#before corporations suck even MORE life out of that ecosystem

[border-spam]

Leech Lord - Beginnings and regrets

The single least Seifa thing Seifa has ever done, is probably also the most actual Seifa thing she's ever done, and that's extremely Seifa of her.

It was going against every lesson survival had beaten into her so far in her life, and helping Tyreen instead of walking away all those years ago.

(Pre CoV)

Pandora is a terrible place.

The whole Galaxy is, Pandora just has a reputation that's honest about it.

The Edens, Athenas, Promethea, Tantalus, every city on every settled planet is built on a foundation of bones, nowhere's really safe or actually wants the humans that settled uninvited and ruined the neighborhood. Can't really expect an ecosystem to welcome you with open arms when you immediately start destroying it for profit, and life ain't easy anywhere. Nowhere is good. Nowhere is nice.

You can't live for long without finding out how dangerous "caring" is.

Small family units survive, yeah, clans scrabble out a living on rock plains and migrant space-rigs, but if you hold out a hand to a stranger in need you need to know the risks, need to really understand how likely it is that there's a knife behind their back and a couple of crosshairs already trained on you.

You have to be harsh, you have to be cruel. Everyone who makes it on the border planets knows the unwritten rules.

Unless you've the backing of a town militia or a hell of a lot of weaponry, you can't afford to risk your own safety for others - and Sei has walked past more people who gasped out a desperate plea for help with one of the few breaths they had left then she could ever, ever let herself acknowledge. Fuck man, everyone has. It's one of the sad truths of living at the knifepoint everyone balances on out here at the fringe.

...It's no different really on the corporate ones, the blades waiting to land in your back are just better dressed there.

So, when Seifa went to walk away from that filthy kid in the junkyard with the busted SMG and found herself stopping as the girl pleaded for medicine, that was beyond out of character.

That was weird. That was impossible to justify, and she lost plenty of nights to trying to do so after - long ones, with tears and far too much whiskey.

It's hard to think back on, how unsettling and stomach turning that first month had been. The whole thing feels like a blur, some grease smeared memory that's mostly lost to the desperately anxious conflict that was going on in her head the entire time. She can remember specific points, but they're half images half feeling, nerves and worry all tangled together into something she hates dwelling on.

She remembers the heat mirages swirling above the desert sands as Elpis set on the horizon, driving the girl out across the salt flats as Ty panicked and urged Sei to go faster, all while she was trying to explain to herself WHY she hadn't slapped this stranger out of her buggy and throttled in the opposite direction. What had gotten into her?

She doesn't remember anything that the kid had said as she was lead by her into that dark shack, still battling with why she wasn't turning around, why she was gingerly picking through debris to reach what looked like a hastily set up camp surrounded by rusting sheet metal and pieces that used to be the hovel - but she remembers the stink of fever sweat that wrinkled her nose and that sad mound of sharp angles heaped at the center by a burnt out fire pit, and the shock of realising it was a man when Tyreen had dropped to her knees and begged through sobs for him to keep breathing.

That she had "Found someone to help."

Recalls fighting back the equal disgust she felt with herself for helping carry the nothing he weighed out of that shithole, and for the fact he was still alive in this state. Covered in filth, blood, chunks of.. something, and reeking of puke and god knows what else. How she chewed at her lip till she tasted copper as the buggy engine rattled in complaint under them, flooring it when she knew the shoddy weld job on the left axle wasn't going to take this strain and would need another couple of hundred dollars she didn't have in repairs by the time she got these pathetic kids back to her ship - and she remembers wincing hours later at her empty medical cabinet after gutting it to keep the boy alive.

Saline stock sucked dry, bactum wasted, and she was saving those health kits for when she might need them...

It was a bad decision. It was a stupid decision, and she'd spent that first night when the girl had cried herself to sleep and he'd finally stabilised, sitting on the cold floor of her quarters with her back pressed against the repurposed mag-lock door, cradling her pistol in her lap as she gnawed at her nails.

They were Sirens.

Sirens.

Moron. Stupid fucking twat, If Boss found out, he'd kill her before these two could get the chance.

Helping them had been idiot move enough, had gone against every fiber of who she'd built herself into, but she couldn't have known. Tyreen had been covered in rags, and Troy's markings too dim and caked in muck to even see before they'd gotten him cleaned up and stable.

She hadn't known. She didn't know, nothing about Sirens anyway, just that you didn't fuck with 'em in the first place. Sirens were bad news, Sirens were the bane of Pandora in the last few years and everyone knew the stories. They were monsters who could turn you inside out or roast you alive without needing to point a gun first, and now she had two in her home with no defenses bar a shitty Jacobs she knew damn well she could barely aim, and hopefully enough faux confidence to seem in control of the situation.

That first night had been the worst.

The twins slept fine, Troy out cold and Ty having cried herself unconscious shortly after his heart beat had become something possible to confuse with normal if you squinted at the scan display from the right angle, but Sei didn't close her eyes once.

Sat awake all night in the clunking, humming, rattling silence of her home as she thumbed the revolver's cylinder slowly, considering how each click marked another second she'd left them both alive instead of doing the right thing and emptying a round into each of their skulls. Pandora would take care of the bodies and she'd fix a serious mistake she was walking straight into... but the suns rose in the end, and the twins were none the wiser about how close the decision had actually been.

It didn't really get better. The fear did, that passed over the next couple of days, but not the worry, not the regret. Two more mouths to feed when she only had the funds for herself? The girl was going to have to learn how to work. The cash she'd put aside was for her junker colony, not strangers, and the boy still couldn't even stand... and how were things going to pan out even if they so far didn't seem to be quite as monstrous as she'd been told so many times in no name dive bars in settler towns?

What if she took Tyreen out on a barter run and her markings got noticed? That mad corporate fuckwad Sexy George or fuckin whatever had just been running some reward scheme for Sirens, right? Would the lowbrows she dealt with on a daily basis here comprehend that wasn't a thing anymore, or would Sei be shanked and Ty abducted within hours of setting foot in a trade dock?

And him...

What the fuck was she going to do with him.

He wouldn't talk, wouldn’t even look at her, just some massive, gangly, awkward, nervous child that ghosted around the edge of her vision and scurried out of the room like a panicked Skag pup if she made the mistake of looking directly at him.

Sick still, even if he was trying to stay in his crew cubby for less every day, the one she'd told him was his and still had not a word of thanks for yet. Shaky, delicate, and in no physical condition to be able to help around the ship yet alone have a chance of bringing in some extra dollars, even if he hadn't been missing such a huge chunk of himself. Pity wasn't going to keep him fed, and she was pissed with herself for feeling it for him in the first place.

She figured that's what had done it really... them being siblings.

That raw desperation in Tyreen's voice as she'd begged Seifa to help when she'd turned to walk away. That her brother was so sick and she didn't know what to do. Siblings gut punched her in ways she knew were a weakness out here. The twin thing? That had just cemented it really. Helping wasn't in Seifa's nature, but leaving kids to die wasn't in her bones.

Still, she'd make it work, she always did. They'd survive, and she'd come out of this in profit one way or another, that was as sure as an Athenian monk lowballing an offer.

She'd train the girl up and run some deals with her, cover the costs of helping them out with a tidy margin for herself - then she'd leave 'em with the tools to survive, a couple of hundred bucks to get started and never have to see them again.

She'd be fine. She was always fine.

That's very Seifa of her.

Asks are Open!

[berniesrevolution]

IN THESE TIMES

We have only 12 years to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 4 percent, according to an October report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The feat, it admits, would require “rapid, far-reaching” societal transformation. If we fail, coastal cities will be inundated, food will run short and the damage will cost $54 trillion by 2040, when babies born this year will be old enough to graduate from college.

The clear path to curbing these catastrophes involves rapidly phasing out carbonintensive fuels, which requires changes on a scale for which “There is no documented historic precedent,” the report’s authors note.

But more dramatic approaches have crept into policy discussions, like solar radiation management, known as SRM. First imagined by scientists during the Cold War, SRM promises a comparatively cheap, quick fix: the continuous dispersal of aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect and absorb sunlight, cooling the planet. In effect, SRM means dimming the sun.

For proof of concept, advocates look to volcanic eruptions, which spew out plumes of aerosols. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, for example, reportedly lowered global temperatures by 1 degree Celsius. The best modeling suggests SRM, too, would work like a charm.

Like a volcano, however, SRM is enormously risky. Side effects could include decreasing crop yields, melting the ozone layer or irreparably altering the water cycle, flooding some parts of the world while causing prolonged droughts in others—and those are just the few we are able to model.

If starting SRM is risky, so is stopping once we’ve started: Stanching the flow of aerosols would risk the Earth rapidly warming by several degrees within a decade, known as a “termination shock.” This sudden heating would do more damage than the current, more gradual warming, disrupting the climate while giving species and ecosystems little time to adapt.

But given the stakes, many SRM boosters say the benefits seem to outweigh the risk. After all, what choice do we have?

If it sounds like we’ve crossed into science fiction, we have: This scenario is more or less the opening narration of Geostorm, a critically panned 2017 film about climate-controlling satellites gone rogue. The better-received 2013 class-struggle flick Snowpiercer also starts with a similar premise: an attempted SRM-like scheme backfires into endless winter.

Yet SRM and other risky high-tech climate interventions inch closer to reality by the day. The IPCC report has reignited a long-running debate: How far are we willing to go, and what risks are we willing to take, to keep the Earth from further warming? Humans have altered the climate for centuries by pumping out greenhouse gases. What’s so different about interfering with the climate to save the world instead of cook it? Do we have any other options left?

Stratospheric Aerosol injection — the type of SRM described above—is one of a suite of technologies aimed at large-scale manipulation of the climate, known as geoengineering. There are two broad categories: solar geoengineering to block or reflect sunlight (like SRM), and “negative emissions technologies” to suck greenhouse gases out of the air. Negative emissions technologies have been factored into climate modeling for years and have a long-established (if controversial) role in IPCC mitigation strategies; solar geoengineering has been more fringe.

But in the past few years, the governments of the United Kingdom and United States have each sponsored research into solar geoengineering, outlets from The New Yorker to the New York Times have commissioned lengthy articles on it, and an editor at The Economist wrote a whole book on the subject, The Planet Remade. Just after the release of the new IPCC report, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard N. Haass opined that world governments should “accelerate R&D on geoengineering,” and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) called to “incentivize oil companies to help.”

SRM has even found a research base in the Ivy League. Thanks to Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program, founded in 2017, the first steps toward implementation may soon float above the United States through the program’s Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment.

Known as Scopex, the experiment is not an SRM test, per se—to truly test the concept would require a global scale. But it is an attempt to go beyond computer modeling to understand the chemistry and microphysics of how particular aerosols interact with the stratosphere. A propeller-powered balloon will disseminate the aerosols; a small gondola, attached, will carry sensors. Researchers hope to launch in 2019.

Opposition to SRM has increased as well. As IPCC researchers met in South Korea to finalize their report, 110 civil society organizations across five continents, from First Nations peoples to think tanks to environmental NGOs, issued an anti-geoengineering manifesto: Hands Off Mother Earth, or HOME.

It reads, in part: “Geoengineering perpetuates the false belief that today’s unjust, ecologically and socially devastating industrial model of production and consumption cannot be changed and that we therefore need techno-fixes to tame its effects.” Signatories fear the development of SRM will be used as an excuse to continue the carbon status quo, calling it a “dangerous distraction��� from real solutions and a “further entrenchment of fossil fuel economies.” Fossil fuel corporations have yet to throw their weight behind SRM specifically, but Shell’s chief climate change advisor, David Hone, praises the “sulphur solution” (referring to SRM) as the simplest in his book, Putting the Genie Back.

Harvard scientist David Keith, a contributor to the Scopex project, has emerged as something of a public face of SRM. He disagrees that geoengineering protects fossil fuel companies, envisioning it instead as a complement to decarbonization. “If solar geoengineering was much better understood, I don’t think it would make all the environmental forces give up and let Exxon win,” he says. “There’s not an alternative to cutting fossil fuels. We have to get them out of the energy system.”

Keith isn’t pushing for SRM deployment—just research— and says it’s important to understand all of the risks before moving forward. He worries about the Trump administration or other fossil fuel-friendly governments grasping onto SRM as a perceived quick fix. Still, he thinks we should be able to simultaneously research SRM and take action against fossil fuels.

The HOME manifesto, however, calls for a ban on open-air field experiments like Scopex. “[Scopex] makes no sense if you are not going to pursue deployment later,” says Silvia Ribeiro, one of the manifesto’s authors and the Latin America director of ETC Group, which addresses the social and environmental impacts of new technologies. “All powerful technologies have started with small experiments.”

Oxford physicist Raymond Pierrehumbert, a lead author on the IPCC’s third assessment report in 2001, sees Scopex as a crossing of the Rubicon. “Proceeding to field experimentation,” he writes, “crosses a thin red line beyond which lies the slippery slope down to ever-larger field trials and, ultimately, deployment.”

Skeptics also note that SRM only addresses some of the effects of global warming—those stemming directly from temperature. It does nothing to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, which means ocean acidification would continue apace, causing irreversible damage to coral reefs and other ocean life that will reverberate up the food chain. The continued accumulation of greenhouse gases would also heighten the impacts of potential termination shock.

(Continue Reading)

[lully-jo]

Final Fantasy VII: The Theme of Life [Part 1]

My introduction to Final Fantasy was with VII* in my freshman year of High School. Though the graphics did not age well (and have aged like milk with each passing year) the storytelling was so compelling and immersive that it carried the game into the hands of future generations who had become so accustomed to high resolution gameplay complete with voice acting and flashy action sequences. From the opening cutscene to the closing epilogue, I found myself thrust into a world that became more and more familiar as I explored every city and village and spoke with the townsfolk and learned about every party member’s backstory. These were people and places that I somehow knew. This was a fantasy that mirrored a reality that I and everyone around me was already living, and rather than being a pessimistic take on capitalism and classism and the destruction of the planet, there remained a glimmer of hope to inspire players when they turned the game off.

Interestingly, with the remake coming within the next year, it seems the themes of VII have only become increasingly relevant. Normally, I would be excited to see a new generation of players pick up this legendary masterpiece of RPG gaming and find within it the meaningful questions regarding humanity and its place in the universe, but I have reason for concern even with the mere teasers being released in preparation for this year’s E3. I want to take this opportunity to express just why VII is considered so legendary and masterful so that those who will enter the world of Cloud and company through the remake will know where the story started and what made it worth re-introducing to the new generation of gamers in the first place.

*I should probably make it clear that I only played VII because I instantly fell in love with Cloud’s character in the first Kingdom Hearts game which I played in middle school.

Be prepared for spoilers under the cut, but I’d be surprised if you’ve gone this long without learning about much of VII’s story. 

Storytelling: The World is Much Bigger Than You

One of the greatest methods in which VII expresses the grandness of the universe is in the simple method by which the story begins. The player is immediately thrust into a bombing mission as Cloud Strife, a 21-year-old mercenary who has been hired by AVALANCHE, a terrorist, anti-SHINra organization. The goal is simple: The planet is dying and big business is what's killing it. Therefore, cripple the company by destroying their methods of production. Immediately, the story is set in a world very much like our own; big business has all the real power, the wealthy live in luxury at the cost of the poor suffering and the planet’s ecosystem and essentially lifeblood is sucked up dry.

Without much further thought, Cloud continues along with Barret, Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie towards the center of one of SHINra’s reactors, killing any SHINra soldier along the way with little remorse. Again, at this point, the mission is simple. Once you reach the reactor, there is a short scene where Cloud collapses and we get a small piece of foreshadowing into our major plotpoint: there’s something else going on here. After detonating the bomb, Cloud and company return to Tifa’s bar, 7th Heaven--the HQ of AVALANCHE. There are arguments, as Cloud seems to be a mere bystander taking advantage of Barret’s need for insider information (Cloud was a 1st Class SOLDIER under SHINra before he became the mercenary he is at the start of the game) rather than someone who genuinely cares about the well-being of the planet. Eventually, Tifa and Cloud reminisce a scene together of a promise they made as children in their hometown; Cloud left Nibelheim in order to become a 1st Class SOLDIER, just like his hero, Sephiroth. If memory serves me right, this is our first introduction to Sephiroth.

Later, there is another bombing mission (Cloud has agreed to help again, but at a price) at it doesn’t go as planned. After a battle gone wrong, Cloud falls from the plate and lands in Aerith’s church. He had already met this girl once, but this time he gets a proper introduction to her and learns that SHINra has been keeping an eye on her since she was very small. This is another indicator that there is more going on to this story than players initially assumed; what else is SHINra up to? Why hunt this girl from childhood? She seems close with the Lifestream somehow--she can speak with souls that have passed on and simply knows when someone has died as though she’d been beside them when it happened.

As Cloud continues on with Aerith and learns more about her and is able to introduce her to Tifa and Barret, there eventually comes disaster; SHINra is about to drop one of the Sectors of the plate that hangs over the slums of Midgar, which will result in the deaths of thousands. Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie are already attempting to counter SHINra and their Turks (a special unit that SHINra sends out to do their dirty work and whom have been hunting Aerith since childhood), but they are easily overtaken. Aerith is kidnapped by the Turks in exchange for keeping Marlene, Barret’s adopted daughter, safe from harm, and though Cloud, Tifa, and Barret make an escape, the self-destruct button is pushed by Reno and the plate comes crumbling down. SHINra places the blame on AVALANCHE and thousands of innocent people are killed.

It is in this moment that we see Tifa and Barret now asking themselves if their methods of protest were worth it. If they had done the right thing and if all those deaths were, in fact, their fault. This is the beginnings of VII showing a recurring theme in the game; how do my actions affect everyone else in this world?

After a moment of grief and finding Marlene safe in the hands of Aerith’s adopted mother, Cloud and company decide to break into the SHINra building to rescue Aerith. On their way to the top floor, they discover a few hints at other projects SHINra has been working on and see into Hojo’s laboratory where he was keeping Aerith and what he calls Red XIII (otherwise and from here on out known as Nanaki), a wolf-like creature with fiery-red fur and a flame at the end of his tail. Hojo attempts to force them to mate, explaining that Aerith is the last survivor of a race called Ancients who can speak and connect with the Lifestream. The gang rescues Aerith, Nanaki joins your party (he can talk!) and then you are captured as you try to make your escape. What happens overnight is what changes the  name of the game from then on out.

After a short night’s rest, Cloud wakes up to find his cell door open and blood streaked across the floor. SHINra soldiers have been killed and the blood continues up towards the top floor of the building. When Cloud and company arrive at President Shinra’s office, he is dead--impaled with a sword. It is Cloud who identifies it as Sephiroth’s sword and now the player and all the characters are met with the realization that there is something else much deeper and much bigger going on than they had previously imagined. This storytelling method is continued through every interaction until it isn’t just a question of who the immediate bad guy is, but the implications of how every person can be the bad guy in some way and also how nature will always take everything back.

Though it took me a while to get here, the opening of VII is truly masterful in its buildup towards the actual meat of the story it attempts to tell. The focus is on Cloud and his small group and their very centered goals and eventually, through subtle foreshadowing and character dialogue, the scope of the story grows and grows until it’s no longer the question of one’s place in society, but one’s place in the universe. I find it so poignant how extremism is shown to be dangerous on either end of the spectrum, and just how dangerous is shown as you progress through the story and are made to think about the world on a much grander scale than yourself. As I stated before, the greatest power by the end of the game is the planet itself; Nature will always take everything back.

This method of storytelling allows players to learn along with the characters. It allows us to be part of the party without dumbing down characters in a way that doesn’t make sense within the canon. Not only this, but it takes the characters very seriously within their environments and their objectives. It builds them up only to make them question if their motives are justified. In the grand scheme of things, was setting off explosives to get back at a government entity good for everyone? Innocent people were killed in those explosions, and that’s not just including the dropping of the plate over the slums by SHINra. AVALANCHE sacrificed innocent lives as they battled with SHINra as a corporate entity. Were those deaths justified?

The slow yet action-packed buildup towards the meat of the VII’s story was purposeful, well executed, and honestly the best way to open this story. From a quick glance at the FFVII tag after the reveal of the new trailer, some fans seem to be speculating that the dark shadows that fighten Aerith are perhaps new foreshadowing into the remnants affiliated with Sephiroth and REUNION. I fear that trying to force too much early foreshadowing will cheapen what was already a beautiful story-telling method. Part of what made those remnants such a shock later on in the story was our sudden introduction to them. Bringing them in earlier in the gameplay seems completely unnecessary and like it will hurt the return to Nibelheim scene and the eerie feeling the player is supposed to be struck with when they enter the town. Not to mention, Aerith’s reaction was wholly unlike her and contradicts what made her such a complex character that broke the trope of petite-princess-girl-need-protection.

I’ll get into the details of characters in another part. This has already gotten long-winded enough and there’s still so much I’d like to discuss.

[coopdigitalnewsletter]

3 August 2020: Remote work: reply later. Amazon: free London grocery delivery. Tech industry: regulation?

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter - it looks at what's happening in the internet/digital world and how it's relevant to the Co-op, to retail businesses, and most importantly to people, communities and society. Thank you for reading - send ideas and feedback to @rod on Twitter. Please tell a friend about it!

Remote work: reply later

Many organisations have been “working from home” for a few months now, and there are obvious advantages and disadvantages to being remote. You don’t need to spend time or money commuting, you can work the way you want, etc. On the other hand, you might be trying to care for and homeschool children while also working, which is exhausting and impossible.

One of the non-obvious disadvantages of remote work is that if you try faithfully replicate the experience of being in an office there are additional cognitive costs. Doing a Zoom meeting is slightly harder work than doing a meeting face to face because many of the social cues that help make a conversation happen are lost in the “Can you hear me/I think Marina dropped out/I didn’t catch that” dance. So after a tough day of back to back meetings on the Zoom grid, you are finished.

Here’s an article that argues that remote workers are more productive than their present-in-the-office counterparts, and that asynchronous communication is the reason. If people send messages and avoiding demanding an instant response, recipients have freedom to fit replying into all of their other work. So there are fewer interruptions (related: Basecamp - how we communicate). You can see that even if messages are happening more slowly, more work will probably get done.

But it is also obvious that making remote work work isn’t easy. Nor is it the right answer for every situation. This is the negative argument: Our remote work future is going to suck: “remote work makes you vulnerable to outsourcing, reduces your job to a metric, creates frustrating change-averse bureaucracies, and stifles your career growth”. So there’s work to do to make sure that remote work doesn’t end up like that!

Amazon: free grocery delivery in London

Amazon takes on supermarkets with free food delivery. Same or next-day delivery will now be free for Prime subscribers in London on orders above £40. Amazon says “members will get fast grocery delivery - free with their Prime membership ­­- starting today [28 July] in London and expanding to millions of members across the UK before the end of the year”.

Last week the newsletter looked at how grocery delivery services that fully or part-subsidise delivery suffer significant margin erosion. So bundling delivery free into another service is a big move. This might be a classic “land and expand” plan. The free delivery is a loss leader to win Amazon customers who will later be loathe to switch supplier once they’ve committed. (And Amazon has the cashflow machine to outlast others.) 

Another way to look at it: Amazon is just following shopper behaviour: people want convenience, and recently they’ve got used to groceries being delivered (also everyone now lives in a world where “popping to the shops” involves queues and having to wear masks and worry about getting ill, so a push of free delivery works fits with that).

Or Amazon sees it in terms of the ecosystem. Shoppers would like free delivery, so Amazon adds it to Prime, and Prime gets slightly harder to cancel, even though its annual cost keeps nudging up. This approach only works if Amazon are consistently good at working out what shoppers value. If they make a mistake, Prime starts looking like a bad deal and cancellations will grow. But if it works, Prime is the recurring membership fee that eventually looks like essential life infrastructure.

Last week: the shop inside the self-scan bleeper.

Queues and retail news

Sainsbury's tests virtual queuing system. Shoppers will be able to join the queue from a remote location, such as their car, using a smartphone app, avoiding the need to stand outside the shop. Previously on queues: Could online supermarket queues do good? and Managing queues inside and outside Co-op stores during the pandemic. 

Good list of local, independent retailers in the US, many of them co-operatives.

The Book of Dreams closes: Argos is going to stop printing its massive catalogue. “Many declared childhood had been "ruined" by the news and decrying that children will never know the joys of circling potential birthday and Christmas gifts.” (The Book of Dreams has its own website, which is worth a visit.)

Tech industry: regulation?

Last week the Big Tech company leaders got hauled into the US congress’s Zoom chat to talk about whether they’re too big and whether the US gov should use anti-trust action to break them up. Here’s a summary.

Traditionally US competition law has seen monopolies in terms of price fixing - they’d ask if consumers are getting fair prices. On that basis, companies like Amazon usually don’t look anti-competitive because they generally force prices down.

However you’d think that regulation is on its way for a couple of reasons. First, market power now comes from controlling demand rather than supply. So the traditional price-fixing measure of monopoly damage may not be sufficient - and academic thinking on monopoly power is now evolving. Second, if you step back from anti-competition law specifically, regulation looks inevitable as the tech industry becomes ever larger and subsumes other industries, remaking them with software and data. It’s natural that the technology industry should face more regulation to limit its harms to consumers, other companies and wider society, its negative externalities, its unexpected consequences:

“Some time between 1850 and 1900 or so the industrial world worked out that regulating industry is necessary, and since then we’ve been arguing about how and how much, industry by industry, from industrial food to banking to airlines. Now that gets applied to tech.”

Related: I tried to live without the tech giants. it was impossible.

Uber’s algorithm and other mobility

Uber drivers to launch legal bid to uncover app's algorithm - this is interesting. if you work for an algorithm (the algorithm tasks you, and determines how much money you make) then it is deeply in your interest to understand how it works.

Also Uber: the company has cancelled plans to provide digital wallets and other financial services. They’ve committed to being profitable soon, and (thanks partly to the virus) the corporate emphasis is on Uber Eats.

Elsewhere in mobility data… the county of Devon will use data from running app Strava to prioritise popular cycling roads for repairs. And some global data on electric scooter rideshare use (nb electric scooters became legal in UK in July).

Co-op Digital news and events

The Federation House team is running weekly drop-in chats for the community every Wednesday at 10am: Join us here. See our online events. You can also see how The Federation is planning for a safe return to the co-working floor.

Other free of charge events 

Andy’s Man Club – Gentleman's Peer to Peer Mental Health Meet Up – Mondays 7pm 

Self Care – Online Workshops – Various dates/times in July 

Northern Azure User Group – Meet Up – 5 Aug – 6pm 

Virtual Data Expedition – Online Workshop – 11 Aug – 10am. “Do you wish you had more confidence with data? Do you want to use data to better inform what you do? Whatever your data skills, wherever you are, you're invited to join a Virtual Data Expedition being led online for the first time by Open Data Manchester, with the support of charity data experts 360Giving. A Data Expedition is a way of working with data from 'start to finish' – from identifying a question you have, to finding and using data to try to answer it, to telling a story with it. Sign up to join a series of guided workshops on a journey of data discovery.” 

NW Drupal User Group – Meet Up – 11 Aug – 7pm 

Beginners Guide to Retrofit – Webinar – 12 Aug – 6pm 

Women in Tech – Networking – 13 Aug – 8.30am 

LGBTQIA – Hackathon – 28-30 Aug 

 Paid for events 

Invisible Cities - Online Tours of Manchester or Edinburgh – Various Dates & Times 

Mandala Yoga – Online Yoga Sessions - Various Dates & Times 

Tech Ethics – Meet Up – Various Dates & Times 

Thank you for reading

Thank you, beloved readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc to @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading, please tell a friend! If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog. Previous newsletters.

[libertariantaoist]

The ruling corporate elites no longer seek to build. They seek to destroy. They are agents of death. They crave the unimpeded power to cannibalize the country and pollute and degrade the ecosystem to feed an insatiable lust for wealth, power and hedonism. Wars and military “virtues” are celebrated. Intelligence, empathy and the common good are banished. Culture is degraded to patriotic kitsch. Education is designed only to instill technical proficiency to serve the poisonous engine of corporate capitalism. Historical amnesia shuts us off from the past, the present and the future. Those branded as unproductive or redundant are discarded and left to struggle in poverty or locked away in cages. State repression is indiscriminant and brutal. And, presiding over the tawdry Grand Guignol is a deranged ringmaster tweeting absurdities from the White House.

The graveyard of world empires—Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Mayan, Khmer, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian—followed the same trajectory of moral and physical collapse. Those who rule at the end of empire are psychopaths, imbeciles, narcissists and deviants, the equivalents of the depraved Roman emperors Caligula, Nero, Tiberius and Commodus. The ecosystem that sustains the empire is degraded and exhausted. Economic growth, concentrated in the hands of corrupt elites, is dependent on a crippling debt peonage imposed on the population. The bloated ruling class of oligarchs, priests, courtiers, mandarins, eunuchs, professional warriors, financial speculators and corporate managers sucks the marrow out of society.

The elites’ myopic response to the looming collapse of the natural world and the civilization is to make subservient populations work harder for less, squander capital in grandiose projects such as pyramids, palaces, border walls and fracking, and wage war. President Trump’s decision to increase military spending by $54 billion and take the needed funds out of the flesh of domestic programs typifies the behavior of terminally ill civilizations. When the Roman Empire fell, it was trying to sustain an army of half a million soldiers that had become a parasitic drain on state resources.

The complex bureaucratic mechanisms that are created by all civilizations ultimately doom them. The difference now, as Joseph Tainter points out in “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” is that “collapse, if and when it comes again, will this time be global. No longer can any individual nation collapse. World civilization will disintegrate as a whole.”

Civilizations in decline, despite the palpable signs of decay around them, remain fixated on restoring their “greatness.” Their illusions condemn them. They cannot see that the forces that gave rise to modern civilization, namely technology, industrial violence and fossil fuels, are the same forces that are extinguishing it. Their leaders are trained only to serve the system, slavishly worshipping the old gods long after these gods begin to demand millions of sacrificial victims.

“Hope drives us to invent new fixes for old messes, which in turn create even more dangerous messes,” Ronald Wright writes in “A Short History of Progress.” “Hope elects the politician with the biggest empty promise; and as any stockbroker or lottery seller knows, most of us will take a slim hope over prudent and predictable frugality. Hope, like greed, fuels the engine of capitalism.”  

The Trump appointees—Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions, Rex Tillerson, Steve Mnuchin, Betsy DeVos, Wilbur Ross, Rick Perry, Alex Acosta and others—do not advocate innovation or reform. They are Pavlovian dogs that salivate before piles of money. They are hard-wired to steal from the poor and loot federal budgets. Their single-minded obsession with personal enrichment drives them to dismantle any institution or abolish any law or regulation that gets in the way of their greed. Capitalism, Karl Marx wrote, is “a machine for demolishing limits.” There is no internal sense of proportion or scale. Once all external impediments are lifted, global capitalism ruthlessly commodifies human beings and the natural world to extract profit until exhaustion or collapse. And when the last moments of a civilization arrive, the degenerate edifices of power appear to crumble overnight.

Sigmund Freud wrote that societies, along with individuals, are driven by two primary instincts. One is the instinct for life, Eros, the quest to love, nurture, protect and preserve. The second is the death instinct. The death instinct, called Thanatos by post-Freudians, is driven by fear, hatred and violence. It seeks the dissolution of all living things, including our own beings. One of these two forces, Freud wrote, is always ascendant. Societies in decline enthusiastically embrace the death instinct, as Freud observed in “Civilization and Its Discontents,” written on the eve of the rise of European fascism and World War II.  

“It is in sadism, where the death instinct twists the erotic aim in its own sense and yet at the same time fully satisfies the erotic urge, that we succeed in obtaining the clearest insight into its nature and its relation to Eros,” Freud wrote. “But even where it emerges without any sexual purpose, in the blindest fury of destructiveness, we cannot fail to recognize that the satisfaction of the instinct is accompanied by an extraordinary high degree of narcissistic enjoyment, owing to its presenting the ego with a fulfillment of the latter’s old wishes for omnipotence.”

The lust for death, as Freud understood, is not, at first, morbid. It is exciting and seductive. I saw this in the wars I covered. A god-like power and adrenaline-driven fury, even euphoria, sweep over armed units and ethnic or religious groups given the license to destroy anything and anyone around them. Ernst Juenger captured this “monstrous desire for annihilation” in his World War I memoir, “Storm of Steel.”

A population alienated and beset by despair and hopelessness finds empowerment and pleasure in an orgy of annihilation that soon morphs into self-annihilation. It has no interest in nurturing a world that has betrayed it and thwarted its dreams. It seeks to eradicate this world and replace it with a mythical landscape. It turns against institutions, as well as ethnic and religious groups, that are scapegoated for its misery. It plunders diminishing natural resources with abandon. It is seduced by the fantastic promises of demagogues and the magical solutions characteristic of the Christian right or what anthropologists call “crisis cults.”

Norman Cohn, in “The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Messianism in Medieval and Reformation Europe and Its Bearing on Modern Totalitarian Movements,” draws a link between that turbulent period and our own. Millennial movements are a peculiar, collective psychological response to profound societal despair. They recur throughout human history. We are not immune.

“These movements have varied in tone from the most violent aggressiveness to the mildest pacifism and in aim from the most ethereal spirituality to the most earth-bound materialism; there is no counting the possible ways of imagining the Millennium and the route to it,” Cohen wrote. “But similarities can present themselves as well as differences; and the more carefully one compares the outbreaks of militant social chiliasm during the later Middle Ages with modern totalitarian movements the more remarkable the similarities appear. The old symbols and the old slogans have indeed disappeared, to be replaced by new ones; but the structure of the basic phantasies seems to have changed scarcely at all.”

These movements, Cohen wrote, offered “a coherent social myth which was capable of taking entire possession of those who believed in it. It explained their suffering, it promised them recompense, it held their anxieties at bay, it gave them an illusion of security—even while it drove them, held together by a common enthusiasm, on a quest which was always vain and often suicidal.

“So it came about that multitudes of people acted out with fierce energy a shared phantasy which though delusional yet brought them such intense emotional relief that they could live only through it and were perfectly willing to die for it. It is a phenomenon which was to recur many times between the eleventh century and the sixteenth century, now in one area, now in another, and which, despite the obvious differences in cultural context and in scale, is not irrelevant to the growth of totalitarian movements, with their messianic leaders, their millennial mirages and their demon-scapegoats, in the present century.”

The severance of a society from reality, as ours has been severed from collective recognition of the severity of climate change and the fatal consequences of empire and deindustrialization, leaves it without the intellectual and institutional mechanisms to confront its impending mortality. It exists in a state of self-induced hypnosis and self-delusion. It seeks momentary euphoria and meaning in tawdry entertainment and acts of violence and destruction, including against people who are demonized and blamed for society’s demise. It hastens its self-immolation while holding up the supposed inevitability of a glorious national resurgence. Idiots and charlatans, the handmaidens of death, lure us into the abyss.

[richmeganews]

The People Who Hated the Web, Even Before Facebook

Thirty years ago this week, the British scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web at CERN, the European scientific research center.  Suffice it to say the idea took off. The web made it easy for everyday people to create and link together pages on what was then a small network. The programming language was simple, and publishing was as painless as uploading something to a server with a few tags in it.

There was real and democratic and liberatory potential there, and so it’s not at all surprising that people— not least Berners-Lee himself—are choosing to remember and celebrate this era. This was the time before social media and FAANG supremacy and platform capitalism, when the internet was not nearly as dependent on surveillance and advertising as it is now. Attention was more widely distributed. The web had broken the broadcast and print media’s hold on the distribution of stories. HTML felt like a revolution.

Not to everyone, though. Just a few years after the internet’s creation, a vociferous set of critics—most notably in Resisting the Virtual Life, a 1995 anthology published by City Lights Books—rose to challenge the ideas that underlay the technology, as previous groups had done the same with other, earlier technologies. This wasn’t the humbuggery of Clifford Stoll’s Newsweek essay arguing the internet basically sucked. These were deeper criticisms about the kind of society that was building the internet, and how the dominant values of that culture, once encoded into the network, would generate new forms of oppression and suffering, at home and abroad.

Resisting the Virtual Life assails “the new machinery of domination,” contemplates an “ungovernable world,” considers the discriminatory possibilities of data harvesting, catalogs the unfairness of gender online, examines the “masculinist world of software engineers,” laments the “reduction of public space,” speculates on “the shape of truth to come,” and even proposes a democratic way forward. Its essays foresaw the economic instability the internet might bring, how “the cult of the boy engineer” would come to pervade everyone’s lives, and the implications of the creation of huge amounts of personal data for corporate processing. “What could go wrong with the web?,” they asked. The answer they found was: A lot. They called themselves the resistance.

This was before Jeff Bezos was the richest man in the world. It was before Facebook, before the iPhone, before Web 2.0, before Google went public, before the dot-com bust, before the dot-com bubble, before almost anyone outside Finland texted. 18 million American homes were “online” in the sense they had America Online, Prodigy, or Compuserve, but according to Pew, only 3 percent had ever seen the web. Amazon, eBay, and Craigslist had just launched. But the critiques in Resisting the Virtual Life are now commonplace. You hear them about Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, the venture backed-startup ecosystem, artificial intelligence, self-driving cars—even though the internet of 1995 bears almost no resemblance, technically or institutionally, to the internet of 2018.

Marc Andreessen, then co-founder and Vice-President of technology for Netscape (Reuters)

Maybe as a major technological movement begins to accelerate—but before its language, corporate power, and political economics begin to warp reality—there is a brief moment when critics see the full and awful potential of whatever’s coming into the world. They look into the tear in the social fabric with awe and anger. No, the new technology will not bring better living (at least not only that). There will be losers. Oppression will worm its way into even the most seemingly liberating spaces. The non-commercial will become hooked to a vast profit machine. People of color will be discriminated against in new ways. Women will have new labors on top of the old ones. The horrorshow recombination of old systems and cultures with new technological surfaces and innards is visible, like the half-destroyed robot face of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2.

Then, if money and people really start to pour into the technology, the resistance is swept away, left dusty and coughing as what gets called progress rushes on.

***

In the post-2016 world of the left, socialism is back and computers are bad. But computers have been bad before, and not coincidentally, when various socialisms were popular.

Long before the internet and Resisting the Virtual Life, people fought the very idea of computers—mainframes, initially—beginning with the 1960s student movements. It wasn’t pure Luddism; computers were, quite literally, war machines. At Stanford, then a hotbed of radicalism, students staged sit-ins and occupied administration buildings. Even as the war ebbed, many on the left worried that technology in the form of computerization and automation was destroying working-class jobs, helping bosses crush unions, and making work-life worse for those who remained employed.

Offut Air Force Base computers (Library of Congress)

But as the 1970s crept into the 1980s, some of the military-industrial stank began to rub off. A computer that spit out Vietnam War predictions for McNamara was one thing, but what about a network of computers that let anyone wander a digital frontier, associating with whomever they wanted beyond national borders or established identities? The meaning of networked computing began to change. These 1s and 0s could be bent to freedom.

“To a generation that had grown up in a world beset by massive armies and by the threat of nuclear holocaust, the cybernetic notion of the globe as a single, interlinked pattern of information was deeply comforting: in the invisible play of information, many thought they could see the possibility of global harmony,” wrote Fred Turner in From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism.

Turner’s book begins with the question: “How did the cultural meaning of information technology shift so drastically?” from the Vietnam War protest days to the beginning of the dot-com boom. And his answer is that a set of figures in the Bay Area, led by Stewart Brand, who had founded the Whole Earth Catalog, transformed the notion of computers from military-industrial infrastructure to personal tool through the 1970s.

Brand positioned these technologies as boons not for bureaucrats calculating missile trajectories, but more for hacker-freaks planning winning videogame maneuvers. In Rolling Stone, he declared the arrival of computing “good news, maybe the best since psychedelics.”

It helped that the United States had entered a period historian Daniel Rodgers has called The Age of Fracture. American institutions, collectivities, and solidarities broke down in favor of a wildly individualist model of consumer action. “One heard less about society, history, and power and more about individuals, contingency, and choice,” Rodgers wrote. “The importance of economic institutions gave way to notions of flexible and instantly acting markets.”

The world was a place for individuals to make choices in, and what they needed to make better choices was more information. Information was stored in computers, and therefore, networking individual people one to another would lead to new forms of collective action.

Apple and its charismatic salesman Steve Jobs were there to commercialize this new idea of the computer. Liberal technology enthusiasts like Al Gore and conservative technology enthusiasts like Newt Gingrich joined the movement to create a new consensus that the only role of government in the industry would be to create an environment friendly to the development of internet businesses and niche communities alike.

So, when Berners-Lee wrote his 1989 proposal for the web, the world was ready. Tellingly, it was an institutional breakdown that motivated his desire for a hypertext system. People kept leaving CERN and taking information with them. Organizational memory was lacking. At the same time, systems for creating that memory required people agree to certain hierarchies of information and keyword taxonomies, which they were loathe to do. His answer to this problem became a radically individual one: Anyone could create a page and link to anything. Get enough people doing so, and the flywheel of content creation would keep spinning. No institutions required. No holds barred. This was personal freedom, as implemented in a network protocol.

Tim Berners-Lee talks about the world wide web in 1998 (Reuters/Pierre Virot)

The internet’s early proponents saw all this potential. They gushed in the pages of Wired, headquartered south of Market, in in San Francisco, long a down-and-out part of town. But across Market Street and up Columbus Avenue, in the heart of North Beach, where aging Beatniks still had some small purchase, the poets and writers of the City Lights Bookstore had not been swayed.

***

“There are alternatives to the capitalist utopia of total communication, suppressed class struggle, and ever-increasing profits and control that forgets rather than resolves the central problems of our society,” wrote James Brook and Iain Boal, the editors of Resisting the Virtual Life. Those problems were obvious: “People sorted into enclaves and ghettos, growing class and racial antagonisms, declining public services (including schools, libraries, and transportation), unemployment caused by automation and wandering capital, and so on.”

And yet, for most people, the personal computer and the emerging internet had obscured the underlying structural forces of the society. “‘[P]ersonal’ computers and CD-ROMs circulate as fetishes for worshipers of ‘the free market’ and ‘the free flow of information,” they wrote.

Brook and Boal knew they were up against “much—one could say ‘everything’” in trying to assemble the resistance to the explosion of the internet. But their goal was not necessarily to win, but rather to “address an almost unnameable object—‘information age,’ ‘information superhighway,’ ‘cyberspace,’ ‘virtuality,’ and the proliferating variants—from a critical democratic perspective.”

It’s almost like they wanted to mark for future generations that there were people—all kinds of different people—who saw the problems. “Resisting the Virtual Life intends to provide correctives more profound than those generated by the cybernetic feedback mechanisms of ‘the marketplace of ideas,’” the editors wrote, “where scandalous defects are always answered by pseudocritiques that assure us that all is well, except for the inevitable bugs that the system itself will fix.”

A typical Silicon Valley office park scene (Alexis Madrigal)

The essays in the book are uneven, as you might expect. But some of them are stunningly prescient. In “It’s the Discrimination, Stupid!” which reads as a prequel to 2018’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,  USC professor Oscar H. Gandy Jr’s  argues that  “Personal information is used to determine our life changes in our role as citizens as well as in our lives as employees and consumers.” In a powerful reflection on the landscape of Silicon Valley, Rebecca Solnit concludes that, as a place, it is a nowhere, but one linked by supply chains to changes across the globe. UC San Diego communication professor and media critic Herbert Schiller points out how the internet could reduce the power of nation-states, weakening them while transnational corporations grow stronger. Could electronically enhanced armies hold the people down “while privately initiated economic forces are contributing to wildly disproportionate income distribution and gravely distorted resource utilization, locally and globally?”

A CIA website for kids from 1998 (Reuters).

And Ellen Ullman, who has continued to critique the tech world from the inside, might have made the most perfect critique of how the human desire for convenience would rule how technology was seen. “The computer is about to enter our lives like blood in the capillaries,” she wrote. “Soon, everywhere we look, we will see pretty, idiot-proof interfaces designed to make us say, ‘OK.’”

The on-demand economy would rule. “We don’t need to involve anyone else in the satisfaction of our needs,” she wrote. “We don’t even have to talk.” Smuggled inside these programs would be “the cult of the boy engineer,” “alone, out-of-time, disdainful of anyone far from the machine.”

If these critics from another era seem to have cataloged all that could go wrong, they also did have a sense that things could go differently. Writer and historian Chris Carlsson, for example, saw hope in the organizing potential of online communities. “The threads of subversion we weave so quietly today must find their way to transform the self-destructive, brutal, and dehumanizing lives we lead at work, at school, and in the streets,” he wrote. “The trust we place in electronic links must again find a common home among our social links, until electronic ‘experiences’ take their rightful place as supplements to a rich, varied human life.”

Then, again, he acknowledged that “it’s easier to imagine a lot of empty pointless verbiage flying around the electronic world, matched only by the piles of data gathered by our corporate and governmental institutions.”

***

Since the 2016 election—both its course and outcome—Americans have been engaged in a newfound struggle to understand how the internet has changed their country and the world. It’s simply not possible to celebrate the birth of the web without acknowledging that the cyberutopia never arrived. Look at many tech titans’ behavior over the past few years and you see both scandalous defects as well as “pseudocritques that assure us all is well.”

In this long moment of reevaluation, the industry and its products have come under attack from almost every angle: inside and outside, local and global, economic and social, legislative and rhetorical, capitalist and socialist. That hasn’t stopped the profits from raining down. The biggest tech companies are in the top 10 most valuable companies in the world. According to one ranking of brand equity, the four strongest brands in the world are Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft. But once the consensus dropped away that internet technology was equal to progress, people inside and outside the industry have found an unending fount of questionable practices. People treat their phones as they once did cigarettes.

As the diagnoses are reached and suggestions made, these early critiques are worth remembering precisely to inoculate against the nostalgia for an earlier time. The seeds of our current technologically mediated problems were obvious to critics with the eyes to see them in 1995.

Examining the history of the web might yield a better internet in the future, but not by looking only at what we loved about the early days. The premises of the early web—valorizing individual choice, maximalist free speech, and dispersed virtual networks, ignoring institutional power and traditional politics—might require revision to build a new, pro-social web.

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[anthonybialy]

Showing Morton Downey Junior

Schlock has escaped from its cage and infected everything.  As reflected in President Donald Trump's impossibly tacky golden-tinted '80s design sense, America endures the worst sort of throwback.  Time only seems to be moving forward as we're trapped by ideas that repulsed decent people before anyone had modems.

Specifically, we're stuck on the best worst talk show ever.  Present American inmates inhabit a Morton Downey Junior world where the most dated example of confrontational TV ever has gone national.  Off-putting fighting wasn't supposed to be taken seriously, but it's now the baseline for discourse.  I miss when trash was honest. Those innocent times make today's genuine anger even more tiresome.

Today's tainted political ecosystem is reminiscent of what was broadcast three decades ago by WOR-TV, a delightfully low-rent channel known for chintzy local production values in the nation's biggest media market.  The fascinating view they provided of tawdry New York City was both horrifying and exciting.  If you missed it, you can only be assured that the appeal was irresistible even if muggings were the only thriving industry.

A Gotham channel's provincial take was especially enticing for a suburban brat at the state's other end.  I was quite fond of the evening news, which was an intense version of the formula where metropolitan activity seemed relentlessly exciting in its frightening way.  It felt like my local news, only with the dosage upped.  

The channel became beloved for its somehow charming series of purportedly valuable films, batty originals, and whatever syndicated programming they could score.  Their offerings also included a shocking local radio host named Howard Stern. Who could not watch while flinching?

But the queen fake jewel was Downey's preposterous outrage hour.  His habit of screaming at scum-sucking, pabulum-puking liberals, to use his favorite description of those with whom he disagreed, typified the era's amusing excesses.  Well, we couldn't own jerks online.

I remember catching Mister Downey Junior's embodiment of sensationalism for the first time.  He was bickering with Klansmen, which made it the perfect initial episode.  Did you know he opposed them?  It was a time for bold statements.  He concluded the feisty hour by righteously kicked them off the set.  Of course, I was hooked. Amused by his preposterous forcefulness and contempt for dissent, I had my political model.

Scolding, accosting, and chain-smoking were par for the course.  People didn't tune in for William Buckley-style erudition: we wanted our right-wing ranting literally in the face of the opposition.  This was an era when commies were descending into cartoonish failure.  They were begging to be publicly humiliated.

The subtle political visionary frequently sparred with people who've become nationally notorious.  For one, the cheesy ragefest was the level where Gloria Allred belonged. It's not to accuse her of seeking attention or anything, but she always practiced law in front of television cameras.  Now, you can actually find a certain brand of sanctimonious twits who respect her as an attorney. That shouldn't happen for anyone in that particular inglorious profession, but it's especially so for her.

And nothing that says more about our society than Al freaking Sharpton being taken seriously. The purported reverend was more tolerable when he was a race-baiting local clown with the girth and pompadour to match. Of course, he still left a trail of corpses which made his shtick less charming.  But showing up to argue with Downey was fitting for the guy who inflicted what he did on Crown Heights, Steven Pagones, and Freddie's Fashion Mart.

It's no surprise Downey interviewed a president if you've made it this far.  He notoriously interviewed a local real estate-flipping braggart named Donald Trump because of course he did.  It was the perfect pairing of someone repellant spewing hideous takes as he drew attention to himself and Morton Downey.

Downey was a visionary, sadly. He naturally didn't believe a word he said.  The poseur's not entirely novel strategy involved getting as outrageous as possible for ratings.  Sure, relying on shock is unsustainable.  But nobody cares about running out of fuel when the afterburner button is fun to press.

There was plenty inspirational about someone known for screaming about a position that's a caricature of what people actually believe.  The blip on the cultural radar during the original Nintendo era featured a guy playing a character who adorably thinks nobody else notices.  Gee, can you think of a president who took inspiration from Channel 9's trashy mascot?

The sideshow was taken nationally long ago.  Life feels dull while the rage never stops.  For one, the formerly enticing base for depravity has gone corporate.  New York is boring as the banks on every corner.  Everything that was unique is no longer.  Local color was co-opted by attention whores in other markets.  It is technically a culture even if it's not quite refined.

Those who prefer substance to volume miss when Trump was a headache limited to Gotham's tabloids.  We're inured to the New York Post covering him as national news.  The damage radius increased exponentially past the Hudson.  I miss when the screaming was contained to a ramshackle TV set in Secaucus.  Loudmouths can be heard anywhere.

[smartphoneteam-blog]

New Post has been published on Smart Wrist Wrap Watches

New Post has been published on https://www.smartwristwrap.com/the-apple-watch-turns-3-and-its-still-flawed.html

The Apple Watch turns 3, and it's still flawed

The Apple Watch Series 3.

Image: lili sams/mashable

In 2007, Apple changed the act of socializing, maybe forever, with the release of the iPhone. There it was, a perfectly packed 4.5-inch-long computer designed to pulverize boredom like a drill through your skull. You bought one, and now, whenever you have a few minutes of downtime, even if that downtime is shared with your friends or spouse or mom at Christmas, you tap or scroll or swipe something on that little glass screen.

To own a smartphone is to cede some part of yourself to it. The device is too innately fascinating to be conquered by lifehacks, which feel like treating a hernia with vinyasa flow. So, three years ago, Apple released the Apple Watch, promising a better way forward. It’s a mini-computer you strap to your wrist to free yourself of the one you carry in your pocket. Apple’s promises then are worth reconsidering today, after years of modest improvements to the wearable, because the fundamental problem — tech interrupting and shaping our natural lives — remains unsolved.

Indeed, the original sales pitch of the Apple Watch was an admission that something wasn’t quite right in iPhoneland. There was Tim Cook, beginning hour two of a PR gauntlet that had included the announcement of the iPhone 6S, hawking his company’s new “intimate way to connect and communicate.” There was a standing ovation.

Minutes later, Apple screened a commercial narrated by Jony Ive, the corporation’s chief designer. In 2018, we may understand the Apple Watch mostly as a fitness tracker, but in the video, Ive gives it a significantly more nuanced pitch.

“We conceived, designed, and developed Apple Watch as a completely singular product,” Ive says in his silken British hum. “You know, you can’t determine a boundary between the physical object and the software.”

One of the first promotional images for the Apple Watch depicted a romantic embrace.

Image: Apple/YouTube

Throughout all of this, a render of the Apple Watch rotates and shimmers. During this next line, you see chain-link metal flowing like cream and an erotic pan over the bottom of the Watch’s golden wrist strap.

“We’re introducing an unparalleled level of technical innovation combined with a design that connects with the wearer at an intimate level to both embrace individuality and inspire desire,” he continues.

You can draw a message on the 42-mm screen, or try to. You can share your heartbeat with someone. That’s the Apple Watch difference.

The money shot.

Image: apple/youtube

All of which is to say the Apple Watch, at conception, was a very personal response to an already very personal computer — the iPhone, which you can use during a potluck or after 50 sit-ups or whenever, really.

Yes, Apple, like any great company in the business of marketing products, is skilled at creating needs where you didn’t have any, though maybe it was onto something here. The smartphone made personal computers and the internet ubiquitous, but it also moved them into social life, creating millions of invisible barriers between people that never existed before. Perhaps something smaller, with a series of subtly actionable notifications that only alert the human wearing the device, could in some way solve the problems we hadn’t anticipated from the iPhone.

But the Apple Watch doesn’t solve these problems.

Mixed messages

The author (Damon Beres) and his loaner Apple Watch.

Image: Lili Sams/Mashable

Three years after the original device went on sale, I strapped on the newest iteration of the Apple Watch — a “Series 3” model, temporarily provided for review by Apple — and expected to learn something new. Truthfully, I’ve always been suspicious of wearables, for a fairly self-evident reason: Their pitch is to solve data overload by more or less re-contextualizing that data, without meaningfully changing much in the process. Worse, by virtue of the device being strapped onto your wrist, the chances for unwanted technological interjection are quite a bit higher than they are with a phone in your pocket, or in another room.

Say your friend sends you a text message. In Apple’s ecosystem, that message is equally accessible and interactive no matter what device you’re on. Just like your iPhone, iPad, or MacBook, the Apple Watch receives the signal and produces a little blue, text-filled bubble. You can respond to it fully no matter what device you’re on.

Messages on the Apple Watch

Image: Mashable Screenshot

Messages on the iPhone

Image: MASHABLE SCREENSHOT

On paper, that’s impressive. The Apple Watch has a unique user interface, with a digital crown to rotate and different ways of responding to messages by default — write out letters with your fingers, dictate with your voice, use one of many automated responses — but the core functionality mirrors the programs you’re already accustomed to. Especially with the Series 3, which can be completely untethered from your iPhone, Apple has designed a wristwatch that functions like a “full” computer (at least with some applications).

It is unmistakably an engineering feat, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for people. Though they should offer quite different things to a user, the membrane between the Apple Watch and the iPhone is basically nonexistent. When it comes to something like messages, you’re getting all or nothing on your wrist, just as you do on your iPhone.

The Apple Watch’s iMessage settings.

Image: mashable screenshot

I use iMessage a lot. It is, in effect, my preferred social network. Very quickly, the notifications on my wrist became vomit-inducing. When I need to, I can shove my iPhone in a bag or put it in another room or, in a fit of heaving sobs, ask my wife to hide it, but taking the Apple Watch off is another thing entirely. If you’re going to do that, why have one at all?

Yes, you can use the “Do Not Disturb” function, which stops notifications from prodding at your wrist, though again I wondered: If I turn everything off, what good is this thing? At that point, it becomes a glorified fitness tracker — more on that in a second — that I can use like a mini-iPhone when needed. That is literally never needed, because I have an iPhone, and the Apple Watch is no less disruptive to tinker with than the rectangular slab in my pocket.

Remember that Apple’s original pitch for this thing was all about intimate communication. There are two really important but unspoken elements of that pitch:

Unlike the iPhone, the Apple Watch should keep your hands free. Pay attention to the amount of time people spend actually touching the watch in commercials for this device: It’s not very much.

If you have to look at the Apple Watch, you should get the information you need very quickly.

Remember, out of the context of Apple’s advertising, “intimacy” is already a defining trait of the iPhone. It goes with you everywhere, it takes pictures of everything — that’s intimacy! So, the Apple Watch really has to make its case as something that can remove the barrier between you and the people you’re communicating with in real life (and not via gadgets).

I’m belaboring this point to the exclusion of the, like, billions of other little things the Apple Watch can do — I downloaded a game about chewing bubble gum! — because fundamentally, the Apple Watch fails to remove this barrier. When it comes to intimacy between people, the Apple Watch is nothing new. The user interface replicates the functions of your iPhone, and fiddling with its screen or digital crown will be just as annoying to anyone you’re sitting across from.

This 1983 concept for an Apple “wrist and ear phone”  is nuts, but at least it’s not emulating an existing computer.

Image: concept by hartmut esslinger; image via “Keep It Simple: The Early Design Years of Apple, ” published by Arnoldsche Verlagsanstalt

So… it sucks?

Measured against the original promises, the Apple Watch is hardly a success. And indeed, I wanted to experience the device — its latest update, no less — specifically in reference to those promises. We’re more aware now of the potential harms lying beneath our touchscreens, but the fundamental product hasn’t changed much.

That’s probably why Apple has pivoted its marketing for the device. The original commercials were all about subtle interactions between people; many of the recent ones are about exercise. Fair enough: The exercise and health features are great, and certainly better than any of the several other fitness trackers I’ve used over the years.

i will cherish this forever pic.twitter.com/W7xm37rjV1

— Damon Beres ✨ (@dlberes) April 22, 2018

Perhaps unsurprisingly, focusing on fitness seems to have improved Apple Watch sales.

“My theory is that consumers are starting to see a place for Apple Watch in their lives,” industry analyst Neil Cybart recently wrote on his Above Avalon blog. “While Apple’s revised Apple Watch marketing campaign around health and fitness has led to a clearer sales pitch, I think the health and fitness messaging ends up being Apple’s way to get its wrist in the door.”

His full argument is much more involved. The familiar functions of the Apple Watch attract people, but the device introduces new ideas that hint at the future Apple is trying to build. I may not like the screen interface, but Cybart rightly points out that the Apple Watch is packed with additional technology — voice recognition, artificial intelligence, smart sensors — that could become very important to Apple moving forward.

But we’re not in that future yet. I would argue we’re a paradigm shift or two away from the Apple Watch standing apart as a device that most of us would experience as meaningfully different than the iPhone when it comes to most aspects of personal computing, fitness tracking aside. The Apple Watch won’t be “done,” in my view, until you can own it without needing an iPhone — not because Apple’s ecosystem is busted, but because the Watch is too beholden to the iOS framework, warts and all. In an era when many of us dream about being less trapped by screens and notifications, the Apple Watch does little more than pile on.

One could argue that Apple needs to rethink what the Watch is capable of. The fanboys will crucify me for saying so, but maybe reducing functionality would be a step in the right direction — perhaps we don’t need the full, iOS-like iMessage experience on our wrists, for example, though I could only guess at what the right replacement would be.

Until then, here’s what the Apple Watch is for: more of the same.

WATCH: Communicating with people who sign just got a whole lot easier

Read more: http://mashable.com/

[cryptochurp]

Mr. and Mrs. Blockchain, Traveling

The central character in Truman Capote’s novel “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” is Holly Golightly who is an independent and rather mysterious person. The card on Holly’s mailbox reading “Holly Golightly, Travelling” suggested from the very beginning of the novel that this is a character who aims to escape the conventional existence. Leaving aside her romantic pursuits, she is a traveler in that endless search for a new location.

The novel was published in the late 50s, and like many of her contemporaries who wanted to travel, Holly might have made a phone call to book a hotel and her booking might have been recorded in a ledger of a travel agency or a  hotel. Now, in our age of internet communication, a booking is quickly done online but some awkward situations cannot be avoided whatsoever.

‘I Can’t Find Your Booking’

This is one of the phrases a traveler hates to hear. You go through the trouble of flying half-way around the world and the hotel’s stupid reservation system can’t find your booking? Hmmm… or maybe you didn’t hit the book button twice, like you were meant to.

The fact is you are there, but your room is not. Well, you could always try this old line:

If Prince Charles was to walk in here right now you’d find a room for him, right?  Well, he’s in Scotland this weekend, so I want his room.

But that’s not likely to work, and may even make your partner hate you, so maybe now’s the time to just suck it up and look for the nearest backpacker lodge. 

On top of it, misfortunes never come singly. When you finally find a place to put down the suitcases, your credit card revolts and refuses to take the payment. How would you feel about a string of these alarming events?  Low mood, anxiety and feeling as if you are going crazy. How to get out of it? Taking a sedative is a poor option as you might never know if these misfortunes happen again but you end up gulping down tons of pills. Indeed, you have to seriously consider the option that you never get into these bizarre events at all.

Before we consider a remedy, let us take a broad look at the travel industry. Online traveling services are considered very lucrative as they generate over 76% of the revenues from hotels, tours, and accommodation bookings, but as things stand now, this segment is controlled by five big players whose dominance allows them to set high fees and slow down progress.

The commission on platforms such as  Booking.com and Airbnb.com runs up to 30% and sometimes even 50% of each booking made, which increases the cost for consumers and also reduces vendors’ earnings.

According to data,  the travel and tourism industry contributed over $7.6 trillion to the global economy in 2016.  The number of international tourists has grown more than twofold since 2005, and the trend is looking stronger than ever.

The Traveler’s Solution? The Blockchain

The first generation of the digital revolution brought us the Internet. The second generation ushered in the blockchain. This technology is bringing us a new value: a new, distributed platform that can help us reshape the world of business and transform the old order of human affairs for the better.

The blockchain is a decentralized system, with no single entity controlling it. The blockchain servers are scattered across the globe, and there are no intermediaries. This computer network underpins the Bitcoin, one of the many new cryptocurrencies. No exchange rates apply either because cryptocurrencies are oblivious to borders.  And because there are no intermediaries involved, monies are transferred instantly.

It is essentially a single, extremely secure, transparent global ledger. The network, rather than a third party, validates a  transaction. This means that friction -and cost- can be reduced across the network.  The technology is described today as a way of updating payment ledgers in multiple locations without a single, centralized authority.

Its promise has led companies to announce their plans to start working with the innovative blockchain solution. The Concierge project, for one,  misses no opportunity to keep abreast of technology.  It seeks to challenge the centralized online booking industry heavyweights for the benefit of travelers and service providers.

Concierge.io believes it has the power to reshape the booking industry. The new decentralized booking platform, which is based on the blockchain network NEO, will provide travelers and vendors with a friendly ecosystem where they can communicate and deal with each other directly. Concierge will level the field for small service providers and make high-quality offerings affordable for travelers.

Key features of the Concierge travel booking marketplace appeal both to travelers and vendors:

Instant booking: No need to wait for 24 to 48 hours to get confirmation as blockchain technology allows live updates on availability.

Economic efficiency: Considerably lower operational costs due to peer-to-peer communication.

Easy integration: Web application and mobile platforms will work as a seamless whole.

Many business gurus argue that blockchain technology will transform not only travel industry but financial services in general, as well as the deep architecture of the corporation. The second era of the internet- the blockchain –  has profound implications for competitiveness and business strategy. The travel industry, for one, is about to have a new lease on life.

Remember, we started off with Holly Golightly, a literary character from Truman Capote’s novel. The name she chose for herself is obviously a mix of words ‘go’ and ‘lightly’. These are the attributes of a fictitious character. Blockchain does it for real. Capturing your desire to travel lightly and change locations and lifestyles without fault or hesitation.

What are your thoughts on the Concierge.io platform? Can blockchain technology improve efficiency and reduce costs in the travel industry? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Images courtesy of Concierge, Breakfast at Tiffany’s/Paramount Pictures

The post Mr. and Mrs. Blockchain, Traveling appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.

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[a-memoir-of-me-blog]

or is he just a reflection of us? vice versa?

i remember talking to my first love about this....trump is a catalyst and the people KNOW culture needs to change and we need to take action and responsibility in our hands instead of solely relying on the government. the government wants you to use it....just know how to be resourceful

Trump woke lol.

His smokescreens are genius.

He aggravating ppl because he's just making them reflect on themselves. And make them wanna educate themselves more when he says "I know this more than u". He understands humans. And as humans. We don't want someone to be better than us. So it forces us to look at the important stuff and rlly learn about it and how the system fucked us.

Trump is making everything ride up so then he can flip it and change it.

He's cutting off the hurtful parts. So we can focus on ourselves. And improve. And when we improve. We have more. We have more educated ppl. We have more innovators. We have more value that can be offered to places outside of us after we internally improve. And then ppl come here and realize. This is our true value. Humans in our country. Our potential. And how the potential here is so high. That places where it's low and they wanna seek it come to us and we balance out.

Example. Diffusion in cells

He's making America more self reliant.

I think that the most value is life itself. And that's why he's keeping it here. And why he wants to make more American things. Instead of outsourcing. Because if we outsource. We're cheating ourselves. Are we really owners of what we have? They own us. The ones who give us the things we want. Because of media. We are wasting!!!! We need to change the American mentality. Become more self reliant. Improve ourselves. Before we help anyone else. Because if we're low on life supply. Then why would we help other places that only suck out life we have here that we're already low on?

Trump is making the oppressed mad. So they can educate themselves and get to the same level. Realize things. And change the system that they're in. And we can't do that because we're stuck in the established. We're stuck in the capitalist mindset.

Trump is using his "money credibility" as a force to lure ppl out of the darkness.

He's putting on a show to get people involved and wake up.

Media is feeding us false value. False ideas. Encouraging us to spend money for what? Clothes? That were made as a profit maker for us? Kill someone else on the other side of the world? For what? To "look cool"? To feed our ego that was made by media?

My philosophy is this. And history and philosophy and books about humanities and our conditions as humans. Hamlet. Walden. Icarus. Etc.

We need to be more self reliant. We need to build an abundance of valuable producers. Not consumers. We need to build ourselves first. And THEN we can help others out.

We are our own ecosystem and economy and business. We must feed ourselves. We must be healthy. We must have life for ourselves and sustain it and not rely on anyone outside of us. Because. The food we eat. GMO's etc. not good for health. And what? So we can feed back into the healthcare system? That Monopoly money feeding industry off of the sick ppl of our own country? Again. Media attracts u to that shit.

And guess what. We're gonna die because of that. We're gonna die because imagine. One day. We have no access to water because someone is hogging it and then selling it. For what? What will that dollar do? Can they eat it? Oh. So they can buy some shit that is unnecessary. Literally just to feed their ego because "oh. This latest car or fashion will make *media washed ppl* praise me". How sad does that sound? You're just as washed as them.

But u know who has the true value? Someone who knows the value of life alone. Who sees the potential. There's so much potential in that one little garden. That one garden to feed yourself. That one garden that will sustain your basic necessities. Without the need for money. Money has no intrinsic value. Money cannot be eaten. Money cannot be drank. Money cannot sustain life. It can feed an ego that was created because we're brainwashed by media tho. And I guess that comes into play because as humans we love to have attention. We love to be seen as more than the next person. We love the praise. But you're getting the praise by killing one off? So what...you're gonna kill the world you're in. Kill the people you are living in the world with?

And guess what. Sooner or later. YOUR future. YOUR actions that trickle down to next generations after the other. Will have a bad affect because of ur mindset and actions today.

Sooner or later the world will be dead and we killed it. Sooner or later, the ppl we once wanted to get praise from can no longer praise u because they're dying. The ppl u once wanted to trade GOODS with can no longer supply u anymore because WE took it all out by money. So guess what? Now you're dying. Now you're alone. And now you, the one who relied on everyone else to support YOUR HEARTBEAT, will die because you don't know how to keep ur water clean. U don't know how to feed yourself by having your own garden. You don't know how to travel anymore from place to place because u relied on someone else.

It's so ironic. We will kill ppl slowly by exploiting them and making them do stuff. So we can (example), get the labor from them and use it (cotton for example) and sell it for a profit....to get what??? There is no value in that shirt u sold. But there's a life on there that was taken because u were brainwashed into this society and think that money is better than life.

I want to make community gardens. Build wells in communities. Educate ppl on this. Have a better electricity system. Take the talents of others and give them something in return that will help them prosper in life. Ex: a house builder and a person who makes clothing. The house builder has a house. He's good. So what he'll do. Start making a house for the one making clothes (that cloth maker will make clothes for him) and then show the cloth maker how to continue it. And vice versa.

I want to show the world that money has no power over us. Media and the globalization that England started can end today!

We can live a prosperous life.

But as good things start to rise. We get greedy. Aka. Icarus. And we fall. And we die. We want more and more and more. And then we create our own downfall.

Watch. If we start being self reliant. If we start making community gardens. We will be told it's illegal. Soon we will be told that seeds are illegal. CHERISH the seeds. Because seeds grow into hope. Water the brain. Water the heart. Give life and life will give to u. Soon we will discover that the greedy one who doesn't want to change the world and improve it will get upset and scared because he's losing power. He will poison the soil. But guess what? Now you're gonna get ppl mad and they're gonna look at the person who u killed and look at their motives and analyze it. And be like "oh wow. They just killed someone who was trying to improve the world....". Then guess what? Now they're going to be attacked and killed and guess what? Now they have no power. Power over who? U killed everyone! And you're gonna soon die because u just let money buy everything for u and never learned to be self reliant. And now guess what. You're dead. We're all dead.

So what I wanna do. Teach the community to come together. Share the talent. Create things in collaboration. Not in exploration. Not for the sake of capitalism. Create so u can give back to the world and let life live on. If one can grow a tree, one can build a house. If one can grow a garden, one can sustain the health. If one can think up of ways to better electricity, then one can live in light. If one in the light can study in there, then one can think more and more and more. If one can make clothing, then one can be warm and survive and give back life.

Think about how you can give, so then you can continue this legacy. This heaven that was put on earth. Wake up the god in u. Wake up the good. Act in goodness. Let god work thru u. Think ahead of yourself. Think more for yourself. Think for others because that person will offer u more ok return.

Also I rlly agree with trumps policy to lower business taxes. Because it encourages more ppl with great ideas to do them because it's not so much and it's less risk. And it'll encourage ppl to invest more. So again. Production. Innovation. I want these businesses to not be for corporations. But more public projects. Like better electricity. Better agriculture. Better water technology. Etc

And raising taxes on stupid shit. Like clothes. Etc. will discourage ppl to buy them and be more conservative with their money and invest in more long term things. But that's the capitalist part of him. Other than that. From everything that I said above. Will happen when we stop buying so much shit like clothes and shoes and cars and unnecessary things. Creating less value. And ofc, in comparison of the dollar we have, we'll eventually run them out and it'll change society. And with the public projects and the less companies that feed the ego of humans, then our mindset will change and we will make America great again. But. I need to do more behavioral research. Will ppl addicted to smoking or addicted to having their ego stroked rlly be able to react in that way? Will they actually stop putting value into those things? "Value". A dollar with no intrinsic value. But then again it's cotton that's made by exploited ppl. So the money supply and circulation can def have an affect. So this rlly says. Do we have so much value in this dollar that we don't value our health (the buying of the cigs, etc) and our ego is so big we don't even care that we're killing our selves and someone else?

Life gives life to give life.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Bagels, Burgers, and the Branding of Bushwick

Screenshot of a new Dutch campaign for McDonald’s, from TBWA\Neboko (all images by the author for Hyperallergic)

Yes, graffiti and hip-hop and bagels are authentic New York. And sure, McDonald’s is also a part of New York … though no more or less than it’s part of every other big city. If McDonald’s wants to sell bagels in the Netherlands as if McDonald’s bagels are a New York thing — uh, fine. America’s with you. But for McDonald’s to sell bagel–burgers in the Netherlands by tossing old-school graffiti and hip-hop and gentrified Bushwick and bagel-burgers into a blender, hoping to churn out the next baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet — uhhhh … we … uh … no. We have to take a stand. It’s 2017, so chew on this while you’re brunching, Bushwick: it’s the Bushwick Collective who’s bottled up your Bushwick vibe, added a soundtrack, and shipped it off to the Netherlands, all for the New York Bagel Supreme.

As Adweek’s Gabriel Beltrone  recently reported, “the fast-food giant flew in a half-dozen street artists from the Brooklyn-based mural project Bushwick Collective, and is paying them to paint stylized versions of the sandwich on a series of billboards. McDonald’s is filming all this, and will turn it into TV ads.”

A billboard posted over a mural by the Bushwick Collective (2015)

It’s clear that marketers were hoping to capture some of that sweet, sweet graffiti flavor to spread on their bagels. People I spoke to were unimpressed with the four-minute documentary-style video (which was removed, possibly over rights issues —more on that below). Bucky Turco, who founded long-running (but now dormant) arts and culture site ANIMAL, has been a collector and followed graffiti for years; he even hosted a GHOST show in 2003. Turco told Hyperallergic: “The art is good; the campaign is horrible and an abomination. It also sucks that we live in a time where graffiti artists as good as GHOST and GIZ even have to consider doing commissioned work for the nation’s top cheeseburger maker. Maybe this will inspire their fans to buy more work; Instagram love doesn’t pay rent.”

People may buy more bagels in the Netherlands after the campaign, but graffiti and street-art fans are rolling their eyes, not seeing McDonald’s as edgy for the spots. A jingle about flavor is still advertorial at three minutes long, and a faux-vandalized billboard presents graffiti’s style but not its context. McDonald’s is consistent, corporate, and cheap, and so far, even with graffiti and hip-hop, the brand remains well within the margins of this well-defined space. As Beltrone points out, McDonald’s even adds cringey disclaimers to its own video: “All Bushwick murals are painted with permission of the owners. McDonald’s loves street art when done legally.”

The mini-doc introduces the six (male!) artists — Strider, Poem One, Sipros, Such, Ghost, Giz — as they open their sketchbooks, or draw, or paint a wall. (Note: on March 12, the music video and short film were removed from the Internet. Vandalog reported that several artists had not granted the Collective permission to use their work for an ad campaign and were upset to hear about that happening. Vandalog notes that some of the work featured was not even “Bushwick Collective” work. The Collective’s founder, Joseph Ficalora may now be facing angry artists and an angry client, if he represented the work as okay to film. Some definitely wouldn’t have given consent, in particular to McDonald’s, Vandalog wrote. I sent several questions about the project to Ficalora last weekend, and as of press time, he has not replied.)

Biiboards over Tina’s Restaurant in Bushwick

In the video, Poem One shows framed pictures of trains painted more than 30 years before the Bushwick Collective was founded. These remembrances — one artist mentions Bushwick “before gentrification” — are interspersed with beauty shots of murals, as Joe Ficalora, describes his five-year-old mural project. The narration reprises a role he’s played for press before: the project is about the neighborhood; Bushwick is where he is from; this is about love of the art. Really? Then, why all the promotion? Bushwick Collective leans heavily on its claims of authenticity. It even declares its legal status as a 501(c)(3) organization on its social media pages, as if this confers certifiable purity.

Oh, please.

Purity? In street art? Okay, sure, let’s talk about authenticity, Bushwick Collective, since you brought it up. It is true that Bushwick Collective is registered with the state of New York as a not-for-profit corporation. However, Bushwick Collective Studios is also registered as a corporation. This entity was registered first, as Bushwick Collective Corp., in April 2014. It filed for non-profit status sixteen months later — possibly after some criticism? “I thought that Bushwick Collective isn’t in the ad business,” Turco said when I asked him about the McDonald’s gig. “I also never trust the motives of an entity with the word ‘collective’ in its name. It usually never is,” he explained.

What makes it collective, exactly, has always been hard to understand, because Ficarola, a non-artist, is the guy in charge and artists involved in his collective don’t seem to vote as a group, elect members, or have much say over what happens to their work — how it’s filmed or used, and when it’s destroyed.

A wall piece by Anthony Lister

It’s not just ownership of the artwork that’s confusing, it’s how the Collective fits into the neighborhood that even locals don’t understand. From the beginning, many assumed Bushwick Collective was affiliated with Arts in Bushwick, because it produced events during that group’s weekend-long festival, Bushwick Open Studios. Bushwick Collective brought in food trucks and sold T-shirts and beer to another entity’s crowds. A small, self-funded, entirely separate organization did much of the work creating free events to bring the community together, while the annual block party attracted tourists, leaned on corporate sponsors, and grew into a professionally produced nightmare for many artists. Eventually Arts in Bushwick gave up the weekend entirely, in part to separate itself from the frat-party atmosphere cultivated by the Collective.

Just before 2015’s Bushwick Open Studios, billboards began to be installed around the neighborhood, which comprises adjacent residential and industrial areas. One was even nailed right on top of a mural.  Suddenly, there were billboards everywhere, and to many, this was curious and surprising. I know a guy in advertising who called it out to me right away: “Of course you need murals,” he said. “They help the advertising blend in. Otherwise — just ugly billboards!”

Bushwick Daily took up the issue at the time and interviewed Ficalora, who, like many others, was unhappy with the billboards. Why was he unhappy? As Bushwick Daily noted, 16,000 people came to the Bushwick Collective Block Party that June.  (Um … well … it was also Bushwick Open Studios, but ….) Did crowds come “for billboards or for street art?” Ficalora asked, adding, “their Instagram photos included these billboards as well even though the building owners didn’t want to participate or support The Collective.”

The billboards didn’t support … What!?

A random advertising sticker in the neighborhood

In the project’s early years, most artists weren’t paid anything for their work. They donated their time and supplied their own paint. The walls belonged to someone else, and the block-party was piggy-backing on, while not supporting another organization’s event. But according to Ficalora, it’s billboard companies who should support the Collective, because the murals boosted the exposure that the ads received? It’s tough to follow the logic.

For all my critique — and I have never been a fan of the way the project is run —Bushwick Collective offered some artists free walls, a luxury when legal walls are hard to come by. It’s true: exposure can sometimes lead to other work, can help build a reputation. The attention economy exists. For an artist, building a following and spending time in New York around other artists can be important. But the capitalist economy still sits there on top of the attention economy, and this is the system many street artists overlook in their gratitude for walls. Wherever artists are invited to paint “for exposure” only, there is usually some suggestions that they are giving a gift to the community, doing a good deed. But is that true? If rents are going up and businesses are opening wherever murals appear, an artist should ask: Why am I working for attention, while everyone around me is working for money?

The tour groups and hotel rooms and new restaurants and even the server gigs — an entire economy is springing to life in Bushwick, in part because Ficalora and his sponsors have used murals to birth a tourist destination. The art makes this hub appear that it’s growing out of what was already there, but really, this new ecosystem is being retrofitted into the old — the same way billboard companies buy space around murals. That’s how real estate-driven gentrification works.  So why not get paid?

If we all, artists, critics and cultural producers, started treating work as work, it would become obvious to artists whether they are helping communities, or are instead in the real-estate business.

If it’s not cool to the Collective that billboard companies leverage artwork for exposure, it would be equally uncool for artwork to leverage authenticity to attract a whole new residential demographic — but that’s what’s happened in Bushwick. If we think of the Collective as a neighborhood developer, then taking cash from McDonald’s to send artists to Europe to paint billboards, then leveraging those billboards to market the brand seems like a win — to a businessman, perhaps less so to the artists. So we can close the book now? Bushwick Collective is a brand; it develops neighborhoods using art. It gets paid. So artists, get paid.

A mural on a business available for lease in Bushwick

Is that too blunt? In this year of obfuscation, propaganda, and lies from our leaders, let’s try not to lie to each other. Life is too short. I believe Bushwick Collective exists not to improve its community but to commodify it. Bushwick is becoming Brooklyn’s Times Square for the Tinder-date crowd.

I’m not the only one who credits Joe Ficalora and his artists with commodifying Bushwick; he does it himself. Complaining about the billboards in 2015, Ficalora told Bushwick Daily, “I made this part of the neighborhood desirable and now they are cashing in on it while doing nothing for the community.”

Here let me briefly digress on the weirdness of gentrifying a neighborhood while cashing in with McDonald’s. Photographer and writer Chris Arnade has invested substantial time engaging with people at McDonald’s restaurants around the country and writing about McDonald’s-as-signifier for The Guardian. Yes, the food is cheap in cost and quality, so even with free Wifi, people who have other options aren’t hanging around Mickey D’s. Who does that leave? Arnade says McDonald’s attracts — and, significantly, does not kick out — people who are homeless, people looking for a place to get high or to be high, myriad groups who arrange social meetups there. They spend long hours in McDonald’s because they have nowhere else to be, and because they like it there.

Arnade feels strongly that McDonald’s knows who its customers are and is cool with being what he describes as “de-facto community centers and reflections of the surrounding neighborhood.” His work suggests there are interesting discussions we could have about how we find meaning and community in spaces that are both  public and private, and how McDonald’s functions as a community amenity somewhere between the two. Through this lens, McDonald’s appears to offer a real value to low-income communities — accessibility — that the constructed fabric of a neighborhood like Bushwick, focused on trendy restaurants and bars, does not.   

I thought about Bushwick when I recently read about Delmira Gonzalez and her efforts with neighbors in Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights to resist gentrification-by-artwashing. Boyle Heights used to be similar to Bushwick — a large immigrant population of working-class families, close enough to a city center to be a target for developers who want the land. Neighbors there are fighting the changes that Bushwick has mostly halfheartedly fought. Small art spaces are opening, along with big-money galleries, as if all cities read from one script.

Boyle Heights, like Bushwick, suffered the same scourges of crime, drugs, gang violence. How did it come to attract big money from Beverly Hills? Ms. Gonzalez described for Link TV how “women organized to create safe passages to escort children to school … occupied known drug-dealing spots by setting up impromptu barbeque grills and serving free food,” and that “dealers, when interrupted, accepted plates of hot food before scurrying away.”

Neighbors persisted through bold, hard work for years. This sustained effort has built up a reservoir of resilience the community can tap as it fights gentrification. Under a coalition called Boyle Heights Alliance Against Artwashing and Displacement (BHAAAD), activists from groups like Defend Boyle Heights and Union de Vecinos confront what they call “the current crisis of evictions and abusive real estate practices in L.A.”

The Alliance points out that it’s not art, per se, that Boyle Heights is rejecting, noting on its website that “many artists and cultural workers in Los Angeles are sick and tired of being used in the process of gentrification and are seeking meaningful ways to refuse their participation in the cultural economy of displacement.” In other words, not every community aspires to a “Bushwick Vibe.” In fact, an art gallery recently closed in Boyle Heights, and locals consider this a win.

I wonder if Boyle Heights has a McDonald’s.

The post Bagels, Burgers, and the Branding of Bushwick appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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