On this day (1962): 1962 Marilyn Monroe sings “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to JFK before 15,000 attendees, accompanied by jazz pianist Hank Jones, at Madison Square Garden, NYC.
Different times….
NOTE TO READERS: “What Americans think it takes to be a good news consumer” [Pew Research Center]. “One of the most common things Americans associate with being a good news consumer is a sense of skepticism or discernment. One-in-five adults mentioned this in their responses.” • I highlighted the word “Discern” in an earlier Words of the Day [lambert preens], for dealing with AI. So it’s out there, in the zeitgeist; a good thing.
Relation, from my OED: “/rɪˈleɪʃn / ▸ noun 1 the way in which two or more people or things are connected; a thing’s effect on or relevance to another: questions about the relation between writing and reality the size of the targets bore no relation to their importance. ▪ (relations) the way in which two or more people or groups feel about and behave towards each other: the improvement in relations between the two countries the meetings helped cement Anglo-American relations. ▪ (relations) formal sexual intercourse: we had stopped having relations of any kind 2 a person who is connected by blood or marriage; a relative: he has no close relations. 3 [mass noun] the action of telling a story.” • I’m treating the more vapid and impoverished “relationship” as a subset of “relation” which also, in sense 3, has a narrative aspect (“the tale I will relate” relates).
“Faith-based rom-com Relationship Goals quickly becomes an infomercial” [AV Club]. “From the sassy gay assistant to the questionable gender politics, there are more than a few ways in which Relationship Goals feels like a throwback to the glossy rom-coms of the late 2000s. But perhaps the most obvious is that it’s based on a self-help book—a niche trend that previously gave us He’s Just Not That Into You, Think Like A Man, and What To Expect When You’re Expecting. Here, the self-help book in question is an explicitly faith-based dating guide by real-life Oklahoma megachurch pastor Michael Todd, who pops up in the movie to shill his ideas about ‘dating intentionally’ because you can’t ‘Facebook faithfulness’ or ‘Instagram integrity.’ While that alone sounds harmless enough, Todd’s also got some slightly more dubious thoughts on how women need to lower their standards while giving their cheating playboy exes a second chance.” • “Real” “life” in what sense(s)?
“What Investors Mean When They Say Get More Traction” [Silicon Opera]. “This is the one nobody says out loud. Telling a founder to come back with more traction is a low-cost way to stay in the deal flow without committing. If you figure it out, they can re-engage claiming a prior relationship. If you fail, they’ve lost nothing. It’s rational behavior for investors, but it means the advice itself is structurally useless to you. The tell is whether they give you anything specific. “More traction” is vague. ‘We’d want to see three months of consistent 20% month-over-month growth with net revenue retention above 100%” is a real benchmark. If they can’t or won’t name the actual threshold, they’re not seriously evaluating you. They’re managing optionality.” • So is “managing optionality” the same as “dating intentionally”?
“The Crisis Finance Capitalism Can’t Escape” [Michael Hudson]. A real banger, well worth reading in full: “We can now see that the long upsweep since 1945 that seemed to be a series of self-correcting business cycles has been a failed finance-capitalist detour from industrial capitalism that has no automatic self-correcting market forces. The solution must come from outside the market system. And that is something that neither academic economics nor the public relations ideology of free markets (meaning unregulated and privatized economies Thatcher-Reagan style) have recognized. The future will call for thinking about the unthinkable [laboring in the same vineyard…]. It requires recognition that debts that can’t be paid, won’t be.” • Both industrial and finance capital, both forms of economic capital, are social relations (that intentionally manage optionality? As above? If so, this entire triplet was certainly a lucky shot!
Dad Joke of the Day: What do lawyers wear to court? Law suits
Touris[m|t] . From my OED app, tourism: “/ˈtʊərɪz(ə)m / noun [mass noun] the commercial organization and operation of holidays and visits to places of interest: a national fund for the promotion of tourism [as modifier] the tourism industry.” And tourist: noun 1 a person who is travelling or visiting a place for pleasure: the pyramids have drawn tourists to Egypt.”
“Tourist Gone Wild in Japan” [Daily Mail]. “Shocking footage captured the moment an American tourist dressed as an emoji leapt into a monkey enclosure and sparked chaos among the animals. The incident unfolded Sunday at the Ichikawa City Zoo in Ichikawa, Japan, in the enclosure where a baby macaque monkey named Punch became an internet sensation earlier this year [for its bond with an orangutan stuffed animal].” Ah, monkey bonding to dummy surrogates. A prank
Japanese authorities said two Americans were arrested for the stunt, and identified them as 24-year-old Reid Jahnai Dayson and 27-year-old Neal Jabari Duan. “According to Japanese outlet TBS News, [Reid Jahnai Dayson] climbed over a fence and dropped into the monkey exhibit while [Neal Jabari Duan] allegedly filmed his antics.” 24 and 27, respectively. Was I that stupid at that age? [Does math. Stupid, but not thatstupid.] And: “Visitors to the zoo will also be banned from filming at the exhibit, and the zoo said it would be banning all proposals from YouTubers to record Punch and his fellow monkeys ‘for the time being.’” • That’s a damn shame (and it’s hard for creators to perpetrate pranks with still cameras, so please don’t ban them).
“Are You Enjoying Our Linguine?” [The Dial]. “It’s going to take 30-plus questions, and these are going to be asked by three adults who are not self-conscious at all. The tone of their voice is flat: unassuming but unrelenting. If they’re going to ingest these new gelato flavors, they need to know all there is to know about them…. They’re here, in a way, expressly to make sense of all this. To give it value…. It might be obvious, to someone who’s not them, that this family is not the demographic this gelateria is trying to appeal to. The gelateria wants to be modern and foodie-ish, not a place for the average tourist. But the family is not to be put off. They feel challenged. They feel alive. They are Americans. They are frontier people. They love a cultural mystery. And so, since the family has entered the gelateria, time seems to have reached a standstill. When these tourists ask the worker behind the counter What is gianduia?, time enters its favorite zone. The fabric of time loves American tourists. When Americans analyze a small shop in a foreign country, time stops counting itself on clocks and pondering its own dull finiteness. Now it can pleasurably yawn into the holy hollowness of the 30-plus questions the tourists are asking. Now, everyone around the American family is swamped in the buttery goo of the present, stretched. The other people in the gelateria can’t name the feeling that wraps itself around them. The feeling that time is purring, that time is on the American family’s side.” • “Everybody hates a tourist.” Then again—
“App-Driven Birding Attracts Flocks of Enthusiasts to Colombia” [New York Times]. “Samantha Giraldo, 21, was at her family’s home in Colombia last Christmas when an email from a birding enthusiast in India, half a world away, arrived. Merlin and eBird, the world’s most widely used birding apps, had highlighted the Giraldo family’s small hotel — named after the guácharo, or oilbird, often found on the property — as a birding hot spot. He was preparing, he wrote, to make the long journey to see it. That was when Ms. Giraldo felt something fundamental had shifted. So many people tell us that’s how they found us,’ she said, referring to the apps. ‘Not just avid birders but backpackers, retirees, people who are new to this passion.’ Colombia, home to the world’s largest number of bird species known to ornithologists, has long struggled to attract as many ‘avian tourists’ as smaller but more politically stable countries, like Costa Rica.” • eBird is Macaulay, where I find the bird songs for Water Cooler. I never thought that any library could drive tourism!
“How Everest Has Changed Since Into Thin Air” [Jon Krakauer, The Atlantic]. “Perhaps the most significant change in the past 30 years, however, is the transfer of authority and agency on the mountain: from European and American climbers and guiding companies to Nepalis. Thanks to the greater demand for high-altitude workers on Everest, many more Nepalis are now employed by commercial guiding operations; today they represent a majority of the highly qualified guides. Even more noteworthy is the dramatic increase in the number of expedition services owned and run by Nepalis, which currently make up most of the guiding companies on Everest. No longer do Nepalis primarily function as kitchen workers and load carriers. They are now frequently the most skilled and accomplished guides on the mountain. For all intents and purposes, climbing activity on the Nepali side of Everest—where most ascents take place—is controlled by Sherpas. They install and maintain the dozens of ladders and miles of fixed rope on the mountain. They call the shots. They’re the gatekeepers. This is entirely appropriate, given that the mountain rises from the homeland of the Sherpas, a native ethnic group, and they have been a crucial presence on Everest expeditions since the earliest attempts to climb it.” • Yes, but with “dozens of ladders and miles of fixed rope” why do it? Selfies?
Fortune: “Do you think that when they asked George Washington for ID that he just whipped out a quarter?” — Steven Wright
Jōhatsu. From Wikipedia, “Jōhatsu (Japanese: 蒸発, Hepburn: jōhatsu; lit. “evaporation”) or jouhatsu refers to the people in Japan who purposely vanish from their established lives without a trace.” • America used to, as a friend of my mother once said, “the land of the second chance.” You could just move, and start a new life. No longer.
“Disappearing to Start a New Life - The Phenomenon of Jōhatsu” [YokoGao]. “The phenomenon of evaporation gained momentum in the 1990s following the bursting of the speculative bubble which led to bankruptcies and insurmountable debts. If disappearances increase in times of economic difficulties, it is mainly because financial factors play an important role in this radical decision. Indeed, in a culture where leaving a company can be considered shameful, disappearing is an attractive alternative, and people who decide to leave want to escape the distress that this implies. It is sometimes even the only alternative in order not to lose face in the face of the problems that must be faced in a context of social pressure that is increasingly difficult to manage.” And but: “The decision to leave everything is not made without difficulty, and the majority of those who evaporate have in common that they live in poverty, in unsanitary housing, with poorly paid and dangerous daily work. The great fragility of these voluntarily disappeared people makes them easy prey for mafia organizations, which hire a workforce carrying out work that no one wants to do. The country’s thriving underground economy makes it possible to disappear and find undeclared work without identification or written records. This encourages some [jōhatsu] to flee their past, because they know that a new beginning remains possible despite the difficulties. The government does not hesitate to turn a blind eye to these cases of disappearances, and respects the choice of these individuals. In a way, admitting their existence would amount to recognizing the limits of Japanese society and its harmful effects on its citizens. On the other hand, they serve the country’s economy. For example, evaporated people were hired to clean up radioactive sites following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.” • So there’s a bright side!
“Johatsu in Japan: Why People Disappear and How Night Movers Work” [Jobs in Japan]. “A lot of articles about johatsu tend to exaggerate actual statistics of the phenomenon, conflating total missing person numbers with johatsu cases. People go missing for many different reasons such as diseases like dementia or criminal reasons like abduction. Japan has on average 80,000 to 100,000 missing person cases per year with the numbers remaining consistent since the 1950s. This may seem high at first glance but it’s actually quite low compared to many developed nations. Compare it, for example, to the UK which has a little over half the population of Japan but has an average of 170,000 missing person cases per year. Of those people that go missing each year in Japan, typically around 95% of them are located. Of the remaining number, only a few are likely to be cases of johatsu. There are claims that a significant number of disappearances go unreported which is possibly true but even so, statistically the number of actual johatsu is likely to be low. With that said, there is no doubt that it exists and there are companies that operate openly in supporting people who want to vanish in Japan.” And: “Often translated as ‘Night Movers’. these companies assist people in fleeing from their lives and starting new ones. Night moving companies offer services for those who need to escape from a bad situation. This has sometimes been romanticized but the fact is that most cases that yonige-ya deal with are those of people fleeing domestic violence or abuse. This often involves moving a person and their possessions late at night to a new location which is where the name comes from. Night movers have some overlap with private detective agencies and it is sometimes a service offered by these agencies.” • Here is a market for Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong!
“The reality behind Japan’s ‘vanishing phenomenon’ and how people disappear” [Monocle]. “To young Japanese, the word means ‘evaporation’ but to an older generation it is a term that was once used for people who voluntarily disappeared from their own lives without a trace.” More: “The widely cited figure of up to 100,000 people vanishing every year in Japan requires unpacking. This number dropped below 100,000 from the late 2000s (and is now roughly half the number of those who go missing annually in the UK, for example). Almost a third of the ‘missing’ have dementia or other medical conditions. And of those who are reported as gone, 90 per cent are eventually found.” And: “So does our fascination with johatsu derive from a need to pigeonhole Japan or a craving to disappear ourselves? ‘There is often a narrative that it is taboo but the reason why Japanese people don’t really talk about it is because they’re not familiar with the phenomenon,’ says [Hiroki Nakamori, an associate professor at Rikkyo University’s Graduate School of Social Design Studies and an expert on the subject]. It’s not to say that these disappearances don’t happen in Japan – they do – but perhaps it’s easier to see them as particular to that country, rather than universal to all.” • Interestingly, however, the Wikipedia entry claims that “this phenomenon can be seen all over the world, such as the United States, China, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and Germany.[1][2].” So perhaps jōhatsu is more universal than not?