Monday, December 12, 2022
Vladimir Pozner: How the United States Created Vladimir Putin
[ed. How sad and infuriating. Such an important opportunity missed. "Our mistake was that we trusted you too much, and your mistake was trying to take advantage of that." (32:00). Other segments: 10:12 - 19:20; and 26:25 - 29:30. All well and good. Still, I wonder what Russia's end game actually is? It doesn't feel like the kind of world domination the US is pushing for - spread of democracy and opening of capitalist markets - but it still has to be something more than just security? See also: Why Did Russia Launch This Catastrophic War? (Current Affairs).]
Is That All There Is? How Neuroscience Confirms the Most Ancient Myths About Music
How Neuroscience Confirms the Most Ancient Myths About Music (Honest Broker)
People often talk to me about music, so I’m not surprised when friends ask me about specific songs. But I found it uncanny—and actually unsettling—when two elderly individuals very close to me, both in poor health and near death, mentioned the same obscure song.
These two individuals never met each other, and lived thousands of miles apart, but in their final days they both wanted to talk about the same record from more than fifty years ago. They told me that the lyrics of this pop tune captured their melancholy reflections on what had gone wrong in their lives.
The song in question, “Is That All There Is?,” had been a modest hit for vocalist Peggy Lee in 1969, but never quite reached the top ten. I’m hardly surprised by that. It was the era of Woodstock and psychedelic rock, and a gloomy song of this sort had nothing in common with the upbeat youth movement that was defining the musical culture of the day.
The track is mostly a semi-spoken monologue, interrupted by sung interludes on the meaninglessness of life—capped by a complaint that “I’m not ready for that final disappointment.” I consider it the mirror image of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” a more successful hit of the same era, which celebrates a triumphant life full of victories and self-actualization.
If you never got the chance to do things your way, this is your song.
People often talk to me about music, so I’m not surprised when friends ask me about specific songs. But I found it uncanny—and actually unsettling—when two elderly individuals very close to me, both in poor health and near death, mentioned the same obscure song.
These two individuals never met each other, and lived thousands of miles apart, but in their final days they both wanted to talk about the same record from more than fifty years ago. They told me that the lyrics of this pop tune captured their melancholy reflections on what had gone wrong in their lives.
The song in question, “Is That All There Is?,” had been a modest hit for vocalist Peggy Lee in 1969, but never quite reached the top ten. I’m hardly surprised by that. It was the era of Woodstock and psychedelic rock, and a gloomy song of this sort had nothing in common with the upbeat youth movement that was defining the musical culture of the day.
The track is mostly a semi-spoken monologue, interrupted by sung interludes on the meaninglessness of life—capped by a complaint that “I’m not ready for that final disappointment.” I consider it the mirror image of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” a more successful hit of the same era, which celebrates a triumphant life full of victories and self-actualization.
If you never got the chance to do things your way, this is your song.
by Ted Gioia, The Honest Broker | Read more:
Video: Peggy Lee/YouTube
[ed. Definitely worth a full read. See also, this official video of Peggy Lee's "Fever" (yow).]
Sunday, December 11, 2022
Project Wedge: Confidential Records Show a Saudi Golf Tour Built on Far-Fetched Assumptions
Early in 2021, consultants working for Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund studied an audacious idea: The desert kingdom wanted to become the world leader in the hidebound realm of men’s professional golf.
If the idea seemed unlikely, records show that the benchmarks for success bordered on the fantastical. A new Saudi league would need to sign each of the world’s top 12 golfers, attract sponsors to an unproven product and land television deals for a sport with declining viewership — all without significant retaliation from the PGA Tour it would be plundering.
The proposal, code-named Project Wedge, came together as Saudi officials worked to repair the kingdom’s reputation abroad, which hit a low after the 2018 assassination of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents. The plan was the foundation for what became LIV Golf, the series whose debut this year provoked accusations that Saudi Arabia was trying to sanitize its human rights record with its deep pockets, former President Donald J. Trump’s country clubs and a handful of big-name golfers. Some of those golfers have publicly played down Saudi abuses, as has Mr. Trump.
The league’s promoters say they are trying to revitalize the sport and build a profitable league. But hundreds of pages of confidential documents obtained by The New York Times show that Saudi officials were told that they faced steep challenges. They were breaking into a sport with a dwindling, aging fan base — if one with plenty of wealthy and influential members — and even if they succeeded, the profits would be a relative pittance for one of the world’s richest sovereign wealth funds. Experts say that these make clear that Saudi Arabia, with a golf investment of least $2 billion, has aspirations beyond the financial.
“The margins might be thin, but that doesn’t really matter,” said Simon Chadwick, a professor of sport and geopolitical economy at Skema Business School in Paris. “Because subsequently you’re establishing the legitimacy of Saudi Arabia — not just as an event host or a sporting powerhouse, but legitimate in the eyes of decision makers and governments around the world.”
The documents represent the most complete account to date of the financial assumptions underpinning LIV Golf. One of the most significant was prepared by consultants with McKinsey & Company, which has advised the kingdom’s leaders since the 1970s. McKinsey, which has worked to raise the stature of authoritarian governments around the world, was key to Vision 2030, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plan to diversify the kingdom’s economy and turn it into a powerful global investor. Worldwide sports have become a pillar in that plan, with Saudi officials even discussing the possibility of someday hosting the World Cup.
The wealth fund did not comment.
McKinsey, which declined to comment, analyzed the finances of a potential golf league, but pointedly said in its report that it was not examining whether it was a strategically viable idea. And many of Saudi Arabia’s rosy assumptions, McKinsey added, “have been taken for granted and not been challenged in our assessment.”
Indeed, LIV Golf appears far from meeting the goals that the Project Wedge documents laid out. After an inaugural season that cost in excess of $750 million, the league has not announced major broadcasting or sponsorship deals. And its hopes for a surrender by, or an armistice with, the PGA Tour have instead collapsed into an acrimonious court battle. (...)
The consultants detailed three possible outcomes for a franchise-driven league: languishing as a start-up; realizing a “coexistence” with the PGA Tour; or, most ambitiously, seizing the mantle of dominance.
In the most successful scenario, McKinsey predicted revenues of at least $1.4 billion a year in 2028, with earnings before interest and taxes of $320 million or more. (Federal records show that the PGA Tour, a tax-exempt nonprofit, logged about $1.5 billion in revenue and posted a net income of almost $73 million for 2019.)
By contrast, a league mired in start-up status — defined as attracting less than half of the world’s top 12 players, navigating a “lack of excitement from fans,” reeling from limited sponsorships and confronting “severe response from golf society” — stood to lose $355 million, before interest and taxes, in 2028.
For now, LIV’s standing tilts sharply that way. Its tournaments have not commanded large crowds, and its broadcasts are largely limited to YouTube. The PGA Tour suspended players who defected, and it is not yet clear whether the organizers of the four major men’s tournaments will allow LIV golfers to participate. (...)
McKinsey’s work on the golf project is part of a longstanding pattern of foreign consultants providing rationales for Gulf States’ multibillion-dollar projects, some of which become white elephants. When the crown prince announced plans to build a futuristic city called Neom, McKinsey was among the companies that helped envision proposals for robotic dinosaurs, flying taxis and a ski resort that officials say will host the Asian Winter Games in 2029.
If the idea seemed unlikely, records show that the benchmarks for success bordered on the fantastical. A new Saudi league would need to sign each of the world’s top 12 golfers, attract sponsors to an unproven product and land television deals for a sport with declining viewership — all without significant retaliation from the PGA Tour it would be plundering.
The proposal, code-named Project Wedge, came together as Saudi officials worked to repair the kingdom’s reputation abroad, which hit a low after the 2018 assassination of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents. The plan was the foundation for what became LIV Golf, the series whose debut this year provoked accusations that Saudi Arabia was trying to sanitize its human rights record with its deep pockets, former President Donald J. Trump’s country clubs and a handful of big-name golfers. Some of those golfers have publicly played down Saudi abuses, as has Mr. Trump.
“The margins might be thin, but that doesn’t really matter,” said Simon Chadwick, a professor of sport and geopolitical economy at Skema Business School in Paris. “Because subsequently you’re establishing the legitimacy of Saudi Arabia — not just as an event host or a sporting powerhouse, but legitimate in the eyes of decision makers and governments around the world.”
The documents represent the most complete account to date of the financial assumptions underpinning LIV Golf. One of the most significant was prepared by consultants with McKinsey & Company, which has advised the kingdom’s leaders since the 1970s. McKinsey, which has worked to raise the stature of authoritarian governments around the world, was key to Vision 2030, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plan to diversify the kingdom’s economy and turn it into a powerful global investor. Worldwide sports have become a pillar in that plan, with Saudi officials even discussing the possibility of someday hosting the World Cup.
The wealth fund did not comment.
McKinsey, which declined to comment, analyzed the finances of a potential golf league, but pointedly said in its report that it was not examining whether it was a strategically viable idea. And many of Saudi Arabia’s rosy assumptions, McKinsey added, “have been taken for granted and not been challenged in our assessment.”
Indeed, LIV Golf appears far from meeting the goals that the Project Wedge documents laid out. After an inaugural season that cost in excess of $750 million, the league has not announced major broadcasting or sponsorship deals. And its hopes for a surrender by, or an armistice with, the PGA Tour have instead collapsed into an acrimonious court battle. (...)
Prince Mohammed, the kingdom’s 37-year-old de facto ruler, often gravitates toward splashy ventures and has repeatedly said that he sets sky-high targets in hopes of motivating officials to achieve a fraction of them. In its analysis, McKinsey called the golf league “a high-risk high-reward endeavor.”
The consultants detailed three possible outcomes for a franchise-driven league: languishing as a start-up; realizing a “coexistence” with the PGA Tour; or, most ambitiously, seizing the mantle of dominance.
In the most successful scenario, McKinsey predicted revenues of at least $1.4 billion a year in 2028, with earnings before interest and taxes of $320 million or more. (Federal records show that the PGA Tour, a tax-exempt nonprofit, logged about $1.5 billion in revenue and posted a net income of almost $73 million for 2019.)
By contrast, a league mired in start-up status — defined as attracting less than half of the world’s top 12 players, navigating a “lack of excitement from fans,” reeling from limited sponsorships and confronting “severe response from golf society” — stood to lose $355 million, before interest and taxes, in 2028.
For now, LIV’s standing tilts sharply that way. Its tournaments have not commanded large crowds, and its broadcasts are largely limited to YouTube. The PGA Tour suspended players who defected, and it is not yet clear whether the organizers of the four major men’s tournaments will allow LIV golfers to participate. (...)
McKinsey’s work on the golf project is part of a longstanding pattern of foreign consultants providing rationales for Gulf States’ multibillion-dollar projects, some of which become white elephants. When the crown prince announced plans to build a futuristic city called Neom, McKinsey was among the companies that helped envision proposals for robotic dinosaurs, flying taxis and a ski resort that officials say will host the Asian Winter Games in 2029.
by Alan Blinder and Sarah Hurtes, NY Times | Read more:
Image: John David Mercer/USA Today Sports, via Reuters
Image: John David Mercer/USA Today Sports, via Reuters
[ed. McKinsey. Always near the bottom of every sludgy deal. Pete Buttigieg's old employer.]
On Speaking Spanish
Myriam Gurba: What made you want to discuss this subject?
Maria Bustillos: Well, my mom died … It’s going to be two years ago. And I used to speak Spanish with her every day, or pretty much every day. And now I don’t speak Spanish, like at all; I mean (a) I’m in Scotland right now, and (b) I’m estranged from most of my family, because they’re mostly Republicans, and the ones who aren’t Republicans don’t speak Spanish.
I was the first one of my family born in this country, and I had a rebellious attitude about participating in Latin American culture until I became an adult. I was taught to “assimilate,” and found my whole soul in English, as a teenager. But I still always spoke Spanish. I took that for granted. And I really miss it now; there’s a dimension of my psyche that has just sort of evaporated. I’ve come to realize that there’s so much more to all of this than politics, or “ESL” or immigration, or assimilation.
So tell me what your relationship is with Spanish.
MG: So, Spanish has been a part of me … It was a part of me before I was born, you know? Because my mother was born and raised in Mexico, speaking Spanish. When I was born, my mom was still in the process of learning English. And she’s told me that she didn’t work, I think, for maybe the first year of my life. And my mother is an extreme extrovert. She has no introversion—everything’s externalized, do you know what I mean? The woman lives inside-out. She needed somebody to talk to, and so I became her audience.
She’s said that she’d just speak to me all day long, and I’d just sort of nod along. And then I quickly became really hyperverbal, I think because I was around the world’s, or at least California’s, most prolific chatterbox. And so it just rubbed off on me. Do you know what I mean?
MB: Yeah. I mean your English is so stupendous, I love your English. But you spoke Spanish first?
MG: Yeah. Like in the house specifically, with my mother, and then my parents made a decision to raise all of their children bilingually. They decided that our father would speak to us in English, and our mother would speak to us in Spanish. They really, really, really abided by that agreement. I’m 45, and my dad still talks to me in English, and my mom in Spanish. The only time that I hear my mother speaking English is with people who are unable to speak Spanish. Or on an extremely rare occasion, she’ll speak English when she’s angry.
And so I get scared when I hear her speak English, because I’m like, “Somebody’s in trouble, and I don’t know if it’s me.” So that’s like my alarm, that’s my warning system; is the woman speaking English? If she’s speaking English, there’s trouble. So …
MB: How’s her English?
MG: Her English is great. She has an accent that is very noticeable, and she’s not at all interested in losing it. And so when she speaks, it’s clear to everybody who has heard Mexican speakers of English where she’s from, but she really owns it. She taught elementary school for 20 years.
My favorite mistakes that my mother makes in English happen when she confuses proverbs, or aphorisms or adages. And I think that she often improves them. Once she was looking at my friend and me and with a totally serious face, she goes, “It’s the law of the cookie and the way the jungle crumbles.” And it was beautiful.
MB: Poetry.
MG: I was like, “This is better.”
MB: My mom used to explain that a meddling person was “getting into my case.” So lovely.
So, you’re very close with your mom.
MG: Yeah. I love my mom a lot. (...)
MB: (...) How’s your writing, and do you read Spanish?
MG: I can read Spanish, but I need a lot of help writing it. I don’t have any formal education in Spanish composition. So I can read it competently and often do, but I struggle to write.
MB: Same.
MG: And I cannot accent it for the life of me. My mother has tried to teach me several times and I just sort of … I just treat the accents like pepper, wherever it falls, it falls.
[Both laughing helplessly]
MB: Go for it. That looks good! Oh man. (...)
MB: Yeah I love them. People ask me, do you speak Spanish fluently? And my stock reply is like, yeah, but like a really foul-mouthed eight-year-old.
MG: That’s what public fluency is, there are I think infinite ways to be fluent in a language and I think people who can understand everything but struggle to speak are fluent, but they experience extreme anxiety prior to speaking, and I think that anxiety is like… it’s socioculturally produced.
MB: Agreed. There’s a psychological moment to participating as a speaker in any culture. I know a lot of people, native speakers in various languages, who cannot have a conversation without gigantic anxiety because they’re being called on to produce language, and it’s frightening to them.
MG: It’s really terrifying for certain groups of people. I noticed that, when I was teaching high school, that basic—what we might call small talk, it seemed very challenging for about half of my students, and it wasn’t necessarily because these students spoke one language at home and another at school. They were unaccustomed to verbally socializing with one another, and they were really unaccustomed to low-stakes socializing verbally, low-stakes chatting. So I did a couple of lessons on small talk, because I was a social studies teacher—I taught civics and economics and history, but I would have, sometimes, these life skills components that I would weave into class.
MG: I explained how small talk is useful, I gave them examples of it and then I would have them practice with one another, and then I would also invite them to practice with me if they wanted to.
MB: Maybe the concept of triviality is native to people like us who are just naturally blabby, but there’s a certain kind of personality that considers speech significant and important, formal, it’s a commemoration of their lives at that moment, so they’re unable to unite that with triviality. People like us just look at that and think, what’s your problem? This all bullshit, none of it matters.
MG: My male students were especially challenged, because boys are not culturally or socially encouraged to engage in low-stakes chatter and so I really encouraged them. I had put down a list of common small talk subjects and encouraged them to practice with one another, because that way they wouldn’t have the added anxiety of talking to a girl.
I remember one time this student came up behind me, and he tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around and I was like, “Yes José, what can I help you with?” And he’s like, “I’m here for some small talk.”
[Both howling]
MB: Oh my God, that’s priceless.
MG: One of those golden teaching moments.
MB: It explains why there’s sports, because otherwise they would be lost.
MG: Exactly. They need human contact, but they create these limits around how they can socialize, and they’re just such artificial silly limitations and barriers that are so easily removed, because they’re just really absurd fictions.
Maria Bustillos: Well, my mom died … It’s going to be two years ago. And I used to speak Spanish with her every day, or pretty much every day. And now I don’t speak Spanish, like at all; I mean (a) I’m in Scotland right now, and (b) I’m estranged from most of my family, because they’re mostly Republicans, and the ones who aren’t Republicans don’t speak Spanish.
I was the first one of my family born in this country, and I had a rebellious attitude about participating in Latin American culture until I became an adult. I was taught to “assimilate,” and found my whole soul in English, as a teenager. But I still always spoke Spanish. I took that for granted. And I really miss it now; there’s a dimension of my psyche that has just sort of evaporated. I’ve come to realize that there’s so much more to all of this than politics, or “ESL” or immigration, or assimilation.
So tell me what your relationship is with Spanish.
She’s said that she’d just speak to me all day long, and I’d just sort of nod along. And then I quickly became really hyperverbal, I think because I was around the world’s, or at least California’s, most prolific chatterbox. And so it just rubbed off on me. Do you know what I mean?
MB: Yeah. I mean your English is so stupendous, I love your English. But you spoke Spanish first?
MG: Yeah. Like in the house specifically, with my mother, and then my parents made a decision to raise all of their children bilingually. They decided that our father would speak to us in English, and our mother would speak to us in Spanish. They really, really, really abided by that agreement. I’m 45, and my dad still talks to me in English, and my mom in Spanish. The only time that I hear my mother speaking English is with people who are unable to speak Spanish. Or on an extremely rare occasion, she’ll speak English when she’s angry.
And so I get scared when I hear her speak English, because I’m like, “Somebody’s in trouble, and I don’t know if it’s me.” So that’s like my alarm, that’s my warning system; is the woman speaking English? If she’s speaking English, there’s trouble. So …
MB: How’s her English?
MG: Her English is great. She has an accent that is very noticeable, and she’s not at all interested in losing it. And so when she speaks, it’s clear to everybody who has heard Mexican speakers of English where she’s from, but she really owns it. She taught elementary school for 20 years.
My favorite mistakes that my mother makes in English happen when she confuses proverbs, or aphorisms or adages. And I think that she often improves them. Once she was looking at my friend and me and with a totally serious face, she goes, “It’s the law of the cookie and the way the jungle crumbles.” And it was beautiful.
MB: Poetry.
MG: I was like, “This is better.”
MB: My mom used to explain that a meddling person was “getting into my case.” So lovely.
So, you’re very close with your mom.
MG: Yeah. I love my mom a lot. (...)
MB: (...) How’s your writing, and do you read Spanish?
MG: I can read Spanish, but I need a lot of help writing it. I don’t have any formal education in Spanish composition. So I can read it competently and often do, but I struggle to write.
MB: Same.
MG: And I cannot accent it for the life of me. My mother has tried to teach me several times and I just sort of … I just treat the accents like pepper, wherever it falls, it falls.
[Both laughing helplessly]
MB: Go for it. That looks good! Oh man. (...)
MB: Yeah I love them. People ask me, do you speak Spanish fluently? And my stock reply is like, yeah, but like a really foul-mouthed eight-year-old.
MG: That’s what public fluency is, there are I think infinite ways to be fluent in a language and I think people who can understand everything but struggle to speak are fluent, but they experience extreme anxiety prior to speaking, and I think that anxiety is like… it’s socioculturally produced.
MB: Agreed. There’s a psychological moment to participating as a speaker in any culture. I know a lot of people, native speakers in various languages, who cannot have a conversation without gigantic anxiety because they’re being called on to produce language, and it’s frightening to them.
MG: It’s really terrifying for certain groups of people. I noticed that, when I was teaching high school, that basic—what we might call small talk, it seemed very challenging for about half of my students, and it wasn’t necessarily because these students spoke one language at home and another at school. They were unaccustomed to verbally socializing with one another, and they were really unaccustomed to low-stakes socializing verbally, low-stakes chatting. So I did a couple of lessons on small talk, because I was a social studies teacher—I taught civics and economics and history, but I would have, sometimes, these life skills components that I would weave into class.
MG: I explained how small talk is useful, I gave them examples of it and then I would have them practice with one another, and then I would also invite them to practice with me if they wanted to.
MB: Maybe the concept of triviality is native to people like us who are just naturally blabby, but there’s a certain kind of personality that considers speech significant and important, formal, it’s a commemoration of their lives at that moment, so they’re unable to unite that with triviality. People like us just look at that and think, what’s your problem? This all bullshit, none of it matters.
MG: My male students were especially challenged, because boys are not culturally or socially encouraged to engage in low-stakes chatter and so I really encouraged them. I had put down a list of common small talk subjects and encouraged them to practice with one another, because that way they wouldn’t have the added anxiety of talking to a girl.
I remember one time this student came up behind me, and he tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around and I was like, “Yes José, what can I help you with?” And he’s like, “I’m here for some small talk.”
[Both howling]
MB: Oh my God, that’s priceless.
MG: One of those golden teaching moments.
MB: It explains why there’s sports, because otherwise they would be lost.
MG: Exactly. They need human contact, but they create these limits around how they can socialize, and they’re just such artificial silly limitations and barriers that are so easily removed, because they’re just really absurd fictions.
by Maria Bustillos, POPULA | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. Another Maria post. I love her writing and didn't realize this is where she hangs out.]
Save Seattle Music
Your favorite club is struggling to maintain staff, sell tickets, and reliably fill their calendar every month.
Rent is higher than ever; the cost of gas increased 49% in the first half of the year. The health care system continues to be a prohibitively expensive and inaccessible mess.
These problems are not unique to Seattle! Nor are they unique to the music industry. Bluntly: Shit is fucked everywhere. But Seattle was a thriving, energizing, musical city. It was synonymous with Sub Pop and KEXP. It was home to literally hundreds of rock, pop, hip-hop, soul, hardcore, metal, and experimental acts, and music fans flocked here to bear witness to the greatness that reliably rose from the damp, foggy shadows of the Pacific Northwest.
Now, venues are dark. Musicians are moving away, and those who remain are finding it harder and harder to prioritize their creative efforts over what's necessary for day-to-day survival. There's no growth. There's no energy. There are those who made it and those who did not.
It's time to turn things around. It's time to save Seattle's music scene.
Dave Segal spoke to six talent-buyers from venues, including the Crocodile, Neumos, Sunset Tavern, and the Royal Room to get the cold, hard truth about their current stressful state.
Kathleen Tarrant talked to a number of musicians who are struggling to find reliable mental health care, and how that impacts their ability to make art.
The organizers of Black Fret and SMASH, two aid organizations that launched in February 2020, share how difficult its been trying to fundraise and support artists during these volatile times, and two local musicians—one established and new to town—share their stories of how the lasting impact of the pandemic only fortified problems that existed before 2020.
But it's not all bad news! Ma’Chell Duma shares an idea that, frankly, could change the city forever—and it’s one I’ve heard others echo for years. Our music community needs the people in Seattle with money—the ones who established themselves and their businesses here because they were drawn to its energizing, melting pot of art, culture, and music—to invest back into the communities that brought them to the city in the first place.
And to see a local arts program that is working, read Matt Baume’s story about the 5th Avenue Theater’s First Draft program, an 18-month musical theater development camp that gives writers access to everything they need to develop the first draft of their musical. It offers peer support and access to workshops and meet-and-greets with industry experts. Most importantly, participants are paid for their time.
It's unanimous: Seattle’s music scene is broken. It's time to take a hard look at how we got here and ask ourselves: “What can we do to fix this?”
by Megan Seling, The Stranger | Read more:
Image: Anthony Keo
[ed. Series here.]
Psychedelic Therapy Arrives in the PNW
Among tall Douglas fir and oak trees, surrounded by a winding creek that feeds into the Clackamas River, a new kind of therapist is being minted in Oregon.
The aptly named InnerTrek is one of many companies that take local mental health professionals, health care workers, and alternative healers through a six-month course that will allow them to seek certification from the Oregon Health Authority to become some of the first guides to administer psilocybin to people in the United States. On Friday at a retreat center in Damascus, east of Portland, about 30 people gathered to learn how to counsel people through a psychedelic experience.
While psychedelic drugs remain federally illegal, Oregon’s Measure 109 was passed by voters in 2020 and will allow for the authorized administration of psilocybin at approved service centers in the state by licensed guides starting next year.
The industry’s launch in Oregon gives a glimpse at what a potential rollout could look like in other states, including Washington. While a legalization bill during Washington’s past legislative session failed to gain traction, the efforts are likely to resurface.
Most recently, voters in Colorado followed in Oregon’s steps, and already local municipalities across the country, including Seattle, are decriminalizing the use of psychedelics, while dozens of ketamine and MDMA-assisted therapy courses are enlisting mental health professionals to jump headfirst into a psychedelic renaissance.
But with certification courses costing thousands of dollars, and thousands of people seeking care among a national mental health crisis with shortage of workers, how will this first wave of treatment play out?
Mushrooms’ “magic”
There are over 200 varieties of psychedelic fungi across the globe. If ingested, psilocybin — the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms” — creates a mind-altering experience, often described as intense, euphoric or mystical. It sometimes includes visual hallucinations or in rare cases synesthesia, a neurological condition where senses are experienced differently and a person can taste colors, for example.
Compared with drugs like alcohol, psychedelic mushrooms are generally considered safe with low potential for abuse and no known lethal dose. Though they’re not advised for people with severe mental illnesses like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, for people with depression, PTSD or trauma, there’s a growing body of research that’s found significant therapeutic benefits.
Researchers at the John Hopkins Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research, for example, found that two doses of psilocybin provided relief for people with major depressive disorder for up to a year in some cases. The study, though small, was published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology in early 2022. Other researchers are investigating the value of psychedelics in helping people quit smoking, those with chronic illness or anorexia, and even health care workers experiencing burnout. (...)
Facilitators must complete at least 120 hours of training and an additional 40 hours of practicum or hands-on experience by an approved training program. Their training ranges from the ethics and responsibility of being a guide, to topics of consent when touching clients, how to deal with people undergoing a difficult trip, and general facilitation skills before, during and after a psychedelic experience, as well as self-care for the guide.
During the class Friday at InnerTrek (owned by Tom Eckert, architect of Measure 109), future facilitators discussed how varied the psychedelic experience can be for each person. Educators likened it to a flight: After ingesting psilocybin, the drug can take up to 75 minutes before takeoff — that’s where people can expect some “turbulence” with feelings of breathlessness or anxiety. The peak of the drug hits at around three to four hours, with the descent coming in at hour five or six, often coming in waves of clarity. (...)
The training programs currently cost about $8,000 to $10,000; facilitators must then pass a state exam before being licensed. (...)
While the Oregon Health Authority will start accepting applications for facilitators, service centers, labs and manufacturers on Jan. 2, it’s unlikely many will be ready soon. Starting this new supply chain will take time — educators think things will be up and running fully by summer or fall 2023.
Psychedelic aficionados also bring up concerns that plague the mental health field in general — how the workforce is largely white, despite psilocybin’s use among Native and Indigenous people, and barriers to accessing care. This form of treatment is not reimbursable by insurance and the high cost means some people that would most benefit from the care, are the least likely to be able to afford it.
by Esmy Jimenez, Seattle Times | Read more:
Image: Esmy Jimenez/The Seattle Times
The aptly named InnerTrek is one of many companies that take local mental health professionals, health care workers, and alternative healers through a six-month course that will allow them to seek certification from the Oregon Health Authority to become some of the first guides to administer psilocybin to people in the United States. On Friday at a retreat center in Damascus, east of Portland, about 30 people gathered to learn how to counsel people through a psychedelic experience.
While psychedelic drugs remain federally illegal, Oregon’s Measure 109 was passed by voters in 2020 and will allow for the authorized administration of psilocybin at approved service centers in the state by licensed guides starting next year.
Most recently, voters in Colorado followed in Oregon’s steps, and already local municipalities across the country, including Seattle, are decriminalizing the use of psychedelics, while dozens of ketamine and MDMA-assisted therapy courses are enlisting mental health professionals to jump headfirst into a psychedelic renaissance.
But with certification courses costing thousands of dollars, and thousands of people seeking care among a national mental health crisis with shortage of workers, how will this first wave of treatment play out?
Mushrooms’ “magic”
There are over 200 varieties of psychedelic fungi across the globe. If ingested, psilocybin — the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms” — creates a mind-altering experience, often described as intense, euphoric or mystical. It sometimes includes visual hallucinations or in rare cases synesthesia, a neurological condition where senses are experienced differently and a person can taste colors, for example.
Compared with drugs like alcohol, psychedelic mushrooms are generally considered safe with low potential for abuse and no known lethal dose. Though they’re not advised for people with severe mental illnesses like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, for people with depression, PTSD or trauma, there’s a growing body of research that’s found significant therapeutic benefits.
Researchers at the John Hopkins Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research, for example, found that two doses of psilocybin provided relief for people with major depressive disorder for up to a year in some cases. The study, though small, was published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology in early 2022. Other researchers are investigating the value of psychedelics in helping people quit smoking, those with chronic illness or anorexia, and even health care workers experiencing burnout. (...)
Facilitators must complete at least 120 hours of training and an additional 40 hours of practicum or hands-on experience by an approved training program. Their training ranges from the ethics and responsibility of being a guide, to topics of consent when touching clients, how to deal with people undergoing a difficult trip, and general facilitation skills before, during and after a psychedelic experience, as well as self-care for the guide.
During the class Friday at InnerTrek (owned by Tom Eckert, architect of Measure 109), future facilitators discussed how varied the psychedelic experience can be for each person. Educators likened it to a flight: After ingesting psilocybin, the drug can take up to 75 minutes before takeoff — that’s where people can expect some “turbulence” with feelings of breathlessness or anxiety. The peak of the drug hits at around three to four hours, with the descent coming in at hour five or six, often coming in waves of clarity. (...)
The training programs currently cost about $8,000 to $10,000; facilitators must then pass a state exam before being licensed. (...)
While the Oregon Health Authority will start accepting applications for facilitators, service centers, labs and manufacturers on Jan. 2, it’s unlikely many will be ready soon. Starting this new supply chain will take time — educators think things will be up and running fully by summer or fall 2023.
Psychedelic aficionados also bring up concerns that plague the mental health field in general — how the workforce is largely white, despite psilocybin’s use among Native and Indigenous people, and barriers to accessing care. This form of treatment is not reimbursable by insurance and the high cost means some people that would most benefit from the care, are the least likely to be able to afford it.
Image: Esmy Jimenez/The Seattle Times
Saturday, December 10, 2022
Joshua Lee Turner
[ed. Such a talented guy. Besides his solo work (and group gigs like this one) he's also part of a dazzling duo with Allison Young. To get in the Christmas spirit check out their wonderful composition - When I'm With You (Christmas Every Day).]
The Music Gig from Hell
This comes from the outstanding jazz pianist and B-3 organist Mike LeDonne, who recently received an email from a booking agent. The sender asked whether LeDonne would be interested playing at a venue in Brooklyn.
He hadn’t heard of the place, so he asked for more details.
He soon learned that it was a “door gig”—in other words, the venue would make no guarantee of payment. Musicians who take these gigs are promised some portion of revenues (usually ticket receipts), and so they play at their own financial risk.
I’m puzzled why these kinds of arrangements are legal. I once even talked to some law school professors about this matter. But they assured me that this is all perfectly okay. Yet we all knew that you can’t get away with paying cooks, bartenders, serving staff, or even dishwashers with a share of uncertain revenues.
Those folks get minimum wage or better. Only musicians are expected to show up for the gig with no guaranteed payment.
So Mike LeDonne turned down the gig. But that’s not the end of the story.
“I noticed that there was a ton of information as I scrolled down the email,” he explains, “and as I read along I was stunned by its audacity.”
The text started out with an innocent request for basic details. What’s the name of the band? What instruments are you playing? What’s your email address and phone number? Etc.
But then the questions got more intrusive.
The venue wanted to know the age of every member of the band, and then asked for the locations of previous gigs with a headcount of people who attended. But that was just a start, because now the venue began listing its own demands.
I’m not making this up. The musician gets no guarantees. But the venue has plenty of them—even a non-compete clause, as it turned out.
But it’s best for you to read it yourself:
He hadn’t heard of the place, so he asked for more details.
He soon learned that it was a “door gig”—in other words, the venue would make no guarantee of payment. Musicians who take these gigs are promised some portion of revenues (usually ticket receipts), and so they play at their own financial risk.
Those folks get minimum wage or better. Only musicians are expected to show up for the gig with no guaranteed payment.
So Mike LeDonne turned down the gig. But that’s not the end of the story.
“I noticed that there was a ton of information as I scrolled down the email,” he explains, “and as I read along I was stunned by its audacity.”
The text started out with an innocent request for basic details. What’s the name of the band? What instruments are you playing? What’s your email address and phone number? Etc.
But then the questions got more intrusive.
The venue wanted to know the age of every member of the band, and then asked for the locations of previous gigs with a headcount of people who attended. But that was just a start, because now the venue began listing its own demands.
I’m not making this up. The musician gets no guarantees. But the venue has plenty of them—even a non-compete clause, as it turned out.
But it’s best for you to read it yourself:
[What is] roughly the number of fans you can draw to the show:
Do you guarantee to draw that number of fans to any and all shows that you would be booking with us:
Do you guarantee to make a public Facebook event (or use our Facebook event), and do visible online promotions for the show that we can periodically check on:
Do you guarantee to not book any local shows within 2 weeks prior & 2 weeks after your date scheduled with us:
How do you plan to promote the show:
Do you understand that if you draw zero people to the show, there is no guarantee that any other band’s fans will stay and watch your show, and we will not have the confidence to be able to rebook you for another show:
Do you understand that unless you have a legitimate emergency, if you cancel last minute we won’t be able to book you again:
Have you read the show info provided for you, and have you read the door deal:
**********KEEP SCROLLING DOWN**************
************PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING- VERY IMPORTANT************
20 - 40+ FAN DRAW REQUIREMENTS All artists are screened and booked based on quality and on how many people they can draw to the show, so it is extremely important that you can bring a following of at least 20+ - 40+ people, depending on the venue and the time slot. If you cannot meet the draw requirements, please do not book a show.
We also ask that you do not book any local shows within 2 weeks prior & 2 weeks after your scheduled show with us. We really prefer that you only did local shows once a month or once every 6 weeks, and we explain why below in the “Special Tips and Tricks: How To Successfully Promote and Draw Fans To Your Show” section, but if you can honestly handle more than that draw-wise, good for you and go for it. Usually though, it is the best way to ensure that your following can make all shows and attach value and priority to your shows, because they are always a big deal and don’t happen too often but just often enough to be something you never want to miss. When achieved, it is truly the biggest win-win situation for everyone, most especially for the act who is performing."
by Ted Gioia, The Honest Broker | Read more:
Image: Mike LeDonne
[ed. I hope Ted doesn't mind me including a large part of his post, there's really no other way to excerpt it to appreciate the full impact of such a sleazy deal. Not only sleazy, but arrogantly sleazy. (But! Read the comments, apparently this isn't uncommon and there are even worse examples, if you can believe it. Who would have thought?) Also - it's not just musicians getting ripped off. See: Publications Must Pay Their Writers, Period (Current Affairs). The gig economy in all its sordid glory. I guess.]
[ed. I hope Ted doesn't mind me including a large part of his post, there's really no other way to excerpt it to appreciate the full impact of such a sleazy deal. Not only sleazy, but arrogantly sleazy. (But! Read the comments, apparently this isn't uncommon and there are even worse examples, if you can believe it. Who would have thought?) Also - it's not just musicians getting ripped off. See: Publications Must Pay Their Writers, Period (Current Affairs). The gig economy in all its sordid glory. I guess.]
Friday, December 9, 2022
Why Did Russia Launch This Catastrophic War?
A few weeks ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a “partial mobilization” of Russia’s armed forces and, not for the first time, threatened the West with nuclear annihilation. Given the seriousness of the threat—as well as the undeniable destructive power of the person who made it—the obvious question to ask is: How are we to avoid nuclear war? Basic common sense informs us that to answer this question satisfactorily we must first answer another: Why is nuclear war being threatened in the first place? What would compel the undeniably popular leader of a proud and culturally rich country of 144 million people to so brazenly jeopardize the future survival of his own people—and, indeed, the survival of the human species? What on Earth could possibly have led to this?
Many in the West have suggested that the answer to this question is obvious: it is that Putin is insane or dying or frustrated in his failure to resurrect the Tsarist empire or Soviet Union and/or destroy Ukraine. Such answers, however, are at best extremely simplistic and, at worst, distract us from the true—or, at the very least, far more significant—causes of the current crisis. Let us try to understand just what those causes are. (...)
[ed, In geopolitics nothing is linear.]
Why, then, did Russia launch such a catastrophic, criminal war? Let us try to understand the war’s causes from the Russian perspective. To do so is not to justify or excuse, but to try to comprehend the worldview that led to the war, in the hope that this might help us to end it. To understand Russian decision-making, we must revisit the following history:
As many as 27 million Soviet citizens died during the war, including approximately 14 million ethnic Russians. During the siege of Leningrad alone, approximately 1.1 million people died—more than the combined deaths of all U.S. and U.K. citizens during the war. (Notably, Putin’s 1-year-old brother, Viktor, also died during the siege.) Desperate hunger led many civilians to eat wallpaper, sawdust, and cats; many even resorted to cannibalism. Tens of thousands of Soviet cities, towns, and villages were also destroyed during the war, as well as thousands of churches and hundreds of synagogues. Overall, the Nazi invasion led to the Soviet Union losing up to a third of its wealth and one-eighth of its citizenry; it took eighteen years for the country to recover its pre-war population levels.
The war is not ancient history for Russians. Every year, on May 9—Russia’s “Victory Day,” a deeply emotional public holiday commemorating the Russian victory in World War Two (or the “Great Patriotic War,” as it is known in Russia)—Russians march in major cities across their country holding placards with pictures of their relatives who fought or served during the war. Hundreds of thousands of Russians still have vivid memories of what happened during the war years; the stories of their immense suffering are, in turn, faithfully transmitted from generation to generation. To give just one illustrative anecdote: when I was on holiday in St. Petersburg a few years ago, my tour guide informed me that her grandmother, who miraculously survived the siege of Leningrad, does not celebrate her own birthday. “She considers May 9 her birthday,” my tour guide said. “It is the only day which is sacred to her.”
Thus, a major event in Russia’s contemporary history—the Nazi invasion—involved the failure of its political leadership to take a security threat sufficiently seriously on its border, and this failure not only led to the deaths of tens of millions of its citizens, but almost completely obliterated the nation itself. Russia, in other words, is a country which, for perfectly comprehensible historical reasons, is extraordinarily sensitive about any potential military buildup on its borders. It is a country which is committed to never making the same mistake again.
NATO Expansion
Besides the Second World War, there are other crucial pieces of historical context that are worth mentioning. Western leaders misled Russia during the 1990s about NATO expansion after the admission of a unified Germany into the alliance (Germany, it bears repeating, is a country which had almost destroyed Russia twice in the preceding century). As declassified documents released in 2017 by the National Security Archive at George Washington University show, such promises were made on multiple occasions by various Western leaders and officials, including most famously by Secretary of State James Baker, who told president of the U.S.S.R. Mikhail Gorbachev three times that NATO would not expand “one inch to the East” of Germany. (...)
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, NATO has added 14 members—almost doubling the alliance’s size—in five separate waves of eastward expansion: the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined in 1999; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined in 2004; Albania and Croatia joined in 2009; Montenegro joined in 2017; and the latest member, North Macedonia, became a member just two years ago, in 2020. Furthermore, at the Bucharest Summit in 2008, NATO explicitly declared that both Georgia and Ukraine would eventually become members of the alliance. (The Summit Declaration reads: “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.”)
In short: Western promises of NATO non-expansion were repeatedly made, and they were repeatedly broken. In fact, it is worse than this: since these promises were made, other explicit promises to other countries (namely, Georgia and Ukraine) have been made which further contradict the original promises given to Soviet (or Russian) leaders in the 1990s. Thus, NATO, the world’s most powerful military alliance whose original raison d’être was to confront and contain the Soviet presence in Central and Eastern Europe has, since the fall of the Soviet Union, expanded closer and closer to Russia’s borders. What’s more, it has issued official, explicit statements to the effect that it will come closer still. Is it any wonder the Russians are nervous? (...)
The Failure of Minsk II
Setting this tangled legal issue to one side, one should note that, in the case of Ukraine specifically, Russia had one final legalistic-diplomatic recourse to prevent NATO expansion. These were the Minsk Accords, in particular, the “Minsk II Agreement,” drawn up in February 2015 by the governments of France, Germany, Ukraine, and Russia, and subsequently endorsed by the U.S, the European Union, and the United Nations. The central purpose of Minsk II was to end the conflict between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine: its crucial provisions included the demilitarization of the Donbas region (and, hence, an end to the fighting) in exchange for the region’s “autonomy”—an autonomy which, the Russians hoped, would imply its having an effective veto of major Ukrainian government foreign policy decisions including, most crucially, any decision to join NATO.
For seven years, Russia had been consistently and vociferously calling for the agreement’s implementation. Shortly after the agreement was signed, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov remarked that “the agreement was supported at the highest level and we hope that all parties will honor their commitments.” In 2019, president Vladimir Putin affirmed that “our position is very simple: we stand for the implementation of the Minsk agreements.” In 2021, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov emphasized “the absolute necessity of the full, consistent, comprehensive implementation of the Minsk Package of Measures.” And just weeks before the invasion, Putin himself reiterated his “belief [that] there is simply no alternative” to the full implementation of the Minsk accords.9 Since 2015, Germany and France had also repeatedly called for Minsk II’s implementation; indeed, they were even occasionally joined, somewhat half-heartedly, by the U.S.
The Ukrainian government, however, staunchly resisted implementing the agreement. In June 2018, then Interior Minister Arsen Avakov stated: “The Minsk process has played its role and at the moment it is dead. The Minsk process in its current form does not solve the problems of Ukraine in any way.” Former President Petro Poroshenko—who had been president of the country when the original agreement was signed—echoed Avakov’s remarks: “The Minsk format of negotiations no longer exists,” he said. In early February this year, Oleksiy Danilov, the head of the National Security Council of Ukraine, repeated this point: “It’s impossible to implement [these] documents. … If they [the Russians, Germans, and French] insist on implementing the agreements as they are, it will be very dangerous for our country.” Valeriy Chaly, a member of the original Ukrainian delegation to Minsk, agreed with Danilov’s remarks: “The circumstances have changed significantly, so the Minsk agreements are no longer the political decisions that can be used. They need to be totally renegotiated.”
It is primarily for these reasons that Ukraine specialist Anatol Lieven, in addition to pointing out before the invasion that “the only basis for a settlement is that of the Minsk II Protocol” and remarking (correctly) that “the depth of Russia’s commitment to this [the Minsk II] solution would of course have to be carefully tested in practice,” blamed the failure of Minsk II squarely on “the refusal of Ukrainian governments to implement the [Minsk II-based] solution and the refusal of the United States to put pressure on them to do so.” Similar views have also been expressed by others, including fellow Ukraine expert Lev Golinkin.(Golinkin also attributes the Minsk Accords’ “continued derailment” to the influence of the Ukrainian far-right, for whom the agreements are “anathema.”
The Missing Diplomatic Solutions?
Some have argued that, in spite of more than 30 years of failed diplomacy between Russia and the West and, in particular, the failed implementation of Minsk II, there were nevertheless other diplomatic options that Russia could have pursued. Here I will address two of the more promising—but, I will argue, nonetheless very far from convincing—of such proposals.
- The Second World War.
- The history of NATO expansion and aggression, and the unilateral U.S. withdrawal from nuclear arms treaties.
- Russia’s specific concerns regarding Ukraine.
The Second World War
The war is not ancient history for Russians. Every year, on May 9—Russia’s “Victory Day,” a deeply emotional public holiday commemorating the Russian victory in World War Two (or the “Great Patriotic War,” as it is known in Russia)—Russians march in major cities across their country holding placards with pictures of their relatives who fought or served during the war. Hundreds of thousands of Russians still have vivid memories of what happened during the war years; the stories of their immense suffering are, in turn, faithfully transmitted from generation to generation. To give just one illustrative anecdote: when I was on holiday in St. Petersburg a few years ago, my tour guide informed me that her grandmother, who miraculously survived the siege of Leningrad, does not celebrate her own birthday. “She considers May 9 her birthday,” my tour guide said. “It is the only day which is sacred to her.”
Thus, a major event in Russia’s contemporary history—the Nazi invasion—involved the failure of its political leadership to take a security threat sufficiently seriously on its border, and this failure not only led to the deaths of tens of millions of its citizens, but almost completely obliterated the nation itself. Russia, in other words, is a country which, for perfectly comprehensible historical reasons, is extraordinarily sensitive about any potential military buildup on its borders. It is a country which is committed to never making the same mistake again.
NATO Expansion
Besides the Second World War, there are other crucial pieces of historical context that are worth mentioning. Western leaders misled Russia during the 1990s about NATO expansion after the admission of a unified Germany into the alliance (Germany, it bears repeating, is a country which had almost destroyed Russia twice in the preceding century). As declassified documents released in 2017 by the National Security Archive at George Washington University show, such promises were made on multiple occasions by various Western leaders and officials, including most famously by Secretary of State James Baker, who told president of the U.S.S.R. Mikhail Gorbachev three times that NATO would not expand “one inch to the East” of Germany. (...)
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, NATO has added 14 members—almost doubling the alliance’s size—in five separate waves of eastward expansion: the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined in 1999; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined in 2004; Albania and Croatia joined in 2009; Montenegro joined in 2017; and the latest member, North Macedonia, became a member just two years ago, in 2020. Furthermore, at the Bucharest Summit in 2008, NATO explicitly declared that both Georgia and Ukraine would eventually become members of the alliance. (The Summit Declaration reads: “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.”)
In short: Western promises of NATO non-expansion were repeatedly made, and they were repeatedly broken. In fact, it is worse than this: since these promises were made, other explicit promises to other countries (namely, Georgia and Ukraine) have been made which further contradict the original promises given to Soviet (or Russian) leaders in the 1990s. Thus, NATO, the world’s most powerful military alliance whose original raison d’être was to confront and contain the Soviet presence in Central and Eastern Europe has, since the fall of the Soviet Union, expanded closer and closer to Russia’s borders. What’s more, it has issued official, explicit statements to the effect that it will come closer still. Is it any wonder the Russians are nervous? (...)
The Failure of Minsk II
Setting this tangled legal issue to one side, one should note that, in the case of Ukraine specifically, Russia had one final legalistic-diplomatic recourse to prevent NATO expansion. These were the Minsk Accords, in particular, the “Minsk II Agreement,” drawn up in February 2015 by the governments of France, Germany, Ukraine, and Russia, and subsequently endorsed by the U.S, the European Union, and the United Nations. The central purpose of Minsk II was to end the conflict between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine: its crucial provisions included the demilitarization of the Donbas region (and, hence, an end to the fighting) in exchange for the region’s “autonomy”—an autonomy which, the Russians hoped, would imply its having an effective veto of major Ukrainian government foreign policy decisions including, most crucially, any decision to join NATO.
For seven years, Russia had been consistently and vociferously calling for the agreement’s implementation. Shortly after the agreement was signed, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov remarked that “the agreement was supported at the highest level and we hope that all parties will honor their commitments.” In 2019, president Vladimir Putin affirmed that “our position is very simple: we stand for the implementation of the Minsk agreements.” In 2021, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov emphasized “the absolute necessity of the full, consistent, comprehensive implementation of the Minsk Package of Measures.” And just weeks before the invasion, Putin himself reiterated his “belief [that] there is simply no alternative” to the full implementation of the Minsk accords.9 Since 2015, Germany and France had also repeatedly called for Minsk II’s implementation; indeed, they were even occasionally joined, somewhat half-heartedly, by the U.S.
The Ukrainian government, however, staunchly resisted implementing the agreement. In June 2018, then Interior Minister Arsen Avakov stated: “The Minsk process has played its role and at the moment it is dead. The Minsk process in its current form does not solve the problems of Ukraine in any way.” Former President Petro Poroshenko—who had been president of the country when the original agreement was signed—echoed Avakov’s remarks: “The Minsk format of negotiations no longer exists,” he said. In early February this year, Oleksiy Danilov, the head of the National Security Council of Ukraine, repeated this point: “It’s impossible to implement [these] documents. … If they [the Russians, Germans, and French] insist on implementing the agreements as they are, it will be very dangerous for our country.” Valeriy Chaly, a member of the original Ukrainian delegation to Minsk, agreed with Danilov’s remarks: “The circumstances have changed significantly, so the Minsk agreements are no longer the political decisions that can be used. They need to be totally renegotiated.”
It is primarily for these reasons that Ukraine specialist Anatol Lieven, in addition to pointing out before the invasion that “the only basis for a settlement is that of the Minsk II Protocol” and remarking (correctly) that “the depth of Russia’s commitment to this [the Minsk II] solution would of course have to be carefully tested in practice,” blamed the failure of Minsk II squarely on “the refusal of Ukrainian governments to implement the [Minsk II-based] solution and the refusal of the United States to put pressure on them to do so.” Similar views have also been expressed by others, including fellow Ukraine expert Lev Golinkin.(Golinkin also attributes the Minsk Accords’ “continued derailment” to the influence of the Ukrainian far-right, for whom the agreements are “anathema.”
The Failure of Diplomacy
But why did Putin invade Ukraine rather than addressing security concerns peacefully, through negotiation and diplomacy?
A close look at the history of NATO is revealing. In particular, Russia tried for over 30 years to acquire some binding agreements on NATO non-expansion. But this effort failed largely for two reasons:
- Senior U.S. and NATO officials refused to concede that Russia could prevent Ukraine’s (or any other non-NATO country’s) accession to NATO through diplomatic channels.
- The one legal document which would have effectively guaranteed Ukraine’s permanent non-accession to NATO, Minsk II, failed to be implemented.
Over the last 30 years, multiple Russian leaders have warned about the threat NATO expansion poses to Russian security. In 1995, Russian President Boris Yeltsin informed U.S. President Bill Clinton that “the borders of NATO expanding towards those of Russia” would “constitute a betrayal” and “humiliation” of the Russian people; in 1997, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warned the U.S. Congress that he believed NATO expansion was “a mistake, it is a bad mistake, and I am not persuaded by the assurances I hear that Russia has nothing to worry about”; and in a famous speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin labeled NATO expansion a “serious provocation that reduces mutual trust.” Indeed, in December last year, just two months before its invasion of Ukraine, Russia publicly published proposed draft treaties with NATO and the U.S,, demanding an end to any further eastward expansion of the alliance—a demand which NATO unanimously rebuffed, and which the U.S. in particular rejected as a “complete non-starter.”
Russian perceptions that NATO expansion was a mistake have been echoed over the years by some of the most senior members of the American political and intellectual establishment. Distinguished former statesman George Kennan, famous for his advocacy of the policy of “containment” during the Cold War, in 1998 labeled NATO expansion “a tragic mistake” for which there was “no reason whatsoever.” Influential New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in 1996 similarly described NATO expansion as “the most ill-conceived project of the post-cold-war era.” Celebrated liberal senator Daniel Moynihan in 1998 also warned that, by expanding NATO, “we [the U.S.] have no idea what we’re getting into.” Perhaps the foremost statesman warning of the perils of NATO expansion, however, has been former Ambassador to Moscow and current CIA Director William J. Burns. In his recently published memoir, The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal, Burns recounts how, while working as a counselor for political affairs at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in 1994, he reported back to Washington that “hostility to early NATO expansion is almost universally felt across the political spectrum here.” (Burns himself was of the mind in the mid-1990s that “NATO expansion was premature at best, and needlessly provocative at worst.”) (...)
Undeterred by such warnings from Russian leaders and even members of its own establishment, the U.S. pressed ahead with NATO enlargement. Moreover, Western leaders have repeatedly made it emphatically clear that their rejection of Russian demands is both principled and nonnegotiable. (...)
The Missing Diplomatic Solutions?
Some have argued that, in spite of more than 30 years of failed diplomacy between Russia and the West and, in particular, the failed implementation of Minsk II, there were nevertheless other diplomatic options that Russia could have pursued. Here I will address two of the more promising—but, I will argue, nonetheless very far from convincing—of such proposals.
Thursday, December 8, 2022
Monopoly By the Numbers
A fast-growing number of Americans know that their country has a monopoly problem, and that wealth, power, and control are increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few. We see this in poll numbers – in which 63 percent say that the distribution of wealth and money is unfair – and we see it in protest movements like the Tea Party and protest candidacies like that of Bernie Sanders, largely powered by voters fed up with the state of America’s politics and economy.
Thus far, most of the coverage of America’s monopoly problem has come from the 10,000-foot level. The Economist exemplified this with a pair of articles in 2016, in which they wrote that “the fruits of economic growth are being hoarded” by America’s profitable corporate giants, who face negligible competition. The economists Paul Krugman and Larry Summers have linked growing monopoly power to weak growth, and in a recent White House report, Jason Furman and Peter Orszag argued that monopoly has contributed to inequality in wages.
There are many indicators that economic concentration is increasing. We see when we compare the salary of a CEO today to that of a CEO in the 1970s. Thanks to research led by the Open Markets Team, we see how economic concentration increasingly blocks entrepreneurs from starting and growing their own businesses. Similarly, we can see how wealth is increasingly concentrated geographically. As research and writing by Open Markets has detailed, wealth and power is increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer cities, meaning that as San Francisco, New York City, and Washington thrive, a growing large number of large heartland communities like St. Louis and Memphis increasingly find themselves cut off and hollowed out.
We see some of the most dramatic evidence of concentration at the level of individual economic sectors. Nearly every marketplace in America is vastly more consolidated than a generation ago.
Consider retail; today, a single corporation, Walmart, controls 72 percent of warehouse clubs and super centers in the entire United States. In close to 40 metropolitan areas across America, Walmart sells more than half of all groceries. Amazon, meanwhile, dominates e-commerce in general, and many specific lines of business. The corporation, for instance, sells 74 percent of all e-books and 64 percent of all print books sold online. The story’s often the same for more specialized retail. In eyeglasses, one company, Luxxotica, dominates the manufacture and retail of glasses. In mattresses, two companies control 60 percent of the entire U.S. market.
Much the same is true in food and farming. A generation ago, small, independent operations defined the entire industry. Today, the businesses of beef, pork, and poultry slaughter are all dominated by four giants at the national level. But that greatly understates the problem, as in many regions, a single corporation holds a complete monopoly. Two firms, Dean Foods and the Dairy Farmers of America control as much as 80-90 percent of the milk supply chain in some states and wield substantial influence across the entire industry. As our Food & Power website details, the story is much the same in food-processing, egg production, grain production, and produce farming.
We see some of the most extreme consolidation in hospitals, health insurers, pharmaceutical corporations, and medical device industries. In the average hospital market, the top three hospitals and systems account for 77 percent of all hospital admissions. Many communities face even more monopolistic markets – Grand Junction, Colo. and the whole western portion of the state are served by just one hospital corporation. Hospital corporations across America have also been buying up physician practices in recent years. Hospital ownership of physician practices more than doubled between 2004 and 2011, from 24 to 49 percent. In drug stores, meanwhile, the pending takeover of Rite Aid by Walgreen’s would reduce the market to two giants, along with CVS.
Monopolists have captured control over many lines of manufacturing as well. Corning, an American glass manufacturer, sells 60 percent of all the glass used in LCD screens, and Owens Illinois holds a near monopoly over market for glass bottles in the US. Rexam, a British company, holds a dominant position over the international supply of bottle caps and pharmaceutical bottles.
And, even in industries where many firms compete to sell to end users, monopolists will roll up control of the supply base. In the automobile industry, where manufacturers compete aggressively for customers, a handful of monopolists wield dominant power in the world of auto parts, so that giant firms control the production of things like car seats and dashboards.
Below, we’ve compiled some examples of this concentration as found in different sectors.
[ed. See also: Monopoly's event-horizon (Pluralistic).]
Thus far, most of the coverage of America’s monopoly problem has come from the 10,000-foot level. The Economist exemplified this with a pair of articles in 2016, in which they wrote that “the fruits of economic growth are being hoarded” by America’s profitable corporate giants, who face negligible competition. The economists Paul Krugman and Larry Summers have linked growing monopoly power to weak growth, and in a recent White House report, Jason Furman and Peter Orszag argued that monopoly has contributed to inequality in wages.
We see some of the most dramatic evidence of concentration at the level of individual economic sectors. Nearly every marketplace in America is vastly more consolidated than a generation ago.
Consider retail; today, a single corporation, Walmart, controls 72 percent of warehouse clubs and super centers in the entire United States. In close to 40 metropolitan areas across America, Walmart sells more than half of all groceries. Amazon, meanwhile, dominates e-commerce in general, and many specific lines of business. The corporation, for instance, sells 74 percent of all e-books and 64 percent of all print books sold online. The story’s often the same for more specialized retail. In eyeglasses, one company, Luxxotica, dominates the manufacture and retail of glasses. In mattresses, two companies control 60 percent of the entire U.S. market.
Much the same is true in food and farming. A generation ago, small, independent operations defined the entire industry. Today, the businesses of beef, pork, and poultry slaughter are all dominated by four giants at the national level. But that greatly understates the problem, as in many regions, a single corporation holds a complete monopoly. Two firms, Dean Foods and the Dairy Farmers of America control as much as 80-90 percent of the milk supply chain in some states and wield substantial influence across the entire industry. As our Food & Power website details, the story is much the same in food-processing, egg production, grain production, and produce farming.
We see some of the most extreme consolidation in hospitals, health insurers, pharmaceutical corporations, and medical device industries. In the average hospital market, the top three hospitals and systems account for 77 percent of all hospital admissions. Many communities face even more monopolistic markets – Grand Junction, Colo. and the whole western portion of the state are served by just one hospital corporation. Hospital corporations across America have also been buying up physician practices in recent years. Hospital ownership of physician practices more than doubled between 2004 and 2011, from 24 to 49 percent. In drug stores, meanwhile, the pending takeover of Rite Aid by Walgreen’s would reduce the market to two giants, along with CVS.
Monopolists have captured control over many lines of manufacturing as well. Corning, an American glass manufacturer, sells 60 percent of all the glass used in LCD screens, and Owens Illinois holds a near monopoly over market for glass bottles in the US. Rexam, a British company, holds a dominant position over the international supply of bottle caps and pharmaceutical bottles.
And, even in industries where many firms compete to sell to end users, monopolists will roll up control of the supply base. In the automobile industry, where manufacturers compete aggressively for customers, a handful of monopolists wield dominant power in the world of auto parts, so that giant firms control the production of things like car seats and dashboards.
Below, we’ve compiled some examples of this concentration as found in different sectors.
by Open Markets | Read more:
Image: uncredited
DRM: The Urinary Tract Infection Business Model
Most of the pre-digital offers aren't available at any price: you could buy a DVD and keep it forever, even if you never went back to the store again. If you "buy" a video on Prime or YouTube and then cancel your subscription and delete your account, you lose your "purchase."
If you buy a print book, you can lend it out or give it away to a friend or a library or a school. Ebooks come with contractual prohibitions on resale, and whether an ebook can be loaned is at the mercy of publishers, and not a feature you can give up in exchange for a discount.
For brain-wormed market trufans, the digital media dream was our nightmare. It was something I called "the urinary tract infection business model." With non-DRM media, all the value flowed in a healthy gush: you could buy a CD, rip it to your computer, use it as a ringtone or as an alarmtone, play it in any country on any day forever.
If you buy a print book, you can lend it out or give it away to a friend or a library or a school. Ebooks come with contractual prohibitions on resale, and whether an ebook can be loaned is at the mercy of publishers, and not a feature you can give up in exchange for a discount.
For brain-wormed market trufans, the digital media dream was our nightmare. It was something I called "the urinary tract infection business model." With non-DRM media, all the value flowed in a healthy gush: you could buy a CD, rip it to your computer, use it as a ringtone or as an alarmtone, play it in any country on any day forever.
Of course, there was no market for the right to buy a book but not the right to loan that book to someone else. Instead, giving sellers the power to unilaterally confiscate the value that we would otherwise get with our purchases led them to do so, selling us less for more.(...)
Back when PVRs like Tivo entered the market, viewers were as excited about being able to skip ads as broadcasters and cable operators were furious about it. The industry has treated ignoring or skipping ads as a form of theft since the invention of the first TV remote control, which was condemned as a tool of piracy, since it enabled viewers to easily change the channel when ads came on.
The advent of digital TV meant that cable boxes could implement DRM, ban ad-skipping, and criminalize the act of making a cable box that restored the feature. But early cable boxes didn't ban ad-skipping, because the cable industry knew that people would be slow to switch to digital TV if they lost this beloved feature.
Instead, the power to block ads was a sleeper agent, a Manchurian Candidate that lurked in your cable box until the cable operators decided you were sufficiently invested in their products that they could take away this feature.
This week, Sky UK started warning people who pressed the skip-ad button on their cable remotes that they would be billed an extra £5/month if they fast-forwarded past an ad. The UTI business model is back, baby – feel the burn!
https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/sky-warns-customers-charged-5-25644831
This was the utterly foreseeable consequence of giving vendors the power to change how their devices worked after they sold it to you, under conditions that criminalized rivals who made products to change them back. (...)
This is a case I've made to other reviewers since, but no one's taken me up on my suggestion that every review of every DRM-enabled device come with a bold warning that whatever you're buying this for might be taken away at any time. In my opinion, this is a major omission on the part of otherwise excellent, trusted reviewers like Consumer Reports and Wirecutter.
Everywhere we find DRM, we find fuckery. Even if your cable box could be redesigned to stop spying on you, you'd still have to root out spyware on your TV. Companies like Vizio have crammed so much spyware into your "smart" TV that they now make more money spying on you than they do selling you the set.
https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/14/still-the-product/#vizio
Remember that the next time someone spouts the lazy maxim that "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product." The problem with Vizio's TVs isn't that they're "smart." The problem isn't that you're not paying enough for them.
The problem is that it's illegal to unfuck them, because Vizio includes the mandatory DRM that rightsholders insist on, and then hide surveillance behind its legal minefield.
The risks of DRM aren't limited to having your bank-account drained or having your privacy invaded. DRM also lets companies decide who can fix their devices: a manufacturer that embeds processors in its replacement parts can require an unlock code before the device recognizes a new part. They can (and do) restrict the ability of independent service depots to generate these codes, meaning that manufacturers get a monopoly over who can fix your ventilator, your tractor, your phone, your wheelchair or your car.
https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8
The technical term for these unlock codes is "VIN-locking," and the "VIN" stands for "vehicle identification number," the unique code etched into the chassis of every new car and, these days, burned into into its central computerized controller. Big Car invented VIN-locking. (...)
With Felony Contempt of Business Model, repair is just the tip of the iceberg. When security experts conduct security audits of DRM-locked devices, they typically have to bypass the DRM to test the device.
Since bypassing this DRM exposes them to legal risks, many security experts simply avoid DRM-locked gadgets. Even if they are brave enough to delve into DRM's dirty secrets, their general counsels often prohibit them from going public with their results.
This means that every DRM-restricted device is a potential reservoir of long-lived digital vulnerabilities that bad guys can discover and exploit over long timescales, while honest security researchers are scared off of discovering and reporting these bugs.
That's why, when a researcher goes public with a really bad security defect that has been present for a very long time, the system in question often has DRM – and it's why media devices are so insecure, because they all have DRM.
La Niña Times Three
In December 2022, Earth was in the grips of La Niña—an oceanic phenomenon characterized by the presence of cooler than normal sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific. The current La Niña, relatively weak but unusually prolonged, began in 2020 and has returned for its third consecutive northern hemisphere winter, making this a rare “triple-dip” event. Other triple-dip La Niña’s recorded since 1950 spanned the years 1998-2001, 1973-1976, and 1954-1956. (...)
Much like El Niño, La Niña events affect weather across the globe. “When the Pacific speaks, the whole world listens,” explained Josh Willis, a climate scientist and oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “Their strongest impacts are on either side of the Pacific Ocean. Floods in northern Australia, Indonesia and southeast Asia are common in La Niña years, as is drought in the American southwest.” Meteorologists have linked the current La Niña to a variety of natural disasters, including drought and food security problems in the Horn of Africa, flooding in Australia, and drought in the U.S. Southwest.
Part of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle, La Niña appears when energized easterly trade winds intensify the upwelling of cooler water from the depths of the eastern tropical Pacific, causing a large-scale cooling of the eastern and central Pacific ocean surface near the Equator. These stronger-than-usual trade winds also push the warm equatorial surface waters westward toward Asia and Australia.
The cooling of the ocean’s surface layers during La Niña affects the atmosphere by modifying the moisture content across the Pacific. It alters global atmospheric circulation and can cause shifts in the path of mid-latitude jet streams in ways that intensify rainfall in some regions and bring drought to others.
In the western Pacific, rainfall can increase dramatically over Indonesia and Australia during La Niña. Over the central and eastern Pacific, clouds and rainfall become more sporadic, which can lead to dry conditions in southern Brazil, Argentina, and other parts of South America and wetter conditions over Central America. In North America, cooler and stormier conditions often set in across the Pacific Northwest, while weather typically becomes warmer and drier across the southern United States and northern Mexico.
La Niña tends to change in sync with the seasons. Both El Niño and La Niña tend to be at their strongest in December. “Then in the spring, the tropical Pacific resets itself and starts building toward whatever is going to happen in the following winter,” explained Willis. “The best bet right now is that this La Niña will last through the winter. Then next spring, we’ll be back in wait and see mode for what happens in winter 2023-2024.”
The cooling of the ocean’s surface layers during La Niña affects the atmosphere by modifying the moisture content across the Pacific. It alters global atmospheric circulation and can cause shifts in the path of mid-latitude jet streams in ways that intensify rainfall in some regions and bring drought to others.
In the western Pacific, rainfall can increase dramatically over Indonesia and Australia during La Niña. Over the central and eastern Pacific, clouds and rainfall become more sporadic, which can lead to dry conditions in southern Brazil, Argentina, and other parts of South America and wetter conditions over Central America. In North America, cooler and stormier conditions often set in across the Pacific Northwest, while weather typically becomes warmer and drier across the southern United States and northern Mexico.
La Niña tends to change in sync with the seasons. Both El Niño and La Niña tend to be at their strongest in December. “Then in the spring, the tropical Pacific resets itself and starts building toward whatever is going to happen in the following winter,” explained Willis. “The best bet right now is that this La Niña will last through the winter. Then next spring, we’ll be back in wait and see mode for what happens in winter 2023-2024.”
by NASA Earth Observatory | Read more:
Image: Joshua Stevens, NASA Earth Observatory
Wednesday, December 7, 2022
What Is On the Bookshelves at Puck?
Puck, an online publication aspiring to connect name-brand journalists to wealthy and powerful readers, launched last year funded in part by TPG, “a private-equity firm with a hundred and thirty-five billion dollars in assets,” according to a recent account by Clare Malone in the New Yorker. Despite those deep pockets, and an initial raise of $7 million, however, the photo accompanying Malone’s piece indicates that the bookshelves at Puck HQ are curiously bare.
Editorial offices, even relatively new ones, tend to look like something out of Hoarders, bursting at the seams with review copies and research materials. To eyes habituated to that typical clutter, the Puck photo presents a disconcerting image; one that suggests something more like a furniture ad than a newsroom.
Further deepening the irreality was the question of where these shelves are located. Though it’s common and, given the cost of renting office space in New York, even prudent for a media startup to avoid the expense of a lease, if possible, they are (presumably) real shelves. Where are they?
Despite its positioning as a cutting-edge Information Age publishing enterprise, Puck is forbiddingly hard to Google, its results swamped by those for the fabled 19th century humor magazine of that name, and for the immense and fancifully decorated Lafayette Street office where the magazine was edited and published—and which, a century later, was home to Spy magazine, co-founded by Graydon Carter, who eventually became editor of Vanity Fair. This is the history that led Jon Kelly, a former protege of Carter, to name his new venture Puck. (Now Jared Kushner’s family company owns the Puck Building and it has expensive condos in it.)
This new Puck is not in the Puck Building, apparently. Its website lists no physical address or phone number, just a single email address: fritz@puck.news, for what Malone calls an “automated e-mail persona.” (...)
But: the shelves! With a few exceptions, the selection of books we could make out here has Airport Bookshop written all over it. How did they land on these shelves?
Popula counts 29 books on the slate-gray bookcases in this photo (not counting the 11 uniform volumes of whatever periodical is arranged on the second shelf down, the title of which we were unable to determine). [UPDATE: See below.]
There’s also a plant cutting in water in a “chocolate Negroni” bottle, apparently repurposed from a $140 four-pack of premixed cocktails. Of the 29 visible books, we were able to identify 14, at least three of which were written by Puck staffers: How To Be Black by Baratunde Thurston, and House of Cards and Money and Power by William D. Cohan. Here are the ones we could make out, with excerpts from their relevant blurbs and promotional copy:
The Machine Will Speak With You Now
DALL-E’s chatbot sibling is open to the public.
OpenAI, perhaps best known for its DALL-E image generator, which can produce imagery from text prompts, has opened up public access to ChatGPT — a chatbot that lets you test, explore, manipulate, harass, and generally fiddle around with the latest in “conversational” AI.
Image generators like DALL-E and Midjourney provided an early taste of what this generation of generative AI is capable of — in their case, automating a range of artistic production styles, with often competent results. ChatGPT is much less specific. It’s a general-purpose bot waiting for a question, a command, or even an observation. And it does a much better impression of a real person than anything widely available before it.
With such a wide-open prompt, figuring out what to do with can be daunting. Thankfully, new users have spent the last few days coming up with some ways to break the ice. Some have been using it as a search engine; by default, it won’t actually search the web for you, but it will attempt to answer a very wide range of both broad and highly specific questions:
It’s also apparently capable of generating passable school essays:
OpenAI is suggesting users engage with ChatGPT in a conversational way, but it’s best understood as a chat interface for a large language model that’s capable of many different sorts of tasks. You can talk with it, but you can also tell it what to do. In a pinch, for example, it’s a viable Weird Al, available for very specific parodies:
But using ChatGPT also surfaces a few critiques quite quickly. It is clearly able and will be used to automate a variety of tasks for which people are paid — jobs, in other words, or at least parts of jobs. (The chatbot interface is especially evocative of a customer service interaction, for which this sort of automation will have clear potential, at least to the people in charge.) Whether this kind of thing makes most peoples’ lives easier — or eliminates them — is the sort of unsettling question you’ll find creeping into your brain as you generate jokes for the group chat.
It’s also clearly trained on, and drawing from, a great deal of material to which it provides no clear form of credit. Additionally, users devoting time to experimenting with or breaking ChatGPT are, in effect, contributing to the effort.
Image generators like DALL-E and Midjourney provided an early taste of what this generation of generative AI is capable of — in their case, automating a range of artistic production styles, with often competent results. ChatGPT is much less specific. It’s a general-purpose bot waiting for a question, a command, or even an observation. And it does a much better impression of a real person than anything widely available before it.
It’s also apparently capable of generating passable school essays:
OpenAI is suggesting users engage with ChatGPT in a conversational way, but it’s best understood as a chat interface for a large language model that’s capable of many different sorts of tasks. You can talk with it, but you can also tell it what to do. In a pinch, for example, it’s a viable Weird Al, available for very specific parodies:
But using ChatGPT also surfaces a few critiques quite quickly. It is clearly able and will be used to automate a variety of tasks for which people are paid — jobs, in other words, or at least parts of jobs. (The chatbot interface is especially evocative of a customer service interaction, for which this sort of automation will have clear potential, at least to the people in charge.) Whether this kind of thing makes most peoples’ lives easier — or eliminates them — is the sort of unsettling question you’ll find creeping into your brain as you generate jokes for the group chat.
It’s also clearly trained on, and drawing from, a great deal of material to which it provides no clear form of credit. Additionally, users devoting time to experimenting with or breaking ChatGPT are, in effect, contributing to the effort.
by John Herrman, Intelligencer | Read more:
Image: Kevin Roose, via DALL-E
[ed. I signed up. Once in awhile something comes along and changes everything, this is one of those times. See also: The Brilliance and Weirdness of ChatGPT; and, Does ChatGPT Mean Robots Are Coming For the Skilled Jobs? (NYT).]
[ed. I signed up. Once in awhile something comes along and changes everything, this is one of those times. See also: The Brilliance and Weirdness of ChatGPT; and, Does ChatGPT Mean Robots Are Coming For the Skilled Jobs? (NYT).]
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