pitched tents at campgrounds or transport shots highlighting solo adventures. In the last 18 months particularly, more and more people have been declaring their love of ohitorisama alone time in both the news and social media.
One recent innovation is “hitori yakiniku”. Meaning “grilled meat”, yakiniku usually involves sitting around a gridiron at a restaurant table with a group of people and communally cooking mountains of chicken, beef or pork. But with ohitorisama, the only one grilling (and eating) all that meat is you.
Even karaoke is going solo – a huge change to the classic Japanese pastime. “Demand for single-person karaoke has increased to account for 30 to 40% [of all karaoke customers],” says Daiki Yamatani, a sales manager who does PR for the 1Kara solo karaoke company in Tokyo. In Japan, karaoke spots are everywhere, often big buildings with several floors of private karaoke rooms built for groups of various sizes. But demand from solitary singers has been growing, and so 1Kara swapped large group rooms for phone booth-sized personal recording studios.
In Japan, drinking and nightlife activities have traditionally been shared with colleagues or friends, while food culture means dinners are often shared. So the ohitorisama movement represents a major shift. But what’s driving the change and why exactly is it considered so significant?
by Bryan Lufkin, BBC | Read more:
But many think Japan is changing in a big way. One of those people is Miki Tateishi, a bartender in Tokyo. She works at Bar Hitori, a cosy spot in the Shinjuku nightlife district that is designed for solo drinkers.
The bar, which opened in mid-2018, represents an unusual opportunity in conformity-driven Japan – to go out and drink by yourself. And it’s doing well: instead of hiding in toilet stalls, people are stepping out and embracing being seen solo.
“Some people want to enjoy being alone, others want to build a new community,” says Tateishi. She believes the bar’s “solo only” policy helps potential guests who might otherwise get turned off by big groups or regulars. Customers can strike up conversation with each other in a laid-back environment that accommodates about a dozen people. The flowing booze and tight quarters make for easy interactions.“I think this is rare,” says Kai Sugiyama, a 29-year-old who works for a manufacturing company, from his barstool. “I feel Japanese people live a life in a group, so people want to do things with other people. We don’t have much culture of doing things alone.”
Yet Hitori – hitori means “one person” – is by no means the only example of how businesses are changing to accommodate people who want to do things by themselves. From dining to nightlife to travel, new options catering specifically to individuals have popped up in recent years. It’s known as the “ohitorisama” movement: people boldly choosing to do things alone, the opinions of others be damned.
The power of one
Loosely translated, “ohitorisama” means something like “party of one”. Search for the hashtag on Instagram in Japanese and you’ll find hundreds of thousands of photos: plated restaurant meals for one, cinema hallways, pitched tents at campgrounds or transport shots highlighting solo adventures. In the last 18 months particularly, more and more people have been declaring their love of ohitorisama alone time in both the news and social media.
One recent innovation is “hitori yakiniku”. Meaning “grilled meat”, yakiniku usually involves sitting around a gridiron at a restaurant table with a group of people and communally cooking mountains of chicken, beef or pork. But with ohitorisama, the only one grilling (and eating) all that meat is you.
Even karaoke is going solo – a huge change to the classic Japanese pastime. “Demand for single-person karaoke has increased to account for 30 to 40% [of all karaoke customers],” says Daiki Yamatani, a sales manager who does PR for the 1Kara solo karaoke company in Tokyo. In Japan, karaoke spots are everywhere, often big buildings with several floors of private karaoke rooms built for groups of various sizes. But demand from solitary singers has been growing, and so 1Kara swapped large group rooms for phone booth-sized personal recording studios.
In Japan, drinking and nightlife activities have traditionally been shared with colleagues or friends, while food culture means dinners are often shared. So the ohitorisama movement represents a major shift. But what’s driving the change and why exactly is it considered so significant?
Image: Shiho Fukada and Keith Bedford
Coach O., Louisiana and Coming Home
Couldn’t sleep last night, I was so wired up. Finally dozed off, woke up just before noon. I am afraid I must address, as calmly as I can manage, a controversy that has arisen in the Twittersphere. It seems that an Ivy League graduate who writes editorials for The New York Times did not like the fact that LSU cancelled classes on game day and the day after. He wrote:
“Actual schools.” Well, let’s see.
You’d think that the media elites would by now have learned the cost to their own credibility of not understanding this country. But they keep being surprised. Nobody expects a New York Times editorial writer to agree with the decision to cancel college classes because of a football game. But one would like to think that a man of the world such as himself would have enough sense to think about why this decision might have been made, and what it says about cultural difference. I suspect if the LSU Board of Supervisors had cancelled classes for Transgender Day Of Remembrance, the New York Times editorial board would have wet its collective pants with delight.
If you plan to vote for Donald Trump in November, do me a favor, and think of Binyamin Appelbaum and the LSU Tigers when you do.
What Appelbaum does not know is that cancelling classes was a prudent decision, because none of the students would have shown up anyway. Governor John Bel Edwards cancelled his inaugural ball because he knew that everybody would be at the game. He’s close to Coach O; he wanted to be at the game too. This made perfect sense to everybody here. Who wants to go to an inaugural ball when the Tigers are playing for the national championship? Nobody! If Appelbaum had the slightest bit of cultural awareness and sensitivity, he would recognize that not everywhere in this big and diverse country has the same values as the elites of the Boston-NYC-DC corridor. That’s fine; America needs people who graduate from Ivy League schools and go on to write economics editorials for The New York Times. But she also needs her Ed Orgerons, the hard-fighting Cajun from South Lafourche. She also needs her Joe Burrows, a white boy from struggling southeastern Ohio. She also needs her sons like Clyde Edwards-Helaire, a short, tough-as-nails black kid from Baton Rouge who fought his way to become one of the best tailbacks in the nation.
Maybe America needs men like that more than she needs Ivy League editorial writers for The New York Times. Who knows? I couldn’t possibly say.
We are a different people here in Louisiana. When I first moved to New York in 1998, my sister back home couldn’t believe that we New Yorkers didn’t have Monday and Tuesday off for Mardi Gras. I found that endearing. Fat Tuesday is such a holiday in Louisiana that everybody takes off — classes are cancelled, some businesses shut down — so everybody can go to the parades. I love that. It tells you something, though, that my sister, a school teacher, simply could not imagine that the whole country wasn’t celebrating Mardi Gras. This is less about Mardi Gras and more about a Louisiana orientation towards life.
I used to be something like Binyamin Appelbaum. I’m not much of a sports fan, but I am an LSU Tigers football fan, because that is our tribal religion here on the bayou. I’m not kidding: I’m sitting here writing this with tears in my eyes at the very though of Ed Orgeron. I love him so much. Here is a rough guy from down the bayou, who let his passions get away from him early in his life, and nearly destroyed his career. But the people of south Lafourche who loved him helped him get back on his feet. He kept coming hard, trying to rebuild his career. He failed. He failed some more. But he kept coming, and kept coming. When he was named head coach of the Tigers three years ago, a lot of people down here thought LSU was settling for second-best. Ed Orgeron didn’t stop. And now, he is on top of the world, and he has brought us all along with him. He has earned it. Goddamn it, why wouldn’t you be proud?!
Well, you wouldn’t if you were an Ivy League graduate who writes editorials about economics for The New York Times, because you wouldn’t know this world, and you would hate it because it is not logical, according to what you value. A lot of people here love LSU Tigers football because it’s what we have. Some folks, it’s almost all they have to bring joy to difficult lives. Maybe economics nerd Binyamin Appelbaum gets little endorphin bumps of pleasure when the Fed lowers interest rates, but that doesn’t do much for the folks in south Lafourche, or anywhere else in Louisiana. And you know, that’s fine with me. East Coast educated elite culture, in which I moved for part of my life, has some good things to recommend it. I’m serious. Vive la différence.
Anyway, as I said, I’m not all that different from Binyamin Appelbaum. Even though I was born and raised here, and graduated from LSU in 1989, I used to have a fair degree of Appelbaum smugness in me. I explained this, and my change of heart, in a 2013 piece I wrote for the Baton Rouge Business Report, about my decision to return to south Louisiana after my sister Ruthie’s untimely 2011 death from cancer. (...)
I was doing very well in Appelbaum World, the meritocracy. Then my sister Ruthie, out of the blue, was hit by terminal cancer. Lung cancer. She never, ever smoked. But it killed her, at age 42. More:
Image: Twitter
“Actual schools.” Well, let’s see.
You’d think that the media elites would by now have learned the cost to their own credibility of not understanding this country. But they keep being surprised. Nobody expects a New York Times editorial writer to agree with the decision to cancel college classes because of a football game. But one would like to think that a man of the world such as himself would have enough sense to think about why this decision might have been made, and what it says about cultural difference. I suspect if the LSU Board of Supervisors had cancelled classes for Transgender Day Of Remembrance, the New York Times editorial board would have wet its collective pants with delight.
If you plan to vote for Donald Trump in November, do me a favor, and think of Binyamin Appelbaum and the LSU Tigers when you do.
What Appelbaum does not know is that cancelling classes was a prudent decision, because none of the students would have shown up anyway. Governor John Bel Edwards cancelled his inaugural ball because he knew that everybody would be at the game. He’s close to Coach O; he wanted to be at the game too. This made perfect sense to everybody here. Who wants to go to an inaugural ball when the Tigers are playing for the national championship? Nobody! If Appelbaum had the slightest bit of cultural awareness and sensitivity, he would recognize that not everywhere in this big and diverse country has the same values as the elites of the Boston-NYC-DC corridor. That’s fine; America needs people who graduate from Ivy League schools and go on to write economics editorials for The New York Times. But she also needs her Ed Orgerons, the hard-fighting Cajun from South Lafourche. She also needs her Joe Burrows, a white boy from struggling southeastern Ohio. She also needs her sons like Clyde Edwards-Helaire, a short, tough-as-nails black kid from Baton Rouge who fought his way to become one of the best tailbacks in the nation.
Maybe America needs men like that more than she needs Ivy League editorial writers for The New York Times. Who knows? I couldn’t possibly say.
We are a different people here in Louisiana. When I first moved to New York in 1998, my sister back home couldn’t believe that we New Yorkers didn’t have Monday and Tuesday off for Mardi Gras. I found that endearing. Fat Tuesday is such a holiday in Louisiana that everybody takes off — classes are cancelled, some businesses shut down — so everybody can go to the parades. I love that. It tells you something, though, that my sister, a school teacher, simply could not imagine that the whole country wasn’t celebrating Mardi Gras. This is less about Mardi Gras and more about a Louisiana orientation towards life.
I used to be something like Binyamin Appelbaum. I’m not much of a sports fan, but I am an LSU Tigers football fan, because that is our tribal religion here on the bayou. I’m not kidding: I’m sitting here writing this with tears in my eyes at the very though of Ed Orgeron. I love him so much. Here is a rough guy from down the bayou, who let his passions get away from him early in his life, and nearly destroyed his career. But the people of south Lafourche who loved him helped him get back on his feet. He kept coming hard, trying to rebuild his career. He failed. He failed some more. But he kept coming, and kept coming. When he was named head coach of the Tigers three years ago, a lot of people down here thought LSU was settling for second-best. Ed Orgeron didn’t stop. And now, he is on top of the world, and he has brought us all along with him. He has earned it. Goddamn it, why wouldn’t you be proud?!
Well, you wouldn’t if you were an Ivy League graduate who writes editorials about economics for The New York Times, because you wouldn’t know this world, and you would hate it because it is not logical, according to what you value. A lot of people here love LSU Tigers football because it’s what we have. Some folks, it’s almost all they have to bring joy to difficult lives. Maybe economics nerd Binyamin Appelbaum gets little endorphin bumps of pleasure when the Fed lowers interest rates, but that doesn’t do much for the folks in south Lafourche, or anywhere else in Louisiana. And you know, that’s fine with me. East Coast educated elite culture, in which I moved for part of my life, has some good things to recommend it. I’m serious. Vive la différence.
Anyway, as I said, I’m not all that different from Binyamin Appelbaum. Even though I was born and raised here, and graduated from LSU in 1989, I used to have a fair degree of Appelbaum smugness in me. I explained this, and my change of heart, in a 2013 piece I wrote for the Baton Rouge Business Report, about my decision to return to south Louisiana after my sister Ruthie’s untimely 2011 death from cancer. (...)
I was doing very well in Appelbaum World, the meritocracy. Then my sister Ruthie, out of the blue, was hit by terminal cancer. Lung cancer. She never, ever smoked. But it killed her, at age 42. More:
In my emotional geography, Ruthie was a landmark, a mountain, a river, a fixed point around which I could orient myself. There was no horizon so far that I could not see Ruthie in the distance and know where I was and how to find my way home to Louisiana, no matter where in the world I lived.
Now she was gone, and before long, my mother and father will be gone, too. What would my children know of Louisiana then? Does that matter? Should it matter?
It mattered. Julie and I decided that we wanted to be part of Louisiana life—tailgating at Tiger Stadium, Christmas Eve gumbo at our cousins’ place in Starhill, po-boys at George’s under the Perkins Road overpass, Mardi Gras parades, yes ma’am and yes sir, and all the little things that give life its texture and meaning more than career prestige and a paycheck.
True, by moving to Louisiana our children would have fewer “opportunities,” in the conventional sense. But what were the opportunity costs of staying away? I had believed the American gospel of individual self-fulfillment and accepted uncritically the idea that I should be prepared to move anywhere in the world, chasing my own happiness.
But here’s the thing. When you’re young, nobody tells you about limits. If you live long enough, you see suffering. It comes close to you. It shatters the illusion, so dear to us modern Americans, of self-sufficiency, of autonomy, of control. Look, a wife and mother and schoolteacher, in good health and in the prime of her life, dying from cancer. It doesn’t just happen to other people. It happens to your family. What do you do then?
The insurance company, if you’re lucky enough to have insurance, pays your doctors and pharmacists, but it will not cook for you when you are too sick to cook for yourself and your kids. Nor will it clean your house, pick your kids up from school, or take them shopping when you are too weak to get out of bed. A bureaucrat from the state or the insurance company won’t come sit with you and pray with you and tell you she loves you. It won’t be the government or your insurer who allows you to die in peace—if it comes to that—by assuring you that your spouse and children will not be left behind to face the world alone.
Only your family and your community can do that.
What our culture also doesn’t tell young people is that a way of life that depends on moving from place to place, extracting whatever value you can before moving on again, leaves you spiritually impoverished. True, it is not given to every man and woman to remain in the place where they were born, and an absolute devotion to family and place can be destructive. I do not regret having left Louisiana as a young man. I needed to do that; I had important work to do elsewhere.
But the world looks different from the perspective of middle age. In her last 19 months of life, Ruthie showed me that I now had important work to do back home. Hers was a work of stewardship—of taking care of the land, the family, and the people in the community. By loving them all faithfully and tending them with steadfast care, Ruthie accomplished something countercultural, even revolutionary in our restless age.
You can’t convince somebody by logical arguments why they should love someone or something. You can only show them, and hope the seed of affection falls in the heart’s fertile soil. Through Ruthie’s actions, and through the actions of everyone else in the town who held our family close, and held us up when we couldn’t stand on our own two feet, I was able to see the power of Ruthie’s love, given and returned. And I was able to see my own life in light of this love, and, finally, to feel for the first time in nearly 30 years, a profound affection for this place I had abandoned so long ago.
We moved back to Louisiana and have regretted it not one bit.
It’s not that Louisiana has changed, or changed all that much. It hasn’t. Parades still matter more than libraries here, and college football coaches’ salaries are more important than college professors’ paychecks. The political and economic problems are still with us. So, bless his heart, is Edwin.
Louisiana may not have changed, but I have. Parades—I speak metaphorically—are a lot more important than I used to think. That is, the small things about the life we were all given as south Louisiana natives can’t easily be given a dollar value, or co-opted into an instrumentalist case for rising in the meritocracy. Having the chance to drive over to Breaux Bridge to the zydeco breakfast at Café des Amis, or to have Sunday dinner with the family every weekend, will not get your kids into Harvard, but it just might give them a better chance at having a life filled with grace and joy. Same goes for their parents.by Rod Dreher, The American Conservative | Read more:
Image: Twitter
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Birdie
The women were drinking peach schnapps, telling stories about the worst things they’d ever done. They had already skimmed through the missing years in haste, as though the past were gruesome, the two decades of lost friendship something untouchable and rotten. Maybe it was, Nic thought. Melodie had said she was a real-estate agent in San Luis Obispo, still playing the field. Her face was so artificially plumped and frozen that it resembled a Greek-chorus mask that had slid between genres and settled on tragicomedy. Sammie was overripe, a bruised apple. Five kids with Hank, she had said with a sigh, all seven of them packed into the little house her mother had left her, in the same little town where the women had all grown up. Birdie was dying, the reason they’d all been summoned. She had only her friends and her parents these days, because she had been a freelancer, working alone, and her boyfriend had taken off at the first diagnosis, stealing the cat. Only Nic was the same as she’d been when they’d last seen her, just a little more droopy and wrinkled now—a law professor, one kid, divorced, chunky jewelry, the whole shebang. In this room, she was hyperaware of how boring her life was, but also that she was the one who was clearly managing the best. A surprise; fortune favoring the brittle.
Snow hissed against the window. The hospital moved in its mechanical intricacy behind the door. The three old friends were perched near Birdie, who lay pale and skinny from the neck down, though her face was unreal in its puffiness, as if covered by a floppy creature sucking on the bones of her skull. Only those darting blue-black eyes were hers.
Melodie was now saying that the worst thing she had ever done was at an awful party she’d catered in the hills, just after some bigwig cornered her in the pantry and touched her under her skirt. I threw a bottle of olive oil at his head and burst out into the dining room, she said. And then I realized that I no longer had to take any of this shit, and that I was done trying to charm this room full of rich people, and for what? A nonspeaking part in a movie never released in theaters and a cruddy little efficiency with a rodent problem way out in Encino? No, thank you. So I stole a $20,000 mink out of the coatroom and took off. I don’t even feel bad, because I’m like, if you have $20,000 to park in a coatroom, you have $20,000 to throw away on me. And I still have it in my closet. I mean, it’s ugly as sin. But sometimes when I’m sad I get naked and wear it, fur side in, and I feel at peace with my life decisions for, like, a hot minute.
They laughed, and then Sammie said in a sort of fast whisper that her worst thing ever was terrible and they were all going to hate her if she said it. And when they said, No, no, Sammie, come on, she got tears in her eyes and admitted quaveringly that she’d had an abortion.
That’s your worst thing ever? Melodie said. Christ, Sammie, I’ve had two abortions and I feel great about them. We don’t need to let men spawn in our bodies.
I’ve had one too, Birdie said. A quarter of the women in this country have them. Abortion’s morally neutral, I think.
I’ve had three, said Nic, who hadn’t even had one, but solidarity seemed the right call in this scenario.
Always one-upping us, Nic, Melodie said with a smile that, on her frozen face, was all teeth.
A series of emotions passed over Sammie’s face, but she finally settled into a large, tight solemnity, and they could see her judging them from behind it. Then the women were all looking at Nic, so she took a swig of schnapps and steeled herself and said, The worst thing I ever did was, I guess, what happened that summer just after we graduated, right before we all left home. I was babysitting for a couple who lived out on the lake, about six miles north of town. They worked at the opera. He was a set designer and she did costumes.
She was about to go into the whole story—the delicious old winterized camp that was painted a green-black, and its crisp white modern interior, the husband and wife like sleek seals, the toddler she loved like her own child, who slept with his hands curled near his ears—when she saw the other three exchanging looks and repressing their smiles, and that old whip of their judgment snapped out of the darkness of time and stung her. Nic cried out, What? What?
Oh my God, Melodie said. We were right. We totally knew it. We totally knew you were having an affair with the little boy’s father.
That’s actually why we stopped talking to you, Sammie said. We were so mad at you! You sexy little home-wrecker! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Birdie put her swollen, dry hand on Nic’s and said, I am sorry about the way we treated you. You were just a kid, not even 18. And we were so cruel to you that summer. We’re so sorry.
You were cruel to me? Nic said. I had no idea. I just thought we were all busy that summer and couldn’t hang out.
There was a long pause before Melodie said, Well, I mean, we three hung out. We just never called you. You were kind of persona non grata. We called you Nick-hole.
Yikes, Nic said. Wow.
I mean, in our defense, kids are pretty morally rigid, you know? Sammie said. I mean, it wasn’t right, what you did, or anything, but we definitely should have been nicer to you or, like, made some kind of attempt to understand or whatever. I mean, my oldest is only a few years away from that age, and I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure she’s having sex? Probably not with married men, but who knows anymore? She doesn’t tell me anything, and all these kids have this whole separate life online nowadays. Oh God! she cried, and looked off into the distance, blinking.
Nic tried to remember feeling left out and lonely that summer, but all that returned to her now was a kind of fullness, a warmth and smoothness and a sharpening of all the beauty that had surrounded her until the pressure inside her became so intense, she could hardly recognize anything beyond the confines of her own body. That summer still dazzled her with its light. She hadn’t even noticed her friends ignoring her; she had been too happy within herself.
Snow hissed against the window. The hospital moved in its mechanical intricacy behind the door. The three old friends were perched near Birdie, who lay pale and skinny from the neck down, though her face was unreal in its puffiness, as if covered by a floppy creature sucking on the bones of her skull. Only those darting blue-black eyes were hers.
Melodie was now saying that the worst thing she had ever done was at an awful party she’d catered in the hills, just after some bigwig cornered her in the pantry and touched her under her skirt. I threw a bottle of olive oil at his head and burst out into the dining room, she said. And then I realized that I no longer had to take any of this shit, and that I was done trying to charm this room full of rich people, and for what? A nonspeaking part in a movie never released in theaters and a cruddy little efficiency with a rodent problem way out in Encino? No, thank you. So I stole a $20,000 mink out of the coatroom and took off. I don’t even feel bad, because I’m like, if you have $20,000 to park in a coatroom, you have $20,000 to throw away on me. And I still have it in my closet. I mean, it’s ugly as sin. But sometimes when I’m sad I get naked and wear it, fur side in, and I feel at peace with my life decisions for, like, a hot minute.They laughed, and then Sammie said in a sort of fast whisper that her worst thing ever was terrible and they were all going to hate her if she said it. And when they said, No, no, Sammie, come on, she got tears in her eyes and admitted quaveringly that she’d had an abortion.
That’s your worst thing ever? Melodie said. Christ, Sammie, I’ve had two abortions and I feel great about them. We don’t need to let men spawn in our bodies.
I’ve had one too, Birdie said. A quarter of the women in this country have them. Abortion’s morally neutral, I think.
I’ve had three, said Nic, who hadn’t even had one, but solidarity seemed the right call in this scenario.
Always one-upping us, Nic, Melodie said with a smile that, on her frozen face, was all teeth.
A series of emotions passed over Sammie’s face, but she finally settled into a large, tight solemnity, and they could see her judging them from behind it. Then the women were all looking at Nic, so she took a swig of schnapps and steeled herself and said, The worst thing I ever did was, I guess, what happened that summer just after we graduated, right before we all left home. I was babysitting for a couple who lived out on the lake, about six miles north of town. They worked at the opera. He was a set designer and she did costumes.
She was about to go into the whole story—the delicious old winterized camp that was painted a green-black, and its crisp white modern interior, the husband and wife like sleek seals, the toddler she loved like her own child, who slept with his hands curled near his ears—when she saw the other three exchanging looks and repressing their smiles, and that old whip of their judgment snapped out of the darkness of time and stung her. Nic cried out, What? What?
Oh my God, Melodie said. We were right. We totally knew it. We totally knew you were having an affair with the little boy’s father.
That’s actually why we stopped talking to you, Sammie said. We were so mad at you! You sexy little home-wrecker! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Birdie put her swollen, dry hand on Nic’s and said, I am sorry about the way we treated you. You were just a kid, not even 18. And we were so cruel to you that summer. We’re so sorry.
You were cruel to me? Nic said. I had no idea. I just thought we were all busy that summer and couldn’t hang out.
There was a long pause before Melodie said, Well, I mean, we three hung out. We just never called you. You were kind of persona non grata. We called you Nick-hole.
Yikes, Nic said. Wow.
I mean, in our defense, kids are pretty morally rigid, you know? Sammie said. I mean, it wasn’t right, what you did, or anything, but we definitely should have been nicer to you or, like, made some kind of attempt to understand or whatever. I mean, my oldest is only a few years away from that age, and I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure she’s having sex? Probably not with married men, but who knows anymore? She doesn’t tell me anything, and all these kids have this whole separate life online nowadays. Oh God! she cried, and looked off into the distance, blinking.
Nic tried to remember feeling left out and lonely that summer, but all that returned to her now was a kind of fullness, a warmth and smoothness and a sharpening of all the beauty that had surrounded her until the pressure inside her became so intense, she could hardly recognize anything beyond the confines of her own body. That summer still dazzled her with its light. She hadn’t even noticed her friends ignoring her; she had been too happy within herself.
by Lauren Groff, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: The Atlantic
[ed. See also: Let’s All Read More Fiction (The Atlantic).]
Georgio Goes Gorpcore
Giorgio Goes Gorpcore: Armani Channels The Matrix in Milan (The Guardian)
Image: Jacopo Raule/Getty Images
[ed. Well. I learned a new term today. Who knew I'd be front-running a fashion trend by 30 years? Now if Golfcore ever becomes a thing I'll have a two-fer. See also: Gorpcore is the new normcore (Vanity Fair) and First Came Normcore. Now Get Ready for Gorpcore. (The Cut).]
[ed. Well. I learned a new term today. Who knew I'd be front-running a fashion trend by 30 years? Now if Golfcore ever becomes a thing I'll have a two-fer. See also: Gorpcore is the new normcore (Vanity Fair) and First Came Normcore. Now Get Ready for Gorpcore. (The Cut).]
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
7 Reasons Why Video Gaming Will Take Over
In October of last year, I wrote about the absurdity of the fact that Big Media content companies and distributors were spending unprecedented sums to increase their exposure to a segment of the media industry with declining value (video), even as another (video games) was growing 15-25% per year. While I remain surprised by the differential between investment and growth potential, it’s worth considering why the future of gaming is so immense.
#1 – The Dominant Attention Medium, Television, Has Peaked and its Time is Being Redistributed
In the 19th century, the idea of “leisure” versus “work” emerged. To economists, we could do only two things with our time: “generate” income by working, or give up potential income and/or “spend” our income on leisure (either literally or via opportunity cost). This latter classification included everything from going to a play, reading a book, spending time with your partner, or sleeping. For the most part, these different leisure activities didn’t actually compete that much – before electricity, you could only read so late, there weren’t many local theaters, the solar cycle defined when you needed to wake up, etc. More broadly, there were few real alternatives in entertainment. For example, you had (1) newspapers, which refreshed only once a day and needed to be either delivered or picked up; (2) books, which took lots of effort to consume and were text only; (3) radio, which was audio and live only; and (4) socializing, which required planning, wasn’t for everyone, and had high, logistical costs and limitation.
And so, by the time TV arrived – which offered an abundance of content to choose from, and, uniquely, moving video plus dynamic audio – it dominated. By 2010, more than nine in ten American households were paying $50+ per month for Pay-TV, making it the most accessed and highest revenue-generating entertainment category. What’s more, 280MM Americans were spending an average of 5+ hours per day on the medium.
TV isn’t going away. But regardless of how effectively the major TV companies transition to digital, it’s hard to imagine it will maintain current levels (at least until autonomous vehicles free up another two hours per day). It’s not new that human attention is finite, but the “attention economy” is so talked about today because there’s finally competition for leisure time. That doesn’t mean video time will ever fall below three hours per day, but the historical 5+ level is likely inflated by the fact real substitutes didn’t exist. Now there’s TikTok, Snapchat and Fortnite. And they continue to take generational share away from the category with the most to give.
This is why I once tweeted that Fortnite was Netflix’s most threatening competitor (which CEO Reed Hastings said in his investor letter a month later). This is most plainly understood as the idea that everyone is competing for finite attention and there are more applications for this attention than ever before. But the real challenge for Hollywood is that for decades, whenever “leisure” won over “work”, TV was the primary beneficiary. In recent years, the leisure decision has changed or “moved up” a level. It used to be “what to watch” and now it’s “whether to watch” – and the answer is increasingly “no, I’m going to play a game”. Neither Netflix nor Hollywood has a good solution for this problem. And no one chooses not to game because there’s a branching narrative available instead.
#2 – Gaming is Replicating the TV Package
At the same time, the degree of TV’s success isn’t just due to the scarcity of leisure competition. It boasted many characteristics that ensured its mass appeal, drove its penetration, and maximized its usage. Yes, it was flawed and over time, its value perverted - but Pay-TV was still an incredible package, one that bundled together and offered:
#1 – The Dominant Attention Medium, Television, Has Peaked and its Time is Being Redistributed
In the 19th century, the idea of “leisure” versus “work” emerged. To economists, we could do only two things with our time: “generate” income by working, or give up potential income and/or “spend” our income on leisure (either literally or via opportunity cost). This latter classification included everything from going to a play, reading a book, spending time with your partner, or sleeping. For the most part, these different leisure activities didn’t actually compete that much – before electricity, you could only read so late, there weren’t many local theaters, the solar cycle defined when you needed to wake up, etc. More broadly, there were few real alternatives in entertainment. For example, you had (1) newspapers, which refreshed only once a day and needed to be either delivered or picked up; (2) books, which took lots of effort to consume and were text only; (3) radio, which was audio and live only; and (4) socializing, which required planning, wasn’t for everyone, and had high, logistical costs and limitation.
And so, by the time TV arrived – which offered an abundance of content to choose from, and, uniquely, moving video plus dynamic audio – it dominated. By 2010, more than nine in ten American households were paying $50+ per month for Pay-TV, making it the most accessed and highest revenue-generating entertainment category. What’s more, 280MM Americans were spending an average of 5+ hours per day on the medium.TV isn’t going away. But regardless of how effectively the major TV companies transition to digital, it’s hard to imagine it will maintain current levels (at least until autonomous vehicles free up another two hours per day). It’s not new that human attention is finite, but the “attention economy” is so talked about today because there’s finally competition for leisure time. That doesn’t mean video time will ever fall below three hours per day, but the historical 5+ level is likely inflated by the fact real substitutes didn’t exist. Now there’s TikTok, Snapchat and Fortnite. And they continue to take generational share away from the category with the most to give.
This is why I once tweeted that Fortnite was Netflix’s most threatening competitor (which CEO Reed Hastings said in his investor letter a month later). This is most plainly understood as the idea that everyone is competing for finite attention and there are more applications for this attention than ever before. But the real challenge for Hollywood is that for decades, whenever “leisure” won over “work”, TV was the primary beneficiary. In recent years, the leisure decision has changed or “moved up” a level. It used to be “what to watch” and now it’s “whether to watch” – and the answer is increasingly “no, I’m going to play a game”. Neither Netflix nor Hollywood has a good solution for this problem. And no one chooses not to game because there’s a branching narrative available instead.
#2 – Gaming is Replicating the TV Package
At the same time, the degree of TV’s success isn’t just due to the scarcity of leisure competition. It boasted many characteristics that ensured its mass appeal, drove its penetration, and maximized its usage. Yes, it was flawed and over time, its value perverted - but Pay-TV was still an incredible package, one that bundled together and offered:
- An abundance of content (in both volume and variety)
- Ease of access (TV was everywhere, its content universally accessible and immediately viewable; you could go to your friend’s house, a bar, or another state, and immediately resume your “regularly scheduled programming”)
- Frictionless content discovery and sampling (aside from basically three channels, all content was immediately accessible; indeed, much of it was found by accident or while simply “channel surfing” during commercials
- A wide range of different use cases and functions (some content was designed to inform, others to entertain, babysit, teach, or tap into local tribalism, etc.)
- A range of different engagement levels (viewers could lean in and be totally immersed, lean back and just watch, or turn the TV on in the background for even more passive distraction as they tended to cook, do laundry, or run on the treadmill, etc.)… In addition, TV benefited from…
- Achieving a cultural tipping point. Because “enough” people watched TV, it became a watercooler discussion and dominated pop culture – forcing many to watch TV simply to participate in society, similar to “social smokers” who only smoke when with smokers who are smoking
- Incredible competition that continually drove more value and format diversity/innovation
by Matthew Ball | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. I'll admit, I know zero about gaming so this is all very interesting.]
Monday, January 13, 2020
We Must Save and Strengthen Our Precious Public Assets
It probably won't be long before Amazon decides to crush the U.S. Postal Service altogether. There is talk of the Trump administration privatizing the USPS, but I don’t think that should be our biggest fear—people could be mobilized to defend that institution. But what if Jeff Bezos decides to destroy it? Amazon, which now has a giant, highly efficient shipping apparatus, could open brick-and-mortar shipping stores by post offices around the country and start offering person to person shipping. The USPS, which is creaky and inefficient, will be further financially damaged by Amazon undercutting it on prices and speed. There’s a law against private carriers using federal mailboxes, but the Trump administration wants to change that, and even if they don’t, I’m sure “Amazon boxes” would start popping up next to people’s ordinary mailboxes. What use will there be for a postal service anymore? With Amazon’s giant fleet of vehicles and network of warehouses, why couldn’t it run the mail? (This not some far-off dystopian idea; it has already been suggested that Amazon displace public libraries.)
Amazon is ruthless and they will never stop expanding into more and more areas of life. They went from the “world’s biggest bookstore” to the “everything store” to the “everything business.” That means they dominate cloud computing (40% of all of it occurs on Amazon Web Services), they own grocery stores and a movie studio, and they are trying to “slowly take over all shipping and logistics direct from manufacturers in China and India.” They are the second-largest employer in the United States; more people work for Amazon than live in the entire U.S. state of Vermont.
So expect to see more and more Amazon in your life. They’ll probably do healthcare soon enough. Amazon clinics. They’ll build private roads to save Prime members from traffic. They’ll enter the rideshare business—why not? Will Amazon’s delivery drones be weaponized and sold to the military? I don’t see why not—the military is certainly buying. Amazon has such colossal power that it can dominate almost anyone it chooses to take on. They win, in part because the services they offer to customers are usually cheap and high-quality, in part because they do not care about making money, they care about building power.
Do not think by “cheap and high-quality” I mean that Amazon is good. The company’s “customer first” policy is also an “employees last” policy. (Actually, employees don’t last, they die on the warehouse floor after being reprimanded for failing to ship packages efficiently enough.) Amazon is incredible from the buyer’s perspective—anything I want, delivered overnight! But that’s only possible because there are thousands of people rushing around trying to make sure everyone gets their stuff on time and terrified of being automatically fired if they can’t meet their quotas.
Jeff Bezos and Amazon are smart. They know how to keep public opinion from turning against them. They make sure their customers are well taken care of, and that everyone is a customer, so that everyone has had some kind of positive experience with Amazon. When they are shamed over their pitiful wages, they raise them just enough to keep people from complaining, and then present themselves as a leader on wages. As a result, though we lefties despise them, they are one of the most popular companies in America.
That means that they will continue to slowly wrap their tentacles around everything. It is already becoming impossible to “boycott” Amazon—half the websites you visit use Amazon Web Services, the more they grow, the more futile it becomes to try to use “consumer choice” to stay away from Amazon. But that does not mean we should resign ourself to the “Bezos future.” You might not worry about Amazon displacing the postal service. After all, it would be more efficient. The postal service is bureaucratic. It hasn’t innovated.
But what Amazon is slowly building is a terrifying feudalistic “private government.” There is no democracy in Amazon: workers obey orders, and if they do not obey orders, they are terminated. Now, imagine if termination also meant the company would take away your access to Amazon’s services forever. The more dominant Amazon becomes, the more power it wields over individuals. The typical libertarian response to the tyranny of the Amazon workplace is: “if workers don’t like it they can quit” (which is like saying that if people don’t like living under dictatorships they should emigrate). But what if they make it harder and harder to quit? If Amazon is paying for your school (because we don’t have free public college), then you’ll feel much more intense pressure to not to drop below your package fulfillment quota. Oh, sure, we have some workplace safety regulations that should theoretically keep them from working you to death. But they’ll just ignore those, and nobody will do anything, because Amazon can easily buy its way out of any problem. (If you try suing them, good luck taking on their giant team of lawyers; plus you’ve already signed away your right to a day in court).
It is important to consider how all of this will continue to unfold, because we are slowly handing more and more control to a single company and a single man, and they are less and less accountable to anyone.
Amazon is ruthless and they will never stop expanding into more and more areas of life. They went from the “world’s biggest bookstore” to the “everything store” to the “everything business.” That means they dominate cloud computing (40% of all of it occurs on Amazon Web Services), they own grocery stores and a movie studio, and they are trying to “slowly take over all shipping and logistics direct from manufacturers in China and India.” They are the second-largest employer in the United States; more people work for Amazon than live in the entire U.S. state of Vermont. So expect to see more and more Amazon in your life. They’ll probably do healthcare soon enough. Amazon clinics. They’ll build private roads to save Prime members from traffic. They’ll enter the rideshare business—why not? Will Amazon’s delivery drones be weaponized and sold to the military? I don’t see why not—the military is certainly buying. Amazon has such colossal power that it can dominate almost anyone it chooses to take on. They win, in part because the services they offer to customers are usually cheap and high-quality, in part because they do not care about making money, they care about building power.
Do not think by “cheap and high-quality” I mean that Amazon is good. The company’s “customer first” policy is also an “employees last” policy. (Actually, employees don’t last, they die on the warehouse floor after being reprimanded for failing to ship packages efficiently enough.) Amazon is incredible from the buyer’s perspective—anything I want, delivered overnight! But that’s only possible because there are thousands of people rushing around trying to make sure everyone gets their stuff on time and terrified of being automatically fired if they can’t meet their quotas.
Jeff Bezos and Amazon are smart. They know how to keep public opinion from turning against them. They make sure their customers are well taken care of, and that everyone is a customer, so that everyone has had some kind of positive experience with Amazon. When they are shamed over their pitiful wages, they raise them just enough to keep people from complaining, and then present themselves as a leader on wages. As a result, though we lefties despise them, they are one of the most popular companies in America.
That means that they will continue to slowly wrap their tentacles around everything. It is already becoming impossible to “boycott” Amazon—half the websites you visit use Amazon Web Services, the more they grow, the more futile it becomes to try to use “consumer choice” to stay away from Amazon. But that does not mean we should resign ourself to the “Bezos future.” You might not worry about Amazon displacing the postal service. After all, it would be more efficient. The postal service is bureaucratic. It hasn’t innovated.
But what Amazon is slowly building is a terrifying feudalistic “private government.” There is no democracy in Amazon: workers obey orders, and if they do not obey orders, they are terminated. Now, imagine if termination also meant the company would take away your access to Amazon’s services forever. The more dominant Amazon becomes, the more power it wields over individuals. The typical libertarian response to the tyranny of the Amazon workplace is: “if workers don’t like it they can quit” (which is like saying that if people don’t like living under dictatorships they should emigrate). But what if they make it harder and harder to quit? If Amazon is paying for your school (because we don’t have free public college), then you’ll feel much more intense pressure to not to drop below your package fulfillment quota. Oh, sure, we have some workplace safety regulations that should theoretically keep them from working you to death. But they’ll just ignore those, and nobody will do anything, because Amazon can easily buy its way out of any problem. (If you try suing them, good luck taking on their giant team of lawyers; plus you’ve already signed away your right to a day in court).
It is important to consider how all of this will continue to unfold, because we are slowly handing more and more control to a single company and a single man, and they are less and less accountable to anyone.
by Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs | Read more:
Image: uncredited
How to: File Your Taxes For Free Without Getting Defrauded
When the IRS proposed providing free, pre-completed tax-returns to US taxpayers, the big tax-prep companies like Intuit/Turbotax and HR Block lobbied like crazy to kill the plan, and instead proposed "Free File," through which they would provide free online tax-prep services for people with incomes of $69k or lower.
However, the tax-prep companies immediately set about creating a web of deceptive lookalike services with similar names that would trick people into thinking they were using the free services, then hit them with a surprise bill before they could submit their returns. At the same time, their lobbyists managed to ban the IRS from advertising the real Free File services.
Propublica has produced a guide to filing your taxes for free in 2020, with direct links.
However, the tax-prep companies immediately set about creating a web of deceptive lookalike services with similar names that would trick people into thinking they were using the free services, then hit them with a surprise bill before they could submit their returns. At the same time, their lobbyists managed to ban the IRS from advertising the real Free File services.Propublica has produced a guide to filing your taxes for free in 2020, with direct links.
As ProPublica reported last year, TurboTax purposefully hid its Free File product and directed taxpayers to a version where many had to pay, which is called the TurboTax Free Edition. If you clicked on this “FREE Guaranteed” option, you could input a lot of your information, only to be told toward the end of the process that you need to pay.
You can access TurboTax’s Free File version here. This version is offered through the Free File agreement.
TurboTax’s misleading advertising and website design directed users to more expensive versions of the software, even if they qualified to file for free. After our stories published, some people demanded and got refunds. Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, faces several investigations and lawsuits because of this. The company has denied wrongdoing.How to File Your State and Federal Taxes for Free in 2020 [Kristen Doerer and Justin Elliott/Propublica]
by Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. See also: Here’s How TurboTax Just Tricked You Into Paying to File Your Taxes (ProPublica).]
Don’t Be Crushed By Your Own Belief System
We’ve all known people who’ve changed their belief systems. Whether it’s switching political ideologies or converting to a new religion, we’ve all witnessed with our own eyes that people have the ability to willfully change their beliefs. Unless you’ve been living an incredibly boring and immature life, you’ve probably made such a change yourself at some point, too.
What’s very, very strange, and very very unfortunate, is that when such changes in belief systems occur it tends to go unnoticed and underappreciated just how significant it is and how enormous its implications are. We discover that we have this incredible superpower to change our beliefs whenever we want, and instead of paying attention to that superpower and what it means for our lives, we focus on the new belief system instead.
I once had a friend who converted to fundamentalist Christianity for six weeks, then dropped it like a hot potato. For those six weeks she was absolutely gung-ho, plunged fully into that reality tunnel and perceiving the world through that perceptual lens, and then she was done and moved on to something else. At no time did she ever stop and go “Holy crap! I can change my entire worldview at will! What does that mean for me and my life? What doors can I unlock with this amazing newfound ability?” Instead she focused entirely on her new belief system, then when she dropped it she just reverted to her old one.
How bizarre is that? It’s like if you were straining to reach a book on the top shelf at the bookstore, then you suddenly and unexpectedly levitated off the ground and grabbed it, and instead of paying attention to the discovery that you have an amazing superpower you got all excited to read the book and forgot all about your newfound flying powers.
Because as far as the conventional worldview we’re taught by our teachers and parents is concerned, the ability to change your beliefs at will really is an extraordinary superpower. It’s not an ability we’re ever taught we have; we’re taught in a way that assumes we’re all just floating along taking in information about the world, and whatever that information adds up to is what our belief system looks like. Even in the case of a radical change in belief systems like converting to a new religion, the fact that you’re performing an astonishing miracle by tearing down your old worldview and replacing it with a new one gets de-emphasised and re-framed as you being “saved”. It’s made to look passive. Like something that happened to you.
But it’s not passive at all. You consciously and deliberately replaced beliefs you previously held about the reality you’re living in with an entirely different set of beliefs.
That’s an amazing superpower, and everyone has it. But this extraordinary fact almost always goes completely overlooked. Someone switches from “liberal” to “conservative” and spends their time focusing on how dumb those libtards are. Someone switches from agnostic to Christian and it’s all about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. When really, if they weren’t getting ahead of themselves and staring at the new worldview instead of noticing the amazing thing they were doing to get there, it would be all about “Holy shit! I can believe whatever I want about anything! What belief system will bring me the most happiness and wellbeing?”
Because you really can do that. You do have the ability to completely rewire your beliefs in whatever way serves you. There’s often an unquestioned assumption that we exist to serve our belief systems, but actually the opposite is true: belief is a tool that you can use to serve yourself.
What’s very, very strange, and very very unfortunate, is that when such changes in belief systems occur it tends to go unnoticed and underappreciated just how significant it is and how enormous its implications are. We discover that we have this incredible superpower to change our beliefs whenever we want, and instead of paying attention to that superpower and what it means for our lives, we focus on the new belief system instead.
I once had a friend who converted to fundamentalist Christianity for six weeks, then dropped it like a hot potato. For those six weeks she was absolutely gung-ho, plunged fully into that reality tunnel and perceiving the world through that perceptual lens, and then she was done and moved on to something else. At no time did she ever stop and go “Holy crap! I can change my entire worldview at will! What does that mean for me and my life? What doors can I unlock with this amazing newfound ability?” Instead she focused entirely on her new belief system, then when she dropped it she just reverted to her old one.How bizarre is that? It’s like if you were straining to reach a book on the top shelf at the bookstore, then you suddenly and unexpectedly levitated off the ground and grabbed it, and instead of paying attention to the discovery that you have an amazing superpower you got all excited to read the book and forgot all about your newfound flying powers.
Because as far as the conventional worldview we’re taught by our teachers and parents is concerned, the ability to change your beliefs at will really is an extraordinary superpower. It’s not an ability we’re ever taught we have; we’re taught in a way that assumes we’re all just floating along taking in information about the world, and whatever that information adds up to is what our belief system looks like. Even in the case of a radical change in belief systems like converting to a new religion, the fact that you’re performing an astonishing miracle by tearing down your old worldview and replacing it with a new one gets de-emphasised and re-framed as you being “saved”. It’s made to look passive. Like something that happened to you.
But it’s not passive at all. You consciously and deliberately replaced beliefs you previously held about the reality you’re living in with an entirely different set of beliefs.
That’s an amazing superpower, and everyone has it. But this extraordinary fact almost always goes completely overlooked. Someone switches from “liberal” to “conservative” and spends their time focusing on how dumb those libtards are. Someone switches from agnostic to Christian and it’s all about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. When really, if they weren’t getting ahead of themselves and staring at the new worldview instead of noticing the amazing thing they were doing to get there, it would be all about “Holy shit! I can believe whatever I want about anything! What belief system will bring me the most happiness and wellbeing?”
Because you really can do that. You do have the ability to completely rewire your beliefs in whatever way serves you. There’s often an unquestioned assumption that we exist to serve our belief systems, but actually the opposite is true: belief is a tool that you can use to serve yourself.
by Caitlin Johnstone | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. See also: “Iran Must Begin Acting Like A Normal Nation,” Says Totally Normal Nation (Caitlin Johnstone).]
Nelson Bryant, ‘Supreme Chronicler’ of Outdoor Life, Dies at 96
Nelson Bryant, whose lyrical columns in The New York Times for nearly four decades chronicled his love affair with fishing, hunting and outdoor life, and made him the dean of outdoor writers in America, died on Saturday in Oak Bluffs, Mass., on Martha’s Vineyard. He was 96.
His longtime partner, Ruth Kirchmeier, confirmed the death, at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. He lived on the Vineyard, in West Tisbury.
From the mangroves of the Yucatán watching for green-winged teals to the grand ballet of fly-fishing on the Salmon River in Nova Scotia, Mr. Bryant’s often-poetic, first-person accounts took readers to many places, but perhaps none more so than the mythical past, when boys went fishing with their fathers, watched rainbow trout hover above the pebbles in a brook and learned that patience, cultivated during hours in a duck blind, was more than a needlepoint virtue. His insights appealed to many readers who had never set foot in woods or a stream.
Raised on Martha’s Vineyard, Mr. Bryant was a seaman, a carpenter, a ditch digger, a logger, a cook and a dock builder. He was also a Dartmouth College graduate and a reporter and the managing editor of The Claremont Daily Eagle in west-central New Hampshire for more than a decade in the 1950s and ’60s.
But he was never far from the hunting, fishing and outdoor life he had learned from his father, and his storehouse of field skills and lore were deployed in the sports section of The Times from 1967 to 2005, often in four or five columns a week, under the rubrics “Wood, Field and Stream” and later “Outdoors.”
Unlike news articles, columns reflect an author’s opinions and experiences, and Mr. Bryant, who often took his two sons on camping, fishing and hunting expeditions, offered readers not only his knowledge of wildlife and the rods, reels, lures and guns to bag it, but also insights into what his experiences meant to him. (...)
With his white beard and weather-beaten face, an old pipe clenched in his teeth, he looked like a 19th-century seafarer: a big, sturdy outdoorsman who climbed mountains, portaged canoes and carried his load of guns and tents. But he was remarkably graceful in a trout stream, and his cast was delicate and precise — plop, into the distant pool where the rainbows lurked.
“Every sport has a supreme chronicler,” The Philadelphia Inquirer said in 1994. “Nobody has written about baseball like Roger Angell. Nobody has written about golf like Bernard Darwin. Nobody has written about boxing like A.J. Liebling. Nobody has written about the outdoors like Nelson Bryant.”
by Robert D. McFadden, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Mark Alan Lovewell/The Vineyard Gazette
[ed. I once had the honor of being interviewed by Mr. Bryant for one of his columns in the Times.]
His longtime partner, Ruth Kirchmeier, confirmed the death, at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. He lived on the Vineyard, in West Tisbury.
From the mangroves of the Yucatán watching for green-winged teals to the grand ballet of fly-fishing on the Salmon River in Nova Scotia, Mr. Bryant’s often-poetic, first-person accounts took readers to many places, but perhaps none more so than the mythical past, when boys went fishing with their fathers, watched rainbow trout hover above the pebbles in a brook and learned that patience, cultivated during hours in a duck blind, was more than a needlepoint virtue. His insights appealed to many readers who had never set foot in woods or a stream.Raised on Martha’s Vineyard, Mr. Bryant was a seaman, a carpenter, a ditch digger, a logger, a cook and a dock builder. He was also a Dartmouth College graduate and a reporter and the managing editor of The Claremont Daily Eagle in west-central New Hampshire for more than a decade in the 1950s and ’60s.
But he was never far from the hunting, fishing and outdoor life he had learned from his father, and his storehouse of field skills and lore were deployed in the sports section of The Times from 1967 to 2005, often in four or five columns a week, under the rubrics “Wood, Field and Stream” and later “Outdoors.”
Unlike news articles, columns reflect an author’s opinions and experiences, and Mr. Bryant, who often took his two sons on camping, fishing and hunting expeditions, offered readers not only his knowledge of wildlife and the rods, reels, lures and guns to bag it, but also insights into what his experiences meant to him. (...)
With his white beard and weather-beaten face, an old pipe clenched in his teeth, he looked like a 19th-century seafarer: a big, sturdy outdoorsman who climbed mountains, portaged canoes and carried his load of guns and tents. But he was remarkably graceful in a trout stream, and his cast was delicate and precise — plop, into the distant pool where the rainbows lurked.
“Every sport has a supreme chronicler,” The Philadelphia Inquirer said in 1994. “Nobody has written about baseball like Roger Angell. Nobody has written about golf like Bernard Darwin. Nobody has written about boxing like A.J. Liebling. Nobody has written about the outdoors like Nelson Bryant.”
Image: Mark Alan Lovewell/The Vineyard Gazette
[ed. I once had the honor of being interviewed by Mr. Bryant for one of his columns in the Times.]
Take Care of Your Chicken: Marshawn Lynch Postgame Interview January 2020
---
How would you describe your comeback, Marshawn?“It was solid,” he said.
And scoring four touchdowns in three games?
“Pretty solid.”
What’s going through your mind right now?
“Shoot, we lost.”
Come back next year?
“I mean, shoot, we’ll see.”
“Look,” he said, “I’ll say like this though: This is a vulnerable time for a lot of these young dudes, you feel me? They don’t be taking care of their chicken right, you feel me? So if it was me, or if I had a opportunity to let these little young (teammates) know something, I’d say take care of y’all money, African, because that (stuff) don’t last forever now.
“I’ve been on the other side of retirement and it’s good when you get over there and you can do what the (expletive) you want to. So I tell y’all right now while y’all in it: Take care of y’all bread, so when y’all done you can go ahead and take care of yourself. So while y’all in it right now, take care of y’all’s bodies, take care of y’all’s chicken, take care of y’all’s mental. Because, look, we ain’t lasting that long. I had a couple players that I played with that they’re no longer here no more — they’re no longer — so you feel me? Take care of y’all mentals, y’all bodies, y’all chicken, so when y’all ready to walk away y’all walk away and you’ll be able to do what y’all want to do.”
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)