Daily Archives: December 18, 2019

Wondering why Oregons attempt to pass legislation to limit carbon pollution failed this year? Eric Ward, executive director of the Portland-based Western States Center, attributes the disappointing outcome to the rise of white nationalist groups in rural Oregon. Those groups threatened violence to defend GOP lawmakers who fled the Capitol to prevent the passage of the climate bill.

Right-wing and nationalist groups have been increasingly visible in Oregon over the past five years as rural voters get more disillusioned, said Ward. In frustration, there are organizations and individuals who have stepped into a leadership gap and are attempting to provide parallel leadership. But that leadership is led by bigotry and threats of violence.

At the 2019 Activists Mobilizing for Power (AMP) conference, hosted by the Western States Center, hundreds of advocates came together to talk about how the rising influence of white nationalist groups is impacting issues from climate change to education.

Activists Mobilizing for Power is a gathering for policy advocates and social justice organizers from every issue area in the progressive movement. One of the things that sets AMP apart from other activist conferences is its regional focus: AMP is designed to bring together justice leaders from the Pacific Northwest and Intermountain West states. This approach offers a unique opportunity for activists from every community to learn from each other about emerging trends in the Northwest that impact folks across issues and states. Its the only event I know of focused on building progressive political power across issue areas in a particular region of the US.

Theres a lot that folks at the Sierra Club can learn from Activists Mobilizing for Power, which is one of the reasons we were proud to sponsor the event for the second year in a row. Just like the progressive movement is divided by issue area, the Sierra Club is separated into national campaigns and local chapters, often working in the same places on related issues. Were such a large organization that our internal structures can divide us and keep us from collaborating, or even force us to compete for resources. Were trying to learn from examples like AMP about how to work regionally, so that the folks working in a state to protect public lands and expand access to the outdoors are strategizing alongside folks working to advance clean energy and increase access to public transportation. When the Sierra Club moves as one community, we are more powerful together, just like the progressive movement.

AMP participants representing progressive organizations from the Pacific Northwest and Intermountain West states.

The world is changing faster than ever. Achieving our goals in this momentwhen climate change, economic structures, and governing institutions all fuel inequitymeans fighting for a bold agenda that recognizes the interconnected nature of our planet, people, economy, and democracy. The theme of AMP this year was Democracy Under Siege, with a focus on countering white nationalism and defending inclusive democracy.

As I was working to set up the Sierra Clubs sponsorship of AMP, I occasionally got questions like: "What does pushing back on white nationalism and protecting inclusive democracy have to do with the Sierra Club? Isnt our work simply to protect the planet for everyone to explore, enjoy and protect?"

I wrote recently about how an intersectional approach to environmental and climate work can make it hard to know how to stay in your lane. But staying in our lane doesnt mean ignoring the other drivers on the road. The work of defeating white nationalism is the work of the whole progressive movement, and the Sierra Club is part of that movement.

The Sierra Club is committed to a just, equitable, and sustainable future built on a foundation of racial, economic, and gender equitya future where all people benefit from a healthy thriving planet and a direct connection to nature. We cant build that world without confronting hate through spaces like AMP. We cant even pass legislation to limit carbon pollution while white nationalists are willing to use violence and intimidation to enact their hateful agenda.

I know its a stretch for some folks to make this connection, all the way from fighting climate change to fighting white supremacy. But the bigots and the militia members get the connection. Many of them believe that our work to stop climate change is part of a vast global conspiracy to eliminate the white race.

Those of us who see the world more clearly are building a movement that addresses the climate crisis on the scale needed to head off massive climate disruption and species extinction. We also know that cannot be done without addressing the extreme inequalities that allow Big Polluters to deem some people, communities, and environments sacrificial. We say NO! to nationalist ideologies that demand we choose whole nations and communities to be winners and losers in the climate crisis. We say YES! to an abundant future where those most harmed by climate and environmental injustice are prioritized over profit and corporations.

Even though we say NO!, we cannot ignore the growing influence of eco-fascists and white supremacists. If we do, we arent doing our job to defend our planet and all its inhabitants. Or, as our mission statement puts it: To educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment.

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White Nationalist Organizing Threatens Climate Progress in the Northwest - Sierra Magazine

Showtimes Work in Progress opens on a dark note, with its heroine threatening to kill herself in a hundred and eighty days if happiness doesnt come her way. I mean, Im forty-five, Abby gripes to her therapist. Im fat. Im this queer dyke who has done shit in her lifeand that is my identity? In a funny, curmudgeonly monologue, Abby describes herself as an unfinished building ruining a good neighborhoodan eyesore. When she glances up, her shrink, still grinning supportively, has dropped dead.

Its a Borscht Belt gag, but, then, Abbys whole life feels like a punch line. Still, buried in that Eeyore-ish lament, theres something else: Abbys girlish fantasy of herself as a fucking damsel longing for rescueby a prince or a princess, the details dont matter. Magically, thats just what she gets when she meets Chris, a twenty-two-year-old waiter who Abby (Abby McEnany) initially assumes is hitting on her straight sister. Played by the supremely chill Theo Germaine, Chris looks like Abbys prince in shining tank tops, capable of fixing the unfixable.

This budding romance isnt precisely a Nora Ephron meet-cute, but its a charmer in a new way. Abby is unfazed by the news that Chris is trans, and, despite the generational gulf, theres symmetry to their gender issues: to strangers, Chris, who cant afford top surgery, reads as a cute lesbian tomboy, while Abby, with her shlumpy butch charisma, short-cropped gray hair, and button-down shirts, has spent her life being mistaken for male, even in lesbian bars. In college, she was taunted as Pat, after the Saturday Night Live character, and when, on their first date, she and Chris run into the comedian who played Pat, Julia Sweeney (an executive producer for the show, gamely playing herself), Chris urges Abby to tell her off. I really love conflict, he explains, smiling sweetly. Because hes twenty-two, Chris is stunned to hear of the existence of Patwhats so funny about a person whose gender cant be guessed?

Work in Progress, like its heroine, is sweetly imperfect: not every bit lands, and Chris can feel, at moments, too good to be true. But the series explores, with warmth and originality, the messy gulf between the era when Abby came outas an overall-wearing romantic in a frat-boy world, drinking in lesbian bars full of folksingersand Chriss community of cheerful poly hipsters in Spock ears, corsets, and throuples. When Chris takes Abby to a night club, which features bare-assed burlesque and signs for fisting demonstrations, she groans, I look like Mitt Romney, Jr. Junior? Chris shoots back. In another episode, in a cab, the couple text their sexual preferences back and forth, turning informed consent into flirtation. PENETRATION, Chris texts. I dont think I can fit my Thoughts into one text, Abby texts back, throwing off panicked GIFs of Mr. Furley, from Threes Company.

In many ways, Work in Progress is a familiar entry in an established genre: its an indie comedy by and about a clever, dyspeptic misfit looking for love. Like Pamela Adlons Better Things and Tig Notaros One Mississippi, its about a single misanthrope cautiously dipping her toe into the dating pool. Like Josh Thomass Please Like Me and Maria Bamfords Lady Dynamite, its interested in mental illness and self-help. But Work in Progresswhich is co-written and produced by Lilly Wachowskiis smartly edited, full of odd little montages and visual juxtapositions. It has its own distinctive, salty vibe, driven by McEnanys simultaneously self-loathing and self-aggrandizing swagger. Shes an irritant with charm, along with genuine baggage. (Among other things, she has O.C.D.; as annoyed people bang on the bathroom door, she washes her hands raw.) She also has a secret closet full of notebooks in which shes recorded her whole life. Nobody knows it, but Abby is telling their story. In certain ways, Work in Progress is a mirror image of Hannah Gadsbys Nanette, which argues that self-deprecation, especially for people like her and Abby, amounts to self-harm. Work in Progress takes the position that it might be something better: a tool that, in the right hands, could renovate an unwelcoming culture in Abbys imagecrankiness, grief, and all.

In Dare Me, on USA, a cheerleading team in a depressed Rust Belt town hires a new coach, a blond hot shot who the rich boosters hope will whip their squad into trophy-winning shape. What do I see? Spray tans. Gummy-bear thighs, the coach, Colette French, observes, strutting across the school gym, pinching a girls soft belly as she passes by. (Fix this, Colette says.) I do not see my top girl. One of the cheerleaders, Addy, the striving daughter of a single mom who is also a cop, falls in Colettes thrall, becoming her favorite, her babysitter, and her confidante. Addys best friend, the troublemaker Beth, sees Colette as the enemy.

We know from the start that something bad is coming: those unexplained flash-forwards to a black pool of blood are kind of a giveaway. But while the series, an adaptation of a novel by Megan Abbott, is full of shady twistsblackmail, cyber chicanery, adultery straight out of Double Indemnitythe criminal mystery is not really its central appeal. Its a sharp character portrait and a dreamy mood piece, one style inflecting the other. Beneath the shows poetic, occasionally repetitious narration (there are only so many times we can hear Addy brood, in voice-over, about the fact that people have shadows and wear masks), theres a clear-eyed examination of a small town full of dangerously bored kids, partying in the woods, soft targets for coaches and military recruiters who offer them a ticket out of the busted local economy.

Still, the power of the show flows just as much through its imagerya decadent, unashamedly voyeuristic vision of athletic beauty, with a hallucinogenic verve that keeps it from becoming cheesy. Closeups turn a bruise or a glittering lip into a fetish object. It often feels as if the girls are being shot in slo-mo, even when theyre not. The camera lurks by the lockers, watching the team shower, vomit, and spar; it hovers under the bleachers, ogling muscular thighs. It takes a Gods-eye view of the squads wild lifts, nudges in as they grind at parties, stares out of the mirror when they apply false lashes. To call these shots objectifying would miss the point: they replicate the way the girls see themselves, as both prey and predator. Dare Me is certainly not the only show on TV with bitchy, gorgeous cheerleadersits a clich of many teen series, in multiple genresbut it treats their experiences with a freaky, sensual gravity, not as an arch joke.

The show is especially interested in female ambitionand the ways users can warp a girl-power fantasy to suit their own needs. Who runs the world? Girls!, Beths sleazy dad announces. Youve seen the T-shirt. For him, the team is a lure for investment in a lucrative stadium deal; in private, he bribes his daughters with fancy purses. Some of the best scenes are between Beth and her dissolute mother, a pill-head divorce at the crossroads between Eugene ONeill and The Real Housewives, who is a different kind of coach. You have to play the part: smile and smile, she tells Beth, pressing her to manipulate her dad. Maybe it is my fault. I made you think you can be anything, do anything. Beth answers like a Peter Pan desperate not to go Wendy: I hope I never grow up at all.

Amid a strong cast, Willa Fitzgerald is the standout as the enigmatic Colette, who alternates between spurring her cheerleaders to victory and inviting them over for drunken dance parties. Hanging out with high-school kids seems to work as a contact high for her, normalizing her hidden recklessness. You are the one who wanted the house! she hisses at her husband, as they fight. You love a pretty front. When Colette cheats on him, the show has the respect not to film the sex scenes clinically or from a distance: in the honorable tradition of noir, it looks like the kind of sex youd risk your life for.

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Uncertain Attraction in Work in Progress and Dare Me - The New Yorker

Deutsche Bank has made "positive early progress" in its massive multi-year restructuring program, according to S&P Global Ratings.

In a note published Monday, the independent credit ratings agency retained a "stable" outlook for the embattled German lender, affirming its long and short-term issuer credit ratings at 'BBB+/A-2'.

S&P said the promising signs were "most evident in the refocusing of the investment bank and the runoff of exposures in the capital release unit (CRU)."

Deutsche Bank announced in July that it would pull out of its global equities sales and trading operations, scale back the investment banking division, and slash 18,000 jobs in a bid to bring profitability in line with cost of capital.

Management wants the changes to trim 20% of the 2019 adjusted cost base by as soon as 2022.

Deutsche Bank chief executive Christian Sewing struck an optimistic tone at the bank's investor conference last week, anticipating a marked rise in profitability and improved cost efficiency through to 2022. He said this was based on measures across private, corporate and investment banking.

Despite the German banking system facing substantial economic and industry risks, S&P has agreed that it saw "sufficient progress" from Deutsche Bank to affirm its credit rating.

"Looking ahead, with substantial operational execution due in 2020 across all divisions, we see this as a critical period that will determine whether, amid an adverse environment, the plan can ultimately be successful," the S&P analyst note said.

"We continue to see management's desired result as ultimately more supportive of Deutsche Bank's creditworthiness: a leading, less-leveraged and well-controlled European bank, with focused global reach, that covers its cost of capital, aided by a greater weight of stable revenues, significant contributions from all divisions, and scalable infrastructure," it added.

Shares of Deutsche Bank are lower by around three-quarters of one percent on Tuesday on a down day for wider markets. Since the appointment of Sewing in April 2018, the stock has lost almost 40% in value.

S&P analysts highlighted that the restructuring of the investment bank and establishment of the CRU appears to be "substantially complete" while Deutsche's regulatory capital is likely to finish 2019 ahead of expectations.

"Step by step, regulators appear to accept that the bank's control environment is improving, signaled for example in the European Central Bank's announcement that it will reduce the bank's 2020 capital requirements by 25 basis points to 11.6%," S&P said.

Wall Street analysts have expressed skepticism over the planned scale of the downsizing and reinvestment, and S&P acknowledged that there are "clear downside risks" at this early stage of the restructure.

"These stem principally from the already weak economic and market environment, which could deteriorate further, making Deutsche Bank's already difficult task of covering the cost of capital even harder," the note said.

"While the current management team has demonstrated its ability to cut costs, execution could yet be impeded or delayed, and an even weaker environment could further undermine revenues."

In the event of material setbacks to the possibility of Deutsche hitting its profitability target by 2022, S&P suggested that it could lower its long-term issuer credit rating for the bank.

"This could be more likely in the event of management missteps or a more costly, or longer, turnaround than anticipated, but it would most likely result from an even more adverse environment that severely weighs on group revenue," it added.

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S&P Global Ratings sees 'positive early progress' in Deutsche Bank restructure - CNBC

Writing for Vice, Gabriel Soares takes a look at Civilization and why a standard playthrough tends to get more boring as the player reaches modern day technology:

what is progress in an historical 4X game? To be blunt, its the elimination of difference. The closer you are to us, the more you have progressed.

...

Effectively your only decisions are how to advance through a predetermined trajectory culminating with us, "the US. This is easier to perceive in tech trees, but its also true of those two other Xs: expand, exterminate. Make the world homogenous, make the world boring. Those early turns players like put them into contact with difference. The rest of the game sees them destroy it.

In the course of discussing what "progress" means, Soares describes an effort to study aboriginal culture. A sociologist had planned to derive the "Elementary Forms of Religious Life" by observing the supposedly simplest religion of Aboriginal Australians:

Problem is, if youre going to grade different peoples on their relative simplicity like some kind of Olympic judge, you first need to decide what the sport is. Nobody disputes that Indo-Europeans are great at making products, matter of fact providers of merchandise or people of merchandise is one of the most common names for the white man among Amazonian peoples. But what about everything else?

Because those very same Australian aboriginal populations who have been so continuously discriminated against by generations of academics have also developed the most complex kinship systems on the planet. There is, of course, much diversity between different populations, but many defy the limits of what can be modelled, and almost all require at least a three-dimensional diagram (posted above).

By comparison most current day European kinship systems are among the simplest ever observed, and thats the point: complexity and simplicity is very much in the eye of the beholder. Unsurprisingly, strategy games tend to only engage with complexity when it can be converted into a military or economic trait, the rest is treated as irrelevant or merely aesthetic.

Read the whole article here.

I remember buying Westwood Studios (miss those guys) point-and-click Blade Runner game to play on my old ThinkPad, back in the late 1990s. It was the first game I can recall owning that spanned multiple disks. While I was surprised to find that the main character in the game neither looked or sounded like Harrison []

The 2020 Game Developers Conference will include alt.ctrl.GDC, a showcase of video game using unconventional, accessible or alternative physical controls. The 20 finalists include Far Away Cage, an Alien-inspired game where you interact with the ship by sliding on a skateboard: Ready? Set. Haiya! is a motion-based fighting rhythm game played by interacting with a []

AI Dungeon, a vastly open text adventure that used artificial intelligence to generate responses to your commands, is now available as an easy-to-use smartphone app (the web version was clunky). The Verge has more: We tested the iOS version briefly, and although there were a few game-breaking errors, its generally as easy to use as []

Bluetooth audio is all about convenience. Its so convenient, in fact, that its somewhat disappointing when you return from a run with those wireless earbuds to home audio or TVs that arent equipped with the technology. Theres an easy fix: The beamit Wireless Bluetooth Audio Transmitter & Receiver. The unit connects easily to most any []

When it comes to bathroom breaks, do you struggle to stayregular? Youre not alone. Most people dont use the toilet correctly, for the simple reason that toilets in the western hemisphere arent actually designed to make eliminations as easy as they could be. For that, you need a stool. And unlike your toilet, the TURBO []

Whether you own or rent your place, insurance on that home is a necessary hassle but a new tech-driven company called Lemonade is starting to show that while it might indeed be a necessity, it doesnt have to be a hassle. Heres the way insurance typically works: You pay premiums and hope an accident []

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The Kinship Hybercube and the meaning of progress in Civilization games - Boing Boing