#slash being 6 months old was a difficulty for us in terms of that and i am not going to do that again

[darkwood-sleddog]

CDC's new dog import laws coming in August sure are....something.

[olderthannetfic]

It's really surprising that you're so well versed in older fandoms and yet participate in new popular ones (that cdrama, kpop) is this by design? Im in my twenties and my interest turnover is already way slower than it used to be

You know, that’s a really interesting question. I wouldn’t say it’s by design exactly in that I do tend to just follow what strikes my fancy, and I can’t force myself to want to write fic for just anything. (I find it easier to like reading fic without serious involuntary emotional investment, but writing takes more. Vidding I can do on command most of the time, but I don’t usually bother unless I have a lot of feels or I’m fulfilling someone’s prompt.)

However, me getting into BTS was 100% due to me wanting to understand BTS enough to explain to people who weren’t very interested but wanted to know what was going on in fandom lately. Under normal circumstances, I run the dance party at Escapade, the oldest extant slash con. We borrowed vividcon’s thing of playing fanvids on the wall--all of them set to dance music--as the soundtrack for the dance party. This means I’m creating a 3-hour mixtape of fannishness, which has amazing potential to make people feel in the know about Fandom Today... and equal potential to make them feel alienated if nothing they care about shows up. Only about 100-150 people attend the con, so it really is possible to make a playlist that feels inclusive yet informative--it just takes a huge amount of work.

Every year, I do a lot of research on which fandoms are getting big and look for vids from vidders people won’t have heard of, so there is an element of consciously trying to keep up with things. Generally, I only get into these fandoms myself if I had no idea what they were and then suddenly, oops, they’re my kryptonite, like the buddy cop android plot in Detroit: Become Human, which sucked me in hard for like 6 months on the basis of a vid.

(So if you’re into cross-fandom meta and associated stuff as one of your fannish interests, you tend to have broader knowledge of different fandoms, old and new, than if you’re just looking for the next place you’ll read fic. It’s also easier to love vids for unfamiliar things than fic.)

But though I was only looking for a basic primer on BTS, BTS has 7 members with multiple names and no clear juggernaut pairing, not to mention that AU that runs through the music videos and lots of other context to explain. The barrier to understanding WTF was going on at all was high enough that to know enough to explain, I had to be thoroughly exposed... And once I was over that hurdle, oops, I had a fandom.

--

In terms of old vs. new, here’s the thing: kpop fandoms in English and c-drama fandoms in English right now feel a lot like anime fandom in English did in the early 00s. I had a Buddy Cops of the 70s phase in the middle, but my current fannishness is actually a return to my older fannishness in many ways.

What do I mean about them being similar?

Yes, I know some wanker will show up to say I think China, Korea, and Japan are indistinguishable, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the way that I used to routinely meet Italian and French and German fans, Argentinian and Mexican, Malaysian and Indonesian and Filipino too. English-language fandom of SPN or MCU may have all those fans from all those countries, but it feels very American most of the time. English-language fandom of a non-English-language canon is more overtly about using English as a lingua franca.

It also tends to attract people who as a sideline to their fannishness are getting into language learning and translation, which are my other passion in life after fanworks fandom. (I speak only English and Spanish and a bit of Japanese, but I’ve studied German, French, Russian, Mandarin, Old English, and now Korean.)

Nerds arguing about methods of language learning and which textbooks are good and why is my jam. This is all over the place in English-language fandoms of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean media. Those fandoms also tend to be full of speakers coming from a Germanic or Romance languages background who face similar hurdles in learning these languages. (In other words, if you’re a native Japanese speaker trying to learn Korean, the parts that will be hard for you are different than if you’re an English speaker, but you’re also usually not doing fandom in English.)

There’s also an element of scarcity and difficulty of access and a communal attempt to construct a canon (in the other sense) of stuff from that country that pertains to one’s fannishness. So, for example, a primer explaining the genre of xianxia is highly relevant to being a n00b Untamed fan, but just any old thing about China is not. A c-drama adapted from a danmei webnovel is perhaps part of the new pantheon of Chinese shit we’re all getting into, but just any old drama from decades ago is probably not... unless it’s a genre precursor to something else we care about. Another aspect here is that while Stuff I Can Access As A N00b Who Doesn’t Speak The Language may be relatively scarce, there’s a vast, vast wealth of stuff that exists.

This is what it felt like to be an anime fan in the US in 2000. As translation got more commercial and more crappy series were licensed and dumped onto an already glutted market, the vibe changed. No longer were fans desperately trying to learn enough of the language to translate or spending their time cataloguing what existed or making fanworks about a show they stuck with for a bit: the overall community focus turned to an endless race of consumption to keep up with all of the latest releases. That’s a perfectly valid way of being fannish, but if I wanted that, I’d binge US television 24/7.

Anime fandom got bigger, but what I liked about anime fandom in English died, and I moved on. (Okay, I first moved on to Onmyouji, which is a live action Japanese thing, but still.)

Hardcore weeaboos and now fans of Chinese and Korean stuff don’t stop at language: people get excited about cooking, my other other great passion. Times a thousand if the canon is something like The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty, which is full of loving shots of food preparation. People get excited about history! Mandarin and Japanese may share almost nothing in terms of grammar or phonology, but all of East Asia has influence from specific Chinese power centers historically, and there are commonalities to historical architecture and clothing that I love.

I fell out of love with the popular anime art styles as they changed, and I’m not that into animation in general these days. (I still own a shitton of manga in art styles I like, like Okano Reiko’s Onmyouji series.) I’ve become a filmmaker over the last decade, and I’m very excited about beautiful cinematography and editing. With one thing and another, I’m probably not going to get back into anime fandom, but it’s lovely to revisit the cultural aspects I enjoyed about it via live-action media.

BTS surprised me too, to be honest. I really dislike that early 90s R&B ballad style that infests idol music (not just Korean--believe me, I resisted many rounds of “But Johnny’s Entertainment though!” back in the day). While I like some of the dance pop, I just don’t care. But OH NO, BTS turn out to be massive conscious hip hop fanboys, and their music sounds different. I have some tl;dr about my reactions in the meta I wrote about one of my fanvids, which you can find on Dreamwidth here.

--

But back to your comment about turnover: I know fans from the 70s who’ve had one great fannish love and that’s it and more who were like that but eventually moved on to a second or third. They’re... really fannishly monogamous in a way I find hard to comprehend. It was the norm long ago, but even by the 90s when far more people were getting into fandom, it was seen as a little weird. By now, with exponentially more people in fandom, it’s almost unheard of. I think those fans still exist, even as new people joining, but we don’t notice them. They were always rare, but in the past, only people like that had the stamina to get over the barriers to entry and actually become the people who made zines or were willing to be visibly into fanfic in eras when that was seen as really weird. On top of that, there’s an element of me, us, judging the past by what’s left: only people with an intense and often single passion are visible because other people either drifted away or have seamlessly disappeared into some modern fandom. They don’t say they’re 80 or 60 or 40 instead of 20, so nobody knows.

In general, I’m a small fandoms and rare ships person. My brain will do its best to thwart me by liking whatever has no fic even in a big fic fandom... (Except BTS because there is literally fic for any combination of them, like even more than for the likes of MCU. Wow. Best fandom evar!) So I have an incentive to not get complacent and just stick with one fandom because I would very soon have no ability to be in fandom at all.

My appetite for Consuming All The Things has slowed way down, but it also goes in waves, and a lot of what I’m consuming is what I did back in 2000: journal articles and the limited range of English-language books on the history of m/m sex and romance in East Asia. It’s not so much that I have a million fandoms as that I’m watching a few shows as an expression of my interest in East Asian costume dramas and East Asian history generally.

I do like to sit with one thing and experience it deeply rather than moving on quickly, but the surface expression of this has changed depending on whether I’m more into writing fic or more into doing research or something else.

But yes, I do do a certain amount of trying to stay current, often as a part of research for fandom meta or to help other people know what’s going on. Having a sense of what’s big doesn’t automatically mean getting into all those things, but I think some fans who are older-in-fandom and/or older-in-years stop being open to even hearing what’s new. And if you’ve never heard of it, you’ll never know if you might have liked it.

[less-than-hash]

Endless Night Class

If you’re interested in studying game design, Atlus has provided a rare (possibly unique) opportunity in their Persona Endless Night Collection.

Be warned: I’m about to spend a lot of words advocating that you acquire, play extensively, and critically examine their three Persona dancing games. I’m in no way associated with (and have never been associated with) Atlus. Nor am I an evangelist for any of these three games individually (though I do enjoy them). Taken together, though, I think they prove both fascinating and illuminating, and it’s rare to find a series as odd as this collected like this.

I provide some possible alternatives for similar exercises at the bottom of the post.

For the uninitiated, Atlus released a beatmatch game for the Vita a few years back based on the fourth of their teenage dating-sim slash Jungian dungeon delve Persona games: Persona 4: Dancing All Night. (I’ll be calling this P4D.)

I’m personally a big fan and played the crap out of it for months. Which is not to say that it’s without some pretty significant flaws. 

A few weeks ago, they released their follow-up(s), Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight (P3D) and Personal 5: Dancing in Starlight (P5D). 

The fact that any of these games exist at all is pretty weird. They’re beatmatch games that serve as spin-offs (and in two out of three cases, sequels) to narrative focused hundred-hour RPGs, each themed around dancing, despite the fact that dancing is in no shape, form, or fashion important to the core games. 

Stranger still, the two new releases are essentially the same game from both a systemic and narrative perspective. The characters are different, the music is different, the UI is different, but essentially everything else - the mechanics, the UX, the inciting narrative, the way story content is accessed, the loot - is exactly the same. 

Essentially Atlus made two games worth of content for the exact same “engine” and released them at the same time. It’s a little as if Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas had been released on the same day (had New Vegas not made any modifications to Fallout 3′s gameplay systems).

But here’s the kicker: for $100, you can get the “Endless Night Collection,” which contains both of the new releases and a code for the digital version of the original Dancing All Night (for PS4, if you get the PS4 bundle).

In other words, for $100 you get:

A game from mid-2015 developed for the Vita.

A follow-up to that game based on a different property developed for simultaneous release on PS4 and Vita.

A second follow-up to that game based on yet a different property developed for simultaneous release on PS4 and Vita, to be released at the same time as the above.

In addition to which, one of the two new games is a spin-off of a 12 year-old PS2 game while the other is a spin-off of a game that released last year.

That’s a whole lot of design from a whole lot of sources over a pretty long time kind of piled up on top of itself.

To an extent, that’s not wildly different from, say, being able to purchase a Witcher 1, 2, and 3 bundle. But there are a few other things that lend these particular games to study:

There’s minimal change in the basic gameplay systems, allowing you to focus on what things the devs decided to alter between games.

The games can be approached almost entirely non-linearly. You will miss nothing by not playing them in the order they were released. You certainly need not play them in their numeric order. Even within the games, the narrative and songs are released in a fairly non-linear order. (This is less true in P4: Dancing All Night, but that’s part of the point of this exercise.) 

The gameplay loop can be approached in chunks as short as five minutes.

Due to the confluence of the above, you can easily and comfortably jump back and forth between all three titles.

These games marry narrative-focused properties to a traditionally narrative-light genre.

All that said, here are a few things to keep in mind:

The games are not wildly accessible to those with difficulty hearing, seeing, or performing quick finger movements.

Having a working knowledge of Persona 3, Persona 4, and Persona 5 will dramatically deepen your experience of the dancing games. If you haven’t played them (which is reasonable - that’s a roughly 300 hour and $120 investment for all three, and Persona 3 has not aged well at all, especially from a systems design perspective), it’s worthwhile to at least familiarize yourself with their plots, themes, characters, art styles, and UI.

Possessing a knowledge of both rhythm games and music will allow you a deeper awareness of some of the gameplay changes that occur between the games.

SO, let’s say I’ve convinced you to acquire a copy of the games. What about them should you be studying as you play them?

What changes did the devs make between 2015′s P4D and the two 2018 games? What does each change accomplish? What need, challenge, or issue do you think the change was in response to?

Some examples:

P4D includes a visual novel-style story mode while P5D and P3D do not. Yet they still contain interactive narrative scenes. What do these two different presentations accomplish? Why do you think Atlus changed their tact in the newer games? For bonus points, compare against the narrative presentation in the Persona 4 Arena fighting games.

It’s not merely the mechanical presentation of the narrative content that changed between the games - the scope, focus, and tone of the two recent games is markedly different from P4D. P4D tells a single, linear narrative, while P3D and P5D seem much more interested in their casts’ varied interpersonal relationships. In the older game, the player encounters a small cast of entirely new characters. In what I’ve played of the newer games, there are no new characters at all. Consider why that is. I'm almost positive that the answers are neither “they’re lazy” or “it was cheaper” (though “the cost didn’t justify the reward” could very well be part of the rationale).

Progression in P4D is wildly different from that in P3D and P5D. Consider how this requires the player to approach the content. Think about why the devs may have decided to change progression in such a radical way.  

Item progression, too, is handled entirely differently in P4D than in P3D/P5D. P4D included a currency system that’s entirely gone in the new games. Why do you think that is? Further, what types of items exist in the former that aren’t in the latter? Does the functionality of some of those item types exist elsewhere in the game? Why change that presentation? Some of these changes will feel like cuts, but I promise it would have been cheaper to leave some of these systems as they were. So if the reasoning wasn’t strictly financial, what was it?

There is a single addition to the core mechanics of the game between P4D and the new releases - the double beat. Why do you think it was added?  

Compare the background videos during song gameplay in P4D to that in P3D and P5D. You’ll notice that the latter two are significantly less busy from a VFX perspective. (While I haven’t closely studied it, I suspect they’re also less complex in terms of camera cuts and camera angles.) Why do you think that is, especially given that A) games within series strongly tend towards bigger, brighter, and brasher over time; and B) the original Persona 5 possesses a much flashier visual style than Persona 4? Why are the dance sequences in P5D less flashy than those in P4D?

Similarly, passing any song in P4D got you a brief cutscene in which the dancing character summoned their persona. These are absent from the newer games. Consider why that might be. (In this case, the answer “It was cheaper” may have a lot of merit, but that’s probably not the sole reason. How do those little cutscenes at the end of each song impact the way the player interacts with the game? Especially in the common use case of the player wanting to retry the song to improve their score.)

This requires a little more familiarity with music and game design, but try to observe the ways in which the authoring of the beatmatch play changes between P4D and the newer games. The mechanics are exactly the same, but the way the devs present challenges within those mechanics are different. Try to identify how, then consider why. For bonus points, examine this through the lens of questions 4, 5, and 6 in the next section.

Much of the UI art in P4D is a major departure from that of the original Persona 4. On the other hand, P3D and P5D tend to hew much more closely to their sources for their UI art. Why do you think that is? Especially consider what’s accomplished by P3D’s emulation of a 12 year-old PS2 game. (Full disclosure: I hate it.) Strangely and interestingly, though, P3D straight up steals a bit of UI from P5D, which it takes from Persona 5. (Hint: it’s when the player is prompted to speak.) Why do you think this is? (This is a spot where the financials may have played a role. Creating the art asset for P3D to use the same UI in these moments certainly cost more than not having to create that asset. However, that cost may have been significantly cheaper and safer than changing that aspect of the UI’s functionality between the two concurrent games. Is that why it was done? I can’t say. It’s worth thinking about what the decision accomplishes from a non-financial perspective, too.) 

A major change between P4D and P3D/P5D’s conversation UI is the discontinued use of character portraits during speech. Those portraits already exist for both Persona 3 and Persona 5, so why not use them?

Alright, that’s a bunch to chew on solely from the perspective of differences between the games over time.

But it’s also worthwhile to carefully consider the choices that remain consistent across the titles. These are the things the devs felt strongly enough about to hold onto when they could have changed or jettisoned them.

The controls in all three games are exactly the same (though there’s a little fuzziness between platforms where certain inputs don’t map 1 to 1 between them). What do you think the developers consider so successful about these controls that they didn’t adjust them at all in the three years between the release of P4D and the latter titles?

Similarly, consider the control inputs chosen. Identify why d-pad right and Square aren’t used during dance play. Then consider how else the developers could have tried to address that issue. Why do you think they landed on the solution that they did?

Up at the top of this post, I mentioned that despite their overt focus on the idea and act of dancing (and the narrative’s examination of dancing from perspectives social, physical, and cultural), these are not dancing games. So why do you think these games are about dancing at all? The developers could absolutely had the beatmatch play represent something like the characters calling on their personas to battle shadows - or carrying out heists in the case of P5D. Or playing music in a band. So why the focus on dance? How does that interact with the base Persona games? Consider the role that “practice” and “training” play in both the dancing games and the RPGs. How is it reflected in the narrative of the games? How is it reflected in the way the player interacts with the game?

Clearly the player isn’t actually dancing - so what experience do you think are the devs hoping to inspire in the player as they perform each song? How do you think they wanted you to feel while you’re playing?

The audio chosen for the beat match is incredibly specific. Listen to the sound the game makes when you successfully hit a single beat. To the sound the game makes when you hit a linked beat. A sustained beat. Each of these are different, and each is immediately recognizable. Unless I missed something, none of these sounds change between the original P4D and the recent releases. (Though the new games let the player edit the sounds that play for each beat type.) Why do you think the audio team chose those sounds? How do those specific sounds contribute to the player’s experience of the game?  Looking back to question 4, how do these sounds make the player feel when their actions evoke them?

Once you’ve got an answer for questions 4 and 5, consider how successful you think the devs were in evoking that experience. Which aspects of the game undermine that experience? Which support it? Are there aspects that undermine it present in P4D that no longer exist in the recent releases?

Play the game on the three basic difficulties. Are your answers to question 6 different on the different levels of difficulty?

Go play (or watch a video of) Guitar Hero, Rock Band, or one of their sequels. What sounds do those games make when the player successfully hits a beat? More interestingly, what’s the audio response to missing a beat in Guitar Hero or Rock Band? Compare that to the audio response for missing a beat in the Persona dancing games. Why do you think those teams chose those dramatically different approaches?

Carefully consider the gameplay goals and how they’re presented to the player. The player is scored numerically, but they also reside on a continuum of “approval” (presented by dancing green alien invader-looking shadows in P4D and by bar meters in the newer releases). The latter of these is given tremendous and repeated audio feedback in the form of barks from the player’s companions. Additionally, the game displays how many successful beats the player has had since they last missed one. (And look at how the game defines this - it isn’t only a Missed beat that breaks a combo, but one rated Good.) Finally, the game assigns a text rating at the end of a performance: Not Cleared Stage Cleared Brilliant King Crazy Consider how all of these forms of feedback relate to one another. Why do all of these exist? Do they need to? What problems do you think they were implemented to solve?

Really think about the numerical score. How do you think it’s calculated? (Hint: the player increases that score over the course of their playthrough - it’s not tabulated at the end based on the report card of information presented about their performance.) Note that I don’t mean the specifics of exactly how many points each beat is worth, because I have no idea what those specifics are. (I could probably Google it, but part of the point of this is to consider what the player’s experiencing is.) What purpose does it serve?

For that matter, look at the elite King Crazy rating. Consider how it’s earned (by hitting every beat in a song, including scratches, with either Perfect or Great precision). Why do you think that’s the goal the developers set for the player? And why call it “King Crazy?” (I don’t think the answer to that question is localization-related or preciousness with the original language. The two recent games are called Persona 3: Dancing Moon Night and Persona 5: Dancing Star Night in Japan. Though I suppose if preciousness preserved the term in P4D, a desire to retain the same scale might result in the persistence of the term.)

I mentioned near the top of this post that these games aren’t wildly accessible. Consider specifically what aspects of the game would make it difficult for different kinds of people to enjoy playing it. If you were the developer, how might you try to address some of these issues?

During narrative segments, P3D and P5D (and to a lesser extent P4D, given its visual novel style) make a marked departure from the RPGs they’re based on in terms of perspective. Neither Persona 3 nor Persona 5 are first-person games, and the dancing segments involving the protagonist in P3D and P5D are similarly third person. Consider the first person perspective of the narrative in P3D and P5D. What does it accomplish? Why do you think the developers chose it?

Whew, that’s a lot. You doing okay?

In the famous words of Douglas Adams’s towel, DON’T WORRY. You don’t need to know the answers to all of those questions. I certainly don’t. 

I’ve got pretty strong suspicions about some of them, interpretations or ideas about most of them, and educated guesses about the rest. For some of these questions, the only people who know the answers for sure are those who were in the room when the decision was made. And hell, maybe they’ve forgotten!

The point is that if you’re going to be successful in design, you should be willing to dig deep into what a game’s doing when you experience it. Interrogate the game. Try to suss out the developers’ intentions. Resist the urge to pass judgment on them - to say that their choices are right or wrong, good or bad - but feel free to consider how you might have tried a different approach.

And then consider what obstacles those different approaches might hit.

Personally (get it?), I think that the Endless Night Collection provides a really rare, interesting opportunity to dig into these kinds of questions across multiple related games. If you don’t want to or can’t look at these particular titles, try to find similar opportunities. Search for games that might provide rewarding insights through archaeological examination. Some possibilities:

You a WoW player? Find a vanilla server and take a long, focused look at the way the game’s changed since launch.

The base Mass Effect trilogy was developed over a relatively short period of time (the console life cycle of the 360), but each game plays significantly differently from the one before. Despite the fact that you’re playing the same character (kind of) in each, the stats that represent that character, the way that character moves, and the UI through which you inhabit the character all change dramatically between each title. (My Shepherd in ME1 was spec’d as a healer. Remember when an ME character could be a healer?)

If you’re into Obsidian’s games, play through Baldur’s Gate 2, Pillars of Eternity, and Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire and ask questions like those above of these games. The original PoE essentially sold itself as a modern BG, so in what ways did it actually emulate those old games, and in what ways did the devs decide a different direction was better? What further did they then change for the sequel to their own game?

Find those changes, those differences large and small, give consideration to what the experience accomplishes (or fails to) on either side of the change, and imagine what the devs were trying to accomplish with their adjustments.

Anyway, I should probably sleep at some point, or so Morgana would tell me.

Good luck! <#

[devotedlydistinguishednut]

Wednesday Briefing by The New York Times

India’s coronavirus mystery

    The country has around 125 confirmed cases, and it’s a bit of a puzzle how the world’s second-most-populous nation, with 1.3 billion people, has seemingly remained unscathed so far.

    There could be many more cases in India than have been detected, because of the difficulties of getting tested. But it’s also possible that the country has actually managed to so far escape the worst — either because of quick and strict efforts right from the start, or another mix of factors.

    The relative calm has fueled disbelief in some quarters that the virus is even a threat. Over the weekend in Lucknow, one of India’s bigger cities, young people packed into pubs. “I am not scared. I eat, party, sleep,” said Akshay Gupta, an accountant who was bar hopping on Saturday night. “The scare is overhyped.” 

    Elsewhere in Asia, countries have begun to impose strict measures, including lockdowns in the Philippines and Malaysia and the widespread closure of schools, businesses and entertainment venues in Thailand. Some nations face a worrisome rise in cases without health care systems that can deal with a major outbreak.

Case studies: 

    Early intervention, meticulous tracking, quarantines and social distancing helped Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong get their outbreaks under control.

■ New York City residents were told to prepare for a possible “shelter in place” order in the next 48 hours. Separately, the Trump administration will seek to send cash payments directly to Americans to cushion the economic blow of the pandemic.

■ The first testing in humans of an experimental vaccine has begun, but even if it is proved safe and effective, it will not be available for at least a year.

■ The European Union has adopted a 30-day ban on non-essential travel to European countries from the rest of the world, starting a stretch of isolation like nothing in modern history outside wartime.

■ After suffering their worst day in decades, stocks bounced back: The S&P 500 rose about 6 percent as Washington policymakers talked up plans to try to cushion the economy.

■ The actors Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson have been released from the hospital after contracting the virus.

What we can do next

    Melina caught up with Donald G. McNeil Jr., our infectious diseases reporter who has been covering epidemics for nearly two decades. He has been reporting on experts’ recommendations for what to do next.

    You’ve said this is a crisis but it’s not unstoppable. How do we stop it?

    We need to shut down all travel, as experts have said. And then we really aggressively tackle the clusters. People have got to stop shaking hands; people have got to stop going to bars and restaurants. New clusters are appearing every day.

    It’s basically urgent that America imitates what China did. China had a massive outbreak in Wuhan, spreading all over the country, and they’ve almost stopped it. We can shut off the roads, flights, buses and trains. I don’t think we’ll ever succeed at doing exactly what China did. It’s going to cause massive social disruption because Americans don’t like being told what to do. 

    In places like China, Singapore and Taiwan, they’ve gone through SARS — they know how scary it is.

    Is that what some countries are missing? This sense of collective action and selflessness?

    That is absolutely what many Americans are missing — that it’s not about you right now. When I was a kid, my parents were in the World War II generation and there was more of a sense of, hey, we did something amazing; we ramped up this gigantic society effort. It was this sense of we’re all in this together. 

    We’ve got to realize that we’re all in this together and save each other’s lives. That has not penetrated yet and it needs to penetrate because we all have to cooperate.

    The sad thing is: Most people — this has been true in every epidemic I’ve covered, whether it’s Zika in Puerto Rico or AIDS in South Africa — don’t believe in the disease until they see someone get sick and die from it, someone they know. And it’s too bad. It’s: Oh, that’s happening to those people over there; that’s happening in China; that’s not going to happen to us.

    I imagine that after decades of covering epidemics, you understood Covid-19’s severity early on. Tell me about when this became serious for you. 

    I remember vividly — I went on vacation to Argentina, not thinking this was terribly serious: It sounds like an animal disease and it’s going to kill a limited number of people. By the time I came back, China admitted there was sustained human-to-human transmission. I started watching the case counts double and doing the math in my head, and I realized, oh my god. This is going pandemic.

    When was that?

    It was late January. I was on the subway, going from work to my girlfriend’s house, just sort of thinking about the numbers and realizing: Wait a minute, that doubling rate is so fast, there’s no way this isn’t going to become a pandemic. I started writing on a piece of notebook paper trying to see if I was crazy — and then went looking up the 1918 pandemic and realized that was the closest model to this.

China bans American journalists from major outlets

    Beijing announced that it would expel American journalists working for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, and also ban them from reporting in territories like Hong Kong and Macau.

    It also demanded that those outlets, as well as the Voice of America and Time magazine, provide the government with information about their operations. The full scope of the directive was not immediately clear.

     The latest move in the tit-for-tat campaign between Washington and Beijing comes at a moment when reporting on the coronavirus is a global, 24-hour operation for most news outlets. Last month China expelled three Wall Street Journal reporters from the country. President Trump responded this month by limiting the number of Chinese citizens who could work in the U.S. for five state-controlled Chinese news organizations.

    Related: China has been cracking down on online anger toward the government for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak. A new internet police force is knocking on doors of suspected critics, subjecting them to hours of interrogation and in some cases forcing them to sign loyalty pledges.

Why yoga is causing a stir in Nepal

    Next month, the small Himalayan nation will become the first in the world to make yoga a required subject nationwide.

    For many around the world in similar programs, it’s a healing and stress-reducing addition to a curriculum. But in a region where the exercises are increasingly intertwined with rising Hindu nationalism, some Muslims are worried.

Here’s what else is happening

Football: The European Championship, second only to the World Cup in international football, will be postponed until 2021.

Germany: A laptop sold on eBay for $100 was discovered to contain classified software for a surface-to-air rocket system used by the country’s air force.

Syria: Amid a cease-fire in the northern province of Idlib, some of the hundreds of thousands of displaced residents are trickling back. But very few believe the quiet will last.

Snapshot: A physicist is trying to disentangle the structural dynamics of bird nests using bamboo skewers, above. A nest is “a disordered stick bomb,” resilient in ways that humans have hardly begun to understand.

What we’re reading: This Harvard Business Review article about two new mothers who take very different paths going back to work in Sweden and the U.S. “Reading the two stories side by side shows just how dismally work-family policies in the U.S. measure up — if they’re there at all,” says Francesca Donner, the director of our Gender Initiative.

Now, a break from the news

Cook: This rosemary, olive oil and orange cake is great for what our Food editor Sam Sifton calls “procrastibaking,” though “anxiety baking may be the better term of art these days.”

Shows for social distancing: Looking for a few hours of distraction between vigorous hand-washings? Need a moment away from Twitter? A musical mockumentary, an addiction sitcom, two true-crime docs and a pottery competition are here to help.

Read: Was there a murder on the Mayflower? In her new novel, “Beheld,” TaraShea Nesbit uses a death on the pilgrim ship to examine what life was like for women in the Plymouth Colony.

Smarter Living: Here are some ways to help your community combat the coronavirus while still practicing social distancing. For starters, donate — ideally money, not old cans — to your local food bank.

And now for the Back Story on … Covering an infected global economy

    The pandemic is having a big impact on the world’s wallet. To understand the fallout, Times Insider spoke to Jeanna Smialek, who covers the Federal Reserve from Washington. Below is a condensed version of the conversation.

    On Sunday, the Fed slashed interest rates to almost zero. How could that affect us going forward?

    The move should help consumers borrow and spend. For example, it should make mortgages cheaper. But at the end of the day, nothing the Fed can do at this point is going to offset the full shock of coronavirus, because its tools are just not well suited to making up for lost work hours or helping employees who have missed out on paychecks.

    Can nations work together to help the global economy rebound?

    Central banks do not have the firefighting power that they had going into the 2008 financial crisis. Many central banks, like in Japan and in parts of Europe, already had very low or even negative interest rates. And so they just have less room to act to soften the economic blow.

    What matters right now is what happens to the companies getting clobbered in the moment. Is this a short-term blip that is painful but not devastating? Or will this kill companies, thereby having greater repercussions for financial markets, and be much more long-lived in its pain?

    If there’s one takeaway for readers on the global economy, what should it be?

    It’s been said by every person on the planet at this point, but the single best thing for the global economy is for this virus to be contained. More than any fiscal or monetary package, the public health response here is most important.

— Melina and Jonathan Adapted from "Your Wednesday Briefing, The New York Times" <nytdirect@nytimes.com>

[robertkstone]

Pragmatism Vs. Passion: Behind the Scenes at 2018 SUV of the Year

I’m stuck. Inconceivable. I unclip my seat belt and step out of the molten orange Rogue Sport and into the silty sand of the Mojave Desert.

It’s hot. Oppressively so. Especially considering the other 10 judges and I began our evaluations at the Honda Proving Center only an hour earlier.

As I step back to evaluate my sandpit predicament, international bureau chief Angus MacKenzie rolls up, bemused, in a blue Maserati Levante. I wave him by and watch as the Levante disappears behind a swirling rooster tail of dust before turning my attention back to the ensnared Nissan.

The other judges are busy cycling through the 37 SUVs we have on hand, and our photo and video teams are hard at work capturing the action. I don’t want to bother them, so only one option remains—do it myself.

I try all the tricks I learned after plowing my college-years Mustang into a snowdrift for the millionth time. Regardless, I taste bitter defeat. A few minutes later, road test editor Chris Walton, photographer Jade Nelson, and photo intern Darren Martin pull up in our long-term Ford F-250, the 2017 Truck of the Year. Jade and Darren position themselves on the Rogue Sport’s B-pillars. With a little throttle in reverse the Nissan springs free.

The great thing about evaluating SUVs at a facility such as Honda’s is that it not only allows each judge to evaluate our 24 contenders (totalling 37 vehicles) in the same repeatable way but also allows us to bring our unique automotive perspectives and experiences to the table.

I am a child of the Northeast. My younger brothers and I grew up shoveling snow from the stoop of my family’s apartment building every winter. When we wanted extra money, we’d walk up the block looking to rescue SUVs whose drivers thought all four-wheel-drive systems were created equal. We never had to look hard. For every Jeep or Subaru we rescued, we saved a half-dozen early Ford Escapes or Honda CR-Vs.

That would explain how I found myself stuck in the sand. Sand isn’t a perfect substitute for snow, but it’s close enough to serve as a SoCal analogue. I made a point to drive around the sand portion of our off-road course at city speeds, stopping and starting to see which SUVs could handle it. Most did fine. The Rogue Sport and Toyota C-HR did not. Others—some with strong off-road credentials—had more difficulties than we would have expected.

The 1.34-mile off-road course is just one of the four abuses we subjected our entrants to. We also made good use of a 7.6-mile oval, the 1.9 mile winding road, and a half-mile gravel loop.

We weren’t kidding around with these tests, and we do this so you can make an informed decision regarding which SUV will best get you to and from your ski lodge or hunting cabin without getting stuck in bad weather.

The goal of our time at Honda’s proving ground isn’t to pick a winner, though. It’s to winnow out the SUVs that aren’t winners. After two days cycling through every SUV and assessing them against our six criteria, we’d know enough to separate the contenders from the pretenders. Our finalist loop would settle the rest.

Although I spent much of my time on the off-road course, my fellow judges brought their unique perspectives to the table. Technical director Frank Markus, an engineer by trade, made a point of torturing himself on the Belgian block section of the gravel course, testing suspension compression, rebound, and impact harshness. Chris made multiple passes on the winding road, driving each contender in the same lanes at near-identical speeds so that he could accurately assess how they handle different performance thresholds.

Meanwhile, executive editor Mark Rechtin spent much of his time testing things buyers rarely notice on test drives but become bothersome after months of ownership: wind noise, air-conditioning performance, and high-speed cruise control accuracy—the latter so much so that he was chided by Honda’s proving ground monitors for, ahem, accidently exceeding the 100-mph speed limit. All in the name of science, right?

While Mark ripped around the oval, associate editor Scott Evans was taking a more holistic approach, attempting to recreated how owners would use an SUV in the real world, testing passing power, emergency braking, and ride quality.

Others, such as guest judge Gordon Dickie—an automotive engineering consultant who’s been an R&D executive for Kia, Mazda, Volvo, Ford, and others—spent extra time evaluating interior lighting, folding and unfolding rear seats, measuring body-panel gaps, and investigating hundreds of other traits that together make a vehicle great.

Not all contenders would make it through the test track torture scot-free. The C-HR and the front-drive variant of the Hyundai Santa Fe Sport joined the Rogue Sport in beaching themselves in the sand. The Chevy Equinox narrowly escaped its opportunity to join that club, too. Elsewhere, the Alfa Romeo Stelvio and Audi Q5 lived up to their brands’ sometimes spotty histories with electrical issues. The Stelvio periodically displayed taillight out and service headlamp warnings, and the Q5’s collision mitigation software would routinely freak out and slam on the brakes when being driven on the winding road.

While some SUV’s stocks tumbled, others rose. The Enclave Avenir, for example, impressed judges with its quiet, buttoned-down ride and handsome sheetmetal—though it’s as-tested price gave many judges sticker shock, especially compared to the equivalent Chevy Traverse. The Honda CR-V also impressed with its full suite of semi-autonomous driving tech, good road manners, and spacious interior. Judges were also blown away by the Volkswagen Atlas’ adult-friendly third row—who needs a reborn VW Microbus when the Atlas has packaging like this?

When a palate cleanser was needed, many judges gravitated to the hunchbacked Mercedes-AMG GLC43 or the Alfa Romeo Stelvio. The former, with its high-strung twin-turbo V-6, steamroller tires, and rear-biased AWD system, was a monster on the winding track. The Stelvio was an absolute sweetheart, too. Toss a corner its way, and it comes alive, exhibiting a sense of soul missing from many crossovers in its competitive set. With few exceptions, the sporty Europeans were a welcome respite as the days grew long and caffeine ran low.

At the end of two frantic days totaling some 5,700 combined miles of evaluations in this desert kiln, we haggled over the cut list in a mercifully air-conditioned conference room—while our hardy photo and video teams continued slaving away outside, fighting off dust storms and flybys from Air Force and Navy jets.

Ruthless People

It’s always interesting to see how the finalist cut conversation goes. Some years no one seems to want to narrow the field. Other years, judges want to slash and burn—a braying Roman gladiator crowd pitilessly thumbing down any vehicle that’s not up to snuff. This discussion quickly went the latter way.

Editor-in-chief Ed Loh started feeling out the room by offering up a vehicle that’d been banned from our off-road testing due to its propensity for getting stuck: the Toyota C-HR. Although an argument could be made for the C-HR on our Efficiency or Value criteria, when it comes to Engineering Excellence and Performance of Intended Function, the C-HR’s lack of all-wheel drive coupled with its carlike ground clearance led to failure in its primary mission of being a crossover.

Blood was in the water. A heated debate ensued on the GM triplets, the Buick Envision, Chevrolet Equinox, and GMC Terrain, ultimately ending in all three being cut.

Down the list we went—a cold-blooded 45-minute slash and burn before we agreed on our first finalist. However, once we had the low-hanging fruit out of the way, the debate was engaged in earnest for the remaining bubble candidates. Was the Audi SQ5’s zippy performance sufficient to overcome the Q5’s clinical styling and weird collision-prevention events? Was the thrilling Alfa Romeo’s occasional gremlin enough to disqualify it? Was the Buick Enclave Avenir a better seven-seat SUV for the money than its mass-market Chevrolet Traverse cousin? And although the fun Mazda CX-5 fell short against its Honda CR-V rival in most measurements, this is not a head-to-head test—so was the CX-5 good enough to make the finals? Were the awful gear-selector buttons of the otherwise competent GMC Terrain enough to ruin its chances? The debate raged on.

Finally, after hours of discussion, our field of 24 was down to just seven. The finalists couldn’t be more different; it’s a good thing that our Of The Year competitions aren’t comparison tests. Our finalists included a bit of everything: the sporty Alfa Romeo Stelvio, the family-friendly VW Atlas and Chevrolet Traverse, the value-packed Honda CR-V, the off-road-ready Land Rover Discovery, the cheap and cheerful Subaru Crosstrek, and the luxurious Volvo XC60. Over the next two days on real-world roads, we’d figure out which was worthy of the Golden Calipers.

We packed up as the sun set on the Mojave. Tehachapi and our real-world loops still lay an hour’s drive away. We jockeyed for keys and saddled up for our convoy to the old railroad town on the outer edges of the desert.

The Finalists

If the first two days of SUV of the Year are a sprint through 37 vehicles, the last two are a marathon through seven finalists. Over the next 48 hours, we’d each drive our 27.6-mile Of The Year loop 11 times, thanks to the extra Crosstrek, Discovery, and XC60 variants that help us assess the breadth of their given lineups. After 303.6 miles on highways, rural back roads, canyons, city streets, and industrial byways, we’d each be ready to put our heads together and pick our 2018 SUV of the Year.

Proving grounds are great places to test lots of vehicles in a controlled environment over a short period of time, but performance in the uncontrollable real world can make or break a finalist. For example, issues such as those we experienced with the Audi Q5’s forward collision software at the proving ground typically don’t rear their heads except on public streets with real traffic—in fact, a similar issue arose last year with the Mazda CX-9, sinking its chances at winning. The unpredictability of the real world also further helps us test everything from low-speed braking behavior and transmission responsiveness in traffic to radar cruise control, lane keep assist systems, infotainment software, and audio systems—something I vowed to pay particular attention to this year.

Just before 8 a.m. on the first day of the finalist loops, I walked into our hotel conference room and was greeted by a personalized drive schedule. Frank, who seems to always be running on East Coast time, made one for each judge despite turning in for bed past midnight and waking up at what I’m sure was way before dawn.

I snagged the keys to the diesel Discovery, fired up the oil burner, and set out for my first loop of the day.

Before I’d even made it to lunch with the gang some four hours later, I realized I’d made a terrible mistake.

I’d read recently that Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” with its operatic highs and heavy-metal lows, is one the best songs for testing an audio system’s chops. In year’s past I’ve used my favorite albums, but I’ve never used a single song on repeat. This seemed much more scientific.

It was on my fourth loop when I realized my critical mistake: Listening to a great song repeatedly on full blast ruins said great song. Sure, in those four hours I learned “Bohemian Rhapsody” sounds unexpectedly good on the Subaru’s Harman Kardon audio system and surprisingly bass-heavy on the VW Atlas’ Fender system, but at what cost? My ears would ring with Freddie Mercury’s voice and Brian May’s guitar on an endless loop.

By the following afternoon, I was ready for “Bohemian Rhapsody” to end and our debate to begin.

There’s always a tense, nervous quiet that overtakes the conference room ahead of our final debates. Some mindlessly fiddle with their phones. Others anxiously pore over their notes, gaining ammunition for the fight to come.

Unlike the relative anarchy of our contender cuts, Ed leads us diligently through the finalists. We start with the VW Atlas. “Anyone feel strongly that this should be our SUV of the Year?”

Detroit editor Alisa Priddle is the first to respond: “I know this is Volkswagen’s corporate styling, but the design does not work for me at all.” Angus jumps in, defending the Atlas’ sheetmetal before admitting, “My big problem with the Atlas is in its suspension calibration,” noting that it’s frequently either bottoming or topping out.

After thoroughly covering the Atlas, Ed moves the discussion on to the Volvo, then the Land Rover and the Chevrolet. Like the Atlas, the XC60, Discovery, and Traverse all get an exhaustive review from the judges—yet no one makes a passionate case for any of them to be crowned SUV of the Year. Everyone seems to be waiting for their favorites to be brought to the table.

Then we get to the Alfa Romeo Stelvio. “I feel like this is the most polarizing vehicle in the mix,” Ed said. Boy, was he right. For every case that could be made against the Alfa—from its electronic glitches and intermittently functioning sunroof (an issue which cropped up minutes before we began our discussion)—an equally compelling case could be made for its exceptional driving manners. The Stelvio was appealing to our hearts, the enthusiast in each and ever from PerformanceJunk WP Feed 3 http://ift.tt/2AFpqOm via IFTTT