#if only i had any reason at all to go to helsinki i might consider the airbnb

[omppupiiras]

i'm guessing at this rate it's not going to take long for jere to reach his goal of becoming a millionaire 🤪🤑 ok it's such a stupid amount of money that i have no clue how difficult it would be to achieve, but babygirl must well and truly be on her way once the money from his OF and airbnb start rolling in 😎

Jo sillon päätin, еttä käärin itteni miljonääriks (hei) Back in the days, jo sillon päätin, еttä hillot käärin ku miljonääri (hei) Milli-milli-milli-miljonääri, milli-milli-milli-miljonääri

[blorbosexterminator]

Sergio's not gonna die, he is needed for a possible re-opening of the show. Palermo is too obvious (and that matters to pina), Raquel was already fake-killed. OTOH, Denver: has a lot more protagonism this season, with flashback and all, he is a universally beloved character (always a good candidate to kill), Jaime Lorente has been seen in some town with pedro and alba filming (prob flashback but why with those 2?). 90% sure he's the dead (if anyone).

Honestly, the only thing that would truly surprise me at this point if they indeed don't kill anyone next volume. Would be a move™, I'll give them that. But yes, I do think that they'll go with Denver too, and it has been foreshadowed to be honest. Doesn't change how much I dislike and genuinely disagree with that choice though. I don't think the actor would be up for a spin-off honestly, but anyway Sergio only has the element of surprise and the parallel with his father (the show is too fond of parallels lmfao) not much else to make his death a good choice.

And as you said, Palermo is predictable. And I imagine, with how politically aware™ the show is this season, they might also try to avoid the 'bury your gays' trope.

The thing is, most of what you and I just listed are just meta-textual reasons. I'm not saying those reasons have no place at all when considering writing choices, of course not, but I do disapprove, generally speaking, of writers taking this too much into account when writing their finales.

Sergio would be shocking to a more extent than the others, but that doesn't make him any more a good choice. Denver would guarantee as much of an angry and frustrated reaction as Nairobi (Although I honestly don't dislike Nairobi's death as much as everyone else. I thought it was well-played to an extent) and would have a strong emotional response plus parallels with Moscu, but to me it would be very misplayed.

I wasn't really talking about what I expect from the show as much as what I personally believe is a good writing choice. I most expect Denver to die, but I think Palermo is the most fitting choice.

Like sure, those things are subjective, and they change from one fan to the other as well as from one writer to the other. But just because the death of a character is predictable doesn't mean it's not the most fitting choice for the situation. Not really, I think it means the audience sees something there.

Look, before anyone starts assuming I just *want* Martín to die to see some afterlife scene for my ship, or even a parallel. Yeah, sure, preferablly as a fan of them I'd love this, but I don't think they are in any way necessar. To me, they would just be peppering that would make the death scene nicer stylistically speaking. I don't even think the show canonized the after-life or something of the sort, again I just think they are a mere stylistic choice. I wouldn't be at all actually bothered if we got nothing of the sort.

I just wholly believe the best choice to go with for both textual and meta-textual reasons is Palermo. First, the meta-textual ones, despite the fact that I disapprove of how they got there, I have to admit that the show managed to get him to be more likable this season. General audiences that have previously hated the hell out of him like him enough now. But at the same time Martín is still not Sergio, Raquel, or Denver. His death would cause some sadness and emotional response in the audience but not literal rage and feeling of betrayel, like say for example how GOT fans felt. Also, Martín now has enough alive characters that care about him that would make his death sad. It's unlikely an audience would give a shit about a character's death if none of the surrounding characters do. But now there is Helsinki, who incidentally Martín is also much nicer and caring towards this season, so Helsi would have "good reasons" to react strongly to his death, Sergio supposedly also cares for Martín, and we can say Raquel respects him. So the characters around him wouldn't be indifferent, especially if his death has value in the narrative, say an actual sacrifice for the rest of them. The show itself is VERY fond of the sort of arc that goes along the line 'Selfish character who caused harm and pain to all around them reaches selfishness and then sacrifices their life for the sake of the others.' It happened with Berlin, it happened with Tokyo. And it seems is effective enough. So if I were the writer and wanted a death that is effective but won't anger audience too much, I'd 100% go with him.

And again, a point is Martín even has something that neither Tokyo nor Andrés did, he had a very direct hand in the killing of a very beloved team member. Sure, you can say Tokyo had a hand in what happened to Moscu, but Tokyo legitimately had very little choice because she couldn't find Sergio and she had no intention to do harm, she didn't know her entrance would literally cost the man's life. Martín knew very, very well what Gandia was capable of and this is exactly why he did what he did.

Martín is narratively still responsible for Nairobi's death and took no hand in even avenging her from Gandia. That was Bogota and then Tokyo. And the character seems to be weighted by that guilt to a large extent. And I think the absolute best way for the narrative to resolve this point is by Martín dying directly to save Helsinki, who the show also made a point of also incapacitating, and I'd imagine that would have repercussions on how efficient getting out of the bank would be on him. Characters rarely get injured just for the sake of it, Nairobi's terrible injury from Alicia made her much more susceptible to Gandia, who had a huge leverage on her as she was physically incapable of resisting anything. (I imagine Monica's situation would also have repercussions--hopefully just not on Denver lmfao)

So despite generally not being a fan at all of the pairing in any way or form, and how they generally make no sense to me, with how the show is going now it's definitely best for Martín to die partially for his plan and partially for Helsinki.

Like ideally, what I'd personally most love to see and what I'd personally write a 2573 different fic versions of, is for Martín to die for his plan and for Sergio. I personally believe outside of the plan, Martín's most important relationship in his arc is with Sergio. But the show already ignored their relationship enough this volume as a first and Sergio already got the strong death scenes with Berlin and Tokyo as a second, it could be seen as an excess. But with Helsinki it's meaningful on a different level. The character Nairobi cared about the most is Helsinki (and he's also nearly as well-liked by the audience), so this would balance what he did to Nairobi in a pretty significant way, not completely out-do it, but the two acts would definitely balance each other. To both the audience and to the characters, Martín would be truly "redeemed." Which despite how much I dislike, and genuinely don't agree with it, the show is already putting a lot of focus on his 'redemption'. I don't like redemption arcs generally speaking, I don't think Martín is fit for it, and I don't think it's happening in an organic way at all, and I frankly believe it made him boring, but alas, it is what is is, the show is already half-way there, it already took that route, so the only end for it is to finish it and go all the way. It would be very useless if he ended up surviving lmfao.

And of course the other reason is for Martín's personal arc. The plan is his life's work, the thing he showed most loyality and love to from the moment he showed up 2 seasons ago, the end of his arc is with the end of his plan. Never mind how A LOT of scenes would be useless if Martín doesn't actually die for the success of the plan; the whole reason Sergio opposed it so strongly is because, in his own words, it was completely suicidal. Sure, you can say that they already proved the plan is dangerous by the army going in and all of this "war", but there was no Rio, Raquel, Plan Paris or Plan Roman in the original plan, so there would have been no reason for things to go that bad in that respect, all that happened in volume one is by direct consquence of the plan changing, so that still leaves the question why was Berlin and Palermo's plan so wrong and so suicidal if we don't take into account this war? If there is no answer and if there is no answer that is actually anchored by a death in canon, then those were really all just empty scenes. And of course it's Martín, the mastermind and engineer, the artist who crafted this poem, that has to die for its completion and overall success. Since day one, his arc has been tied intimately to this plan, we barely even know anything about him beyond it. And like, three people died for the mint heist and it was a plan made to work perfectly without a single flaw, where does this put a heist that was just full of romanticism and complete focus on the gold with disregard to the people? All of the scenes we saw of Sergio rejecting the bank heist in the flashbacks on that basis have to mean something now.

Against all of this, what does Denver have? What will his death signify? Nothing, in my opinion. The man didn't even want to be there. Also I guarantee you, if he does die for Monica the way he said, every single fan will turn against her and the hate the character will receive will be insane. Like why end the story of those two characters this way? What is there beyond edginess and grimness for their own sake?

Martín's death, even if it causes sadness, will be satisfying for his character. Besides, Martín as a character is too much like Tokyo, I don't imagine he himself would be very satisfied growing old and dying under the radar somewhere; going with a blaze now, sealing off his life's work and having his death mean something too is a much, much more satisfying ending for him.

Tldr; Palermo in a very balanced position to kill, especially that he is currently the actual leader, a position the show has given him with more space and better, much nicer spotlight now than in the third season. And I imagine with volume two focused more on extracting the gold, his role will get only bigger in that respect. He's still responsible for Nairobi's death. And he should 100% die for the Gold and the completion of his plan.

[evak-fic-rec-turtleanon]

Evak Fics - Sports

Any kind of sports or physical activity. Swimming. Skiing/Snowboarding. Football. Hockey. Others. I have a separate list for dance aus.

***** SWIMMING *****

Summer nights by Alwaysevak2121 (1k words) - Summer night, heat and swimming.

Sommernatt by Bewa (5.1k words) - The only thing that kept his mood up today was that it was Friday, and Even had promised him a surprise when he got home from work. Birthday.

cupid by evak1isak (5.2k words) - Isak, a water polo player and uni student, didn't think that he'd bump into his high school crush again. When he does, he wasn't expecting so much drama in his life.

from an earth to its sun by traumatic (18k words) - the entire world goes to bed normally and wakes up with glowing countdowns above their heads. No one's sure what causes the numbers to drop, only that when they hit 0, you hit the ground.

Drowning in your love by depressed_mermaid_53 (62k words) - Even is captain of the swim team. Isak and the boy squad join the team. In this universe a pool is a bigger part of their story.

Panic And Patch Me Up by intothewind (70k words) - (5/6 chapters posted) Swimmer Isak, Boxer Even and Boxer Jonas. Involves Josak. The thing with Jonas is complicated, but the thing with Even isn't making it any easier.

***** SKIING/SNOWBOARDING *****

Sprained Ankles, Netflix and Chill by Bellakitse (1.1k words) - Isak sprains his ankle while on a school ski trip, Even keeps him company in the main cabin.

Hot Chocolate and Snow Angels by GayaIsANerd (1.2k words) - Isak hates skiing. There’s nothing deep or traumatic about it, he just hates skiing.

Suck My Board Bitch by nyicris (1.3k words) - When Isak and Even go on a ski trip to Switzerland with their squad, they meet another LGBT couple. They don’t get competitive. At all. E!Online Poll AU + henrik’s extra ass (wow this brings back a lot of memories!)

From A Safe Distance by MinilocIsland (1.4k words) - Isak hasn't bothered to watch skiing for years. Or, so he claims. Even knows him too well not to sense the truth.

The First Noel by colazitron (1.9k words) - Even's parents have a cabin in Hemsedal where the family traditionally spends Christmas. This year, Isak's coming with.

Just Kids When We Fell In Love by wyoheartsmusic (5k words) - Isak and Even go to university 3000 km away from each other. Luckily, it's Christmas break and they had the brilliant idea to go on a cabin trip together.

Shred by Jules1398 (23k words) (SERIES, 2 FICS) - There were two versions of Isak Valtersen. The first Isak was the one that his friends knew. The second Isak, the real Isak, was trans, gay, and then there was his five year-old son, Adrian. Keeping the two Isaks separate wasn't that difficult. At least, not until he saw Even again.

Cabins, Coziness and Conspiracies by evakuality (24k words) - Isak and Even have to share a bed, their friends are strangely obsessed with their lives and things are not exactly as they might appear. Cabin ski trip.  

My Very Personal Ski Trainer by Crazyheart (28k words) - Sana has invited Even and her other friends to a Holiday cabin trip, and Even needs to get in shape so that he can beat his buddies in Sana’s planned ski race.

Different, but same by Crazyheart (31k words) - Isak and Even had broken up almost a year ago, and Even was devastated. He tried to get over it and went on a ski holiday with Yousef and Elias. He met a guy that looked like Isak, except his dark, buzz cut hair, well trained body and rough, charismatic personality. The fact that he called himself Markus Simensen was even more confusing... Even started to doubt who the guy was but of course... he had to be Isak.

***** FOOTBALL *****

Norway. A Summer's Tale by wyoheartsmusic (7k words) - Isak, as the first openly gay footballer and newly recruited teammate on Norway's National Squad, travels to Russia for the FIFA World Cup 2018

Chapter 3 of take me into your loving arms by diminuendodaydream (955 words) - The Pat is a hug that is all about friendship and camaraderie.

Take Me As I Am by givemesumaurgravy (9.9k words) -  Isak is the coach of Even’s daughter’s football team and Even likes Isak’s bum. One day there’s a parent football game and Isak, just maybe, starts hitting on Even and, just maybe, Even gives in.

Hail Mary Pass by thekardemomme (20k words) - the term hail mary pass has become generalized to refer to any last-ditch effort with little chance of success. sleeping with isak valtersen until time starts running out is what causes even to realize just how vital these passes can be. American football

i didn't mean to kiss you (you didn't mean to fall in love) by shadesofcool (24k words) - football/cheerleader au with not much football and cheerleading because i(the writer) only know the basics

If You Love Me, If You Hate Me by MacksDramaticShenanigans (44k words) - (9/11 chapters posted) Isak could be chill. He was the chillest. He was a mature, reasonable adult that was perfectly capable of controlling his emotions. Not even Even could ruin that.

we've made it this far, kid by everythingislove (straykid) (60k words) - Isak is just trying to raise his nephew as best he can with the help of his best friends. He doesn't expect to fall for Felix's gorgeous football coach along the way.

And at night I dream of golden curls and pink hair bands by Zabn (80k words) - WIP. Last update Oct 2019. Even swore himself to never get involved with a football player ever again, but then he meets Isak...

***** HOCKEY *****

it started with a kiss by pansexuaIeven (1.8k words) - Chris surprises Isak with tickets to a hockey game. Things don't work out as planned, but maybe they still end up okay in the end.

"So, it was you?" by Julieseven (2.4k words) - Isak is an amateur hockey player and Even kind of falls for him from afar

Checking From Behind by DickAnderton (156k words) - Isak is to captain his hockey team this season which means he has to somehow learn to cooperate with the newest addition to their team: Even Bech Næsheim.

Checking From Behind. 2809. by DickAnderton (102k words) - Sequel.  Isak has been drafted to potentially play hockey for the KHL in Helsinki. Even is soon going to face his abusive coach in court. 

***** OTHERS *****

Seriøst? by CiaraSky (716 words) - Isak and Even go ice skating.

Fireworks by multifeelings (1k words) - Just how a baseball game brings two boys together in a different way than you may think.

powerslide by evak1isak (1.6k words) - Summer is boring and Jonas teaches Isak how to skate. And at the park, Isak meets Even.

Brunch Dates and Basketball by waitineedaname (2.5k words) - In which Sana and Yousef host a double date with Isak and Even. Basketball 

Flying High by colazitron (3k words) - Isak Valtersen has announced his retirement from the quidditch pitch and, ahead of his last World Cup, sits down for an interview with Magical Norway's quidditch correspondent Even Bech Næsheim.

Off the Backboard. by Samanthaa23 (3.8k words) - Isak and Even meet for the first time during a basketball game between Bakka and Nissen. They don't meet again until 5 years later at a charity basketball game.

Beer Pongs and Mistletoes by yllawonders (5.2k words) - Then somehow they ended up arm wrestling and this time Even won’t pretend to lose because Isak thinks he is a tough guy when he knows and he will prove it today that he is in fact, a big fat softie.

the universe was made just to be seen by my eyes by ikerestrella (5.9k words) - Set six months after the events of Season 3. They are on a hiking trip, and Isak definitely did not get them lost in the woods. 

Slippery Slope by Laika_the_husband (11k words) - the guys wrestle in sun oil and the Balloon squad shows up.

scarves of red tied 'round their throats by puddingandpie (15k words) - The last time Isak saw Even, he was sweaty and naked underneath him, only to pack up and leave the next morning. Now, they're together at the Winter Olympics, a coincidence which was never going to be a coincidence considering Isak was well aware of the profession that Even was in as well. Figure skating, snowboarding, hockey, skiing...  

Head Over Heels by LostInAdmiration (46k words) - Isak wished for the hundredth time that his stupid friends could just be normal so that he could go home and bundle himself in his duvet and re-watch Breaking Bad again, instead of spending all of his spare time outside in a pathetic excuse for a skate park.

Breaking Free (Outta the Closet) by valtersass (58k words) - (11/12 chapters posted) Isak, the popular captain of the basketball team, and Even, the brainy and beautiful member of the academic club, break all the rules of Hartvig Nissen society when they secretly audition for the leads in the school's musical. HSM au

Next to you, is where I call home by LostInAdmiration (101k words) - “Why don’t you start track too? You’d be a good sprinter, I’m sure you’d do great,” suggested Isak. Isak wasn’t entirely sure why he asked - he mostly liked being alone and he barely knew Even - but there was just something about Even that had drawn Isak to him.

The trip to you by charlyflowers (148k words) - Isak hates Even. He hates him with all his heart. What a pity the art class is also coming to the trip to Germany. Volleyball.

To Proudly Bleed These Colors From My Veins by Evensleftbigtoe_91 (164k words) - WIP. Last updated Aug 2019. Mixed martial artist Isak's dream is to feel the weight of a UFC Title Belt across his waist. But Isak has a long and difficult path in front of him. (I haven't had the chance to read this yet so I'm not sure if Evak is the main or endgame pair. But this fic sounds really cool.)

[chalabrun]

between the dirt & desperation, ch. 1

Word count: 3,753 Pairings: Symbrock Rating: T Warnings: None Summary:  Sequel to “Angry & Half in Love with You”, it’s been well over a month since Eddie moved away from San Francisco to start over in his hometown of Manhattan. Yet, it’s difficult to return to a normal life when what you were once addicted to becomes addicted to you.  A/N: This is a crossover between Venom (2018) and Sam Raimi’s Spiderman trilogy (2002-07)

( READ ON AO3 )

Cities had moods. They had character, and personalities. It was hard explaining to someone from the suburbs or a small town of 5,000 where everyone knew each other. Eddie had been born in the city of cities, the one that everyone from Helsinki to Beijing and everywhere in between thought of when asked to imagine America, even for the tiniest of moments. Even Americans themselves. Manhattan had a personality so large and old that the entire East Coast looked like it. Like the Big Apple could be any city from Maine to just a stone’s throw above the Bible belt and they wouldn’t be wrong. Not entirely.

New York was steel and teeth. It was craggy concrete that bubbled like rivers of dried and cracked lava through the streets. A raw, industrial creation. When Christ told his disciples to be fishers of men, he wondered if they’d anticipated it’d look anything like this, that the net they threw would bring people together in a new Noah’s ark. Expansive, secretive, old, haggard, but also alive. Old and new. Fast-paced and robust and industrial. It claimed chilly winter nights and congested traffic as its temple, old jazzy film noir and sleepless, caffeinated nights as its sacrifice.

San Francisco had always been different. A bright tendril of Los Angeles, soaked in sun. If the sun made its harbor in Hollywood, then San Francisco was where its rays touched first, but also where its shadows were longest. It didn’t have the steel and shadiness New York did. Or ever would. It felt like your favorite relative you saw on the holidays, of palm fronds and brisk walks on a beach crested by an ocean so brilliant it was bluer than the sky it was supposed to get its color from. Peeled away and without secrets.

Maybe that’s why he never really felt like he’d belonged. Why he finally up and left after the whole Life Foundation incident. And after divorcing himself from the Other, when it finally became apparent how utterly at the mercy he was at the symbiote, they had to part ways. Lest he lose himself on top of all sense of normalcy. Of Anne and Dan and how utterly suited and picture-perfect they were for San Francisco.

It’s why New York’s rough and tumble called him back like a siren, and he just couldn’t refuse.

“Hey, I think ya dropped these.”

The subway emerged from a long and ghastly dark tunnel that made your reflection too easy to see. The back car for the early morning train from Brooklyn was mercifully sparse, all things considering. The man in question had dropped a sheaf of photos the lights blocked its glossy contents of, until it became apparent as to what it was.

Opaque, wide eyes set in a mask made of webbing. Red like blood, like slaughter. Interrupted by a Pacific blue on the chest, crawling up the side of a skyscraper in stunning detail. Eddie became shell-shocked at the sight of it, mind phasing to a rapid negative of the photos. Blinking, it went away.

“Oh, sorry about that. Guess I’m still kind of clumsy in the morning.” The brunet who speaks with wide blue eyes and earnest, smiling thin lips is the picture of someone untouched, but not innocent.

Eddie remembered himself and smiled back. “Yeah, no, no. These are some killer shots, though. You the guy who’s been getting Spidey’s mug in the papers? Man, even I gotta envy that kinda skill.”

The other man chuckled modestly. “My boss tends to differ on that front. He thinks all my stuff is pretty mediocre.”

Eddie’s brows bounced in disbelief, sputtering, “You serious? This shit looks like you got Spidey to pose for you in a SoHo photo studio. And he thinks this is subpar? Man, I wouldn’t wanna be workin’ for him.” Handing the photographer’s material back to him, he added, “Y’know, I do investigative journalin’ myself. Hell, I just got hired on to the Daily Bugle just the other day. We might actually see each other around.”

A boyish and incredulous look crossed the brunet’s face almost shyly. “Wait, seriously? What are the chances of that? —Oh, I’m Peter, by the way. Peter Parker.” He offered his hand to shake. “I’m more freelance, but I guess this makes us coworkers, huh?”

“No kidding. Can’t say I’m adverse to the idea. You photographers are like the muses of us journalists. At least, I think I got that off’a fortune cookie somewhere. You headed to HQ or somethin’?” Smiling crookedly, he shook Peter’s hand a little too enthusiastically. Blame finally getting something resembling a friend on that. “Oh, uh—yeah, Peter. I’m Eddie. Eddie Brock. Real name’s a bit longer, but kinda pointless, y’know?”

Their hands finally released, Eddie backtracking to whether or not he’d shaken it for too long. Clearing his throat, visibly fidgeting, he awkwardly ushered Peter through when they’d finally made it to a mutually apparent destination. “Hey, uh—after you, Pete.”

Peter smiled thinly at that. “Bugle’s this way. It’s not all that hard to miss.” Completely oblivious as to the sudden change in demeanor, Eddie shrugged and alighted on the platform with the other. At least he wasn’t going it alone this time around.

“Will you shut that thing off! If I have to hear one more goddamn word out of that smug Daily Planet’s reporter’s mouth, someone’s going to get fired!”

John Jonah Jameson leaned back in his rickety reclining chair, proudly smoking a thick cigar, a smug and politically incorrect aura bleeding from it. Thick brows raised dubiously as he went through Peter’s crop of photos like an inspector of choice swine at the country market, sticking a knife in the fat to gauge its leanness of the meat. And by the way his cigar hung from his teeth, he didn’t look too impressed.

“This the best you’ve got, Parker? I’ve seen brats on Instagram take better selfies at 3 AM after getting the damn munchies.” Peter himself looked tense, jaw gritting but too subtle to be noticeable or angry. Even Eddie found himself morbidly fascinated by the exchange and feeling vaguely bad for Peter himself.

“It’s the best I’ve got, Mr. Jameson. I got better lighting, and everything,” Peter reasoned, bordering on protesting, splaying his inventory out more. “Like for that one scoop you were talking about. I got this,” he pointed to a photo of the Friendly Neighborhood Spider accelerating up a wall in the wake of a crime scene, “in exactly the kind of context you were looking for and everything.” Incriminating, but falsely planted. Just what sort of deal had they made, anyways?

“It’s crap,” Jameson rebutted bluntly. “You think stories are made from HD screenshots? Nah, I want in-action pictures, Parker. Hell, I think it’s why teaming you up with Brock here will do you some good. You’ve got promise, but I just don’t see it—”

“Sir, your wife she’s—”

“Tell her I’ll call her back! Can’t you see I’m busy?” Jameson barked to his secretary who shrunk back, gazing sidelong as though the employees at desks behind her back were a captive audience. Jerking his head towards Eddie, he quipped gregariously, “What do you say, Brock? You up to heading to Oscorp to interview Doctor Octavius?”

Eddie needed a moment to mull over the name, feeling a pit open in his stomach at the realization. Oh God. Oh no—this was turning into San Fran all over again. Exactly what he’d been trying to escape. Except—Eddie calmed his breathing. It didn’t have to be a repeat. He’d get the interview, get in, get out, and not stick his neck where it didn’t belong like last time. Easy.

“You can count on me, Mr. J. I’ll keep Petey here from takin’ photos that look too good, eh?” As if to prove a point, Eddie circled an arm around Peter’s shoulder and shook it for emphasis, Parker glancing at him in bemusement, brows furrowed.

“Yeah…what he said, Mr. Jameson,” Peter replied stiffly, shrugging Eddie’s arm off and offering him a distantly apologetic look.

Alright, that was something. Only one more head-ducking event to go, and he’d be in the clear!

Several days later of navigating his way through an apartment at various stages of unpacking, and Eddie cobbled together an outfit that seemed decent enough: a button-down dress shirt, crisp black slacks, penny loafers, a dark jacket, and tie. Dressy, but still informed the world that he wasn’t some Washington Post shill. Remembering his past mistake with Carlton Drake seared the reminder not to get involved, not to fuck this up. He did enough time with what happened and paid dearly for it.

Even if he’d turned a new leaf, that didn’t mean he didn’t lie awake thinking about the symbiote. He did. God, he did. It was just the little things, mainly. Buying chocolate and tater tots and wondering why the hell he had. Thinking something and pausing, waiting for a response. It was messing with him, but he had to move on. If Venom was really that hellbent on keeping him, it would’ve. But, it didn’t. He had to remember that and move on. All graceful, and shit.

That didn’t make the memory of their parting any easier. Why did it still come back and bite him in the ass? It had been a month, maybe more. Why did his heart still ache like there was an emptiness to fill?

“C’mon Eddie, get your shit together,” he muttered to himself after stepping off the platform in Midtown Manhattan where the Oscorp tower rose in rivalry to that of Stark Industries’. It was an enviable life, being able to live so richly and without much complication, building an empire off the wit, grit, and ambition that made the American Dream. …Eddie mentally jotted that down. That could make for a good opener in his article.

“There you are. Right where I left you.” Eddie smiled at the sound of Peter’s voice. Sweater vest over some dress shirt and crisp trousers; the glasses made Parker look like a classic point Dexter. Guess that made Eddie the classic rebel to match.

“Yeah, yeah. Least Aunt May spiffed you up pretty good, eh? We ought’a start going; looks like it might start soon, an’ all.”

After their first meeting, they’d met a few times at a bar. First, it was logistics. The sense and sensibility that came with networking that any New Yorker in any industry worth his salt knew how to do. Brock wouldn’t have gotten nearly as far otherwise. Then, it was real friendly talk. Bonding over being born and bred city slickers felt like a homecoming he didn’t ask for, but sorely appreciated. It was nice having friends that didn’t quite stick as much in San Francisco.

“You ready to head on up, or does your hair need more greasing?” Peter teased as they crossed the street in unison. “Could stop at McDonald’s, too.” God, the shit-eating grin. Parker had a real mouth on him when he wanted to. A real potshot when it came to sarcasm and its humor.

“Can it, wise guy. Let me look a little bit smart ‘ere.”

Little more words were exchanged when a familiar professionalism beholden to men in journalism overcame them both almost in tandem, greeted by a front desk secretary who gave them both guest passes specific to the press conference Doctor Octavius was holding in one of Oscorp’s more “public-friendly” labs. Fair enough, even though the investigator in him wanted nothing less than to pass through all restrictions and really see the seedy underbelly. No corporation made it this big without a few body bags along the way.

At the demonstration proper, an enormous curtain separated the small gathering of reporters and journalists like them from the class act behind it. Eddie folded his arms and Peter appeared equally pensive, but a lot less out of place amid shined shoes and news anchor smiles.

“So, this guy, this Otto Octavius—any idea what he’s got cookin’, or we just gonna be surprised?” Eddie turned to Peter to ask who was like a kid in a candy store. He was still in is later college years, far as he knew. Practically a friggin’ baby, which explained a lot. That put a couple years between them. “’Cuz I ain’t really the surprises type.”

“Well, yeah. That’s kinda the whole point, right? Besides, it looks like it’ll start soon.” Peter’s eyes were wide as saucers and totally affixed to the front row. “Let’s get up front. I want a good view of what we might see.”

A flutter of anticipation and nervousness flowered in Eddie’s breast, practically feeling preemptive adrenaline pump through his veins. “…If ya say so, Petey. Guess it can’t hurt.” Why did it feel as though a sense of foreboding hung over them like a cloud? Along with something damnably familiar? Eddie swallowed down a clout of nerves he hadn’t felt before, following it tow as Peter dragged him to the front where no one seemed to mind. The lab’s ampitheater slanted downwards, anyway, so it’s not like they were blocking anything.

Clutching his camera in hand, Peter looked as though he might unleash a barrage of snapshots in his excitement. Which suited him just fine. Not that the camera shutters weren’t going off already like Peter was trying to commit to memory via his camera. Eddie, meanwhile, ticked on the portable recorder he kept on his person at almost all times, checking the small mic clipped on his jacket’s lapel.

And just in the nick of time, too. The lights dimmed substantially from their florescent blaze. Across the stage did a middle-aged and stocky man come unto the podium, smiling in a way that did little to offset the brooding intensity beneath heavy, thick eyebrows. The face of a scientist who grimly saw the failing condition of the world and had many a sleepless night trying to contrive of ways to offset the inevitable flatline. Cartlon Drake had that look, he remembered. This man wore it more intensely, and that much was exceedingly obvious.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we stand upon the brink. We live in a world where we’ve yet to explore the unknown while what we do is on the verge of collapse. And in response to it, it is the burden of those gifted with an aptitude of their calling to answer that call and play their part in saving this planet. The only one of its kind that we know of.”

With all the aegis of someone of his stature, of his eminence as a scientist, it still made Eddie feel wary of him. Even before the crawling sense of déjà vu, it clung to his tongue like gum and stuck there. What he wanted to speak out against before he even knew what it was. Clapping once, the maroon curtain rose and slowly did that sensation return stronger than it had ever before.

He should’ve known something out there was conspiring against him. Before him, in a cylindrical tube, was the symbiote. He could feel a low pulse that hummed softly, knowing exactly what it was doing: subduing the Other. Slowly did Eddie’s arms unfold, completely transfixed, and he had to resist every urge in his body to leap on stage and bash the glass in.

It was in pain.

Dr. Octavius gestured at the tank with a sweeping gesture, a dark humor in his smile. “I present to you the symbiote. Roughly a month ago as I’m sure you are all aware, the Life Foundation discovered these beings on an unsanctioned space flight. In San Francisco, innocent human lives were subjected under the machinations of Carlton Drake to try and bond it and others like it. Inhumane, and completely reprehensible.”

Venom stirred in the tank, almost in a stupor before rousing to life. Familiar, achingly agonized eyes widened in recognition of Eddie and the symbiote began writhing madly in the tank, inky tendrils crawling up its curve in futility, as if trying to escape to get back to him. His heart caught in his throat that throbbed sympathetically, every protective instinct in his body revving to high gear that wanted to spirit it away. As if knowing his thoughts, Venom thrashed in desperation and he swore he could hear it whimper and whine as though it were next to him, panicking once it knew he was here.

“It’s alive. Instead of subjecting this creature to the harms of bonding to a human host, we mean to study it, to replicate its properties without bringing harm to humans. Through this being, this symbiote, we intend upon harnessing its potential as both armor and protection and regeneration to benefit mankind. Think of it: a suit that could heal the infirm and disabled, helping them walk again. Or, sending people armed in this suit to hazardous places to save endangered lives in the wake of disaster. Even going beyond that, at no cost of life.”

While Octavius continued orating, Eddie tried to maintain his composure, but it was difficult with every passing second. His field of vision completely whited out save for his view of the symbiote, how it was practically ready to capsize the container in its desperation with Eddie so near. He hardly heard a word spoken until Octavius mentioned him by name, Peter’s perplexed look matching that dozen who stared at him in unison.

“Mr. Brock, is it? I’ll admit, I was surprised to find you among the list of those who were in attendance, but pleasantly surprised. Please, why don’t you come up here? Maybe you can hold their attention better than I can.” There was a murmur of polite laughter, though there was nothing humorous in the scientist’s eyes. If anything, it looked more like he was sharpening a knife and Eddie was the whetstone.

“Oh—right, yeah, sure thing, Doctor Octavius,” Eddie responded automatically, smile tense as he vaulted on the stage instead of taking the short set of stairs nearby. No one seemed to really mind, despite the formalness of the event. Hooking his thumbs in his pockets, it was a struggle not to keep his eyes wholly trained on the symbiote that loosed a long-pitched whine at their close proximity.

“Now, as many of you may be aware, Mr. Brock was one of two known successful hosts that bonded with one of the symbiotes, notably this one. I’ll admit, I’m quite curious: what was it like, being at the mercy of this fascinating creature?”

Eddie swallowed thickly, Peter’s blue eyes intense upon him that he only surreptitiously met. With every moment under the limelight, he felt his self-control crumbling and a white-hot rush of adrenaline take its place. He was sick. He was so fucking sick and he hadn’t even touched the Other in over a month, their time together having been brief enough as it was. “See, that’s the thing. It’s not really a ‘creature,’ y’know what I’m sayin’? It’s alive. Maybe not our definition of alive, but it thinks, it feels—it knows what it is. Who it is.”

Disguising his adrenalized state as thoughtful pacing, he rounded away from Octavius who watched him hawkishly, conspiratorial murmurs ringing the crowd like mist, like gathering storm clouds. And he could hear it in waves. “Humanity often thinks we’re the only ones out there capable of thinkin’ about our place in the universe, of makin’ bonds so profound that even the sun feels cold to us.” A flash of red along the wall: a fire extinguisher. It looked heavy. Heavy enough.

In the calm before the storm, he placed his hand on the glass, barely aware of the flashing bulbs of the cameras. Venom reacted intensely, that familiar, savage purr as it pressed itself yearningly to the glass, a passion so heavy it weighed like blood. “’s alright. I’m here now, baby. I’ll get ya outta there.” If it could devour the oils from his fingers, the milky clear prints left behind, the lingering heat—it would. Starved, so starved, not even meat could sate that hunger.

“What was it like being its host, Mr. Brock?” one of the reporters prompted, a stern blonde with flinty-ash eyes. “Were there any detriments to your health? You look fine, by looks alone.”

Eddie cleared his throat, coughing into his hand. Octavius’ gaze was like irons on his, having seen it from the sidelong view he had of the tank. Eddie’s own faltered as he pretended to focus exclusively on the crowd, Peter’s enthusiasm faltering. Like he knew about the chaos to unleash.

Posturing to look as though he were preparing to answer the question, he instead bolted for the fire extinguisher and paid no attention to the sudden shock upon the crowd while Octavius’ smug darkness shifted to a frenzied possession. Lunging for the tank, Eddie manfully smashed the glass, taking several tries before there was a fissure enough for Venom to seep through and spring into Eddie’s arms. Despite the whizzing of bullets from the security guards stationed nearby, Venom craned up to lick Eddie’s lips in a semblance of a kiss, wanting to sink into it. To be enveloped and taken by that tar pit he’d feared.

“Eddiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeee,” Venom crooned adoringly, wrapping around the blond with aplomb and all the anxiousness of before melting away. A massive black tarp of its nebulous miasma unfurled like crow’s wings around them, the bullets repelled uselessly. It nuzzled into his neck, content to stay there forever.

“Hey, Ven, we gotta get outta here. Y’think you can help me out here?”

A toothsome, wolfish smile of all fangs spanned its black lips, eyes narrowing in a feral cheer. “We’ll protect Eddie. We’ll keep him safe,” came its savage purr, all before the proximity between them closed with a harsh entanglement of mouth and tongue, Eddie forgetting to breathe and almost glad not to. Gradually, the eddies of his vision clouded away to a soothing blackness, one he never thought would’ve been.

And I’ll keep you safe, too—promise.

All he could remember last was rocketing into the very sky, smashing through skylights that rained down like shards of ice and incited a panic, Octavius enraged while the rest scattered. It was to be a state of emergency, sure, but little else mattered now.

All faded to black.

[mcrmadness]

9, 10 & 22?

Kiitos jälleen äskistä! :D

9. Can you swim? 🐡

I'm not sure, probably not really. I don't like swimming in general (because of the swimsuits), and I also always used to get panicky if I didn't feel the bottom of the lake/swimming pool under my feet so I always preferred staying close to the shore or walls etc. where I could grab on just anything or stand up. But I remember we went to the indoors swimming... pool place (UIMAHALLI mitä se on enkuks) often when I was younger, and I really liked diving. I always kept saying I can't swim, so I would just dive to everywhere and never swam.

About today - I honestly don't know. I don't think I can swim, because I'm always so terrified of running out of energy. So even if I was able to swim in theory, I don't know for how long I'd be able to keep going. Even if they say that every human can also float but, idk. I just don't like water nor beaches. Too hot and wet and swimsuits are awful.

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10. Cute movie 🎥

Oh gosh, what is a cute movie even... I don't really watch cute movies? And most of my favorite kids' films are also kinda dark, such as The Lion King or Land Before Time. In a way Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron could also be considered cute but it ALSO is actually rather dark than just cute...

Okay. For some reason my mind wants to answer now: Over The Hedge. I have seen this movie only once and probably over 10 years ago, but the reason why my mind is thinking about this might be the squirrel Hammy. He's super cute and has ADHD so he's very hyperactive and also funny (and relatable too I guess). I can only remember the scene where he drinks an energy drink and the time "stops" because he can now move faster than light basically. But yeah, it's a very "basic" DreamWorks animation about a group of friends who are slightly anthropomorphic animals. Should probably rewatch that. (It also has opossums in that, and you like opossums, right? :D)

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22. Favorite fastfood restaurant 🍗

I think it's gotta be a pizzeria. That's the fast food I eat most often (which is not that often), and the next in line is probably Subway. But yeah, not going to name any pizzerias for privacy reasons, but there are several good ones in my city, but two of them are great (or one of the is not even a pizzeria but a buffet restaurant which also serves pizza and kebab etc). From the other one (same as in the brackets) you can also get deep-pan pizza, and I LOVE deep-pan pizza but there's only like 2 places in my city where you can order that, and the other one always closes at like. 3pm or something which is so weird. I'm barely even awake at 3pm.

I also really love Frnds&Brgrs, but unfortunately they don't have restaurants anywhere near my city. I've visited this once in Helsinki (the one near the train station, I really recommend this cos it was SO GOOOOOOD). And the other one I visited at... I think Espoo this summer, but the burger was not as good as the one I had in Helsinki a few years earlier. It could have been just what I ordered, but the fried onion there inside the burger was just so spicy I had to remove it from the burger, and I didn't realize it would even come with that. Generally I do love onion and use it all the time in my own cooking, but for some reason it was just so spicy I could not taste anything but that burning sensation.

[fucktheoryquestions]

On The Economics of Higher Education

I would like to ask you a question I've been thinking of for a while, if you have the time. I have just started my PhD in Anthropology in University of Helsinki, and I have been involved in quite a few student campaigns against university reforms (of neoliberal kind). Yet still all our universities are public institutions, there are no tuition fees and all students receive student allowance, so our situation is quite different than in, say, UK and US. I've been able to study two majors without acquiring any debt, which is quite common here. My question is: Do you think university system that is publicly funded and free for all students (and adjunct staff is payed comparatively well) still has some of the irredeemable qualities that you describe in your critique of US elite universities? Best wishes, Viljami Kankaanpää-Kukkonen

Hi, I appreciate the question, thanks for letting me respond publicly so I don’t have to answer it more than once.  

Before I answer your question let me say what perspective I’m speaking from.  I’ve been in the US for 10 years.  My involvement in American academia was mostly at private institutions on the East Coast, though I took a few seminars and spent time at Rutgers and CUNY, as well. Before that, I did my undergraduate education in Berlin at the Free University.  I was in the last generation of students at the FU who graduated with a traditional German Magister degree; even before I graduated, the FU began to implement the accords of the Bologna Process, which aimed to unify educational standards across the EU and which led to a splitting of the Magister degree into American-style BA and MA programs.  I haven’t been involved in European academia in the past 10 years.  My “data” consists in 10-year-old experience with the German system; extensive 10-year-old familiarity with the British and French systems; and passing 10-year-old acquaintance with the Italian and Dutch systems.  I’m sure that higher education in Europe has changed a great deal in the past 10 years in response to the pressures and forces you describe as “neoliberal,” so take everything I say in light of these ongoing developments.  

Very simply put:  the more “Americanized” an educational system becomes, the more its structure and consequences will resemble the structure and consequences of the American education system.  The most distinctive feature of the American university system is its exorbitant cost, and its relation to debt and hence to the labor market.  So the shortest answer I can give you is No, a free or cheap university system does not share all the dangerous implications of the American system.  That said, the disciplinary and organizational nature of the European system is very similar to the American system and growing more so.  I don’t think humans are “rational actors,” but I do think we constantly perform conscious or unconscious cost/benefit analysis, and I think it’s easy to see why the cost of an American higher education is much greater than the cost of a European higher education, not only in dollars but also in anxiety, in preparation, and in non-academic lifestyle commitments required to access and survive the university. The higher the cost of attending a European university becomes, the more that system will resemble the American one 

That’s the short answer, and anyone who’s reading this can feel free to stop reading here; the rest of this post is just an elaboration.  

Your e-mail mentions “other countries” generally, but I’m not comfortable speaking about countries I don’t know enough about. I’ve met and studied with and read papers by academics from all over the world, and I know some vague stories, but that’s not the same thing as having concrete knowledge of economic relations, so I’m going to localize the rest of my response and frame it as a comparison between the American and the European systems with which I’m familiar.  

* 

A free university system cannot engage the same socio-economic relation to the labor market and to personal debt that the American university system currently engages.  The difference has to do with a different relation of the institution to the state and to private capital, as well as to the job market and to relations of labor and production more generally.  For these reasons, I consider the European university less irredeemable and pernicious than the American one.  

It shares many of the same features and problems, especially on the inside of the institution and in the production of knowledge, but I think the social role of the university is less compromised and dangerous and I think European universities could be improved more easily than American ones – for now. As we’ve already noted, the twin ideologies of privatization and austerity are pushing hard to “Americanize” higher education in Europe and elsewhere.  The more successful these efforts are, the more irredeemable the university becomes.

Before I continue, please note that while I’m less critical of the European university system, I’m not holding it up as an ideal or a model or ignoring its very real problems.  For example, I discuss the non-academic (vocational/professional) higher education system in many European countries as opening up more paths to financial stability than are available in the US.  I stand behind that claim, but I’m also very aware that the parallel higher education systems in Europe have a classist function and a classist history, serving mostly to route upper and upper-middle class students to universities and poorer students to vocational schools.  I’m also keenly aware that I went to university in a city (Berlin) that has more Turkish residents than Ankara, but I can count on one hand the number of Turkish students that sat in seminar rooms with me at that university. Etc., etc.  This is not an encomium to the European higher ed system, it’s just a description of some crucial differences.  

There are at least three major differences between the American and the European higher education systems:   

·      Debt

·      Non-academic higher education

·      Public system only vs. public/private dual system

I’ll expand on all these, but first we can observe that despite a profound difference in the economic relations in which the university is embedded, a fascinating aspect of the question is that there is fairly little difference between higher education systems in terms of content and style.  You find the same plodding, obfuscatory writing; the same laborious processes of peer review; the same behind-the-scenes politicking and reputation-based privilege; the same interests and questions, though often with different approaches or angles; and most importantly, the same canon of concepts and thinkers and disciplines.  This fact reinforces my belief that the discourse of the university performs a similar organizing social function (what Gramsci describes as “traditional” intellectual activity) everywhere, regardless of the specific hegemonic structure it’s serving or upholding.  In this context, it’s worth distinguishing a critique of the university as an institution embedded in a specific economy from a critique of the discourses produced in the institution.  These aren’t separate questions:  there’s only one economy.  But these questions operate in different registers, because the critique of the production of knowledge goes all the way back to Plato and beyond while the critique of the university’s current economic entanglements can’t go beyond the material history of those entanglements while remaining in any way immanent.  

Back to the three big differences I listed.

Debt is the biggest one, by far.  

I graduated from a European university debt-free. I paid registration fees every semester and I had to house and feed myself, but I didn’t have to pay exorbitant tuition fees.  I certainly didn’t have to take out a loan at the age of 18 that would follow me the rest of my life.  This difference is the single most important difference, because it doesn’t just change other relations, it changes the weight of other relations.  A damaging situation is bad; a damaging situation is 100 times worse if you have no way of getting out of it or putting it behind you.  

If you’re German and you get into a university and you find it utterly unbearable and traumatizing, you can just leave. You’ve spent some time, you might disappoint yourself or other people, but you’re not in debt, your parents didn’t spend $80,000.  If you’re 20 years old and you’ve already signed the loan papers and you’re $80,000 in debt already after just 4 semesters, you’re going to think really fucking hard about starting over in a different program, or leaving school to do something non-academic.  You’re much more likely to stay on a path you’re not happy with.  And even if you do make the choice to leave, that debt can still follow you around the rest of your life unless you manage to adjust very effectively to a highly profitable new career path.  If you spent $160,000 on a law degree from Yale then start practicing law and discover you absolutely hate it, you’re probably going to practice law for a few years anyway because otherwise you’re changing careers $160,000 in debt (that’s one hundred and sixty THOUSAND dollars).  Minimum wage in Connecticut is currently $10.10 dollars an hour 

Maybe this isn’t the case any more, but 15 years ago in much of Europe, you could decide academia wasn’t for you, leave the university, and get a job in a restaurant that would pay all your bills. In other words, you could shift gears to a much lower-pressure lifestyle without serious consequences.  But imagine if you have serious student debt and you have $500 deducted from your salary each month?  Suddenly you have earn more, even if you want a low-key lifestyle; you take on another job, or you find a job that’s higher-pressure even though you want to shift gears or whatever.  

The costs of debt – in labor, in health, in anxiety – are enormous.  In this way, there is a much tighter and more vicious link between higher education and the labor market in American than in Europe.  There’s no other way to put it – the structure and pressures of the American system mean that Americans have to work, constantly, grindingly, in a way that many (not all) Europeans just don’t have to and honestly can’t understand.  The American system presents a double bind:  either you are bound to the labor market by debt because you did go to school, or you’re bound to the labor market by necessity because you didn’t go to school and are locked out of higher-paying jobs.  The American university system is locked into the economy in a way that presents three options only:  serve the system at the top; serve the system at the bottom; or succeed against all odds by being truly exceptional and carving out a space for yourself alongside the system or breaking into it in an unexpected way. There are very few paths to genuine economic prosperity that don’t run through the university system somehow.  

The situation in the US hasn’t always been so dire; it got bad under Reagan and has been getting worse ever since.  For a couple of decades after World War II, the G.I. Bill and a flood of money to universities made public higher education really affordable in the U.S. for many people.  In the ‘60s or ‘70s in the U.S. (so I’m told, I wasn’t here), you could flip burgers for three months during the summer and save up enough money for a year’s tuition at a good state school if you were an in-state student; I doubt that’s still the case anywhere in the U.S., and certainly not at the more prestigious state schools.    

Now that the American “middle class” has effectively vanished, we can see what role the university had in making that class disappear.  An absolutely crucial element in that process was the defunding of public universities at the state and federal level, which led to massive tuition hikes that have made tuition at the most prestigious public universities almost as high as those at prestigious private ones.  Capitalism played a major role in that process, because university pass their costs on to students by framing the rising costs as the availability of additional features, from trendy new disciplines to massive, ridiculous sports facilities.  This is a “client-centered” approach to education that directly prioritizes students who can afford to pay.  Basically, America no longer has a state-sponsored, debt-free path to prosperity, which Europe still does…for now.  Defunding of universities and tuition hikes are the changes that will most quickly introduce debt as a decisive factor and bring the European system in line with the American one, with massive implications for the entire economy, not just for academia in some isolated, abstract way.  Keeping the European university system free or at least cheap is unspeakably important and probably impossible at this point.  

The relation between the education system and the labor market is also different in that many European countries have vocational or professional higher education that isn’t academic.  That’s the second big difference.  Craft and trade apprenticeships represent an important bloc that has no equivalent in the US, where most internships are professional position you get after you do a BA, and not instead of doing a BA (not always, but often).  There are often but not always alternatives to university-style education in Europe.  German interns (Auszubildende, or Azubis) are usually paid and can access no-interest government loans to support themselves when they aren’t.  Many people I knew in Germany in the 2000s finished an academic Magister degree and then went on to do an Ausbildung in a completely different area (sound design, lighting tech, theater management) which then became their actual career.  Here again the major difference is debt – you don’t need to take on massive debt to study nursing or hotel management in much of Europe – but there is also a difference in the need for critique of the institution.  Simply put, if there are effective non-academic paths to prosperity, academics have less of an ethical obligation to critique and correct their institutions, and the institution has less of an exclusive onus to fight against inequality.  If we consider “university students” as a socio-political bloc, that bloc is much more massive, diverse, and complex in the United States than it would be in much of Europe.  

Third – and this too is linked closely to the question of debt rather than separate from it – a major difference between the US and Europe is the long-standing existence in America of extremely wealthy private universities.  In Europe until recently there weren’t many private institutions of higher education. This was changing rapidly even while I was still there, and I’m sure it’s gotten worse.  However, it will take a long time before new institutions acquire the prestige and surplus capital which American private universities already have.  

The brilliant scheme of the American private university is that it took up the model and the rhetoric of the European, post-Enlightenment liberal university, but without sharing or adopting its economic model, which is that of a state-operated and –funded institution. The American private university is a European liberal shell over a fundamentally different economic motor, which is basically a massive private endowment of religious origin.  The biggest American universities weren’t started to train scholars, they were started to train preachers; in this, they had more to do with the medieval canon school than with the post-Enlightenment liberal university. These universities acquired private wealth and land in the manner of traditional Catholic institutions, not in the manner of liberal European universities; now, centuries later, these institutions are basically giant pools of privately-held capital which have an enormous impact on the education, labor, leadership, scholarship, and values of the United States and, indeed, the world, but without any of the regulations that state-funded and –controlled institutions have to endure.  These institutions are first and foremost corporate brands and wealth managers; they only teach students incidentally, as a kind of favor to the rich whose money they manage, but despite this they exert an enormous and unhealthy influence on higher education all over the world.  For decades, the public university system in the US has worked extremely vigorously to imitate the private model, where instead the American public should have demanded the divestment of property from private universities, or at least an end to their tax-exempt status.  

The impact of these institutions can scarcely be overestimated, but they are only the keystone of a vast system that all works together to produce and enforce inequality in the United States.  Because the university is an instrument of hegemony and because capitalist hegemony always depends on inequality, the university under capitalism will always be in some ways an instrument and an enforcer of inequality.  This statement is always true, but for that reason also fairly banal, because it doesn’t engage with any actual, specific material relations.  The difference – as of now – is in the degree to which the entire system interlocks to trap and control the individual.  Simply put, because in Europe there is less systemic inequality, less poverty, and more options for non-academic upward mobility (not many, but more than in the U.S.), the effect of the European university can’t be considered as pernicious and total as the effect of the American university. That doesn’t mean there isn’t much to correct and improve, it just means that capitalism has long tended to workshop its oppressions in the Americas first and then exported them elsewhere.   

European systems, which have traditionally been national or nationalized, tended to have a single centralized application system and held rigidly to unitary standards of admission and education across the national system, even if certain schools had a better “name” or were more popular. But even before I left Germany, there were already efforts to declare certain universities in the national system “centers of excellence” and to pump money into those places.  A major symptom of Americanization is the establishment of a corporate institutional hierarchy, often based equally on actual funding and on institutional PR, between universities in the public system.  This idealistic appeal to merit and excellence justifies budgetary inequalities which in turn serve both to defund “less excellent” disciplines and to center education on the interests of funders and not students.  Here too a “client-centered” corporate approach claims to serve students but is actually a pretense for increasing inequalities between them, and here too the same conclusion follows as above:  the more tiered and hierarchical the national European systems become, the more inequalities will emerge that resemble those of the American system.  

 Another big difference between the US and Europe traditionally has been a much higher European emphasis on the humanities and “human sciences.”  Scientists have always looked down on poets, but until fairly recently in Europe, it was equally the case the poets had the opportunity to publicly and emphatically look down on scientists.  When I first lived in Germany as a teenager, I remember regularly seeing literary critics, poets, screenwriters, and other kinds of art and humanities people on TV, in panel discussions (broadcast on daytime network television!) and in newspapers. This too had begun to change by the time I left Germany, and I’m sure it has gotten worse.  There’s a reciprocal pressure between intellectuals and institutions devaluing the humanities and the general public devaluing the humanities; as humanities programs disappear from the university humanities programming disappears from mass media.  A primary ideological function of the university in modern society is to tell people what’s important and what counts as real knowledge.  There are direct and significant consequences to the logic of quantification and its Four Horsemen, S, T, E, and M.  Global warming would be easier to fight if so many people weren’t convinced life is impossible without tech, for example.  These societal ideological formations don’t begin or end with the university, but they are upheld by it, promoted by it, and routed through it.  Consider for example the ways in which STEM professions are dependent on corporations in a way that many humanities jobs aren’t.  You can be a high school teacher pretty much anywhere if you speak the language; good luck being a freelance molecular biologist and crowdsourcing a lab. There are material and economic and personal consequences to ideological formations, that’s the whole point of enforcing an ideology, whether consciously or not.  Here too it’s a question of degree; we already see the process happening. How far will you let it go?  You often hear administrators tell you that the emphasis on STEM comes from students, who just don’t care about literature the way they used to.  In my experience, this is nonsense.  The proportion of humanities-oriented students and science-oriented students in the average classroom doesn’t change; what changes is the number of students who feel pressured or obligated to try and be science people when they’d rather be studying literature.  That is my experience only, I haven’t done any studies.  

The importance of fighting to keep European higher education free and accessible doesn’t rest on some liberal ideals of education and equality, but on the very real functions that higher education plays in the general economy, and in the relations of labor and production that express that economy.  The European university often serves the interests of industry and private capital, but it is an arm of the state and transmits the values of the state and is susceptible to the pressures of private capital roughly to the same degree that the state itself is.  But in America, the leading universities are expressions and instruments of private capital.  They are inseparable from it, and they serve as instruments with which private capital applies pressure to the state, rather than as an apparatus of the state on which private capital applies pressure. 

At the moment, the differing economic and social relations within which it is embedded make the European university less broken and less harmful than the American university, and with more potential for reparative change.  But even as American global hegemony collapses, economic “Americanization” is on the rise everywhere.  How far it will go, and what traditional institutions are destroyed or altered in the process, remains to be seen.  

[the-real-xmonster]

The ISU meltdown (cont.)

Anonymous said:

Reading through this article, the one thought resounding through my head till now is ‘I never want to see Yuzuru skating under such a system’ if this, god forbid, happens, I hope it is after he retires because it is bad enough to make me consider quitting the sport altogether! 

Anonymous said:

I read somewhere that the reduction in the BV of the quads could “encourage” less injuries in both the men’s and ladies’ fields?? Put that way, I kind of get it?? Because while I’d love to see yuzu land the 4lz or 4a, the thought that he’d get injured training those jumps makes me almost wish he wouldn’t train them 😭😭

Anonymous said:

Okay but none of this is set in stone yet right? Even if they do reduce base values those numbers in the table might not be the ones we end up with. Is the way to get rid of inflation seriously to FORCE the scores into naturally being lower…?? And is Kori Ade living in some alternate universe? I cant really get where she is coming from, lol just because her skater cant land quads doesnt mean she can throw shade on those who can

Re: Yuzuru. Yes, I agree. I probably am going to hell for saying this, but considering the steady deterioration of this sport into complete and utter chaos, I am now officially in favor of a Yuzu departure post-Milan. Figure skating soon wouldn’t deserve His Highness as its champion anymore.

Re: ISU trying to justify their convoluted witchcraft by pretending that they care about the athletes. Yeah, well, that one line just about summed up what I think. No, BV reduction is not going to make skaters stop training harder jumps. Figure skating jump is not a commodity to which you can reduce supply by simply lowering price. As long as quads are not completely outlawed, there will be skaters training to perform them. As long as quads carry higher BV than triples, and harder quads higher BV than easier ones, there will be skaters performing them in competition. Working towards improving technical ability is part of an athlete’s raison d'etre. There is a reason why the Olympic motto is Faster, Higher, Stronger and not Higher Score, More Medals. Yes, there is the risk of injury attached to it, but you don’t get better at skating, or any sport for that matter, by playing safe. I think all skaters know that very well, I’m not sure the ISU does.    

Re: timeline of new rules going into effect. Right now the only confirmed changes that will take place during the 2018-2019 season are (1) reducing the number of jumping passes in the men’s FS from 8 to 7, (2) reducing allotted time for the men’s FS from 4 minutes 30 seconds to 4 minutes, (3) increase GOE range from +/-3 to +/-5. The adjustment to jump BV is still in a draft state and has not been finalized. The more dramatic proposal for athletic/artistic program likely won’t even be in time for congress consideration by 2020. As I said, these sport governing bodies tend to move at the leisurely pace of a morbidly obese turtle (trust me on this, I’ve been observing the ITF and FIFA at work too). 

Re: alternative solutions to the general inflation in scoring. Yes, those do exist. The most straightforward one, IMO, is adjusting PCS coefficient. My exclusive dealer of bad figure skating news, @fuckyeahdearlybeloved​, recently discussed this method extensively in a very nice rant, so I’ll let myself be lazy and just refer you to that post, here we go :) One other thing I’d suggest the ISU do is making sure their judges and technical panels read and understand their own damn rule book before going out and judging anyone. Going by the men’s free skate protocol from Helsinki, I doubt if any of the judges on duty that day had a very clear idea what the GOE bullets say, or about PCS criteria, or about the difference between an inside edge vs an outside edge.

Re: Kori Ade. Well, it was a rather dumb and careless statement she made, but you have to admit that it is true in a pretty large number of cases. If you look at the SPs of the top men last season and consider their non-Axel solo jump, which is explicitly required to have connecting steps/skating movements preceding it, only Yuzuru’s quad loop and Javier’s quad Salchow met that requirement. Boyang’s quad toe had no steps into it. Nathan’s quad flip was the same. Shoma’s quad flip had about one and a half steps which happened so far out from the jump that calling it “connecting” would be quite a stretch. And yet, at Helsinki, Boyang, Nathan, and Shoma all received positive GOEs for those jumps (I’m leaving Patrick out because he didn’t do a solo quad). Basically, when Ade said “The bullet points for GOE are not adhered to for quads“, she is not entirely wrong. Sad, but again, at least half-true (or 3/5 true just from the sample we discussed).

[123designsrq]

HERE COME AUTONOMOUS SELF DRIVING BUSES

It’s natural the world’s first fully autonomous self-driving bus would emerge from Finland. Finland, surprisingly, is frequently regarded as the ‘Silicon Country’ that gave the planet Nokia and virtually set the blueprint for mobile communications. Nokia began in Finland, as well as for over two grand decades before Apple launched the iPhone, Nokia was the conventional to conquer. Actually, there is a high likelihood that the first phone would be a Nokia (I understand mine was). Publish-2010 when Nokia saw a slowdown, and was acquired and dissolved by Microsoft, these engineers and designers moved onto bigger and things. The dissolution of Nokia saw an upswing of the likes of Rovio (Angry Wild birds), SuperCell (Clash of Clans), as well as Sensible 4, the organization that designed the program behind Gacha, the world’s first self-driving bus which was created to operate under any climate conditions. THE COLLABORATION Gacha was produced together with MUJI, which provided the look language for that bus. Courtesy a partnership facilitated by Helsinki Business Hub (which promotes collaboration between worldwide agencies and Finnish talent) MUJI, headed by Naoto Fukasawa, made contact with with Sensible 4, the brains behind the self-driving software. Since as soon as the 90s, Sensible 4 has worked on self-driving tech. Actually, they can tested a functioning self-driving Jeep in 1993, however the computers within it were just too large, there wasn't any spot for humans to sit down! The collaboration came into being as Sensible 4 started plotting methods to make trains and buses more autonomous and frictionless. The concept for any 10-person bus that may navigate any place in any weather was created and MUJI immediately leaped aboard to assist bring the vision to existence! The Look of the Autonomous Bus The name Gacha develops from a Japanese toy figurine frequently present in shops and malls across Japan. These Gachas could be in the massive toy-dispensing gumball machine and when you place the cash in and pressed a control button, the toy will come tumbling out, encased within an almost spherical container. This container, which housed an individual toy within it, grew to become MUJI’s inspiration for that Gacha, and also the name stuck around too. The Gacha’s dual-colored design is inspired through the toy container’s two-piece construction too. It provides a soft, filleted design that immediately seems friendly and welcoming, unlike the rigid style of autonomous buses, or even the aerodynamic style of trains. The soft form helps break barriers by not developing a strictly defined wall or perhaps a ceiling. The curved, almost womb-like form immediately enables so that it is regarded as friendly around the outdoors along with the inside… an element that’s essential, states Naoto Fukasawa, thinking about how daunting the possibilities of a self-driving vehicle might be. How big the automobile is ideal too, allowing 10 individuals to be sitting down as well as an additional 4 more and more people to face inside. The seating design is favorable to friendly conversation. Unlike most buses which have seats facing one way or individually designed seats arranged linearly, the Gacha includes a running bench from left to right. It requires inspiration in the seating of saunas, a Finnish heritage and tradition, encouraging individuals to sit in groups. Its dimensions are crucial too, based on Sensible 4’s Chief executive officer Harri Santamala. The Gacha’s small size (along with its top speed of 40mph) is ideal for small shuttle activities. Public transit is protected due to its speed, and assuming interest in the Gacha increases, municipalities can easily deploy more vehicles on the highway, instead of making bigger vehicles which are more accommodating. Lastly, the Gacha’s design is bilaterally symmetrical like a stroke of complete genius. Having a design that does not possess a back or front, Naoto states the Gacha can certainly operate in left-hands and right-hands driving countries. The headlamps and taillamps are built-into a running Brought strip round the waist from the vehicle, and a straightforward switch inside the software makes it possible for the headlamps and taillamps to change direction, allowing public transit to operate easily on any side from the road without requiring costly hardware/build changes. The entire lack of a motorists cockpit or controls means the insides are totally bilaterally symmetrical too, in the benches lower towards the in-bus displays. We've Got The Autonomous Technology Sensible 4 has worked on autonomous driving tech for virtually 3 decades. Using the Gacha, the organization finally sees self-driving vehicles really making their method to roads around them. How's Gacha not the same as other self-driving vehicles all over the world? It’s the very first self-driving vehicle made to operate in practically any the weather. Finland, apart from fostering a remarkably gifted tech community (not only is it among the 3 countries on the planet to curently have legislation in position for self-driving automobiles) offers the right testing ground for self-driving cars, given its weather diversity. Far from the sunny plains of Bay Area, Finland turns out to be an entire obstacle course for that Gacha. It sees snow, rain, sun, hail, fog, and also the roads are frequently difficult to travel through, simply because they might be snowed in, frozen and icy, or simply plain uneven in suburban areas. Sensible 4 has labored lengthy and difficult to build up an automobile that may not just sense roads and obstacles, but perform its tasks in inclement weather. The Gacha, outfitted with a multitude of sensors, cameras, and mapping systems, can traverse dense fog, heavy snow, as well as torrential rain having to break a sweat. It may travel through roads utilizing an on board GPS navigation along with a map, sense traffic and signs/signals to visit in compliance using the law, stopping at red lights, zebra crossings, or perhaps when there’s a hurdle in the path. Within the snow, the Gacha knows wherever speed breakers are, using a mix of radar, lidar, and sonar, and it is intelligent AI may even pre-plan alternate routes if roads are closed, unsafe, or perhaps crowded. Phone way Gacha captures and procedures its surroundings The Gacha, ultimately, is built to be considered a autonomous passenger bus. Consider an Uber Pool in excess of 4 people. It may operate inside the city in addition to suburbs, obtaining individuals who summon it and preparing its routes based when needed, using Sensible 4’s advanced algorithms. Instead of getting a set route just like a public autonomous bus, the Gacha could make diversions to get individuals who will need to go to particular destinations, with its 100km range and 6-hour battery existence, can complete multiple runs before retiring to some nearby charging station for any quick recharge. The Exam for the Autonomous Bus RIDE Public transit was unveiled around the eighth of March towards the public of Helsinki, having a flag removed from the deputy mayor from the city. It'd snowed yesterday, and for that reason, the roads were slushy and slippery, and that i remember everybody complaining about how exactly miserable the elements was, as the Gacha team had just the opposite reaction! These were more than pleased to show the self-driving autonomous bus in undesirable weather and driving conditions. Unveiled at Helsinki’s recently built central library, the Oodi, the Gacha is made they are driving inside a cordoned off position for the general public, such as the press. Walking in to the Gacha, I instantly appreciated registering two reactions. My thoughts understood just what a problem it was, to become sitting in the vehicle which was operating by itself, with simply no instructions or controls from the present human… but simultaneously, it felt as an incredibly familiar experience. The thing is, we’re accustomed to something quite similar having a subway or perhaps a train. You do not always begin to see the driver from the teach you sit in. You simply go into the compartment and stand there aimlessly understanding that the automobile will complete its journey along with you within it, as well as your only job is to buy off at the stop. That’s exactly what the Gacha felt like too, and it is an amazing win for that industry since it immediately helps remove any fear the general public might have with self-driving cars. Practically how big a sizable cable vehicle, the Gacha moved around by itself when i, plus a number of journalists, sitting inside, attempting to register just what a problem it was. There is immediately a feeling of belief within the autonomous bus, and that i doubt a vehicle might have the very same feeling because individuals are utilized to driving their very own cars, however with a bus, you’re usually always a passenger. The Gacha understood wherever to prevent, when you should as well as for how lengthy to spread out its sliding doorways, so when to embark. It completed a circular journey around a clear plot outdoors the Oodi library, and plotted the very same path without worrying about lanes, lines, or perhaps a roadway. It stopped whenever a pedestrian became of compare into it, and started immediately when the coast was obvious. The Brought strip round the Gacha did a outstanding job of letting people know precisely if this would stop, if this was awaiting boarding, so when it would depart. In each and every which way, the Gacha did just what it guaranteed to complete, using the intuition of the human driver, knowing exactly when and where to proceed. The Autonomous Long Run The Gacha might be able to receive from point One place to another by itself, however it still provides extensive obstacles to mix. To begin with, Sensible 4 is delivering public transit (its only prototype as of this moment) towards the northern laplands of Finland to function under snowy conditions. They will gather all of the necessary data to help make the Gacha are more effective with lesser friction, regardless of weather. In addition, there's a significant conversation around the existence of self-driving automobiles according to the risks of we've got the technology. The immediate fear is losing jobs, however in any evolving society, old jobs die to provide birth to brand new ones. The deputy mayor of Helsinki believes the Gacha can create new jobs by using it. The 2nd most significant fear may be the protocol within an undesirable situation as an accident or perhaps a calamity. As the Gacha is heavily enhanced and speed-restricted to avoid moving accidents, still it remains determined exactly what the autonomous bus is going to do in case of one. Unlike humans who may flee a scene, the Gacha must be a lot more accountable and responsible, whilst being responsible for anyone there. Because of the Gacha’s 2021 debut date, we might finally obtain a clearer picture from the safety protocols of self-driving vehicles. As the Gacha continues its year-lengthy test run within the town of Espoo, Sensible 4 is given the job of locating a hardware/manufacturing partner for that vehicle. Using the technology and design in position, the organization wishes to have governments of metropolitan areas and municipalities invite it to explore the general public transit system. The Gacha also provides extensive possibilities outdoors trains and autonomous buses. Having the ability to act as a logistics vehicle, or perhaps moving retail store just like a grocery, or possibly a MUJI shop (!) on wheels, the Gacha can don many hats, serving not only local governments and municipalities, but corporations. Ultimately, the truth that the Gacha is able to travel with any type of weather with no need of a person, really enables the automobile to seamlessly integrate into a number of countries, cultures, societies, campuses, as well as companies. Made to just be an automobile which will reliably receive from point A to suggest B with no glitch, problem, or fuss, the Gacha includes a universal outlook and appeal that appears lightyears in front of it is time! Read the full article

[blorbosexterminator]

Exactly!! Helsinki's bond with Martín is nothing compared to that with Nairobi, not even close. On the other hand, there's Bogota, the "boyfriend" of Nairobi, but him forgiving Martín is believeble, for the exact same reason - they share a long history with Martín and with Nairobi his bond wasn't that strong. Sure, he's pissed and sad but his relationship with Martín is the more important one. Btw all the original team members were too forgiving with him, only Rio called him out.

Yes! Like it's insane to me, consider it from the pov of any other character and you'll see, imagine if Tatiana had just gotten Martín killed and a few moments later Andrés goes 'that's alright, you're a good person deep inside <3' like ?????????? Why the fuck does that even matter now? Who gives a single shit what's deep inside Martín's heart? He got his fucking partner of three years (not romantic partner, but that doesn't make it any less meaningful) killed, and again, I don't see how in hell that corresponds to Martín's "pain." He just got her killed, full stop. Not only is it unrealistic that Helsinki would forgive him that easily, so soon, but it's demeaning to his character.

With Bogota it's completely normal for the reasons you said. At the end of the day, he knew Nairobi for what? A month and a half? Sure there might have been potential day, but it's a crush that a got little deepened, that's it. Martín is his friend here. Martín is the man he knew for 5+ years, and he understands Martín's personality and connection to the plan better than anyone present AND Bogota himself has the same logic of 'we do what it takes for the plan' so he has a better onlook on Martín's motivation (and lmfao, he's def the guy to go 'bros before hoes') so yeah here his relationship with Martín is deeper than his with Nairboi. But Helsinki??? Pfffft

Exactly. Like I get the show wanting to move on to deal with 'the war' and I could understand the team members just putting it aside for now so that they get out of here, but lmfao forgiving him? Dealing with him as any other good team member? Helsinki just going 'I want to be with you when we get oit of here <333' ? Absloutely fucking ridiculous. Like wanting the plot to move on and wanting a half-assed redemption arc doesn't make things that canonically happened in the show and didn't get their warranted reaction/deal with it just disappear. Bless Rio for being the only one with some common sense.

[alexsmitposts]

Threats and Sanctions Everywhere – A Chronicle of Disorganized Chaos Foretold As of May 10, Mr. Trump has arbitrarily increased tariffs on Chinese goods imported into the US, worth about 200 billion dollars, from 10 % to 25%. It is an action without any foundation. An action that makes no sense at all, as China can and will retaliate – and retaliate much stronger than what the impact of the US’s new “sanctions” bear – because these arbitrary tariffs are nothing else but sanctions. Illegality of such foreign interference aside, there is hardly any serious economist in this world, who would favor tariffs in international trade among “adults” anywhere and for any reason, and, of course, least as a punishment for a nation. All that such sanctions do is pushing a partner away. In this case it’s not just any partner; China is a key trading partner of the United States. The new tariffs will hardly harm the American consumer. There are huge profit margins by US middlemen and importers of Chinese goods. They are competing with each other within the US – and the consumer may not even notice a thing. However, the US economy will likely suffer, especially from Chinese retaliatory actions. A spoiled child, what Trump is, doesn’t get his way – and goes into a tantrum, not quite knowing what he is doing, and knowing even less what he may expect in return. Mr. Trump himself, has not only reached a level of incompetence and ignorance which is scary – but he has also surrounded himself with inept, preposterous people, like, Pence, Bolton, Pompeo – who, it appears, have no other means left than running around the world amok, dishing out threats left and right – and spending billions on moving aircraft carriers around the globe to make sure people are afraid of the great-great the United States of America. *** Back to trading with China. China has a million ways (almost) to retaliate. China can devalue her currency vis-à-vis the dollar, or China can dump some of their almost 3 trillion dollars-worth of reserves on the money market – just take a wild guess about what that would do to the hegemony of the dollar which is already in dire straits – with ever more countries departing from the use of dollars for international trade. And just hypothetically, China could stop altogether exporting all that Walmart junk that American consumers love so much – just for a while. Or China could stop making iPhones for the US market. Guess what kind of an uproar that would trigger in the US? – Or China could of course, levy herself high tariffs on US imports, or stop US imports altogether. China being part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – actually the co-founder of it – has many alternatives to cover her demand. No need to depend on the west. Let’s not forget, the SCO which also counts as its members, Russia, India, Pakistan, most of Central Asia, and Iran poised to become a full-fledged member – covers about half of the world population and a third of the world’s economic output, or GDP. No need to look to the west for ‘survival’ – those times are long gone. *** But more importantly, what all this looks like to me – is the desperate thrashing around of a dying beast, or in this case a dying empire. We have the US and Venezuela – threats after threats after threats – Maduro must go, or more sanctions. Indeed, according to a study by the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), these horrifying, totally illegal sanctions or blockages of imports, most of them already paid for by Venezuela, have killed some 40,000 people in Venezuela. Of course, Washington doesn’t care about legality and killing, also typical for a fading mighty power – no respect for law and order, no respect for human rights and human lives. One only has to see what type of psychopaths are occupying the tasks of “Foreign Minister” and of “National Security Advisor” or of Vice President, for that matter – they are all sick, but very sick and dangerous people. Well, in Venezuela “regime change” didn’t work out – so far. Pompeo has been clearly told off by Mr. Lavrov during their recent get-together in Helsinki – and China is in the same line of supporting the government of Nicolas Maduro. Next – Iran. Attacking Iran has been a dream of Bolton’s ever since the US 2003 “Shock and Awe” invasion of Iraq. Bolton and Pompeo are of the same revolting kind: They want wars, conflicts, or if they don’t get wars, they want to sow fear, they enjoy seeing people scared. They want suffering. Now they didn’t succeed – at least so far – with Venezuela, let’s try Iran. Pompeo – “Iran has done irregular things” – not saying what in particular he means – so Iran has to be punished, with yet more sanctions. And any argument is good. The entire world knows, including the Vienna-base UN Economic Energy Commission, and has acknowledged umpteen times that Iran has fully adhered to the conditions of the Nuclear Deal from which the US exited a year ago. Of course, no secret here either, this at the demand of Trump’s Big Friend Bibi Netanyahu. The European Union vassals may actually turn for their own business interests, not for political ethics, but pure and simple self-interest – towards respecting the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Nuclear Deal. China and Russia are already holding on to the Deal, and they are not impressed by Washington’s threats. So, there is very little Trump and his minions can do, other than saber rattling. Therefore, the nefarious Pence-Pompeo-Bolton trio must invent another warning: Iran or any proxy of Iran shall attack an ally of the US, and Iran will be devastated. In fact, they consider the Houthis in Yemen who fight for their sheer survival against the US-UK-France – and NATO supported Saudis, as a proxy for Iran. So, the US could start bombing Iran already today. Why don’t they? Maybe they are afraid – afraid Iran could lock down the Strait of Hormuz, where 60% of US oil imports have to sail through. What a disaster that would be, not just for the US but also for the rest of the world. Oil prices could skyrocket. Would Washington want to risk a war over their irrationality? – Maybe, Mr. Halfwit Trump might, but I doubt that his deep-dark state handlers would. They know what’s at stake for them and the world. But they let Trump play his games a bit longer. Moving the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, loaded with war planes, close to Iranian waters costs hundreds of millions or billions. Just to enhance a threat. A show-off. Bolton and Pompeo will entertain their sadism, enjoying seeing scared people. But the cost of war doesn’t matter – it’s just more debt, and as we know, the US never, but never pays back its debt. Next – or simultaneously is China. The trade war with China that started last year, then had a respite to the point of the recent joint negotiations – and suddenly the Trumpians are veering off again. They must smash China, wanting to appear superior. But why? The world knows that the US are no longer superior – by a long shot, and haven’t been for the last couple of years, when China surpassed the US in economic strength, measured by PPP = Purchasing Power Parity – which is the only parity or exchange rate that has any real meaning. Guess what! – All these three cases have one common denominator: The dollar as a chief instrument for world hegemony. Venezuela and Iran have stopped using the dollar for their hydrocarbon and other international trading, already some years ago. And so did China and Russia. China’s strong currency, the Yuan, is rapidly taking over the US-dollar’s reserve position in the world. Sanctioning China with insane tariffs is supposed to weaken the Yuan; but it won’t. All of these three countries, China, Iran and Venezuela are threatening the US dollar’s world hegemony – and without that the US economy is dead, literally. The dollar is based on thin air, and on fraud – the dollar system used around the globe is nothing but a huge, a very big and monstrous Ponzi-scheme, that one day must be coming crashing down. That’s what’s at stake. New FED Board member, Herman Cain, for example, is pledging for a new gold standard. But none of these last resort US measure will work, not a new gold standard, not a trade and tariff war, and not threats of wars and destruction and “regime change”. The nations around the world know what’s going on, they know the US is in her last breath; though they don’t quite dare saying so – but they know it, and are waiting for the downfall to continue. The world is waiting for the grand fiesta, dancing in the streets, when the empire disappears – or becomes utterly irrelevant.

[deniscollins]

The World Wastes Tons of Food. A Grocery ‘Happy Hour’ Is One Answer.

About one-third of the food produced and packaged for human consumption is lost or wasted, which equals 1.3 billion tons a year, worth nearly $680 billion. Meanwhile, 10 percent of people in the world are chronically undernourished. If you were a supermarket executive what would you do with nearly unsellable food nearing midnight expiration: (1) throw in the garbage, (2) reduce price to 60 percent off at exactly 9 p.m., or (3) something else, if so, what? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

“Happy hour” at the S-market store in the working-class neighborhood of Vallila happens far from the liquor aisles and isn’t exactly convivial. Nobody is here for drinks or a good time. They’re looking for a steep discount on a slab of pork.

Or a chicken, or a salmon fillet, or any of a few hundred items that are hours from their midnight expiration date. Food that is nearly unsellable goes on sale at every one of S-market’s 900 stores in Finland, with prices that are already reduced by 30 percent slashed to 60 percent off at exactly 9 p.m. It’s part of a two-year campaign to reduce food waste that company executives in this famously bibulous country decided to call “happy hour” in the hopes of drawing in regulars, like any decent bar.

“I’ve gotten quite hooked on this,” said Kasimir Karkkainen, 27, who works in a hardware store, as he browsed the meat section in the Vallila S-market. It was 9:15 and he had grabbed a container of pork mini-ribs and two pounds of shrink-wrapped pork tenderloin.

Total cost after the price drop: the equivalent of $4.63.

About one-third of the food produced and packaged for human consumption is lost or wasted, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. That equals 1.3 billion tons a year, worth nearly $680 billion. The figures represent more than just a disastrous misallocation of need and want, given that 10 percent of people in the world are chronically undernourished. All that excess food, scientists say, contributes to climate change.

From 8 to 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are related to food lost during harvest and production or wasted by consumers, a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found. Landfills of rotting food emit methane, a gas that is roughly 25 times more harmful than carbon dioxide. And to harvest and transport all that wasted food requires billions of acres of arable land, trillions of gallons of water and vast amounts of fossil fuels.

For consumers, cutting back on food waste is one of the few personal habits that can help the planet. But for some reason, a lot of people who fret about their carbon footprint aren’t sweating the vegetables and rump steak they toss into the garbage.

“There’s been a lot of focus on energy,” said Paul Behrens, a professor in energy and environmental change at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. “But climate change is as much a land issue and a food issue as anything else.”

Reducing waste is a challenge because selling as much food as possible is a tried, tested and ingrained part of all-you-can-eat cultures. Persuading merchants to promote and profit from “food rescue,” as it is known, is not so obvious.

“Consumers are paying for the food, and who wants to reduce that?” said Toine Timmermans, director of the United Against Food Waste Foundation, a nonprofit in the Netherlands composed of companies and research institutes. “Who profits from reducing food waste?”

A growing number of supermarkets, restaurants and start-ups — many based in Europe — are trying to answer that question. The United States is another matter.

“Food waste might be a uniquely American challenge because many people in this country equate quantity with a bargain,” said Meredith Niles an assistant professor in food systems and policy at the University of Vermont. “Look at the number of restaurants that advertise their supersized portions.”

Nine of the 10 United States supermarket chains that were assessed by the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity last year were given a C grade or lower on food-waste issues. Only Walmart did better, largely for its efforts to standardize date labels and to educate staffers and customers.

Some of the most promising food waste efforts are apps that connect food sellers to food buyers. Think Tinder, except one party in this hookup is a person and the other is an aging loaf of bread.

Among the most popular is Too Good to Go, a company based in Copenhagen, with 13 million users and contracts with 25,000 restaurants and bakeries in 11 countries. Consumers pay about one-third of the sticker price for items, most of which goes to the retailer, with a small percentage paid to the app.

In Denmark, food rescue has attained the scale and momentum of a cultural movement, one with its own intellectual godmother: Selina Juul, a graphic designer who immigrated from Russia at the age of 13.

“I came from a country where there was a fear that we wouldn’t have food on the table tomorrow, where there were food shortages,” she said in a phone interview. “When we emigrated, I had never seen so much food. I was shocked. Then I was shocked again when I saw how much food people wasted.”

In 2008, at the age of 28, she started a Facebook group called Stop Wasting Food. Within weeks, she was being interviewed on the radio. Soon after that, she came to the attention of Anders Jensen, the buying director at REMA 1000, the largest supermarket chain in Denmark.

“I was on a business trip to Scotland and I read about Selina in a newspaper,” Mr. Jensen recalls. “Around that time, we learned that every Dane was throwing out 63 kilos of food per year” — about 139 pounds — “and I was sitting in this airport thinking, she’s right.”

After the two met in a Copenhagen cafe, REMA 1000 eliminated in-store bulk discounts. As of 2008, there would be no more three hams for the price of two, or any variations on that theme.

“It exploded in the media because it was the first time a retailer said, ‘It’s O.K. if we sell less,’” Mr. Jensen said.

REMA 1000 and Ms. Juul recognize that there is a limit to how much one company can do to reduce waste. Consciousness raising was necessary. So Ms. Juul has enlisted famous Danes to join her cause.

She’s co-writing a book on cooking with leftovers with Princess Marie, who worked in advertising and marketing before marrying into the Danish royal family. Celebrity chefs, like Rene Redzepi, have spread the word. Mette Frederiksen, the current prime minister, even made it a campaign issue this year.

In Finland, reducing food waste has yet to become a political issue, but it is a selling point for at least one restaurant. Every dish on the menu of Loop, which is housed in a former mental hospital in Helsinki, is made from past-due ingredients donated by grocery stores and bakeries. Donations vary, so Loop’s chefs have no idea what they’ll be making until they walk into the restaurant’s kitchen.

“It’s like an episode of ‘Master Chef’ every day,” said Johanna Kohvakka, founder of the nonprofit From Waste to Taste, which operates Loop. “But we try to make every dish look great so that people can share images online and say, ‘This was about to be wasted.’”

Ms. Kohvakka says Loop turns a profit and could serve as a model for similar ventures. Executives at S-market in Finland make no such claims about their happy hour. Mika Lyytikainen, an S-market vice president, explained that the program simply reduces its losses.

“When we sell at 60 percent off, we don’t earn any money, but we earn more than if the food was given to charity,” he said. “On the other hand, it’s now possible for every Finn to buy very cheap food in our stores.”

It’s not unusual to find groups of S-market shoppers milling around with soon-to-be-discounted items from the shelves and waiting for the clock to strike at 9. “I’ve done that,” Mr. Karkkainen said, as he headed for the exits with his pork mini ribs.

Other Finns, it seems, haven’t fully embraced S-market’s anti-waste ethos. Harri Hartikainen, 71, was shopping one evening in Vallila and considered a 60 percent off box of Kansas City-style grilled chicken wings.

“I’ve never tried these before,” he said, dropping them into his shopping basket. “But it’s so cheap, if I don’t like it, I can just throw it out.”

[theninjasanctuary]

Another year in review.

This will be long and poorly organized, because I have mixed feelings about this one. It was really harsh in some respects, then again I found the resilience to cope, and some things went well.

I’ll start with what stands out the most to me: haven’t done the numbers (will see once I get my income tax data), but I believe this is probably my worst year, income-wise, in at least a decade. I had 1/4 of a day job for 8 months, then no job for 1,5 months (but couldn’t sign up for unemployment benefits because I was teaching), then got 1/2 of a day job for the remaining 2,5 months, which now earns me just slightly above minimum wage. Also lost a long-term, boring, but relatively ok-paying side gig at the start of the year. So I took on as many side jobs as I could, which was gratifying in some ways (opportunities were easy to find, the feedback was good, etc.), but they also have mostly frustrated me with how little and how late they pay (teaching in particular). Got one small grant in October, which really helped me out, otherwise I’d definitely be finishing the year in debt. I am still finishing pretty broke with no savings, but at least I’m being owed several hundreds of € for completed work. And I’ve been able to pay not just the bills but somehow afford a fair amount of my wants and needs as well (no-frills but decent skincare, some travel, some wardrobe updating, a great new phone), which is definitely better than I feared, so I’m not exactly unhappy with this outcome. However, I must not lose sight of this not being enough. I want to be able to afford the most basic adult things like furniture and driving lessons, and currently I can’t. Many plans fell through this year, not least another grant application that was supposed to get me a decently paying, full-time job for 5 years. I can just about exist on this income level, but just about existing is fucked and unacceptable at my age. So I must locate some way of increasing my income considerably, and soon.     

On the work front, there’s a number of unmet goals, primarily pieces of writing I need to finish. However, my self-esteem has tentatively recovered, in part due to the relative ease of freelancing, and the fact that I seem to be doing ok at the new job so far. I can’t think of any particular highlights, but it seems nothing went majorly wrong for once (except for that grant application getting rejected, but that wasn’t on me personally). Not feeling quite so low about my ability and skillset any more must be counted as a big plus. I also met my goal of writing a) more, and b) at least partly for pleasure, and it felt as good as I expected, and the money I made from it helped too, even if it wasn’t much. And I think all of the presentations and public speaking I did went well this year, too.  

Health-wise, things could certainly have been better. The random, life-first proper UTI in April was surely the lowest point. I’ve been vigilant as hell since then, eating probiotics daily, and am slowly growing less paranoid about getting another. Still, looking over my entries, I’ve spent big chunks of the rest of the year being stressed and complaining about either sleep problems, bizarre heart problems, fever, etc. Did have a full endocrinology checkup and dosage adjustment in the summer, so thyroid issues have been in check since then. Had a thorough heart checkup in September and October which found nothing of concern, thankfully. Minor injuries (ankle and wrist sprains, etc.) showed up from nowhere, but healed fine. The 2 consecutive viral colds in December have been annoying and frankly unnecessary, but it’s not as if I could have prevented them. Also, there are a couple of more check-ups I’ve been needing to book, but have kept postponing, so that’s not good either.

Relationships: doing fine in my modest and introverted way, as usual. The extreme heatwave in the summer and then being overwhelmed with work in the autumn were detrimental to socializing, but otherwise things have been pretty good. Grateful to have the friends I’ve got and the time I got to spend with them. Not to jinx it, people at the new office seem ok too.

What I’m happy about: I made time to read and to watch anime. For most of the year, I got a decent amount of exercise, taking breaks when I was ill or when the temperatures posed an actual health risk. No drastic weight changes, am about the same as last year. Despite budget constraints, I think I looked pretty good for the most part, so there’s that (already made a separate post about my skincare highlights of the year). I’m glad I undertook the effort to get my ear piercings to collaborate again, haven’t had any issues with them since. Looking back at what I wrote at the end of last year, I did not get haircuts as often as I’d have liked, for money reasons, and when I did treat myself, the result was actually a slight letdown. Must try again towards this spring.

I also did not spend all that much time outdoors as I would have liked, I guess, for various reasons (including the hottest summer of my life kind of overwhelming me, as faint as that memory seems now), but there were some quality highlights. This too is something I need to try improving next year.

I did see some new domestic sights, while international travel was brief and limited to places I’d been before - Helsinki, Brussels, Paris, London, but hey, I’m glad I got to go anywhere at all, given how broke I was, and I had a lovely time every time. Only one of these was a work trip, and it was with the boyf and a couple of friends, staying at a very nice hotel I wasn’t paying for, so nothing to complain about even there. 

Glad I managed a necessary tech upgrade. I retired my Fairphone 1 at the end of this year, after almost 5 years. Switching to a new phone went surprisingly smoothly, and it is nice to be able to have some confidence about battery mileage. I haven’t changed my usage habits by much yet though. I keep turning data off and the entire phone off for the night unless I need to set an alarm. I rarely take pictures even though the camera is so, so much better. I still look distorted and weird as fuck in selfies compared to the mirror. And I’m still using the same handful of apps, really... too busy to think about options, if anything, I should tone things down even further. Muting not just only dozens of keywords, but almost everyone I followed on Twitter back in June was a great decision. I did it because the constant influx of extremely distressing news I could do absolutely nothing about was clearly doing me harm at that point. I’ve unmuted exactly 1 person since then, and looking at the list, with most of them, idek why I ever bothered tbh.

A clear upside, compared to the year before: no funerals.

What I should do differently in the new year:

Should not prioritize work over sleep. Just because I can work through the night, doesn’t mean anyone will be thanking me for it, and it’s summarily not good for me. I don’t really know how to handle deadlines in a different way though.

I should try going sugar-free again, because this latest cold has ruined my appetite anyway, and sweet stuff, which I’ve eaten in moderation for most of the year (still much less than I used to), is mostly just disappointing. It would be good to lose a few k before summer at the latest. I don’t need a wardrobe overhaul, I just need to look better in what I’ve already got.

I might also try giving up red meat, not that I consume a lot of it in the first place. I don’t enjoy it that much anyway, and it’s bad for the environment. I think I could easily go from “sometimes” to only “when I can’t be bothered explaining my dietary choices to my mother”.

I should buy less bread, because too much of it goes to waste. I like toast, but bloody hell, it would be more practical if I could buy like 4 slices at a time. Yeah, the uneaten stuff gets composted, but I still don’t like wasting food.

Should aim to keep up a good routine of AHA and BHA on my face and KP-prone parts (my arms looked much better this summer), and should locate a vit C product that is gentle, stable and free from awful texture issues (my current options are too harsh or have awful texture issues).

Should focus on putting effort into long-term goals and not get mired down in getting through mundane to-do-lists. Be ambitious. Aim big. Turn down offers I don’t like even if I could use the money.

Should aim to have more sex. This year has not been great. Too much work, too fucking hot to even consider it, health issues, etc., etc.

Should work on improving my stamina. Bike rides, maybe a little running. Definitely badminton.

Should also buy a new swimsuit and go to a spa sometimes.

[readfelice-blog]

Moominland Chronicles achtzehn: Gran Torino

Hello, let’s just jump straight in shall we?

Oh, no wait, firstly,  have a look at Colin Self’s Siblings (which is surprising and delightful in certain places, I’m only on my first listen though so havent got to its core yet.)

https://colinself.bandcamp.com/album/siblings

And something a bit more Italian for you, Franco Battiato, who was the essence that was channeled vicariously in the naming of LA LUCE AL BUIO,

-Un’ora Con…

….Makes for very interesting listening, there's a clangers track in there, though I’m not sure if that's what Franco was going for it definitely made me smile:

This is fetus (a track off the album but it's hard to source online so might be a spotify / google play search tbh) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd_59SCLlZY

Well then, Turin’s right nice.

I got a plane at 6:30 in the morning, the wing of the airport I was leaving from was closed when I got there.

This time I got a seat on the bus to get to the airport. My seat was directly in front of a mentally disturbed man who was walking up and down the aisle for the entire journey. He eventually got blocked in by other passengers boarding, he had a strange distant smile, I can't say it wasn’t disconcerting, but it was also curious and strangely beautiful.

He disappeared when we arrived at Tegel, I doubt he was getting a plane, though who knows, perhaps he was some fractured billionaire burnt out from all the money he was juggling.

After customs took their seats and sent me through the barriers I sat to wait for the cafe to open, wrote my diary: which is another thing im doing now, in case you're not content with one ‘Felice’s tell all story’ - theres now a rawer instagram only version charting my journey through ‘восем acht ocho’ as well, its totally unedited bile and thoroughly embarrassing - I’m not re reading / editing it, but it’s the best way to keep track of all these publications being haphazardly launched around Central Europe.

The airline I was flying with was called Lauda, some subdivision of Ryanair, who I bought my ticket through, all the staff had Ryanair uniforms on and the plane was a Ryanair plane.

Last week I was a bit mad on death, I read Michel De Montaigne’s essay ‘To philosophize is to learn how to die’ and then put its message into practise - looking for and becoming acquainted with death wherever I went, envisioning it in the lamp light of darkened streets, the glass eyes of dolls and even under the toilet seat.

Lauda was death, a Ryanair flight would never crash, not in my mind, but a Lauda flight could….

We left Berlin in fine weather, we travelled to a sunless sky framed by thick blocks of grey. As we went along the turbulence was unbearable, I am not an easy flier, perhaps I've not done it enough, but also I’m riddled with anxiety before I even get in the sky, one small shake is ok, but a continuous rattle for 20 mins and the safety belt signs coming on whilst still mid journey does not fare well with me. I was utterly convinced at one point that it was the end of my relatively short but eventful time on earth and glad I’d written my last requests before I left, though much more scared than I wanted to be.

Breathe deep, it does work.

Just as we descended and the spectre of death rescinded I suddenly realised how incredible the view was outside my window and eagerly attended to the sight of clouds upon clouds, a dense celestial cacophony lit by the golden rays of the sun. We passed through this heavenly land, everything becoming hazy and disappearing into the fog of vapor.

When we landed the plane applauded the pilot, clearly I was not the only person on board so terrified that if I’d clenched my fists any tighter they’d have snapped off my wrists.

Our pilot deserved those claps, he flew us close to death but was strong enough to skim it rather than be sucked in.

The airport was the same as last year,

no wait no it wasn't because I flew to Milan

and then had two train rides to Torino (Turin), the second train was very pleasant, trains are nice in Italy, they have power ports under the seats and are 2 floors like double decker buses. I think some of them are like that in Germany to.

This year I was officially in Italy, joyfully attached to my window, taking in the edge of decay that skirted wonderful quaint yellow houses, one glass fronted building bursting out of another which contained hundreds of lamps in different shades and sizes. Studying the people, handsome and somehow and open, there was a vividness to their faces that arrested me.

And I was in Italy when I got off the train and walked on to the streets of Torino, it wasn’t Paris or Berlin or Helsinki or Cork, it wasn't the setting where I would be saved by a man I’d never met before.

It was captivating and full of heart.

Firstly, my ableton tote that held 3 publications needed attending to, I neatly veered towards Piazza Statuto, reputedly a potential gate to hell, this little trip would chart me walking from dark to light.

It was raining as I stood under the jagged rocks and mangled bodies of the Monument, I’d been panicking that the rain would ruin these labored over gifts , where would I leave them?? Not in toilets, especially not disgusting piss sprayed italian cafe toilets, they were worth more than that, as with much of my life I stepped back a little from this worry and just trusted that something would present itself.

A couple approached me after a short time of being stood in front of the gates of hell, they asked in Italian, then English, for me to take a photo of them, I talked myself down from chucking my parcel in their direction and then launching myself the opposite way. This turned out to be sensible, as the opportunity then presented itself, in the form of a thick tree stump, under the gaze of the tortured stone faces. It had once been a pair of trees, but now in the wet air of the afternoon, it was one tree and one monument of a tree, the remaining oak sheltering its lost compadre with thick branches still full of leaves.

They were off the beaten path, in truth I wondered if it would be found, the person that might spy it would have to be observant and sensitive: children would find it, but I don't want kids to find these books, there's some art smut not for children's eyes bound inside the covers.

The act of leaving this gift was much easier than I envisioned, it turns out you can do all sorts of things in plain sight and most people won’t even bat an eyelid, at least not in Torino that day.

I really like Italy now.

I left it, then I zipped off to a nearby cafe to have a cup of tea (coffee is to strong for my delicate disposition these days). Last year I spoke to no one for days, but after months of not being able to speak German in Germany, not being able to speak Italian in Italy wasn't quite such a big deal.

The cafes I visited remind me a bit of Amelie, who I couldn't find in Montmartre, she had somehow transferred herself to Torino.

This one was brightly lit, glass cases of cakes and thick sandwiches hugged the floor, then the bar followed round behind them, I blundered through asking for tea, was given a pot of water and a tray of teabags, i just took all the teabags unthinkingly and then considered the inadequate ratio of tea bags to water.

D’oh,

They were returned to the counter and I parked myself outside to start my diary.

When I went in to pay at the end I found out that it was the lady, on her own little island aside from the bar, nestled amid nik naks and sweets, who was the person i should give my money to. I chuckled a bit to myself for my lack of common sense, the staff had big smiles on, it was a happy place I left, it was a happy place I had entered.

Then to Piazza Castello, but via Dama art fair.

In the rain it suddenly struck me how incredibly sensible and kind all these covered footpaths were, graced by arches and gorgeous decorative embellishments, they sheltered the people of the city and provided ample space for outside seating, whatever the weather. Because, the people of Torino like to be outside even when they’re inside, lots of cafes have glass paneled structures adjacent to the main building, so you can always eat on the street.

I sidestepped the main street, a direct passage from dark to light, to go to Dama art fair, a smaller less commercial affair than Artissima, set inside a baroque palace. It announced itself calmly, no fanfare and the first room you entered was empty, aside from sound, then into a journey, maps stretched across the wall, details of the passage overhanging the main plots, drawings and observations, in monochrome.

Dama art fair was elegant, but not arrogant, against the gorgeously decadent furnishings and trimmings of the palaces rooms quiet art pieces, drawings and sculptures mainly, investigating and working with form, sat just ebbing and pulsating in the atmosphere of the surroundings they inhabited. On arrival upstairs, after dumbly staggering around a courtyard for about 15 mins with a wealthy and well dressed man and his companion, who were also very friendly.

He “Its the most secret art fair in the world”

Me “You have to work for your art”

On arrival you were greeted by ‘THE END’ : woven fabric around big wooden words hung from the ceiling between two large blue speakers.

“How do they know?” I wondered to myself - “How do they know that this is my ending, here in Torino?”

No sign of a beginning though, I guess I will find it somewhere else.

Then back out onto the street again and walking past high street shops to the Piazza Castello. On my straight line from dark to light.

I’m glad my bag is light, you don’t need much to travel.

It’s raining and overcast, but the Piazza Castello is opening up in front of me like a beacon of light, it’s not an angel that stands in its centre, which I expected to find, but a man, I feel like he's a logician, an academic, an emblem of reason and enquiry. I haven’t done my research because I like to work with impressions and weave my own kind of mysticism into what I find as I walk around, so I don’t know who he is.

The piazza is huge, on my left to horseback riders announce a big art gallery where curious visitors stand in bunches waiting to go inside, on my right are white fronted buildings, all majestic and grand, there is so much room to breath here. But where do I leave my publication? I circle the statue and then spy what looks like a plinth, a kind of chalice almost, I imagine it’s filled with the elixir of life but as I get closer I find it’s actually an ashtray, its covered though and as I take a turn about it I notice that the wise man in the centre of the square is pointed towards me.

It might be an ashtray but it’s the right place, I’m more confident this time as I prop my publication on its rim, take a photo and then walk away. I’m noticing though that I barely take in the surroundings I find when I’m doing this and then I get panicky and run away, I make a note to myself that after all this work I need to sit where I lay my gifts, I need to draw them and understand them, be able to describe them to myself for years to come. Quick photographs don’t give enough time to what I’m doing.

I then arch off and look for food, because I’m hungry. Lots of people seem to be gathering about a nearby pizza shop, like a chicken headed tourist I join the crowd, I’ve decided I’m allergic to lactose and wheat but hey, I’m on holiday, when you’re abroad your hysterias change.

I get myself a ‘Gran Torino’ and then I eat it there on the street, wrapped in paper, there’s a man sat down nearly opposite, the first homeless man I’ve seen here, we don’t interact but I pay him mind, I don’t want to make him invisible to suit my view. As I’m just stuffing the last of the delicious breaded cheese feast into my mouth I enter another cafe, pulled in by its ample outside seating and its corner position, I don’t want any more tea but they have freshly squeezed orange juice, yes please.

Whilst sat outside I am approached 3 times at my table, twice by Italians looking for somewhere to eat, who are very friendly when they find out I’m not Italian and go on their way cheerily. Once by a woman pushing a very young girl and braced little boy who very aggressively asks for money, her young son and her stand and shout at me for a few minutes whilst I refuse to give them anything then go off into the surrounding city, they shout in Italian and I think to myself that it’s probably not the best way to ask for charity, but maybe it works for them sometimes.

I’ve already experienced more interaction with people in a few short hours than I did in the 4 days I was here last, who am I this time? I’m not the same person that traipsed miserably up and down these streets 12 months ago.

Nowhere is this more profound than on my walk to my air bnb, the wet warm air and clouds hug incredible views down each street that I walk past, as I look to my left I can see the glorious green hills that surround the city, I can feel the magic that is rife here, and I notice the Italians going about their daily lives so full of energy and vitality. There’s a spring in my step every cm of the way that I walk.

My air bnb host is a superhost, I’d actually settled to stay alone but my trip was cancelled a little while before I went to Paris and her place was available, I’d taken it because I wouldn’t be alone, because even though my stay in Paris was not great I’d appreciated having someone there when I got to my accomodation and I’d wanted to repeat that more sensibly this time, with a private room rather than a sofa bed in common space.

The house is spotless, she is a compact and very handsome older woman, it feels safe, I feel like I’ve been here before. We can’t really communicate, she cant speak English and I can’t speak Italian, it’s frustrating but we manage somehow. I have my own private bathroom in this house and a little tidy bed with soft pillows that make me realise the one I have in my room at home is far to hard and unfriendly.

I have a nap, which I’ve promised myself since getting aboard the plane, I get into my pajamas and lie in bed for 3 hours, half awake. Whilst I’m spread out in my little bed I listen to the noise that surrounds me, the young family that live next door chatter and argue and laugh, the birdsong echoes outside my window, the sound of cars and the church bells fill my ears, they are resonant, like a chorus. I find my demons lurking inside me, but I just face them and then have a little stretch and turn over, we are a multitude of traumas and triumphs, not just one but several people and in order to rest we must be able to live with all these voices inside us, come to terms with them and pull them together to fight for us.

Because life isn't simple or easy all the time, no human is not inflicted at some point in their lives and it's very important when you face problems to be able to know who you are, so that you can love yourself whilst you receive the madness of the world.

I get up when it’s dark, thinking I’ll order a taxi to the AC Hotel, I shower and furnish my face with glitter, put on my blue velvet dress. I’m not excited, but it's what I must do and so I will go to the AC Hotel with my last publication stowed under my arm, to the garden where last time I had invested so much hope, though I know logically now that it's not the key to this trip, in some ways I’ve already lived what I came here for, but I must re walk these steps to release myself from the past and move forward.

I end up walking because buses and trams are to complicated and the taxi doesn’t come.

Before I get to the hotel I want to eat, the cafe I went to last time is closed but there is a gelato shop on the opposite side, with a hot pink table, totally empty. I’ve still not had any gelato in Italy and as I used to work in a gelato shop it's something I’d like to try.  

Its an old couple that own the shop, I get the most gelato I possibly can: fior di latte, amaretto, pistachio, in a great big cone, I’m treating myself because I’m not drinking and I need the energy. Though I worry it’ll make me puff up I eat it enthusiastically at the hot pink table whilst looking out at the rainy streets of Lingotto, considering the other desserts in a glass case by the window.

I’m quite a sight tonight, in blue velvet and glitter, my red tousled hair brushing my shoulders, I can tell its made an impression on the owners of the shop, who buzz about, welcome a customer that seems like a friend, go about their lives surrounded by all these delicious sweets.

Once I’m done I consider leaving my last publication there as well, but think better of it, sling it over my shoulder and continue to the AC Hotel.

Everyone’s so good looking once I get inside the hotel, a smorgasbord of chic sportswear and chiselled faces, I don’t look anyone in the eye whose not a member or staff so I manage to kid myself that people are who they are not to suit my fantasies. I go upstairs to an ‘installation room’ which is some led lights and a person fiddling on a laptop, the room is filled with people socialising, I go downstairs to try and see if I can get into the secret rooms, but the hostess, after flirting for about 15 minutes and ignoring me, gleefully tells me there are no rooms left, except lust at 21:40, its 20:00 ish, I don’t know what I would do whilst waiting for that room and actually of all the rooms lust is not whats in my heart right now, I do think about just taking it to prove a point but really I’m not petty enough to sit in this place bored for over an hour waiting to go upstairs.

Clearly the secret rooms will remain secret to me.

I don’t get a drink because I don’t drink (alcohol).

I go to the garden, there’s a lot of people gathered around the door and I push through them to find space and to consider where to leave my publication, it's still raining.

This garden is not the Garden of Eden tonight, perhaps it never was, now its a concrete courtyard with a tree and some grass in the dipped area, and rain streaked white seats on the raised platform I’m standing on. It's not the Garden of Eden, its a hotel courtyard. Where do I put my publication?

Just past the crowd, behind a shrubbery, there's a window sill thats large enough to perch on, which is sheltered from the rain, it's quite hidden but it seems like the place. I sit in the cove and have a cigarette then I get out my book and place it where I’ve been sitting, take a photo and scamper off. The last of the 3 now placed in Torino.

After this is is a kaleidoscope of moments: wandering around a shopping centre, which is called 8, going up escalators to unravel the triple 8 scrawled on a door before me and see where the seeds were sown. The venue and Aphex twin and all his lasers, scurrying from room to room through intolerably long hallways to watch a myriad of vocalists, dancing about in various places, realising that the toilets were never that bad, as long as you manage to effect a good squatting position. Finding out that question marks are not always doorways that open to fantasies being realised.

I stand and wait for a taxi for an hour behind women with artist badges around their necks.

I Get home after a 20 minute detour because my taxi was invaded by impatient people.

I Sleep.

In the morning I wake up in good time despite not getting my full 8 hours (or anywhere close to this) I wander out and make tea, I try to talk to my host but it’s very difficult, though I’ve noticed the traces of her in the flat, the handmade lemon body wash, the single malts, the honey. Eventually after starting a note to her I just use the paper in my hand to write what I am saying, my London accent is always a problem wherever I go but she understands written English. This works:

“It took me 90 minutes to get home last night.

12:30 > I’m going to shower, my aeroplane is at 3:30 (15:30)

So hopefully I have time

I like to have a lot of time

Biggest stress

Lots of people don’t understand my accent because I mumble”

Me and my host have a strange connection, she is another angel, she sees my fragility and the sadness that sits at the basin of my eyes, she offers me food and shelter, I can feel her heart wrapping around me and giving me warmth. I go to sit outside and wait for my taxi 20 minutes in advance, she comes and brings a sock I’ve left in the flat, as we embrace its tight and full of love, not like the hug of strangers, like family. Later she tells me via email that I am always welcome, that I am a friend now and friends don’t have to pay to stay with her.

I will go back to that house and those church bells, though I can’t say exactly when.

My ride home is flawless, as I sit on the mezzanine over looking TXN airport, a beautiful well proportioned space where you can look out at the snow capped mountains, I listen to a man playing drukqs by aphex twin on the piano below me and I let go of Turin, of last year and all the residual pain that I brought here when I came before.

There’s no need for me to go back to that festival again, there’s other places and new journeys I must embark on.

I enter Turin a mangled and not very good musician, I leave Torino a curious and dignified artist, that sings. I let art return to me and realise it never really left, I will always be an artist whatever I do.

That's just me.

85 publications to go….

[jeroldlockettus]

Can an Industrial Giant Become a Tech Darling? (Ep. 357)

Ford Motor plans to cut $25.5 billion of spending by 2022 — and to monetize the data its cars collect about drivers. (Photo: Scott Olson/Getty)

The Ford Motor Company is ditching its legacy sedans, doubling down on trucks, and trying to steer its stock price out of a long skid. But C.E.O. Jim Hackett has even bigger plans: to turn a century-old automaker into the nucleus of a “transportation operating system.” Is Hackett just whistling past the graveyard, or does he see what others can’t?

Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

*      *      *

Stephen DUBNER: Okay, if I’m looking at your résumé, I’m not seeing C.E.O. of an auto firm.

Jim HACKETT: Oh God, you and me both.

And yet: he is.

HACKETT: I’m Jim Hackett, president and C.E.O. of Ford Motor Company.

DUBNER: I have to ask, how’d you get to our studio today?

HACKETT: A Lincoln Navigator.

DUBNER: When’s the last time you rode in a vehicle that wasn’t made by the Ford Motor Company?

HACKETT: Probably a year before I was the C.E.O. I actually had three other vehicles in my garage when I was on the board, and I got rid of all of them.

Hackett became C.E.O. of Ford in May 2017.

NBC 4: We begin with a big shakeup at Ford. Mark Fields is out and Jim Hackett is in.

NBC 4: I mean, look, let’s face it, Jim Hackett wasn’t on anybody’s radar when it came to automotive succession here at Ford.

One reason Jim Hackett wasn’t on anyone’s radar is that he’s not what they call “a car guy.” In Detroit, the world is pretty much divided into “car guys” and everybody else. Hackett is a 63-year-old Ohio native who started out in sales and management at Procter and Gamble; then worked for many years at the Michigan furniture company Steelcase, including 19 years as C.E.O.; and after that, he was interim athletic director at the University of Michigan, his alma mater, where he hired the football coach Jim Harbaugh. He did join the board of directors of Ford in 2013, while he was still at Steelcase. But, like we said: not an obvious candidate for C.E.O. of one of America’s Big Three automakers.

However, as it is often said: desperate times call for desperate measures. And the old-line auto industry definitely has an air of desperation about it. Consider the challenges. Decades of foreign competition; the rise of ride-share services and autonomous vehicles; environmental concerns and the rise of electric vehicles, especially the ones made by Tesla; the rise of urbanization, with all that bothersome walking and biking and public transportation; the steep decline in car ownership among young people specifically and, more generally, the fact that we seem to have passed “peak motorization,” as one transportation scholar puts it. So, yeah, welcome to the Ford Motor Company, Jim Hackett!

Most C.E.O.’s we’ve interviewed for our “Secret Life of a C.E.O.” series told us about their challenges and dramatic turnaround efforts long after the fact. Like Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo:

Indra NOOYI: [From “‘I Wasn’t Stupid Enough to Say This Could Be Done Overnight’”] A few months after I became C.E.O., there was a financial collapse. The retail environment changed, the U.S. market slowed down. So one had to learn in a hurry how to run this company through extreme periods of adversity. And there’s no book you can read.

But Jim Hackett and Ford aren’t reminiscing about tough times. They’re in the middle of it, right now.

CNBC: What wrong with Ford, what’s going on in Dearborn?

NBC 4: We’re now learning more from analysts who believe the turnaround is about to get very painful.

Bloomberg: They did close under $9 a share for the first time in six years; what’s going on with Ford?

What’s going on is … a lot. Hackett recently announced a huge restructuring plan, hoping to cut $25 billion in costs; this includes a lot of layoffs and a realignment of how Ford does business in Europe, South America, and China. Hackett also announced that Ford will cut way back on making cars.

NBC 4: Adios to the Fiesta, Focus, Fusion, and Taurus.

FOX BUSINESS: Ford says it’s going to focus on SUVs and trucks.

Hackett said at the time that Ford would, “focus on products and markets where we know how to win.” What will those products and markets be? Hackett, for all his old-school credentials, has long been enamored with the Silicon Valley growth mindset. Over the past decade, Ford’s research-and-development spending has nearly doubled, and Hackett shows no sign of slowing it down. This has led one industry analyst to say Ford is “burning a lot of cash in a lot of places”; another argued that Hackett will, “keep bleating buzzwords like ‘fitness’ and ‘mobility’ without any … real plan to remake the Blue Oval.” It’s recently been reported that Ford is considering some sort of merger with VW, the German automaker that’s got its own mountain of troubles.

If you had to make a bet on the future of Ford: well, the people who do make bets — stock-market investors — they’ve been pretty decisive:

BLOOMBERG: They did close under $9 a share for the first time in six years.

So how does Jim Hackett plan to turn things around?

HACKETT: It’s beyond vehicles to transportation, and actually a transportation operating system.

A “transportation operating system” sounds an awful lot like something a pure technology company might talk about. This leads to several questions. Can a traditional manufacturing company like Ford really turn itself into a modern tech company? What makes Ford think they can succeed, when the companies whose turf they’re invading — Amazon and Google and Uber — are already so good at what they do? And what, exactly, is Ford good at these days? Finally: will Hackett’s vision for Ford turn out to be a brilliant repositioning or a desperate grab for relevance?

HACKETT: Well, there is a long answer to that.

*      *      *

Ford C.E.O. Jim Hackett was visiting New York in late September, when we sat down with him in our studio.

DUBNER: Okay, so the late Gerald Ford, the 38th president of the United States, was a great athlete and played center on the Michigan football team.

HACKETT: And an all-American as well.

DUBNER: And all-American, M.V.P. of the team, they won two national championships. You also played center for Michigan and are now the president of Ford. Tell me that’s just a coincidence. Come on.

HACKETT: That’s hard, isn’t it?

DUBNER: That sounds like conspiracy to me.

HACKETT: Yeah, and there’s a history there, quickly, with President Ford, because he was sitting in office when I played at Michigan. He loved the team, so he landed Marine One on the practice field, came and talked to the team, went to the training table with us. X-years later, when I’m running Steelcase in West Michigan, there happens to be a portrait of that evening. Someone brings it in, and it’s he and I sitting together. And so I became very close to him after he was president. I would talk to him often. Always before the Ohio State game, I would call him. And the one Ford story I love to tell is that when he was negotiating arms agreements with Brezhnev in Helsinki, they stop the negotiations so he can find out what the score of the Michigan-Ohio State game is.

DUBNER: Okay, so this is a parallel out of nowhere, but I think it’s appropriate. One of the reasons that football has become dangerous — on some dimensions, and less on others — the helmet was invented to prevent skull fracture, and it’s done a great job at that. Unfortunately, the helmet is such a good protector that it began to be used as a weapon.

Interestingly, with auto travel, cars have gotten so much safer over the generations, highways have gotten safer, etc. I don’t know if drivers have gotten any better, that’s hard to prove — and yet the last numbers I saw, somewhere in the neighborhood of 35,000 traffic deaths a year in the U.S., more than a million a year globally. It’s funny, when you talk to people, people are worried about terrorism. They’re worried about murder. But if you ask people how many people they know who’ve been connected with one of those things, very few have; whereas auto fatalities, we all know someone.

So I’m curious: you’ve taken over Ford Motor Company fairly recently and this is a way of transportation that totally changed the way that we live our lives — in many positive ways and some negative ways. So what I’d like to ask you is: consider for just a moment all the positives of auto travel to date, and all the negatives, and where you see the industry at the moment, and what are the big problems or what are the big challenges to address?

HACKETT: Well, only with you would I make a connection of football with that question, but like what happened in football, if we studied the mass of the players over that period: mass equals force, right? So the size of the players and your wise observation that they could move faster and not knock themselves out caused the brain to take 100 percent of the concussive shock. So all the design now in the future is about trying to push that outwards, and then change the techniques. Mass found its way in automobiles, too.

So the earliest one’s 1903 — 115 years, Ford is — Henry worked on an electric vehicle with Thomas Edison. He was a foreman in Edison’s factory. And the early models are really light, very small because they’re trying to use bicycle components and things like that. And then, as we’ve seen in history, as the mass gets bigger, mass production allows stamping tools to take really large sheets of metal and, for a fraction of the cost if you had to do this by hand, you get to have them wrapped around those skeletal structures. What’s cool about its is that the drive to get the vehicle more fuel-efficient means we’ve got to get rid of all that weight. In trying to do that, we actually are making the structures safer for crashes. And then, of course, this isn’t a reach prediction, but we won’t have crashes in the future.

DUBNER: Because of autonomous vehicles and software?

HACKETT: And sensing, and a third thing we’ll talk about, which is the cloud. A system that’s mediating the interactions of these objects. So, we have in computing, there’s packets that move really quickly. At an atomic level, they could run into each other and do harm, but they’re mediated in a way at the speed of light. So we can do this with the design of transportation.

At the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show, or C.E.S., Hackett and other Ford executives unveiled several components of what Hackett calls “The Living Street” and Ford’s vision of a “transportation operating system.”

HACKETT: Now, the power of artificial intelligence, the rise of certain autonomous, that are all going to be connected, for the first time in a century, we have mobility technology that won’t just incrementally improve the old system, but it can completely disrupt it. So a total redesign of the surface transportation system with humans and community at the center.

But he began by addressing the question that a lot of people had to be thinking:

HACKETT: You might wonder why a furniture guy would be asked to run an automotive company.

We did wonder, and we asked him.

DUBNER: So Steelcase was regarded as a great company to work for, which, I’m guessing, you had a little something to do with. And you were regarded as — the Wall Street Journal called you,“a pioneer of the open office,” and it really did change the way that we began to think about how an office should look and feel and work. So first of all, persuade me that the notion of the open office wasn’t just a commercial idea to encourage every company in America and the world to redo their offices so that you could sell more furniture. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

HACKETT: No, no, no. I’m going to endorse that notion, but I was not the father of it. By the time I came in as C.E.O. in the late 80’s, Herman Miller, Inc. was really the early purveyor of the open office, and it came from Germany. And the real movement really started here in New York. As the rents went up, it allowed you to get more density. That was really the underlying thing.

If I want to take credit for a movement, it was shifting the amount of space that you actually devoted to cubicles, and moving that to teams. So I call that “The shift between I and we.” But to make team spaces really cool and attractive, we had to do some unique things that weren’t being done. And I want to give credit here, I buy this really cool little company in Palo Alto called IDEO.

DUBNER: And they’re like a design consultancy? How would you describe them?

HACKETT: Yeah, that’s fair, and David Kelley, its founder, is noted for architecting the mouse with Steve Jobs in its first product. So Jobs hires IDEO to do design work from outside of Apple, forever. So right until when Steve passes away, he’s using IDEO.

I meet them and I start learning about the nature of a way work might be different watching how they work. I want to tell you, I was right about that. It actually changed the way teams work. And there’s another hour on that whole thing, but it leads to an important conclusion, which is that Steelcase needs to see itself beyond furniture and be about work. And if there’s anything that enticed Bill Ford about me, it was the notion that the company, almost as long-lived as Ford, finds a higher purpose that makes its market now bigger.

Bill FORD: I’ve known Jim a long time personally.

And that is Bill Ford, chairman of the Ford Motor Company, announcing Hackett’s appointment.

FORD: And we’ve always clicked in terms of thinking about the future. But make no mistake: he’s not just a futurist, he’s a very good operating executive.

Bill Ford said that Hackett had shown himself to be a “transformational leader” at Steelcase, that he’d made the company more profitable by seeking out a higher purpose.

HACKETT: I’m saying the same thing about Ford. I think our higher purpose is that the smart vehicle and the smart world have an interaction in the future that’s much bigger than it was in the past.

DUBNER: So as Steelcase is to being beyond more than work, even though it’s making office furniture, Ford is beyond transportation, being a mobility company, tech, etc.?

HACKETT: It’s beyond vehicles to transportation, and actually a transportation operating system that we can talk about.

Hackett’s involvement in the Ford overhaul began a few years ago, when he was just a Ford board member.

HACKETT: And it’s really straightforward. I’m on the board. I’m in Palo Alto with a meeting with the board and Bill, and we’re trying to get ourselves around the question of: how can we manage the core business and this emerging thing in parallel?

This “emerging thing” would come to be known as Ford Smart Mobility, a unit meant to boost the company’s role in ride-sharing and autonomous vehicles.

HACKETT: And I tell the C.E.O. Mark Fields — I have a great relationship with him — I say, “You know, you ought to get somebody to help you manage the emerging business. Your job is too big. You need to do this.”

DUBNER: And he said, “How about you, Jim?”

HACKETT: Within half a day, Bill came and said, “That’s a great idea, why don’t you do it?” And I thought, “Eh, I ran a company. I don’t want to run a company.” So it’s like two guys playing office. He goes, “Well, just be chairman and you can hire a C.E.O.” And as I look back on that, I was naive, because I couldn’t go in there and help invent it without running it. Then running it led to — I had nothing to do with Mark’s situation, I wasn’t in the boardroom anymore. I wasn’t reporting to them. So Mark’s evolution out surprised me.

DUBNER: You business guys and your business-speak. His “evolution out.” He was fired, right?

ABC-7: The Dearborn automaker parting ways with C.E.O. Mark Fields.

CNBC: If you look at shares of Ford since Mark Fields took over in July 2014, it’s down 36 percent!

HACKETT: Yeah. But he was ahead on a bunch of ideas and I would have loved the reverse role, could I mentor him — I was the old guy — could I teach him what we’re talking about. I mean, I miss having him right now with some of the issues that I’m facing, he really had mastery of.

DUBNER: Well, let me ask you a central question here, and I guess this speaks to your ascension as C.E.O. as well, because we tend to attribute failure and success often to individuals or to single events, when in fact the world is much more complicated, plainly.

HACKETT: That’s for sure.

DUBNER: Here you are, the older guy, as you said, coming in to the company, taking over when Mark Fields was put out. And you mentioned earlier that the big concern for the Ford Motor Company and Bill Ford was how to balance the core business — making vehicles — and the emerging business, which is this smart mobility, cloud-based, etc. My big question for you is: what made all of you think that Ford needed to be in that emerging business?

HACKETT: Well, there is a long answer to that, but I’ll tell you. The way you’ve got to think about competitive sets is: the nature of what makes a business win over time is not unlike any other kinds of system — the way our bodies win in the battles they have, or the way a football team wins, or the way a market moves. I’m a student of this, complexity theory, and what that tells you is that over time, you have to mutate and evolve, because the nature of random things is going to cause more things that come at you.

So let’s just be specific: in the auto industry, it’s the randomness of climate conflict. It’s a real science thing. We’re in support of meeting a really high standard. So this starts to birth Tesla and then you put a rocket scientist, truly, in charge of that, who has a computer background, understands design really well, and he starts to question the model of the way a vehicle’s ordered and built. So he’s got a lot of that right. And it’s just one. And then he gets copied and then all of a sudden there’s a company called Lucid Motors that Chinese companies put a lot of money behind. We looked at it. These are people that are redesigning the car business.

So the board sits there and sees this happen over and over again in other industries. You don’t want to be the one that does that. So the story I tell is: let’s play Kodak for a moment. And what you have to start with: the board is smart. They’re not dummies. They have the patent for digital photography.

DUBNER: They made one of the first digital cameras, right? They were there.

HACKETT: I know a board member who was there and the issue is: you make more money on chemicals and paper than you do this new idea. So if you’re just doing pure investment comparison, stay with the old.

So what a guy like me, having gone through this in another company, Steelcase, I’m trained now to look at that problem differently, and I frankly didn’t get to talk about that much in the boardroom, but maybe Bill picked that up. Now I’ve got to prove — I’m very confident here — but I have to prove to a lot of people that we can make the core business really profitable. We’re working on that and the disruption shouldn’t scare us at all because we can lead in some areas there. So when I’m done, no date on that, but I want to make sure we’re on the right track in both of those areas.

DUBNER: Before we get into the specifics, let me just, not challenge, but question the premise a little bit more, because if you look at business history, you just look at legacy firms generally, you see that technology and time are really tough on companies. Most companies don’t stick around for too long and when the technology changes enough, many companies try to adapt with the changes and very few do well.

G.E. is a really interesting example on a number of dimensions, they went very broad and so on. What makes you think that, with that substantial history, Ford is special, or that any legacy automaker is special and can adapt and add on the technologies that are so strong and powerful, but not get beat by the companies that are tech firms and telecom firms and so on?

HACKETT: Yeah. You’ve grabbed the essence of the challenge. The affirmation is: they did it before, we just forget.

DUBNER: What do you mean?

HACKETT: Well, we didn’t always have computing, in the way a factory was run. We didn’t have — the telephone wasn’t, I don’t think, in 1903, highly pervasive, right? So think of people being paid in the factory out of a paddy wagon with real cash instead of direct deposit.

So, actually, I have a theory about this, and I’ve not written, but talked to other C.E.O.’s and I get support. The notion is that over time, you have to think about the business over phases. You can say “past” but let’s hold that off. You think about “now” and “far” and I’m going to sneak a word in, “near.” “Now, near, far.” Now what separates those time spans, because we could just make up: what’s the future? Is it a year? Is it 25 years?

What I’ve bought into, it’s science-derived. In other words, what makes the increments grow in time is Moore’s Law. Reed Hastings is on a Charlie Rose interview, and Charlie says, “Reed, what do the people in Palo Alto know that everyone else doesn’t know?” And he said, “Moore’s Law.” And Charlie goes, “Well, I know what Moore’s law is.” And he goes, “Yeah, but Charlie, you don’t understand. We’re designing for the next iteration now.” That changed me, a number of years ago. So Moore’s Law only swallows you up when you don’t think about it. So imagine we’re in meetings right now where people are talking about technology and the vehicle and they go, “Jim, can’t afford it, it’s too expensive, people won’t pay for it.” Well, I know from my friend David Kelley that Steve Jobs would say, “I want it in now because I know the price is going to be one-tenth very quickly.” So he forced the design to adopt the next iteration.

And then, of course, in Apple’s case they made money right away. Ford’s got to find a way to make money faster on that kind of theory. So, in parallel, you’re not just trying to make the product adaptive, you’re thinking the business model is going to be under attack because the economic principles have totally changed over that time.

DUBNER: So what you’re describing now are the real economics, but added to your challenge, running a company like Ford, is stock market psychology — which is a whole other realm. It’s based on economics to some degree but then the market has its own ideas. So, I’ve read, and tell me if I’m wrong, I’ve read that one thing that led to Mark Fields’s firing from Ford was when Tesla, which makes many, many fewer cars than Ford does, beat it in market cap.

HACKETT: I never was in a discussion where that was cited. But let me just cite, I know about myself in this regard. There’s a fair amount of stress around: does Jim Hackett get that the market’s got to be rewarded for these great ideas? And I totally do. Because I did it once before, first of all. And the question is: is the design of the business such that there’s a patience factor here and you get rewarded? So let’s talk about Amazon’s profitability in its history. I mean, it took a while. Let’s talk about Apple. If you look at Apple’s stock price when Steve came back —

DUBNER: Took a long time.

HACKETT: Yeah, and what they want, which those two guys gave, which I know I’ve got to, is believable momentum. They could show the compounding of the number of customers, they could show the case of add-on revenue, they could show the case of users being delighted with products.

DUBNER: They’re also due — because their products were new though, I’m curious whether they get a novelty premium that you don’t get.

HACKETT: Fair. I think that happened with the automotive competitor.

DUBNER: So we should say, as we speak, Ford Motor market cap is about $37 billion and Tesla’s market cap is about $53 billion, which I’m guessing as the C.E.O. of Ford, whether you’re going to say it or not, is a little frustrating, perhaps?

HACKETT: We make a new vehicle every four seconds.

DUBNER: There goes another.

HACKETT: You get to observe — in their business model, they’re trying to get 20,000 of them — or whatever the number was built — in a quarter or something.

DUBNER: But if you were doing the business case: let’s say you’re teaching Harvard Business School right now and the case that you want to study is Ford Motor Company versus Tesla for the moment. And we know what Ford does, what they represent, how they make their money. And we know what Tesla does. And we try to project it into the future and see what the stock price is really all about. Make the best case that Ford is undervalued right now.

HACKETT: And I really believe this. You’re not supposed to, as a C.E.O., speculate on stock price, so all I can say is: I’m really optimistic about the price-earnings ratio that understates the real value. First of all, we’ve got an industrial price-earnings ratio of six or seven, something like that.

A company’s price-to-earnings ratio is a key metric used by investors to assess how the company’s share price relates to its true value.

HACKETT: And I asked Ginni Rometty today what theirs was at I.B.M. and I think she said 11 or 12, and we were discussing Microsoft’s probably in the 20’s, right? Now these three companies, all of them are actually dealing with bits and cloud structures and data, right? But one’s in the 20’s, the other one’s in the sixes. So the case I would make is that we have as much data in the future coming from vehicles, or from users in those vehicles, or from cities talking to those vehicles, as the other competitors that you and I would be talking about that have monetizable attraction.

Now, I talk to lots of investors and they go, “Got it. Boom. Thumbs up, Jim. Go for it. Can you just prove to us that you’ve got that working?” And what you and I just agreed when we saw some of the early tech startups, they could go to market with investors only seeing a fraction of what they were going to become, and that caused belief.

I mean, who am I speaking to, right? I think that’s unfair for industrial companies at 115 years old. We have a lot of talented people. We can generate returns on that invested capital. My belief is: we have 100 million people in vehicles today, that are sitting in Ford blue-oval vehicles. That’s the case for monetizing opportunity versus an upstart who maybe has, I don’t know, what, they got 120,000 or 200,000 vehicles in place now. Just compare the two stacks: which one would you like to have the data from?

DUBNER: I hear you entirely. But I also think, “Well, who are the companies that have been good at monetizing customer data?” And we can name them. There’s Facebook, there’s Google, etc. And have they already mastered or owned that market? So what makes you think that Ford can monetize that in any significant way, enough to invest in developing that whole scenario?

HACKETT: Well, first of all, we already know as a proxy that those really wonderful firms you talk about, like Facebook — we’re a great customer of Facebook, they love us. Google loves us, because Ford’s a big advertiser. So we talk to these folks all the time. But they don’t own the healthcare data market. They are not controlling aviation data today. They may be doing flight reservations. I mean, we can find proxies where there’s data and they don’t own it. Now let’s let that just be an argument that says they’re not everywhere. They’re very powerful.

The issue in the vehicle, see, is: we already know and have data on our customers. By the way, we protect this securely; they trust us. We know what people make. How do we know that? It’s because they borrow money from us. And when you ask somebody what they make, we know where they work; we know if they’re married. We know how long they’ve lived in their house, because these are all on the credit applications. We’ve never ever been challenged on how we use that. And that’s the leverage we’ve got here with the data.

DUBNER: So the question I have is whether Ford necessarily has, not only a big role in that, but a big opportunity to monetize. So at the C.E.S. presentation, you rolled out a couple components of “The Living Street.” One is called the Transportation Mobility Cloud.

Marcy KLEVORN: Our Transportation Mobility Cloud, or T.M.C., will support the rapid development of services and applications that will enable people to move more efficiently and have access to smart, connected transportation.

DUBNER: Another was called C-V2X.

Don BUTLER: C-V2X, or Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything technology, has the potential to enable a city’s various components and applications to share information with each other, from vehicle to pedestrians and bicyclists, to the whole infrastructure, enabling collision-avoidance safety systems, traffic signal prioritization, and much more.

DUBNER: And one of the examples that your team gave was on the C-V2X component. They described a scenario in which a vehicle, “without requiring a network, can communicate when a driver needs help. Maybe he has diabetes and is going into shock … C-V2X can coordinate the response, the system can recognize the driver’s distress, send a signal to emergency responders … The vehicle can even send medical records for drivers who have opted in for that.”

So when I read that, why is this wonderful-sounding, but very-complicated-to-me-sounding solution — having the vehicle diagnose a medical emergency, for instance, rather than, say, a wearable medical device, which I’m wearing. My smartwatch is that now. And I saw a variety of examples of that in your vision whereby it seems like Ford is describing itself as a major player in this reimagining of the public square, the public space. I don’t understand what you bring to it that makes you think that you can be a big player in that space beyond the transportation component.

HACKETT: You mentioned the diabetic thing. I’ll give you a real one that’s working right now. The Los Angeles Police Department drives Ford Explorers. We have a high market share of police vehicles. In an application, that is one of our tests, they have this terribly sad story where an officer is on a mission, gets in a wreck. And the airbag knocks him out, so he dies. They can’t find him because they’re radioing him. I don’t know why they didn’t have G.P.S. or something like that, that positioned him.

What we’ve invented with them is that, every time the airbag goes off, it’s communicating its location. And now we have a team sitting inside L.A.P.D. right now, working on a dozen other ideas that we get monetized for because of the data they’re willing to share that helps build a response system for them. So that’s in use — like a person in their vehicle to the cloud.

The promise of the diabetic is: in India, this is really extreme, you can’t get an ambulance in to somebody that’s in trouble. The traffic’s too congested. The theory here is the vehicles give priority to that. So they’ll know where to go. So if you’ve been in an environment where the siren’s on, you go, “Do I go right or left?” The command will be the way air traffic is. They just tell a plane, if it’s on a collision course, they just go up or down, they don’t tell them to turn right or left. Our commands will tell you go right or left, and everybody’s moving the same way, and it knows what the oncoming traffic is doing. The simple transactions are Ford’s reducing the friction in somebody’s life.

*      *      *

Just a decade ago, Ford Motor Company was the most stable of the Big Three U.S. automakers. General Motors and Chrysler both declared bankruptcy during the financial crisis and received a government bailout; Ford didn’t, although, under then-C.E.O. Alan Mulally, it did accept some federal assistance. From both a financial and business perspective, Ford seemed to be in relatively good shape. But that’s no longer the case. Despite a strong economy and stock market, Ford has been struggling, even more than the other U.S. automakers, as evidence by its battered share price.

Ford is still the king of pickup truck sales, but Moody’s Investor Service, in a recent downgrade of Ford, cited “erosion in the company’s global business position and the challenges it will face implementing its Fitness Redesign program.” “Fitness Redesign” is Ford’s way of saying it’s downsizing and restructuring — a fate that Chrysler and G.M. had forced upon them during their bankruptcies. But which Ford, paradoxically, was able to avoid — until now. One big part of Ford’s restructuring has been Jim Hackett’s recent decision to phase out nearly all Ford sedans currently on sale in North America.

NBC 4 (DETROIT): Ford has decided to get out of the car game except for its iconic Mustang.

FOX BUSINESS: Ford says it’s going to focus on S.U.V.’s and trucks.

HACKETT: So the sedan, as a platform, you’d be shocked at how the sales have dropped off globally for everybody.

It’s worth noting that just a couple decades ago, Ford’s Taurus was the best-selling car in America. But consumer preferences have changed; the price of gas is relatively low; and there may be something of an arms race among consumers, who feel that S.U.V.’s and trucks are safer — especially when you’re on the road with so many other S.U.V.’s and trucks.

HACKETT: Yeah, well, definitely. I know with women buyers, they prefer the height, they just see better. It’s a function of seeing where you’re driving and the car’s relative position. But the other thing is: in the past, you would have to hedge if fuel prices went up, and the vehicles have gotten so fuel-efficient. Our F-150 — I give Alan Mulally a lot of credit for this, he aluminized the body of it.

DUBNER: Right, very controversial at the time. We should say that he was an airplane guy.

HACKETT: He was an airplane guy; he knew aluminum; he knew riveting; it was a really hard problem to rivet the panels. We have a lot of patents on that. But guess what: the vehicles — so this is a hard way to understand, but in the CAFE standards that are calculated for the world’s fleet, or in this case U.S. fleet, the vehicle that made the most progress in making it better is the F-150. Now it’s not as fuel-efficient as a smaller vehicle, but in contributing to global climate, it’s less of a problem.

DUBNER: But what about the profit margin; trucks and S.U.V.’s versus sedans?

HACKETT: Well, the reason you make more on them is because your price point’s higher.

DUBNER: Really? Pickup — I thought pickup trucks are cheap. We don’t have any pickup trucks in New York City, as you’ve seen.

HACKETT: So that’s the issue. But come with me to Texas.

DUBNER: No, no, no, I understand, I’ve seen the numbers.

HACKETT: I’m driving a King Ranch, which is the nickname of a luxury F-150. And I mean the leather seats and the ride —

DUBNER: That could run over the whole Ohio State defensive line, I guessing. Not that you would do that.

HACKETT: And the cool thing is: that frame — I don’t mean the physical frame of a vehicle but the idea of people sitting in vehicles like that — there’s another series below that called Ranger and it’s much smaller and it’s global and it’s very profitable. And we’re working on other ideas in that category, because people love these things.

This is the part of the Ford reboot story that you may find confusing. Which many investors seem to find confusing — or, to be fair, concerning. On the one hand, Ford talks about remaking itself as a technology firm, with their “Living Street” model and their “transportation operating system.” Earlier, you heard Hackett comparing Ford’s price-to-earnings ratio to those of I.B.M. and Microsoft, which are actual tech firms. So that’s the forward-looking part of the reboot mission.

On the other hand, Ford’s increasingly heavy reliance on truck and S.U.V. sales has more than a little throwback feel to it — especially in how the company markets itself. Jim Hackett says Ford is eager to collaborate with the Silicon Valley heavyweights in order to get a piece of their pie. But one TV ad in a new campaign called “Built Ford Proud” opens by mocking Silicon Valley. The actor Bryan Cranston, looking very Elon Musk-y or maybe Steve Jobs-y, takes the stage in front of a backdrop labeled “Future Talk.”

FORD AD: Thank you. Now let’s get started.

But then Cranston, switching out of that character, confides to the viewer …

FORD AD: The future isn’t created in a keynote address.

What does create the future?

FORD AD: Building does. Building like we have for the last 115 years. And building for the next century. Building cars. New technology. And transforming cities.

And by now Cranston is barreling through the desert in a Ford pickup truck, windows down, engine roaring.

FORD AD: So let the other guys keep dreaming about the future. We’ll be the ones building it.

The ad ends up looking like pretty much every other pickup truck ad you’ve ever seen. It doesn’t seem like the most convincing way to declare that Ford is the company that’s working on what Hackett calls “a total redesign of the surface transportation system.” By the way, these promises of new technology and transformed cities all happen atop an orchestral version of the Rolling Stones song “Paint It Black,” which came out more than a half century ago.

DUBNER: So one of the big changes in the world, but especially for your industry, is the oncoming autonomous vehicle scenario, which is incredibly exciting, and will probably have a lot of effects that many people can’t quite imagine yet, pro and con. But it strikes me that Ford is a little bit late to the starting line. And I’m curious to know, again, what makes you think that you’re going to do well in that realm?

HACKETT: I actually think it’s a myth that we’re behind. So robotics is not new; of course, they’ve been in the factories for years. Mark Fields deserves credit here. He decided that to get there faster, he was going to invest in a group of people who wanted to leave some of the notable firms working on it: Google, Uber, some others. They came to us and said, “We want to do our own startup.” So we’ve created that. It’s called Argo A.I. It’s in Pittsburgh, near Carnegie Mellon, of course.

DUBNER: Pittsburgh’s become the capital of autonomous vehicle research.

HACKETT: Yeah. And we’re the sucking sound there, because this is the who’s-who from that alumni. The guy leading our company was the number-two guy at Google working on Waymo, which, I give lots of credit to Google. I think they’ve done a great job. We believe we’re behind them, but the velocity of the vehicle’s learning’s ahead because we have people that worked there. So we’ve taken a different tact with the design of the software.

Just a quick lesson for the listeners. It’s only three years old that neural networks actually found their way into A.I. So, before that, robotics were making progress, but this is the breakthrough.

DUBNER: So let me ask you this. You recently led a team of Ford executives making a big presentation at the 2018 C.E.S., Consumer Electronics Show. And it is a huge multi-dimensional vision of how what I think of as an auto company is creating a large ecosystem that includes all different kinds of inputs. And I want to know, is that the kind of presentation you make at C.E.S. because it’s kind of good for business to invite those technology firms who come to come and play in your sandbox? Or is this a real part of your business model?

HACKETT: Yeah, I mean — and I did that in January of this year, and I’m really happy I did it because I was trying to get out the three parts of the technology evolution, which is: the nature of propulsion’s changing — to electric and hybrids. There will be gas, hybrids, and electric. There’s a robotic system. Let me give you the three letters: it’s called S.D.S., Self-Driving System is what they’re called. They’re trying to get away from autonomy and have it be labeled this way.

DUBNER: Because “autonomous” is a little too scary?

HACKETT: I think so. It’s not human-centered. It’s making the vehicle the celebrant, and we want the people inside. The third technology is this cloud structure.

DUBNER: Which you call the Transportation Mobility Cloud.

HACKETT: That’s our phrase. But all we really trying to do is orchestrate these three technologies to have an advantage for customers. The mere fact that 70 percent of the world’s population is going to be in city centers by 2050. It means we’ll be paralyzed. So I’m in New York this week, when the U.N.’s going on, and you can’t get around with the rain. President Clinton told me that he had to stay in town last night because he couldn’t get out to his home.

So we got to choreograph the system so that you reduce all this friction. The study after study that’s done about what causes jams and things like that show that a fallacy is: if you add more highway capacity, you get more throughput. The opposite happens. So there’s a famous story in China where there’s a month-long traffic jam on their biggest superhighway. Can you imagine getting in a car and you can’t get out of it for a month? So Chinese government and other places are dealing with it.

You’ve done a piece with Sidewalk Labs about smart cities. But I’m saying something different. I’m saying it feels utopian to talk about a smart city. Let’s start down the ladder and just get the transportation system to be smart. Let’s just coordinate mass transit, micro transit and your vehicles, and then the Uber-Lyft combinations, around what’s really going on in the lives of people.

And the opportunity here is enormous to change the way your life is in a city, because that system gives you the permission and the force of having what you want, when you want it. And you go, “How does it do that?” We took off 45 minutes earlier to come to you today, so I’m adding to the congestion. If I actually knew when I needed to be here, and the city mediated that, it would take all the people who are trying to get ahead out. Now that’s the traffic thing. Another quick one is parking. You lose more fuel efficiency trying to find a spot.

DUBNER: And then there’s just the real-estate question of parking.

HACKETT: I actually think a cool thing is the origami of parking, because the way lines are designed and parking lots that we’re going to be able to park really weird ways because the vehicles will negotiate their packing.

DUBNER: Well, and theoretically, with autonomous — or whatever we’re calling it, S.D.S. — we don’t need to hang on to our cars anymore, right? If you’re summoning the next one, to some degree.

HACKETT: Well, we’ve taken away the street from the people. Where’s your favorite city you like to visit? I mean, New York is one of mine. But when I go to Paris and the way the food spills out, the vehicles kind of destroy that. So we’ve painted a picture: there’s more green space, there’s more human interaction with the streets. How’s that happen? It’s because of this transportation mobility cloud, smart cars.

DUBNER: Before you go, I do want to ask you: in a recent interview you said that Ford has lost about a billion dollars in profits from metals tariffs, so a) just confirm for me I heard you right, and b) tell me if that’s true or if it’s even half-true, what are you doing about it?

HACKETT: Well, the number’s true if — the way I did the model in my head, and I should have been clear about this — you add the time the tariffs have started through next year. But still, it’s a billion dollars, and this is a really interesting thing. In my lifetime running another company, I never thought about trade. I never worried about it. So, now the C.E.O.’s time is tied up in something that they didn’t have to worry about. It needs to be updated because what happened is: those were emerging countries that are now. And the deficit’s got bigger and bigger.

So I think the administration has momentum from other administrations who likewise wanted to address it. All I’ve been asking for is that if you go in and you attack this problem, the winning state is a state of equilibrium, not a constant fight. A trade war will take away — these are stats that maybe you’ve read. The tax cut benefit to our citizens right now is going to get wiped out by this current inflation on what they’re calling the Walmart effect. So the goods that people are buying in stores have now been hit. So two-thirds of the tax benefit could be actually wiped out if we don’t get this fixed.

DUBNER: And as the C.E.O. of a car company, the uncertainty, I would imagine, can be very difficult, because we all know it’s hard to make even a personal decision when there’s that much uncertainty. So let me just really, finally, ask you the final question. When you look forward, do you see less uncertainty than I do? Do you see a clear path toward what Ford can actually accomplish based on these rather large dreams that involve everything from cloud computing to telecom in cars and so on?

HACKETT: Well, this gives you insight into me. My dad never had a bad day and he had a lot of challenges. But the optimism when he got up every day, that’s the way I was raised; as opposed to someone who heard, “Life’s going to hell in a handbasket.” I never heard that.

So I told a story to one of my colleagues today that said, “Why do you think there was a milkman in the day?” And, well, it was because we couldn’t refrigerate milk in our homes, so then they could get it to you because it had to be fresh. And then what happened was we had refrigerators, and to get scale, they moved the dairy farms further away. Then they started adding chemicals to them so they didn’t spoil, beyond homogenization. And today the average distance from farm to market’s 1,500 miles.

So the world’s looking at that and saying, “Was that the best design for humans?” What I’m optimistic about, based on the way we’ve talked today, is the transportation system caused some of that. It now can actually go backwards, so that you can have produce very close. You can send these objects of intelligence on missions for you. You can know where anybody you love is at any given time, if they want to tell you. And we can kind of know that now? But what you’re going to be able to know is going to be incredible. And in a way that I think is safe and helping humanity. So we can make Ford a really cool futuristic company in just building and making cars and selling them. We have a lot of great ideas there.

Whether these ideas are truly great, whether Ford will buck the trends of history and reinvent itself as a firm for the middle of the 21st century — I have no idea. Thanks to Jim Hackett, though, for taking the time to explain his vision for the Blue Oval.

*      *      *

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Greg Rosalsky, with help from Zack Lapinski. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Alvin Melathe, and Harry Huggins; we had help this week from Nellie Osborne. Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; all the other music was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Jim Hackett, president and C.E.O. of Ford Motors.

RESOURCES

“Has Motorization in the U.S. Peaked?,” Michael Sivak, U.M.T.R.I. (June 2013).

“Ford CEO’s Cost-Cutting Strategy in Focus During Earnings Slump,” Christina Rodgers, The Wall Street Journal. (April 2018).

EXTRA

“How to Build a Smart City,” Freakonomics Radio (2018).

“The Secret Life of a C.E.O.,” Freakonomics Radio.

The post Can an Industrial Giant Become a Tech Darling? (Ep. 357) appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/ford/

[vinayv224]

The president revoked the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan on Wednesday.

President Donald Trump revoked former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance on Wednesday — an extraordinary move that came less than a day after the former CIA director publicly criticized the president on television and Twitter.

Brennan might not be the last, either. In a statement announcing his decision, Trump said he was considering rescinding the clearances of other top intelligence and law enforcement officials or preventing those who’ve already lost clearances from obtaining them in the future. The list includes former FBI Director James Comey, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former CIA Director and NSA Director General Michael Hayden.

Trump first considered revoking clearances for former high-ranking officials in July — not long after many of those same officials condemned Trump’s Helsinki press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin. After those initial threats from Trump, Vox spoke with Mark Zaid, a national security attorney, to get a sense of what could happen, both practically and politically, if the president were to follow through on his threats.

Though we spoke in late July, Zaid’s perspective still offers useful context on how the security clearance process works, and how incredible the president’s actions on Wednesday really were.

“The reality is they probably could care less about their clearances,” Zaid said of the former officials. “It’s still the precedent that’s being set — to set back the entire security establishment that we’ve created over the last 75 years.”

Our conversation, edited and condensed, is below.

Jen Kirby

If someone departs the White House or the federal government, isn’t their security clearance just cut off once they leave service?

Mark Zaid

A ton of the 4 to 5 million people who have clearances are contractors. They don’t work for the US government; they work for Booz Allen Hamilton and Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. But at the Cabinet level, it’s very common for former secretaries and CIA, NSA directors to maintain their clearances because they’re brought in as advisers, for use in their experience and knowledge.

They also have the ability, under the executive order, to go back through their papers if they want to, for historic purposes, when they do their memoirs. They get access. It’s common that the people who have been named — although I understand Comey doesn’t have access, McCabe definitely doesn’t have access, and Hayden says he doesn’t have any access right now. I don’t know about the others, but they probably still have — and here’s the difference — eligibility. Eligibility versus access, so different things. They may be eligible for classified access, but they might not have access.

Jen Kirby

So they’re eligible on a case-by-case basis? I’d like to write my memoir and look at X, Y, Z papers, and the CIA, or whatever agency, says, “Sure, you can access this because you’re eligible”?

Mark Zaid

Usually so. There’s a provision in the executive order that grants historic access in that context. But they’re often on advisory committees for their home agencies — former CIA directors, former secretaries of state. The current [administration], oftentimes — although this administration is very different — but in the past, for example, Condoleezza Rice would still talk to Madeleine Albright, or whoever. They would still talk to one another for a variety of things.

Jen Kirby

So does security clearance expire on its own?

Mark Zaid

For each level [of] clearance, there is a different timeline for expiration of the validity of the background investigation — so the higher the clearance level, the shorter the term is for how active that background investigation is before it expires and you need a new one.

But people are out of scope all the time, and still are. Sometimes even though there was a requirement within five years, it would be five to 10 years before an individual would have their poly[graph] or their new background investigation. And it’s routine; it’s very common at many of the agencies that that happens.

But so long as you’re continuing, you’re employed, you’re fine. But if you leave government service, it would be a problem; you’d have to reapply. You’d go to a contractor or whatever, they’d look you up in the system and they’d see that you need a new background investigation, and that’s always a factor in hiring because it’s going to take a while.

Jen Kirby

This revocation of security clearance seems like a politicization of the federal bureaucracy in a way that seems somewhat alarming. I don’t know what your thoughts are on that.

Mark Zaid

It is incredibly alarming. ... As far as we know, it is unprecedented that a president of the United States would get involved with a security clearance determination. Any president is the final authority on access to classified information; they can decide whatever they want, that is for sure.

But if you think about it, on any given day, a large percentage of those 4 to 5 million who have a security clearance are likely members of the opposite political party from whoever is president. I’m not sure if there’s any way to figure it out, [but] I’m sure at most or at worst that the lowest is 35 or 40 percent of whoever has a clearance is going to be in the opposite party of the sitting president of the United States.

To think that a president would render a clearance decision based solely on an opposing political viewpoint is reminiscent of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. I mean, that’s what happened back in those times.

There are potentially legitimate reasons to revoke the security clearances of some of these individuals who have been named. But that would be on objective, substantive grounds challenging their trustworthiness. Just because they’re politically opposed to the president does not impact their trustworthiness at all.

Jen Kirby

When it comes to revoking clearance, does a reason need to be given? Or is it at the discretion of whoever is making that decision?

Mark Zaid

So the executive order that governs security clearances, which President Clinton issued in 1995, requires that if a clearance is denied or revoked — deny, you don’t have one; revoked, you had one — it requires an explanation in writing, specifying why. There may be limitations based on national security, so the reasons are sometimes classified. There are incredibly rare exceptions — I think I’ve had the only one in three or four decades — where they can revoke someone’s clearance without giving any explanation.

But generally, you have to have an explanation in writing. There’s 13 adjudicative guidelines, A through M, that set forth the disqualifying conditions that would justify denial or revocation. None of them involve political views. The closest is if you advocate the violent overthrow of the US government, which, of course, is not what this is about.

So the Trump administration would be hard-pressed, as a general rule, to say that any of these individuals should have their clearance, their trustworthiness, revoked based on political views. There are substantive grounds for some of the individuals who have been named. McCabe is obvious — he has the IG report; you can argue Comey improperly released information to his friend at Columbia; Clapper lied to Congress as an argument. Brennan and Hayden, not a clue of what substantively they’ve ever done to justify their revocation of a clearance other than politically opposing Trump. So those would be hard-pressed, even though I do believe the president has the authority to take that action.

The better way would be not to revoke their clearance, but to simply say that they no longer have “a need to know” and restrict their access or eliminate their access. That does not require due process. It’s not an unfavorable action against their clearance; they retain their eligibility — they just no longer have access. So if Trump did that, which he definitely has the legal authority to do, that eliminates a lot of the problems that otherwise would exist, though it still smacks of politicization and Nazi Germany.

Jen Kirby

So it seems by publicly revoking clearances, Trump is really going on the record and politicizing this more than he has to.

Mark Zaid

The Trump administration does what it usually does for its base, and this really motivates their base. The 25 to 35 percent who are just die-hard — he can shoot someone in Times Square and nobody would care — they despise all these people who he has named. Even at a lot of the Republicans who don’t necessarily [support this], they’re still probably against Brennan and Clapper. There’s probably half the country, regardless, who’s cheering this on even though what it represents is a horrible precedent for our country.

Jen Kirby

Well, besides the erosion of norms, is the most practical consequence just that these guys can’t get consulting gigs?

Mark Zaid

Well, yes, it might be. Most of these guys end up on the board of directors of some big defense contractor, making a lot of money. But the reality is — and I think Comey and Hayden have already publicly commented, “We don’t use our clearance; we really don’t care.” They’re certainly not being brought back into the government to talk to their successors. The reality is they probably could care less about their clearances; it’s still the precedent that’s being set, to set back the entire security establishment that we’ve created over the last 75 years.

Jen Kirby

Is there anything big that I might be missing?

Mark Zaid

One thing to understand — because I’m sure people are already saying, “This is a violation of their First Amendment rights and they’ll sue” — they can’t sue. I mean, anybody can sue, you can sue for anything, but they have no basis. There’s a Supreme Court precedent from 30 years ago that restricts federal judges from handling security clearance appeals. This really is the power of the executive branch. And it’s an unchecked power at this stage.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/2nJMW3X

[philosophyofpolitics]

Noam Chomsky: U.S. Must Improve Relations with Russia and Challenge the Expansion of NATO

AMY GOODMAN: Russian President Vladimir Putin has invited President Trump to Moscow, just days after the White House postponed a planned summit between the two leaders in Washington until after the midterm elections. Well, to talk more about U.S.-Russian relations and much more, we’re spending the hour with the world-renowned political dissident, author and linguist Noam Chomsky. He is now laureate professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught for more than 50 years. His recent books include Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy and Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power. He joined us from Tucson, Arizona, last week. I asked him about the recent Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki and played for him a short pinwheel of U.S. media coverage of the summit.

ANDERSON COOPER: You have been watching perhaps one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president at a summit in front of a Russian leader, certainly that I’ve ever seen.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: All of you who are watching today will be able to tell your friends, family, your children, your grandchildren you were watching a moment of history. It may not be for the right reasons.

NORAH O’DONNELL: This Helsinki summit was one for the history books. President Trump’s refusal to challenge the Russian strongman drew widespread condemnation from members of his own party and administration. This summit, that might have been about U.S. condemnation, instead ended with President Putin giving President Trump a soccer ball from the World Cup, and Mr. Trump handing Putin a gift of absolution.

AMY GOODMAN: So that was CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, George Stephanopoulos of ABC News and CNN’s Anderson Cooper, reporting after the July 16 joint press conference with Trump and Putin. I asked Noam Chomsky for his response to the Helsinki summit.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Trump has basically one principle: me first. That’s almost all of his policies, and wild statements and so on are perfectly well explicable within—under the assumption that that’s what’s driving him. Now, that—crucially, for him, he has to ensure that the Mueller investigation is discredited. Whatever they come up with, if it implicates him in any way, the way the media and political culture function, that will be considered of enormous significance, much more significance than his pursuing policies on the environment which may destroy human civilization. But given that, those highly skewed circumstances, he has to make sure that the Mueller investigation is discredited. And that was the main core part of his interview with Trump. Putting aside the way he behaved, you know, the soccer ball, which apparently had a listening device embedded in it and so on, yes, that was strange and unpleasant and so on.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, actually, that World—that soccer ball, that particular ball has that little device in it, and that’s how it’s sold. It was a World Cup soccer ball, and that’s what it—that’s one of its attributes that people like, that they can put their iPhone next to it and get information.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, well, Putin was plainly treating Trump, more or less, with contempt. So, whatever you think about that, nevertheless his—the main concern—his main concern was pretty obvious. And that was the center part—central part of the Putin-Trump interviews. And so, yeah, I think—I just don’t see the great significance of his acting in a silly and childish way in an interview. OK, let’s—he did. Now let’s go to the important issues which are not being discussed. The issue of improving relations with Russia is of overwhelming significance as compared with the remarks saying, “Well, I don’t know whether to trust my own intelligence agencies,” for—saying that for perfectly obvious reasons: to discredit the Mueller investigation and to ensure that his fervently loyal base stays supportive. That’s not an attractive policy, but we can understand very easily what he’s doing.

AMY GOODMAN: Those intelligence agencies—former CIA Director John Brennan tweeted, “Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of 'high crimes & misdemeanors.' It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???” Again, the former CIA Director John Brennan’s tweet. Noam?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, his remarks were certainly incorrect. Whatever you think of Trump’s behavior, it has nothing to do with high crimes and misdemeanors or treason. That’s just not true. But again, the same point I’ve been trying to make throughout, we are focusing on issues of minor significance and putting aside problems of enormous importance and significance, whether we’re thinking of how to deal with immigration or whether we’re dealing with the question of survival of organized human life on Earth. Those are the topics we should be thinking about, not whether Trump misbehaved in a press conference.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, I wanted to ask you about NATO. President Trump has questioned a key provision of the NATO military alliance: the mutual defense of NATO member countries. He made this remark during an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson just a week ago.

TUCKER CARLSON: Why should my son go to Montenegro to defend it from attack? Why is that—

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I understand what you’re saying. I’ve asked the same question. You know, Montenegro is a tiny country with very strong people.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I’m not against Montenegro.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: Or Albania.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, by the way, they’re very strong people. They have very aggressive people. They may get aggressive, and, congratulations, you’re in World War III.

AMY GOODMAN: There’s President Trump, questioning the whole idea of NATO. Well, if you could specifically address this? Interesting he chose Montenegro, where, well, many months ago, when he was with the G7, the G8, he pushed aside the prime minister of Montenegro. But the bigger point about—well, he wasn’t making this point, but I’d like to ask you about whether you feel NATO should exist.

NOAM CHOMSKY: That’s the crucial question, not whether Trump made an ugly and demeaning comment about a tiny country. But what is NATO for? For from the beginning, from its origins, we had drilled into our heads that the purpose of NATO was to defend us from the Russian hordes. We can put aside for the moment the question whether that was accurate. But let’s—in any event, that was the dominant theme, overwhelming, in fact, unique theme. OK, 1991, no more Russian hordes. So, the question is: Why NATO?

Well, what happened was very interesting. There were negotiations, between George Bush, the first; James Baker, secretary of state; Mikhail Gorbachev; Genscher and Kohl, the Germans, on how to deal with the—this was after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev made an astonishing concession. Astonishing. He agreed to allow Germany, now unified, to join NATO—a hostile military alliance. Just look at the history of the preceding years. Germany alone had practically destroyed Russia, at an extraordinary cost, several times during the preceding century. But he agreed to allow Germany to—a rearmed Germany to join NATO, a military alliance that was set up to counter Russia. There was a quid pro quo, namely that NATO not—meaning NATO means basically U.S. forces—not expand to East Berlin, to East Germany. Nobody talked about anything beyond that. Baker and Bush verbally agreed to that. They didn’t put it in writing, but they essentially said, “Yeah, we will”—in fact, the phrase that was used was “not one inch to the east.” Well, what happened? NATO immediately moved to East Germany. Under Clinton, other countries, former Russian satellites, were introduced into NATO. Finally, NATO went so far, as I mentioned before, 2008, again in 2013, to suggest that even Ukraine, right at the heartland of Russian strategic concerns—any Russian president, no matter who it was, any Russian leader—that they join NATO.

So, what’s NATO doing altogether? Well, actually, its mission was changed. The official mission of NATO was changed to become to be—to control and safeguard the global energy system, sea lanes, pipelines and so on. And, of course, on the side, it’s acting as a intervention force for the United States. Is that a legitimate reason for us to maintain NATO, to be an instrument for U.S. global domination? I think that’s a rather serious question. That’s not the question that’s asked. The question that’s asked is whether NATO made—whether Trump made some demeaning comment about Montenegro. It’s another example of what I was talking about before: the focus of the media and the political class, and the intellectual community in general, on marginalia, overlooking critical and crucial issues, issues which do literally have to do with human survival.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, now linguistics professor at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Coming up, we’ll talk to him about climate change, nuclear weapons, Israel, Gaza and more.

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