#(capitalism is terrible for our health in so many ways and preventing most people from having time or energy to exercise is just one!)

[blackwoolncrown]

For the past few days, a heatwave has glowered over the Pacific Northwest, forcing temperatures in the region to a record-breaking 118ºF. Few people in the region—neither Americans nor Canadians—have air-conditioning. Stores sold out of new AC units in hours as a panicked public sought a reasonable solution to the emergency. Unfortunately, air-conditioning is part of what’s causing the unusual heatwave in the first place.

We came close to destroying all life on Earth during the Cold War, with the threat of nuclear annihilation. But we may have come even closer during the cooling war, when the rising number of Americans with air conditioners—and a refrigerant industry that fought regulation—nearly obliterated the ozone layer. We avoided that environmental catastrophe, but the fundamental problem of air conditioning has never really been resolved.

Mechanical cooling appeared in the early 1900s not for comfort but for business. In manufacturing, the regulation of temperature—“process cooling”—controlled the quality of commodities like cotton, tobacco, and chewing gum. In 1903, Alfred Wolff installed the first cooling system for people at the New York Stock Exchange because comfortable traders yielded considerably higher stock returns. Only in the ’20s did “commercial cooling” appear. On Memorial Day weekend 1925, Willis Carrier debuted the first centrifugal air-conditioning system at the Rivoli Theater in Midtown Manhattan. Previously, theaters had shut down in the summer. With air-conditioning, the Rivoli became “the talk of Broadway” and inaugurated the summer blockbuster.

-another direct tie to capitalism. Everything born out of colonio-capitalism carries its toxic mark. Article totally not under the cut for those who can’t pay for Time. It honestly paints a really clear picture of the situation. Bolding mine.-

“It’s time we become more comfortable with discomfort. Our survival may depend on it.“

Before World War II, almost no one had air-conditioning at home. Besides being financially impractical and culturally odd, it was also dangerous. Chemical refrigerants like sulfur dioxide and methyl chloride filled most fridges and coolers, and leaks could kill a child, poison a hospital floor, even blow up a basement. Everything changed with the invention of Freon in 1928. Non-toxic and non-explosive, Freon was hailed as a “miracle.” It made the modernist skyscraper—with its sealed windows and heat-absorbing materials—possible. It made living in the desert possible. The small, winter resort of Phoenix, Arizona, became a year-round attraction. Architecture could now ignore the local climate. Anywhere could be 65ºF with 55% humidity. Cheap materials made boxy, suburban tract housing affordable to most Americans, but the sealed-up, stifling design of these homes required air-conditioning to keep the heat at bay. Quickly, air-conditioning transitioned from a luxury to a necessity. By 1980, more than half of all U.S. homes were air-conditioned. And despite millions of Black Americans fleeing the violence of Jim Crow, the South saw greater in-migration than out-migration for the first time—a direct result of AC. The American car was similarly transformed. In 1955, only 10 percent of American cars had air-conditioning. Thirty years later, it came standard.

The cooling boom also altered the way we work. Now, Americans could work anywhere at any hour of the day. Early ads for air-conditioning promised not health or comfort but productivity. The workday could proceed no matter the season or the climate. Even in the home, A/C brought comfort as a means to rest up before the next work day.

The use of air-conditioning was as symbolic as it was material. It conveyed class status. Who did and didn’t have air-conditioning often fell starkly along the color line, too, especially in the South. It conquered the weather and, with it, the need to sweat or squirm or lie down in the summer swelter. In that sense, air-conditioning allowed Americans to transcend their physical bodies, that long-sought fantasy of the Puritan settlers: to be in the world but not of it. Miracle, indeed.

But it came with a price. As it turned out, Freon isn’t exactly non-toxic. Freon is a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), which depletes the ozone layer and also acts as a global warming gas. By 1974, the industrialized world was churning out CFCs, chemicals that had never appeared on the planet in any significant quantities, at a rate of one million metric tons a year—the equivalent mass of more than 500,000 cars. That was the year atmospheric chemists Sherry Rowland and Mario Molina first hypothesized that the chlorine molecules in CFCs might be destroying ozone in the stratosphere by bonding to free oxygen atoms and disrupting the atmosphere’s delicate chemistry. By then, CFCs were used not only as refrigerants but also as spray can propellants, manufacturing degreasers, and foam-blowing agents.

The ozone layer absorbs the worst of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Without stratospheric ozone, life as we know it is impossible. A 1 percent decline in the ozone layer’s thickness results in thousands of new cases of skin cancer. Greater depletion would lead to crop failures, the collapse of oceanic food systems, and, eventually, the destruction of all life on Earth.

In the 1980s, geophysicist Joseph Farman confirmed the Rowland-Molina hypothesis when he detected a near-absence of ozone over Antarctica—the “Ozone Hole.” A fierce battle ensued among industry, scientists, environmentalists, and politicians, but in 1987 the U.S signed the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which ended Freon production.

The Montreal Protocol remains the world’s only successful international environmental treaty with legally binding emissions targets. Annual conferences to re-assess the goals of the treaty make it a living document, which is revised in light of up-to-date scientific data. For instance, the Montreal Protocol set out only to slow production of CFCs, but, by 1997, industrialized countries had stopped production entirely, far sooner than was thought possible. The world was saved through global cooperation.

The trouble is that the refrigerants replacing CFCs, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), turned out to be terrible for the planet, too. While they have an ozone-depleting potential of zero, they are potent greenhouse gases. They absorb infrared radiation from the sun and Earth and block heat that normally escapes into outer space. Carbon dioxide and methane do this too, but HFCs trap heat at rates thousands of times higher. Although the number of refrigerant molecules in the atmosphere is far fewer than those of other greenhouse gases, their destructive force, molecule for molecule, is far greater.

In three decades, the production of HFCs grew exponentially. Today, HFCs provide the cooling power to almost any air conditioner in the home, in the office, in the supermarket, or in the car. They cool vaccines, blood for transfusions, and temperature-sensitive medications, as well as the data processors and computer servers that make up the internet—everything from the cloud to blockchains. In 2019, annual global warming emissions from HFCs were the equivalent of 175 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

In May, the EPA signaled it will begin phasing down HFCs and replacing them with more climate-friendly alternatives. Experts agree that a swift end to HFCs could prevent as much as 0.5ºC of warming over the next century—a third of the way to the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Yet regardless of the refrigerant used, cooling still requires energy. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, air-conditioning accounts for nearly a fifth of annual U.S. residential electricity use. This is more energy for cooling overall and per capita than in any other nation. Most Americans consider the cost of energy only in terms of their electricity bills. But it’s also costing us the planet. Joe Biden’s announcement to shift toward a renewable energy infrastructure obscures the uncertainty of whether that infrastructure could meet Americans’ outrageously high energy demand—much of it for cooling that doesn’t save lives. Renewable energy infrastructure can take us only so far. The rest of the work is cultural. From Freon to HFCs, we keep replacing chemical refrigerants without taking a hard look at why we’re cooling in the first place.

Comfort cooling began not as a survival strategy but as a business venture. It still carries all those symbolic meanings, though its currency now works globally, cleaving the world into civilized cooling and barbaric heat. Despite what we assume, as a means of weathering a heat wave, individual air-conditioning is terribly ineffective. It works only for those who can afford it. But even then, their use in urban areas only makes the surrounding micro-climate hotter, sometimes by a factor of 10ºF, actively threatening the lives of those who don’t have access to cooling. (The sociologist Eric Klinenberg has brilliantly studied how, in a 1995 Chicago heat wave, about twice as many people died than in a comparable heat wave forty years earlier due to the city’s neglect of certain neighborhoods and social infrastructure.) Ironically, research suggests that exposure to constant air-conditioning can prevent our bodies from acclimatizing to hot weather, so those who subject themselves to “thermal monotony” are, in the end, making themselves more vulnerable to heat-related illness.

And, of course, air-conditioning only works when you have the electricity to power it. During heatwaves, when air-conditioning is needed most, blackouts are frequent. On Sunday, with afternoon temperatures reaching 112ºF around Portland, the power grid failed for more than 6,300 residences under control by Portland General Electrics.

The troubled history of air-conditioning suggests not that we chuck it entirely but that we focus on public cooling, on public comfort, rather than individual cooling, on individual comfort. Ensuring that the most vulnerable among the planet’s human inhabitants can keep cool through better access to public cooling centers, shade-giving trees, safe green spaces, water infrastructure to cool, and smart design will not only enrich our cities overall, it will lower the temperature for everyone. It’s far more efficient this way.

To do so, we’ll have to re-orient ourselves to the meaning of air-conditioning. And to comfort. Privatized air-conditioning survived the ozone crisis, but its power to separate—by class, by race, by nation, by ability—has survived, too. Comfort for some comes at the expense of the life on this planet.

It’s time we become more comfortable with discomfort. Our survival may depend on it.

[astheshadowslovethecastle]

Yo, another Canadian from outside Ottawa here. I hope those protester people stop doing such things to you and your neighbours. It's disrespectful enough that they were honking their horns constantly and filling the place unmasked.

But it's a whole other level of vile that they are pulling down other people's masks. If they feel like wearing masks is a freedom issue, they still shouldn't be pulling off other people's masks; that's hypocrisy. Plus, for all they know, the people they are pulling masks off of could be immunocompromised or something. They seem to have no true consideration for others.

I hope they leave your city alone soon. I don't know if there's much I can do to help, but the situation you Ottawa folks are in sucks.

Honestly it's so frustrating.

Like, this is the capital, we have protests, that's a totally normal if sometimes inconvenient thing, so whatever, you deal. People have a right to protest. But this isn't a real protest, this is just a neo nazi street party. Like this isn't even the right capital for most of the things they want changed, that's mostly provincial regulations, but they are too fucking stupid to know that. And also what they want changed is terrible like fuck off, it's OPPRESSION to get a potentially life saving vaccine to protect yourself and others? You can still choose not to get it you just need to isolate this isn't the end of the world. You call yourself a patriot for wanting the right to infect your fellow citizens with a potentially deadly virus?? Really??? Go to hell.

What's also really irritating is that it is taking attention away to real ways our governments let us down in handling this plague - easy to blame shitty antivaxxers since they are incredibly shitty and also mostly white supremacists but ALSO the government has been defunding hospitals for decades, CERB was inadequate at best and cancelled while the plague is still here, CEWS had nothing to prevent execs from taking it for themselves to give extra bonuses while the rest of us got screwed, testing is next to impossible to get in Ontario now, schools are incredibly unsafe since there is nothing the conservatives like better than defunding education except maybe defunding health care like...antivaxxers are selfish garbage and I despise them but they are not the main reason people are still getting sick.

And most of what they are doing is waaaay more about harassing the residents than it is about bugging politicians. People have this image of Ottawa as being a bunch of privileged bureaucrats and government workers - bitch these are not the people living downtown in shitty one bedroom apartments. These are not the literal teenagers working retail being screamed at and getting death threats for enforcing mask rules. The only people downtown are the people who live there and the ones who can't do remote work and can't afford to miss work as well as many of the homeless, but the convoy doesn't care about that they literally swarmed a soup kitchen and stole food supposed to feed our most vulnerable residents. And even then the mall and a bunch of shops are closed and people are losing their pay many of whom probably can't afford that. The people that are their image of Ottawa are working remote from the suburbs; it's the rest of us that have to deal with these assholes.

And the city has basically rolled out the welcome wagon for them - like, I'm not saying break out the water cannons and brutalise these nazis they way they do to anyone protesting for like indigenous rights or the rights of our communities of colour or against police brutality etc. etc. (though the ludicrous double standards should be noted) but...give them hundreds of parking tickets! They're still ticketing the rest of the city, the rest of us who live here, why not these assholes? What about public drinking? - you're not supposed to wander the streets with open alcohol. Fuckin enforce that. We don't need new laws against defacing statues despite the incredible disrespect to Terry Fox, that will just mean more laws our SHITTY police will refuse to enforce against their buddies their pals the white supremacist shitheads but can use as an excuse to assault protesters of colour, no thanks. Just use the laws that are already there. These twerps have no permit for the demonstration even because they don't know what they are doing. Tons of little fines and citations and they can find out that the white supremacists who organised this are just grifting them and took all the gofundme money. This is Ottawa, this is Canada, we can do obnoxious petty red tape in our sleep. But they won't, because cops love and support neonazi antivaxxers and all cops are garbage. And you just know they will try to use it as an excuse for increasing their budget despite doing fuckall.

Like I am not an amazingly proud Canadian by any means, i know our country has a shitty history and, frankly, present, and i pretty much just break out the pride during hockey tournaments but I never really expected to reach the point that just seeing my own country's flag would fill me with seething rage.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

One of the very last events I attended before the lockdown was a thing in Silicon Valley attended by many old friends, but the best moment of all was the chance to hang out with Kim Stanley Robinson, a friend and inspiration.

That's when Stan told me he had just finished a book that might be his last-ever novel, The Ministry For the Future, and that his future work would be nonfiction, starting with his long-planned book about the Sierras.

I was stricken. Robinson's novels are a lifeline for me.

The first Robinson novel I read may just be my favorite: Pacific Edge, a green utopian novel about a successful transition to a post-climate-emergency, just and stable world. Re-reading it is a vacation from all my anxieties, still.

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/01/15/pacific-edge-the-most-uplifting-novel-in-my-library/

My first novel, DOWN AND OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM, wouldn't exist without Pacific Edge. That was the book that taught me that small disputes over beloved local treasures could be as dramatic as (and microcosms for) global conflicts.

I have been both dreading and anticipating MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE, not wanting to read my last KSR novel but also wanting so badly to read this one, because it's the book in which he imagines the end of capitalism.

You've heard the phrase, "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism," variously attributed to Frederic Jameson and Slavoj Žižek. As the author of a couple of postcapitalist novels, I have a real appreciation for the details of that truism.

It's actually not all that hard to imagine a postcapitalist society - but imagining the actual END of capitalism, the euthanasia of the rentier, the reversal of the doctrine of virtuous selfishness, the abandonment of the idea that some are born to rule, that is damned hard.

And while PACIFIC EDGE is my favorite KSR novel, my favorite KSR series is the string of books that starts with 2012's 2312 - a string of books that really leans hard into imagining the actual end of capitalism.

xhttps://memex.craphound.com/2015/01/15/pacific-edge-the-most-uplifting-novel-in-my-library/

2312 is set 300 years into postcapitalism. It's a novel of solar-system-scale civilization, riven by its own problems and contradictions, filled with tech marvels, a tale of natural wonders that showcase Robinson's incredible, John-Muir-grade genius for pastoral writing.

2312 was followed up by Aurora, one of the best space-exploration novels ever written, about the arrival of the first-ever generation ship at its destination world, and the hasty retreat it is required to stage.

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/11/02/kim-stanley-robinsons-aurora-space-is-bigger-than-you-think/

The book provoked a vitriolic reaction from science fiction's great reactionaries! I love a book that enrages the right people, and I was delighted to publish Robinson's rebuttal to their peevish complaints.

https://boingboing.net/2015/11/16/our-generation-ships-will-sink.html

From there, we move on to New York 2140, a novel of a pivotal moment in the transformation of capitalism and its relationship to the climate emergency.

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/03/18/new-york-2140-kim-stanley-robinson-dreams-vivid-about-weathering-climate-crisis/

These are like an artilleryman rangfinding a mortar, first overshooting his target and then walking his fire back, drawing closer to his bullseye. For Robinson, bullseye is the moment at which our society is transformed into one that can survive the coming emergencies.

It's telling that the 2312 books never got there. It is so fucking hard to imagine the end of capitalism.

But that is what The Ministry For the Future Does.

Sort of.

It's a novel about a specialized UN agency, chartered through the Paris Climate Agreement to represent unborn generations and the natural world in legal proceedings related to climate devastation.

Talking about this book, Robinson has described it as a kind of futuristic documentary, told in many voices, as a way of describing a phenomenon as vast as this global transformation.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/14/final_ver2/#ksr

Like many docs, it follows a couple of main characters, but weaves in dozens of other voices, some of whom we hear from only once or twice, recounting pivotal moments in which a moment calves away from our reality as we know it - moments of shear, giddy and terrifying.

Robinson is so good at this stuff. This is the book that he has been practicing for all his life. The vignettes are superb little jewels, mostly illuminating flashbulb moments in the lives of strangers met fleetingly.

But some of the most powerful moments don't even have characters: there's a transcript of the openng a fictional congress of global climate remediation groups after the crisis that is just an alphabetical list of countries and their associated projects.

This literally made me burst into tears of joy, bursting with hope at the thought that we could, as a species, spawn so many evocative and hopeful projects to save our world, our species, and our nonhuman cohabitants.

Robinson's versatility is on glorious display here: from long lists of hypothetical ecological projects, he veers into closely told moments of human endeavor in the natural world, showcasing his pastoralism with scenes so vivid you could reach out and touch them.

But all that said, the most interesting thing about this book is the stuff that Robinson couldn't or wouldn't put on the page. Robinson's hypothetical scenario for the end of capitalism is a baroque scheme of global cryptocurrency money-creation tied to carbon drawdown.

His technocrats trick capitalism into spending itself out of existence in a plan that is by turns brainy and daffy (as all blockchainism tends to be), with some pretty epic handwaving (especially when it comes to the breakup of tech monopolies).

But all of that would fail were it not for acts of absolutely brutal, ruthless terrorism. Robinson's transformation isn't merely about the carrots of double-bluff get-rich-quick schemes, it's heavily dependent on the stick of terror.

The aviation industry isn't (just) replaced by airships and rail because it's better and cleaner - but also because parties unknown use drones to bring down every private jet in the sky, and then commercial liners, until the aviation industry seizes up and dies.

And the world doesn't abandon beef because vegans win the moral argument or because greenies win the practical one - the decisive factor is drones that dart an unknowable plurality of the world's cattle with bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

There's more - pitiless, remorseless, anonymous. And while Robinson gets up close and personal with one traumatized individual who engages in an ecologically motivated, short-lived (and nonlethal) kidnapping, we never meet any of the terrorists or their victims.

The terror that begets the transition is recounted in the dry language of an encyclopedia entry, not dramatized like the pivotal moments of so many other characters.

It's a very telling omission.

My 2019 novella "Radicalized" is about an online community of men who, after watching their most treasured family members die slow, painful, preventable deaths because of insurance company fuckery, become suicide bombers who murder health execs.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/05/who-says-violence-doesnt-solve-anything-a-review-of-radicalized-four-tales-of-our-present-moment-by-cory-doctorow.html

Writing that story was an intensely uncomfortable experience (and, judging from reader comments, it can be uncomfortable to read, too).

It's one thing to recognize that a systemic problem might not be solved without grotesque, mass violence, and another to put yourself in the shoes of either the perpetrators or the victims.

Robinson's end of capitalism is, superficially, a story of a transition, not a spasm, not a capital-T Terror. The lives we inhabit in this novel are people who are engaged in struggle, but not mass-murder.

But right there on the page is Robinson's uncomfortable and only partially elided conviction that we're not in for a transition, but rather a bloodletting, a reckoning commensurate with the ecocidal crimes that led up to this moment.

MINISTRY is a book that, on first consideration, feels like a utopia - not merely for the beautiful descriptions of people, animals and environments finding a way through the emergencies, but for the emergencies resolution.

But on closer examination, MINISTRY represents the dark fears of one of our brightest, most hopeful writers, that the world can only be saved by means that are literally too terrible to contemplate up close.

It's an uncomfortable read. It's a brilliant book. If it indeed turns out to be Stan's last novel (oh please don't let it be Stan's last novel), it will be a fitting capstone. But the subtext of this book is that we are past the point of no return.

Not only will rescuing our planet entail sacrifices of species, habitats, and coastlines - it will also entail sacrifices of the moral convictions that make vast spectacles of bloodletting unthinkable.

[wolfbeware]

Comments about the Coronavirus:

It's awful what's happening right now. I absolutely hate it, dispise it, and am disgusted by it. I do not enjoy being sick, but this post is not going to be able self quarantining or how bad the symptoms are.

I am going to be talking about how awful the U.S. and capitalist ideas have led to such universal anxeity.

Considering that the U.S. is still the stand alone superpower, the citizens' and government's reaction to the coronavirus will most likely effect other countries' and citizens' reactions. I am not saying that the U.S. is what a lot of countries look to for guidance, but, in the most general sense, feelings within the U.S. is often shared by people outside the country. With that out of the way, let us consider our commander in chief's reaction to all of this. Before I begin, I will add that President Trump has defunded and fired the pandemic committee. To me, this is clearly negative. However, Trump supporters have supported this decision in the past. Therefore, the Trump supporters must still be in agreement with that, right? No, they are not in agreement anymore, or at least I hope they are not. However, Trump supporters will point to how Trump is dealing with the coronavirus pandemic itself now, in March 2020. They will point to the address to the nation reguarding the coronavirus that aired a few weeks ago which outlines what Trump will be doing in order to help with the coronavirus. I watched it when it was airing, and there was something unusual about it that I could not put my finger on. I watched it during my lunch break in between homework sessions. I was sitting with a good friend of mine, which of whom is politically involved as well. I was watching it by myself, since she said she would read the transcript later. As Trump stopping talking, he turned to the people behind him, calling names like a elementary school teacher. It felt wrong. If he had talked to these people, he would have at least known their names, right? I suspect this information is irrelevant, but it made me more suspicious of who these men and women were. As I sat and attentively listen, I spouted out names of different companies each of the men and women represented. All the representatives represented companies who benefited from the pandemic. It was grotesque. I felt physically uncomfortable in the cafeteria chair. They represented pharmacy companies, medical insurance, and bulk buy stores. The same companies who were benefitting the most. Additionally, the U.S. is a free market; it is allowed that they benefit from this. However, what sickened me was that the president was teaming up with them. The U.S. president is encouraging them. He is encouraging them to benefit from this pandemic. The Walmart represetative stated that they will set up drive-through testing. This is a good thing. I would like to raise, why Walmart? My friend and I were talking about how terrible it was that the president was talking to the companies who were benefitting. She said something I never heard out loud before, "Create a problem, offer a solution." This was in reguards of why the benefitting companies were the ones on that stage. They are offering a bought-only solution. They are giving free testing, but what is the solution to a sickness? Medical care. Who was standing up on the stage next to Trump? Insurance company representatives. Trump is not only encouraging our free market, but he is ignoring the thousands of people without health insurance. I am lucky that I do have health insurance, but more requently, I have seen too many people posting and asking for economic help. Trump is encouraging the rest of the world to follow suit. As I said at the beginning of this paragraph, the U.S. is the stand-alone superpower in the world right now. Many other capitalist economies are going to look at the U.S. and understand that what Trump is doing is a valid option, when it is not a cure to the pandemic. What Trump is doing is giving the U.S. extra symptoms to the pandemic disease.

U.S. citizens are not doing any better either. All citizens are scared in the U.S. whether it is because of social distancing, distrust in our government to handle the pandemic, or getting sick ourselves. U.S. citizens are reacting in a scarily over-exaggerated way. Our media is the most plausible cause for this. Since the U.S. citizens are bombarded with information daily, usually from untrustworthy or biased souces, U.S. citizens have been receiving little to no information on how the government is reacting and how they should react. All the U.S. has been getting, in reguards to news, is that a pandemic is going on. A pandemic. It is a scary word: pandemic. I will admit, I am afraid too. I am afraid of this pandemic, because I do not want people around me to die. I know people with pre-existing conditions, and I fear for my own grandmother and grandfather's life. Therefore, I have decided that I will not go outside until my college comes back into session. Personally, I am unhappy about the situation, but I am so afraid for the people I care about that this is what I resorted to. However, even though many U.S. citizens are afraid, it should not be to the extent that it has gotten. My fear may be called irrational, and I fully accept that. However, there are some people who believe that they will be stuck in their homes for months on end. There are some people who believe they need to buy all the essential oils, toilet paper, and baby wipes from the store. There are some people who believe being near chinese people will get you sick. This is not the U.S. population should be doing. All of these reactions are outrageous and affect the population who has it the worst right now: the disabled and people with other sicknesses. Many disabled people has a difficult time finding jobs; not to mention the U.S. is currently in a bear economy, so it is more likely they will be laid off. People with other sicknesses are being hurt the worst as well. By taking away essential items from the store or hospitals, this causes the people who actually need those masks, gloves, and etc. unable to do anything! A few of my friends have asthma, and they often where face masks in order to prevent dust and pollen to get into their lungs. Since U.S. citizens have been buying masks in bulk, my friends are out of masks and unable to restock. That honestly scares me. I do not often get sick, and I have relatively good phyiscal health compared to others. Therefore, I have decided that I will not fall into my own desire of bulk buying masks and water, so the people who actually need it are more likely to be able to get it. However, this choice of mine is not shared among all U.S. citizens. The fact that people are allowed to come into a store and buy all their stock of toilet paper is completely unfair in this time of need. To offer a solution, I would have forced stores to ration these products. It is unfair that well-off people are able to buy bulks of fask masks, when many poor people are barely able to afford food on the table -- most not even considering fask masks. These panicked feelings have changed the name of the game of bulk buying. Of course, many countries are also experiencing the pandemic, and they are reacting in the same way as the U.S.: panick-filled bulk buying. However, since U.S. citizens have done it, the action is now acceptable.

The U.S. will always defend it's capitalist values. My mother has always believed in it, and accused me of being a socialist when I thought otherwise. However, the U.S. citizens need to ask themselves: is capitalism always there to defend us?

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Over the weekend, an ABC/Washington Post poll found that most Democrats now back former Vice President Joe Biden, but enthusiasm for his candidacy was, on the other hand, pretty lackluster.

Just 24 percent of his supporters said they were “very” enthusiastic about supporting him. This marked the lowest level of enthusiasm for a Democratic presidential candidate that ABC/Washington Post has found in the last 20 years. And perhaps even more troubling for Biden was that nearly twice as many of President Trump’s supporters (53 percent) said they were “very” enthusiastic about his candidacy.

This, of course, has sparked comparisons to 2016 when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found herself in a similar situation — running neck-and-neck with Trump and with only 32 percent saying they were “very” enthusiastic about supporting her in September 2016. Biden, of course, is already 8 points below that mark now.

So does Biden have an enthusiasm problem? What’s the case for why he might and the case for why we shouldn’t read too much into this now?

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): I don’t think this is something Biden should worry about, at least not right now. We’ve just come off a knock-down, drag-out, 15-month-long primary fight. And some would argue it’s still going on, with Sen. Bernie Sanders still contesting the nomination!

It’s a lot to ask for the party to be totally united at this early juncture. I’d guess that, by September, Biden will have as good or better enthusiasm numbers as Clinton did in September 2016.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): It feels so quaint to be debating a horse-race question in the middle of a pandemic.

But basically: I don’t think enthusiasm is a terribly meaningful indicator above and beyond what is already reflected in polls.

Sanders’s voters were more enthusiastic than Biden’s in the primaries. But he’s actually tended to underperform his polls. Sometimes higher enthusiasm means you have a narrower base, and the other candidate has more room to turn out undecideds, etc.

An important qualification to all of this is that most of the polls so far are conducted among registered voters when really we want to see likely voter polls, which won’t really be reliable for another several months.

nrakich: Yeah, Biden leads in most general election national polls right now, but likely-voter polls tend to be a few points better for Republicans than registered-voter polls, and as Nate says, we don’t have a ton of these polls right now.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): It’s hard to say much about enthusiasm right now since we are still in the midst of the Demcoratic primary ending. For instance, I think enthusiasm around him could still grow, especially after Barack and Michelle Obama have enthusiastically endorsed him, Sanders is behind him, and he has picked a running mate who perhaps excites the party.

sarahf: That’s fair, but how do we reconcile that Trump’s very enthusiastic support is so much higher than Biden’s — 29 points?

perry: Trump is the Republican Party’s candidate, and he just won his primary with overwhelming support. The party is unified behind him. People have voted for him once. I’m not surprised his supporters are fairly enthusiastic about him.

natesilver: I don’t care how much higher a quality is that doesn’t matter.

But honestly, I think this discussion is premature in some ways. The general election campaign hasn’t begun. The primary campaign is in a zombie-like state between being sort of finished and sort of not.

We’re in the midst of a pandemic. And we don’t have very many likely-voter polls, and to the extent we do, they’re not liable to be very reliable anyway at this early stage.

Perhaps most importantly, Democrats can be very enthusiastic about beating Trump even if they’re not that enthusiastic about Biden.

perry: Right, that’s the most important thing.

nrakich: Yeah, I find it hard to get worked up by any general-election polling at this point. We’re still so early in this massive news story that could significantly help or hurt Trump.

sarahf: But is it a bad sign for Biden — and enthusiasm for his campaign — that 15 percent of Sanders supporters in the ABC poll say they’ll vote for Trump?

natesilver: Twelve percent of Sanders primary voters voted for Trump in 2016, and another 14 percent voted for a third-party candidate or didn’t vote. So those numbers are in line with four years ago. And there are fewer Sanders voters than there were four years ago, so if anything those numbers are better for Biden than they were for Clinton.

nrakich: Yeah, historically, that would be a totally normal number. In addition to the numbers Nate cites for 2016, another study found that 25 percent of Clinton voters voted for McCain over Obama in 2008.

So it’s not like this is something past presidential candidates haven’t had to overcome as well. It can make a difference in a close election, but bigger factors (e.g., the national environment, the economy) will probably determine the outcome in the end.

sarahf: OK. So what I’m hearing is that the idea that Biden has a real enthusiasm gap is — at least at this point — overrated! But isn’t it at least somewhat worrisome that there now appears to be an effort to draft New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for president?

natesilver: Ohhhhh Sarah, this is such trollbait.

nrakich: Let’s be clear — that “ooh, Andrew Cuomo should run for president!” talk is utterly nonsensical, non-serious and half-baked.

sarahf: It is! I’m not defending it. But look at what happened when that talk took off last fall. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick both entered the race as opposed to throwing their support behind someone else.

natesilver: People don’t understand the process. People think you can magically wave a magic wand and that Cuomo becomes the nominee.

Look, if Biden drops out for some reason (health, scandal, etc.), then, obviously, you’ll need a different nominee.

And I do think Cuomo might be the second-most likely nominee, after Biden.

If you need an emergency replacement nominee because Biden drops out, he’s fairly compatible with Biden ideologically.

And frankly, the “emergency replacement” scenario — while unlikely — is still probably more likely than “Bernie wins all remaining contests by 20 points and wins a pledged-delegate plurality” scenario.

nrakich: I do wonder to what extent people actually believe/want Cuomo to be the nominee, and how much is just a fun daydream.

perry: I live in Kentucky. People are suddenly talking very positively about our Gov. Andy Beshear, who is a Democrat. This is in part because Trump is doing press conferences in which he ignores the evidence and seems as interested in defending himself as he is in addressing the issues. So Cuomo comes off well in comparison, as do other governors, like Ohio’s Mike DeWine, a Republican.

It also helps that Cuomo is doing a lot of media and lives in the media capital of the United States. Plenty of governors would be getting buzz if they were doing a competent job and were based in NYC, for example, Gavin Newsom (California), Jay Inslee (Washington), Beshear, DeWine.

nrakich: I think the Cuomo thing — both talk of him becoming the nominee and his role as a leader on the coronavirus in general — has been overinflated by the New York-centric media.

perry: Also, Biden has not been super-impressive in his media appearances, so there is that.

Cuomo has been better on that front, as have other governors.

sarahf: But Biden has been kind of missing from the coronavirus response, right? Part of that is because, as you all point out, he’s not a current governor tasked with spearheading preventive measures in his state, but it does seem as if it’s harder for him to have a natural place in the conversation.

natesilver: I don’t think anything Biden’s doing right now matters very much.

He’s also done more than the media has generally acknowledged.

perry: I think Biden is in the conversation. But his general ideas (Trump should listen to the medical experts, social distancing should continue) are what basically the media, governors, experts, everyone else is saying. Biden is not trying to stand out in that conversation or be interesting, which I think is normatively good. He is not offering weird ideas to stand out.

natesilver: The narrative is dumb. It’s always dumb at this stage of the campaign, when the primary winner has in all probability been decided but it’s not technically over yet. It would be a lot worse if not for coronavirus since the media would have a lot more news cycles to fill with fake drama.

nrakich: Yeah, Sarah, Biden hasn’t been as much of a presence on our TV sets, but I don’t think that’s his fault, as Nate pointed out. I think cable news just hasn’t been giving him a lot of airtime. The other day, major networks decided to air Cuomo’s briefing on the coronavirus instead of Biden’s speech.

But what Biden has to say on the coronavirus is more relevant to a majority of the country.

natesilver: It shouldn’t give him a lot of airtime!

Biden’s not hugely relevant at the moment.

nrakich: I think they should give him more than Cuomo! Biden might be president at this time next year. Cuomo governs just 6 percent of the country.

natesilver: Cuomo is dealing with the realities on the ground in a way Biden isn’t. And New York has a lot more than 6 percent of coronavirus cases.

He’s also doing a pretty effective job of communicating about coronavirus data and where the state and the country is in combating the epidemic.

I don’t think he’d get as much press coverage if he hadn’t been doing a good job with the communication side of things. It’s earned media in the truest sense of the word.

sarahf: That’s fair. A lot of what’s happening now is outside of Biden’s control, and obviously, there’s a lot we can’t answer, but Americans still rate Trump really highly on the economy — 57 percent said they approve of how he’s handling it, which marked a new high for him in that same ABC/WaPo poll. What’s more, Trump led Biden on this metric, 50 to 42 percent. Couldn’t that pose a real problem for Biden moving forward, especially if it’s harder for him to be a part of the conversation now?

nrakich: I think this is Exhibit A for it being too early to say anything. It seems like the economy is going to be in real trouble. If unemployment hits 30 percent or the gross domestic product growth rate is -15 percent, I don’t think Americans will continue to approve of Trump’s handling of the economy.

natesilver: No, I don’t think anything about the polls right now tells us very much about what the situation is likely to look like in September, or November.

People haven’t been living with this for very long. A lot of the consequences haven’t happened yet. And after the consequences, there’s the opportunity for a rebound, or a second wave.

You just have to be patient. Right now, I spend a lot more time looking at, say, the number of new COVID-19 cases in Italy than at Trump’s approval rating. I’d argue that the former tells us more about his reelection odds than the latter, since it tells us something about the extent to which a coronavirus epidemic can slow down post-peak.

sarahf: I can’t help but think that part of the narrative is being set now, though, about Biden having an enthusiasm problem. Of course, it could be that enthusiasm for Biden doesn’t really matter because enthusiasm to elect anyone but Trump is a bigger motivating factor, but I do wonder how that plays out in the coming months. Even if the enthusiasm gap isn’t real, could the perception of one still hurt Biden?

natesilver: Just one troll question after another.

sarahf: I know! But I think people are thinking about this — and even if it’s premature now — I do wonder how it takes root, even when it shouldn’t.

nrakich: That’s interesting, Sarah. Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if cable news continually covers Biden with the implication that he is somehow inadequate or not up to the task of beating Trump. I don’t know if that could become a self-fulfilling prophecy or not.

natesilver: I think if anything people tend to overlearn the lessons of the most recent election. A lot of the templates that people applied from the 2016 primaries to the 2020 primaries led to completely wrong predictions, like vastly understating Biden’s chances.

The fact that Democrats are worried about an enthusiasm gap because of 2016 could easily help Biden because it will scare Democrats into voting.

nrakich: I certainly agree that people try way too hard to retrofit the lessons of the previous election. To many (especially those with an anti-Sanders agenda), Clinton lost because Sanders voters weren’t united around her. But can’t it just be enough that she lost because it was an extremely tight election and that happens sometimes?

perry: Biden could very well lose the general election. And he could lose in the same way that Clinton did — a center-left Democrat wins the primary on the strength of older voters, particularly older black voters, but then loses in the general, with Trump winning in key swing states even as he loses the national popular vote.

But Clinton almost won and Biden very much could win. I don’t think Biden has an enthusiasm “problem,” but having enthusiastic supporters who are donating a lot of money, volunteering and eventually turning out to vote in large numbers always helps. So getting as much of Sanders’s crowd on board as possible will be useful for Biden.

Do I think it would be better for Biden if polls showed people were excited to vote for him? Yes, because I do think there is the potential that “people are holding their nose and voting for Biden” becomes a narrative.

nrakich: I also think a lot of the problem is that no one media members or the Twitterati know personally is enthusiastic to vote for Biden. Which of course speaks to the bubbles they live in. But that can have real effects on the narrative, as Perry said.

perry: But it’s hard for me to look at these polls right now and say Biden has an actual enthusiasm problem — or really many problems at all.

[jeanjauthor]

This.

Whole.

Thread.

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Thread unroller: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1231411476805672961.html

We have answers to the question "How do we pay for Medicare 4 All?" Some of them quite detailed. No one has managed to come up with an answer to "How do we afford not having it?" We as a nation literally cannot pay for healthcare. This is a huge ongoing crisis. The closest we can come to answering it is to pretend that, well, the fallout of individuals not being able to afford healthcare is limited to those individuals. This is a lie. It costs everyone. It drags the precious economy down. The person who goes bankrupt because of medical expenses and loses their house... that's a blow to the neighborhood they lived in. A bank has replaced a profitable asset (a mortgage) with a depreciating asset (an empty house). The family struggling to pay for healthcare is paying money into a system that doesn't actually produce anything except profit for the top. Take away that struggle, they are doing business with their neighbors. Ordering products. Buying services. Creating jobs! Defaulted medical bills (including from those much-exaggerated can't-refuse-anybody free ER visits that the right likes to pretend is the same as free healthcare) get passed onto everybody else, meaning we're already "socializing" costs, but inefficiently. ERs don't do routine preventative and diagnostic services or non-emergency treatment of chronic conditions, which means by the time someone winds up in an ER, the care they need is 1) more expensive and 2) less effective. 

All of this is a huge drain on the stuff that the people gibbering about the terrible specter of socialism actually do care about: productivity! Consumer confidence! The freedom of the marketplace! Socialize the medical system and we will be paying less money for better outcomes. We're already spending more money on healthcare, collectively, than it would take to treat everyone for real. And for all that money, we get the worst healthcare in the so-called developed world. If we could be getting more while paying less, THE INVISIBLE HAND OF THE FREE MARKET demands that's what we do. Market economics dictates that we adopt socialized medicine. Anybody who disagrees doesn't actually care about what they're telling you they care about. "But people will have to wait for treatment!" They do already, sometimes until they die. "But there will be rationing." There already is rationing and it's killing people. "But the government will decide what treatment you get." Less so than for-profit insurance companies do now. Universal healthcare, free at point of service, paid for by public money, is the best deal we could take. We would pay less and get more. And it would make the "free market" freer by removing artificial constraints on things like job mobility. "Private industry is more efficient than the government." Efficient at what? For insurance companies, it's making money. This efficiency comes in the form of them taking more profit by charging more and providing less.

It's efficient *against us*.

Of course, replacing most of the concept of health insurance with a public institution will displace some jobs, and we should take care of the people affected by that but "socialism" is a better solution than propping up an industry that is robbing and killing us. Our concept of business ethics right now is that the main fiduciary duty of a company is to generate ever-growing profits for its stakeholders. This means a for-profit insurance company is doing wrong when it takes care of us. Its "job" is to take our money and keep it. Any money that an insurance company spends on paying for actual health care is regarded in the business world as a failure, with some failure being inevitable, but regrettable nonetheless. They will take more and give less, if they can get away with it. Now, the ideal of the free market is that if they jerk us around we can take our business elsewhere, but healthcare is so expensive and byzantine that most of us can't afford it, except when subsidized by an employer who has the benefit of negotiating in bulk on our behalf. But this leaves us in a pinch where if our employer isn't great we can't "vote our wallets" by leaving because we need the healthcare and if our healthcare (which we didn't get to pick directly) isn't great we can't "vote our wallets" because we need the paycheck.

In theory an employer offering bad healthcare benefits is a bad employer who should be "corrected" in the market by leaving their employ, but jobs aren't fungible, we can't just leave and go across the street to another employer with the same circumstances but better insurance. This makes the "free market" as it applies to health insurance NOT REALLY VERY FREE AT ALL.

Our nominal power to negotiate and force companies to compete for our business is severely constrained and diluted by circumstances. If a restaurant, movie studio, or video game company wants our business, it has to contend with the fact that we could stay home and feed or entertain ourselves in lots of other ways, on top of there being other restaurants and media companies. But the alternative to healthcare is stay home and administer home remedies and hope you don't die of an infected tooth or hangnail that spreads, or untreated cancer, or whatever. We aren't really "customers" with the same choice. So the fact that the consequences of voting our wallet and staying home means we might die and the fact that our negotiation ability is at a remove through our jobs (which, again, without which we might lose our ability to secure food and shelter and healthcare, and maybe die)... ...means that the vaunted competition that is supposed to make the free market efficient and fair just doesn't happen. It doesn't apply.

We are at the mercy of corporations who, again, are instructed by society that their highest good is separating us from our money. And it doesn't have to be this way! We could eliminate the whole predatory, unnecessary layer that is the for-profit health insurance complex and replace it with a public agency whose highest good is getting the most treatment for the least money. And at that point, multiple massive distortions of the "free market" disappear.

We gain more power to change jobs if another employer is offering us a better deal. Free market competition! Great, right? We've got more money that we can spend on things we want. We don't have people losing cars and houses and apartments and education plans and jobs because they had a medical emergency they couldn't pay for. We eliminate a lot of bankruptcies. Financial planning becomes more predictable. Consumer confidence goes up. Spending goes up.

Every business that is providing something people want benefits from the increased stability! Demand for basically everything rises! Jobs are created! Workers are less stressed and fearful and exhausted and so are working better! Where's the downside for "capitalism"? I'm a fan of the free market. I think customers benefit when companies compete for their money. I think companies benefit when workers compete for their money. But our for-profit healthcare system distorts this whole thing so badly that this is basically not happening now. If you like "capitalism" in the sense of a market-based economy where entities compete to trade what they have for what they want... a little "socialism" around the edges is a good thing, a necessary thing. If we could decouple our thinking in the business world from the current fiduciary duty we choose to imagine businesses owe, then "profit" becomes the reward for doing a good job at whatever the business does, and that's FINE. It's good, it's great, it's the ideal. 

But we can't there as long as we're treating everything as though it's just another fungible option among many where people could freely vote their wallets. We can stay home from the movies if the options stink, go watch a play or a TV show. Can't do that with cancer treatment. Democratic socialism, social democracy... related and overlapping concepts, I'm not actually that interested in wanking over the distinctions. The point is, you can have social features on a market economy. And you can't have a market economy for long without them. In the competition that makes a market economy work, the reward for winning is also the means by which the game is played, which means each round is *less* competitive than the one that came before. Competition is a finite resource, which means it's unsustainable. The more that this competition extends into areas in which negotiation and competition are stifled, the faster the process by which the competition breaks down becomes until the "free market" becomes a fiefdom of company towns. And so the distortion caused by our for-profit healthcare industry is speeding up the demise of the free market. A public option would slow that down. Eliminating health insurance as it exists now and replacing it with some form of single payer system would go much further. 

To make a long story short (TOO LATE!) - we can't afford to keep the health insurance industry around. Can't afford it. How do we pay for it? Nobody has an answer for that. We can figure out how to pay for Medicare 4 All, but not how to pay for health insurance. And while we're figuring out how to pay for healthcare under the private insurance model, we should ask... wait, what are we paying for? Mostly to prop up an industry whose goal is that we should continue paying them to exist. Literally no purpose. They produce nothing.

[berniesrevolution]

JACOBIN MAGAZINE

Some of the most militant housing actions I have ever witnessed arose in opposition to buildings that don’t yet exist. I have seen occupations, disruptions, and even physical fights break out in order to halt state approvals for development projects. While it might seem a bit abstract to raise a ruckus in the present over construction in the future, everyone involved — from protesters to politicians to developers — understands the stakes.

The fight over housing is about both what is there and what isn’t: the cost of living in existing buildings, and the price of future developments. The pace and price of residential construction affects everything else in an area, from sewers and transit to taxes and schools. The rules guiding future development are therefore crucial to fights over both present and future housing conditions.

The way we make such decisions is known as planning. It is both the vision we have for our cities and towns, and the way we seek to implement it. There are many long-standing traditions of urban planning around the world, as practiced by both utopian socialists and cut-throat capitalists. Planning can be robust and seek comprehensive approaches to addressing the entire urban ecosystem, from physical development to environmental protection, or it can be narrow and carve out a limited role for government and a greater role for capital. Housing has long been a central concern for urban planners, from industrial revolution-era building safety codes to mid-century public housing projects.

In recent years, one particular planning tool has grown to outsized influence, and become almost a substitute for the entire practice of residential planning. Zoning — a set of rules that regulate future development — is the most important way many municipalities shape their cities. This is especially true in places like Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, and others that have experienced a wave of new investment. Entrepreneurial mayors have seized on zoning as a way to make a permanent mark on their cities’ skylines. Community organizers have used zoning and the public process around it as tools to fight gentrification, by either trying to stop zoning changes that would encourage luxury development, or by using rezoning to incentivize low-income housing construction or protect working-class communities.

The rezonings many mayors are pushing, though vast in scale, cannot be mistaken for comprehensive plans; they are, in fact, more often abdications of planning to the market. Rezonings set limits for development in some places and channel it toward others, but rarely create new physical spaces or social policies. Sometimes zoning has been bent toward those goals as a shortcut, with detailed plans for particular projects or anti-harassment tenant protections written into the zoning code. In most cases, however, zoning is less a plan than a parameter — a framework within which private development does or does not take place in the future.

Their Code and Ours

Zoning determines what kind of buildings can go where, and at what size. In the traditional model, different types of activities are divided up into various “use types”: residential, commercial, industrial, recreational, and so on. Areas, and even individual lots, can be used for more than one thing at a time, but the zoning code allows the state to detach these uses as desired.

The classic justification for separating uses is industry and housing: no one should have to live next to a smoke-belching factory. But the separation of uses has roots in less altruistic impulses. In 1885, the country’s first zoning code was introduced in Modesto, California, and it used bans on laundries to exclude Chinese workers and families from the most desirable areas of the city. About forty years later, New York City instituted zoning after high-end Fifth Avenue merchants lobbied the city to zone out manufacturing. Their goal was less to protect health and welfare than to prevent Jewish garment workers from walking down their streets and scaring away their patrician customers. Ten years after New York, Birmingham, Alabama used zoning to lock in residential segregation, producing a zoning code geographer Bobby Wilson calls “one of the most overt expressions of white supremacy ever put into law in the twentieth century.”

In addition to separating uses, zoning also limits the height and bulk of future buildings. This can be set in any number of ways and, like the separation of uses, can be done for a number of purposes: a plain and simple height cap can be put over a district, limiting how tall new buildings can be; a more flexible system can allow virtually unlimited height, as long as buildings are set back to allow for light and air to pass through their lots; limits can be placed on new buildings based on the size and shape of neighboring properties, in order to encourage continuity; built forms can be mandated to increase or limit the space between buildings, and between structures and the street; a “bonus” can be offered to developers, allowing them to build more if they provide a desired feature, such as cheaper housing or open space; an allowance can be included for property owners to sell “air rights” — or the theoretically developable space above and around a structure — from one building to another, which can then build taller than is otherwise allowed; “special districts” can be created that have their own rules, often straying far from the limits of traditional zoning into areas like landscape design or tenant protections.

“Fights against exclusionary zoning, like the long legal battle in New York’s suburban Westchester County that has lasted since the 1980s, aim to integrate neighborhoods and mandate that new housing be affordable to more potential residents.”

Many cities have experimented with each of these approaches, sometimes all at once. Over the years, zoning has become quite complex, keeping an army of development lobbyists, technical experts, corporate consultants, and land-use lawyers employed. When New York City’s zoning code was created in 1916, it was 85 pages long. When it was revamped in 1961, the new resolution was 539 pages. Since then, another 3,436 pages of amendments have been added. In New York today, there are about 150 different zoning types in use around the city.

Under these circumstances, developers looking to build have two choices. First, they can design a structure that fits the existing zoning rules. This is called “as of right” development. There is essentially no public process required for this type of construction, and as a result tenants have very little input on or leverage over what gets built. If a developer wants to build a fifty-story luxury condominium in an area that allows that sort of thing, little short of direct action or lawsuits will stop it.

The other type of development, however, involves building outside the zoning code’s constraints. That would mean either designing something bigger than permitted or proposing something other than the allowed use — like a condo complex in an area zoned for manufacturing.

In order to do this, the developer has to seek a variance from the city. Lawyers and planning consultants are brought in to make the case that the city’s zoning code should be changed on one particular lot in order to accommodate whatever it is the developer wants to build. This gives people an opportunity to protest, however, and say that they do not want the project to go through. Plenty of times this works, and the developer has to revise or discard their plans. It can be an expensive and time-consuming process, and is therefore something for-profit developers generally seek to avoid. If they can get an entire neighborhood rezoned to their liking, however, they will be able to build whatever they want without having to bother with any sort of pesky public process.

Drawing out rezoning is an extremely complicated legal and political terrain. People spend years studying land-use planning and law to truly master its intricacies and quirks. It is also a terrible bore — not many people would voluntarily subject themselves to countless hours of debate over the merits of c6-2a zoning versus r8a. Yet the zoning code is one of the most important legal documents in a city for both activists and real estate investors because it sets the rules for new development.

It is, however, a highly imperfect vehicle for housing politics. What activists tend to care most about is the price of housing; what the zoning process is designed to adjudicate, however, is the size and use of buildings. The system thus encourages housing activists of all stripes to expend a great deal of energy arguing over housing densities as a proxy for housing costs.

In suburban contexts — including the outer stretches of most cities — the zoning code is often written to allow only large lots for single-family homes. This helps lock in high land values as the only things that can be built are big expensive houses. Smaller and more affordable homes are outlawed, as are apartment buildings or any other kind of low-cost multifamily dwelling. This practice is known as “exclusionary zoning” because it keeps out a wide swath of people who will never be able to afford homes of these sizes.

Combined with a regressive tax code that rewards large landholders and owners of multiple homes, exclusionary zoning perpetuates intergenerational wealth, racial inequality, and spatial segregation. It helps wealthy neighborhoods stay wealthy and offers them an ample tax base for extensive and exclusive public services — particularly schools.

In the United States, many of these zoning codes correspond with New Deal-era and postwar racist housing policies. The era of mass suburbanization was sparked by a series of initiatives meant to standardize the home loan industry, increase homeownership, depress worker militancy, and spur employment in construction and related industries. Some of the most important programs were led by Roosevelt’s Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which, among other things, insured mortgages for those who otherwise would not receive them. As part of this program, the FHA wrote guidelines for banks that dictated what type of residential communities they wanted financed. Following real estate industry “best practices,” the FHA preferred: new construction; space between properties; and, more than anything else, racial segregation. Neighborhoods with African Americans and recent immigrants were coded unsafe for investment and redlined (shaded red on maps to signal their planned decline). Meanwhile, white families were offered subsidized mortgages for housing in new suburban districts.

Undoing these laws was a crucial part of the mid-century Civil Rights Movement, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 made many of these practices illegal. But while explicit rules to segregate housing by race were outlawed, exclusionary zoning has kept many of these places almost entirely white. Fights against exclusionary zoning, like the long legal battle in New York’s suburban Westchester County that has lasted since the 1980s, aim to integrate neighborhoods and mandate that new housing be affordable to more potential residents.

(Continue Reading)

[pamphletstoinspire]

Suicidal Ideation in Church and State

With the terrible events of this past weekend, which witnessed mass shootings in both Dayton and El Paso, the media-consuming public is being subjected to any number of diagnoses from activists, journalists, social scientists, and others, especially Democratic candidates for the presidency.

What I wish to propose in this Ad Rem is that the true etiology underlying many of these mass shootings is very similar to the etiology of current civil and especially ecclesiastical illnesses.

Prescinding from these most recent massacres, about which too little is presently known, there is evidence that connects certain pharmaceuticals (psychotropic drugs) with homicidal ideation. This will probably get some but not enough attention in the next few days and weeks. Other causes are at work, to be sure (mostly spiritual), but anyone who is familiar with the iatrogenic nightmares of the opioid crisis and the benzodiazepine crisis will find what I’m saying here credible. As one who has experienced both of these crises up close in the debilitating effects they have had on my parents, I have no trust in the system that fostered them.

Big Pharma is the tail that wags the dog of the “healthcare” industry in America. And yes, the power quotes were deliberate. As is the case with other things our modern parlance couples with the word industry (e.g., food, music, entertainment), healthcare has suffered immeasurably from being industrialized, capitalized, and governmentalized.

But to bring us closer to our point, there is another harmful effect of certain widely used pharmaceuticals: suicidal ideation. I refer to the known association between suicide and some classes of drugs, such as opioids, SSRIs, and benzodiazepines. For example, there is a correlation between the alarming rate of military suicides we keep hearing about and the pharmaceuticals military personnel are given to treat PTSD and other problems.

When psychotropic drugs are prescribed for people diagnosed with psychopathologies by the failed mental health system, what is happening? Supposedly sick people are given drugs that we know make people sick — and included in that latter sickness is violent ideation, of both the suicidal and homicidal varieties. This is not healthcare, but societal suicide that enriches the drug companies and their co-conspirators. Dr. G.C. Dilsaver summarized it this way in a recent interview (around the 2:04:00 mark): “In short, the mental health system, the psychopharmacological companies, and the insurance agencies get away with murder.”

These terrible phenomena of drug-induced mass shootings and rising military suicide rates may be compared to the current crisis in the Catholic Church with very clarifying results.

The three-part pattern is quite similar: (1) A genuine problem exists, (2) to which is applied an unhealthy remedy, (3) with disastrous results. Here is a concrete application in the mental health profession, where a patient might: (1) experience some sort of anxiety or depression, diagnosed by a “mental health professional” using his handy-dandy, unscientific DSM, (2) at which point he is treated by psychotropics, producing the result of (3) iatrogenic sickness, including possibly suicide and/or homicide.

Let us apply this pattern to one current “Catholic problem,” church closings: (1) There is the problem of low Church attendance resulting in financial hardship for parishes. (2) The “remedy” is to close parish churches by combining two existing parishes into one and selling off the property of the church building no longer needed, possibly demolishing the building so that it does not become desecrated by its new owners. (3) Among the known results of such an action is that a definite number of parishioners will leave not only the parish, but the Catholic Church, for good. One estimate has that number at forty percent. According to Philip Gray, who runs the Saint Joseph Foundation, the percentage of Catholics who leave due to church closings varies based on how well the bishop handles the situation: if well, it goes down to around twenty percent; if badly, it goes up to about sixty percent. So the best-case scenario in church closings is that one in five parishioners is lost to the Catholic Church! Therefore, closing churches is a losing proposition for the Church, a gun to the ecclesiastical head.

What would a real remedy look like? Here is a missionary solution: Send priests, upper-class seminarians, and religious out into the streets to invite people — Catholics and non-Catholics — to come to Church, getting the Roman collar, the cassock, and the religious habit in plain view and making your new diocesan missionaries vulnerable to a hostile or indifferent populace. They will be targets, but that’s OK, so were the Apostles. Once they have people’s attention, they must invite them, challenge them, engage them, hear their grievances compassionately, and answer their questions with thoroughly orthodox and uncompromising replies. Put on special classes and some cultural events for the people you have so invited. Make them feel welcome, not by some big PR splurge that you’ve paid too much for on TV and radio, but by having genuine human interaction that has as its sole purpose the glory of God and the salvation of souls. In short, save the parish; don’t shut it down, and save souls in the process: a net gain for the Church.

It is probable that there are some shakers and movers in the parish, capable and energetic lay folk who want to do something good for the Church. Instead of clericalizing these zealous individuals by making them Eucharistic ministers, lectors, “song leaders,” and other unnecessary add-ons to the clerics and male acolytes in the sanctuary, have them help with these truly missionary efforts. They could actually be working to save souls.

Note that the proposed solution is missionary. In other words, it involves the Church doing something integral to the divine constitution of the Church and therefore traditional. Traditional remedies are the best!

Another example: Instead of merging a Catholic hospital system with a pro-abortion secular institution in order to “save” it — which is institutionally suicidal as well as homicidal to bodies and souls — try expanding the reach of authentic Catholic healthcare by partnering with medical schools that enthusiastically assent to the Church’s moral magisterium, and establishing guilds of Catholic physicians, nurses, and support staff who take professional oaths to be pro-actively pro-life and pro-family. No, it won’t be easy, but partnering with the medical culture of death is taking a Glock to the head!

Other examples:

Youth programs designed to “keep the young people,” or draw them back to the Church: Instead of trying to make them “relevant” by employing the worst of pop-culture and therefore giving them nothing particularly Catholic to grab hold of, have family-based activities that bring youth, parents, and clergy together. Emphasize holiness by offering retreats, wholesome camping and/or scouting activities, and events that promote genuine culture. Focus the events around the liturgical year, the sacraments, and big anniversaries, e.g., of the parish, to give them that sense of belonging to a community that they need.

Seminary formation: Instead of welcoming effeminate men into the seminary, as has been common in the last decades (even still!), make a very public statement that you only want masculine men who want to sacrifice themselves in the seminary (think vintage 1985 Marines), and that you will keep the homosexuals out; challenge young men to be “man enough” to embrace the Cross of the Catholic priesthood, and then introduce traditional clerical asceticism into the seminary environment and formation programs. Teach them what spiritual fatherhood is. No, this is not an attempt at recruiting “dumb jocks” to the priesthood; strong academics and exposure to genuine Catholic culture must also be present in the formation.

Altar Servers: Make it an exclusive male-only brotherhood, emphasizing virtue as well as knowledge of how to serve.

Some of what is true of Church demographics also applies to civil societies in former Christendom. Institutionally, most European nations are displaying suicidal ideation, too. Declining birthrates are compensated by profligate immigration from Muslim countries. That is a gun to the national head if ever there was one. But what can be done about it? Consider Hungary, where strict immigration laws prevent Muslim invasion and financial incentives are available to married couples who have at least three children. No wonder the liberal globalist elites hate Viktor Orbán!

In the Church, bishops could do things to incentivize higher birthrates by imitating the impressive incentive of Georgian Orthodox Patriarch Ilia II, who offered personally to baptize every third child and over born to a married couple. He actually caused a demographic uptick in his country, a former Soviet republic. It should be mentioned that for the Church to accomplish this, her ministers must fearlessly preach the truth about marriage and parenthood to the faithful, including the mortally sinful nature of birth control as well as abortion. Priests and bishops who do that are still, sadly, rare birds.

In general, churchmen seem to favor expensive bureaucratic solutions to the problems caused by modernity when the answer is a return to tradition, even if that return to tradition will require some modern methods (such as electronic media). It’s bad enough to be ineffective, but, as we have seen, churchmen become institutionally suicidal whenever they do something contrary to the nature of the Church — her divine constitution, her faith or morals — such as partnering with an expensive pro-abortion PR firm, as at least one archdiocese in the US actually does!

As far as the lowly faithful are concerned, we cannot institute these changes, but we can teach people the truth about the problems and authentic solutions that flow from a well-formed sensus Catholicus. And the laity can also use the power of the purse string by supporting only apostolates that actually advance the mission of the Church rather than picking up someone else’s suicide tab.

When many of the old nominally Catholic institutions have killed themselves off, those few who have reformed themselves in fidelity to tradition will join the new ones that will inevitably crop up to foster a genuine renaissance of Catholicity. Then the Church will have the resources to provide authentically Catholic remedies to all those horrible social problems about which there is so much clueless pontificating today.

BY: BROTHER ANDRÉ MARIE

From: www.pamphletstoinspire.com

[mlow19ahsgov-blog]

Media Assessment of Issue

Article 1 (RedState): Yet Another Leftist Anti-Energy Misdirection: Hiding Behind the Animals [https://www.redstate.com/setonmotley/2018/09/06/yet-another-leftist-anti-energy-misdirection-hiding-behind-animals/] 

Subject: The author’s main point is that everything about green energy is either stupid or just a huge lie. According to him, renewable resources are terrible, so therefore everyone advocating for it is really just lying about how great it is in order to “halt any and all productive human activity.” He says people lie so much about advertising green energy, that apparently Earth Day is even fake because it’s on Vladimir Lenin’s birthday. He also accuses those on the Left of using “cute animals” to persuade people to invest in using renewable resources for purposes like global warming or climate change, which he calls “The Greatest Scam on Earth” that supposedly belongs to the Leftist environmentalists. Later in the article, the author addresses the Stand for Salmon ballot measure, an attempt to improve salmon habitat protections, which he says it’s misguided.

Author: Seton Motley is the president of Less Government, a DC-based non-profit organization dedicated to reducing the power of government. He is a writer, television and radio commentator, political and policy strategist, lecturer, debater, and activist. He is extremely conservative and hates Obama.

Context: The article was published online on September 6, 2018. The article is very recent, as it was published only a few days ago. This article represents the small percentage of people who don’t believe in climate change, thinking it is all fake and nonexistent. Everything about the article advocates against renewable resources and protecting the environment, making it only mean much to those who agree with the author.

Audience: The audience are the online community of RedState, who are most likely to be more on the extreme side of conservatism and might not even believe in climate change either. The article would only attract those who share this same opinion of climate change.

Perspective: The article is extremely subjective, as the author uses insulting language throughout the whole article, saying climate change is fake and that those on the Left are only lying to prevent productive human activity. I personally despise this author’s claim because it is downright rude and inaccurate. Sure, people use animals in advocating renewable resources, but it is because animals are a huge reason of why these resources need to be used. The pictures of animals are meant to show people some of the many consequences of using too much fossil fuels and raising the Earth’s temperature, which would cause several species and habitats to be in danger, which has already started to happen. It was amusing to see how one-sided people are about environmental issues, as the whole argument about Earth Day being fake was ridiculous. It’s likely that Motley exaggerated the Stand for Salmon ballot measure in order to invoke even more anger in the readers who believe the article’s content.

Significance: Motley provides plenty of commentary on his topic. Near the beginning of the article, he calls the “ideas for alleged energy – are awful, and awfully dumb. Solar, wind, ethanol and the like – are terrible sources of energy…and are worse for the environment than the real energy sources they purport to replace.” He also constantly accuses liberals of hiding “their anti-energy insanity behind cute animals. That way they don’t have to say “We hate energy, and capitalism, and human activity, and humans” – they can say “We like cute animals.” As Motley still thinks climate change is all a hoax, his opinion on seeing animals and their habitats destroyed because of it is: “So instead we get pictures of Polar Bears and Penguins on ice floes. Oh look – how cute. About which they lie – and say the floes are fleeting due to Climate Change. Oh no – what will become of the cute animals?!?”

Article 2 (HuffPost): Is President Trump the Kick in the Butt We Need to Get Onto a Sustainable Path? [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/is-president-trump-the-kick-in-the-butt-we-need-to_us_58ab1d89e4b0b0e1e0e20e05]

Subject: The author is advocating to go against President Trump’s environmental policies in order to protect mankind from collapsing environmentally, economically, and socially. They explain that burning coal for energy can cause deaths for miners, citizens, and the unborn because of air/water pollution, mining accidents, and the destruction of plant/animal species and their habitats. A list of solutions are proposed like using renewable resources, finding the true health and environmental costs of products, services, and technologies, taxing behaviors that damage human and environmental health and rewarding behaviors that protect it, creating social equality, and strengthening democracies. The article ends off by stating that a crisis like this can empower people to advocate for their climate, health, living beings, and democracy. The author encourages the audience to immediately take action and make changes to society in order to thwart the president’s plan to the nation’s demise.

Author: Ellen Moyer is an environmental consultant with a BA in anthropology, an MS in environmental engineering, and a PhD in civil engineering. She is a registered professional engineer and a US Green Building Council Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Accredited Professional.

Context: This article was published online on February 20, 2017. The article is one year old, and it is not likely President Trump has changed his opinion on the environment or his related policies. Even though the article is a little less than a year old, its arguments are still very much related to the problems circulating today. The only thing that is not as relevant anymore is that people have already started to make changes towards using renewable resources. It is now a matter of funding and spreading its use.

Audience: The audience are the readers of the HuffPost (formerly called the Huffington Post). It is likely that liberals would read this article, as the article clearly opposes President Trump’s environmental policies and encourages people to take charge. The author uses descriptive words to demonstrate her own opinion towards the president, giving a slightly dramatic and harsh spin of what is happening.

Perspective: This article is subjective, as the author‘s message is to defend the nation’s environment by standing up for major changes that need to happen in order to prevent Donald Trump from permanently ruining the nation. I agree with the author’s claim because I believe President Trump barely cares about the environment, and that it is up to us, as the citizens, to do what is best for the country so that the environment, society, and economy don't fall apart. I think enforcing these processes would significantly benefit not just the United States, but the world too by setting a positive example for other nations to follow.

Significance: The author inserts her own opinion throughout the article many times using both statements and rhetorical questions. She starts off with the very first sentence being “For someone with such immense financial wealth—and now power—President Trump displays a baffling ‘can’t do’ attitude and ‘poverty mentality.’” Moyer later asks a clearly slanted question: “Will we continue along Trump’s “road to ruin”­—like lemmings running off a cliff? Or will we veer onto a path of safety and prosperity just in time?”. One of the last few sentences of the articles even says “President Trump’s reckless environmental policies have our species heading straight for the rocks even faster than before.” Even the title of the article shows bias, as it is called “Is President Trump the Kick in the Butt We Need to Get Onto a Sustainable Path?”.

Article 3 (The New York Times): A Year After Trump’s Paris Pullout, U.S. Companies Are Driving a Renewables Boom [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/climate/companies-renewable-energy.html]

Subject: The author’s main point is that even though President Trump has made the United States exit the Paris Agreement, many large corporations are continuing to honor the agreement. These corporations have invested billions of dollars in wind and solar energy projects to power their operations, making them a driving force of America’s renewable electricity growth. Many hope that it will be easier by making “green tariffs” (utility-created programs that allow customers to buy renewable energy from specific renewable energy projects) more popular and offered to encourage more people to use green energy, as these green tariffs are limited to the larger companies. As some of these corporations managed to purchased an amount of renewable electricity equivalent to all the power that they use, it doesn’t mean that the company is truly 100% run on renewable energy. The next step for these companies is to figure out ways to completely power everything using zero-carbon energy sources.

Author: Brad Plumer is a reporter covering climate change, energy policy and other environmental issues for The New York Times's climate team.

Context: This article was published in print and online on June 1, 2018. Since this article was written only a few months ago, corporations probably haven’t made much progress yet and are still trying to figure out ways to power their projects 24/7 using renewable resources. They may try to overhaul electricity markets and allow companies to make direct purchases, incorporate additional technologies like battery storage, or even use nuclear power.

Audience: The audience is the readers of The New York Times, and anyone who is interested in what major corporations are doing and encouraging the use of renewable resources. Both liberals and conservatives who are aware of climate change and support the use of renewable resources would likely be interested in reading this article. This article does not aim to please anyone who does not support renewable resources.

Perspective: This article is primarily objective, as the author shows no opinion leaning toward a liberal nor conservative perspective. The article proposes that it would be difficult for smaller companies to run on renewable energy without green tariffs. However, many are hoping for the demand and popularity of green tariffs to rise, while major corporations are trying to find ways to run completely on carbon-free energy.

Significance: Using a lot of money to make long-term purchases for renewable electricity would make the smaller companies have to “create its own energy subsidiary and receive federal approval to trade its excess power, which wouldn’t be practical for [them].” Although green tariffs are often limited to larger companies, Rob Threlkeld, a global manager for renewable energy, says “If we can show utilities that the demand is there, that could convince regulators to expand these programs and allow access for smaller companies.” Seeking ways to completely run on no carbon power is important to many, as Michael Terrell, head of energy market strategy at Google, said that “Reaching 100 percent renewable energy is an important milestone, but it’s just the beginning. We have to keep our eyes on the ultimate prize, which is to enable carbon free power in every hour of every day.”

The 3 articles were not very similar, but more different. One focused on the denial of climate change, another one acknowledged it and encouraged people to do something about it, while the last one showed an economic perspective of how large corporations are trying to switch to renewable sources. The only things that are similar is maybe that 2 of the 3 articles came from reliable sources (HuffPost and The New York Times), while one came from an extremely biased conservative source (RedState). And that they all discuss ways people are persuading each other to use renewable resources. From using pictures of animals, to companies investing money, to public advocation.

I identify with the second article (HuffPost) the most because I agree with most of what is said. As someone who is very against the first article (RedState), the second article is nearly the complete opposite, which is why I identify with it more than the third article (The New York Times). I definitely agreed with the third article, but I didn’t feel as close to it because it was talking more on an economic perspective, versus the second article talking on a social perspective. I extremely disagree with President Trump’s environmental policies and hope that more people will continue to fight for an increased use of renewable sources because I think it’s very necessary in order to protect environments worldwide. 

[sinrau]

On Tuesday afternoon, Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, came on the line with a breaking-news bulletin. Just before our interview, Whitmer had heard that President Trump was talking about dismantling the coronavirus task force he had assembled to oversee the national response to the pandemic. Whitmer seemed stunned by this information—U.S. infections from COVID -19 were well over a million, the daily national death toll was often more than two thousand, and, in Whitmer’s hard-hit state, the crisis had already claimed more than four thousand of her constituents’ lives. “It’s just shocking,” she said, as we both tried to absorb the news. “Something new happens every day.”

By the next morning, Trump had, once again, changed his mind. He told reporters that he had no idea how “popular” the coronavirus task force was, and that it would remain in operation while shifting its emphasis toward reopening the economy and away from a public-health catastrophe that has already caused more U.S. deaths than the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq combined. These are crazy times in American politics. What’s a governor, or anyone trying to make sense of Trump’s on-again, off-again war on the virus, supposed to say?

Whitmer, a first-term Democrat in a swing state that helped Trump win the Presidency in 2016, has become such a lightning rod for Trump and his supporters that the President has given Whitmer her own derogatory Twitter nickname. After long-gun-toting protesters opposing her stay-at-home order entered the Michigan capitol last week—some of them wearing Trump campaign regalia, and some carrying Confederate flags, nooses, and swastikas—the President praised them as “very good people.” As Democrats nationally celebrate Whitmer’s unyielding response, and as Joe Biden considers her as his running mate, both the Republican-controlled state legislature and a Republican member of Congress have now sued her for using her emergency powers to keep the state closed during the crisis. Meanwhile, in heavily Democratic, heavily African-American Detroit, health-care workers are struggling to contain one of the worst outbreaks in the country.

Public polls show that the vast majority of Michiganders support social-distancing measures to combat the pandemic (as is true nationwide), and also Whitmer’s handling of the situation. In a state that Trump needs to win this fall, his approval ratings have dropped, while Whitmer’s have risen. Whitmer told me that Trump’s hyper-partisan approach did not make sense in terms of either public health or crass politics. “The enemy is a virus, and it doesn’t care what party you’re in, it doesn’t care what state you’re in,” she said. Trump, however, has not only persisted in his critiques of “that woman from Michigan” but nationalized his combative approach, with one policy for “Democrat states,” as he recently called them, that are the worst-affected by the virus, and another for Republican ones.

A fleeting image, captured on C- SPAN inside the U.S. Capitol this week, highlighted the divisive absurdity of the moment: Mitt Romney, wearing a mask, walked out of the Senate Republican Conference weekly lunch meeting toting a large placard with a graph on it. “Blue states aren’t the only ones who are screwed,” read the headline on the placard. Romney, though, is a minority of one. The lone Republican in either the House or Senate to support convicting Trump in his recent impeachment trial, Romney, who was the Republican Presidential nominee in 2012, is now an outlier in a Party with a devotion to Trump so strong that it has not faltered even in the face of the President’s reality-defying response to the pandemic.

Romney’s pitch, in fact, appeared to be so unpersuasive that, by Wednesday evening, Politico reported that “Senate Republicans are settling on their pandemic message as they fight to save their majority: President Donald Trump did a tremendous job.” This, not at all coincidentally, is the theme of a new ad being run nationwide by the Trump campaign, in which the President is portrayed as a heroic leader who defied Democrats and media pundits, shut off the country from the Chinese virus, and will lead America’s cratering economy to recovery. In case the message is too subtle, the ad spells it out in big all-capital letters on the screen: “ THE GREATEST COMEBACK STORY.”

When I went to college, we used to joke during exam period that you were really in trouble when you started to lie to yourself and believe it. The President and at least some of his most fervent supporters appear now to be in the lying-to-yourself-and-believing-it stage of the pandemic. Truth has become so inconvenient that it’s better left aside for some alternate, less inconvenient reality. This is, of course, not the first time in the Trump Presidency, or even the first time during this pandemic, that there has been such a gap, but it appears to be a moment when there is a widening and very likely unsustainable gulf between Trumpian truth and what is actually happening.

That’s because the numbers are the numbers and, for Trump and for America, they look terrible. On Wednesday, there were some twenty-six hundred deaths in the United States from COVID -19, and, on Thursday, there were even more: around twenty-seven hundred. Leaked predictions from government scientists show an increase, by June 1st, to three thousand deaths, on average, every twenty-four hours. As Whitmer noted to me, that amounts to essentially a 9/11’s worth of victims per day. Even after some seventy-five thousand deaths and a couple months of social-distancing public-health measures, the charts demonstrate clearly that the national curve has not flattened, with sharp declines registered only in New York and New Jersey—which have already gone through the country’s worst ordeal—and a handful of other states. More than half the states have at least partially lifted strict stay-at-home orders, although none of the states that announced reopenings—not one—met the criteria established by the Trump Administration for doing so. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week, a detailed, seventeen-page guide for how to return safely to workplaces and schools was quashed by the White House, and its authors were told it would “never see the light of day,” the Associated Press reported on Thursday. Testing capability is nowhere near the millions of additional tests needed to resume regular daily life, according to experts, nor is there widespread capacity to conduct contact tracing, another prerequisite.

Yet many states are reopening anyway, and Trump is not, at least for now, even bothering to hide the fact that more Americans may die as a result of these decisions. On Tuesday, he flew to a mask factory in Arizona for a photo op, where he appeared not wearing a mask, as the Guns N’ Roses version of the song “Live and Let Die” blasted over the factory’s loudspeakers. In an interview taped at the factory, Trump said, “I’m viewing our great citizens of this country to a certain extent, and to a large extent, as warriors. They’re warriors. We can’t keep our country closed. We have to open our country. Will some people be badly affected? Yes.” On Wednesday, he elaborated as to what he meant by “badly affected.” Asked if more Americans might die as a result of reopening too soon, he said, “Hopefully that won’t be the case.” But, he added, “It could very well be the case.” He also argued against more testing. “In a way, by doing all this testing, we make ourselves look bad,” he said. On Thursday, it was reported that, even as Trump was saying this, one of his personal valets, who delivers his meals, had tested positive for the virus. In response, Trump said he would now be tested every day. Reality, it turns out, is not just a matter of political optics.

Has Trump Reached the Lying-to-Himself-and-Believing-It Stage of the Coronavirus Pandemic? #web #website #copied #to read# #highlight #link #news #read

[melvinfellerstuff]

About and Why Use Business Consultants in Your Business by Melvin Feller

About and Why Use Business Consultants in Your Business by Melvin Feller

Melvin Feller Business Consultants in Texas and Oklahoma. Our mission is to call and equip a generation of Christian entrepreneurs to do business as ministry. We provide workshops and resources that help companies discover how to do business God’s way. When the heart of a business is service rather than self it can be transformed into a fruitful business ministry earning a profit and being of service to the community and their customers. Melvin Feller is currently pursuing another graduate degree in business organizations.

 Sustainable Performance

 At Melvin Feller Business Consultants LLC we care about empowering business owners, sustainable development and making a difference. Sometimes we are a coach and trainer helping a business get better and sometimes we are a matchmaker finding the right partner, investor or distributor. We help companies grow improve and master change.

For our clients we are NOW able to utilizes a global network of consultants, subject matter experts and service partners in the US, Europe, India and Africa. Sharing knowledge and expertise, accessing markets and building the right partnerships is essential for turning challenges into opportunities. We provide management consulting, business development, market research, and professional training. Our dedicated team helps you develop your business plan and strategy, understand your customers, define your brand, create powerful marketing solutions and improve your processes.

 BUSINESS PLANNING

Do you need a business or marketing plan, do you want to convince an investor with a proposal? Then the Melvin Feller Business Consultants team can help you! We help you define your business strategy and prepare the necessary documentation.

SALES

We help you improve sales through business analysis, sales training, lead identification of building partnerships with distributors and partners.

Melvin Feller Business Consultants

 BUSINESS COACHING

The business coaching and sessions are customized to meet YOUR needs. The goal of each session is to help you achieve your goals, to improve your business and to make you more successful! We want to find out together where you and your business are right now, where you could be and what can be done to set you on a path to success!

 GROW METHODOLOGY

GOALS-REALITY-OPTIONS-WAY

FORWARD

 GOALS

What do you want to achieve? What is important to you right now?

Describe your perfect world

What do you want to achieve because of this session?

 REALITY

Where are you now in relation to your goal?

On a scale of 1 -10 where are you?

What has contributed to your success so far?

 OPTIONS

What are your options?

What could you do differently?

Give me 5 options

If anything was possible what would you do?

 WAY FORWARD

Which options work best for you?

What one small step are you going to take now?

What actions will you take?

When are you going to start?

Who will help you?

 “Your beliefs become your thoughts,

Your thoughts become your words,

Your words become your actions,

Your actions become your habits,

Your habits become your values,

Your values become your destiny.”

― Mahatma Gandhi

 Principles & Values

Professionalism & Attitude: Our staff is professional, friendly and respectful at all times. We share our knowledge, contacts and expertise to the benefit of the client and the team. Cooperative teamwork, integrity and reliability are essential parts of our corporate culture.

 Sustainability: We achieve results that last. To create truly sustainable performance the improvements need to be measurable, well communicated and embedded in the overall corporate strategy. Our goal is to optimize the triple bottom line of economic, social and environmental performance. Therefore, we look at the total life cycle of the product and want to minimize the impact on the environment.

Customization: Our consulting approach is very collaborative and focuses on customized solutions for the client. Our tools and recommendations need to fit with the client’s organizational structure, business model and corporate culture.

 Mutual Learning: We consider ourselves a learning organization. We constantly improve our organizational structure and our policies. We invest in our team and continuously want to improve how we do business. Our clients learn from us and we learn from our clients.

 Why Consulting?

 Small Companies

Many people start a business based on a particular talent or set of skills that they can offer to others. Although these people may be very knowledgeable about their craft, more often than not, they do not have the same skillset on business. It is common to see the small business owner’s lack the knowledge of optimal business models, best practices to grow the business, important formulas and ratios to determine the actual health of the company, nor the ability to anticipate the challenges that lie ahead.

 Although these business owners will make sure that they have an attorney to look over a contract and an accountant to make sure they are filing their taxes right, rarely do they hire a consultant to help them run their business effectively and profitably. That is why you hear the statistics that 95% of startups not last 10 years. To the business owner’s defense, the cost of hiring consultants is usually too high for the business owner to afford. This forces them to try to figure it out on their own and eventually fail. Melvin Feller Business Consultants is changing that. We believe that proper guidance is vital to every organization, in most cases more than that of the attorney or accountant. Not saying these professionals are not important, but if your business fails, there is no need for the accountant or the attorney.

Melvin Feller Business Consultants is providing strategy, marketing, and business consulting services at very affordable rates for all businesses and business sizes. You can receive the best business strategies through any one of our consulting, coaching, and training services that meet your needs. Melvin Feller Business Consultants delivers these high-profit strategies through multiple channels, from in-person to virtual, giving everyone the ability to benefit.

 Mid-Size and Large Companies

Larger companies realize the necessity of hiring consultants on a regular basis. In fact, most likely that is how they have gotten to the stage they have. These companies usually have a much different set of problems. They have hired employees that have degrees in business and others who have experience. They understand the fundamentals of business and the importance of growth. Unfortunately, most medium and large size companies are so big and bloated that their departments do not function as one lean machine. The left hand often does not speak to the right hand. There are so many managers and VP’s that the structure often gets in the way of the company’s success because there are so many layers that the upper management often has no idea what’s happening on the front lines with the actual customers. The politics alone in the corporate world cost the companies millions. Sometimes each department is fighting another for funding never mind trying to work as one cohesive unit.

 Although mid-size companies do not have it as bad, they are dealing with their own set of problems. It is a combination of both. They have some of the problems that the larger companies have but they do not have the capital and cash flow resources like the large companies. The larger companies also have systems, policies, and procedures in place where the midsize company is trying to figure all that out.

 Melvin Feller Business Consultants helps mid to large companies focus on the areas that will have the biggest impact on the bottom line. Our processes will show your company areas that money is being spent that are not producing results and how to use these funds in higher affecting areas to get a much higher return on your investment.

 Why Consultants will Have you Focus on a Niche

When we talk about a niche, this is one of those lessons that you already “know” but probably are not following, or at least to the extent you can. I love speaking deeper on topics people are already familiar with because we save time by me not having to prove the concept. I will prove it anyway just to build more leverage on you to follow through.

 When slow or no growth companies ask me for help, my first task is to identify all the anchors, bottlenecks, and/or dead ends that are currently preventing growth from happening.

 Anchors: Something that is holding you back or weighing you down. This can be anything- a limiting belief, bad employees, a terrible product, or even an entire department that is working against your growth. Getting rid of an anchor is addition by subtraction.

Bottlenecks: This is when you have a process or a path to growth but it is limited in some way. What you need to do here is open things up. Picture reducing traffic by opening more lanes. You want to increase the capacity, increase the bandwidth, and allow things to flow more freely (people, information, communication, etc.).

 Dead Ends: Exactly what they sound like, this is when the current path you have will not take you to the desired destination. A road or new pathway must be built in order to get you to where you need to be. In the task of identifying these growth killers, the very first place I look is to see if the company chose a niche to operate in or not. Like clockwork, the companies that are slow to grow are usually the ones that never chose a niche to dominate, and the reason for this comes out of a fear that they may alienate other business that falls outside that market.

  In turn, they try to be all things to all people, eventually becoming nothing to anyone. The easiest way to prove the importance to you is to ask whom you would choose if you needed heart surgery. Would you go to your general practitioner or a heart surgeon? Let us try something less dramatic. Say there is a dispute over your product name and now there is a possible trademark infringement litigation. In addition, as luck would have it, at the same time, you are in the process of going through a divorce and you need to hire an attorney. Would you go to the same person? Probably not. Chances are you would look for the best intellectual property attorney you can find (best can be defined as best for you), and the divorce attorney that best meets your needs as well. In fact, if someone told you that, they had a lot of experience in both matters; it would most likely make you question their competence in both areas.

 One Niche at a Time

The proactive approach is to choose a niche and go down the line piercing through that market. The top 1% in all categories go deep, rookies go wide. The big fear everyone has is that they will miss opportunities that fall outside their market so I am often asked, “what if this additional business outside my niche finds me, while I’m hunting for the business that falls in my niche?” I will double down and caution you that anything outside your expertise requires you to learn which requires more of your time and that time is expensive. Getting involved in markets that are outside your wheelhouse will require you to move much slower and this extra time will cost you more revenue in comparison to sticking to your niche. Obviously, in some cases it may be irresponsible for you to turn away business so in those cases do what you must. However, throughout the process, think about what it will cost you in time to actually get the business and deliver the best possible product/service flawlessly. Anything less will cost you.

 The good news is that once you have dominated your market there are many different markets to expand into. You can go one-by-one, dominating each space until you have officially conquered the world. However, until you have dominated one market, it would not make sense to waste the effort just being a drop in another bucket. You can now see how each effort can compound the effects if you build on and use all of the previous efforts before you. Each case study, testimonial, reference, or industry award can be used to further dominate more of that specific market. Social proof mounts until everyone as the leader in that space recognizes you. In a world full of generalists, you will be a specialist. In addition, just like outdated methods of mass marketing, your competitors will still be using the antiquated approach of mass appeal, never appealing to anyone.

 Get Help Narrowing Your Focus

 If you’re having trouble deciding which path to go down, ask a friend, mentor, or advisor to follow an exercise that will help you find the answer. They should ask you questions like:

What is your first instinct?

Where are your biggest clients?

What industry do you have the most experience in?

What market needs your services the most?

What type of companies would you have the most impact on?

Why… why… why…

 Therefore, a good Consultant wants to make the world a better place by dramatically raising the bar to which businesses compete. A focus of ours is how businesses serve their customers.

By raising the standards to the level a customer is served, we can create a world where a business will only survive when they go beyond for their clients. We do have a large task because, in today’s environment, many companies are more concerned about their profits than focusing on their customer’s needs.

Melvin Feller Business Consultants in Texas and Oklahoma. Melvin Feller founded Melvin Feller Business Consultants  in the 1970s to help individuals and organizations achieve their specific Victory. Victory as defined by the individual or organization are achieving strategic objectives, exceeding goals, getting results or desired outcomes. He has extensive experience assisting businesses achieve top and bottom line results. He has broad practical experience creating WINNERS in many organizations and industries. He has hands-on experience in executive leadership, operations, logistics, sales, program management, organizational development, training, and customer service. He has coached teams to achieve results in strategic planning, business development, organizational design, sales, and customer response and business process improvement. He has prepared and presented many workshops nationally and internationally.

[newstfionline]

Headlines

The new ‘get out’ push (NYT) When the coronavirus lockdowns began almost two months ago, the outdoors seemed like a scary place. As more virus research has emerged, however, the outdoors has begun to look safer. One study of 1,245 coronavirus cases across China found that only two came from outdoors transmission. Beside the research, something else has also begun to make outdoors seem more attractive. People have started to go stir crazy. This combination is leading to a surge of new expert advice that might be boiled down to: Get out. Be careful about getting close to other people or touching surfaces. But experts are arguing that it’s time to think about how to move more activities outdoors—including socializing, eating, shopping, attending school and holding work meetings. Marty Makary of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health put it this way, “The outdoors is not only good for your mental state. It’s also a safer place than indoors.”

An economic hit ‘without modern precedent’ (NYT) The Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, delivered a stark warning on Wednesday that the United States was experiencing an economic hit “without modern precedent,” one that could permanently damage the economy if Congress and the White House did not provide sufficient financial support to prevent a wave of bankruptcies and prolonged joblessness. Mr. Powell’s blunt diagnosis was the latest indication that the trillions of dollars that policymakers have already funneled into the economy may not be enough to forestall lasting damage from a virus that has already shuttered businesses and thrown more than 20 million people out of work.

Empty streets, no pedestrian deaths in New York (Foreign Policy) As one of the jurisdictions worst affected by the coronavirus pandemic globally, the city of New York has had more than its fair share of bad news over the past few weeks. Lockdown measures have produced one sliver of good news though: New York has not had a single pedestrian death for the longest period since 1983 (when records began). Polly Trottenberg, the New York City transportation commissioner, said the city has now gone 58 days without a pedestrian dying from being struck by a vehicle. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is looking to make the empty streets that have produced this statistic permanent, with a plan to free up 100 miles of New York city’s roadways to bicycles and pedestrians to create space for social distancing in the cramped city. The move follows a trend of cities increasing space for bicycles and pedestrians already announced in Berlin, Paris, and London.

Think we have military primacy over China? Think again. (Washington Post) Here’s a fact that ought to startle every American who assumes that because we spend nearly $1 trillion each year on defense, we have primacy over our emerging rival, China. “Over the past decade, in U.S. war games against China, the United States has a nearly perfect record: We have lost almost every single time.” That’s a quote from a new book called “The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare,” the most provocative critique of U.S. defense policy I’ve read in years. It’s written by Christian Brose, former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a close adviser to late senator John McCain (R-Ariz.). The book isn’t just a wake-up call, it’s a fire alarm in the night. Brose explains a terrible truth about war with China: Our spy and communications satellites would immediately be disabled; our forward bases in Guam and Japan would be “inundated” by precise missiles; our aircraft carriers would have to sail away from China to escape attack; our F-35 fighter jets couldn’t reach their targets because the refueling tankers they need would be shot down. “Many U.S. forces would be rendered deaf, dumb and blind,” writes Brose. We have been so busy buffing our legacy systems that, as Brose writes, “the United States got ambushed by the future.”

Mexico to start reopening border region as coronavirus lockdown eases (Washington Post) The government says it will lift a quarantine for hundreds of counties starting May 18 and will begin to gradually reopen the rest of the nation June 1 as it seeks to emerge from the pandemic.

Colombia Militarizes Brazil Border Amid Jump in Virus Cases (Bloomberg) Colombia is increasing its military presence along the border with Brazil to head off the spread of new coronavirus cases as infections and deaths rise in Amazonas province, President Ivan Duque announced. “We’ve decided to militarize all border points,” Duque said Tuesday evening. The military will have “greater presence and exercise respective control to prevent imported cases” from arriving. The government also announced more funds for the local health system to help it cope with the spike in infections. With Brazil fast-emerging as the new global hot spot for the coronavirus pandemic, neighboring nations have grown increasingly concerned that the loose approach by Latin America’s largest country poses a risk to their capacity to contain the virus, even with shuttered borders. Paraguay President Abdo Benitez warned last week that the situation in Brazil threatens his country’s containment measures as well, leading him to increase military presence along the border. The Uruguayan government also voiced concern, saying the country will increase monitoring of border crossings to reduce the risk of the coronavirus spreading from Brazil.

‘Total’ lockdown for Chile capital after virus spike (AFP) Chile’s government ordered a mandatory total quarantine for the capital Santiago on Wednesday after a 60 percent spike in coronavirus infections in the previous 24 hours. “The most severe measure I must announce is a total quarantine in Greater Santiago,” home to 80 percent of the country’s 34,000-plus infections, Health Minister Jaime Manalich said. Chile had until now opted for a selective quarantine strategy in dealing with the pandemic, limiting the measures to areas with high incidence of infection.

Thinking outside the pub (Reuters) Britain’s pubs may be shut, but one east London brewer has found a novel way to keep the beer flowing—by packing his kegs into a van and pulling pints on people’s doorsteps. Driving a white van with the slogan “tactical beer response unit” on the side, Peter Brown, the director of Forest Road Brewing, spends his day fulfilling delivery orders.

Russians running out of money (Bloomberg) Russians are running out of money after six weeks of lockdown and minimal government support, adding to pressure that pushed President Vladimir Putin to start reopening the economy even as the infection total surges to the second-highest in the world. Almost half of Russians have either no savings or just enough to cover them for the next four weeks, a survey by Moscow’s Centre for Strategic Research published this week showed. About a quarter of the population has had to spend reserves since the start of the lockdown to cover a drop in income, according to the central bank. “The situation with incomes has become pretty dreadful,” said Dmitry Dolgin, an economist at ING Bank in Moscow. “Pressure will increase either to ease the lockdown or ease fiscal policy.”

China Suspends Australian Meat Imports (Foreign Policy) China has suspended imports from four major Australian meat firms, escalating a quarrel between the two countries over the origins of the novel coronavirus. Speaking at a press conference, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian said the suspension was not connected to the dispute but was instead a matter of regulation—and then went on to issue further economic threats against Australia. The warnings are backed up by increasingly belligerent editorials in state media. The dispute began with the Australian government’s call for an independent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus. China has reacted strongly against allowing a transparent, multilateral probe in Wuhan and acted to impede Chinese investigators. That could be a sign that there’s something to hide—whether sloppy regulation of the wildlife trade or even a biosafety accident. But Beijing’s reaction may also be a byproduct of a paranoid system. China has a track record of using trade measures to punish countries that challenge its ideological demands, such as its suspension of salmon imports from Norway after the Nobel Peace Prize—administered by a committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament—was awarded in 2010 to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. The next step may be to foment boycotts against Australian firms, as was done to South Korean companies over the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system.

Chinese Threats against Taiwan (Foreign Policy) Taiwan has been taking advantage of its success against the coronavirus to highlight its exclusion from the World Health Organization and push for a bigger place on the international stage. Perhaps unsurprisingly, China has responded with both rhetorical threats and military provocations, according to a U.S. congressional report. But such saber-rattling is unlikely to lead to invasion given the scale of the pandemic challenges Beijing faces at home. In Hong Kong, however, the government is doubling down on repression—with a new law that criminalizes booing China’s national anthem high on the agenda.

Typhoon Vongfong churns toward the Philippines (Washington Post) Typhoon Vongfong is the first named storm of the 2020 West Pacific typhoon season, but it already has the makings of a potentially significant storm. The Philippines is bracing for a close shave or direct hit later this week as the intensifying system churns ominously closer to the archipelago. The JTWC expects Typhoon Vongfong to continue at Category 3 strength by Thursday afternoon or evening local time. During this time frame, Vongfong should track northwest, skimming the Philippines’ eastern Visayas and the Bicol region. That probably means a very close shave of the western eyewall on the eastern shores of the island of Samar, where winds ranging from tropical storm to hurricane force and a storm surge of several feet are likely.

Niger says 75 Boko Haram fighters killed (Foreign Policy) Niger’s defense ministry said it had killed 75 Boko Haram insurgents during operations conducted earlier in the week in the border region between Niger, Nigeria, and Chad. Niger’s military said the assault was in retaliation for Boko Haram attacks on military positions near the town of Diffa in the country’s southeast. On Tuesday, Babar Baloch, a spokesperson for the United Nations’ Refugee Agency, said that violence across the border in Nigeria had forced 23,000 refugees to flee to Niger in April alone. It brings the total number of Nigerians taking refuge in Niger to over 60,000.

Limits of the ‘aristocracy of the wise’ (Worldcrunch) Whether or not they were looking for it, the COVID-19 crisis has given epidemiologists bonafide public power. “At this point, if Drosten says it is too early, that carries as much weight as Merkel saying it,” quipped German economist Marcel Fratzscher about his country’s top epidemiologist Christian Drosten and top politician Angela Merkel. There is no doubt that the pandemic, epidemiologists, virologists and medical professionals worldwide have stepped into the muddy terrain of national politics. Though the public may not understand every technical detail epidemiologists offer on TV or at press conferences, there’s a certain comfort in listening to the scientists who have spent their lives studying the kinds of epidemics that now occupy our minds, if not lives. Still, as Kenyan economist David Ndii pointed out on Twitter, the current rise of the “epistocracy”—the aristocracy of the wise—should be watched with caution. Although doctors may be adept at curing our bodies and understanding the dynamics of pathogens, they have far less experience managing people and guiding societies.

[and-then-there-were-n0ne]

Hello, everyone… How many fascists are there in the audience today? Well, it’s a bit difficult to say, because we’ve forgotten what fascism is. People now use the term “fascist” as a kind of general-purpose abuse. Or they confuse fascism with nationalism. So let’s take a few minutes to clarify what fascism actually is, and how it is different from nationalism.

So what is fascism, and how is it different from nationalism? Well, nationalism tells me that my nation is unique, and that I have special obligations towards my nation. fascism, in contrast, tells me that my nation is supreme, and that i have exclusive obligations towards it. I don’t need to care about anybody or anything other than my nation. Usually, of course, people have many identities and loyalties to different groups. For example, I can be a good patriot, loyal to my country, and at the same time, be loyal to my family, my neighborhood, my profession, humankind as a whole, truth and beauty. Of course, when I have different identities and loyalties,it sometimes creates conflicts and complications. Fascism is what happens when people try to ignore the complications and to make life too easy for themselves. Fascism denies all identities except the national identity and insists that i have obligations only towards my nation. If my nation demands that I sacrifice my family, then I will sacrifice my family. If the nation demands that I kill millions of people, then I will kill millions of people. And if my nation demands that I betray truth and beauty, then I should betray truth and beauty. For example, how does a fascist evaluate art? How does a fascist decide whether a movie is a good movie or a bad movie? Well, it’s very, very, very simple. There is really just one yardstick: if the movie serves the interests of the nation, it’s a good movie; if the movie doesn’t serve the interests of the nation, it’s a bad movie. That’s it. Similarly, how does a fascist decide what to teach kids in school? Again, it’s very simple. There is just one yardstick: you teach the kids whatever serves the interests of the nation. The truth doesn’t matter at all.

now, the horrors of the second world war and of the holocaust remind us of the terrible consequences of this way of thinking. but usually, when we talk about the ills of fascism, we do so in an ineffective way, because we tend to depict fascism as a hideous monster, without really explaining what was so seductive about it. it’s a bit like these hollywood movies that depict the bad guys –voldemort or sauron or darth vader – as ugly and mean and cruel. they’re cruel even to their own supporters. when i see these movies, i never understand – why would anybody be tempted to follow a disgusting creep like voldemort? the problem with evil is that in real life, evil doesn’t necessarily look ugly. it can look very beautiful. this is something that christianity knew very well, which is why in christian art, as [opposed to] hollywood, satan is usually depicted as a gorgeous hunk. this is why it’s so difficult to resist the temptations of satan, and why it is also difficult to resist the temptations of fascism.

Fascism makes people see themselves as belonging to the most beautiful and most important thing in the world –the nation. And then people think,“Well, they taught us that fascism is ugly. But when I look in the mirror, I see something very beautiful,so I can’t be a fascist, right?” Wrong. That’s the problem with fascism. When you look in the fascist mirror,you see yourself as far more beautiful than you really are. In the 1930s, when Germans looked in the fascist mirror,they saw Germany as the most beautiful thing in the world. If today, Russians look in the fascist mirror,they will see Russia as the most beautiful thing in the world. And if Israelis look in the fascist mirror,they will see Israel as the most beautiful thing in the world.

this does not mean that we are now facing a rerun of the 1930s. fascism and dictatorships might come back, but they will come back in a new form, a form which is much more relevant to the new technological realities of the 21st century.

in ancient times, land was the most important asset in the world. politics, therefore, was the struggle to control land. and dictatorship meant that all the land was owned by a single ruler or by a small oligarchy.

and in the modern age, machines became more important than land. politics became the struggle to control the machines. and dictatorship meant that too many of the machines became concentrated in the hands of the government or of a small elite.

now data is replacing both land and machines as the most important asset. politics becomes the struggle to control the flows of data. and dictatorship now means that too much data is being concentrated in the hands of the government or of a small elite.

The greatest danger that now faces liberal democracy is that the revolution in information technology will make dictatorships more efficient than democracies.

in the 20th century, democracy and capitalism defeated fascism and communism because democracy was better at processing data and making decisions. given 20th-century technology, it was simply inefficient to try and concentrate too much data and too much power in one place. but it is not a law of nature that centralized data processing is always less efficient than distributed data processing. with the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning, it might become feasible to process enormous amounts of information very efficiently in one place, to take all the decisions in one place, and then centralized data processing will be more efficient than distributed data processing.

And then the main handicap of authoritarian regimes in the 20th century – their attempt to concentrate all the information in one place – it will become their greatest advantage.

Another technological danger that threatens the future of democracy is the merger of information technology with biotechnology, which might result in the creation of algorithms that know me better than I know myself. And once you have such algorithms, an external system, like the government, cannot just predict my decisions, it can also manipulate my feelings, my emotions. A dictator may not be able to provide me with good health care, but he will be able to make me love him and to make me hate the opposition. Democracy will find it difficult to survive such a development because, in the end, democracy is not based on human rationality; it’s based on human feelings. During elections and referendums,you’re not being asked, “What do you think?” You’re actually being asked, “How do you feel?” And if somebody can manipulate your emotions effectively, democracy will become an emotional puppet show.

So what can we do to prevent the return of fascism and the rise of new dictatorships? the number one question that we face is: who controls the data?

If you are an engineer, then find ways to prevent too much data from being concentrated in too few hands.And find ways to make sure the distributed data processing is at least as efficient as centralized data processing.This will be the best safeguard for democracy. As for the rest of us who are not engineers, the number one question facing us is how not to allow ourselves to be manipulated by those who control the data. The enemies of liberal democracy, they have a method. They hack our feelings. Not our emails, not our bank accounts – they hack our feelings of fear and hate and vanity,and then use these feelings to polarize and destroy democracy from within. This is actually a method that Silicon Valley pioneered in order to sell us products. But now, the enemies of democracy are using this very method to sell us fear and hate and vanity. They cannot create these feelings out of nothing. So they get to know our own preexisting weaknesses. And then use them against us. And it is therefore the responsibility of all of us to get to know our weaknesses and make sure that they do not become a weapon in the hands of the enemies of democracy.

Chris Anderson: Yuval, thank you.Goodness me. It’s so nice to see you again. So, if I understand you right,you’re alerting us to two big dangers here. One is the possible resurgence of a seductive form of fascism, but close to that, dictatorships that may not exactly be fascistic, but control all the data. I wonder if there’s a third concern that some people here have already expressed, which is where, not governments, but big corporations control all our data. What do you call that,and how worried should we be about that?

Yuval Noah Harari: well, in the end, there isn’t such a big difference between the corporations and the governments, because, as i said, the questions is: who controls the data? this is the real government. if you call it a corporation or a government – if it’s a corporation and it really controls the data, this is our real government. so the difference is more apparent than real.

CA: But somehow, at least with corporations, you can imagine market mechanisms where they can be taken down. I mean, if consumers just decide that the company is no longer operating in their interest,it does open the door to another market. It seems easier to imagine that than, say, citizens rising up and taking down a government that is in control of everything.

YNH: Well, we are not there yet, but again, if a corporation really knows you better than you know yourself –at least that it can manipulate your own deepest emotions and desires,and you won’t even realize –you will think this is your authentic self. So in theory, yes, in theory, you can rise against a corporation, just as, in theory, you can rise against a dictatorship. But in practice, it is extremely difficult.

[lewishamledger]

A safe space

 WORDS BY COLIN RICHARDSON

 Homelessness has been steadily increasing over the past 10 years. Last year, homelessness charity Shelter estimated the number of homeless people in Britain to be 320,000 – and that, they said, was likely to be an underestimate.

 According to the government’s own figures, the number of rough sleepers in England increased more than two-and-a-half times (165%) between 2010 and 2018, rising from 1,768 to 4,677. London accounts for more than a quarter of all rough sleepers. In just one year, between 2017 and 2018, the number of people sleeping rough in the capital rose by 13% – that’s an additional 146 people.

 Lewisham is one of the hardest hit parts of the country. By Shelter’s estimation, the borough has the 12th highest rate of homelessness in England. One in 45 local people are homeless: 6,695 in temporary accommodation and 22 sleeping rough.

 The government finally got round to taking action last year, pledging to end rough sleeping by 2027 and committing £1.2 billion to tackling homelessness. New legislation places new duties on cash-strapped local authorities to relieve and prevent homelessness.

 The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has ramped up the Life off the Streets programme he launched last winter in a bid to end rough sleeping, and he is investing £1 billion to build 11,000 more council houses. These and other initiatives are of course welcome, but most will take time to show results. Meanwhile, there’s work to be done.

 Behind an unassuming shop-front on Deptford Broadway, a small charity is working flat out to help Lewisham’s homeless people. The 999 Club was set up in 1992 as a general purpose community charity, but over the years it has shifted its focus to homelessness. It runs a wide range of services, including a day centre, health and wellbeing support, learning opportunities, help with finding a job and, perhaps most important of all, a night shelter, the only one of its kind in south-east London.

 Tim Fallon has been CEO of the 999 Club since June 2017. “We see about 1,000 different individuals a year,” he says. “Our day centre – the Gateway – is open five days a week and gets quite busy. We can get 40 to 50 people in during the day.

 “The night shelter has a capacity of 25, and currently we have 22 or 23 people staying with us each night. So we’re not quite at capacity, but it means we can accommodate someone in an emergency and we don’t have to turn people away.”

 The night shelter is not just a bed for the night. The people who come to stay often have nothing. “We provide food and clothing, showers and all that kind of very basic stuff,” says Tim. “And then, if they haven’t got any ID, we get them ID; if they need to make a benefits claim, we help them do that.”

 People can stay for up to 28 days. “We hope we can get people rehoused in that period,” says Tim, “so we run a rapid rehousing service. As soon as people move in with us, we’re trying to work with them to find move on accommodation. If they haven’t managed to find accommodation within 28 days, we then have a discussion with them about whether to extend their stay. One of the things we don’t want to do is make the accommodation permanent, so it’s emphasised that it’s temporary because we don’t want this to be your home, it isn’t a home.”

 As well as rough sleepers, the 999 Club sees a lot of people who are, in Tim’s words, “on the edge of homelessness. They might be sofasurfing, or they spend a couple of nights staying in a hostel or staying with a friend, but they’re on the edges of safety and if they’re not careful they’re going to end up on the streets.

 “One of the things we’ve seen happening over the last few years is that we’re getting more and more young people referred to us, who have become homeless for the first time. These are 18 and 19 year olds, who have never been in a hostel before and who never thought it would happen to them. They never thought they’d be using this kind of service, and it’s quite a shock to them.”

 And of course, the 999 Club sees people with alcohol and drug addiction, with physical and mental ill-health. “We have a GP practice that we use,” says Tim, “and they accept referrals for and registrations from homeless people. They run a surgery here in the day centre – a GP comes in and a practice nurse and a mental health practitioner.”

 The 999 Club supports people with alcohol and drug problems, but drugs are not tolerated in the night shelter. “People do take drugs of all sorts outside,” says Tim, “but you’re not allowed to take any drugs on the premises. If we see any evidence of that or we suspect it’s being done, then you will be asked to leave.

 “We can take people who have a history of drinking, but if their drinking is very chaotic, such that they’re drinking all the time, including in the night shelter, we might not be able to take them. We try really hard not to turn anybody away but if someone’s behaviour is very chaotic, or they’re violent or very abusive, those are the things that would stop us taking somebody. But we try to be as tolerant and as accepting as we possibly can.”

 Between a fifth and a quarter of the 999 Club’s users are women. “We try to avoid this being a male-dominated environment, where women feel intimidated or don’t feel safe,” says Tim. “We’ve tried different ways to encourage women to use our services, and we bid for a women-specific service a few months ago, but it’s quite hard to change the percentages.”

 Last year the government put some funding into the 999 Club’s night shelter. But the money runs out at the end of March 2020 and unless replacement funding is found, the shelter may have to close.

 “I’m not sure most of the public appreciate that the work we do isn’t funded through the government or local authority,” says Tim. “So fundraising is a constant struggle for us. We’ve got about 15 staff, it’s not like we’re a huge organisation, but it costs just under £800,000 a year to run our services.”

 The 999 Club is simply indispensable, and it needs your help. Volunteers play a vital role in keeping the organisation afloat, so even if you can only give two or three hours a week, you won’t be refused. Donations of money or old clothes are always welcome. Or you could organise a fundraising event at work. There are many more ideas on the website.

 Homelessness is very largely preventable. But it requires big changes: more social housing, more protection for private tenants and measures to rein-in rent increases, the overhaul of a benefits system that doesn’t even cover basic housing costs, and a determination to tackle poverty and inequality.

 And so, for the foreseeable, it’s mostly down to us.

 Homelessness is a year-round concern. But winter is a particularly terrible time for people who are sleeping rough. If you see anyone you think may be living on the street, one way to help is by raising an alert via the Streetlink website or app. Your report will ensure that a local outreach team will visit the person concerned to see what help they need. Streetlink can only help rough sleepers aged 18 or over. If you see someone under 18 living on the street, you should alert the police. For more information, please visit 999club.org and streetlink.org.uk

[garyh2628]

GLOBAL LEGAL AUTHORITY ON INVESTMENTS AND LIVING YOUR BEST LIFE. GLOBAL LEGAL OWNER OF OUR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND CAPITAL.  PRESIDENT AND CEO- OFFICE OF SIGNATURE AND STAMPS AND APPROVAL.

PERSONAL PRIVATE WEALTH FUND. PRESIDENT OF THE PRESTIGIOUS CLUB. The Family, The Network, The Team and The Family Sector.  The Producers Group.  Definitions can and will only come me through my Office when it is ready. Portfolio Responsible for the Economy and Investment and Living your Best life. Our mission is to develop Standards that bring transparency, accountability and efficiency to this process and for the rapid implementation of our Global Mandate around the world. Our work serves to hasten this process for engagement with me for approval and ratification in order to fostering trust, growth and long-term financial stability in the global structure economy.‬

 To my Pharma Hubs, Technology Hubs, Social Creative/Personal Hub, My Private Hubs, My Financial Hubs and my Health and Wellbeing/Scientific Hubs, Legal and Innovation Hubs, Hinterland Hub and to my Eastern Caribbean Hub, Linguistic/Psychology Hub, to my beloved additions and to my Institutions and Partners and Team, Pool of Potential Personal Assistants and Private Secretaries and Business Managers and also to my Fitness Hub which is an extension of my Health and Wellbeing Hub and not to forget my beloved Brooklyn Hub and my Wine/Adviser Hub, Influential Legal Cashier, Strategic Partnerships, STATEMENT OF INTENT, MY WEALTH FUND AND PERSONAL ATTORNEY and PROPERTY EXPERT GUY and THE ATTACHMENT AND MY PERSONAL BOARDROOM AND MY CHIEF STRATEGY AND INNOVATION OFFICER. The core founding support regions of this Network and Global Structure. MY FAVOURITE CEO.

A Special Note:

Those of you who including my Private CEOs who are part of my signature suite and part of my Personal Private Life and will be taking part in my private value sessions as I prepare for work, we are on the cusp of delivering for imminent engagements and strategy and my approval.  Your best days are ahead of you.  Let's stay focused across the Globe and continue to contribute to this process and defeat delays.  I’m looking forward to welcoming you to my Private Official Residence for drinks, discussions, update, reporting etc imminently.

  GLOBAL LEGAL AUTHORITY ON INVESTMENTS, CONTRACT, PEOPLE AND FINANCE  AND LIVING YOUR BEST LIFE

STRONG GROWTH DRIVES AWAY THE SHADOW OF HISTORY

Intellect and true love  share many of the same qualities, indestructible, pure and beautiful to behold. Our Intellect is of a natural producing type and we intend to keep it that way.  I love you, I love you, I love!  I love you more.  Truth to Tell, Tell it First, Tell it like it is.  Family is of utmost importance.

 Our Strategy on WINE AND COCKTAILS is formidable but not only formidable, its Intellectually built and is designed to facilitate a process of always being your best self and the authority on Intellect and earthquake proof.  It is a bit of an understatement to say we have time to lose.  Many of you were given a very restricted and impoverished vision of the future, I am here to let you know that we are not part of that party, this Global structure is tipping over financially and the transition to payroll will be imminent. Riding High.  I’m pleased that as a result of this process, provisions will be made for regions in this world who credited me for putting them on the map. I’m looking forward to my private working stint before Intellectual Carnival as I prepare to take the reigns of an important global Position in addition to my duties with the Global structure.  I’m very pleased to know preparation is underway.  In case you overlooked the unmissable the Global Structure and me and our Global Monetary Footprints and Mandate  has become the surprise star of the Global Sector and those emerging Sectors and the Foundation Sector. We do not have time to lose, and although this process is more resilient than previously, I’m pleased that that the imminent meetings of progress with my CEOs, General Counsels, long time Financial Institution and my Investors Council and Advisers are on scheduled.   The scale of the challenge facing them is now clear, and the scale of the Global Structure saturation is also now clear.  Their activities are three fold :

How to slow the rate of change and the progress being made across the Globe for Incorporation.

How to minimise the coherence and formidability and tranquility of the groups and the Global Mandate as new Technology

How can they preserve failure that they grew so accustomed to. 

 “The problem is that they have no plans for those people other than staying in the news,” says a community participant Investor and CEO.  No one had touched it previously, it was in a terrible shape, now thanks to Gary, The Global Structure and the Global Mandate it is now a lovely rich and thriving Sector, a growing Brand and groupings and the same is forecasted to happen across the Globe after meetings for strategy and Incorporation.”  We believe strongly in the Welfare of the employees of the Global Structure and it is for those reasons that this process will be moving to payroll immediately after my meetings for strategy.  The attention being lavished on our personal private lives are meant to overshadow the influence that me and this Global Mandate so successful and why it is going to be more successful as New Technology on implementation and incorporation.  That is my eye opening prowess in this Sector and this Industry and in the Foundation of the Mandate and for business. It was me, calm, modest and analytical, who over the years transform an obscure idea and process in a formidable colossus.  Each story in these narrative illustrate one corner of the making of a vast Corporate Empire and the forecast are stunning.  I would like to say a big thanks to my addition and a partner in this process.  I’m looking forward to welcoming you to the Official Residence of the Global Structure for discussions immediately imminent after my meetings for Strategy.   For those public capacities, I’m looking forward to our meetings for strategy immediately imminent for work on the plans to tackle those issues for value and further responsibility and which will be part of the extrapolation of our Intellectual Property. 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Our work serves to hasten this process for engagement with me for approval and ratification in order to fostering trust, growth and long-term financial stability in the global structure economy. Let’s show up for school and continue to answer the call of intellectual greatness that is the Global Mandate and the Global Mandate as new Technology while at the same time defeating the present and historical calls of mediocrity and gimmicks and irrelevance. They have been comprehensively defeated across the globe.‬ I’m pleased you understand it’s a new thing and I’m looking forward to us implementing this asd new Technology across the Globe.  I’m very pleased that your current self is disgusted with your previous self because you experience first hand the benefits that will be brought to fruition across the Global Landscape after incorporation of this Global Structure. I’m pleased that across the Globe the groups and groupings and the community is very jubilant about this process and for our Global Monetary Footprints and for incorporation and for value sessions and more so for Intellect and the Global Structure Promise.  We’ve got it right and we are the Gold Standard and as such in every Country across the Globe those local offices and local groupings are working assiduously in anticipation of incorporation and my looming strategic tour especially those located in those important strategic places that are pivotal to me personally.  This is a big gigantic thing and I’m pleased that it is being treated that way across the Globe and to that end we are accelerating immediate imminent engagement for planning to begin and approvals and ratification to be completed by me.  Those attempts to push for a delay in an attempt for intrusion of privacy and to prevent those who needed help the most from getting because of personal biases will be defeated across the Globe.  The full Global reporting of the Property Portfolios and Brands and the Halls of Residence will be reporting to me very soon; immediately imminent.  The days when the help you seek for the advancement of intellect and living your best life, is approached from those negative perception and from the standpoint of a punitive focus, will soon be history. The Global Structure Promise will be available from the smallest to the greatest.  I’m looking forward to my Arnhem discussions and my private intellectual focus time in Germany.   GLOBAL LEGAL AUTHORITY ON INVESTMENTS AND LIVING YOUR BEST LIFE. GLOBAL LEGAL OWNER OF OUR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND CAPITAL.  PRESIDENT AND CEO- OFFICE OF SIGNATURE AND STAMPS AND APPROVAL. 

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What is the history of perfume development?

>>>>>> Before the 11th century: the history of ancient perfumes and perfumes is as old as the history of human beings. No one can determine how the perfume originated. The history of annihilation has become difficult to verify with the passage of time. Scholars can only speculate on the mysterious origin of perfume through fragmentary historical fragments. It is found through records that perfume was first used to worship the gods. It represents sacred and inviolable, so ordinary people cannot use it. In the Stone Age, people learned how to use fire, they thought that after the object was burned, it was emitted.

Smoke is the connection between the gods and the earth. Perfume, the English word for perfume, originated in the Latin Perfumum, meaning "through smoke." Even now, incense has played an important role in many religions.

Roles, such as Buddhism in our country, Taoism. The ancient emperors were burned every time they sacrificed. They believed that the smog of the sky was the way to communicate with the gods. Ancient Egyptian perfume history The ancient Egyptians were the first to use perfume for personal enjoyment. In the beginning, perfumes were only allowed to be used by pastors, and only pastors could participate in the process of making perfumes, so many temples had special perfume laboratories.

Later, the Egyptian kings and queens began to enjoy the perfume. When they died, people would make their bodies into mummies and wrap them with myrrh, cinnamon-made spices. For a long time after that, only

A prominent person is eligible to use perfume to decorate their mausoleum. In 1992, when archaeologists opened the pyramids of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen, he discovered him.

The mummies, and a number of oil pots for storing essential oils were found around them. In the 40th century BC, during the reign of the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra VII, the use of perfume reached an unprecedented climax. When her regime began to disintegrate, she relied on beauty and used a lot of perfume to lure the Roman Emperor, Julius Caesar.

Caesar) and made their help in the military. When she died, Egypt’s enthusiasm for perfumes also came to an end.

Ancient Greek perfume historical perfume

He was taken to Greece by the Phoenicians. Greece controlled trade in the Mediterranean region after Egypt lost its dominant power. At that time, there were a large number of female perfumers in Greece who improved the perfume manufacturing technology in Egypt. Ancient Greek nationals consume large amounts of perfume every year and have the habit of using different perfumes in different parts of the body. At that time, the Athens politician, the legislator, Solon, believed that the use of perfumes by the nationals was rampant and legislation prohibited the free sale of perfumes. But he did not succeed, perfume is still the most popular product. Because of the love of jasmine at that time, Jasmine was also established as the national flower of Greece.

Ancient Roman perfume history

To the influence of the Central and Eastern regions and Greece, the Romans also began to indulge in perfume. In the early days, the Roman Empire only allowed perfumes on two occasions – religious activities and the funeral of prominent people. During the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero

The use of perfume has reached a feverish stage. When Nero's most beloved pope dies, he uses more incense than the Arab one. The Romans exquisitely crafted perfumes and used incense

Water is completely unrestrained. They will spray perfume on the floor, on the wall, and even use perfume on their horses and dogs. At some banquets in the upper class, even the perfume fountain will be seen.

Ancient Arab perfume history

The rise of Christianity has greatly inhibited the use of perfume. Not only has the daily use been greatly reduced, but even the original religious practices have been affected. Christianity believes that perfume is a product that has no practical use. However, the Arabs are guaranteed

Hold the habit of using perfume. The believers of the founder of Islam, Mohammed, love the smell of musk, rose and amber. They even mix these spices with the cement used to build the palace, giving the palace a strong, long-lasting scent. One of the most important inventions in the history of perfume originated in the 10th century, the invention of the distiller made the perfume manufacturing process - distillation method greatly improved. Since then, a large area of ​​land in Persia has been used to grow roses, which are transported to Baghdad in Arabia for the purpose of refining rose oil, and Baghdad has become a “fragrance capital”. In the 12th century, when Arabs discovered that the essence was dissolved in alcohol, the fragrance could be slowly released, and some of the concentrated essence was better preserved by alcohol.

11th-16th century:

Leather gloves and the black death The demise of the Roman Empire, the aggression of the barbarian tribe, and the endless wars made the European countries enter a period of dark history, and the perfume lost its original status. This situation was not changed until the resurgence of trade in the 12th century. Due to the rise of the university, the perfection of alchemy, and the distillation method passed down by the Arabs, the manufacturing process of perfume has been greatly improved. Incense and myrrh remain the most commonly used spices for religious activities. At some religious ceremonies, people use small brushes to spray perfume on clothing or walls.

The origin of leather gloves

In 1268, the leather glove industry in Grasse, France, developed rapidly and exported finished products to other countries. Since the leather manufacturing process requires the use of industrial waste containing nitrogen, the finished product has an unpleasant odor, so it is necessary to add essential oils such as lavender, rosemary, and sage to deodorize. In addition to the traditional distillation method, Grasse also invented the Enfleurage for extracting essential oils. Therefore, the creation of spices in leather gloves is of great significance to Grasse, and even the development of the entire French perfume industry.

Venice, Italy was the world's largest perfume trade city at the time. There was a huge spice market in the city, and a lot of spices from the Far East were traded every day. The journey of Marco Polo led to the introduction of pepper, nutmeg and clove oil in Italy. The Arab sailors brought a variety of spices from the East Indies and Ceylon. Even Asian merchants brought spices from Malaysia and China. An Italian official discovered the natural environment in which Grasse was suitable for growing spices, as well as the local essential oil extraction method, which was stationed in Grasse to provide spices for the Italian court.

Black Death and Perfume Black Death

It broke out in 1348 and lasted for about 400 years. It did not disappear until 1679. During this period, it was a terrible dark world for Europeans. About one-third of people in Europe die from the Black Death. Since the doctor at the time thought that the Black Death was transmitted through the air, it was recommended to wear thick clothes to prevent the air from coming into contact with the skin as the first line of defense. The second line of defense is that you can't take a bath, so the dirt on your body can plug the pores. It sounds ridiculous now, but this misperception was not lifted until the 19th century, and Europeans did not take a bath during the 500 years. King Louis of France only took two baths in a year. The 18th century travel guide has documented that half of the population in Paris has never been bathed in a lifetime, and the problem is very serious. People found that when the Black Death was raging, the people who made the perfume did not seem to have been sick. In the 17th century, there was a small town in the UK called Berklesberg, a trading center for lavender. Because the Black Death is transmitted by fleas, and lavender has a natural deworming effect, no one in the town suffers from the Black Death, so no one in the town suffers from the Black Death.

The novel spice preservation vessel was born in that era, called the "fragrance box", which is used to preserve musk, amber, rosin, lavender and other essential oils. On this iron-like vessel, there are small holes for the fragrance. The scent can drive away the Black Death and some other epidemics. These incense boxes have also created today's aromatherapy, which includes promoting digestion, increasing sexual desire and more.

In addition to the aromatherapy, the perfume can mask the smell. It includes the body odor caused by not taking a bath, and the stench of the urban environment. The urban drainage system in Europe benefited from the highly skilled ancient Romans, but with the decline of ancient Roman civilization, the urban health conditions of Europe as a whole fell rapidly to the original state until the 19th century. In the long years, European cities were filthy. Paris, a populous city, is a typical example. Parisians dumped streets and squares as dirt, waiting for them to be washed into the river by the rain. Residents in the building simply dumped the manure and garbage directly out of the window. The street often has a stream of manure and smog. All this makes Paris a “smelly capital”. Under the odor of the inside and outside of the attack, the French aristocracy and the upper class began to use a lot of perfumes, and the peripheral products such as sachets and powders also showed a steady growth.

The birth of a new fragrance In the second half of the 14th century, a new fragrance of alcohol and essential oil was born, which was called "toilet water". This is why the term perfume contains "water." Here is a story about the perfume of the Hungarian Queen. This folklore is that the Queen Elizabeth of Hungary was 70 years old and was in poor physical condition. One monk gave her a bottle of perfume. After the queen used the perfume, all the ailments were healed and regained her youth. Even the Polish king began to propose to her. Due to the discovery of the New World in the 15th century, Venice lost its original status. The volume of spices in Spain and Portugal has increased accordingly. The Netherlands is the fastest growing country in the process of perfumery. They not only get involved in international trade, but also protect their own spice industry and improve farming techniques. This has led to a significant increase in the production of perfumes in the Netherlands, and the perfume water produced by them has changed the characteristics of the previous fragrance, using a large number of mixed spices to make perfumes, including flowers, herbs, musk and amber. Perfume industrialization The industrialization of perfume began in the 16th century. At that time, the Italian princess Catherine de Medici came to Paris from Italy, married the French King Henry II of France and became the Queen of France. She brought the Italian fragrance and even fashion trends to France, and her royal perfumer Rene le Florentin also came to France and opened a perfume shop in Paris. For a time, the perfume gloves became the fashion must-have item for the ladies and grandfathers in Paris. Everyone started to love leather gloves soaked in perfume. The best perfume gloves come from Grasse, France, and the French city has also prospered because of the trade in perfume gloves. It is blessed with a natural environment and is especially suitable for growing a variety of spices, making it a great spice growing base. Today, like Chanel, Guerlain, a brand that pays special attention to perfume quality, has its own exclusive plantation in Grasse to cultivate a variety of precious spices. In the 17th century, the world perfume industry has achieved great success. People are crazy about perfumes, so that the problem of body odor caused by not taking a bath is no longer there. The glove industry was popular under the leadership of Louis XIII, and the glove chambers and perfume manufacturers were established. Then Louis XIV brought together a group of pharmacists, distillers, alchemists and chemists to monopolize the perfume industry. Jasmine, roses and many bulbous plants are used as fragrances to expand into the raw materials of perfumes, enriching the fragrance of perfumes. A wide variety of perfume bottles have also become enriched. The use of incense boxes is increasingly widespread and this habit has been retained until the end of the 18th century. Many pear-shaped clear glass bottles and crystal bottles are also in use. During the Baroque period, a group of quirky perfume bottle collectors emerged. >>>>>> 17th century-18th century: The rise of Cologne and Grasse, four thieves and perfume fans: the French Revolution and the world of philosophers and perfumes. The palace of Louis XV has a name called the perfumed palace (the perfumed Court). Because every day people spray perfume on fans, furniture and clothing. Even if the vinegar water disinfection function is better, people are still more inclined to rely on the deworming function of the perfume in the prevention of the Black Death. In 1720, the Black Death was once again raging, and the vinaigre des quatre voleurs was one of the magic perfumes that emerged at the time. The formula of the four thief vinegar came from the United Kingdom. At first, four thieves were created to prevent the family from being infected with the black plague. Later, the secret recipe was strictly kept secret, and only a few witches knew it. Due to the protection of the four thieves and vinegar, the four thieves robbed the dead's property without being infected. When they were arrested, they exchanged their personal freedom with the formula of four thief vinegar. The recipe for the four thief vinegars was made public the next day, which may be the reason why people can deworm at the time. The use of fans: From the 17th century until the rise of the sprinkler bottle in the second half of the 19th century, ventilators were often used to spray perfume. The material texture of the fan page is ideal for absorbing perfume, allowing the scent to remain on the fan for a considerable period of time. Moreover, the use of the fan is also very suitable for diverging the fragrance. Later, the appearance of the perfume nozzle replaced the use of the fan, and people no longer used the fan to spread the fragrance. The fan has also developed into a display tool in the perfume shop, which is equivalent to the test card of today's counter. The rise of cologne: The real revolution of perfume began in the 18th century. The process of world perfumes has been accelerated by the invention of Cologne (Eau de Cologne). This refreshing fragrance is a natural fragrance and alcohol, has no other toxic ingredients, and is therefore versatile. It can be used in baths, mouthwashes, mixed with red wine or sugar, or simply for use in addition to ordinary perfumes. disinfection The origin of cologne is a very controversial topic. If you discuss it in detail, you can write the thickness of a book. One of the interesting stories is about the struggle between the two families of Feminis and Farina. Emily of the Farina family invented a new fragrance that was originally named "Eau de Bologne". The most accepted version of the story originated in the 14th century. It is a nun of St. Mary's Monastery in Florence, Italy. The nun developed a bottle called "Ququa de Regina". This bottle of perfume was so famous in the 17th century that Giovanni Paolo, a member of the Philippine family, tried to inspire the convent of the convent to inquire about the recipe of the perfume. This Giovanni is a pharmacist in Cologne. He hopes to start the perfume business as soon as possible. The bottle was originally renamed "Eau Admirable" and was later renamed "Eau de Cologne" today. In 1766, the Philippine family invited them to expand their perfume business in Italy. In 1806, Jean Marie of the Farina family once hid her true identity in Paris as a perfumer. He is very talented for the fragrance, and the perfume sales are also very good. Later, he sold the cologne trademark to a company founded by Armand Roger and Charles Gallet, whose company Roger & Gallet manufactures high-quality perfumes and fragrances. The soap is still available today. In 1865, in Cologne alone, 39 perfume boutiques with cologne logos were found. Napoleon is the biggest consumer of cologne. He likes to bathe with cologne or mix it with sugar. He is said to use 5 kilograms of cologne every day. Another version of the story about cologne originated in Cologne City in 1792. At the wedding of William the son of the banker Murhens, a monk in the form of a sheepskin roll will be "extraordinary water (l’acqua The perfume formula of marabilis) was given to the couple. The couple officially sold the perfume after the wedding, and they named the perfume as 4711 cologne. Two centuries After that, the 4711 cologne was still on sale, and was responsible for Ferdinand, the descendant of the Murgens family, without interruption. The new look of perfume bottles: Since the beginning of the 18th century, different types of perfumes have been matched with different bottles. In France, the glass was popular in the perfume industry at the time because the Baccarat factory was dedicated to producing a wide range of glass perfume bottles. The glass factory in St. Louis has also played an important role in the development of perfume bottles, and crystal glass has been popular ever since. Some high-end perfume bottles are made of gold and silver and embellished with crystal and emerald. At that time, the design of the bottle was separated from the previous Baroque style, returning to nature, simple and fashionable, and was praised by Rousseau. At that time, a number of excellent porcelain perfume bottles emerged, usually decorated with gold and made into pear shape. Porcelain is usually sold by Germans, Austrians, and British people. Wedgwood invented the blue and white porcelain, which made it the first porcelain bottle in Europe. Judging from the bottle pattern of porcelain perfume bottles, most of them are flowers, fruits, wars and some oriental illustrations, showing the love of Rococo style at that time. There have even been humanoid perfume bottles, mainly used to depict comedy art. In the 18th century, the Toilet Bag was put into use. The bag contained a small bottle for different perfumes. The bag is versatile and can be used for toothbrushes, pencils, cotton swabs or funnels. City of Perfume – Grasse: The perfumers' preference for Grasse, France, made Grasse the world's largest spice production base, especially jasmine, rose, and various citrus plants. As a tannery and perfumer, the city of Grasse has indirectly become a chapter in the history of perfume. In 1724, the scenters of Grasse began using distillers to make perfumes. Since then, the relationship between Glass and perfume has been permanently determined. By the mid-18th century, Grasse had become the world's first and largest base for spice planting and essential oil extraction. Galimard is Grasse's largest manufacturer of perfumes and fragrances, offering fragrances, balsams, olive oil and other aromatic products to King Louis XIV and Louis XV. Other local perfume manufacturers are also maturing, and production is becoming more scalable, meeting the needs of a growing market. Paris then maintained close trade with Grasse, making Grasse the world's number one perfume city. However, in 1760, the government imposed high taxes on leather and drastically reduced the profits of the leather industry. Grasse's leather glove industry began to decline. The leather industry in Montpellier, in the south of France, is larger and more capital-rich and has not been spared. The alliance between leather and perfume has broken down since then, but Grasse's perfume industry has not been hit by this blow, and the spice industry has been developing steadily. Through centuries of accumulation, Grasse is at the world level in terms of spice cultivation, essential oil extraction, and flavoring technology. The name of the perfume capital has been preserved to this day. The fragrance technology there has been passed down from generation to generation, and A group of excellent perfumers have been trained, and most of the world's famous perfumers are also from Grasse. During the Romantic period (at the end of the 18th century), the savory perfume became the mainstream, which matched the unique wilting state of that period. Napoleon III corrected the perfume atmosphere at the time by using patchouli. Later, people retained the habit of using a small amount of patchouli to reconcile the perfume. >>>>>> 19th century: The rise of the empire and artificial spices In the 19th century, due to the development of the modern chemical industry, people's olfactory preferences changed, resulting in a complete change in the entire perfume industry. This trend has been retained to this day. The French Revolution could not eliminate people's follow-up of perfumes, and even a perfume called Parfum a la Guillotine. During the French cabinet period (1795-1799), people began to dare to showcase luxury goods, including the use of expensive perfumes. During Napoleon's reign, he encouraged the use of perfume, and Napoleon and his ministers used a big fragrance. Queen Josephine, who likes the strong perfume, has the nickname "Muskfool".

Her bathroom is filled with strong musk, vanilla and amber, so that it can still smell after 70 years. She has two beloved perfumers, Lubin and Houbigant, who have invested countless dollars in both of them. His husband Napoleon sometimes couldn't stand such a strong fragrance and had to leave the bedroom and choose to go to sleep in another room. But he himself is the ultimate lover of cologne. Every day, he lets his servant wipe the cologne made by Jean Marie Farina. The perfumer made a small perfume bottle for Napoleon that could be put into his boots. He consumed 60 bottles a month. According to him, perfume can not only stimulate his brain, but also affect his relationship with the Queen. This can be observed in his saved correspondence with the Queen - "Dear, don't take a shower, I will come back soon. It looks like 8 days."

During the restoration of the French kings (1815-1830), the perfume industry was a relatively slow development stage. People tend to use a softer, more creamy perfume. During the reign of Louis XVIII, the prevalence of the two tears of the les larmes de l'aurore and the de eau des Belles proved this. The rise of the Guerlain Empire: In the history of perfume, there is a man-made perfume empire, this person is Pierre-François Pascal Guerlain, a doctor and chemist, opened in Paris in 1828. His first Guerlain perfume store sells perfumes and powders. Through his creation of the Au de Cologne Imperiale, he was also famous for his “Royal Supplier” award from Queen Eugenie. His two sons, Aimé and Gabriel, inherited his profession. In 1889, Aimé Guerlain believed that the volatilization rate of various perfumes was different during the volatilization process, and it also caused different fragrances at different time periods. This is his new conception of the perfume structure, which proposes a pyramid-like perfume structure and creates a world-famous perfume, Jicky, which makes it the first bottle in history with three different fragrances. perfume. Since then, large-scale perfume production has adopted this pyramidal (or third-order, three-layer and classic) structure. That is, the three basic flavor stages of the top, middle and back. Artificial spice revolution: The greatest contribution to the perfume industry in the 19th century came from organic chemistry. Organic chemistry provides researchers with the ability to separate odors into separate components and to mimic them through synthetic pathways. Therefore, the perfumers can no longer be bound by nature, and any imagination can create any fascinating new smell. Perfume bottles have not escaped the rhythm of industrial production, crystal is still the favorite material: Bohemian, France, Britain have high-end bottle making process. And all of this contribution is more than the impact of the same thing on the history of perfume, that is the distiller, and every one of us who loves the fragrance should thank its inventors. In 1874, the first synthetic fragrance vanillin was introduced. It has a vanilla scent and a rich milky aroma. It has a long-lasting fragrance and aroma and aroma in the perfume. This has greatly accelerated the process of industrialization of perfumes, making mass production of perfumes possible. While reducing the cost of perfume, it also gives ordinary consumers the right to use perfume. Due to its low price, artificial flavors have had a certain impact on the cultivation of traditional natural flavors. With the continuous advancement of technology, more and more natural flavors have been found to be replaced by cheap artificial flavors, which is one of the reasons why perfumes are constantly being revised. It can be said that the current perfume has reduced the cost compared with the previous one, but the price has remained unchanged, so the profit per bottle of perfume is much higher than before. Perfume classification: At the end of the 19th century, the famous British perfumer, Eugene Rimme, tried to divide the perfumes into 18 categories (like sandalwood, including sandalwood, fragrant root and fir). It is very difficult to classify different fragrances. This classification is not widely used because it is not easy to accurately describe a fragrance. His company is still working in the cosmetics industry. At about the same time, another perfumer, Charles Piesse. Try to use the corresponding scale method to classify the perfume. He believes that the arrangement of perfumes should have their own order like the tone of music. This method has not been successfully promoted in the end, but some terms related to music have been retained until now, such as the accordion term Accord, which is "harmonic" in music. the meaning of. >>>>>> 20th Century: The combination of perfume and fashion industry In France in the late 19th century, nearly 2,000 people were engaged in the perfume industry, and one-third of the perfume production was exported. With the advent of the industrial revolution, those middle classes began to suddenly become rich, and they found that perfumes, which were originally only aristocrats, could be industrialized. An important reason for this change is the control of the compounds. With them, perfumes can also be produced on a large scale, but perfume dispensers need to acquire more chemistry. A new wave of marketing The 1900 World Expo in France has become an important event in the history of perfume. The perfume pavilion at the fair is gorgeously decorated, and the center is a large fountain surrounded by various perfume exhibitors. Exhibitors invited famous artists at the time to design and decorate their booths. The famous designer Hector Guimard designed the perfume bottle for the perfumer Mailot. Gradually, people began to pay attention to some elements other than perfume taste - bottle design, outer packaging, advertising. Perfume manufacturers have started working with famous glass manufacturers such as Lalique and Baccarat, as well as other famous designers and advertisers. The collaboration between Francois Coty and Rene Lalique is the most effective. The two are today's famous Coty perfume company and Laiwu Crystal Products. Founder. They will design different perfume bottles for different perfumes, making the perfume bottles a selling point. Before that, the perfume shop will put people's favorite perfume into the same glass bottle. Founded in 1904, Coty is known worldwide for its pioneering modern fragrance industry. It is a major promoter of synthetic fragrances, producing and selling a large number of affordable perfumes. Nowadays, it has become the world's largest perfume manufacturer and a leader in the perfume industry. Coty has a wide range of perfume brands, from Calvin Klein, Davidoff to Vera Wang, which we all know are made by Coty. Laiwu Crystal Company constantly improves the production process of perfume bottles. In addition to Coty, it also cooperates with many perfumers such as Guerlain to customize perfume bottles for them. Other perfume bottle companies have also contributed to the evolution of perfume bottle manufacturing processes, such as Baccarat, Guerlain's bottle manufacturers, maintaining their strict production processes and extending the business to the 20th century. Only Baccarat can meet the strict requirements of Chanel and design and produce the classic perfume bottle of Chanel No. 5.

In 1911, a women's designer, Paul Poiret, liberated women from their corsets and became famous. He was the first person to associate perfume with fashion. He named the first perfume under his fashion brand, Les Parfums de Rosine, by his eldest daughter, but because of the marketing For the sake of this, the sale of this bottle of perfume is not ideal. In contrast, the Chanel No. 5 fragrance launched by Gabrielle Chanel is very successful and still sells well today. The perfumer of Chanel No. 5 is Ernest Beaux. He introduced Aldehyde into the perfume industry when he created Chanel No. 5. These aldehyde-like chemicals are usually the main part of the perfume, not only to make the flavor of the perfume thicker, but also to make all the ingredients in the perfume have better compatibility, and the fragrance is more durable. They are often found in the form of solidulants. With the development of the times, these high-tech products are used more and more, but aldehydes have to be mentioned. It is extracted from alcohol or natural plants. Aldehydes are used in many ways: for example, simulating hawthorn or violet flavor. They also give the perfume a distinctive identity. When using them, be careful and control the amount. If you accidentally drop a little liquid on your body, it will give off a bad smell. The birth of the cypress The perfume manufacturing process has also been greatly improved during this period. Francois Coty is the first person to combine natural and artificial flavors to make aroma. His perfume, L'Origan by Coty, was born in 1905 and is the first bottle of modern perfume. In 1917, he created the Chypre perfume, which was later known for its novelty and unique scent. The definition of “Xipu” was defined as a new member of the fragrance family. The sips usually contain oak moss, lavender, patchouli, bergamot, and some oriental-inspired spices, so they are diffuse, soft, spicy, and sexy. The scent of sip is also known as the licorice in the country because of its obvious odor. At the end of the 19th century, the use of synthetic fragrances like citrine was very popular, setting off an artificial spice revolution. Hundreds of contends in the new era In the 1920s, it was the golden age of perfume. In addition to Chanel No. 5, there were also Guillain's Shalimar and Mitsouko, and the famous scent of the singer (Arpege) was famous. After the First World War, women's social status has been greatly improved, their style is bolder than before, they know how to defend their rights, and they are naturally dressed to attract the opposite sex. Perfume is definitely a powerful weapon for them. The perfume of that era has a strong floral fragrance and exudes a romantic atmosphere. In the 1930s, black and white movies were released. In the Great Depression of the world economy, everyone went to the cinema to escape reality and find their dreams. Women want to escape from the perfume, and Joy (Joy) produced by Jean Patou is their voice. It expresses the desire of the world to regain joy under the economic panic. Joy is made from more than 100 precious flowers. The elegant fragrance dilutes the tension of the economic depression during the panic era. The founder of Guerlain created the eponymous perfume, the Vol de Nuit, for another work by the author of Little Prince, encouraging people to stimulate their adventures. In this decade, leather-toned perfumes are popular, characterized by the smell of leather and the taste of fat powder, such as Chanel Cuir de. After the Second World War in the 1940s, the world can finally regain joy. Women and their families reunite with each other to reproduce the grace they deserve. The perfume of this era is very feminine, and the design of the perfume bottle is very feminine. In 1948, Nina Ricci launched the double wing (L'Air du Temps) perfume, the double pigeons on the arc vial, not only symbolizes the heroic mood of the world after the war, but also a good testimony of love. In the 1950s, the French fragrance industry reached an unprecedented peak. After Chanel succeeded in linking fashion to perfume, Jean Patou, Worth, Lanvin and other fashion giants began to follow suit. The social situation is also more stable. Women must pay more attention to occupations and families. The body and mind should work hard. Of course, perfumes should not be bought by themselves. Lovers and husbands are precious. Moreover, before the 1950s, perfumes were still luxury goods. After the painstaking efforts of Ms. Estee Lauder in the United States, Youth-Dew, which is cheaper but has a higher concentration of fragrance, became popular in the market. In 1955, Christian Dior's Diorissimo fragrance, the first time to use lily of the valley as the main material, is the first bottle of perfume for pure girls. In 1957, Givenchy's founder Hubert De Givenchy also created a perfume taboo for his girlfriend star Audrey Hepburn (L'Interdit). In the 1960s, the perfumer Edmond Roudnitska applied the compound Hedione to his work for the first time – Eau Savage, and therefore in the fragrance industry. Triggered a revolution. During this period, men's fragrances became very popular, and the introduction of foreign perfumes also made the competition in the French perfume market more intense.

In the early 1970s, fashion designer Yves. Saint Laurent travels to China and is attracted to the oriental style. And created opium (Opium). This bottle is inspired by a snuff bottle. The bottle is engraved with a poppy pattern, and the bottle is closed with a mysterious and gorgeous, tempting and addictive oriental fragrance. Once the opium perfume was launched, it caused a topic and was full of controversy. However, this is not important to Mr. Saint Laurent, because he is convinced that the woman who uses opium perfume has completely conveyed the temperament that is like an opium. The beautiful Estée Lauder in the 80s represents the most touching wedding vows. Every bride is the brightest queen in the wedding. In such a time, I will join hands with my loved ones to share the future. Every woman is beautiful and amazing! The advertisement has always been dominated by the bride, because Beautiful is the most beautiful perfume in life. Ms. Estee Lauder once said that Beautiful's creation is inspired by the most beautiful and moving memories of her life. The scent of the 90s is counted as Tresor. For Lancome, perfume is not only its history, but also the source of the rose logo. In the past, Lancome's perfumes were only O de Lancome and Magie Noire. Their relationship with roses is not so direct and absolute, which is regrettable. In 1990, Lancome decided to introduce a bottle of perfume that fully interpreted the image of Lancome. Of course, rose is the indispensable material in this bottle of perfume. The sweet smell of scent is the scent of love and happiness. What should not be forgotten in the 1990s is the water of life L'eau d'issey. This is a fragrance that has sparked fashion trends. The Miyake master who made a name for himself in Paris, who personally designed the bottle made up of simple lines, quickly gained recognition in the fashion world. For Miyake Master, nature has always been the leader in his creative process. He chose the seemingly simple but infinite imagination of water as the theme of perfume, simple and amazing. The pure lines and transparent bottle are in full compliance with Issey Miyake's life: I want to express beauty with the least and the simplest, but it has nothing to do with abstract art. In the 1990s, neutral perfumes rose from this, and the masterpiece was the CK One in 1994. Gender is no longer an absolute dichotomy. Whether they are women or men, they just want to be themselves. Neutral perfumes have risen in this context. CK One is a bottle of perfume that everyone can use. It is no longer limited to a certain class. With an open attitude that is completely undefended, I hope that everyone will be included. Simply can't simply scrub the glass and aluminum cans, recyclable materials, and boldly challenge the rules of the perfume market. Just like the seemingly decadent and careless young people in the advertisement, the best-selling CK One reflects the changing world and the consumer layer. CK One is a simple product that understands everyone's needs and is at your fingertips. Today, perfume has evolved into a luxury industry. Like many other economic sectors, the perfume industry has suffered from the financial crisis. If it does not rely on marketing strategies, the perfume industry will be difficult to survive. In the 21st century, the choice of perfume has become more and more, and consumers have become more critical. Due to advances in chemical processes, the perfume industry has had to rely on high technology to improve its production processes, such as relying on plant genetics to improve spices – a discipline that combines technology and art.