How the "Working Class Republican" Scam Works

The Republican Party under Trump would like to opportunistically cast itself as a “working class” or “pro-worker” party. As a starting point to today’s conversation: this is bullshit, and the pundits who give it credence only help the bullshit spread more widely. Many labor journalists including myself have written long pieces laying out the policy reasons why this is bullshit. (Here’s one by me on the awful labor elements of Project 2025, here’s Dave Jamieson on JD Vance’s bullshit, here’s Steve Greenhouse on the Republicans’ bullshit, and you can Google for many, many more.) I’m not going to belabor, hehehe, the reasons why it is bullshit here. What I want to do today is to briefly sketch out what actually makes up the alleged shift in the GOP, and what is going to happen, generally speaking, if we allow it to flourish.

A classic pro-labor political agenda, by which I mean “a political agenda that will actually help the working class,” consists of things that will strengthen worker power—more and stronger unions, and a government framework to help rather than hinder those unions—and things that will rein in corporate power. This is common sense, when you remember that there is a natural and omnipresent power struggle between capital and labor under our system of capitalism. Companies and investors and managers are always trying to seize more power for themselves in order to keep wages and worker power low, and the labor movement seeks to empower workers to fight against this. So: help workers get stronger, in the form of unions, and put guardrails on the excesses of corporations, via corporate regulations and taxes. Labor policy is quite detailed and labor law is its own morass of nitpickery that even I do not fully understand but in general it is easy to comprehend who a policy agenda is trying to help and who it is not trying to help by using the above framework. Do not evaluate these things based on who has more pickup trucks at their political rallies or who uses what songs for their ads or who you would like to attend a football game with or who wears a flannel shirt. (Or even who shows up to put on a concerned face at a picket line.) Evaluate the various political agendas based on whether they legitimately make worker power greater and restrict corporate power, or not.

If “build worker power and restrict corporate power” are the two pillars of left wing labor policy, here are the two pillars of the Republican Party as a Working Class Party of today:

1. Anti-immigration. This, not union power, is the bedrock of what the Republicans are selling as their working class agenda. Instead of saying “companies are stepping on workers’ necks,” they say instead, “immigrants are taking money out of workers’ pockets.” Notice that any conversation on this topic by the right wing shifts almost immediately into a rant against immigration. It never goes from “we want to help workers” to “we want to build unions.” It always goes from “we want to help workers” to “immigrants are the problem.” This is the number one sleight of hand at work in all of this. Whenever an allegedly pro-worker Republican starts talking about the perils of immigration, stop him and ask him instead what he wants to do to build more and stronger unions so that working people will actually have the ability to take their fair share of the economy back. The answer will be bullshit, I guarantee.

No matter where you land on the immigration issue—whether you think it is mostly a humanitarian crisis in which working people of the world are artificially divided and oppressed by arbitrary borders in order to benefit capitalists (true), or whether you think immigration is a serious problem for the American working class because immigrants are stealing American workers’ jobs (not true in the sense of being a national crisis, but perhaps true in spots)—the one thing that is definitely true is that immigration is not the most important part of a pro-worker labor policy. It is at best a secondary concern. The heart of a pro-worker labor policy is union power and corporate regulation. Republicans instead want to sell the idea that the American economy is a zero-sum battle between American workers and immigrants coming in to take jobs and money and housing and resources from those American workers. As a matter of fact, the American economy is not zero-sum, and the job market is not a zero-sum contest between natives and immigrants, and the affordable housing crisis was not caused by immigration, and in the long run immigration grows rather than shrinks the economy.

So while there are legitimate questions of logistics and resources necessary to take in and assimilate large numbers of immigrants into America and its economy in the least harmful way, the fact that these questions are always swapped into the labor policy discussion is just pure scaremongering by Republicans. It is just a way to use racism to distract from the fact that Republicans hate unions. If you find that analysis too blunt, we can say that it is a way to demonize an other in order to avoid addressing the genuine questions at the heart of American capitalism that cause the working class to lack power. Going forward, just count the seconds from when someone asks these Republicans about the working class to see how long it takes them to start demonizing immigrants. And then see how long it takes them to start talking about how to build stronger unions. The answer will speak for itself.

2. Culture war transposed onto companies. If you are genuinely concerned about the fact that big corporations have too much power and workers have too little, restricting corporate power is its own goal. Restoring the fair balance of power is an end in itself. In the case of the Working Class Republican Party, that is not how it works. Republicans are still the party of business. They do not want to restrict corporate power in order to empower the working class. What they do instead is to take their culture war issues—gay rights, trans rights, “DEI” aka racism, and other right wing/ religious obsessions—and apply them to corporations. So they hate “big tech” and whatnot not because those companies are too powerful and are therefore detrimental to the working class economically, but because they believe those companies are too powerful and are therefore detrimental to right wing values culturally.

This is a pretty clear distinction! Although one that routinely befuddles national pundits. “Buhhhh, Josh Hawley and JD Vance said big tech companies are bad… is this populism?” No. This is culture war, applied to corporations. Instead of saying, for example, “Anheuser-Busch needs to sign a strong contract with its union in order to help workers live better lives,” you say, “Anheuser-Busch sucks because Bud Light had a trans person in an ad!” To me, it does not seem hard to see which of these positions represents true concern about the dangerous imbalance of power between workers and corporations, and which one is just bigotry masquerading as populism. But a lot of pundits seem mystified. (...)

That’s it. Those two elements are the core of the Working Class Republican Party. The fact that the national political media takes this seriously as some sort of meaningful shift in policy is a testament to the fact that we really need more experienced labor reporters in this country. It is very dumb.

Now, let me make a prediction to you about how this will play out, if Trump and Vance ascend to the White House. Corporations, which employ many lobbyists who are attuned to these things, will perceive that the Republican anti-corporate push is rooted not in a genuine distaste for corporate economic power but rather in a distaste for the trappings of progressivism that major corporations don for PR purposes. So what will corporations do? They will change their outward appearances. They will retire the pride flags and they will stop putting trans people in ads and they will stop putting out Black Lives Matter statements and they will stop touting their DEI policies. And they will tell their ad agencies to put more American flags in their ads.

This will be enough to satisfy the Republican Party. They will be able to proclaim victory in their culture war against woke corporations. Said corporations will proceed to conduct business as usual. The Republican Party will enact its typical anti-union policies and cut corporate taxes and scrap corporate regulations, and carry out flamboyant and draconian anti-immigrant efforts, as they always do. This regulatory environment will be good for corporate power and correspondingly bad for worker power and union power. 

by Hamilton Nolan, How Things Work |  Read more:

Image: Getty

[ed. Exactly so. Republican administrations (and some Democratic ones, too) since Reagan have principally focused on these two issues: big tax breaks and trade protection for corporations; and vilification of immigrants. Oh, and one more too: privatization of public resources (vilification of government). See also: Public Ownership of Public Goods (HtW):]

"You don’t get a bill when a fire truck comes to your house. You do get a bill when an ambulance comes to your house. The only reason why this strikes anyone as normal is custom. Fire departments are publicly owned. They are a service that the government provides to all of us. If, a hundred years ago, fire departments had become private businesses, so that anyone whose house caught on fire also got stuck with a $5,000 bill for extinguishing services, then people living today would mostly accept that as the natural state of affairs. It is easy to see that America’s division between public and private services does not follow any rule at all, except this: Under capitalism, the private sector will try to take over all services, always, and only constant government action will keep public services public.

Do I need to say that this is stupid? This is stupid. If you were designing a common sense rule to govern what services should be publicly owned, it would be something like, “The public should own the things that all the public uses.” In fact, I think that if you asked most people, you would find that they already take this for granted, whether they have thought much about it or not. Why is the fire department public and not private? Because anyone might need it at any time. It’s a common good. It makes sense to be publicly owned. This is also why the police department is public. It is why parks are public. It is why the postal service is public. It is why schools are public. It is why most roads are public. It is the basic rationale for most of the things that the government controls and runs and provides to the public as a service. It is common sense.

A moment’s contemplation of this basic principle is enough to make you start wondering about all the things that aren’t public. Within the group of “Things that everyone needs more or less equally,” why is there such an arbitrary division between the publicly run things and the private ones? Why do we get firefighters, but not doctors? Why parks, but not stadiums? Why roads, but not banks? Why not, you know, food? When you take a vital service and privatize it, you ensure that it will run according to a private profit motive rather than running with the goal of providing the best service to the public. America’s health care system is the most glaring example of the human cost of this. The aggregate number of years of human life that we sacrifice in order to allow a relatively small number of people to get rich off of owning and selling health care is a staggering moral crime. The underlying principle, though, applies across many other less flashy goods and services."

***

See also: Everyone into The Grinder: "One of the most direct ways to improve a flawed system is simply to end the ability of rich and powerful people to exclude themselves from it. If, for example, you outlawed private schools, the public schools would get better. They would get better not because every child deserves to have a quality education, but rather because it would be the only way for rich and powerful people to ensure that their children were going to good schools. The theory of “a rising tide lifts all boats” does not work when you allow the people with the most influence to buy their way out of the water. It would be nice if we fixed broken systems simply because they are broken. In practice, governments are generally happy to ignore broken things if they do not affect people with enough power to make the government listen. So the more people that we push into public systems, the better.

Rich kids should go to public schools. The mayor should ride the subway to work. When wealthy people get sick, they should be sent to public hospitals. Business executives should have to stand in the same airport security lines as everyone else. The very fact that people want to buy their way out of all of these experiences points to the reason why they shouldn’t be able to. Private schools and private limos and private doctors and private security are all pressure release valves that eliminate the friction that would cause powerful people to call for all of these bad things to get better. The degree to which we allow the rich to insulate themselves from the unpleasant reality that others are forced to experience is directly related to how long that reality is allowed to stay unpleasant. When they are left with no other option, rich people will force improvement in public systems. Their public spirit will be infinitely less urgent when they are contemplating these things from afar than when they are sitting in a hot ER waiting room for six hours themselves."

Why is Fentanyl in Cocaine?

Last Sunday, the Wall Street Journal, ran a huge feature story about three “high achieving” New Yorkers who ordered cocaine from the same phone-order delivery service. A social worker, a finance executive, and a young lawyer all died from fentanyl overdoses after placing their cocaine order. According to the unsealed criminal complaint, the cocaine had a mix of fentanyl and acetylfentanyl in it, which are potent synthetic opioids that an unsuspecting user has little tolerance for.

The Journal’s reporting, based on the complaint and numerous interviews, offers a vivid account of these people’s lives just before they died. But neither the complaint nor the story answers the central question on everybody’s mind: Why is there fentanyl in cocaine?

Since this story came out, multiple people have sent me DMs and emails asking: What the fuck? Why would “dealers” do this to their customers? What business sense does this make?

The government wants to charge the people they say are involved in this delivery service with running a narcotics conspiracy that resulted in death. “In the course of a single day, the defendants’ Delivery Service caused the deaths of three unrelated victims in Manhattan by selling the victims purported cocaine that was, in fact, laced with fentanyl,” the complaint reads.

There’s a subtle thing I picked up on here. The government says the Delivery Service indeed sold the cocaine “laced” with fentnayl. But they do not say, nor am I aware that they are alleging, that the Delivery Service did the actual lacing. And that’s what I want to zoom in on here: 1) At what level in the supply chain was the fentanyl mixed into cocaine? and 2) Why is this happening? (...)

The events I’m writing about ocurred during March 2021.

Why do dealers add fentanyl to cocaine?

Most dealers are not doing this. When something terrible like this does happen, I think it says much more about the state of the drug market and its structural dynamics than the people who are working in that market.

The main reason I’ve heard from researchers and analysts about the cocaine-fentanyl phenomenon is that there is simply too much illicit fentanyl being manufactured. There is way too much fentanyl and not nearly enough of the old school agriculturally produced drugs like cocaine and heroin that people very much want and seek out. This is a supply-side problem, not a demand-side problem. There is a surplus of street fentanyl out there and this excess fentanyl supply has to go somewhere. Someone, somewhere, is on the hook for it.

The illicit drug supply chain, like all markets today, is complex and multi-layered. And I think that market dynamics happenning above the retail sales level (e.g. The Delivery Service) is where this excess/surplus fentanyl gets mixed into cocaine. It could be happening via some accidental contamination. A brick of fentanyl accidentally gets added to cocaine and nobody notices. Then drug buyers who work closer to the retail-level make a bulk purchase and they get stuck with contaminated product.

Those who run retail-level sales operations typically go through middle-men who act as a go between, seperating the street level from bigger brokers and regional distributors. My speculation is that the fentanyl is being mixed into cocaine supplies at these upper-levels of the market, perhaps several rungs above the retail-level.

In this Manhattan case, it appears the Delivery Service eventually realized something was wrong with their product. I think the evidence in the complaint makes the case that it was not them who did the actual lacing. After they already made some sales of a “new batch” it seemed they realized their drugs were tainted and something was going very wrong.

I want to start with one part of the complaint that appeared in the WSJ article that really stuck out to me. It’s a text message exchange between one of the now deceased customers, Amanda Scher, a social worker, and the dispatcher. “On that March day, Ms. Scher texted a number stored in her phone as ‘Jason Melissa’” to place a cocaine order.

“Question first,” Ms. Scher wrote.

“Is it the same as it was Sunday? Because that was not good lol, had to get rid of it.”

“No new…Batch,” came the reply.

“Def better,” Ms. Scher texted about two hours after the delivery.

Texts came in from the delivery-service number:

“Hey try not to do too much because it’s really strong”

“Hey boss lady you heard”

“Lol”

The WSJ piece shows the Delivery Service then making a bunch of panicked phone calls and texts to the customers hours after they purchased their orders. Around six hours after the “cocaine” delivery to the young lawyer, her phone pinged and it was the DeliveryService:

“Hey”

“Hey you there”

Seven calls came in that night and the next morning from the delivery-service number.

The same thing happened to the social worker. After “cocaine” was delivered to her, the Delivery Service made three FaceTime audio calls to her phone that went unanswered. Then came a text the next morning: “Hey can you give me a call back I need to ask you something real fast.”

From the WSJ piece, based on the complaint, “The day after the deliveries, Mr. Rainey sent Mr. Ortega screenshots of home drug testing kits, and Mr. Ortega switched to a different phone to take drug orders, prosecutors alleged.” Mr. Ortega and Mr. Rainey are defendants in the case, accused of running the “narcotics conspiracy.”

It seems that the Delivery Service eventually realized their batch was tainted, and that doesn’t mean it was them who did the lacing. Maybe they knowingly bought a bad batch and had no other sources, so they bought it tried to fix it. Maybe the realized their batch was bad after using a fentanyl test strip, and then sent panicked messages to their customers.

Based on the frenzy of calls and messages to their customers, one thing that seems unlikely is that this delivery service wanted to intentionally harm or poison people. The DEA often labels drug dealers as cold-blooded murderers; predators who prey on people suffering with addiction, who don’t care about safety or human life. The messages sent by The Service to their customers that were obtained by law enforcement do not sound like cold-blood murderers. The Service sounds like people who are scared.

But this whole ordeal is also also confusing. Because it appears that this wasn’t the first time that the Delivery Service sold “bad” cocaine. The text messages between the social worker and the Delivery Service add another layer to this story. The social worker wanted to place an order with the service, but she told them that she had to get rid of her last batch because it was so bad. Was that batch also cut with fentanyl? Was that batch just very weak? What was going on there?

Again, I can only speculate based on what I know about the drug market right now.

I think this particular service struggled to obtain quality product. I think they realized something was wrong with their product, which they likely bought from a mid-level supplier above them in the supply chain. Maybe the Delivery Service bought drugs as they usually do but this batch was contaminated and they were stuck with what they got.

The retail-level sellers at the bottom of the supply-chain, the people who itnerface with customers, were maybe left with only bad choices. That’s the nature of prohibition markets. If they ditch the bad batch and don’t sell it, then they are likely to lose out on a lot of money. So they see selling it as their only choice. What do they do? They try to cut it. They try to dilute it. They try to make do with what they’ve got, just as many small businesses in America do.

Unless they’re good chemists, the retail-level attempts to fix their product isn’t really going to work. Especially with a cocaine and fentanyl combo, where customers are using their five senses to test the quality of the drug all the time. They taste it. They smell it. They look at it. Then finally they feel it. They are feeling for a stimulating cocaine high, which is the opposite of what fentanyl does. The consistency, taste, smell, and psychoactive effect are all wrong. Perhaps that’s why the social worker “had to get rid” of the last batch. Maybe she got lucky that time and survived because she only did a tiny bit and got rid of it.

After that incident, the Delivery Service maybe had the same product and they tried to do something to improve the quality and called it “a new batch.” This is something I’ve seen dealers do a lot. They say they’ve got something good, something new, but it’s the same old junk. It’s like a crappy sale at Kohl’s. Customers arrive all excited only to see the stuff on sale is the boring shit they don’t want.

Interestingly, the social worker responded that the new batch was “def better.” Maybe the Delivery Service bought better cocaine and added it to the bad batch. But the fentanyl was still there. At first taste, the cocaine hit them first, so they used more and more. And the fentanyl crept up.

Fentanyl can hit fast, but snorting still takes roughly 10 minutes to really hit. It’s not like the movies. The effects of snorting are not instantaneous. Using this bad batch, the unwitting user is in a totally precarious place and could very well die if they’re alone and no one is there with naloxone to revive them. It seems that was the case in each of these three deaths. The social worker, the lawyer, and the finance executive used alone and died.

by Zachary Siegel, Substance |  Read more:

Image: via

[ed. See also: The cops and local news won’t stop lying about fentanyl (WTHW):]

"None of which is to say that fentanyl isn’t actually dangerous when used and (I know you know this) anyone out there using right now should be especially careful. It’s just that it quite simply does not attack you like a sentient alien molecule riding on the air from host body to host body as the cops would have us believe.

The reason they want us to believe it does is obvious to anyone reading this but just to lay it out anyway the more dangerous the job of a cop appears and the more that idea is laundered through the media the harder it becomes for people to push back against anything they say or do never mind get anywhere remotely near something like defunding them. After all look at how valiant they are out there risking their lives every day to rid the streets of the scourge of dangerous drugs. For us.

It also provides further justification for destroying the lives of the people they arrest for possession of said drugs. If people like this can use drugs this dangerous they must naturally be inhuman....

Plenty of drug users also know right off the jump that these overdose stories are fake. If fentanyl was really deadly to the touch or somehow magically defied gravity and lingered in the air, people everywhere would be dropping like flies. And yet, it’s only cops who seem susceptible to fentanyl’s magical properties."

The Good Tourist

The good tourist: can we learn to travel without absolutely infuriating the locals?

Tourism has never had a great reputation, given that the very word “tourist” is pejorative. At best, it suggests someone whose interest is superficial and whose understanding of a place is nonexistent. What’s the first thing you think, when you hear the phrase, “They’re a bit of a tourist”? You think, that person is annoying. But the word’s reputation has plummeted further in recent years. Anti-tourism movements are springing up across the world...

Part of this is about sheer volume: the number of people crossing an international border as tourists (rather than displaced people or migrants) in 2023 was 1.3 billion, which is not only a complete bounceback post-Covid, but an almost 25-fold increase since the 1950s...

When you look at anti-tourism movements as a whole, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that travel is one of those nice things we no longer deserve. But into that sorry picture steps the travel journalist Paige McClanahan with her book The New Tourist. We can still travel, she says, and more than that, it’s important that we do; we just have to get a lot better at it.

The old kind of tourist, she writes, is “a pure consumer who sees the people and places he encounters when he travels as nothing more than a means to some self-serving end: an item crossed off a bucket list, a fun shot for his Instagram grid, one more thing to brag about to his peers”. The new tourist, by contrast, is humbled by the unfamiliar, not unsettled by it, she “embraces the chance to encounter people whose backgrounds are very different to her own, and to learn from cultures or religions that she might otherwise fear or regard with contempt”. Maybe that doesn’t sound groundbreaking – in brief, when you’re away, try being your best self – but it cuts to the heart of a book that is part a modern history of international travel, part manifesto for it...

The first chapter of The New Tourist goes back to how we got here: 50 years ago, when newlyweds Tony and Maureen Wheeler set off from the south of England to drive to India. They weren’t the first to try the hippy trail, but they were the first to launch a publishing empire off the back of it: Lonely Planet. Many of us who took our first trips as adults holding one of these guides will remember the sensibility of them: it was all about budget travel, getting in and out of a place on a fiver. The Wheelers changed the terms of tourism entirely – the true traveller didn’t waltz in like Lady Muck, paying top dollar for everything. This new kind of tourist liked to be called a “traveller” and went to out-of-the-way places, craving the authenticity of the locals’ experience, not luxury.

But this had its downsides, namely that these “travellers” had the same footprint but a lot less money. No offence – and this is my opinion, not McClanahan’s – the Wheelers made an absolute fortune off performative non-materialism and lauded being “off the beaten track”, while beating every track so hard you could see the tracks from space.

Lonely Planet guides, by the turn of this century, had become more about the high end, but there is a broader tension, which McClanahan exemplifies with Bhutan – where you pay a really sizeable visitor sustainable development tax of $100 a person every day – versus Nepal, the “backpacker’s superhighway”. “In Bhutan,” she says, “you had to come with an organised tour and had to be led by a local tour guide. They were very explicitly going for lower volume, higher quality tourism.” She felt plugged in to Bhutan, “saw villages that felt untouched” (tourism in Bhutan has existed, in tiny numbers, since 1974); Nepal, heaving with visitors, didn’t come close, “although the landscapes were beautiful, of course”. It would be crude, though, to make that into a creed that you should only travel if you’re loaded. Maybe, rather, it means start by going to places where they want you.

by Zoe Williams, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image: Park Guell in Barcelona. Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images

Nail Art: Small Canvas, New Directions

The creatives pushing nail art to sculptural new lengths (CNN)

Images: Mei Kawajiri; Morgan Gilbertson, via Jam Press

American Vulcan

The facts of Palmer Luckey’s life are so uniquely bizarre—combining elements of fantasy with lunacy and also world-altering change—that they could be printed on magnetic poetry tiles, rearranged in an endless number of indiscriminate combinations by a drooling baby, and yet every time, still manage to convey something significant and true.

Let me show you: Luckey is the owner of the world’s largest video game collection, which he keeps buried 200 feet underground in a decommissioned U.S. Air Force nuclear missile base—which is the kind of thing a man can afford to buy when he single-handedly turns virtual reality from the laughingstock of the technology industry into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise by inventing the Oculus Rift in a camper trailer parked in the driveway of his parents’ duplex in Long Beach, California, where at 19 years old he lived alone and survived on frozen burritos and Mucho Mango AriZona tea.

Or: After selling Oculus to Facebook for $2.7 billion and then getting fired by Mark Zuckerberg for making a $10,000 donation to a pro-Trump troll group dedicated to “shitposting in real life,” Luckey tried his hand at building a nonprofit private prison chain that only gets paid when ex-prisoners stay out of prison. After he decided that would require too much lobbying work, he attempted to solve the obesity epidemic by making food out of petroleum products centrifuged out of the sewer system—a perfectly delicious and low-calorie idea, he maintains, which he only ditched because of the “marketing nightmare” of persuading people to eat remanufactured sewage. In the end, he decided instead to found Anduril Industries, a defense technology startup that makes lethal autonomous weapons systems. It is now valued at $14 billion.

Another: In his spare time, when he is not providing U.S. Customs and Border Patrol with AI-powered long-range sensors, or Volodymyr Zelenskyy with drones to attack high-value Russian targets, or winning first place in the Texas Renaissance Festival’s costume contest with historically meticulous renderings of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn sewn and stitched by his wife, Nicole—who’s been at his side for 16 of his 31 years on earth—Luckey recently built a bypass for his peripheral nervous system to experiment with giving himself superhuman reflexes; vestibular implants to pipe sounds into his skull so that instead of having to call him and wait for him to pick up, Anduril employees could just pick up a designated Palmer Phone and talk straight into his head; and a virtual reality headset that—by tying three explosive charges to a narrow-band photosensor that can detect when the screen flashes red at a specific frequency (i.e., GAME OVER)—kills you in real life when you die in a video game.

Would you like one more? Of course you would: In his private underground workshop garage on Lido Isle in Newport Beach, California, Luckey has built an unenclosed toilet on the wall of his workspace. As the transcript of our recorded conversation later confirmed, I alarmed Luckey’s press handler by becoming fixated on this toilet, repeatedly telling him that it was “awesome,” “so fucking awesome,” and “probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.” Luckey rescued me from this preoccupation by capering up to the second floor of his lair to show me the dance studio, the sewing room, and the traditional Japanese-style apartment he built for Nicole, who as it happened gave birth to their first child the very next day.

It took me several hours of trailing Luckey—hours filled with air and sea drones, autonomous air vehicles, surveillance and electronic warfare systems currently deployed in Ukraine, a 1966 Mark V Disney Autopia, a 1,600-pound, 670-horsepower, augmented reality headset-operated Autozam AZ-1, which is wrapped in an anime decal of the character LLENN (“In the real world she is very, very tall and nobody thinks she’s cute,” he explained, “so she spends all her time in virtual reality where she can play as a very cute small girl, because that’s what she in her heart wants to be”)—to understand that my monomania for the exposed toilet was just the normal person’s relief at the sight of something ordinary in the fulminating life-world of Palmer Luckey. Aside from having a family and liking Taco Bell, toilet-use might be the only other thing we have in common.

But if he is perhaps the wildest misfit tech diva of his generation, with a torrid ambition and engineering prowess rivaled only by Elon Musk, Luckey is also, in a way Musk is not and cannot be, the product of something more familiar—the heir to a 100-year revolution in American society that made Southern California the techno-theological citadel of the Cold War, and a one-man bridge between the smoldering American past and an unknown future that may be arriving soon. (...)

The shadow of the Sun Belt—which pooled its wealth and voting power into free market and family politics, an eccentric and paranoid anticommunism, pro-Zionism, and a younger, more colorblind hyperpatriotic nationalism—can be hard to spot in the more recent California of Kamala Harris and George Clooney, and the parched corpse that passes for the region’s GOP. But it can be seen following Palmer Freeman Luckey, who went to church here every Sunday as a boy and grew up near the port, watching the Marine Corps practice helicopter drills and Navy ships conduct exercises right offshore, and spent his weekends building computers and coil guns, modifying video game consoles, raiding junkyards, and cannibalizing DVD burners for their laser diodes, which he used to build etching equipment.

Julie Luckey decided to homeschool her children for an uncomplicated reason: She believed all kids are different, and that no schooling system can devise a personalized education for every individual, who by definition is unique. In her son’s case, at least, the decision was vindicated. “These days they’d probably say I had ADD,” Luckey told me at his home in Newport Beach, sitting at his makeshift Dungeons & Dragons table littered with Sonic condiment packets, beneath the 6,500-gallon coldwater tank filled with local predatory fish he built into his white and teal living room. “I’d say I just had boy disorder. But it was pretty clear that I was going to need some special attention if I was going to not just spin out of control.” When he wasn’t doing his schoolwork, Luckey liked reading Jules Verne, Neal Stephenson, and Anne McCaffrey novels, playing video games, and educating himself on electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, gas and solid-state lasers, and high-voltage power systems.

His mother’s sense of the value of tailoring education to the uniqueness of individuals has an echo in Luckey’s love of anime, which began in early childhood—and which is clear from the room on the first floor of his home ringed with glass shelves supporting hundreds of hand-painted vinyl anime figurines, mostly of buxom girl characters. This animated style adapted from Japanese manga, running at a low frame rate and composed of longer fixed scenes, is very cheap—which is what gives the medium its magic, he explained. “The reason that’s so fundamental is that the extremely low cost of production is what allowed anime to become a huge, huge diversity of different genres, of different ideas. They can say, ’We’re going to do an experiment here. We’re going to make something for the weirdos.’”

by Jeremy Stern, Tablet |  Read more:

Image: Elizabeth Weinberg

Kool & The Gang

[ed. See also: ‘Bumble fumble’: online dating apps struggle as people swear off swiping (Guardian).]

It’s Okay to Bow Out

Just one week ago, we all began our lives in a totally new reality: the President would not seek re-election, which (dear God please) we may hope is the last “most consequential development” of this “most consequential election.” Given the weekend that preceded his announcement (remember the events in Butler, PA? Really? Because I personally feel like they happened minimum six months ago), I would say that 2024 has made a serious move on 1968 and 1974 for the title “Craziest Summer in American Politics.” No more breaking news, please!

Thanks to his decision, it appears that President Biden could be anointed one of the most respected leaders we’ve ever had, called “true patriot” and “American hero” by even those who were relentlessly enumerating his deficits and symptoms as if they were actual doctors and not just people who had played them on TV for a few seasons 30 years ago. I for one think the man has earned it, and though the final days of his long record of public service have come sooner than planned, now no outcome in November can dim his legacy, and in fact, quite the opposite: if the Fates – who, you may remember from Greek mythology, were female – have their way, his leadership will be forever linked with the United States electing its first-ever woman as President.

But in all the discourse about how he passed the torch, how he put the cause ahead of his personal ambition – all reasonable and decent things to do, by the way, and we should all consider the opportunities we get to give put our egos on holiday (if not furlough them indefinitely) – I think we may have missed a finer point. One that might never get you called a paragon of integrity, or credit you with saving the republic. But it might save you.

I get why we’ve made the story about selflessness and heroism: it’s good to equate those things, especially in a country (and internet) filled with stage hogs and attention seekers. We were given a rare opportunity to contemplate a public figure who seemed (at least in this moment) more concerned with the big picture than his own mirror reflection; sometimes I wonder if there even are people left who consider declining the full spotlight or ceding the center square. But I think the other reason we’ve made this the narrative is that it allows us not to have to talk about things we’ve not very good at talking about (or doing): age, and acceptance, and admitting that it’s time to pack it in.

Very few us will make choices in the realm of monumental, history-making sacrifice. Our decisions are of the grade that might affect our households or workplaces but are unlikely to garner the thanks of a grateful nation (though I suppose there’s no reason not to try). But we are called on – by others or just ourselves – to pursue and juggle scores of complicated things (Romance! Parenthood! Home ownership! Second home ownership! Getting ahead at work! Having a fit body! Bouncing back from (fill in the blank)! A nice vacation! Being a good child to elderly parents! Being a good friend! Keeping up with the news, the Joneses and the Kardashians!) in a place that prides itself on being filled builders and strivers, never-quitters and big swingers. Here, taking things off the plate or not going the distance feels kind of unspeakable, which makes bowing out nothing short of revolutionary. For those of us who don’t lead countries or nurture true successors, whose daily challenges are of a more personal than global nature, “passing the torch” is letting go. And even then, for most of us, it’s an anathema. It’s why we appeal, and borrow, and delude ourselves. It’s why we feel inadequate, judged, “less than.”

Think about it: we revere not just millionaires but billionaires in a way that almost no nation on earth does – especially if they are self-made – because they are almost by definition people who win and win and win. We nudge people to pursue “main character energy” as a solution to their problems, and deride supposed “former superstars” Jennifer Lopez and Justin Timberlake for shaky “relevance.” It’s not enough to get to the top; you must stay there – otherwise, what was it all for?

Does this not explain how a certain person in the news is embraced as a folk hero instead of a con man? The fact that he is undeterred by his losses, flame-outs and disasters is clearly seen by his superfans as proof of his doggedness; the fact that he would do anything to best his opponents in business or politics, literally anything to get to power and stay here is clearly read as tenacity, grit. America is a place where the story can be whatever you say it is, where you need not even surrender to the truth.

And what is “the truth”? Amongst many: you might have time, but you don’t have forever. You can’t have “it all.” Something’s gotta give. You’ll probably end up with more decisions than options – with two not perfect — or not even great — things to choose from instead of an endless array of glittering, finely calibrated ones. A lot of times, you are presented with only two doors to walk through when you really want three – and sometimes, it’s just one. Sometimes you should keep going, wait it out, refuse to give up, and sometimes you see that the answer is clearly “no.” Sometimes you get to the end of the road before you’re ready. Sometimes you get to smile because you had it, and sometimes you just smile because you tried.

There’s nothing wrong with being achievement-oriented, or pursuing your dreams. In fact, people with absolutely no ambition are no picnic either. But have you ever noticed how the obsession with “goals” (life goals, couple goals, apartment goals, relationship goals, goals goals) can make people crazy – especially in our culture of relentless exposure to what everyone else is doing and having (and feeling)? Where we’re all constantly showing and telling? “Failure is not an option” sounds good on Day 1, so if on Day 10,000 and it’s still not going your way, know that you are allowed to redefine your vision of “success.” Dreams are great, but not if they make us unsympathetic or blind to who were really are or what we are really capable of. Or just up for. Dreams are important, which is why you’ll make new ones.

by Bonnie Morrison, Is It Okay? |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. See also: Five Bad Motivations With Good Outcomes (The Ruffian).]

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[ed. Had a doctor appt. this week.]

There Will Be Blood

Early next year, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service plans to send sharpshooters to the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Their target: barred owls, whom they will lure into range with electronic calls and then kill—the opening salvos of a slaughter that is expected to continue for 30 years and claim 470,000 lives. The reason for the carnage? To protect endangered spotted owls outcompeted by their barred cousins.

The plan has been years in the making, with its latest announcement issued on July 3, a day typically used to bury unpopular news before the Independence Day holiday. Nevertheless it made headlines. Barred owls are no less special for being common, and to kill them for the sake of spotted owls—if it even works, which is by no means assured—is something that few people welcome.

The owl dispute is perhaps the most high-profile such conflict to date, though it’s hardly unique. Conservation in the fragmented, ecologically degraded landscapes of the early 21st century frequently involves killing species considered invasive or overabundant in order to protect other species they displace or consume. In Australia and New Zealand, such programs are already massive and routine; they’re fast becoming more common elsewhere. In the U.S., they include the killing of: tortoise-predating ravens in the desert southwest, mammal-eating boa constrictors in the Florida Everglades, fast-proliferating Asian carp in the upper midwest, salmon-eating sea lions in the Columbia River, and on and on.

With the killing comes controversy. Were those animals merely biological automatons, as conventional science once held, it might not be so objectionable—but scientific research on animal intelligence has buttressed arguments for considering the well-being of individuals as well as species in our moral equations. Yet while some people argue that the killing is unethical, others counter that it’s unfortunate but necessary, the harms outweighed by the good of the species and ecosystems being protected.

It’s a profound, polarizing, and extremely complicated dilemma. In Meet the Neighbors, my recent book on animal personhood and nature, the subject of conservation killing arises but is not central; the topic was so massive that it deserved a book all its own—and that book is Hugh Warwick’s The Cull of the Wild, published earlier this year.

“When we humans have unleashed a new species on an unsuspecting fauna, when we have transformed ecosystems so that previous balances become undone, how do we fix the problem?” Warwick asks. “Should we fix the problem? Should we play god, or should nature be left to take its own course?” An ecologist, conservationist, and animal lover as well as a writer, Warwick talks to dozens of people from all perspectives, encouraging readers to challenge their own biases and find common ground. “We deserve an honest conversation,” he writes, though there are no easy answers. (...)

Some of the best-known examples of conservation culling involve eradicating rats on islands that host seabird colonies. And whatever misgivings I feel, I can see the case for it. The before-and-after is so strikingly different. These enormous colonies are delivering nutrients to the surrounding waters; nearshore ecosystems flourish because of them, and the killing is of a limited duration. It’s feasible to kill all the rats on the island. It’s not going to go on forever.

But sometimes the rationale for protecting species can seem very fuzzy. You write about the killing of grey squirrels to protect red squirrels in western Europe. Nobody’s saying that red squirrels are going to go extinct. They’re being replaced by grey squirrels in part of their range. It seems to me like the killing is a matter of aesthetic preference. It’s not about ecosystem function or whether there will be a forest at all—yet the justification is often portrayed as ironclad. I feel uncomfortable with that.

The main issue we’ve got in the United Kingdom is that we will eventually have the extinction of red squirrels in this country. The issue isn’t direct competition between the two species. Rather, grey squirrels carry the squirrel pox virus to which they’re immune but the red squirrels die horribly.

You can very easily drift into an almost ecofascist narrative that only the natives can be here, which is clearly nonsense. The main thing is that you’ve got one species, which is the interloper, which kills the other species by carrying this virus. And we as a society are making a choice as to whether we want to retain or give up on the native species.

I’m certainly not suggesting that people continue controlling grey squirrels forever. I write about Craig Shuttleworth, who kills grey squirrels on the island of Anglesey but says there’s no point doing what is essentially harvesting, where you go out every year and wait for more grey squirrels to be born and kill those. The only reason he did what he did and killed 7,000 grey squirrels with a truncheon is because it could be done as an act of eradication. Before writing the book, I hadn’t really thought through the difference between “control” and “eradication.” Now I see control as a really dirty word. It just means that something is going to go on and on.

In the various checklists—requirements to meet or before killing is done—I’ve collected in The Cull of the Wild, that is one of the central tenets. If you want to start killing, it has to result in the eradication of that species in that area. Otherwise you end up controlling. It becomes a different sort of thing. That seems to be one of the most important differences that wildlife managers often forget.

As I say that, I realize that what goes on with deer in the U.K. is always going to be control. We’re never going to get rid of all the deer. But in that instance we’re replacing the predators who used to be there. We’re trying to maintain a balance that used to exist and is now out of kilter.

I think people who make the argument for killing are sometimes a bit disingenuous in invoking examples of true eradication on islands to support what are really control programs on mainlands—and that standard of not killing indefinitely is often not met.

You might have a situation where you’re not going to get all the raccoons—or whatever species it may be—off an island, but if you don’t do the work of control during bird breeding season then the birds will stop breeding there, and you’ll have altered that ecosystem enormously.

There is an argument for letting nature take its course. Other species will come along and fill the vacant niches. But that’s a little bit like being at the Louvre and seeing art on fire and going, “Yeah, but we’ll get more art. That’s fine.” And I think there is something to be said for protecting what you’ve got, especially when the reason the fire has started is because we lit it.

But sometimes it seems like the fire, so to speak, isn’t really a fire. For example, in the northeastern U.S. there is a panic about spotted lanternflies. People are encouraged to go out and squash as many flies as they can—which isn’t going to make a difference, and the narrative of lanternflies wreaking havoc on trees is speculative and now looks to be overblown. And in my book I talk about an ecologist who defied conventional wisdom on supposedly invasive feral donkeys and showed that they can actually play vital ecological roles. (...)

You also write about non-native ruddy ducks and native white-headed ducks in western Europe. It’s not like one species is replacing the other. They have very similar ecological niches and are interbreeding. Same thing with spotted owls and barred owls in the western U.S.

This is what the animals are choosing for themselves, right? And the offspring are successful. Killing ruddy ducks really does feel like an aesthetic preference—not in the sense of aesthetic as visual, but in the sense of wanting things a certain way—rather than ecosystem function or what’s objectively good or bad.

We’re moving on to the issue of purity. It gets quite nasty quite quickly. How pure is pure.

Another example is the Scottish wildcat, one of the most endangered feline carnivores in the world. The biggest threat they face is through breeding with feral cats. The result there is you get a hybrid cat. And yes, they’re doing what they do naturally.

If you have enough wildcats, females do not go near domestic premises. They do not go seeking out feral mates. There’s none of that crossover. It’s a choice they’re only making because there’s no other choice. Do we want to have wildcats? I suggest wildcats are a good thing. Not only are they aesthetically very pleasing; they add an element of wild to the countryside. They’re the size of a big tabby cat, but they’ve got attitude, and they’re very different from a domestic or feral cat.

Do we then go to the trouble of trying to protect those? What’s interesting there is how you’re defining what is truly the original character—and thereby is a really sorry tale of conflicts between morphological and the genetic appreciations of these cats. There’s an argument that the genetic type specimen used to measure Scottish wildcats might already have been a hybrid, which would lead to pure-bred wildcats being killed because they didn’t match the hybrid.

That argument is important. And the owls—we’ve created a situation where two owls are together who didn’t used to be. Can we relax into accepting this? I think you just need to be pragmatic about these things. There’s no point fighting against something which is inevitable. You’ve got to be sensible about it. The wildcat situation, I think, is salvageable. Your owls are destined for a mixup, and let’s embrace that. (...)

How can we get to a place where killing is truly a last resort?

The problem, as I said earlier, is that in many instances there’s a real serious time factor. And conservation is so far down the list of social priorities that by the time they’re given the resources to do something, it’s already too late. There’s a temptation to point a finger at those conservationists—but they’re working within a system which is fighting against them the entire time. They’re in a field of study that has so little respect yet is so staggeringly important.

As Patrick Galbraith wrote in a review of my book recently, “We are a brilliant and terrible species who messed it up a long time ago. And that means we have to do things we don’t want to.”

But the cost is never borne by us, right? This is what I keep coming back to. We talk about how we’ve done something terrible and need to take responsibility for it now—but ultimately the cost is being heaped entirely on the poor animals being killed. That just seems wrong.

It does. But if you don’t have any killing at all, you cannot then avoid your responsibility for the death that occurs because you decided not to kill. That’s what it comes down to, time and time again: the potential for life that’s gone because we wouldn’t step up to remove the principal cause for a population’s destruction.

by Brandon Kiem, Nature |  Read more:

Image: LaVonna Moore/Shutterstock
[ed. It's a nuanced argument. But when you start killing predators just to increase the number of moose or caribou or elk or whatever just so sport hunters can harvest more of them, then I suggest you've crossed over the line - the artificial control thing. There's also the concept of fair chase. There are alternative ways to reduce invasive species or to help struggling populations - increased bag limits, seasons, bounties, access, and the like. So, shooting wolves from airplanes and helicopters (an old practice in the 50's and 60's) eventually came to be viewed as barbaric. Not anymore, apparently. And drugging and killing denning bears is just plain evil. What's only lightly touched upon in this article are the interest groups and politics involved. For example, see also: Alaska’s misguided bear control continues; and Alaska’s game management goals for Mulchatna caribou are unrealistic (ADN).]

30 Useful Concepts (Spring 2024)

It’s that time again; a summary of interesting and useful concepts to spur your curiosity. Click the titles for more information.

1. Dopamine Culture

“Every kind of organized distraction tends to become progressively more and more imbecile.” — Aldous Huxley

The delay between desire & gratification is shrinking. Pleasure is increasingly more instant & effortless. Everything is becoming a drug. What will it do to us?

2. False Consensus Effect

“Everyone driving slower than you is an idiot and everyone driving faster than you is a maniac.” — George Carlin

Our model of the world assumes people are like us. We don’t just do whatever we consider normal, we also consider normal whatever we do.

3. Fredkin's Paradox

The more similar two choices seem, the less the decision should matter, yet the harder it is to choose between them. As a result, we often spend the most time on the decisions that matter least.

To avoid being paralyzed by meaningless choices, use decision-making heuristics.

4. Package-Deal Ethics

“If I can predict all of your beliefs from one of your beliefs, you’re not a serious thinker.” — Chris Williamson

Being pro-choice and being pro-gun-control don’t necessarily follow from each other, yet those who believe one usually also believe the other. This is because most people don’t choose beliefs individually but subscribe to “packages” of beliefs offered by a tribe.

5. Ovsiankina Effect (aka Hemingway Effect)

We have an intrinsic need to finish what we’ve started. Exploit this by taking your breaks mid-task; the incompleteness will gnaw at you, increasing your motivation to return to work. (When writing, I end each day mid-sentence because it (...)

11. Noble Cause Corruption

The greatest evils come not from people seeking to do evil, but people seeking to do good and believing the ends justify the means. Everyone who was on the wrong side of history believed they were on the right side.

Grey Rock Method

Reacting emotionally to narcissists and other toxic people only gives them what they want — your time & energy — which encourages further abuse. If you want to stop receiving provocations, stop being provoked. When the narcissist realizes they can’t manipulate your emotions, they’ll stop trying. (...)

14. Postjournalism

The press lost its monopoly on news when the internet democratized info. To save its business model, it pivoted from journalism into tribalism. The new role of the press is not to inform its readers but to confirm what they already believe.

15. Adams’ 25% rule (aka Skill-Stacking)

Instead of trying to be the best at one thing, try to be "merely" great at two things and then learn to combine them. Not only is this easier, but it will make your skillset more unique, cutting out the competition.

16. Backwards Law

The more you pursue happiness, the less likely you are to obtain it, because the focus on acquiring it only reinforces the fact that you don’t have it. Ironically, happiness comes easiest to those who don’t worry about it.

“Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will evade you, but if you notice the other things around you, it will gently come and sit on your shoulder.”

― Henry David Thoreau (...)

Hitchens' Razor

“What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”

― Christopher Hitchens

If you make a claim, it's up to you to prove it, not to me to disprove it.

Cached Thoughts

Most of your beliefs were formed earlier in your life, when you were naiver. You continue to believe them only because you’ve never reconsidered them. When you’re about to offer an opinion, consider when you formed it, and ask: is it really your belief, or your younger self’s?

by Gurwinder, The Prism |  Read more: 

Image: uncredited

The Old Gray Kayak

KOTZEBUE — The west wind off the ice has kept the bugs down, and on the sunny summer nights I’ve been working on a kayak for my daughter, China. Actually, I’m copying one my dad built back in the 1970s, a light hunting craft that I used all my life.

These days I have cordless power tools — drills, screw guns and a jigsaw — items that would have been magic in my youth, when I was woodworking with hand saws, chisels and a brace-and-bit. (Not to mention first snowshoeing out to find a tree, then hauling it home to make boards.) I’ve been surprised, though, piecing a kayak together here on a blue tarp, how impatient I am. I miss not being busy, and immersing myself in a project. Once in a while I stop and marvel at these modern riches — even this blue disposable tarp.

This winter when China and I snowgoed downriver from our home along the Kobuk, I lashed that old kayak on my sled. It had hung under the cache for decades, and suffered, and snow finally buckled it. Over the years porcupine had crawled inside to gnaw the frames, and bears strolling by had fondled it. The ancient spruce stringers cracked more as I tightened the ropes. I felt bad hearing that breaking wood. Our sleds and kayaks were so vital and valuable when I was a kid, back a half-century and more, when this craft was made.

Standing there on the snow, I recalled the spring that Oliver Cameron camped at Amaktuk, a slough near our sod igloo, and how he’d walk down the bluff to help my dad build his first kayak. Those were simpler times. It was easier to recognize the value of things, and a kayak meant you could hunt the tundra after breakup, after the water dropped. Oliver was known for knowing things and he recommended skinning it with canvas, painting the cloth, then waxing it. He was living under a homemade canvas tent, with little besides a cooking pot and hand tools. Oliver enjoyed making tools, and I can still hear him filing teeth out of my dad’s ripsaw to make bigger teeth so it would cut faster.

China Kantner and her dad head west on the winter trail to Kotzebue. (Seth Kantner)

My dad, Howie, worked on the snowdrift in front of our house, ripping spruce stringers on crude spruce-pole sawhorses. Geese flew overhead, calling, and caribou crossed the melting river ice. Day and night they climbed out on the drift, shook off, and headed north.

After sawing, Howie planed the wood. He was always sawing and planing: in winter, it was hardwood for sleds; spring and fall it was boards for our floor, furniture, and later, boats. The air smelled like wood and my family always had beautiful shavings for firestarter.

The kayak came out tippy and my older brother, Kole, and I weren’t allowed to use it. Too dangerous. Howie made more kayaks the following springs: one big enough for our family to fit in; one blue (I’d forgotten all about it!) wide and safe and slow. The last two were a green deckless craft, and this gray one, my favorite.

We boys were 5 and 6 when my parents’ friend, Keith Jones, built a log raft. He’d cut the trees for Charlie Jones on the coast, and after breakup we rafted down the Kobuk. Onboard were six adults and two boys. It was a grand adventure: sun and wind and rain, animals crossing, fish jumping, ducks skimming past, and of course, mosquitoes biting. Birds sang all night and occasionally a bear walked the shore. There was a Black man along, Marty, who I haven’t thought of in years. I wonder who he was? And Keith’s brother-in-law, Don Bucknell, too; young, probably 21 and already liking to carve paddles and spoons out of spruce roots. One day he dropped his pocketknife between the logs. Plunk. Gone. I never forgot that. I wonder where that knife is now.

Nights we camped, and days Kole and I paddled out, circling the raft. We didn’t know how to swim, but as long as we wore our life preservers, we were allowed to practice turns, race and cautiously approach loons that randomly surfaced.

A few years later, Howie and Keith taught us to portage — carrying kayaks, guns, ducks, eggs and muskrats, from pond to pond — hunting through the night, exploring waterways in tundra. This gray kayak was the best. Howie had made it light and low. Even the ribs were just split peeled dried willows.

The funny thing is, even now, broken in pieces, it’s not easy dismantling his workmanship. The glue and screws are holding fast, the twine lashing each rib is still tight. I’m reminded of how spoiled I am, running stringers through a table saw, filling poor joinery with adhesive, sanding it down with an electric sander. Working, I think about China’s life in the future, and about life further back, too; ancient stone tools, in the hands of Inupiaq, making the first qayaqs.

When I was a kid, one night on a pond I flipped in the gray kayak. Kole and I and our friend Alvin Williams were hunting with .22s and one shotgun. Alvin had amazing eyesight and spotted two shovelers. I couldn’t see the ducks, only the lines on the water. “Male in front!” he advised. I knew to shoot the female first. Boom! Instantly I was in icy water.

I gasped for air, splashed, and tried to grab Alvin’s kayak. We were best friends and he grinned and used his paddle to force me away. I had to lean across the stern of my kayak, and kick around ice pans, toward shore. It was slow going until Kole pulled in the strings tied to my trigger guards, to retrieve my guns dragging on the bottom. Alvin built a fire and Kole plucked the duck while they retold the story over and over, struggling with bouts of laughter. I thawed out and the duck sizzled. When I was shivering less and the bird was half done, we ate it, and continued on in the night.

My family built a new sod house when I was 16. We moved up the hill and our kayaks went in the old igloo. More years went by. My wife, Stacey, and I kayaked from Ambler once, and below Onion Portage the wind was strong, the waves huge, and she was afraid in that tiny gray kayak. We camped, and waited for the wind to go down. When we got home, I stapled material over the bow and stern. It didn’t help much: the following spring, one night I talked two friends, Dave Fleming and Chris Todd, into going portaging, and back in the ponds Dave fired the shotgun and flipped. Pretty much as I had. Except I don’t remember him hitting the duck. We built a fire. We laughed, but less than we had as kids, and it was cold and late and we had women wondering about us, and we went home.

Later, living there alone, one fall at freeze-up the river was running ice and I crossed after a wounded goose. I was maybe 28, and this kayak a bit younger. I got the goose but was swept under the ice on the way back and nearly drowned. When I crawled out and dumped all the broken ice out of the kayak, I couldn’t believe the old stringers and vinyl covering were intact.

Over the years, the old igloo fell in. Snow drifted in and crushed two kayaks. Vandals stole my shotgun and shot holes in a third. The gray one survived and hung under the cache after that. Then we had a daughter, and she loved kayaking. She was light and the cracked ribs held. Bears still beat on it and the bottom grew pocked with patches of duct tape.

One fall I was supposed to fly to the dunes to meet BBC photographers to film caribou; the plane was delayed, and my friend Linnea Wik and I decided to kayak downriver to meet the pilot. I had my camera and gear — too heavy — and only survey stakes for paddles. The kayak creaked horribly. Water squirted in and it was hard to steer. We stayed close to the shore, stopped to dump it out, and laughed the whole way.

I thought that was that, but my daughter kept using it. I built her a new one, and still she preferred the old one. A black bear came up the shore one morning and took swipes at it. We needed meat, and she shot the bear. After we were done skinning, we got out the duct tape again.

Finally, the fall of 2020, there were no caribou, the land felt different and the old kayak really was compost. The willow ribs were white, the spruce as gray as the cover. Then, I spotted a lone caribou on the tundra. The north wind was howling, the sky brilliant blue. My friend Anne Beaulaurier was visiting, and I gave her the new kayak, took the old one. Wood cracked as I got in. My butt was instantly wet. My dad’s old portage trails were brushed in. At the Beaver Pond grasses had grown a floating swamp. Anne had Patagonia waders, I just rubber boots. I stared across dark waves, longing for caribou. I took off my pants, pushed my boat in. The water and grasses grew deep, over my waist. I couldn’t turn. My rifle stock was wet. I leaned up on the stern, tugging at grasses, inching forward. When I got to open water, I was frozen and the waves scary. At the north shore, the tundra was empty, the caribou gone. I wonder where he is now?

Working out here tonight, the wind and those memories swirl around me. I wonder where China will travel in this kayak. It feels strange, how much has changed. I’ve listened to podcasts — about Palestine, AI, guns and modern youth — while I make ribs of beautiful birch from a friend in Fairbanks, John Manthei. The electronic voices are full of information, but also seem to bury information in my head. For years I’ve thought that sleds and kayaks are good examples of changing values, and questioned how a young person might value a manufactured piece of plastic as much as one started from a tree, and finished by their own hands.

by Seth Kantner, Anchorage Daily News |  Read more:

Image: Anne Beaulaurier; Seth Kantner
[ed. Back in AK again. No place like it.]

Image: markk

Chi Chi Rodriguez (Oct. 1935 - Aug. 2024)

Images: via Tik Tok, Golf Digest, Devo

[ed. Entertaining and fun guy. And great golfer! My dad once found himself standing next to Chi Chi at a clubhouse urinal on a course in Hawaii. Just the two of them. He said hi and they exchanged a couple of pleasantries. He later told me he hoped he wouldn't see Chi Chi's famous sword dance when they got finished... lol. See also: World Golf Hall of Famer Chi Chi Rodriguez dies at 88; and, My Shot: Chi Chi Rodriguez (Golf Digest). His Wikipedia entry (with many additional details).]

diadà

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Ok, I'm the Problem

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[ed. People wonder why dating is so hard these days. Points for honesty.]

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Campaign Calculus

[ed. What passes as political strategy these days.]

Donald Trump’s campaign recognizes that it could lose in November if the election is decided on “vibes” and “energy”, according to people close to the former president, as Kamala Harris continues to ride waves of momentum with her newly announced running mate Tim Walz.

The concern has also started to open fractures inside Trumpworld, with some Maga allies criticizing Trump’s political advisers for running a campaign that may be too structurally deficient to stand up a ground game in swing states.

The Trump campaign has sketched out a strategy to hit back and is expected to try to cast the Harris campaign the most progressive US ticket of all time, as they aim to get the political messaging back on their records in office and away from coverage about the extraordinary enthusiasm Harris has generated with voters.

The Trump campaign intends to continue trying to make Harris responsible in the eyes of voters for the influx of migrants, and her role as the “border czar” allowing migrants to spread across the country in part to alleviate pressure on border states.

That ties into their other strategy of pulling a “Willie Horton” attack from the old Republican playbook, suggesting on social media and in television ads that Harris was directly responsible for any crimes some migrants committed. Horton – a convicted murderer who committed more crimes while on prison furlough – was used in a racist attack strategy by George Bush during his 1988 presidential campaign.

With Walz, the strategy for now has been to say he ushered in progressive policies as Minnesota governor, focusing on how he supported transgender medical care for children, approved sweeping climate change legislation and enshrined abortion rights into law.

The campaign has also been eager to cast Walz as falsifying his military record – he has alluded vaguely to serving in Iraq although he left the military before his unit was deployed – an attack style that Trump’s current co-campaign chief Chris LaCivita once used against the decorated Vietnam veteran John Kerry in the “Swift Boat” episode.

The effort to focus on Harris and Walz’s governing records provide a window on to the Trump campaign knowing it needs to avoid a vibes-based election at all costs, the people said. The Trump campaign knows running on national mood will not work against Harris’s stunning momentum since she entered the race in the way it did with Biden.

For weeks before Biden ultimately withdrew, the principal fear inside Trump world was that Biden dropping out would give a successor massive momentum. And it was for that reason that Trump himself refrained from piling on Biden, even as top Democrats pressured him to quit the race.

The momentum premonition has turned out to be true and highly problematic for the Trump campaign as they struggle to get into the news cycle. It is the first time that Trump has largely lost control of the media narrative – and with it, his ability to trash the Harris ticket – since he was indicted in 2023.

But it remains unclear whether the Trump attack lines will work, at least over the next few weeks with seemingly no end in sight for Harris’s extended honeymoon period – an important factor because the longer the honeymoon period lasts, the less time Trump has to negatively define Harris. (...)

On top of that, the attacks themselves have been less tailored than what they were with Biden and, in many ways, easily rebuttable by the Harris team.

If challenged on migrant crime, for instance, Harris is expected to pivot to saying she is an ex-prosecutor running against a convicted felon, bringing unwanted attention to Trump’s recent conviction in New York for falsifying business records to influence the 2016 election.

And if challenged on the Iraq situation, Walz could make a more painful point about Trump not serving in Vietnam on account of his bone spurs.

More broadly speaking, the other attack lines from Trump against Harris have not appeared to have the same effect as his lines had done with Biden. Trump spent some time testing out the “Cacklin’ Kamala” nickname to show her as unserious on account of her laugh, but he recently started trying “Kamabla” – a sign he was not sold on his initial option though it is not clear what the insult means.

by Hugo Lowell, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

[ed. Completely juvenile.]

Terrified of Old People

I'm terrified of old people. 

I used to be extremely confident in myself. 

I was barely 20 years old and I would tell people how to sleep, how to make friends, and how to live their lives. I started a nonprofit aiming to literally rebuild the institutions of science from the ground up. I was dismissive of everyone who didn't impress me in the first 7 minutes of talking to them. I was especially dismissive of old people. 

I'm 26 years old now, I (hope that I) got a tiny bit wiser but I'm pretty sure I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm embarrassed for having published all of these articles giving people advice on how to live their lives; I'm amazed that the nonprofit actually managed to run great programs and fund dozens of young scientists; and I'm absolutely terrified of old people. 

I've always wanted to prove myself to the world; if I were a 60 year old, trying to impress a random 25 year old would be the last thing I'd be trying to do. First, wanting to impress people is the result of not knowing what you want and by the time you're 50 or 60 or 70 you do know what you want [ed. more likely what you'll get or settle for. And people definitely do try to impress for things they know they want.]. Second, the stupider people think I am, the better. I just want to do my thing and I don't want anyone to think highly of me and start actively interfering with whatever it is that I'm doing. [ed. and that is? If it's trying to convince people of something, do you really want them to think not very highly of you and that you're stupid? Really?]

I've always thought that I was very competent. Now I at least realize that I have no fucking clue how anything works. 

Which makes me think: I have like 5 years of experience of real life. What kind of tricks under their belts do people in their 50s, 60s, 70s have? What kinds of crazy heuristics and meta-heuristics they've got in their minds, hearts, and muscles after decades of poking the world? I have no clue and this is what makes me really worried about them. [ed. worried about them? Over crazy heuristics and meta-hueristics?]

I wouldn't be surprised if these decades-in-the-making lessons are so qualitatively different from whatever I believe now that even if someone tried to tell them to me I simply wouldn't be able to comprehend them. [ed. oh, well...maybe try? Isn't that what growing up is all about?]

I also suspect that the declining intelligence measurements of old people are mostly attributable to slower-lookup and "shallow" reactions rather than any actual decline in quality of decision-making. [ed. what? ... lost my hearing aid and need to read that again.]

There's exactly one person who I suspect might be running the simulation and he's not 30 or even 40. He's in his 70s. [ed. Bill Gates?]

People ask me why I don't publish much these days. How about because I have a bunch of stupid shit on my blog that's going to follow me into the grave now and because now whenever I talk to someone they usually "remember" me writing something even dumber than what I actually wrote ("oh, Alexey, weren't you the guy who thought that sleeping 4 hours a night is totally fine?" "No, I wrote that sleeping 4 hours a night didn't make me dumb AND that it was absolutely terrible, please stop asking me about this")? 

I think about Sam Altman's "honestly, i feel so bad about the advice i gave while running YC i’ve been thinking about deleting my entire blog" a lot. 

I do think the majority of my pieces stood the test of time and I'm very proud of them (for example "Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible" which is nearing its 6th anniversary), so maybe I'm overreacting. But it's still unnerving. [ed. but, but...what about all that 'stupid shit' and the grave?]

(Ok, back to old people.) 

Many things just take time. 

Having 0 close friends is qualitatively different from having 1 close friend from having 5 close friends. Just as knowing them for 1 year versus 5 years versus 25 years. So much stuff in the world can only be achieved via close long-term connections. Probably most of the important stuff. Again, the only way to get these connections is to literally just wait. No other way. [ed. what? How about seeking them out?]

My biggest problem running the company, for example, was simply not knowing enough people to be able to hire for the roles the organization needed the most and instead burning through many months and enormous amounts of nerves figuring out if people I just met were (1) right for the role, (2) work well with me, (3) I work well with them. If I'm starting a company today, I'm simply not doing it until I have an incredible operations person on board from day 1. [ed. so again, off-loading management and learning experience to someone else (to determine if they're compatible with you and vice versa?)].

I understand why you need to be at least 35 years old to become President. [ed. ha!]

Patrick Mackenzie once noted that "people consistently overestimate how widely distributed individual technologies are, even where those technologies are clearly better than alternatives, easy to implement, and have minimal downside risk or cost to reverse adoption." [ed. uh, what were we talking about again? According to who? Corporations, hedge funds and shareholders? How about when those technologies are actually worse than previous efforts and come with significant side effects like more invasive surveillance, DRM, right-to-repair impediments, awful interfaces, subscription requirements, etc.]  

How come? Again — things just take time. A huge portion of life is simply about building years-long and decades-long muscle memories for "simple" technologies. To stop the brain when it gets into over-analyzing spirals. To error-correct appropriately when things go wrong. To ask for help. [ed. again... what? And this relates to everything previously written how?]

No amount of reading insights or writing will get you to truly learn this stuff. In fact most of it sounds like empty platitudes & the more you read and write the less time you have to apply it with your body and with your muscles. If I told this to my 16-year old self, he'd tell me to go fuck myself. [ed. bright kid.]

And, sure, no 80-year old is going to be as idealistic or energetic or attractive as when they were 20. 

But if you ask me if I'd rather have a President who is 20 or who is 80, I'll pick the 80-year old in a heartbeat. [ed. many Americans wouldn't.]

by Alexey Guzey, X  |  Read more:

Image: A. Guzey X

[ed. Never heard of this person except through a link today. Some kind of 'independent researcher'/tech pundit...or something or other. Poor guy. Still doesn't get it. Just shut up and get off of X! Nobody cares! (But he's 26 now and not a naive 20). Here's a clue: nobody gives a damn what you think. It's what you do that matters, and apparently that's been very little except to offer some pithy opinions that very few people have heard of or read. Life presents different challenges at different times, and people can be just as confused and opinionated at any age. So broad generalizations do no one any good. Go out and live life and get some real experience, then come back and tell us what you think. I'll bet it'll be very different from this.]