via:

There Are Rivers in the Sky Drenching the U.S. Because of Climate Change

Climate change is spurring a new, deep dive into a complex, little-studied weather system blamed for creating billions of dollars in flood damage across the western U.S.

Atmospheric rivers are narrow ribbons of concentrated moisture that originate in the Pacific and can flow thousands of miles before dropping rain and snow on land. Scientists are ramping up their research into the systems this winter fearful that warmer temperatures tied to climate change will boost the moisture they carry, supercharging them moving forward.

“Hurricane hunter” planes are set to fly at least 12 missions directly into the systems, double last year’s number, to gather a wide range of meteorological data. At the same time, 100 new ocean buoys will monitor how the systems form. The goal: Better warning processes to stave off flooding.

“It is 100% completely saturated air,” said Rich Henning, a flight director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who conducts onboard weather observations. “If you’re ever wondering how six feet of snow can fall in the Cascades in one day, this is exactly how all that moisture is transported.” (...)

A study released in December by Scripps and the Army Corps of Engineers found that atmospheric rivers caused 84% of the flood damage suffered in 11 western states over 40 years through 2017. The average annual cost: $1.1 billion, according to the report.

“In a warmer climate,” the study concluded, atmospheric rivers will be “more intense as they become wetter, longer, and wider; there is some indication that this is already happening.”

It won’t take much of a temperature change to boost their moisture content, according to John Dickson, a flood researcher who is the chief executive officer of Aon Edge, a Montana-based flood insurance provider. A rise of just 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit can boost water vapor in the air by 7%, he said.

“Our world continues to change and our land use practices are constantly evolving,” Dickson said., “Yet we rely on risk management tools that are decades old to navigate the current times.”

Besides helping forecasts in the western U.S., the new data will have international significance, since the rivers can originate in oceans worldwide.

“There has been an amazing amount of research on the hurricane problem and tornadoes and nor’easters,” said Marty Ralph, a Scripps scientist. “But it turns out atmospheric rivers are a real issue on the West Coast, and they have not really had that much attention.”

by Brian K. Sullivan, Bloomberg |  Read more:

Image: NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory

Self-Flagellation and Stuffed Goody Bags

There must be a word – maybe in German, or possibly in Korean – for that piquant feeling of being at one of the most exclusive events in the world, surrounded by people who have only ever turned left on a plane, but are now cheering on a movie about the corrosive effects of class barriers. Don’t get me wrong: it was genuinely delightful to be in the Dolby theatre in Hollywood on Sunday night, watching Parasite bulldoze its way through the awards. And goodness, how the audience was on Parasite’s side, with the cheers becoming so much more pronounced for it than any of its other fellow nominees that it felt almost awkward by the end. Still, let’s remember that a significant number of those applauding the film with one hand were, in the other hand, holding the gift bag for the nominees, worth an impressively humble $225,000 (£174,000).

Offerings inside included $20,000 worth of “facial rejuvenation treatments” and “a book that empowers girls”. That’s right, girls: maybe one day you will feel so empowered that you, too, can have five figures-worth of chemicals injected into your face! But look, as Parasite’s win proved, the Oscars LOVES poor people, so also included was “a cleanser that supports showers for the homeless”. If you’re asking: “Why not just give the whole damn bag – hell, even the whole $225,000 – to the homeless instead of to people who earn seven to eight figures a film?” then you are insufficiently empowered, because you are asking the wrong questions. I can recommend a book for that.

The significance of Parasite’s win should not be downplayed, but it is also true that when it comes to efforts at inclusivity, the Oscars ceremony is a veritable master of making small gestures to buy itself some licence, and this year was filled with absolutely classic examples before the event even started.

In the run-up to Sunday night, an enormous amount of hot air was spewed into the atmosphere about the Academy’s efforts at being a bit more environmentally friendly than sticking a private jet directly into the earth’s lung and choking it. I don’t know about you, but there is nothing I enjoy more than hearing about the half-hearted eco efforts of the 0.0001%. There have been press releases about “plant-based” meals at the event and doomy warnings about the negative environmental impact of sequins. If you think finger-wagging about sequins while your guests take private jets to the beach house and helicopters to music festivals is the literalisation of fiddling while Rome burns, well, that’s ridiculous. Unlike a sequin, no one would put a fiddle on a dress, because it’s just not very slimming.

Most of all, there were promises that (some of) the guests would (maybe) re-wear an outfit, as opposed to getting a new one for the ceremony. This is the celebrity equivalent of going off-grid and, last month, Stella McCartney posted a deeply excited tweet in which she praised Joaquin Phoenix for “making choices for the future of the planet”, this particular choice being “to wear this same tux for the entire award season”. That the much-worn tux just happened to be by one Stella McCartney is surely a coincidence, and I have no doubt that McCartney would have been just as happy if Phoenix had decided to clothe his body solely in Gucci, Pucci, or Fiorucci. If you save a tree in the forest, but don’t send out a press release about it, did you save it at all? (...)

Yet when I arrived at the theatre on Sunday afternoon, I struggled to find any celebrities re-wearing their clothes. Well, to be honest, I struggled to find any celebrities, full stop. In previous years, everyone – celebrities and peasants alike – walked down the red carpet together, but this year, only the A-listers were granted that privilege, with the rest of us shunted off to the gutter, hidden behind a white screen, thus sparing TV watchers at home from seeing our hideous zombie faces. It felt – and yes, you might have seen this Parasite analogy coming – like being stuck in the basement, watching the rich and the beautiful frolic in the sunshine above us. (...)

After everyone in the Dolby theatre recovered from dislocating their shoulder after patting themselves on the back for Parasite’s win, we made our way to the Governor’s Ball, the official Oscars after-party. And what better way to celebrate a movie about the rising up of an underclass than a party where waiters were dutifully spraying gold dust on mini chocolate Oscars for the guests’ enjoyment? If it was hard to see the celebrities from behind the white screen on the red carpet, it was downright impossible in the Governor’s Ball, with the whole room filled with golden flecks of dust.

“The whole evening has been dripping with glamour!” was the nominee Florence Pugh’s take on it. But this was Pugh’s debut at the Oscars, and that was a verdict only a first-timer could make. One of the many strange things about the Oscars is that, for an event so exclusive and elite, it feels decidedly tacky and overcrowded – a bit like a Hilton hotel, really. And it gets palpably worse every year.

by Hadley Freeman, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image: Matt Petit/AMPAS/AFP via Getty Images

via:

A Conundrum: Who Owns Louisiana Land After It Washes Away?

Louisiana's continual land loss has created a monumental legal headache: When privately owned land vanishes under the water, who does it belong to?

A task force created in the summer of 2018 to come up with policy recommendations sent its list of possible solutions to state lawmakers Friday, ahead of their regular session.

The problem is a result of the state's rapidly changing landscape. About 80 percent of Louisiana's coast is privately owned. But, under an old law, as coastal erosion and sea level rise turn the land into open water the area becomes property of the state, including the mineral rights underneath.

Private landowners have become more adamant about restricting access to water on their property in order to assert their claim to the minerals underneath it. But boaters often have difficulty figuring out where private property ends and public waterways begin. Since 2003, Louisiana law does not require landowners to post signs demarcating their property. The resulting confusion led the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society, or BASS, to announce in 2017 that it would no longer host professional fishing tournaments in Louisiana tidal waters, where fishers risk being arrested.

The task force included representatives of landowners, oil and gas companies, environmental groups and fishers. Their final report lays out seven possible options for addressing the problem. Five incentivize landowners to allow recreational fishing by giving them some form of title to water bottoms in areas that have have eroded, including the mineral rights.

Other options include making landowners post private property markers at the boundaries of their property or expanding recreational access to include privately owned coastal waterways.

There are options in the report that would satisfy many landowners concerned about losing their mineral interests, said Taylor Darden, with the Louisiana Landowners Association. "It’s going to be up to the Legislature and its wisdom to decide what to do with it," he said.

But fishers say there's still concern that areas where they historically fished would remain off limits under the options. These areas include canals dredged through marshy areas to bring oil equipment in and out, said Emory Belton, an attorney who represented the interests of Louisiana Sportsmen’s Coalition.

"I think what my guys would really object to is a patchwork of rules for different areas because the public would be no better off in terms of knowing where they could go," he said.

by Sara Sneath, Nola.com |  Read more:
Image: David Grunfeld, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
[ed. Expect to hear a lot more about this issue as coastal lands continue to erode from climate change. Avulsion (and accretion) issues arise for a number of reasons: accretion of sediments that add to an owner's property; loss of property due to environmental factors like hurricanes and earthquakes; and, in Alaska's case, changes in coastal topography and property lines due to earthquakes and receding glaciers (isostatic rebound). Some areas get uplifted, others submerged.]

Fired Salesman Disrupts Car-Buying Industry

Brian Carroll had never been fired or let go from a job. Never.

A year ago, he was dumped, very simply, because his boss needed to trim costs. No warning. No dip in performance. Just a handshake goodbye on that Monday morning in late January because the car dealership that employed him for eight years needed to save money.

“The owner came up to me and said, ‘I’ve been thinking, why should I pay you when I can do what you do?’ And he let me go,” said Carroll, 51, of Macomb Township. “I was driving home, crying my eyes out, to tell you the truth. I thought, ‘What are you going to do? How are you going to make it?’ ”

He called his wife on his way home.

“It was shocking and overwhelming and upsetting,” Angela Carroll said. “He was very good at his job. We thought we were very stable. I didn’t want him to know how freaked out I was. It makes you sick to your stomach. He had health insurance, a salary, things set in place for the future. I’d been a stay-at-home mom with three boys. I was so scared.”

Carroll loved selling cars. He had worked for dealerships in Detroit, Eastpointe, Clinton Township and Troy. And now he was out in the cold. Literally.

Then a guy called wanting a car. Carroll said he didn’t work at the dealership anymore. And the buyer said he didn’t care. Carroll decided then he would go solo. Not as the usual car “broker,” who tends to charge a direct fee to shoppers, but as a car “concierge” who planned to charge customers $0. He would work on commission.

After all, he figured, fewer people have time to go to dealerships and people like the idea of enhanced personal service. He would ride a trend of changing consumer expectations in the automotive industry, not by choice but by necessity. All by word of mouth. (...)

Just 367 days after losing his job, Carroll is selling 30 to 35 cars a month and even as many as 52. He has transformed the car-buying experience for customers in Michigan, New York, Florida and Wyoming.

Andrew Behe, 38, of Oxford wrote an online customer review that praised Carroll as an immediate gratification "Amazon Prime" experience for car shoppers.

Behe explained, “I have four kids, run three different companies and nobody has time to go to dealerships and spend the whole evening there on multiple days. I told him what I wanted and he brought it to me. He came to my house, picked up my car — a Lincoln Navigator — then drove my new car to my office. I wanted a 2019 GMC Yukon. He picked up the old car and drove over the new car the same exact day." (...)

"The auto industry from top to bottom is being disrupted, and the dealership experience is no different," said Michelle Krebs, executive analyst at Autotrader, an online car shopping site. "We tested concepts on 2,000 consumers about how to improve the car buying and servicing experience. When people purchase a vehicle, they want it delivered to them at any location at any time, home or office, and if they have a trade-in, they want it picked up. They basically don't want to go to the dealership for certain parts of the buying transaction."

For now, options to visiting the dealership are limited, she said.

Carvana provides the ability for buying used cars at a kiosk or online and the vehicles are dropped off at people'shouses. There are some dealers offering pickup and delivery options, Krebs said. While car brokers often charge a modest flat fee from buyers who want to avoid haggling, the idea of an independent car concierge working directly with buyers and getting paid by dealers isn't widely viewed as an established model. (...)

Skeptics may wonder how a car concierge can be trusted, that he must be getting big money from someone or inflating prices. But what he does is work now with a network of dealers so he can find the best price and offer options.

“I’m not a broker,” Carroll said. “I don’t even use that word. I don’t know that I have a title. But I’ve learned that if you take a little piece of the pie every time, the pieces will add up to a whole pie. A lot of people try to make a house payment on one deal. I want to be everybody’s ‘my guy.' If you have an accident. If you have a body shop issue? I take care of things. If you take care of one person, it turns into 10. If you do one person bad, it turns into 100.”

by Phoebe Wall Howard, Detroit Free Press | Read more:
Image: Carroll family
[ed. See also: Brand Experience Centers, At-Home Maintenance, Service Pick-up and Drop-off: These are the Modern Automotive Dreams, New Research Shows (Cox Automotive).]

Science for Sale

Rare is the CEO today who, in the face of public concern about a potentially dangerous product, says, “Let’s hire the best scientists to figure out if the problem is real and then, if it is, stop making this stuff.”

In fact, evidence from decades of corporate crisis behavior suggests exactly the opposite. As an epidemiologist and the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health under President Obama, I have seen this behavior firsthand. The instinct for corporations is to take the low road: deny the allegations, defend the product at all costs, and attack the science underpinning the concerns. Of course, corporate leaders and anti-regulation ideologues will never say they value profits before the health of their employees or the safety of the public, or that they care less about our water and air than environmentalists do. But their actions belie their rhetoric.

Decision makers atop today’s corporate structures are responsible for delivering short- and long-term financial returns, and in the pursuit of these goals they place profits and growth above all else. Avoidance of financial loss, to many corporate executives, is an alibi for just about any ugly decision. This is not to say that decisions at the highest level are black-and-white or simple; they are dictated by factors such as the cost of possible government regulation and potential loss of market share to less hazardous products. And, of course, companies are afraid of being sued by people sickened by their products, which costs money and can result in serious damage to the brand. All of this is part of the corporate calculus.

Unfortunately, though, this story is old news: most people, especially Americans, have come to expect corporations to put profit above all else. Still, we mostly don’t expect there to be mercenary scientists. Science is supposed to be constant, apolitical, and above the fray. This commonsense view misses the rise of science-for-sale specialists over the last several decades and a “product defense industry” that sustains them—a cabal of apparent experts, PR flaks, and political lobbyists who use bad science to produce whatever results their sponsors want.

There are a handful of go-to firms in this booming field. Consider, as a silly but representative example, the “Deflategate” controversy in the National Football League (NFL)—the allegations that New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady directed that footballs be deflated during a 2014 championship game. As part of the ensuing investigation, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell hired an attorney who in turn hired Exponent, one of the nation’s best-known and most successful product defense firms.

These operations have on their payrolls—or can bring in on a moment’s notice—toxicologists, epidemiologists, biostatisticians, risk assessors, and any other professionally trained, media-savvy experts deemed necessary (economists too, especially for inflating the costs and deflating the benefits of proposed regulation, as well as for antitrust issues). Much of their work involves production of scientific materials that purport to show that a product a corporation makes or uses or even discharges as air or water pollution is just not very dangerous. These useful “experts” produce impressive-looking reports and publish the results of their studies in peer-reviewed scientific journals (reviewed, of course, by peers of the hired guns writing the articles). Simply put, the product defense machine cooks the books, and if the first recipe doesn’t pan out with the desired results, they commission a new effort and try again.

I describe this corporate strategy as “manufacturing doubt” or “manufacturing uncertainty.” In just about every corner of the corporate world, conclusions that might support regulation are always disputed. Studies in animals will be deemed irrelevant, human data are dismissed as not representative, and exposure data are discredited as unreliable. Always, there’s too much doubt about the evidence, and not enough proof of harm, or not enough proof of enough harm.

This ploy is public relations disguised as science. Companies’ PR experts provide these scientists with contrarian sound bites that play well with reporters mired in the trap of believing there must be two sides to every story equally worthy of fair-minded consideration. The scientists are deployed to influence regulatory agencies that might be trying to protect the public, or to defend against lawsuits by people who believe they were hurt by the product in question. Corporations and their hired guns market their studies and reports as “sound science,” but in reality they merely sound like science. Such bought-and-paid-for corporate research is sanctified, while any academic research that might threaten corporate interests is vilified.

Individual companies and entire industries have been playing and fine-tuning this strategy for decades, disingenuously demanding proof over precaution in matters of public good. For industry, there is no better way to stymie government efforts to regulate a product that harms the public or the environment; debating the science is much easier and more effective than debating the policy. In earlier decades—as documented in detail by a great deal of scholarship, including Naomi Oreskes’s and Erik Conway’s Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (2010) and my earlier book Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health (2008)—we have seen this play out with tobacco, secondhand smoke, asbestos, industrial pollution, and a host of chemicals and products. These industries’ strategy of denial is still alive and well today. Nor is this practice of hiring experts and hiding data about harms limited to health concerns and the environment. Beyond toxic chemicals, we see it with toxic information as well. (Consider the corporate misbehaviors of Facebook.)

This is not to assert that the conclusions of every study or report produced by product defense experts are necessarily wrong; it certainly is legitimate for scientists to work to prove one hypothesis in the cause of disproving another. One means by which science moves toward the real truth is by challenging and disproving supposed truth and received wisdom. Maybe there are two sides to every story—but maybe not two valid sides, and definitely not when one has been purchased at a high price, and produced by firms whose financial success rests on delivering the studies and reports that support whatever conclusion their corporate clients need.

The strategy of manufacturing doubt has worked wonders, in particular, as a public relations tool in the current debate over the use of scientific evidence in public policy. In the long run, product defense campaigns rarely hold up; some don’t pass the laugh test to begin with. But the main motivation all along has been only to sow confusion and buy time, sometimes lots of time, allowing entire industries to thrive or individual companies to maintain market share while developing a new product. Doubt can delay or obstruct public health or environmental protections, or just convince some jurors that the science isn’t strong enough to label a product as responsible for terrible illnesses.

Eventually, as the serious scientific studies get stronger and more definitive, and as the corporate studies are revealed as unconvincing or simply wrong (then generally forgotten, with the authors paying no penalty for their prevarications), the manufacturers give up and acknowledge the harm done by their products. Then they submit to stronger regulation, sometimes even costing themselves more money than they would have paid in the first place. But they can do the math: they have also been making a lot of money for all those years. Their wealth compounds. And as for the people who have been sickened or worse in the interim? Or the despoiled environment? Well, those are unfortunate. Sorry. (...)

It is not an exaggeration to say that in the product defense model, the investigator starts with an answer, then figures out the best way to support it. As often as not, the product defense investigator starts with someone else’s answer, then reviews the evidence or subjects an important study to a post-hoc “re-analysis” that magically produces the sponsor’s preferred conclusions—that the risk is not that high, the harm not that bad, or the data fatally flawed (or maybe all of these at once). These are the studies that are flogged to regulatory agencies or in litigation.

Recognizing these firms’ methods can be tremendously valuable in trying to frame public discourse in today’s toxic political environment. What follows is a kind of disinformation playbook: a field guide to the way science gets sold.

by David Michaels, Boston Review |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

An Unsettling New Theory: There Is No Swing Voter

What if everything you think you know about politics is wrong? What if there aren’t really American swing voters—or not enough, anyway, to pick the next president? What if it doesn’t matter much who the Democratic nominee is? What if there is no such thing as “the center,” and the party in power can govern however it wants for two years, because the results of that first midterm are going to be bad regardless? What if the Democrats' big 41-seat midterm victory in 2018 didn’t happen because candidates focused on health care and kitchen-table issues, but simply because they were running against the party in the White House? What if the outcome in 2020 is pretty much foreordained, too?

To the political scientist Rachel Bitecofer, all of that is almost certainly true, and that has made her one of the most intriguing new figures in political forecasting this year.

Bitecofer, a 42-year-old professor at Christopher Newport University in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, was little known in the extremely online, extremely male-dominated world of political forecasting until November 2018. That’s when she nailed almost to the number the nature and size of the Democrats’ win in the House, even as other forecasters went wobbly in the race’s final days. Not only that, but she put out her forecast back in July, and then stuck by it while polling shifted throughout the summer and fall.

And today her model tells her the Democrats are a near lock for the presidency in 2020, and are likely to gain House seats and have a decent shot at retaking the Senate. If she’s right, we are now in a post-economy, post-incumbency, post record-while-in-office era of politics. Her analysis, as Bitecofer puts it with characteristic immodesty, amounts to nothing less than “flipping giant paradigms of electoral theory upside down.”

Bitecofer’s theory, when you boil it down, is that modern American elections are rarely shaped by voters changing their minds, but rather by shifts in who decides to vote in the first place. To her critics, she’s an extreme apostle of the old saw that “turnout explains everything,” taking a long victory lap after getting lucky one time. She sees things slightly differently: That the last few elections show that American politics really has changed, and other experts have been slow to process what it means.

If she’s right, it wouldn’t just blow up the conventional wisdom; it would mean that much of the lucrative cottage industry of political experts—the consultants and pollsters and (ahem) the reporters—is superfluous, an army of bit players with little influence over the outcome. Actually, worse than superfluous: That whole industry of experts is generally wrong. (...)

Bitecofer’s view of the electorate is driven, in part, by a new way to think about why Americans vote the way they do. She counts as an intellectual mentor Alan Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University who popularized the concept of “negative partisanship,” the idea that voters are more motivated to defeat the other side than by any particular policy goals.

In a piece explaining his work in POLITICO Magazine, Abramowitz wrote: “Over the past few decades, American politics has become like a bitter sports rivalry, in which the parties hang together mainly out of sheer hatred of the other team, rather than a shared sense of purpose. Republicans might not love the president, but they absolutely loathe his Democratic adversaries. And it’s also true of Democrats, who might be consumed by their internal feuds over foreign policy and the proper role of government were it not for Trump.”

Bitecofer took this insight and mapped it across the country. As she sees it, it isn’t quite right to refer to a Democratic or Republican “base.” Rather, there are Democratic and Republican coalitions, the first made of people of color, college-educated whites and people in metropolitan areas; the second, mostly noncollege whites, with a smattering of religious-minded voters, financiers and people in business, largely in rural and exurban counties.

“In the polarized era, the outcome isn’t really about the candidates. What matters is what percentage of the electorate is Republican and Republican leaners, and what percentage is Democratic and Democratic leaners, and how they get activated,” she said.

by David Freedlander, Politico |  Read more:

Image: Julia Rendleman for Politico Magazine
[ed. Negative partisianship. See also: Taxing the SuperRich (Boston Review).]

Hee Young Park

Kirk Douglas (December, 1916 – February, 2020)

Sonny Sharrock

Kanpachi
via: (Blue Ocean Mariculture)
[ed. See also: The Poke Paradox (Longreads)

Fire Threatens Worldwide Vinyl Record Supply

“Devastating” Manufacturing Plant Fire Threatens Worldwide Vinyl Record Supply" (Pitchfork).

Image: Scott Eells/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Story of How You Came to Buy That Car

They routinely ask some of life’s deepest questions: Who are you? What do you care about? What are your goals in life? What do you struggle with? What do you love and hate?

But these are not psychiatrists or spiritual advisers; they’re marketers probing consumers to figure out why we buy. Whether it’s sleek sports cars, laundry detergents, or cellphones, mapping the views and yearnings of potential buyers helps these specialists construct ad campaigns and brand identities. Though people say they buy for rational reasons like effectiveness or price, the truth is that they often make purchases for more complex reasons, so marketers dig deep with their pitches, targeting our values, fears, and aspirations. And these days the preferred delivery vehicle is often a story.

“It always starts with understanding people — fleshing out a full portrait of who a potential customer might be for this product. Because doing laundry is never just about doing laundry. It’s about being a mom or dad and taking care of my family and presenting a clean front to the world,” said Jill Avery, a senior lecturer of business administration at Harvard Business School who studies brand management and teaches “Creating Brand Value,” an M.B.A. course for investors, entrepreneurs, and marketers.

Branding used to be a shorthand way to convey reputation to potential buyers who prized claims of performance (“gets whites whiter”) and expert opinion (“four out of five dentists recommend this chewing gum”) over all else. But since the 1960s, consumers have become tougher to persuade with rational sales pitches.

“Whereas prior to this, ‘Why should I buy?’ was all about function, in this era, ‘Why should I buy?’ has become wrapped up in who my identity is or who I want to be or what kind of lifestyle I aspire to,” said Avery. “In many product categories, you’re buying into the brand much more than you’re buying into the product.”

Some of the world’s most famous brands, like Apple, Nike, and Coca-Cola, have successfully trained consumers to associate their companies with emotional concepts — rebelling, winning, and belonging, respectively — rather than merely the goods they sell.

“People want to believe that they’re not swayed by brands,” said Avery. “They are.”

As firms attach ever-more-sophisticated meanings to their brands, marketing professionals now reach for the tools and techniques used by authors and filmmakers to leverage the human fascination with stories in order to lure audiences in a way that obvious sales pitches cannot.

Stories “generate higher levels of engagement, learning, persuasion, and inspiration for action” than other forms of communication, making them a “superior” vehicle to reach and affect consumer behavior, Avery wrote in a recent HBS Technical Note on brand storytelling. That’s important, because in “today’s world, where attention is scarce and consumers are bombarded with thousands of brand messages each day, brands that are able to tell compelling stories can break through the clutter and create engagement.”

Using humor, romance, sex, or even irony, effective narratives include compelling characters, a conflict and plot that feel fresh yet familiar, and a clear message that comes across as transparent and authentic, not manipulative, she said.

Brand stories are told in many ways, such as on Twitter, through a retail store experience, through packaging and logos, or via a social media influencer’s posts on Instagram or Facebook. Figuring out what will grab would-be buyers is a dicey, complicated task for marketing professionals, for as times and people change, so do the stories that resonate.

“What are we anxious about right now? If we can figure that out as marketers, then we can deliver stories that … help release that anxiety through consumption,” she said.

by Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette | Read more:
Image: "The Hero and the Outlaw,” Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson; “Brand Storytelling,” Jill Avery

Netflix Users Rejoice: Goodbye, Autoplay

Twitter spoke, and Netflix listened.

On Thursday, the streaming behemoth announced that it would give viewers a choice: autoplay or no autoplay. Viewers can now not only skip automatic previews, but also prevent the next episode in a series from playing immediately after the previous one. It’s a seemingly minor change, but some subscribers celebrated the announcement as if it was a great populist victory.

It’s a common annoyance for some Netflix users. While you’re scrolling through the vast library of movies and television shows, if the cursor hovers for a nanosecond too long, the beast that is Netflix autoplay is unleashed. (...)

Autoplay, which has existed as a built-in feature since 2016, seemed designed to keep subscribers’ eyes on Netflix and off their streaming competitors (and real life, for that matter). When one episode of “Arrested Development” ended, another would begin in seconds — no need to wear yourself out by clicking a button. And if no title was revealing itself as the pick of the night, an automatic preview might whet your binge-watching appetite.

A spokeswoman for Netflix said that autoplay was intended to help make it “faster and easier for our members to find titles tailored to their tastes.” Some viewers clearly didn’t feel helped.

by Julia Jacobs, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Netflix

[ed. Hallelujah. Autoplay is/was a royal pain in the ass. It actually made me want to check out other streaming services first. I don't know why they took so long to get rid of it.]

Multimillionaire Invents 'Bin Pods' for Homeless

Multimillionaire invents 'bin pods' for rough sleepers by joining wheelie bins together (Mirror).
Image: Peter Dawe/Triangle News
[ed. So thoughtful. Do they come in different colors?]

Range Balls

USGA/R&A declares distance increases must stop in findings from Distance Insights Project

While golf’s ruling bodies are unclear as to what should happen next, the nearly two-year study of how far the golf ball is flying—known as the Distance Insights Project—is resoundingly clear on one specific conclusion:

Distance must be stopped.

On Tuesday, the USGA and the R&A officially released the conclusions of their report, which involved a holistic review of distance’s effect on the game over the last century that included multiple surveys and commissioned research programs.

“We believe that golf will best thrive over the next decades and beyond if this continuing cycle of ever-increasing hitting distances and golf course lengths is brought to an end,” the report’s 16-page “Conclusions” document reads. “Longer distances, longer courses, playing from longer tees and longer times to play are taking golf in the wrong direction and are not necessary to make golf challenging, enjoyable or sustainable in the future. In reaching this conclusion, our focus is forward-looking with a goal of building on the strengths of the game today while taking steps to alter the direction and impacts of hitting distances in the best interests of its long-term future.”

In an exclusive interview with Golf Digest on Monday, USGA CEO Mike Davis and current USGA president Mark Newell said the game had reached what amounts to a tipping point with regard to distance. Davis cited how “almost all golf courses” have been affected by distance over the past 100 years.

“As distance increases, golf courses have either altered themselves or will alter themselves,” he said. Davis also noted the increase in distance has distorted the skill set required to compete at the highest level, and the strategic challenge has been taken away on certain holes.

“We want the cycle of distance increases to stop,” Davis said. “We think distance is relative, and it’s always been relative. This concept of every generation having to hit it farther than the previous generation, we just don’t think when all is said and done that that is good for the game.”

Davis said he didn’t see the current situation as “a crisis, but we clearly have identified a problem that the industry should solve in a collective way.”

Newell said the distance trend extends to many levels of competitive golf down to state and local tournaments. “It isn’t just a sliver of professionals,” he said. “There’s really a pressure that is felt by many golf courses to keep getting longer in order to accommodate that.”

While no official equipment-related rule changes were proposed, they are without question on the table. The report acknowledges players’ improving skills and athleticism along with the enhanced course conditions that will only get firmer as water use becomes even more restricted in the coming decades, but the ruling bodies’ plan is to focus on how equipment rules could lead to the desired chilling effect on hitting distances. Those changes could target adjustments in the current rules specifications for clubs and balls, but also would consider the possibility of allowing tournament committees to institute local rules that would require a certain kind of ball or club to be used on that course for that tournament.

That idea naturally leads to questions of whether the game should have separate rules for elite golfers compared to the rest of golf. In a Tuesday press conference announcing the report, Davis remained opposed to two sets of rules, but opened the door for a kind of bifurcation where a local rule might be employed.

“We are steadfast in our belief that one set of rules is in the best interest of the game for everyone,” Davis said. “The concept of the local rule goes back to the 1700s and allows courses or tournament committees to have flexibility where it makes sense.”

by Mike Stachura, Golf Digest | Read more:
Image: Stan Badz/PGA Tour

[ed.This is big. Somehow, I don't see golf equipment manufacturers supporting policies that foundationally threaten their raison d'etre (or bottom line). And average golfers clamoring for less distance, different equipment, or separate rules.]

Taylor Swift's Self-Scrutiny in "Miss Americana"

Perhaps the biggest downside of being rich and famous is that no one will ever feel sorry for you again. Once a gleaming black S.U.V. has deposited you directly at the foot of a stairway leading to a private jet, you are suddenly and irrevocably beyond compassion. Most celebrities seem to understand this fact instinctively, though occasionally, in interviews, it’s possible to catch a brief but vivid flash of panic in a star’s eyes when she is asked about how many days she has to spend on the road, or what it’s like to feel the constant adoration of a fan base. Still, no matter how miserable or inhumane the circumstances of her life have become—no griping!

Forced gratitude can feel like a modern plague, but most people still bristle when a celebrity suggests that perhaps she is also a victim. “Miss Americana,” a new documentary about the pop singer Taylor Swift, premièred on Netflix last Friday. The film was directed by Lana Wilson, and takes its title from “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince,” a track on “Lover,” Swift’s most recent album. (“No cameras catch my pageant smile / I counted days, I counted miles,” she sings, presumably describing the time she spent settling down with her boyfriend, the English actor Joe Alwyn, and attempting to avoid public scrutiny.) The film covers Swift’s entire life and career, but it lingers on recent events, including a political awakening, which was apparently hastened by an incident in 2013, in which she was sexually assaulted at a meet and greet by a radio d.j. named David Mueller. (He later sued her, for defamation, and lost.)

Swift is known for her expertise at persona creation, so it would be reasonable to expect that “Miss Americana” might feel like hagiography in a cloak of quasi-confessionalism. That stance, after all, is now the default mode on social media, where the smartest celebrities figure out a way to artfully portray themselves as accidental heroes. But “Miss Americana” is a compelling and thoughtful portrait of an artist reckoning with what she’s capable of, and, more interestingly, what the culture will accept from her. “As I’m reaching thirty, I’m, like, I want to work really hard while society is still tolerating me being successful,” she says. Ouch.

Because she is young, white, and conventionally pretty, Swift has enjoyed some degree of privilege her entire life. Yet, though her background has buoyed her in some very obvious ways (her father, a stockbroker, and her mother, a former marketing executive, moved their family from Pennsylvania to Tennessee, so that Swift could work Music Row), it has also been a funny sort of albatross. From the start of her career, Swift has radiated a kind of frantic ambition, which made it especially easy for critics to dismiss her as a high-achieving cheerleader type, rather than a visionary, a savant, or a mogul. Swift is right to be frustrated by this—it’s another brutal example of how even women who hew close to patriarchal strictures can be punished for their victories.

“Miss Americana” reframes Swift’s hunger for validation as nearly pathological. “I wish I didn’t feel like there’s a better version of me out there,” she says. The film opens with her showing the camera her early journals, a pile of notebooks in shades of pink and purple, some with tiny locks. At one point, Swift says, she used a quill and ink to write. When she was thirteen, she scribbled “my life, my career, my dream, my reality” on one cover. She described her earliest ideology as “do the right thing, do the good thing,” which might seem admirable but quickly became punishing. (Swift identifies as Christian in the film, but her idea of goodness has less to do with morality than with the overwhelming demands of late capitalism—for Swift, goodness is mostly just synonymous with commercial achievement.)

Swift is certainly not exceptional in her yearning for approval, but her life has unfolded on an unprecedented scale. In one scene, the camera follows her as she prepares to appear onstage at one of the stops on her “Reputation” tour. She stands on a platform, and someone raises a sequinned hood over her head. A barrier slowly parts, and suddenly Swift is facing an arena full of people fully losing their minds. It is hard to imagine what it must feel like to stare down that sort of hysterical, churning energy, especially alone. Watching her, I felt neither envy nor curiosity, merely terror.

by Amanda Petrusich, New Yorker | Read more:
Image:Emma McIntyre/Getty

[ed. Despite knowing almost nothing about Ms. Swift, I stumbled onto this documentary on Netflix and was pleasantly surprised at its depth.] 

A Love Letter to Making Movies

[ed. Oscar hunting.]

Amazon Dating

Content creator and filmmaker Ani Acopian says: "I wasn’t having much luck with dating apps so I partnered with @amazon to make a better one."

This is Amazon Dating!

(No, it isn't real. Yet.)

by David Pescovitz, Boing Boing |  Read more:

Image: uncredited