• • • an aural noise • • •
word salad: Welcome to Fields Vol. 2: a gathering for the world’s leading contemporary music experts. Electronica is one of the more difficult genres to explain. That is in part because of its inclusion of numerous subgenres, but more importantly due to the genre’s rich history. Unburdened by the past, with a completely future-focused mindset, Guy J’s boutique label Armadillo Records delivers over an hour of truly cutting edge works from some of the best global producers.
• • • some of the things I read in antisocial isolation • • •
A Mysterious Black Spot Offers Clues to a Doomed Explorer’s Last Moments
Jørgen Brønlund’s diary contained information that wasn’t written on the page.
The black material found on the final page of Brønlund’s diary. Embiggenable.
NEARLY A CENTURY AFTER A tragic Arctic expedition secured a portion of Greenland for Denmark, a final diary entry by one of the explorers has offered up a clue to how he spent his last, frigid moments. The secret lay in a mysterious spot of dark material stuck to the page, rather than in the words themselves.
“No food, no foot gear, and several hundred miles to the ship,” wrote Jørgen Brønlund, the last survivor of a three-man sledge team that perished in 1907 during the Denmark Expedition to survey far northeastern Greenland. The men were attempting to return to base camp in Danmarkshavn when delays forced them to summer in a fjord and await the return of ice and snow more favorable for dog sledge travel. They were, however, already critically short of food and supplies.
Crippled by hunger and exhaustion when they resumed their trek in the fall, Brønlund’s companions, Niels Peter Høeg Hagen and expedition leader Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen, died that November within days of each other. Brønlund, an Inuit native of Greenland, managed to walk another 15 miles to a depot that had been prepared ahead of time at Lambert’s Land. There he sought shelter in a cave, but could go no farther due to frostbite and darkness. His body was found four months later, along with his diary, holding the tell-tale black material on the last page.
“This story is something every Greenlander knows about,” says chemist Kaare Lund Rasmussen, lead author of the study in the journal Archaeometry, and whose team at the University of Southern Denmark specializes in the analysis of cultural artifacts. “This was the terra incognita at the time. It became the Moon and Mars later, but back then it was the polar expeditions that people were waiting to hear about.” …
Trickle-down economics doesn’t work but build-up does – is Biden listening?
A new study confirms tax cuts for the rich do not benefit the rest. Recovery from the pandemic is a chance to change course.
The development and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines shows public investment works.
How should the huge financial costs of the pandemic be paid for, as well as the other deferred needs of society after this annus horribilis?
Politicians rarely want to raise taxes on the rich. Joe Biden promised to do so but a closely divided Congress is already balking.
That’s because they’ve bought into one of the most dangerous of all economic ideas: that economic growth requires the rich to become even richer. Rubbish.
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith once dubbed it the “horse and sparrow” theory: “If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”
We know it as trickle-down economics.
In a new study, David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King’s College London lay waste to the theory. They reviewed data over the last half-century in advanced economies and found that tax cuts for the rich widened inequality without having any significant effect on jobs or growth. Nothing trickled down. …
RELATED: Footing the COVID-19 bill: economic case for tax hike on wealthy
Governments shouldn’t be worried that raising taxes on the rich will harm their economies when deciding on how to pay for COVID-19. Our new research on 18 advanced economies shows that major tax cuts for the rich over the past 50 years have pushed up inequality but have had no significant effects on economic growth or unemployment.
These findings shed new light on a debate that has long divided policymakers, with one side claiming higher taxes on the rich could raise revenue and reduce inequality, and the other arguing that low taxes on the rich are the best route to wider economic prosperity.
The data suggests that low taxes on the rich bring economies little benefit, and this suggests there is a strong economic case for raising taxes on the rich to help repair public finances following the pandemic.
As the COVID-19 pandemic is putting government finances under pressure worldwide, higher taxes on the rich are back on the political agenda. In the US, the president-elect, Joe Biden, has promised to raise taxes on top income earners and corporations. Voices demanding a wealth tax have also become louder in the UK and Germany. Given the damage the pandemic has done to economies, the notion of getting the most affluent to help foot the bill is one that has many supporters. But once again this is being countered by those who insist that low taxes are crucial for stimulating the economy. …
Okay, We Need A Funko Pop! Intervention
It all started innocently enough: you saw some of your friends participating, and you thought to yourself, “Hey, what’s the harm in trying it just one time?” And if you’re being honest, it was kind of exhilarating. The color, the texture, the way it made adrenaline course through your veins — it was unlike anything you had experienced before. So you kept coming back, cautiously at first, then boldly and unabashedly, spending more and more money to get your hands on the goods. The friends who initially introduced you eventually raised some concerns. “You sure you’re good, man? I think you need to slow down a bit.” You shrug it all off. You’re a full-grown adult; you know the line for when it is too much and how to take care of yourself.
Fast forward a few months, and you’re completely caught up in the lifestyle. You’re gasping for air, struggling to stay afloat. The occasional indulgence here and there turned into hundreds of dollars a month, yet you can’t stop yourself from going back for more. Soon you become a shell of the person you once were, and all that’s left to show of it? Funko Pops — hundreds and hundreds of Funko Pops.
Most Americans have seen Funko Pops before. The most recognizable Funko products are the semi-cute, bobblehead-esque toys modeled after iconic pop culture characters, superstar athletes, and even horror villains like Jack Torrance from The Shining and Pennywise the Clown. They also come in other forms such as keychains, Vinyl mini-figures, and as part of Funko board games. What most people are blissfully unaware of, however, is how these seemingly harmless collector’s items can turn into a full-fledged addiction, causing people to literally spend thousands on building up their stockpiles like it was their last day on Earth.
Those of us who lived through the ’90s remember the pop culture obsessions over toys like Beanie Babies and Pogs. Who can forget this 1999 Pulitzer-worthy photo of the soon-to-be-divorced Las Vegas couple who divided their exorbitant Beanie Baby collection under court supervision?
Frances Mountain, left, sorts out Beanie Babies with her ex-husband, Harold Mountain, in a Las Vegas divorce courtroom in 1999https://t.co/H8Wediores pic.twitter.com/fLxNR0Ko9i
— Cory Doctorow #BLM (AFK until Jan 4 2021) (@doctorow) December 9, 2017
These trends show us how easily Americans can become bewitched by the latest trend in novelty items, and in the era of 2020, this near-cult adulation comes in the form of Funko Pops. …
RELATED: The Article That Mainstreamed (And Whitened) Disco Was Made Up
It’s known now as the background noise that provided vapid clubgoers the excuse to do drugs and rub their glittery bodies together between roughly 1977 and 1979, but disco is a complicated art form that’s been played since the ’60s in underground dance clubs frequented by gay and/or non-white audiences. That all changed with the release of Saturday Night Fever in ’77, based on the New Yorker article “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” which purportedly documented a group of Italian-American men who were the kings of disco at the hottest club in Brooklyn.
Overnight, straight white America flocked to the clubs to get their fill of synthesizers and cocaine.
But it was all based on a lie. The New Yorker reporter who wrote the story, Nik Cohn, invented Tony Manero after one aborted night out at Brooklyn’s 2001 Odyssey, where he was greeted by a bar fight and a stomach’s worth of vomit on his pants and turned right back around and went home. He came back to find a man he’d seen watching the action from afar who intrigued him, but the dude wasn’t there, and the other patrons weren’t giving him much. “I made a lousy interviewer,” he later admitted. “I knew nothing about this world, and it showed.”
He’d already convinced the magazine to let him cover the disco scene, though, so he just made up a story about the character that existed mostly in his head based on some guys he’d known in the ’60s back home in the U.K. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, just a quickie he’d dashed off to pay the bills while he worked on a novel that he was “convinced was the most important thing,” but then the story went the ’70s version of viral and got turned into the movie that brought disco to the masses. …
YOU’RE WELCOME: Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night
*From the June 7, 1976 issue of New York Magazine.
Over the past few months, much of my time has been spent in watching this new generation. Moving from neighborhood to neighborhood, from disco to disco, an explorer out of my depth, I have tried to learn the patterns, the old/new tribal rites. In the present article, I have focused on one club and one tight-knit group which seem to sum up the experience as a whole. Artist James McMullan also spent many hours observing this development, but his paintings, reproduced here, are less specific; although they deal with the same locations and group, they are generalized images of these Saturday night rituals.
Everything described in this article is factual and was either witnessed by me or told to me directly by the people involved. Only the names of the main characters have been changed.
Within the closed circuits of rock & roll fashion, it is assumed that New York means Manhattan. The center is everything, all the rest irrelevant. If the other boroughs exist at all, it is merely as a camp joke—Bronx-Brooklyn-Queens, monstrous urban limbo, filled with everyone who is no one.
In reality, however, almost the reverse is true. While Manhattan remains firmly rooted in the sixties, still caught up in faction and fad and the dreary games of decadence, a whole new generation has been growing up around it, virtually unrecognized. Kids of sixteen to twenty, full of energy, urgency, hunger. All the things, in fact, that the Manhattan circuit, in its smugness, has lost.
They are not so chic, these kids. They don’t haunt press receptions or opening nights; they don’t pose as street punks in the style of Bruce Springsteen, or prate of rock & Rimbaud. Indeed, the cults of recent years seem to have passed them by entirely. They know nothing of flower power or meditation, pansexuality, or mind expansion. No waterbeds or Moroccan cushions, no hand-thrown pottery, for them. No hep jargon either, and no Pepsi revolutions. In many cases, they genuinely can’t remember who Bob Dylan was, let alone Ken Kesey or Timothy Leary. Haight Ashbury, Woodstock, Altamont—all of them draw a blank. Instead, this generation’s real roots lie further back, in the fifties, the golden age of Saturday nights.
The cause of this reversion is not hard to spot. The sixties, unlike previous decades, seemed full of teenage money. No recession, no sense of danger. The young could run free, indulge themselves in whatever treats they wished. But now there is shortage once more, just as there was in the fifties. Attrition, continual pressure. So the new generation takes few risks. It goes through high school, obedient; graduates, looks for a job, saves and plans. Endures. And once a week, on Saturday night, its one great moment of release, it explodes. …
RELATED: 4 Reasons We Can’t Laugh Away Stupid Conspiracy Theories In 2021
If you’re a believer in QAnon, the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is fighting a shadow war against a global cabal of elite Satan-worshipping pedophiles comprised of everyone from Barack Obama to Tom Hanks, then 2021 is shaping up to be a big year for you. Not only will you have to spend a lot of time screaming at exhausted Subway employees about how the election was stolen, but you’ll have a chance to attend the For God & Country Victory Cruise! Departing on April 17, it will take a boatload of QAnon believers from New York City to Bermuda, where revelers will presumably harvest the powers of the Bermuda Triangle itself to battle the necromantic corpse of Hugo Chavez or whatever.
You can check out QAnon’s failed predictions if you need a nervous laugh, but it’s hard to read the sentence “Our President and country have been through so much, so what better way to celebrate this new chapter than at sea with your patriot family?” without wondering if they’ve jumped a shark secretly employed by the Trilateral Commission. It’s quite the feat of cognitive dissonance to believe that you’re enlightened enough to be witnessing a battle for the soul of humanity and respond to this ongoing revelation by drinking daiquiris and playing shuffleboard aboard the S.S. Elections Aren’t Real.
On one level, it’s all very silly. The promise that you’ll “have the opportunity to hear from some of your favorite patriots and digital soldiers” sounds like a coffee klatsch with the V.R. Troopers. And let’s look at the credentials of these defenders of America — illustrious speakers include a salon owner who had a kerfuffle with Nancy Pelosi, a man whose entire personality revolves around having been banned from Twitter, and a grifter who sells $1,000 courses on how to overcome your anxiety with “badassery” yet is apparently still oppressed by the deep state.
You’ll also be able to hear the musical stylings of J.T. Wilde, whose songs like “WWG1WGA” and “You Are Lightening” (you may think that’s a typo, but spelling at a fifth-grade level is just what George Soros wants you sheeple to do) are available wherever you go to torture your ears. It’s all so silly, in fact, that it’s easy to forget a QAnon believer murdered a guy way back in the faraway year of 2019.
4. Our First Instinct Is To Treat These Groups As Outliers
And not just any guy — we’re talking about an alleged mob boss.
On Staten Island in March 2019, suspected acting boss of the Gambino crime family Frank Cali was shot dead by 24-year-old Anthony Comello, who believed Cali was part of the nefarious deep state that worked tirelessly against Trump by making him ignore basic responsibilities and play golf all day. If you’re wondering why we’re bringing it back up now, that’s because A) the story was drowned out amid the 500 other scandals unfolding at the time, B) all pre-COVID news fell down a memory hole, and C) it’s bonkers. …
The Campaign Against the Vaccines Is Already Under Way
Society’s well-being depends on how well public-health officials and average internet users combat misinformation.
FOR ALMOST AS long as humanity has had vaccines, it has also had propagandists who try to scare people out of using them. Among the many medical questions contemplated in the journal The Lancet in the late 1890s and early 1900s—“Grey Hair and Emotional States,” “In Praise of Rum and Milk,” “On the Value of Cheese as a Dietetic Resource in Diabetes Mellitus”—are letters debating the efficacy of the smallpox vaccine, the age at which children should get it, the risk of the vaccine relative to the disease, and the extent to which local authorities should enforce compulsory vaccination in case of outbreaks.
The misleading claims Americans will soon hear about the newly released COVID-19 vaccines are nearly identical to claims made about smallpox immunizations 120 years ago: The ingredients are toxic and unnatural; the vaccines are insufficiently tested; the scientists who produce them are quacks and profiteers; the cell cultures involved in some shots are an affront to the religious; the authorities working to protect public health are guilty of tyrannical overreach. In the British Medical Journal in that period, a Dr. Francis T. Bond frets about what to do about his era’s anti-vaxxers and their arguments, which have since become well-trod canards because they are effective in frightening people.
Today’s anti-vaccine activists, however, enjoy a speed, scale, and reach far greater than those of Dr. Bond’s day. Bottom-up networked activism is driving the spread of anti-vaccine COVID-19 propaganda. Americans are about to see a deluge of tweets, posts, and snarky memes that will attempt to erode trust in the vaccine rollouts. Society’s ability to return to a semblance of normalcy depends on how effectively public-health authorities counter this misinformation and how assiduously media outlets and internet platforms refrain from amplifying it—but also on whether average Americans recognize that the material they click on and share has real-world consequences.
The deliberate campaign against the vaccine has already begun. Within 48 hours of the first people in the U.S. receiving the Pfizer vaccine, anti-vaccine activists were amplifying stories of allergic reactions and sharing claims about friends of friends whom the vaccine had supposedly injured or killed. …
BIG QUESTIONS: Do Dogs Get Jealous of Each Other?
Just like how an older sibling might act out when a new baby joins the family, a 2014 study from PLOS ONE suggests dogs get jealous when they perceive there is a rival for their owners’ attention.
To test this, UC San Diego psychology professor Christine Harris and former honors student Caroline Prouvost adapted a test usually applied to 6-month-old human babies. 36 dogs and their owners participated. Each pair was videotaped at home as the owner ignored the dog in favor of three different stand-ins: An animated stuffed dog that barked and wagged its tail; a jack-o-lantern; and a children’s book with pop-ups and sounds. In the case of the toy dog and the jack-o-lantern, owners—who were not informed ahead of time of the hypothesis—were instructed to treat the object as if it were a real dog. The book served as a control; owners read aloud as if to a child.
From there, two independent raters watched the videos and coded them for a variety of aggressive, disruptive, and/or attention-seeking behaviors that would indicate jealousy. What they found was that most of dogs exhibited some signs of jealousy—primarily pushing or touching the owner or object but also snapping at the toy—when their owner interacted with the fake dog. The jack-o-lantern was perceived as less of a threat and the book least of all. Harris also noted that 86 percent of dogs sniffed the toy dog’s rear end at some point, indicating that they believed it to be a real dog.
The study predicts that the jealous behavior would be even more pronounced in situations where the rival for the owners’ attention was a real dog that responded to the attention. “Our study suggests not only that dogs do engage in what appear to be jealous behaviors but also that they were seeking to break up the connection between the owner and a seeming rival,” Harris said. “We can’t really speak to the dogs’ subjective experiences, of course, but it looks as though they were motivated to protect an important social relationship.” …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
Russians can’t drink alcohol while taking the vaccine, the U.S. starts rolling out doses, and Tom Cruise is NOT playing around. Here are this week’s coronavirus updates.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Social Distancing Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
Desi Lydic heads to Arizona to discover how the residents of this swing state feel about not participating in daylight saving time and attempts to figure out why DST even exists.
Merry Christmas ya filthy animals. If you want to learn the design fundamentals it takes to make something like the Glitter Bomb, enroll in my NEW Creative Engineering course at https://Monthly.com/MarkRober and I’ll see you in class!
FINALLY . . .
5 ways MacKenzie Scott’s $5.8 billion commitment to social and economic justice is a model for other donors
The philanthropist is giving away billions of dollars quickly to help people like these Floridians seeking donated food.
The author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott announced on Dec. 15 that she had given almost US$4.2 billion to hundreds of nonprofits. It was her second announcement of this kind since she first publicly discussed her giving intentions in May of 2019.
In July 2020, Scott revealed that she’d already given away nearly $1.7 billion to 116 organizations, many of which focused on racial justice, women’s rights, LGBTQ equality, democracy and climate change. All told, her 2020 philanthropy totals more than $5.8 billion. Scott directed her latest round of giving to 384 organizations to support people disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. She made dozens of gifts to food banks, United Way chapters, YMCAs and YWCAs – organizations that have seen increased demand for services and, in some cases, declines in philanthropic gifts.
In the two blog posts she has written to break the news, Scott has encouraged donors of all means to join her, whether those gifts are money or time.
Previously married to Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, the philanthropist announced in July that from now on she’ll be using her middle name as her new last name. She left it up to the causes she’s funding to reveal precise totals for each gift. …
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Likely, if I find nothing more barely uninteresting at all to do.
ONE MORE THING:
The Curious Case of Thomas Lambert, the Child Who Seemingly Died Before He Was Born
FAR BENEATH THE LOFTY VAULTS of Salisbury Cathedral in the south of England, a mottled stone slab in the floor marks Thomas Lambert’s resting place with this cryptic inscription:
H[ic] S[epultus] E[st] (“Here lies…”)
the body of Tho[mas]
the sonn of Tho[mas]
Lambert gent[leman]
who was borne
May y[e] 13 An[no] Do[mini]
1683 & dyed Feb
19 the same year
What act of wizardry or—Great Scott!—time-traveling technology allowed this child to die before he was born? Alas, there is no magic to this story. The unspectacular answer is that Lambert died in 1684 and not 1683.
Yet the engraver did not make a mistake. For him and his contemporaries, February did indeed belong to “the same year” as that of the previous May.
THE OLD NEW YEAR
In 1684, the New Year in England and its colonies officially began on March 25, as it had for centuries and as it would for decades more until January 1, 1752, when a parliamentary “act for regulating the commencement of the year” went into effect.
Scholars, genealogists, and historical sleuths must therefore always adjust the year for dates between January 1 and March 24 that appear in English sources before the mid-18th century. …
The Trump Presidential Library will be a deleted Twitter account.
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) November 7, 2020
