Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 209

The FCC sold us out to Big Telecom

(Credit: Getty/mediaphotos)

The Federal Communications Commission handed the internet to Big Telecom on Thursday. They sold our public utility down the river. Nobody will benefit but the rich.

The online world was built on the principle of net neutrality. Neutrality meant that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) had to treat all data the same: a New York Times article would move through the digital pipes at the same speed as a celebrity sex video. Much like your parents, ISPs were required by federal law not to pick favorites. Under net neutrality, AT&T couldn’t charge you more for Facebook than Google, or deliberately slow down your service. If you wanted to tweet “I love u, Dylan McDermott” to Dermot Mulroney at 3 a.m., by God, that was your right.

Well, goodbye to all that.

All Trump appointees have one thing in common: they hate the agencies they lead. Scott Pruitt sued the EPA 14 times. Betsy DeVos doesn’t believe in public education. And the FCC is no exception. The Commission is in the hands of corporate shysters who have spent their lives shilling for private interests. The current chair, Ajit Pai — one of the most loathed men in the country — was a longtime attorney for Verizon.

On Thursday, Pai led a straight party-line Commission vote to dismantle the Open Internet. The grinning sewer eel knew exactly what he was doing. Before the vote, he said “It is not going to destroy the internet. It is not going to end the internet as we know it. It is not going to kill democracy. It is not going to stifle free expression online.” Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. If you care so much about ordinary users, why not mention Big Telecom’s buying spree?  They spent over $101 million to shut net neutrality down. They gave money to Sen. John McCain of Arizona ($2.5 million) and Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts ($1.6 million), Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon ($1.6 million) and Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland ($1.4 million). What generosity!

The two Democratic FCC commissioners, Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel, voted to keep neutrality. Both delivered hide-skinning rebukes. Clyburn wrote: “I dissent. I dissent from this fiercely-spun, legally-lightweight, consumer-harming, corporate-enabling Destroying Internet Freedom Order … the public can plainly see, that a soon-to-be-toothless FCC, is handing the keys to the Internet — the Internet, one of the most remarkable, empowering, enabling inventions of our lifetime — over to a handful of multi-billion dollar corporations.”

The representatives from telecom — Pai, Michael O’Rielly and Brendan Carr — voted the way their owners wanted. We should call the FCC’s sellout of net neutrality what it is: Pai’s Auction.

If Pai’s Auction is unopposed, broadband monopolists will take the Net from the poor, and slow it for everybody except those who pay top dollar. Some time next year, your ISP will begin peddling “Slow,” “Normal,” and “Fast” packages. If you want Netflix, you’ll need to pay more for it. Want Hulu? Ante up. Need Twitter? Make with the green. Facebook? That’ll be 20 dollars extra this week, ma’am. What’s that? You crave Reddit? Well then, big spender, how ’bout you upvote some legal tender? Unless we fight Pai’s Auction, that’s our grim meathook future. What we saw on Thursday was a commercial exchange between the Trump administration and the one percent.

There is one way to stop it: public awareness. Very soon now, the FCC will be sued, and Congress will eventually be dragged into action. That will be our chance to set right what the telecoms so desperately want to keep wrong.

Why the auction happened

Pai whined to the media that he was being hassled for his “position.” This makes sense. Muggers are big believers in their victims being obedient. But this slimy Harvard hustler has a point. Pai’s Auction isn’t just ludicrously bad planning, it’s unabashed, unapologetic greed. Pai’s Auction is the economic history of America in miniature.

Here’s how that usually works: The American people fund a public good, like highways or medical research. While the public is doing the hard work, private interests figure out ways to profit. They bribe their way into power so they can seize this good. They hire sleazy lawyers to do their dirty work. Then, after the rich guys have taken over, they sell that same good back to the public. Socialized expense, privatized profits. Here’s a simpler way to say it: The public makes, and the wealthy take.

Whenever a city spends billions to build a football stadium, just because some yacht-owning Yalie doesn’t want to spend a dime of his heirs’ cocaine fund, the public makes and the wealthy take. Whenever the public finances drug research, just so Martin Shkreli can overcharge cancer patients for medicine, the public makes and the wealthy take. Whenever a small town funds a police department, and Wal-Mart skimps on security because they know the local cops will be forced to park their cruisers outside the store, the public makes …. and the wealthy take. And take. And take.

The public built the internet. We did. All of us. And the ISPs got rich. By the early oughts, the telecom giants were making money hand over fist … but they wanted more. You know how it goes: new car, caviar, four-star daydream.

So, during the Bush years, the ISPs made their move. They began to strategically limit certain kinds of internet use. In 2002, RoadRunner began to selectively block user ports. In 2005, Madison River Communications was caught blocking VOIP traffic. The FCC opposed them. The case was dropped. In 2011, Verizon sued the government to fight net neutrality. In 2012, AT&T blocked FaceTime. Finally, in February 2015, Obama’s FCC decided to classify broadband as “a common carrier” under Title II of the federal Communications Act of 1934 and Section 706 of the 1996 Telecom Act. Under Title II, the government treats the internet like a public utility, more or less. That is the ruling Pai and his cronies just voted to undo.

You may ask: How can I can be so sure that Big Telecom will block and throttle the internet? Answer: Because they have already tried. Many, many times.

History shows us why net neutrality is important. My objection to Big Telecom isn’t just philosophical; it’s chronological.

There is no argument for this

There’s a lot of naiveté in America. For instance, some people still believe Trump’s GOP has the genetic capacity for shame. Nonsense. Pai and his friends have the sentimentality of Victorian wharf pimps. And of all the GOP’s shameless cons, Pai’s Auction is the most blatant. This is as obvious as politics gets, folks.

The sell-out of net neutrality is massively unpopular. As Motherboard’s Jason Koebler wrote, a new poll released by the University of Maryland “found that 83 percent of Americans — and 75 percent of Republicans — favor the current system (the group that conducted the poll clearly explained the current regulations as well as the proposed ones).” Eighteen attorneys general sent a petition to the FCC demanding they pause on the vote. Reporter Mallory Shelbourne noted, “The letter comes after a separate letter from the office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) said as many as 2 million comments regarding net neutrality filed to the commission were falsified.”

Defending his vote, Pai said “Broadband providers will have more incentive to build networks, especially to underserved areas.” No they won’t, you human-shaped pile of Verizon receipts. We know this because in 1995, the government paid Big Telecom to add digital infrastructure … and they didn’t. As telecom analyst Bruce Kushnick wrote in 2014, “By the end of 2014, America will have been charged about $400 billion by the local phone incumbents, Verizon, AT&T and CenturyLink, for a fiber optic future that never showed up.”

But really, what did the public matter? Big Telecom had the power, and they used it. No wonder Chairman Pai smiles like a podiatrist hiding human limbs in the trunk of his Volvo. Telecom revenue is projected to be a $2.4 trillion business in 2019. It’s nice to have rich friends who owe you a favor.

No wonder people hate Pai’s Auction. No wonder the entire internet rose up hissing like a thousand-foot cobra. No surprise that tech gurus went public with their devastating deconstructions of Pai’s made-up tech facts.

Fiction changes. The truth doesn’t. Ask yourself the following questions:

Does the internet belong to Big Telecom? No. It belongs to the public.

Did the public want to sell the internet? No, they did not.

Were the people who sold the internet disinterested parties? No, they weren’t.

Does selling the internet to elite parasites encourage innovation? It does not. It limits it.

Does Pai’s Auction let the states devise their own net neutrality policies? No. It forces the states to follow Washington.

Does selling the Net encourage entry? It does not.

Does selling the Net give freedom to the people? No, it clamps down on their freedom.

Will the Telecoms build new lines? We have proof they won’t.

Will they abuse that power? They have before.

Most importantly, who profits? I think we know the answer.

Net neutrality must return. In Pai’s Auction, there’s only one relationship that counts, and it’s the same one that obtains between a hired servant and a wealthy master: dinner is served, sir.

 

Why 2017 was R&B’s return to glory

SZA (Credit: Getty/Randy Shropshire)

Look around, and it can seem like this country is losing its soul. This year, we witnessed the rise of one of the most overtly disastrous political administrations, along with a spike in the toxic attitudes and behavior that swept it into office.

But now listen, and you’ll hear signs that we’ve got a lot of soul still left. Disastrous as it was politically, emotionally, spiritually, 2017 was still a triumphant year for that soulful genre: R&B.

“What a year!” Nadeska Alexis, senior editorial producer at Complex told me on a recent episode of “Salon Talks.” “Honestly, we didn’t deserve all the R&B we got. . . there are too many great albums out this year.”

The acclaim being given to these albums and artists isn’t just coming from fans of R&B, either. The Grammys took notice. In Best New Artist category, three out of the five performers nominated are from the genre. Two R&B albums are up for Best Album of the Year and two R&B songs for Best Record of the Year.

As well, Time Magazine called R&B breakout artist SZA’s “CTRL” the number one album of the year. “Like all the best artists, her experience is so specific that it rises to the level of universality,” Time said. “She may be one of a kind, but she’s speaking the truth of a whole generation.”

It’s a vastly different story than it was even just a few years ago. “For a while, it felt like R&B would fall into this transient category,” Sam Wolfson wrote in The Guardian in 2015. For years, it seemed as if artists were rejecting the R&B label, as if the music wasn’t selling, as if traditional R&B groups were too expensive to sign, as if there wasn’t really a place for it commercially and, as if offerings from the genre were just not as good as they used to be.

But that didn’t mean people didn’t miss the music. Many pined for a return to that soulful ’90s sound that was largely missing from popular music. They wanted their old R&B back.

But something changed in 2017. Artists, producers, media, fans and industry execs have stopped trying to confine R&B to its past. By letting go of their old R&B, they’ve allowed the form to survive, evolve and, it seems, flourish.

“I think back in the 90s there was a definite R&B sound that was easily distinguishable,” vocalist Alessia Cara told the Guardian (she’s up for Best New Artist at the Grammys). “But now, I feel like music has become tailored to the specific artist. There is no longer a ‘set’ R&B sound. There is a ‘Frank Ocean’ sound and a ‘Miguel’ sound. I love that music is doing that.” 

This newfound freedom is certainly a spillover from 2016. That year’s “A Seat At the Table” by Solange is often called one of the best albums of the last decade, as is Frank Ocean’s 2016 release, “Blonde.”

But it’s not just singers with an established toehold in the industry that had an impact in 2017. A new crop of young R&B artists hit the scene this year with releases that were strong, soulful and each of them remarkably different from the others.

There’s Daniel Caesar, the 22-year-old Canadian crooner who released his debut LP “Freudian.” Up for Best R&B Album at the Grammys, it’s anchored by a brilliant sound that’s almost spiritual. That’s not to say it’s definitively connected to God. Rather, it’s so full-bodied and expansive that it’s both commanding and ethereal all at once. On “Freudian,” the production is a dreamscape that glides under Caesar’s syrupy vocals and meditative songwriting.

Then there’s Kehlani’s debut “SweetSexySavage,” on which she straddles the pop and R&B world with a radiant sound grounded by her velvety vocals. Sean “Diddy” Combs himself credited the Oakland native with saving R&B.

Kelela’s debut “Take Me Apart,” layers her alluring, almost dizzying vocals with deeply introspective lyrics. The production is eclectic, it’s at times warped, sometimes lush, sometimes whimsical. As well, the lead singer from The Internet, Syd, released her solo album “Fin” this year. On it, her voice is more subdued than that of her peers, letting a futuristic, experimental sound and vibe take precedence over her vocals.

Even Ty Dolla $ign, who’s not new to the scene, delivered an incredible album in 2017, “Beach House 3.” His commercial success can be seen as a blueprint for upcoming singers and proof that R&B is still viable. “I wanted to show that you could be on the radio and not have to hold back,” he told Rolling Stone of his latest release. “I sung my ass off. But it’s still gonna be a mainstream vibe. That’s all I’m trying to do: Make a lane for the singers.” 

There are many others rising in R&B, and it’s the diversity in sound, the multitude of voices they offer that’s most exciting. “The variety really is incredible,” Alexis said.

These differing artistic statements, all of them under the seemingly larger than ever R&B umbrella, speak to a newfound freedom within the genre, one that is helping to transform audience and industry perceptions of it. Yet, despite this new elasticity, there’s something as old as the R&B itself that is helping it succeed.

Singer PJ Morton said that one of the reasons R&B is resurgent is that it rediscovered its identity and embraced an authenticity that it had perhaps lost. “Soul music touches people,” he said on “Salon Stage.” “We got back to just wanting to be ourselves, and I think once we stopped trying to compete, we eclipsed pop music.”

Alexis believes that there’s a tech factor here, too. She sees streaming services as central to R&B’s victorious year. “A[t] Apple Music especially, they really championed artists like 6LACK and Daniel Caesar,” she said. Both those artists are now Grammy nominees. 

Angela Yee, radio host of Power 105.1’s “The Breakfast Club” agreed, saying that streaming services allow listeners to dive down rabbit holes of musical discovery that even hitting the record store or word of mouth never really offered. Playing SZA, can lead to Kelela, which can then lead to Daniel Caesar, which might bring you to Syd, and then on to any number of the newer, equally sensational R&B artists. In a lot of ways, the shifting nature of the recording industry may be hurting sales, but it’s helping R&B.

Whatever the case, the prospects are bright for even more evolution and success in 2018. “I hope we get even more R&B that we don’t deserve next year,” Alexis says (though that’s no easy task after the plethora of quality releases in 2017.) As NPR declared “R&B has never been healthier.” Whatever happened in 2017, at the very least, we’ve got our R&B back.

Comcast’s decision to rewrite its net neutrality stance had some strange timing

(Credit: Getty/Cindy Ord)

A day after the FCC voted to overturn the Obama administration’s net neutrality rules, many telecom corporations, including Cox Communications and AT&T, have made public statements to clarify that the wildly unpopular rule changes won’t affect consumers. (Whether or not one believes them is another matter entirely.)

Others, such as mega-corporation Comcast — which spent millions lobbying to end net neutrality — is flip-flopping all over the place.

A new report on BoingBoing details the way in which Comcast’s posted statements about net neutrality have shifted around since April 2017. The article references the Internet Archive, which takes snapshots of web pages at different historical moments, to reveal Comcast’s shifting position. It reveals a corporation that is at once conniving, politically shrewd,  and savvy with their public relations.

First, Comcast said that they were “committed to an open Internet,” in a statement that was on their website for years, up until April 27, 2017. From their archived statement from then:

Comcast won’t block access to lawful content.

Comcast won’t throttle back the speed at which content comes to you.

Comcast doesn’t prioritize Internet traffic or create paid fast lanes.

Comcast’s Internet Essentials will make the Internet more accessible to low income families.

Comcast will inspire innovation, promote learning, create access to jobs.

On April 27, one day after FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced the vote to eliminate net neutrality rules, Comcast rewrote the above bullet points to now read:

We do not block, slow down or discriminate against lawful content.

We believe in full transparency in our customer policies.

We are for sustainable and legally enforceable net neutrality protections for our customers.

In hindsight, these posts raise the question as to whether conversations may have occurred between the FCC Chairman and Comcast execs long before the vote. If anything, it validates speculation that some internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast are in favor of the rollback and will take advantage of it, despite claims that they are supportive of an “open Internet.”

Aside from the aforementioned press releases, what else do other ISPs have to say specifically about the rollback? The Verge reached out to 10 ISPs to understand their views on three core pillars of net neutrality: no blocking, no throttling, and no paid prioritization. “Not all of them answered, and the answers we did get are complicated,” they said. AT&T reportedly doesn’t support blocking or throttling websites. Verizon’s stance seems to be a little wishy-washy, as is T-Mobile’s.

 

Facebook reacts to alarming studies about social media use

Mark Zuckerberg (Credit: Getty/David Ramos)

Facebook announced new features on Friday in reaction to a number of studies that suggest social media usage is linked to a higher depression and loneliness rates — studies which have speculated that social media may relate to growing suicide rates among teens.

The new two new features, called “Snooze” and “Take a Break,” both give users more control over whose feeds users see pop up in their feeds. According to Facebook, they believe these features will “help support people’s well-being.” “Snooze” gives Facebook users the option to hide a person, page or group for 30 days, without having to unfriend or unfollow them permanently. “Take a Break” is geared towards users going through breakups. The feature gives the user more control over what an ex-partner can see, and when they see their ex on Facebook. This feature was inspired by research that, according to Facebook, suggests “offline and online contact, including seeing an ex-partner’s activities, can make emotional recovery more difficult.”

Jean Twenge, a psychologist who studies social media behavior, wrote an article in The Atlantic in September that sparked a larger conversation about the downfalls of the rise in social media, and specifically how it’s harming iGen, the name for the cohort born between 1995 and 2012, many of whom are now teens. As she explained, “social-networking sites like Facebook promise to connect us to friends. But the portrait of iGen teens emerging from the data is one of a lonely, dislocated generation.” Teenagers who visit social media sites, she says, on a daily basis to see what their friends are up to are more likely to agree with statements like “I often feel left out of things,” and “I feel lonely.” Incongruously, Facebook just last week released a feature specifically targeting children under the age of 13.

In Facebook’s announcement, the author nodded to Twenge’s research, but said many of the studies that have been published have been biased, and have failed to acknowledge the benefits of social media.

“It’s not the whole story,” the statements says, pointing to research by Sociologist Claude Fischer which argues that claim about the negative effects “ignore the benefits.” Facebook also cites research from Sociologist Keith Hampton, from 2014, which says technology actually isn’t driving people apart, it’s driving more people to spend time in public.

“According to the research, it really comes down to how you use the technology. For example, on social media, you can passively scroll through posts, much like watching TV, or actively interact with friends — messaging and commenting on each other’s posts,” Facebook says. “Just like in person, interacting with people you care about can be beneficial, while simply watching others from the sidelines may make you feel worse.”

There are many health benefits to socializing that can’t happen while socializing through a social media platform. In 2010, a meta-analysis of 148 studies on social connection and health problems concluded that “the influence of social relationships on the risk of death are comparable with well-established risk factors for mortality such as smoking and alcohol consumption.” In other words, a state of isolation and loneliness can have detrimental health effects.

Facebook is right to note that social ties contribute to a better life, and that is part of the company’s mission, but the concern extends beyond than that. The concern is how the Internet as a whole, is keeping today’s humans, specifically teens, from connecting in real life. In-person interactions release oxytocin, and studies have shown that social interactions, in real life, can mitigate depression symptoms.

There is clearly a difference between digital social interactions though, and in-person social interactions, and it appears as if Facebook is missing the point: multiple studies suggest that social media keeps people, particularly teens, from socializing in real life.

Get a career in data analytics with this bootcamp

Modern businesses these days produce mountains of raw data that need to be analyzed and assessed. With the Ultimate Data & Analytics Bundle, you get more than 130 data and analytics courses that show you how to master data science techniques and start a lucrative new career.

When you learn how to analyze big data, you start to uncover hidden patterns, correlations, and trends that help propel companies to success. This Bootcamp includes courses that show you how to use essential software for business analytics and business intelligence and includes courses on SAS, R, pinnacle data, and analytics and database courses.

From learning the ins and outs of R programming for business analysis to mastering Hadoop, learning the Oracle SOA Suite, and more, this Bootcamp includes everything you need to become an invaluable numbers ninja. You’ll get a certificate of completion in SAS, R, Oracle and database courses — plus, you’ll get access to all future online data and analytics courses, and even access to experts via online academic support.

Learn to crunch data like the pros: usually, this Ultimate Data & Analytics Bundle is $1,699, but you can get it now for $39, or 97% off the original price.

Hanukkah’s true meaning? Jewish survival

In this photo taken on Tuesday, May 5, 2015, a nine-branched Jewish candelabrum, or Hanukkah Menorah, rests on a table in the main Jewish synagogue in Lisbon. Portugal enacted in March a law to grant citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews exiled during the Inquisition 500 years ago. Spain is about to adopt a similar law but its different requirements have brought criticism. (Credit: (AP Photo/Francisco Seco))

Beginning on the evening of Dec. 12, Jews will celebrate the eight-day festival of Hanukkah, perhaps the best-known and certainly the most visible Jewish holiday.

While critics sometimes identify Christmas as promoting the prevalence in America today of what one might refer to as Hanukkah kitsch, this assessment misses the social and theological significance of Hanukkah within Judaism itself.

Let’s consider the origin and development of Hanukkah over the past more than 2,000 years.

Early history

Though it is 2,200 years old, Hanukkah is one of Judaism’s newest holidays, an annual Jewish celebration that does not even appear in the Hebrew Bible.

The historical event that is the basis for Hanukkah is told, rather, in the post-biblical Books of the Maccabees, which appear in the Catholic biblical canon but are not even considered part of the Bible by Jews and most Protestant denominations.

Based on the Greco-Roman model of celebrating a military triumph, Hanukkah was instituted in 164 B.C. to celebrate the victory of the Maccabees, a ragtag army of Jews, against the much more powerful army of King Antiochus IV of Syria.

In 168 B.C., Antiochus outlawed Jewish practice and forced Jews to adopt pagan rituals and assimilate into Greek culture.

The Maccabees revolted against this persecution. They captured Jerusalem from Antiochus’s control, removed from the Jerusalem Temple symbols of pagan worship that Antiochus had introduced and restarted the sacrificial worship, ordained by God in the Hebrew Bible, that Antiochus had violated.

Hanukkah, meaning “dedication,” marked this military victory

with a celebration that lasted eight days and was modeled on the festival of Tabernacles (Sukkot) that had been banned by Antiochus.

How Hanukkah evolved

The military triumph, however, was short-lived. The Maccabees’ descendants — the Hasmonean dynasty — routinely violated their own Jewish law and tradition.

Even more significantly, the following centuries witnessed the devastation that would be caused when Jews tried again to accomplish what the Maccabees had done. By now, Rome controlled the land of Israel. In A.D. 68-70 and again in A.D. 133-135, the Jews mounted passionate revolts to rid their land of this foreign and oppressing power.

The first of these revolts ended in the destruction of the Second Jerusalem Temple, the preeminent center of Jewish worship, which had stood for 600 years. As a result of the second revolt, the Jewish homeland was devastated and countless Jews were put to death.

War no longer seemed an effective solution to the Jews’ tribulations on the stage of history.

In response, a new ideology deemphasized the idea that Jews should or could change their destiny through military action. What was required, rabbis asserted, was not battle but perfect observance of God’s moral and ritual law. This would lead to God’s intervention in history to restore the Jewish people’s control over their own land and destiny.

In this context, rabbis rethought Hanukkah’s origins as the celebration of a military victory. Instead, they said, Hanukkah should be seen as commemorating a miracle that occurred during the Maccabees’ rededication of the temple: The story now told was how a jar of temple oil sufficient for only one day had sustained the temple’s eternal lamp for a full eight days, until additional ritually appropriate oil could be produced.

The earliest version of this story appears in the Talmud, in a document completed in the sixth century A.D. From that period on, rather than directly commemorating the Maccabees’ victory, Hanukkah celebrated God’s miracle.

This is symbolized by the kindling of an eight-branched candelabra (“Menorah” or “Hanukkiah”), with one candle lit on the holiday’s first night and an additional candle added each night until, on the final night of the festival, all eight branches are lit. The ninth candle in the Hanukkiah is used to light the others.

Throughout the medieval period, however, Hanukkah remained a minor Jewish festival.

What Hanukkah means today

How then to understand what happened to Hanukkah in the past hundred years, during which it has achieved prominence in Jewish life, both in America and around the world?

The point is that even as the holiday’s prior iterations reflected the distinctive needs of successive ages, so Jews today have reinterpreted Hanukkah in light of contemporary circumstances – a point that is detailed in religion scholar Dianne Ashton’s book, “Hanukkah in America.”

Ashton demonstrates while Hanukkah has evolved in tandem with the extravagance of the American Christmas season, there is much more to this story.

Hanukkah today responds to Jews’ desire to see their history as consequential, as reflecting the value of religious freedom that Jews share with all other Americans. Hanukkah, with its bright decorations, songs, and family- and community-focused celebrations, also fulfills American Jews’ need to reengage disaffected Jews and to keep Jewish children excited about Judaism.

Poignantly, telling a story of persecution and then redemption, Hanukkah today provides a historical paradigm that can help modern Jews think about the Holocaust and the emergence of Zionism.

In short, Hanukkah is as powerful a commemoration as it is today because it responds to a host of factors pertinent to contemporary Jewish history and life.

Over two millennia, Hanukkah has evolved to narrate the story of the Maccabees in ways that meet the distinctive needs of successive generations of Jews. Each generation tells the story as it needs to hear it, in response to the eternal values of Judaism but also as is appropriate to each period’s distinctive cultural forces, ideologies and experiences.

Alan Avery-Peck, Kraft-Hiatt Professor in Judaic Studies, College of the Holy Cross

Too much Christmas music really can drive you bonkers, psychologist says

(Credit: Shutterstock/Salon)

We’ve hit that time of the year when Christmas music is everywhere. Nearly two weeks before Thanksgiving, more than a dozen radio stations had already started playing a constant rotation of holiday music. Walgreens and CVS employees experience a nonstop barrage of Christmas songs on repeat. In the UK, you can’t pass an hour without being assailed by the strains of Slade’s “Merry Christmas Everybody.” If it all begins to feel a bit maddening, you’re not imagining it.

Psychologist Linda Blair says that the endless loop of Christmas music can actually take a toll on our mental health. That’s true for a lot of us, but especially for those who work in environments where blaring Christmas music is the perpetual soundtrack to their workday.

“People working in the shops at Christmas have to learn how to tune out Christmas music, because if they don’t, it really does stop you from being able to focus on anything else,” Blair said in an interview with Sky News. “You’re simply spending all of your energy trying not to hear what you’re hearing.”

In fact, one quarter of retail workers in the US and UK say they feel “less festive” as a result of being forced to hear Christmas music all day long, according to a study by Spotify-owned Soundtrack Your Brand. One in six said all that Christmas music actually “dampens their emotional well-being.”

“Feeling less festive is a specific mental reaction to listening to Christmas music and rebelling against it, whereas the data showing it can have a negative effect on worker wellbeing must be treated with much more caution,” Soundtrack Your Brand founder Ola Sars told the New York Post. “In what can be a highly stressful job at this time of year, it’s important to consider whether a store’s soundtrack is actually increasing stress among its staff.”

There’s a direct and fairly predictable correlation between enjoyment of music and the frequency with which it’s heard. Music researchers have found that even if you like a song, your contentmentment with it peaks at a certain point. Too much play yields diminishing returns and a tendency to like the song less and less. The pattern fits the shape of an upside-down U.

The holiday season seems to kick off earlier each year, with Christmas music becoming pervasive in some stores even before Halloween. According to a study by the Tampa Bay Times, Best Buy outlets flipped to a nonstop Christmas shopping soundtrack on October 22. Sears/Kmart, H&M and Walmart started with the festive music in early to mid-November. Footlocker, Dunkin Donuts and Nordstrom all had the decency to wait until Thanksgiving before assailing shoppers with constant Christmas songs.

Fifty-six percent of American shoppers said they actually enjoy being trailed through store aisles by a Christmas playlist, though nearly a quarter said they don’t want to hear holiday songs before December 1. And while Christmas music can be soul-crushing for store employees who can’t escape it, the sounds can be good for business: a 2003 study found that the right balance of Christmas-oriented smells and sounds makes shoppers feel good about their surroundings. Capitalism, do your thing.

Expect more Christmas music than ever this year, as more artists churn out holiday songs, which inevitably sell. And radio stations will keep the Christmas songs playing until December 26.

“It’s become like our Super Bowl,” Jim Loftus, CEO of 101.1 FM in Philadelphia told the OC Register. “Our audience almost doubles.”

“Christmas music is like the gingerbread latte,” Kenny King, program director at WASH-FM told the outlet.“It’s here for a limited time only, and it’s extremely popular.”

Morgan Spurlock’s unconvincing confession

Morgan Spurlock (Credit: Getty/Vittorio Zunino Celotto)

Along with the truly nauseating details of so many recent high profile revelations of sexual harassment and abuse (I’m still reeling from Matt Lauer’s Bond villain door lock) one of the biggest surprises of this watershed moment is discovering how truly awful guys like Morgan Spurlock are at apologizing.

Perhaps seeking a measure of control over a story that by now sounds strikingly familiar, the documentary filmmaker revealed on Twitter Wednesday evening that “I am part of the problem.” What followed was a lengthy mea culpa — and mixed reviews from his social media audience. Some saw Spurlock as “brave to come forward honestly” and praised his “unbelievable courage;” others pondered that “self-victimization is an abuse tactic” and noted the “performative” aspect of Spurlock’s confession and its poetic repetitiveness. I’m still trying to get my head around how someone who is a paid professional storyteller could be so outrageously bad at this. 

Spurlock now joins a long line of men that includes Louis C.K. and Kevin Spacey, men who you’d think would know how to craft an apology that at least carries a whiff of comprehension about the nature of thing being apologized for. Couldn’t they, I don’t know, ask another human to give their statements a once over? Or are these guys still so driven by their own hubris, so insulated from real criticism, that they can’t entertain the possibility that their crap statements about their crap behavior are not applause-worthy? Let’s take a look at some examples of how what ought to have been Spurlock’s straightforward acknowledgment of contrition became instead a total garbage fire.

As I sit around watching hero after hero, man after man,

Right out of the gate, in your very first words, dude, you lost me. Visualize having the empathy to consider that maybe the men you consider “heroes” have for a very long time been part of whisper network of known predators. You may be late to party, but immediately identifying actual sexual offenders as “heroes” is an inauspicious start.

 fall at the realization of their past indiscretions,

They didn’t fall at the “realization” of “indiscretions.” They were “exposed” as “serial abusers,” who are in several cases accused of “criminal sexual assault.” Fixed that for you.

I don’t sit by and wonder “who will be next?” I wonder, “when will they come for me?”

Because it’s important here to start portraying the men and women who’ve come forward about their experiences of abuse and harassment as a pitchfork mob.

When I was in college, a girl who I hooked up with on a one night stand accused me of rape. Not outright. There were no charges or investigations, but she wrote about the instance in a short story writing class and called me by name.

What follows next is an odd story of the he said-she said aftermath of what Spurlock describes as a drunken encounter. While it’s not possible to discern whether Spurlock’s is an accurate version of events, it does seem safe to question why he’s bringing it up. Could his motives for insisting that:

I tried to comfort her. To make her feel better. I thought I was doing ok, I believed she was feeling better. She believed she was raped

include the classic, undermining suggestion that a woman’s claim of assault is really just a big misunderstanding, just a hookup that went wrong? He continues by moving into his work years.

I would call my female assistant “hot pants” or “sex pants” when I was yelling to her from the other side of the office. Something I thought was funny at the time, but then realized I had completely demeaned and belittled her to a place of non-existence. So, when she decided to quit, she came to me and said if I didn’t pay her a settlement, she would tell everyone.

Translation: I thought I was being funny, she then basically blackmailed me.

And then there’s the infidelity. I have been unfaithful to every wife and girlfriend I have ever had. Over the years, I would look each of them in the eye and proclaim my love and then have sex with other people behind their backs.

Yeah, no one cares. No. One. Cares. In much the same that Kevin Spacey unsuccessfully tried to deflect an accusation of predatory behavior to underage males by coming out as gay, admitting you cheat on your partners has exactly nothing to do with harassment. Consensual adult private behavior — even behavior that is selfish and dishonest — is nobody’s business but yours and your family’s. Trying to smoosh your consenting and allegedly non-consenting actions together into one litany of bad choices is just manipulative. And more troublingly, it suggests you don’t grasp the distinction.

But why? What caused me to act this way?

Here Spurlock launches into an examination of possible motives for his actions, including sexual abuse, his father’s abandonment, alcohol and depression. No sentient person would wish those experiences on any other human being, and Spurlock deserves as much healing and compassion as any abuse survivor. Yet the amount of time he devotes to his own suffering and to assigning outside explanations for his own behavior are pretty telling — and very familiar to anyone who’s ever watched someone go from apologizing to rationalizing at whiplash speed. 

I am part of the problem. We all are.

Are we?

But I am also part of the solution.

Are you?

By recognizing and openly admitting what I’ve done to further this terrible situation, I hope to empower the change within myself. We should all find the courage to admit we’re at fault.

How very self congratulatory of you!

I’m finally ready to listen.

We’ll see.

It’s really not so hard to say, “I did bad things and I am very sorry.” It’s not hard to come up with a concrete action plan beyond “listening.” Who are you going to listen to, specifically? Name a single individual or organization. What are you going to do, precisely, to change the culture in your work environment? You’ve obviously had time to think about this over the past several weeks, but did you think in a way that wasn’t about protecting your own career and brand? How can you make this a story that’s not — just like nearly every single other man who’s been in this spot lately — about your newfound journey of discovery, but is instead about actually doing something constructive for women?

Spurlock has been relatively quiet on Twitter since his Wednesday announcement. But shortly after, he retweeted three replies. Two of them were from women. Both, apparently approvingly, used the word “courage.”

The Lost Action Hero: “Jean-Claude Van Johnson”

Jean-Claude Van Damme in "Jean-Claude Van Johnson" (Credit: Amazon Studios)

The typical movie fan probably hasn’t spent much time thinking about Jean-Claude Van Damme over the last two decades. Considering the omnipresence of his contemporaries in the ‘80s and ‘90 action blockbuster world — Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, even Dolph Lundgren — the fact that Van Damme faded into near-irrelevance is, like his new Amazon series “Jean-Claude Van Johnson,” tragic and a little weird.

An entire generation of filmgoers grew up in the career gap occurring between the era when star of “Time Cop” and “Double Impact” was one of most famous men in the world, and his re-emergence in that 2013 Volvo online ad. You’ve seen it, right? In it, he serenely holds his athletic move between a pair of trucks moving in reverse on a highway as an Enya song lilts in the background. The audacity of the scene resulted in the ad going viral, and within days it had racked up tens of millions of views on YouTube.

If the Muscles from Brussels had concocted a colorful sequence proving that he could still do his signature split after all these years, that would have been something. But the Belgian martial artist is still a superstar at heart, even if his bankability in Hollywood has plummeted in recent years.

Debuting Friday to Prime members, “Jean-Claude Van Johnson” capitalizes these truths while building a lock-tight case as to why we should appreciate Van Damme more than we probably do, starting with the idea that projects his very existence hinging on the star’s willingness to poke fun at himself and own his flaws.  Other action icons cling to their image as unbeatable musclemen who are still kicking ass well into their dotage; “Jean-Claude Van Johnson” opens with Van Damme’s fictionalized self smugly attempting to perform the move that made him famous, failing, and getting wailed in the face.

“Jean-Claude Van Johnson” depicts a fictional version of Van Damme, a rumpled, retired actor mired in ennui despite being surrounded by luxury. Coconut water runs out of every tap in his architectural wonder of a home, and his kitchen cabinet are stuffed to the gills with Pop Tarts.

Alas, the one thing money and faded celebrity cannot buy is true love, something he believed to have found with his former colleague and on-set stylist Vanessa (Kat Foster). So in an attempt to win her back, he emerges from retirement to make his onscreen comeback in an action reimagining of Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn.”

Ridiculous, yes. But that movie, like the rest of Van Damme’s career, is but a cover for his real job as a black-ops agent handled by the very cool and elegant Jane (Phylicia Rashad, clearly having a great time playing a hard-ass), the “M” to Van Damme’s comedic super spy. Unlike Bond, the hero is not immune to the ravages of time or sedentary life, or the pitfalls of ego.

Vanity is one of the many affectations Van Damme and series creator Dave Callaham skewers throughout their nimble and intentionally wacky six-episode comedy. Another is the illogical bombast of the action genre itself, a style of filmmaking that emphasized pyrotechnic overkill in Van Damme’s heyday as well as unrealistic choreography that ensured the hero would emerge from his confrontations with his reputation as an unbeatable killing machine intact.

The true action fan laughs off plot-holes and improbable feats that ignore the laws of physics and common sense, and Callaham winks at that throughout “Jean-Claude Van Johnson” by incorporating a few memorably ludicrous devices from Van Damme’s past hits into the story. A recurring debate throughout the season involves whether Van Damme’s “Time Cop” is better or more plausible than “Looper,” the more recent hit starring Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Leavitt.  Callaham and director Peter Atencio (“Keanu”) take this odd contest, the stuff of late night dorm room blathering, to daft extremes.

As an element of a story that includes a supervillain straight out of Austin Powers, your standard world-conquest plot, and a sidekick with a dark past (Moises Arias), it makes sense in context. As a send-up of a genre whose popularity relies on its fans’ willingness to turn off their inner critic and enjoy the fight scenes, these weird flourishes get a pass. But none of this would work if not for Van Damme’s willingness to commit completely to the lunacy of this enterprise.

Callaham wrote the screenplay for “The Expendables,” a franchise created as an homage to those modern classics and the meaty men who starred in them. His affection for this style of blockbuster is obvious in the outlandish conceit of “Jean-Claude Van Johnson.” Even greater is his clear affection for the actor himself, in his wholeness. And in celebrating who Van Damme was at the peak of his career and who he is after his long fall from grace, about which the actor has been brutally honest, Callaham and Van Damme grant this series a balance of absurdity and gentle earnestness, even allowing it to end on a warm existential note.

It is a strange and wonderful show indeed that can satirize a genre (including staging a few fight scenes using actors who aren’t particularly good at fighting but are loved by the camera) and lampoon its star and his work without betraying the fans of either. But if “Jean-Claude Van Johnson” achieves nothing else, at least it reminds us why Van Damme used to be such a huge star in the first place while making us appreciate that this time, maybe he really is back.

How neo-Nazis recruit: Highlights from the Daily Stormer style guide

The Daily Stormer (Credit: Screengrab)

While the average person likely hasn’t heard of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, the site is a go-to source for many established and emerging white supremacists. And though its rhetoric appears preposterous and offensive to most Americans, behind the scenes the site’s operators have a well-organized, carefully-packaged machine to recruit new members. Huffington Post reporter Ashley Feinberg uncovered a leaked copy of the website’s style guide, which exposes The Daily Stormer’s recruitment tactics. While an incredibly disturbing read, the leaked style guide also provides insight into how white supremacists turn average people to their cause.

First, the style guide explicitly encourages the use of racial slurs. “Generally, when using racial slurs, it should come across as half-joking — like a racist joke that everyone laughs at because it’s true,” the guide says.

It also specifically encourages the use of oppressive and derogatory terms for women, and says that when writing about women, the writer should “blame Jew feminism for their behavior.”

The appalling instructions don’t stop there. The style guide goes on to explain that The Daily Stormer isn’t a “movement site,” but an “outreach site” — in other words, a recruitment vehicle for white supremacy.

“The goal is to continually repeat the same points, over and over and over and over again. The reader is at first drawn in by curiosity or the naughty humor, and is slowly awakened to reality by repeatedly reading the same points. We are able to keep these points fresh by applying them to current events,” the guide says.

In the same section, it asks writers to read Hitler’s doctrine of war propaganda, chapter six of “Mein Kampf,” in which Hitler offers insight into the use of propaganda by the Nazi Party. Propaganda was a powerful weapon for the Nazis to establish and grow their movement in Germany. The Nazi Party famously used newspapers and films to push their propaganda.

All of this should be done in what the style guide refers to as a “lulz” manner. “The tone of the site should be light. Most people are not comfortable with material that comes across as vitriolic, raging, nonironic hatred. The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not. There should also be a conscious awareness of mocking stereotypes of hateful racists,” it says.

You can read the full document via the Huffington Post here.