The Atlantic: Don't Hate the Phone Call, Hate the Phone (AUG 12, 2015)

The distaste for telephony is especially acute among Millennials, who have come of age in a world of AIM and texting, then gchat and iMessage, but it’s hardly limited to young people. When asked, people with a distaste for phone calls argue that they are presumptuous and intrusive, especially given alternative methods of contact that don’t make unbidden demands for someone’s undivided attention. In response, some have diagnosed a kind of telephoniphobia among this set. When even initiating phone calls is a problem—and even innocuous ones, like phoning the local Thai place to order takeout—then anxiety rather than habit may be to blame: When asynchronous, textual media like email or WhatsApp allow you to intricately craft every exchange, the improvisational nature of ordinary, live conversation can feel like an unfamiliar burden. Those in power sometimes think that this unease is a defect in need of remediation, while those supposedly afflicted by it say they are actually just fine, thanks very much. [...]

But now that more than half of American adults under 35 use mobile phones as their only phones, the intrinsic unreliability of the cellular network has become internalized as a property of telephony. Even if you might have a landline on your office desk, the cellular infrastructure has conditioned us to think of phone calls as fundamentally unpredictable affairs. Of course, why single out phones? IP-based communications like IM and iMessage are subject to the same signal and routing issues as voice, after all. But because those services are asynchronous, a slow or failed message feels like less of a failure—you can just regroup and try again. When you combine the seemingly haphazard reliability of a voice call with the sense of urgency or gravity that would recommend a phone call instead of a Slack DM or an email, the risk of failure amplifies the anxiety of unfamiliarity. Telephone calls now exude untrustworthiness from their very infrastructure.[...]

Two intertwined problems arise. First, it turns out that human voices may transmit important information well above 3,300 Hz or even 5,000 Hz. The auditory neuroscientist Brian Monson has conducted substantial research on high-frequency energy perception. A widely-covered 2011 study showed that subjects could still discern communicative information well above the frequencies typically captured in telephony. Even though frequencies above 5,000 Hz are too high to transmit clear spoken language without the lower frequencies, Monson’s subjects could discern talking from singing and determine the sex of the speaker with reasonable accuracy, even when all the signal under 5,000 Hz was removed entirely. Monson’s study shows that 20th century bandwidth and sampling assumptions may already have made incorrect assumptions about how much of the range of human hearing was use for communication by voice.[...]

The Western Electric model 500 was the most popular telephone model of the 20th century, issued by Bell System and its subsidiaries from 1950 until the breakup of the Bell monopoly in 1984. It’s the phone you think of when you think of telephones, and its silhouetted handset shape remains the universal icon for “phone”—even on your iPhone’s telephone app. Like its predecessors and successors in the Bell System, the 500 was designed by Henry Dreyfuss, the mid-century industrial designer also responsible for the Honeywell T87 thermostat, the J-3 Hudson locomotive, and the Polaroid SX-70—all icons of their eras and well beyond.

read the article

openDemocracy: A spectre is haunting Iran: the curious revival of monarchism

Iran’s 2017 nationwide protests had some unique features, dissimilar to those of the previous mass protests against the 2009 ‘electoral coup’. Notably, the 2017 protests had neither leadership nor any immediate political demand, but a wholehearted political message was evident: the protesters rejected the Islamic Republic as a whole. Radical slogans, such as ‘death to Khamenei!’ (the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader) were chanted without hesitation. The protesters demonstrated absolute contempt for the Shia clerical establishment by chanting “people are paupers, while mullahs live like gods”. State-funded religious schools were attacked and set ablaze and about 60 offices of state-appointed Friday Imams were vandalized. [...]

Revisionism of the Pahlavi era steadily grew in the next two decades. In 2001, a favourable biography of the Shah’s longest serving Prime Minister, Amir-Abbas Hoveyda received license for publication. Written by Abbas Milani of Stanford University, the book has since been reprinted more than 40 times. Rehabilitation of the Pahlavi era further progressed when the hopes for Islamic Republic’s gradual metamorphosis into a Middle Eastern democracy were shattered by the events of 2009. After that episode, many Iranians came to believe that political engagement with the Islamic Republic was impossible. [...]

A large number of Iranian intelligentsia and political activists (particularly those who lived under the Shah and opposed his despotism) find this revival of monarchism insufferable. They dismiss it as a superficial nostalgia with no real political consequence. But, they wilfully ignore two major political developments: Four decades after it’s downfall, the Pahlavi dynasty has regained much of its’ prestige and legitimacy. And, from the moment the name of Pahlavi was invoked in 2017’s demonstrations; a vestige of a bygone era became a serious political player: Reza Pahlavi, eldest son of the Shah and heir to the Pahlavi throne. [...]

While protests inside Iran have dramatically increased, the Islamic Republic’s security apparatus has been continuously eliminated any potential unifying leader and organization, without which the protests will remain separated and easy to suppress. Outside of Iran, anti-Islamic Republic political activists are divided and impotent. The only serious opposition group is the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (MEK). MEK has organizational capability and a considerable lobby within the United States, including John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani. Founded as an urban guerrilla organization, resolutely fighting both the Shah and Khomeini, MEK once enjoyed a large following. But today, most Iranians hate MEK and Western governments are reluctant to openly engage with it because of its’ totalitarian nature and alliance with Saddam.

read the article

UnHerd: Is it possible to design a tax that targets the really wealthy?

Mention wealth taxes and these are common responses but given the extreme levels of wealth inequality – in the UK the top 10% of households owns 45% of all wealth, the poorest 50% own less than 10%; in the US it’s even worse, the top 1% owns almost 40%, nearly twice that of the bottom 90% – are wealth taxes really such an unreasonable proposition? [...]

This all helps explain why the idea of taxing wealth is gaining traction and not just on the Left. Nick Timothy, the former chief of staff of Britain’s Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May, writing in The Sun newspaper, called on the Government to “increase taxes on accumulated wealth”.  [...]

Where there is empirical evidence, the negative impact of wealth taxes on desirable economic behaviour appears much smaller than critics would have us believe. A 2010 paper by tax expert and economist Asa Hansson looked at the relationship between wealth taxes and economic growth.4 Based on analysis of 20 OECD countries between 1980-1999 she did indeed find “robust support for the contention that taxes on wealth dampen economic growth”, but, crucially, “the estimated magnitude is relatively modest”. A one percentage point increase in wealth taxes – a very large increase indeed – reduces growth by just 0.02 to 0.04 percentage points. Not insignificant, but certainly not the picture of economic doom painted by critics.  [...]

David Seim, in his analysis of the behavioural effect of Sweden’s wealth tax, found that evasion, rather than a reduction in savings, is the more likely outcome. And herein lies the real issue, wealth taxes have tended to raise little by way of revenue – and have therefore proved ineffective at redistributing wealth – because wealthy individuals tend to have clever accountants. Just think of the Paradise Papers, or the Panama Papers before that.   

Much of today’s wealth is mobile, making an annual tax on net wealth near impossible. Where wealth is rooted and measurable, like land and property, there is often no associated revenue – so if you’re asset rich and income poor, how do you pay the tax? And how do you prevent the rich shifting their wealth to less easily identifiable investments, like art or fine jewellery?

read the article

Jacobin Magazine: Danes First, Welfare Last

This can seem like a paradox. “Defending” the welfare state from “outside” abuse in principle should make it possible to maintain the existing or higher levels of welfare for native citizens. But instead, we see a general retrenchment affecting all recipients.[...]

In power from 2011-2015, S implemented cuts in educational support and the lowest social benefit for the unemployed. In essence, all those who were singled out as unproductive and a “burden” for the state were prone to cutbacks. This can be regarded as the Danish version of austerity policies and logically follows on from the introduction of workfare in the mid-1990s.[...]

Corydon framed neoliberal policies as “the politics of necessity,” according to which technocratic decisions are the only possible ones. The government’s cutbacks on unemployment benefits or the continuous privatization as the sale of shares of Dong Energy to American investors, among others Goldman Sachs, showed this broad orientation. [...]

In 2017, 3,500 people applied for asylum in Denmark. At that time, S was also supporting the temporary stop for refugees arriving under UN quotas, again invoking the need to deal with the challenges we have before we can accept any new refugees. The two first months of 2018 had shown similarly low numbers of asylum-seekers, with less than 300 people arriving each month. At the peak of the “refugee crisis,” the Ministry of Finance estimated that the total costs of receiving refugees in 2016 amounted to 11 billion DKK (€1.47 billion). This corresponded to 0.6 percent of GDP; about 1 percent of the total public budget of 1100 billion DKK. It is difficult to see how this expenditure could undermine the welfare state. [...]

This plan is part of the “cultural” or “values” struggle initiated by the Liberal Party and DF in the early 2000s. However, there is also a strong class component in the plan. The proposals also include the possibility of demolishing buildings, of removing inhabitants (e.g. people without employment) to secure a “better” composition of residents, and of privatizing council estates. Hence, although the plan is racialized, the target group is not only ethnic minorities but poor people in general.[...]

For the Social Democrats, too, in order to receive, people first have to contribute. Solidarity is thus not articulated around oppression, inequality or the reshaping of class. but around belonging to Denmark and the Danish way of living and contributing. Abandoning an alliance that unites working people on a class basis, S thus instead produces a misplaced alliance based primarily on nationality, with the main intention of recovering the space left in recent years to the far right.

read the article

CityLab: As Brazil Went, So Did Oscar Niemeyer

Niemeyer’s ability to land large-scale work in his home country before and after his lengthy Paris relocation speak not only to his durable preeminence but also Brazil’s waves of civic gigantism, its enthusiasm for Modernism, and the difficult political and economic currents it has constantly had to surmount. There are ironies involved in Niemeyer’s success: for an outspoken leftist he was most often reliant on elites for work, whether of the left or the less strident right. And it was unusual that so many were happy to hire him, including many who didn’t share his politics—a reflection of unusual open-mindedness over a remarkably sustained period.

Modernism in the United States most often constituted poles of the built environment: high-profile corporate and civic commissions at the top and social housing at the bottom with little in the middle. Brazil is different, with Modernism constituting the style of a vast amount of construction, including large numbers of homes essentially built by their residents. To achieve the summit like Niemeyer was not to design a few buildings that stand radically apart from traditionalism, but to build the best of a very common style. [...]

Fernando Lara, Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin and author of several books on Brazilian Modernism told CityLab of the trend, “I think Brazilian society, especially the Brazilian government elites have always had the sense we need to build at the scale of our country—huge complexes.” This size has often been a source of vast challenges, but it does generate large dreams.[...]

Another trouble is that if the complex was a gesture of connection to Latin America it didn’t try particularly hard to connect to its surrounding neighborhood. It’s almost entirely fenced off and isn’t even easily accessible from the adjacent train station. It’s also remarkably barren of trees or shade. Much of this may be accounted for by his age. Niemeyer in his late 70s seems to have simply delegated more work to his assistants. Lara notes that Niemeyer, ironically, had become a brand. “Politicians of all ideological spectrums wanted to have a Niemeyer; they wanted the brand and they wanted to bypass the law for government commissions. Construction companies were very happy because Niemeyer was very expensive, they could charge whatever they wanted.”

read the article

Politico: The un-diplomat

The man whom critics dismiss as “the little Trump” may not have captured many hearts and minds in Germany but more often than not, he has succeeded in winning the argument. Across a range of issues — from opening the German market to American LNG (liquified natural gas) to taking custody of a suspected Nazi war criminal, to pulling the landing rights of an Iranian airline — Berlin, after much resistance, has succumbed to Washington’s (read Grenell’s) will. [...]

Still, many in Berlin regard Washington’s objections as a transparent attempt to peddle the country’s LNG, which is more expensive than Russian gas. Some also believe Grenell’s aggressive criticism of the German position could end up hurting his cause.

“I agree with him that Nord Stream 2 is a problem, but I think that the way he’s pursuing it is sadly highly likely to isolate the German critics,” said Constanze Stelzenmüller, an analyst on transatlantic affairs with the Brookings Institution. “I find that unfortunate.”[...]

In addition, Germany is almost completely reliant on the U.S. for its security, whether in terms of the nuclear deterrent or intelligence-sharing. For the foreseeable future, talk of a “European army” is little more than a fantasy; even if Europe could agree on a strategy and funding (which it hasn’t), such a force would take decades to build.

read the article

Nerdwriter1: Masterpiece: The Making of Migrant Mother