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Georgia governor calls for even more nuclear power despite budget woes

Matt Awbrey of Responsible Energy San Diego told Grist the city should address other priorities like affordable housing rather than a proposal “to create a new government-run utility that has no plan, budget or verifiable cost estimates.” He said the cost of the takeover likely would bring ...

San Diego ponders a bid to take over its for-profit energy utility | Grist

A new series from Grist, Vox, and The 19th explores how climate change transforms our reproductive lives, from menstruation to fertility to pregnancy.

Expecting worse: Giving birth on a planet in crisis | Grist

Earth's Climate Is Being Hurt By AI in Non-Obvious Ways

Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 by Various, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . Business and Personal here Business and Personal The Charge for Insertion under this head is One Dollar a line for each insertion. If the Notice exceeds four lines, One Dollar and a Half per line will be charged. Manufs. of Scissors address J.W.D.E., Harmony Grove, Ga. For Sale—36 in. Lathe, $4.00; 72 in. Lathe, $4.50; 10 in. Pratt Whiting Shaper, $2.75; 35 H.P. Loco. Boiler, $300; 12 in. Lathe, $65; at Shearman's, 132 N. 3d St., Phila. Iron Tubing—Wanted, a yearly supply of 1-4 in. light Iron Tubing. Address P.O. box 1250, New York city. Baxter's Adjustable Wrenches—The best for Farmers, Householders and Mechanics. Greene, Tweed & Co., 18 Park Place, N.Y. For Sale—Baldwin No. 4 Foot Lathe and fittings; in perfect order. Address P.O. Box 196, Clinton, Mich. National Steam Pump—Simple, durable, economical. Reduced price. National Iron Works, N. Brunswick, N.J. Manufs. and dealers in Cotton Gins, Grist Mills, and Rice Hullers and Polishers, address with terms, Y.L. Ridley, Liberty, Texas. For Sale—Patent Combination Fruit Press, Filter and Funnel. An indispensable article in every household. For circulars, address G.A. Newsam, 118 3d Pl. Brooklyn. Mill Stone Dressing Diamonds. Simple, effective, and durable. J. Dickinson, 64 Nassau St., N.Y. Will purchase or introduce, on a reasonable royalty, some good, useful article. Address, with description and full particulars, A.E. Lowison, Boston, Mass. Mechanical inventors familiar with Envelope Manufacturing. L.J. Henry, 615 Kearny st., San Francisco, Cal. Set of Mechanical Curves, as illustrated in Sci. Am. Supplement, No. 50, mailed on receipt of $5.25, by Keuffel & Esser, New York. Hyatt & Co.'s Varnishes and Japans, as to price, color, purity, and durability, are cheap by comparison than any others extant. 246 Grand st., N.Y. Factory, Newark, N.J. Send for circular and descriptive price list. Lightning Screw Plates. A perfect thread at one cut adjustable for wear. Frasse & Co., 62 Chatham St., N.Y. Wire Needle Pointer, W. Crabb, Newark, N.J. Power & Foot Presses, Ferracute Co., Bridgeton, N.J. Superior Lace Leather, all sizes, cheap. Hooks and Couplings for flat and round Belts. Send for catalogue. C.W. Arny, 148 North 3d St., Philadelphia, Pa. F.C. Beach & Co., makers of the Tom Thumb Telegraph and other electrical machines, have removed to 530 Water St., N.Y. For Best Presses, Dies, and Fruit Can Tools, Bliss & Williams, cor. of Plymouth and Jay Sts., Brooklyn, N.Y. Water, Gas, and Steam Pipe, Wrought Iron. Send for prices. Bailey, Farrell & Co., Pittsburgh, Pa. Walrus Leather and supplies for polishing Iron, Steel, and Brass. Greene, Tweed & Co., 18 Park Place, N.Y. Hydraulic Presses and Jacks, new and second hand. Lathes and Machinery for Polishing and Buffing metals. E. Lyon, 470 Grand St., N.Y. Solid Emery Vulcanite Wheels—The Solid Original Emery Wheel—other kinds imitations and inferior. Caution.—Our name is stamped in full on all our best Standard Belting, Packing, and Hose. Buy that only. The best is the cheapest. New York Belting and Packing Company, 37 and 38 Park Row, New York. Steel Castings from one lb. to five thousand lbs. Invaluable for strength and durability. Circulars free. Pittsburgh Steel Casting Co., Pittsburgh, Pa. M. Shaw, Manufacturer of Insulated Wire for galvanic and telegraph purposes, &c., 259 W. 27th St., N.Y. Shingle, Heading, and Stave Machine. See advertisement of Trevor & Co., Lockport, N.Y. For Solid Wrought iron Beams, etc., see advertisement. Address Union Iron Mills, Pittsburgh, Pa., for lithograph, etc. Articles in Light Metal Work, Fine Castings in Brass, Malleable Iron, &c., Japanning, Tinning, Galvanizing. Welles Specialty Works, Chicago, Ill. See Boult's Paneling, Moulding, and Dovetailing Machine at Centennial, B. 8-55. Send for pamphlet and sample of work. B.C. Mach'y Co., Battle Creek, Mich. Wanted—Novel and practical invention, by a reliable house, for manufacturing. Address Post Office, Box 25, Chillicothe, Ohio. Chester Steel Castings Co. make castings twice as strong as malleable iron castings, at about the same price. See their advertisement on page 125. Hand Fire Engines, Lift and Force Pumps for fire and all other purposes. Address Rumsey & Co., Seneca Falls, N.Y., U.S.A. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Various (2006). Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19406/pg19406-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

Business and Personal

THE CORPORATION

MR. SQUERCUM IS EMPLOYED

ON THE CARE OF HEALTH.

THE LAST CHRONICLE OF BARSET LEAVING THE POST OFFICE—ST. PAUL'S MAGAZINE.

Five Weeks in a Balloon by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . Chapter XXXIII here CHAPTER THIRTY-SECOND. The Capital of Bornou.—The Islands of the Biddiomahs.—The Condors.—The Doctor’s Anxieties.—His Precautions.—An Attack in Mid-air.—The Balloon Covering torn.—The Fall.—Sublime Self-Sacrifice.—The Northern Coast of the Lake. Since its arrival at Lake Tchad, the balloon had struck a current that edged it farther to the westward. A few clouds tempered the heat of the day, and, besides, a little air could be felt over this vast expanse of water; but about one o’clock, the , having slanted across this part of the lake, again advanced over the land for a space of seven or eight miles. Victoria The doctor, who was somewhat vexed at first at this turn of his course, no longer thought of complaining when he caught sight of the city of Kouka, the capital of Bornou. He saw it for a moment, encircled by its walls of white clay, and a few rudely-constructed mosques rising clumsily above that conglomeration of houses that look like playing-dice, which form most Arab towns. In the court-yards of the private dwellings, and on the public squares, grew palms and caoutchouc-trees topped with a dome of foliage more than one hundred feet in breadth. Joe called attention to the fact that these immense parasols were in proper accordance with the intense heat of the sun, and made thereon some pious reflections which it were needless to repeat. Kouka really consists of two distinct towns, separated by the “Dendal,” a large boulevard three hundred yards wide, at that hour crowded with horsemen and foot passengers. On one side, the rich quarter stands squarely with its airy and lofty houses, laid out in regular order; on the other, is huddled together the poor quarter, a miserable collection of low hovels of a conical shape, in which a poverty-stricken multitude vegetate rather than live, since Kouka is neither a trading nor a commercial city. Kennedy thought it looked something like Edinburgh, were that city extended on a plain, with its two distinct boroughs. But our travellers had scarcely the time to catch even this glimpse of it, for, with the fickleness that characterizes the air-currents of this region, a contrary wind suddenly swept them some forty miles over the surface of Lake Tchad. Then then were regaled with a new spectacle. They could count the numerous islets of the lake, inhabited by the Biddiomahs, a race of bloodthirsty and formidable pirates, who are as greatly feared when neighbors as are the Touaregs of Sahara. These estimable people were in readiness to receive the bravely with stones and arrows, but the balloon quickly passed their islands, fluttering over them, from one to the other with butterfly motion, like a gigantic beetle. Victoria At this moment, Joe, who was scanning the horizon, said to Kennedy: “There, sir, as you are always thinking of good sport, yonder is just the thing for you!” “What is it, Joe?” “This time, the doctor will not disapprove of your shooting.” “But what is it?” “Don’t you see that flock of big birds making for us?” “Birds?” exclaimed the doctor, snatching his spyglass. “I see them,” replied Kennedy; “there are at least a dozen of them.” “Fourteen, exactly!” said Joe. “Heaven grant that they may be of a kind sufficiently noxious for the doctor to let me peg away at them!” “I should not object, but I would much rather see those birds at a distance from us!” “Why, are you afraid of those fowls?” “They are condors, and of the largest size. Should they attack us—” “Well, if they do, we’ll defend ourselves. We have a whole arsenal at our disposal. I don’t think those birds are so very formidable.” “Who can tell?” was the doctor’s only remark. Ten minutes later, the flock had come within gunshot, and were making the air ring with their hoarse cries. They came right toward the , more irritated than frightened by her presence. Victoria “How they scream! What a noise!” said Joe. “Perhaps they don’t like to see anybody poaching in their country up in the air, or daring to fly like themselves!” “Well, now, to tell the truth, when I take a good look at them, they are an ugly, ferocious set, and I should think them dangerous enough if they were armed with Purdy-Moore rifles,” admitted Kennedy. “They have no need of such weapons,” said Ferguson, looking very grave. The condors flew around them in wide circles, their flight growing gradually closer and closer to the balloon. They swept through the air in rapid, fantastic curves, occasionally precipitating themselves headlong with the speed of a bullet, and then breaking their line of projection by an abrupt and daring angle. The doctor, much disquieted, resolved to ascend so as to escape this dangerous proximity. He therefore dilated the hydrogen in his balloon, and it rapidly rose. But the condors mounted with him, apparently determined not to part company. “They seem to mean mischief!” said the hunter, cocking his rifle. And, in fact, they were swooping nearer, and more than one came within fifty feet of them, as if defying the fire-arms. “By George, I’m itching to let them have it!” exclaimed Kennedy. “No, Dick; not now! Don’t exasperate them needlessly. That would only be exciting them to attack us!” “But I could soon settle those fellows!” “You may think so, Dick. But you are wrong!” “Why, we have a bullet for each of them!” “And suppose that they were to attack the upper part of the balloon, what would you do? How would you get at them? Just imagine yourself in the presence of a troop of lions on the plain, or a school of sharks in the open ocean! For travellers in the air, this situation is just as dangerous.” “Are you speaking seriously, doctor?” “Very seriously, Dick.” “Let us wait, then!” “Wait! Hold yourself in readiness in case of an attack, but do not fire without my orders.” The birds then collected at a short distance, yet so near that their naked necks, entirely bare of feathers, could be plainly seen, as they stretched them out with the effort of their cries, while their gristly crests, garnished with a comb and gills of deep violet, stood erect with rage. They were of the very largest size, their bodies being more than three feet in length, and the lower surface of their white wings glittering in the sunlight. They might well have been considered winged sharks, so striking was their resemblance to those ferocious rangers of the deep. “They are following us!” said the doctor, as he saw them ascending with him, “and, mount as we may, they can fly still higher!” “Well, what are we to do?” asked Kennedy. The doctor made no answer. “Listen, Samuel!” said the sportsman. “There are fourteen of those birds; we have seventeen shots at our disposal if we discharge all our weapons. Have we not the means, then, to destroy them or disperse them? I will give a good account of some of them!” “I have no doubt of your skill, Dick; I look upon all as dead that may come within range of your rifle, but I repeat that, if they attack the upper part of the balloon, you could not get a sight at them. They would tear the silk covering that sustains us, and we are three thousand feet up in the air!” At this moment, one of the ferocious birds darted right at the balloon, with outstretched beak and claws, ready to rend it with either or both. “Fire! fire at once!” cried the doctor. He had scarcely ceased, ere the huge creature, stricken dead, dropped headlong, turning over and over in space as he fell. Kennedy had already grasped one of the two-barrelled fowling-pieces and Joe was taking aim with another. Frightened by the report, the condors drew back for a moment, but they almost instantly returned to the charge with extreme fury. Kennedy severed the head of one from its body with his first shot, and Joe broke the wing of another. “Only eleven left,” said he. Thereupon the birds changed their tactics, and by common consent soared above the balloon. Kennedy glanced at Ferguson. The latter, in spite of his imperturbability, grew pale. Then ensued a moment of terrifying silence. In the next they heard a harsh tearing noise, as of something rending the silk, and the car seemed to sink from beneath the feet of our three aëronauts. “We are lost!” exclaimed Ferguson, glancing at the barometer, which was now swiftly rising. “Over with the ballast!” he shouted, “over with it!” And in a few seconds the last lumps of quartz had disappeared. “We are still falling! Empty the water-tanks! Do you hear me, Joe? We are pitching into the lake!” Joe obeyed. The doctor leaned over and looked out. The lake seemed to come up toward him like a rising tide. Every object around grew rapidly in size while they were looking at it. The car was not two hundred feet from the surface of Lake Tchad. “The provisions! the provisions!” cried the doctor. And the box containing them was launched into space. Their descent became less rapid, but the luckless aëronauts were still falling, and into the lake. “Throw out something—something more!” cried the doctor. “There is nothing more to throw!” was Kennedy’s despairing response. “Yes, there is!” called Joe, and with a wave of the hand he disappeared like a flash, over the edge of the car. “Joe! Joe!” exclaimed the doctor, horror-stricken. The thus relieved resumed her ascending motion, mounted a thousand feet into the air, and the wind, burying itself in the disinflated covering, bore them away toward the northern part of the lake. Victoria “Lost!” exclaimed the sportsman, with a gesture of despair. “Lost to save us!” responded Ferguson. And these men, intrepid as they were, felt the large tears streaming down their cheeks. They leaned over with the vain hope of seeing some trace of their heroic companion, but they were already far away from him. “What course shall we pursue?” asked Kennedy. “Alight as soon as possible, Dick, and then wait.” After a sweep of some sixty miles the halted on a desert shore, on the north of the lake. The anchors caught in a low tree and the sportsman fastened it securely. Night came, but neither Ferguson nor Kennedy could find one moment’s sleep. Victoria About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jules Verne (2002). Five Weeks in a Balloon. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3526/pg3526-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

The Capital of Bornou

WINTER DREAMS

This article is copublished with Grist. . Read on our collaborator's site This story was published in partnership with , a nonprofit media organization covering climate, justice, and solutions. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter . Grist here New York State toward curbing the power of Big Tech when lawmakers passed the Digital Fair Repair Act, giving citizens the right to fix their phones, tablets, and computers. took a historic step For years, advocates for the “right to repair” have pushed for such legislation in statehouses nationwide. They argue that making it easier to repair gadgets not only saves consumers money but also reduces the environmental impact of manufacturing and electronic waste. Most of those bills have failed amid intense opposition from tech companies that want to dictate how and where their products are serviced. The passage of the Digital Fair Repair Act last June caught the tech industry off guard, but it had time to act before Gov. Kathy Hochul would sign it into law. Corporate lobbyists went to work, pressing Albany for exemptions and changes that would water the bill down. reportedly They were largely successful: While the bill Hochul in late December remains for the right-to-repair movement, the gives consumers and independent repair shops less access to parts and tools than the original proposal called for. (The state Senate still has to vote to adopt the revised bill, but it’s widely expected to do so.) signed a victory more corporate-friendly text The new version of the law applies only to devices built after mid-2023, so it won’t help people to fix stuff they currently own. It also exempts electronics used exclusively by businesses or the government. All those devices are likely to become electronic waste faster than they would have had Hochul, a Democrat, signed a tougher bill. And more greenhouse gases will be emitted manufacturing new devices to replace broken electronics. Draft versions of the bill, letters, and email correspondences shared with Grist by the repair advocacy organization reveal that many of the changes Hochul made to the Digital Fair Repair Act are identical to those proposed by , a trade association that includes Apple, Google, Samsung, and HP among its members. Repair.org TechNet Jake Egloff, the legislative director for Democratic New York state assemblymember and bill sponsor Patricia Fahy, confirmed the authenticity of the emails and bill drafts shared with Grist. “We had every environmental group walking supporting this bill,”  Fahy told Grist. “What hurt this bill is Big Tech was opposed to it.” That New York passed any electronics right-to-repair bill is “huge,” Repair.org executive director Gay Gordon-Byrne told Grist. But “it could have been huger” if not for tech industry interference. Reached for comment, the governor’s office sent Grist a copy of a statement that Hochul released when she signed the bill, outlining changes made to the text. Her staff declined to address questions about the potential negative impacts of those changes, or about the process behind them. For years, consumer technology companies like Apple have effectively monopolized the repair of their devices by limiting access to parts, tools, and manuals to “authorized repair partners,” which often only perform a small number of manufacturer-sanctioned fixes. Those limited services often force consumers to choose between continuing to use a broken device or obtaining a brand-new one. The that passed New York’s Senate and Assembly last spring sought to level the playing field for independent shops by requiring that companies make parts, tools, and documents available to everyone on fair and reasonable terms. version of the Digital Fair Repair Act A broad coalition of manufacturers opposed the bill in the spring, and its sponsors had to make significant compromises in order to pass it. “We made a lot of changes to get it over the finish line in the first day or two of June,” Fahy said. Those changes included explicit exclusions for everything from home appliances to police radios to farm equipment. Fahy says she was willing to omit those devices because she thought focusing on small electronics would give consumers “the biggest bang for their buck.” Data from the repair guide site iFixit shows that eight of the top 10 devices New Yorkers attempted to repair in 2020 were small consumer electronics, with cellphones and laptops topping the list. The passed the Assembly by a vote of 145 to 1, after clearing the Senate 59 to 4. Despite that overwhelming support, the tech industry was surprised by its passage, said Democratic state senator Neil Breslin, who sponsored the bill. Digital Fair Repair Act “There’s a number of people who were advocating on the parts of the [manufacturers] who really, in private chats, were not expecting it would be passed,” Breslin told Grist. At that point, the bill’s opponents approached Hochul seeking concessions. In particular, show TechNet held frequent meetings with the governor between June and December, when she signed the bill. state lobbying records Lobbyists representing Apple, Google, and Microsoft also met with the governor, state records show. All of these organizations have right-to-repair bills in other states, often citing intellectual property and cybersecurity concerns. lobbied against But some, most , have in recent years. Fahy said Microsoft “constantly tried to reach out” to her office to cooperate on the bill. notably Microsoft softened their stance In a letter sent to the governor in November, the company requested several edits but did not ask for a veto. (Microsoft, Google, and Apple declined to comment.) In letters sent to Hochul in July and August, Apple, IBM, and TechNet all asked the governor to veto the bill. (IBM also declined to comment.) When a veto didn’t immediately happen, TechNet sent Hochul a with edits attributed to , the trade organization’s vice president of state policy and government relations. trimmed-down version David Edmonson Among other things, TechNet requested that the law apply only to future products sold in the state, that it exclude products sold only through business-to-business or government contracts, and that it exclude printed circuit boards on the grounds that they could be used to counterfeit devices. It also sought a stipulation allowing manufacturers to offer consumers and independent fixers assemblies, such as a battery pre-assembled with other components, if selling individual parts could create a “safety risk.” Additionally, TechNet wanted a requirement that independent repair shops provide customers with a written notice of U.S. warranty laws before conducting repairs. Hochul’s office sent TechNet’s revised draft to repair advocates to get their reaction. Those advocates shared the TechNet-edited version of the bill with Fahy’s staff, which gave it to the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, the agency charged with protecting American consumers. Documents that Repair.org shared with Grist show that FTC staff were highly critical of many of the changes. The parts assembly provision, one commission staffer wrote in response to TechNet’s edits, “could be easily abused by a manufacturer” to create a two-tiered system in which individual components like batteries are available only to authorized repair partners. Another of TechNet’s proposed changes—deleting a requirement that manufacturers give owners and independent shops the ability to reset security locks in order to conduct repairs—could result in a “hollow right to repair” in which security systems thwart people from fixing their stuff, the staffer wrote. “These particular TechNet edits all have a common theme—ensuring that manufacturers retain control over the market for the repair of their products,” Dan Salsburg, a chief counsel for the FTC’s Office of Technology, Research and Investigation, wrote in an email to Fahy’s office. Despite the agency’s stern warning, all of the changes described above, and numerous other edits TechNet proposed, appeared in Hochul signed—many of them verbatim. the bill Chris Gilrein, TechNet’s executive director for the Northeast, told Grist in an emailed statement that the bill the Legislature passed “presented unacceptable risks to consumer data privacy and safety,” and that his organization’s recommended changes “addressed the most egregious security issues.” Manufacturers often cite cybersecurity as a reason to restrict access to repair, an argument the FTC found “ ” to support in . scant evidence a report to Congress published in 2021 Gilrein disputed the notion that the final version of the bill favored the tech industry. “At its core, the law remains a state-mandated transfer of intellectual property that is unwarranted at a time when consumers have access to more repair options than ever before,” he said. Todd Bone, the president of , a company that maintains and repairs network and data center IT equipment for corporations and the federal government, says the law offers “nothing” to his business because of the governor’s carveout for devices sold under business-to-business or government contracts. XS International “It was very disheartening,” Bone told Grist, “to see the governor working with TechNet and not paying attention to the votes from the Congress and the Senate in the state of New York, [and] what the consumers of the state of New York wanted.” Jessa Jones, who founded iPad Rehab, an independent repair shop in Honeoye Falls, about 20 miles south of Rochester, N.Y., says the original bill included provisions that would have made it far easier for independent shops like hers to get the tools, parts, and know-how needed to make repairs. She pointed to changes that allow manufacturers to release repair tools that only work with spare parts they make while at the same time controlling how those spare parts are used, both of which were requested by TechNet. “If you keep going down this road, allowing manufacturers to force us to use their branded parts and service, where they’re allowed to tie the function of the device to their branded parts and service, that’s not repair,” Jones said. “That’s authoritarian control.” After repair advocates shared TechNet’s draft with Fahy’s office, they collaborated on a counterproposal that pushed back against many of the proposed changes. The last-minute negotiations with the governor’s office were “frustrating,” Fahy said, although she still ultimately wants to see the bill become law. Fahy hopes the New York Department of State will clarify aspects of the bill that got muddied by industry influence. The agency, which plays a role in consumer protection, will craft regulations dictating how the law will be implemented. Ultimately, Fahy says the bill will still help consumers save money and keep old devices out of landfills. And every little bit counts: In New York State alone, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group estimates that Americans discard roughly 23,600 cellphones per day. Fahy also believes the law—imperfect though it may be—will have a ripple effect beyond the state’s borders. It could give momentum to the efforts to pass similar laws in . dozens of other states Eventually, the passage of state bills could lead to a national agreement between electronics manufacturers and the independent repair community, similar to what happened after Massachusetts passed an auto right-to-repair law in 2012. in the car industry Other lawmakers agree that New York has provided a welcome starting point. “When you’re the first state, sometimes you have to pass something very small to get across the finish line,” Washington State representative , a Democrat who is sponsoring a digital in her state’s house, told Grist. Mia Gregerson right-to-repair bill New York’s Digital Fair Repair Act, Gregerson said, “gives us something to work from.” “We’re going to take that now and try to do a better piece of legislation,” Gregerson said. By of Grist Maddie Stone Also published here Photo by on @felipepelaquim Unsplash

Big Tech Rewrote the Nation’s First Cellphone Repair Law: Here's How They Did It

MINOTAURUS TYPHŒUS: MORALITY

SECONDARY SEXUAL CHARACTERS OF MAMMALS

The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . VIII. DEAD LONDON VIII. DEAD LONDON After I had parted from the artilleryman, I went down the hill, and by the High Street across the bridge to Fulham. The red weed was tumultuous at that time, and nearly choked the bridge roadway; but its fronds were already whitened in patches by the spreading disease that presently removed it so swiftly. At the corner of the lane that runs to Putney Bridge station I found a man lying. He was as black as a sweep with the black dust, alive, but helplessly and speechlessly drunk. I could get nothing from him but curses and furious lunges at my head. I think I should have stayed by him but for the brutal expression of his face. There was black dust along the roadway from the bridge onwards, and it grew thicker in Fulham. The streets were horribly quiet. I got food—sour, hard, and mouldy, but quite eatable—in a baker’s shop here. Some way towards Walham Green the streets became clear of powder, and I passed a white terrace of houses on fire; the noise of the burning was an absolute relief. Going on towards Brompton, the streets were quiet again. Here I came once more upon the black powder in the streets and upon dead bodies. I saw altogether about a dozen in the length of the Fulham Road. They had been dead many days, so that I hurried quickly past them. The black powder covered them over, and softened their outlines. One or two had been disturbed by dogs. Where there was no black powder, it was curiously like a Sunday in the City, with the closed shops, the houses locked up and the blinds drawn, the desertion, and the stillness. In some places plunderers had been at work, but rarely at other than the provision and wine shops. A jeweller’s window had been broken open in one place, but apparently the thief had been disturbed, and a number of gold chains and a watch lay scattered on the pavement. I did not trouble to touch them. Farther on was a tattered woman in a heap on a doorstep; the hand that hung over her knee was gashed and bled down her rusty brown dress, and a smashed magnum of champagne formed a pool across the pavement. She seemed asleep, but she was dead. The farther I penetrated into London, the profounder grew the stillness. But it was not so much the stillness of death—it was the stillness of suspense, of expectation. At any time the destruction that had already singed the northwestern borders of the metropolis, and had annihilated Ealing and Kilburn, might strike among these houses and leave them smoking ruins. It was a city condemned and derelict. . . . In South Kensington the streets were clear of dead and of black powder. It was near South Kensington that I first heard the howling. It crept almost imperceptibly upon my senses. It was a sobbing alternation of two notes, “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” keeping on perpetually. When I passed streets that ran northward it grew in volume, and houses and buildings seemed to deaden and cut it off again. It came in a full tide down Exhibition Road. I stopped, staring towards Kensington Gardens, wondering at this strange, remote wailing. It was as if that mighty desert of houses had found a voice for its fear and solitude. “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” wailed that superhuman note—great waves of sound sweeping down the broad, sunlit roadway,between the tall buildings on each side. I turned northwards, marvelling, towards the iron gates of Hyde Park. I had half a mind to break into the Natural History Museum and find my way up to the summits of the towers, in order to see across the park. But I decided to keep to the ground, where quick hiding was possible, and so went on up the Exhibition Road. All the large mansions on each side of the road were empty and still, and my footsteps echoed against the sides of the houses. At the top, near the park gate, I came upon a strange sight—a bus overturned, and the skeleton of a horse picked clean. I puzzled over this for a time, and then went on to the bridge over the Serpentine. The voice grew stronger and stronger, though I could see nothing above the housetops on the north side of the park, save a haze of smoke to the northwest. “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” cried the voice, coming, as it seemed to me, from the district about Regent’s Park. The desolating cry worked upon my mind. The mood that had sustained me passed. The wailing took possession of me. I found I was intensely weary, footsore, and now again hungry and thirsty. It was already past noon. Why was I wandering alone in this city of the dead? Why was I alone when all London was lying in state, and in its black shroud? I felt intolerably lonely. My mind ran on old friends that I had forgotten for years. I thought of the poisons in the chemists’ shops, of the liquors the wine merchants stored; I recalled the two sodden creatures of despair, who so far as I knew, shared the city with myself. . . . I came into Oxford Street by the Marble Arch, and here again were black powder and several bodies, and an evil, ominous smell from the gratings of the cellars of some of the houses. I grew very thirsty after the heat of my long walk. With infinite trouble I managed to break into a public-house and get food and drink. I was weary after eating, and went into the parlour behind the bar, and slept on a black horsehair sofa I found there. I awoke to find that dismal howling still in my ears, “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla.” It was now dusk, and after I had routed out some biscuits and a cheese in the bar—there was a meat safe, but it contained nothing but maggots—I wandered on through the silent residential squares to Baker Street—Portman Square is the only one I can name—and so came out at last upon Regent’s Park. And as I emerged from the top of Baker Street, I saw far away over the trees in the clearness of the sunset the hood of the Martian giant from which this howling proceeded. I was not terrified. I came upon him as if it were a matter of course. I watched him for some time, but he did not move. He appeared to be standing and yelling, for no reason that I could discover. I tried to formulate a plan of action. That perpetual sound of “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” confused my mind. Perhaps I was too tired to be very fearful. Certainly I was more curious to know the reason of this monotonous crying than afraid. I turned back away from the park and struck into Park Road, intending to skirt the park, went along under the shelter of the terraces, and got a view of this stationary, howling Martian from the direction of St. John’s Wood. A couple of hundred yards out of Baker Street I heard a yelping chorus, and saw, first a dog with a piece of putrescent red meat in his jaws coming headlong towards me, and then a pack of starving mongrels in pursuit of him. He made a wide curve to avoid me, as though he feared I might prove a fresh competitor. As the yelping died away down the silent road, the wailing sound of “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” reasserted itself. I came upon the wrecked handling-machine halfway to St. John’s Wood station. At first I thought a house had fallen across the road. It was only as I clambered among the ruins that I saw, with a start, this mechanical Samson lying, with its tentacles bent and smashed and twisted, among the ruins it had made. The forepart was shattered. It seemed as if it had driven blindly straight at the house, and had been overwhelmed in its overthrow. It seemed to me then that this might have happened by a handling-machine escaping from the guidance of its Martian. I could not clamber among the ruins to see it, and the twilight was now so far advanced that the blood with which its seat was smeared, and the gnawed gristle of the Martian that the dogs had left, were invisible to me. Wondering still more at all that I had seen, I pushed on towards Primrose Hill. Far away, through a gap in the trees, I saw a second Martian, as motionless as the first, standing in the park towards the Zoological Gardens, and silent. A little beyond the ruins about the smashed handling-machine I came upon the red weed again, and found the Regent’s Canal, a spongy mass of dark-red vegetation. As I crossed the bridge, the sound of “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” ceased. It was, as it were, cut off. The silence came like a thunderclap. The dusky houses about me stood faint and tall and dim; the trees towards the park were growing black. All about me the red weed clambered among the ruins, writhing to get above me in the dimness. Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me. But while that voice sounded the solitude, the desolation, had been endurable; by virtue of it London had still seemed alive, and the sense of life about me had upheld me. Then suddenly a change, the passing of something—I knew not what—and then a stillness that could be felt. Nothing but this gaunt quiet. London about me gazed at me spectrally. The windows in the white houses were like the eye sockets of skulls. About me my imagination found a thousand noiseless enemies moving. Terror seized me, a horror of my temerity. In front of me the road became pitchy black as though it was tarred, and I saw a contorted shape lying across the pathway. I could not bring myself to go on. I turned down St. John’s Wood Road, and ran headlong from this unendurable stillness towards Kilburn. I hid from the night and the silence, until long after midnight, in a cabmen’s shelter in Harrow Road. But before the dawn my courage returned, and while the stars were still in the sky I turned once more towards Regent’s Park. I missed my way among the streets, and presently saw down a long avenue, in the half-light of the early dawn, the curve of Primrose Hill. On the summit, towering up to the fading stars, was a third Martian, erect and motionless like the others. An insane resolve possessed me. I would die and end it. And I would save myself even the trouble of killing myself. I marched on recklessly towards this Titan, and then, as I drew nearer and the light grew, I saw that a multitude of black birds was circling and clustering about the hood. At that my heart gave a bound, and I began running along the road. I hurried through the red weed that choked St. Edmund’s Terrace (I waded breast-high across a torrent of water that was rushing down from the waterworks towards the Albert Road), and emerged upon the grass before the rising of the sun. Great mounds had been heaped about the crest of the hill, making a huge redoubt of it—it was the final and largest place the Martians had made—and from behind these heaps there rose a thin smoke against the sky. Against the sky line an eager dog ran and disappeared. The thought that had flashed into my mind grew real, grew credible. I felt no fear, only a wild, trembling exultation, as I ran up the hill towards the motionless monster. Out of the hood hung lank shreds of brown, at which the hungry birds pecked and tore. In another moment I had scrambled up the earthen rampart and stood upon its crest, and the interior of the redoubt was below me. A mighty space it was, with gigantic machines here and there within it, huge mounds of material and strange shelter places. And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians—dead!—slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth. For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things—taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many—those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance—our living frames are altogether immune. But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain. Here and there they were scattered, nearly fifty altogether, in that great gulf they had made, overtaken by a death that must have seemed to them as incomprehensible as any death could be. To me also at that time this death was incomprehensible. All I knew was that these things that had been alive and so terrible to men were dead. For a moment I believed that the destruction of Sennacherib had been repeated, that God had repented, that the Angel of Death had slain them in the night. I stood staring into the pit, and my heart lightened gloriously, even as the rising sun struck the world to fire about me with his rays. The pit was still in darkness; the mighty engines, so great and wonderful in their power and complexity, so unearthly in their tortuous forms, rose weird and vague and strange out of the shadows towards the light. A multitude of dogs, I could hear, fought over the bodies that lay darkly in the depth of the pit, far below me. Across the pit on its farther lip, flat and vast and strange, lay the great flying-machine with which they had been experimenting upon our denser atmosphere when decay and death arrested them. Death had come not a day too soon. At the sound of a cawing overhead I looked up at the huge fighting-machine that would fight no more for ever, at the tattered red shreds of flesh that dripped down upon the overturned seats on the summit of Primrose Hill. I turned and looked down the slope of the hill to where, enhaloed now in birds, stood those other two Martians that I had seen overnight, just as death had overtaken them. The one had died, even as it had been crying to its companions; perhaps it was the last to die, and its voice had gone on perpetually until the force of its machinery was exhausted. They glittered now, harmless tripod towers of shining metal, in the brightness of the rising sun. All about the pit, and saved as by a miracle from everlasting destruction, stretched the great Mother of Cities. Those who have only seen London veiled in her sombre robes of smoke can scarcely imagine the naked clearness and beauty of the silent wilderness of houses. Eastward, over the blackened ruins of the Albert Terrace and the splintered spire of the church, the sun blazed dazzling in a clear sky, and here and there some facet in the great wilderness of roofs caught the light and glared with a white intensity. Northward were Kilburn and Hampsted, blue and crowded with houses; westward the great city was dimmed; and southward, beyond the Martians, the green waves of Regent’s Park, the Langham Hotel, the dome of the Albert Hall, the Imperial Institute, and the giant mansions of the Brompton Road came out clear and little in the sunrise, the jagged ruins of Westminster rising hazily beyond. Far away and blue were the Surrey hills, and the towers of the Crystal Palace glittered like two silver rods. The dome of St. Paul’s was dark against the sunrise, and injured, I saw for the first time, by a huge gaping cavity on its western side. And as I looked at this wide expanse of houses and factories and churches, silent and abandoned; as I thought of the multitudinous hopes and efforts, the innumerable hosts of lives that had gone to build this human reef, and of the swift and ruthless destruction that had hung over it all; when I realised that the shadow had been rolled back, and that men might still live in the streets, and this dear vast dead city of mine be once more alive and powerful, I felt a wave of emotion that was near akin to tears. The torment was over. Even that day the healing would begin. The survivors of the people scattered over the country—leaderless, lawless, foodless, like sheep without a shepherd—the thousands who had fled by sea, would begin to return; the pulse of life, growing stronger and stronger, would beat again in the empty streets and pour across the vacant squares. Whatever destruction was done, the hand of the destroyer was stayed. All the gaunt wrecks, the blackened skeletons of houses that stared so dismally at the sunlit grass of the hill, would presently be echoing with the hammers of the restorers and ringing with the tapping of their trowels. At the thought I extended my hands towards the sky and began thanking God. In a year, thought I—in a year. . . . With overwhelming force came the thought of myself, of my wife, and the old life of hope and tender helpfulness that had ceased for ever. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. H. G. Wells (1992). The War of the Worlds. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022, from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36/36-h/36-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

DEAD LONDON

MAKING BREAD 

Food and Flavor: A Gastronomic Guide to Health and Good Living: Chapter VIII - EPICUREAN ITALY

The Essays of Adam Smith, by Adam Smith is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here .  Part V: Of the Influence of Custom and Fashion upon the Sentiments of Moral Approbation and Disapprobation. Chapter I: Of the Influence of Custom and Fashion upon our notions of Beauty and Deformity. Chapter I. Of the Influence of Custom and Fashion upon our notions of Beauty and Deformity. THERE are other principles besides those already enumerated, which have a considerable influence upon the moral sentiments of mankind, and are the chief causes of the many irregular and discordant opinions which prevail in different ages and nations concerning what is blamable or praise-worthy. These principles are custom and fashion, principles which extend their dominion over our judgments concerning beauty of every kind. When two objects have frequently been seen together, the imagination acquires a habit of passing easily from the one to the other. If the first appear, we lay our account that the second is to follow. Of their own accord they put us in mind of one another, and the attention glides easily along them. Though, independent of custom, there should be no real beauty in their union, yet when custom has thus connected them together, we feel an impropriety in their separation. The one we think is awkward when it appears without its usual companion. We miss something which we expected to find, and the habitual arrangement of our ideas is disturbed by the disappointment. A suit of clothes, for example, seems to want something if they are without the most insignificant ornament which usually accompanies them, and we find a meanness or awkwardness in the absence even of a haunch button. When there is any natural propriety in the union, custom increases our sense of it, and makes a different arrangement appear still more disagreeable than it would otherwise seem to be. Those who have been accustomed to see things in a good taste, are more disgusted by whatever is clumsy or awkward. Where the conjunction is improper, custom either diminishes, or takes away altogether, our sense of the impropriety. Those who have been accustomed to slovenly disorder lose all sense of neatness or elegance. The modes of furniture or dress which seem ridiculous to strangers, give no offence to the people who have been used to them. Fashion is different from custom, or rather is a particular species of it. That is not the fashion which every body wears, but which those wear who are of a high rank, or character. The graceful, the easy, and commanding manners of the great, joined to the usual richness and magnificence of their dress, give a grace to the very form which they happen to bestow upon it. As long as they continue to use this form, it is connected in our imaginations with the idea of something that is genteel and magnificent, and though in itself it should be indifferent, it seems, on account of this relation, to have something about it that is genteel and magnificent too. As soon as they drop it, it loses all the grace, which it had appeared to possess before, and being now used only by the inferior ranks of people, seems to have something of their meanness and their awkwardness. Dress and furniture are allowed by all the world to be entirely under the dominion of custom and fashion. The influence of those principles, however, is by no means confined to so narrow a sphere, but extends itself to whatever is in any respect the object of taste, to music, to poetry, to architecture. The modes of dress and furniture are continually changing, and that fashion appearing ridiculous to-day which was admired five years ago, we are experimentally convinced that it owed its vogue chiefly or entirely to custom and fashion. Clothes and furniture are not made of very durable materials. A well-fancied coat is done in a twelve-month, and cannot continue longer to propagate, as the fashion, that form according to which it was made. The modes of furniture change less rapidly than those of dress; because furniture is commonly more durable. In five or six years, however, it generally undergoes an entire revolution, and every man in his own time sees the fashion in this respect change many different ways. The productions of the other arts are much more lasting, and, when happily imagined, may continue to propagate the fashion of their make for a much longer time. A well-contrived building may endure many centuries: a beautiful air may be delivered down by a sort of tradition, through many successive generations: a well-written poem may last as long as the world; and all of them continue for ages together, to give the vogue to that particular style, to that particular taste or manner, according to which each of them was composed. Few men have an opportunity of seeing in their own times the fashion in any of these arts change very considerably. Few men have so much experience and acquaintance with the different modes which have obtained in remote ages and nations, as to be thoroughly reconciled to them, or to judge with impartiality between them and what takes place in their own age and country. Few men therefore are willing to allow, that custom or fashion have much influence upon their judgments concerning what is beautiful or otherwise, in the productions of any of those arts; but imagine that all the rules, which they think ought to be observed in each of them, are founded upon reason and nature, not upon habit or prejudice. A very little attention may convince them of the contrary, and satisfy them, that the influence of custom and fashion over dress and furniture, is not more absolute than over architecture, poetry, and music. Can any reason, for example, be assigned why the Doric capital should be appropriated to a pillar, whose height is equal to eight diameters; the Ionic volute to one of nine; and the Corinthian foliage to one of ten? The propriety of each of those appropriations can be founded upon nothing but habit and custom. The eye having been used to see a particular proportion connected with a particular ornament, would be offended if they were not joined together. Each of the five orders has its peculiar ornaments, which cannot be changed for any other, without giving offence to all those who know any thing of the rules of architecture. According to some architects, indeed, such is the exquisite judgment with which the ancients have assigned to each order its proper ornaments, that no others can be found which are equally suitable. It seems, however, a little difficult to be conceived that these forms, though, no doubt, extremely agreeable, should be the only forms which can suit those proportions, or that there should not be five hundred others which, antecedent to established custom, would have fitted them equally well. When custom, however, has established particular rules of building, provided they are not absolutely unreasonable, it is absurd to think of altering them for others which are only equally good, or even for others which, in point of elegance and beauty, have naturally some little advantage over them. A man would be ridiculous who should appear in public with a suit of clothes quite different from those which are commonly worn, though the new dress should in itself be ever so graceful or convenient. And there seems to be an absurdity of the same kind in ornamenting a house after a quite different manner from that which custom and fashion have prescribed; though the new ornaments should in themselves be somewhat superior to the common ones in use. According to the ancient rhetoricians, a certain measure or verse was by nature appropriated to each particular species of writing, as being naturally expressive of that character, sentiment, or passion, which ought to predominate in it. One verse, they said, was fit for grave and another for gay works, which could not, they thought, be interchanged without the greatest impropriety. The experience of modern times, however, seems to contradict this principle, though in itself it would appear to be extremely probable. What is the burlesque verse in English, is the heroic verse in French. The tragedies of Racine and the Henriad of Voltaire, are nearly in the same verse with, Let me have your advice in a weighty affair. The burlesque verse in French, on the contrary, is pretty much the same with the heroic verse of ten syllables in English. Custom has made the one nation associate the ideas of gravity, sublimity, and seriousness, to that measure which the other has connected with whatever is gay, flippant, and ludicrous. Nothing would appear more absurd in English, than a tragedy written in the Alexandrine verses of the French; or in French, than a work of the same kind in hexametery, or verses of ten syllables. An eminent artist will bring about a considerable change in the established modes of each of those arts, and introduce a new fashion of writing, music, or architecture. As the dress of an agreeable man of high rank recommends itself, and how peculiar and fantastical soever, comes soon to be admired and imitated; so the excellencies of an eminent master recommend his peculiarities, and his manner becomes the fashionable style in the art which he practises. The taste of the Italians in music and architecture has, within these fifty years, undergone a considerable change, from imitating the peculiarities of some eminent masters in each of those arts. Seneca is accused by Quintilian of having corrupted the taste of the Romans, and of having introduced a frivolous prettiness in the room of majestic reason and masculine eloquence. Sallust and Tacitus have by others been charged with the same accusation, though in a different manner. They gave reputation, it is pretended, to a style, which though in the highest degree concise, elegant, expressive, and even poetical, wanted, however, ease, simplicity, and nature, and was evidently the production of the most laboured and studied affectation. How many great qualities must that writer possess, who can thus render his very faults agreeable? After the praise of refining the taste of a nation, the highest eulogy, perhaps, which can be bestowed upon any author, is to say, that he corrupted it. In our own language, Mr. Pope and Dr. Swift have each of them introduced a manner different from what was practised before, into all works that are written in rhyme, the one in long verses, the other in short. The quaintness of Butler has given place to the plainness of Swift. The rambling freedom of Dryden, and the correct but often tedious and prosaic languor of Addison, are no longer the objects of imitation, but all long verses are now written after the manner of the nervous precision of Mr. Pope. Neither is it only over the productions of the arts, that custom and fashion exert their dominion. They influence our judgments, in the same manner, with regard to the beauty of natural objects. What various and opposite forms are deemed beautiful in different species of things? The proportions which are admired in one animal, are altogether different from those which are esteemed in another. Every class of things has its own peculiar conformation, which is approved of, and has a beauty of its own, distinct from that of every other species. It is upon this account that a learned Jesuit, Father Buffier, has determined that the beauty of every object consists in that form and colour, which is most usual among things of that particular sort to which it belongs. Thus, in the human form, the beauty of each feature lies in a certain middle, equally removed from a variety of other forms that are ugly. A beautiful nose, for example, is one that is neither very long, nor very short, neither very straight, nor very crooked, but a sort of middle among all these extremes, and less different from any one of them, than all of them are from one another. It is the form which nature seems to have aimed at in them all, which, however, she deviates from in a great variety of ways, and very seldom hits exactly; but to which all those deviations still bear a very strong resemblance. When a number of drawings are made after one pattern, though they may all miss it in some respects, yet they will all resemble it more than they resemble one another; the general character of the pattern will run through them all; the most singular and odd will be those which are most wide of it; and though very few will copy it exactly, yet the most accurate delineations will bear a greater resemblance to the most careless, than the careless ones will bear to one another. In the same manner, in each species of creatures, what is most beautiful bears the strongest characters of the general fabric of the species, and has the strongest resemblance to the greater part of the individuals with which it is classed. Monsters, on the contrary, or what is perfectly deformed, are always most singular and odd, and have the least resemblance to the generality of that species to which they belong. And thus the beauty of each species, though in one sense the rarest of all things, because few individuals hit this middle form exactly, yet in another, is the most common, because all the deviations from it resemble it more than they resemble one another. The most customary form, therefore, is in each species of things, according to him, the most beautiful. And hence it is that a certain practice and experience in contemplating each species of objects is requisite before we can judge of its beauty, or know wherein the middle and most usual form consists. The nicest judgment concerning the beauty of the human species will not help us to judge of that of flowers, or horses, or any other species of things. It is for the same reason that in different climates, and where different customs and ways of living take place, as the generality of any species receives a different conformation from those circumstances, so different ideas of its beauty prevail. The beauty of a Moorish is not exactly the same with that of an English horse. What different ideas are formed in different nations concerning the beauty of the human shape and countenance? A fair complexion is a shocking deformity upon the coast of Guinea. Thick lips and a flat nose are a beauty. In some nations long ears that hang down upon the shoulders are the objects of universal admiration. In China if a lady’s foot is so large as to be fit to walk upon, she is regarded as a monster of ugliness. Some of the savage nations in North America tie four boards round the heads of their children, and thus squeeze them, while the bones are tender and gristly, into a form that is almost perfectly square. Europeans are astonished at the absurd barbarity of this practice, to which some missionaries have imputed the singular stupidity of those nations among whom it prevails. But when they condemn those savages, they do not reflect that the ladies in Europe had, till within these very few years, been endeavouring, for near a century past, to squeeze the beautiful roundness of their natural shape into a square form of the same kind. And that, notwithstanding the many distortions and diseases which this practice was known to occasion, custom had rendered it agreeable among some of the most civilized nations which, perhaps, the world has ever beheld. Such is the system of this learned and ingenious father, concerning the nature of beauty; of which the whole charm, according to him, would thus seem to arise from its falling in with the habits which custom had impressed upon the imagination, with regard to things of each particular kind. I cannot, however, be induced to believe that our sense even of external beauty is founded altogether on custom. The utility of any form, its fitness for the useful purposes for which it was intended evidently recommends it, and renders it agreeable to us, independent of custom. Certain colours are more agreeable than others, and give more delight to the eye the first time it ever beholds them. A smooth surface is more agreeable than a rough one. Variety is more pleasing than a tedious undiversified uniformity. Connected variety, in which each new appearance seems to be introduced by what went before it, and in which all the adjoining parts seem to have some natural relation to one another, is more agreeable than a disjointed and disorderly assemblage of unconnected objects. But though I cannot admit that custom is the sole principle of beauty, yet I can so far allow the truth of this ingenious system as to grant, that there is scarce any one external form so beautiful as to please, if quite contrary to custom and unlike whatever we have ever been used to in that particular species of things: or so deformed as not to be agreeable, if custom uniformly supports it, and habituates us to see it in every single individual of the kind. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Smith, Adam. 2018. The Essays of Adam Smith. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 2022 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/58559/58559-h/58559-h.htm#page171 This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

The Essays of Adam Smith: Part V, Chapter I

How democratic governance, collective ownership, and circular token economics can be used to create decentralized food networks — a research proposal. Various forms of networks. Blockchains can facilitate in creating more peer-to-peer decentralized networks. Introduction It can be argued that the sustainable food transition towards decentralized and regional food economies is one of humanity’s most pressing challenges (Satterthaite et al., 2010). The current industrialized agrifood regime is arguably unsustainable (Johnson, 2015; Pollan, 2009; Satterthaite et al., 2010; Sedghi, 2013; van Staalduinen, 2014), especially when taking into account the estimated increasing global population and rapid urbanization by mid-century (Alexandratos & Bruinsma, 2012, UN DESA, 2014; UN DESA, 2015, Wagner, 2008). Hence, (De Schutter, 2010; Groesbeek, 2009; Kneasfey et al., 2013; McIntyre et al., 2009). Like the energy transition, in which energy production and consumption is being changed from a centralized production and distribution model to decentralized smart mini-grids, a similar trend is emerging in the agrifood industry. short food supply chains (SFSC) via decentralized food networks and regional food economies have been proposed as a possible solution for a sustainable agrifood industry (Keeley & Pikkel, 2013). The aim of this study is therefore to understand . By learning more about the combinational impact of these technological developments, this research project can generate valuable insights that contributes to achieving circular and decentralized food innovation in cooperative networks. Innovation can be defined as the novel combination of existing ideas, processes, services, and products three complementary and novel developments for circular food innovation: platform cooperatives, decentralized food networks, and blockchain-based information systems Cooperativism is about democratization of ownership, governance and value. Credit: https://open.coop Platform cooperativism The concept of has been proposed by Scholz (2014), as a reaction to the dependence of digital tools and platforms in modern society. This digital economy is mostly enabled by a range of platforms that are (Hill, 2016; Fonseca, 2016). The value that is generated through these fundamental digital environments flows towards a handful of firms and their shareholders, as well as governmental intelligence agencies, essentially exploiting the users that make the network possible. platform cooperativism Since the arrival of the smartphone in the late 2000s, many interactions in both a professional setting and in private life are facilitated by online platforms and apps. owned, governed, operated and regulated by profit-maximizing companies and data-collecting governments As a response to this form of digital capitalism, (Matias, 2015). Scholz (2016a) argues that “[platform cooperativism] is bringing together 135 of workers self-management with 170 years of the cooperative movement […] bring[ing] in the commence based peer production together with those into this digital economy”. platform cooperativism “is about cloning the technological heart of online platforms and puts it to work with a cooperative model, one that puts workers, owners, communities, and cities — in a kind of solidarity that leads to political power” Scholz proposes two main tenets within the platform cooperative paradigm: and In practise this refers to , communities and regional networks. As a result, the profits that are made in this decentralized economy flows back into the community and the platform users instead of to a handful companies in Silicon Valley. communal ownership democratic governance. creating and community wealth through a digital interface that is owned and self-governed by its users shared value (Rushkoff, 2016). “Platform cooperatives — as a direct affront to the platform monopolies characterizing digital industrialism — offer a means of both reclaiming the value we create and forging the solidarity we need to work toward our collective good. Instead of extracting value and delivering it up to distant shareholders, we harvest, circulate, and recycle the value again and again. And those are precisely the habits we must retrieve as we move ahead from an extractive and growth-based economy to one as regenerative and sustainable as we’re going to need to survive the great challenges of our time” A great book on Platform Cooperativism Blockchain technology and the digital commons The second innovation that plays an essential role in decentralized (food) networks is (Tapscott & Tapscott, 2016). Bollier (2016) argues that open platforms, which have become integrated in private and working life, should be changed into . The digital commons refers to the distribution and communal ownership of informational resources and technology (Stalder, 2010). blockchain technology, as it allows to over the internet transfer value to manage shared wealth digital commons (Bollier, 2016). “One instrument for converting open platforms into digital commons is the blockchain ledger. The blockchain ledger is significant because it can enable highly reliable, versatile forms of collective action on open networks. It does this by validating the authenticity of a digital object (for example, a bitcoin) without the need for a third-party guarantor such as a bank or government body” Collaborative is arguably an important contributor towards realizing sustainable and transparent food industries. IBM’s private blockchain solution, Hyperledger, is being implemented by Walmart to increase efficiency, traceability and food safety in their supply chain (Yiannas, 2017). Additionally, the EU is actively working towards an “Internet-of-Food”, in which Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies are leveraged to connect and digitize the complex food system (IoF2020, 2017). (Ambrosus, 2018; Branimir et al., 2017; Te-Food, 2017). blockchain-based data systems in the food supply chain By integrating the data streams of the dozens of network actors in the same supply chain, food commodities can become traceable, quality controlled, and more efficiently distributed, leading to a fairer, safer and more circular food economy Tokenization and circular token economics Moreover, the blockchain-based decentralized networks can be fueled by tokenization in . Tokenization can be defined as the representation of value in an digital asset, a token. In the words of Sneider (2017): . Kelly (2008) argues that the internet is designed to copy information. However, “when copies are super abundant, they become worthless. ” (Kelly, 2008). circular token economies “Digital tokens are designed to be scarce; they are not copied when traded […] they reward users for their involvement and enable them to trade that reward for a benefit” When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable Hence, . This approach also allows for recirculation of the represented value in the tokens, thus creating circular ​token ​economies. Connected to the quote of Rushkoff (2016) above, the concept of circular economics can be applied to sustainability, in which valuable ‘waste’ and resources are continuously flowing through the network of actors (Sneider, 2018). a limited supply of digital tokens which can be transferred but not copied due to the inner-working of blockchain technology, can lead to shared value creation and new circular economic models , by William Mougayar The Theory of a Blockchain Circular Economy Decentralized food economies The vision of sustainable nutrition, regional food economies and short supply chains may be realized via decentralized food networks. According to McNamara (2016), . Minimizing the gap between consumers and producers is a critical step towards an environmentally and economically sustainable food system”. decentralized food networks “would democratize the food industry by dispersing small food hubs across the globe, bringing food production to regional communities Decentralized networks, such as the open source movement, often rely on a . “We also see it in the open source software revolution where there is dozens, hundreds of programs that rely upon communities volunteering to create new and interesting code, often in collaboration with proprietary software companies. So it is not necessary an either or proposition, it can be quite ”. (Bollier, 2016, 12:13). combination of volunteers creating community wealth and business activities in markets synergistic in creating value; one working in the market and through a community Blockchain applications for agrifood Many projects are initiated to realize shorter food chains and peer-to-peer (P2P) economies, such as Delicia, an Estonian based blockchain start-up which aims to connect regional food producers, restaurants, supermarkets, and consumers in networks with the main goal to reduce food waste (2018). Other European start-ups like Ambrosus, OriginTrial, and Te-Food are creating the blockchain-enabled data infrastructure for traceability and food safety in the supply chain, and Dutch start-up Fructus aims to create a blockchain-based marketplace where farmers can directly interact with consumers (Fructus, 2018). Additionally, Backfeed and Odyssey are creating blockchain platforms as well as protocols for decentralized cooperation and decentralized sharing economies respectively, tools which can be leveraged to create open networks of food cooperatives. It can thus be argued that . various aspects of the agrifood sector are rapidly being digitized, contributing to decentralized food networks and short food supply chains Literature review The body of literature on platform cooperativism as well as blockchain-based food supply chains and decentralized food networks is still in an early stage. Goodman et al. (2012) state that the European Union is making policies for more decentralization in the agricultural industry, for instance in policymaking, multifunctionality and territoriality, arguing that (AFNs) are important for fairer, sustainable and resilient food systems. According to research by Sauvée (2012) on decentralized network governance, “operational decisions may be decentralized at different levels within the network, while control and incentive mechanisms rely upon totally decentralized means” (p. 11). Yet, centralized decision making over strategic assets is advised to main strategic coherence over time. Additionally, the research on traditional food cooperatives is plentiful (Knupfer, 2013; Yang & Woods, 2014), and the literature concerning platform cooperativism is emerging (Scholz & Schneider, 2016; Scholz, 2016b). However, . alternative food networks knowledge is lacking regarding the combination of circular economies, platform cooperativism, food cooperatives, and blockchain-based decentralized food networks Research aim and questions -such as its democratic governance structures, collective ownership and business models- as well as the formation of blockchain-based decentralized food networks for short supply chains. Possible research questions can now be formulated as follows: This research aims therefore to fill this knowledge gap by studying various approaches and dimensions within platform cooperatives for creating sustainable food economies with shared value Which types of traditional food cooperative models can be identified to form platform cooperatives in decentralized food networks? What is the role of blockchain technology in creating decentralized food networks? What is the role of self-organized digital commons in creating decentralized food networks? How can tokenization and circular token economics play a role in the network to create shared value? By conducting this research, a better academic understanding can be gained regarding the decentralization of the food economy in the coming decades. Additionally, due to an approach in this study, it is aimed to achieve societal and practical relevance by engaging various stakeholders in the existing regional food networks in the Utrecht area of the Netherlands via semi-interviews in which knowledge can be shared. . engaged scholarship The proposed research aims to contribute to valuable insights in the complementary fields of decentralized food networks, blockchain technology, and platform cooperativism to realize short food supply chains Do you like this article? Give me a clap, clap! :) About the author has been studying innovation and exponential technologies since the early 2010s. He is now focused on sustainable food, decentralized networks and blockchain technology. Menno van Ginkel — Have I forgotten trends, cool interesting start-ups, or developments? Or do you have identified flaws or bias in my story and reasoning? Please let me know, I’m open for discussion, feedback and critique. References Alexandratos, N. & Bruinsma, J. (2012). World Agriculture Towards 2030/2050. The 212 Revision. ESA Working Paper №12–03. Retrieved on the website of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations from 016/ap106e/ap106e.pdf http://www.fao.org/docrep/ Ambrosus. (2018). Ambrosus Whitepaper. Retrieved from https://ambrosus.com/assets/Ambrosus-White-Paper-V8-1.pdf Delicia. (2018). Whitepaper. Retrieved from https://delicia.io/delicia_wp.pdf De Schutter, O. (2010). [Report number A/HRC/16/49], presented at the 16th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Retrieved from Agroecology and the Right to Food http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/food/docs/A-HRC-16-49.pdf Fonseca, M. (2016, September 21). Why Platform Cooperatives Can Be The Answer To A Fairer Sharing Economy. Retrieved from management/why-platform-cooperatives-can-be-the-answer-to-a-fairer-sharing-economy/ https://www.intelligenthq.com/innovation- Fructus. (2018). Whitepaper. Retrieved from http://fructus.io/WHITEPAPER.pdf Goodman, D., DuPuis, E. & Goodman, M. (2012). . Routledge. Alternative Food Networks: Knowledge, practice, and politics Groesbeek, M. J. (2009). ​Duurzamer ondernemen​. Uitgeverij Business Contact. Hill, S. (2016). How the Un-Sharing Economy Threatens Workers. In Scholz, T. & Schneider, N. (eds). . OR Books. Ours to Hack and to Own. The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet IoF2020. (2017). Internet of Food and Farm. D1.3 Detailed Work Plan. Retrieved from https://www.iof2020.eu/deliverables/d1.3.-detailed-work-plan.pdf Johnson, N. (2015, February 10). So can we really feed the world? Yes — and here’s how. . Retrieved from and-heres-how/ Grist http://grist.org/food/so-can-we-really-feed-the-world-yes- Keeley, L. & Pikkel, R. (2013). . John Wiley & Sons Inc. Ten Types of Innovation. The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs , K. (2008, January 31). Better Than Free. Retrieved from better-than-fre/ Kelly http://kk.org/thetechnium/ Kneasfey, M., Venn, L., Schmutz U., Balázs B., Trenchard L., Eyden-Wood T., Bos E., Sutton G., & Blackett, M. (2013). Short Food Supply Chains and Local Food Systems in the EU. A State of Play of their Socio-Economic Characteristics. JRC Scientific and Policy Reports. Report EUR 25911 EN. Knupfer, A. M. (2013). . Cornell University Press. Food Co-ops in America: Communities, Consumption, and Economic Democracy Matias, N. (2015, November 13). What is Platform Cooperativism and Why is it Important? Retrieved from https://civic.mit.edu/2015/11/13/what-is-platform-cooperativism- and-why-is-it-important/ McIntyre, B. D., Herren, H. R., Wakhungu, J. & Watson, R. T. (Eds.). (2009). Agriculture at a Crossroads. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). Synthesis Report. Retrieved from http://www.unep.org/dewa/agassessment/reports/IAASTD/EN/Agriculture%20at%20a%20Crossroads_Synthesis%20Report%20(English).pdf McNamara, B. (2016, July 11). Examining the Need for a Decentralized Food System [Blog post]. Retrieved from decentralized-food-system-fc06420ba9c7 https://medium.com/@CarFreeBrad/examining-the-need-for-a- Pollan, M. (2009). The Omnivore’s Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World. Retrieved from http://books.google.com. Rakic, B., Levak, T., Drev, Z., Savic, S. & Veljkovic, A. (2017). OriginTrail White Paper. First purpose built protocol for supply chains based on blockchain. Retrieved from OriginTrail-White-Paper.pdf https://origintrail.io/storage/documents/ Rushkoff, D. (2016). Renaissance now. In Scholz, T. & Schneider, N. (eds). . OR Books. Ours to Hack and to Own. The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet Satterthaite, D., McGranahan, G. & Tacoli, C. Urbanization and its implications for food and farming. , 365(1554), pp. 2809–2820 Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B Scholz, T. (2016b). . Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. Platform Cooperativism. Challenging the Corporate Sharing Economy Scholz, T. [re:publica]. (2016a, May 3). re:publica 2016 — Trebor Scholz: How Platform Cooperativism Can Unleash the Network [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkSTgAucRqE Scholz, T. & Schneider, N. (eds). (2016) . OR Books. Ours to Hack and to Own. The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet Sedghi, A. (2013, 10 januari). How much water is needed to produce food and how much do we waste? The Guardian. Retrieved from 2013/jan/10/how-much-water-food-production-waste http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/ Sneider, D. (2017, September 12). Better Than Free: The New Business Model for Apps (and possibly everything else). Retrieved from free-the-new-business-model-for-apps-and-possibly-everything-else-a343e97ba706 https://medium.com/deconet/better-than- Sneider, D. (2018, April 17). “Enterprise Hodl” and Circular ​Token ​Economies. Retrieved from https://medium.com/deconet/enterprise-hodl-and-circular-token-economies-b394c4056ecd Stalder, F. (2010). Digital Commons. In: Hart, K., Laville, J., Cattani, A. D. (eds). . Polity Press, pp. 313–324. The Human Economy: A World Citizen’s Guide Tapscott, D. & Tapscott, A. (2016). . Penguin. Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World Te-Food. (2017). Making business profit by solving social problems. Retrieved from https://ico.tefoodint.com/te-food-white-paper.pdf United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. (2014). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2014 Revision, Highlights (ST/ESA/SER.A/352). 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Retrieved from https://youtu.be/SV0KXBxSoio

Leveraging blockchain technologies and platform cooperativism for decentralized food networks and…

This is (almost) the text of a talk I gave as part of the Museum of London’s Futureshocks season , on humans in the city. It’s about how technology has allowed both the Woman’s and the Robot’s Gaze to emerge as cultural forces. I’m going to talk about clothes and body image and identity, and the way that Instagram and other kinds of new technology are changing and challenging how women are seen, and how we see ourselves. And about the importance of whose gaze we’re looking through: men’s, women’s, or robots. Who do women want to be seen by? Men, women, or robots? What I’m going to call “the fashion internet” is interesting to me because it’s mostly out of sight of mainstream technology commentary. From a technical perspective it’s understood that there is, at the moment, a single Internet — an open network of networks in which everything is connected. But not everyone has the same experience of those networks — there is not a single experience that defines the digital world. It’s fashionable to call this a filter bubble, but it’s no more or less a bubble than the rest of our lives: the networks we inhabit are constructed by our interests, our backgrounds, the people we know. This isn’t simply a consequence of algorithms or personalisation, it’s also because no one can see everything — there’s no digital omniscience. This lack of a shared view means that predictions for our near future tend to represent a few of us, at best. They are filled with drones and self-driving cars and cold beers that are on the table when you get home. These futures belong to a small — often male and affluent — slither of society. Other futures are of course possible, but they’re not always seen, or allowed to emerge. In reality, every city, every street, holds many contradictory futures at once — what is true for one of us won’t be true for everyone — yet in spite of that, certain people’s futures become the dominant narratives, while others’ are trivialised. How women’s fashionable lives have been changed by technology is playing out in plain sight, but it’s also hidden from view — taking place in the alternate reality of our Instagram timelines, rather than on the city streets around us. The most visible membrane of this is our traditional perception of women and power. At first glance, women appear vulnerable, partly clothed and available to the camera. But it’s an easy misconception to think this is the whole story. A snapshot of Kendall Jenner and Desi Perkin’s Instagram feeds Technology has changed the power dynamics of how women look, how they appear, and made the Woman’s Gaze into a culturally significant force. The fact that women can now own and manipulate their appearance might, in time, provide a protection from the harassment and the day-to-day harms of our physical lives. I’m going to explore this in three ways by talking about women wearing clothes, women wearing make-up, and women taking pictures. And I’ll start with women wearing clothes. So — going back to an evening last May. It was kind of late and I was getting ready for bed, and I saw this picture from the Met Gala ball pop up on Twitter. Helen Lasichanh and Pharrell Williams at the 2017 Met Gala Ball, picture from Vogue.com This is Pharrell Williams, looking kind of so so, and his wife Helen Lasichanh, looking extraordinary and unlike any normal idea of how women appear in the world or on the red carpet. So I stopped what I was doing — which was probably getting ready to go to sleep — and watched some of the live stream of the other women turning up on the red carpet. The gala was in honour of Rei Kawakubo from Commes des Garçons. The clothes she makes for women look like this: A dress from the Commes des Garçons Fall 2012 Ready-to-Wear Collection (Vogue) So I was expecting to see more women wearing challenging and extraordinary outfits. But I was fairly quickly disappointed. I realise I’d not actually ever seen, or thought about, what makes those big red carpet moments happen. And sure, while Helen Lasichanh might not be wearing the most practical outfit in the world, she looks both powerful and, quite literally, protected. Insulated from the outside world, while sending a message of utter confidence. Not only is she taking up space, but she looks like she couldn’t care less. But she was one of the few guests who met the dress code head on. Instead, there were lots of very slender women, wearing shoes that were too high to walk in and dresses that needed three people to organise, standing around looking shell-shocked at the shouting photographers and the lights, waiting for their stylist to tell them where to stand. They were making princessy, high-status pictures, where the train of the dress fell in a perfect puddle and the light bounced from their borrowed diamonds to illuminate their faces. They weren’t there to have fun; they were there to create highly syndicatable and profitable moments in time. Inevitably, the standout image from the evening had nothing to do with Kawakubo at all. It was this picture of the model and Instagram sensation Bella Hadid, showing off her “revenge body” after a break-up. Image: Bella Hadid in Alexander Wang (Vogue) Hadid is a millionaire, and incredibly influential in the fashion world. She has 17m followers on Instagram and her picture fills billboards and magazines. But to look at this picture, you would never know that: she is vulnerable, passive — barely dressed, coquettish, . wearing a body suit that the designer Alexander Wang “stitched her into”, like a chastity belt And it’s worth just quickly taking a quick look at Wang’s sketch for the outfit. Sketches by Alexander Wang The body here is so anatomically unlikely it may as well be some kind of curvy, upside down giraffe: the impossibility of walking or sitting down with that of degree of thigh gap, of holding up that curvy bottom on those spindly legs, makes it seem fantastical that this could be a sketch of how clothes relate to a human body. Yet this is how powerful, influential young women are depicted. No leg can be long or slender enough to do justice to the design. So, I stopped watching the live stream and went to sleep, but a few weeks later I was in New York and went along to the exhibition. And afterwards, while I was wondering around downstairs in the Met, I was really struck when I walked into one of the armoury rooms by how much this suit of armour reminded me of Lasichanh’s outfit. The padding, the top knot, the stance, they’re all kind of the same, and so different to the vulnerability of Hadid’s outfit. (L) A suit of armour in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; (r) Helen Lasichanh in Commes des Garçons Because how Hadid looks is more reminiscent of how we’re used to seeing women: naked, compliant, and available. Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (Wikimedia) And since then, for the last few months, I’ve been tussling with this contradiction: for the first time, millions of women are producing and publishing pictures of themselves, but the images that make it into popular consciousness are no different to those from 500 years ago. How is technology changing the image of ourselves that we’re creating and projecting? Women taking pictures. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that women spend a lot more time in public imagination looking like this: Eduoard Manet, Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (Wikimedia) or this: The Jumanji poster, with my annotation. Than they do like this: Queen Elizabeth I, attributed to George Gower (National Portrait Gallery) Of course — fashion is slightly different, because women are at least wearing clothes. But the women themselves are often so insubstantial as to be barely there — slithers of flesh and bone, not taking up too much room even in the magazines invented to celebrate them. YSL 2017 Print Ad High-end women’s fashion, which is largely owned, run, designed and photographed by men, has a famously complex, and perhaps exploitative, relationship with the women who keep it in business. Unlike high street beauty products, luxury fashion doesn’t gratify women with slogans like “ ” — the fantasies it creates are often more punitive, masochistic almost, focussed as much on the absence of women as celebrating their presence. Because you’re worth it In 2016, for instance, Louis Vuitton used a drawing of the character Lightning from the game Final Fantasy in a campaign — and rather bafflingly sent this drawing out on the press circuit, to talk about “her” appointment. Louis Vuitton Print Ad (2016) The designer Nicolas Ghesquière welcomed this new two-dimensional representative by calling her: “the symbol of new pictorial processes. How can you create an image that goes beyond the classic principles of photography and design? Lightning heralds a new era of expression.” A new era of expression because, in case you missed it, she’s not a woman. She’s a drawing. And in this world where women have become expressions of men’s creativity, fashion bloggers and Instagram influencers have actually brought a kind of pseudo-candour to things. Their pictures — which look like real life only better, interspersed with motivational quotes and unlikely images of people eating pasta — have made fashion more intimate and personal — something that can be held and examined in the palm of your hand. Millions of women now have intimate, high-definition relationships with the lifestyles, faces and bodies of hundreds of women they have never met, and rich lives lived in Instagram comments. Images from Camille Charriére and Leandra Medine’s Instagram feeds Influencer told Vogue, “ .” Camille Charrière I know that if I want 8,000 likes on an Instagram post then I need to be wearing jeans and a T-shirt with Converse. In general, people like simplicity. They’re looking for reality, because that’s something they can emulate and buy into And buying they are. In 2017, the top 10 influencers reached an audience , and e-commerce referrals from them have started to . about the size of Canada dominate mobile traffic to big name fashion stores Which means that for many women, the screen — which is controllable, editable, filterable — is becoming more representative than the street. Even 10 years ago it made sense for a street-style photographer like Bill Cunningham to cycle around New York, taking photos to predict coming trends; now the same is achieved by liking pictures on Instagram, with the added bonus that you can “shop the look” with just a tap or two of the your finger. But the crux, of course, is that the “reality” people are buying into is as much an alternate reality as any virtual world or magazine shoot. The lens of the influencer is positioned a selfie-stick away from real life and is managed by algorithms, filtered by software and powered by likes. Which means, ultimately, that your favourite influencer is no more or less authentic than your favourite brand of deodorant. But in the aftermath of , it makes perfect sense that women might want a protected world that looks and feels a bit better than reality. There’s something safer about engineered spontaneity, something more trustworthy about a woman’s gaze and the reassurance of her personal brand. #metoo Never mind that we’ll never know how she took that , or that most people put on trousers before lying on their kitchen counter to drink coffee. It’s a safe escape in a reckless world, like an all-inclusive holiday at a gated resort. plandid Which brings me to the last area: women wearing make-up Make-up is in some ways more democratic than fashion. You can’t afford those fancy shoes, but you can still do flicky eyeliner, and if you need to brush up on your skills — well, there are . 11 million YouTube tutorials to help you out “Putting your face on” is a culturally normative part of women’s armoury, and both the ceremony and the results of applying make-up have extended from the real world to its digital alternatives. While women are still barely visible in most areas of public life, YouTube hums with the technical knowledge and skills of millions of women who authoritatively share their expertise about their hair, make-up and skin care. When you see a woman put on her make-up while standing up on a busy commuter train, the rhythms and routines are second nature. She’s holding the mirror almost out of force of habit, not even because she needs to see the shapes her hands are making. And photo-editing apps translate this casual optimisation — “like you, on a good day” — from your real-life human face to the screen. Facetuning out your eyebags isn’t such a big deal if you’ve worn Touche éclat every day of your adult life, just as adding a cat filter in Snapchat isn’t *that* weird if you’ve ever applied white eyeliner to the pink bit in your inner eye to look “more awake” (pro tip: don’t do this). These micro-optimisations are no more than digital reflections of the ways women hide their imperfections and project their “best self”. FaceTune, before and after. But what seems interesting is the way the online and offline worlds are colliding. Cosmetic companies have been quick to make products that . You can buy foundation that somehow makes your face blurrier, glowier and brighter, and the continuing popularity of contouring is at least partly because, as fashion blogger Leandra Medine says, it makes you look like “ ”. copy the affordances of Instagram filters a perpetually filtered, better version of yourself For many women, these micro labours aren’t new tasks but a seamless continuation of their off-line lives. If you “put your face on” to pop out to the shops, why wouldn’t you do the same to pop up on Instagram or Facebook? But just because it’s easy, does it mean it’s good? Probably one of the biggest downsides is the even closer coupling of personal identity with consumerism. Shopping a look or clicking through from a sponsored post are not that different to going to TopShop with your friends. There’s a feeling of intimacy and friendship from sharing in something that someone you respect has recommended. The feeling of belonging, of being in a gang when you’re really sitting on the bus on your own. And the trails and trails of data that we’ve left behind. The insecurities we’ve shared with our photo editing apps, the obsessions that only Instagram Discover really knows you have — these are all grist to the ad targeting that might just help to reinforce the insecurities you came to Instagram to hide from. And where does this all end? Like so many things, probably with Amazon. The Amazon Echo Look might be the singularity of the fashion Internet. It’s an Amazon Echo with a camera that tells you if you look nice. Echo Look promotional film Using machine learning and a panel of experts, Alexa will not only keep you on trend but make sure you’re wearing the most flattering outfit. “How do I look?” (or variants thereof) is one of the most complex questions a person can ask. It depends on context, taste, norms, and requires bucketloads of sensitivity. It could mean will I stand out, will I get the job, will that person fancy me, should I wear a bra, or a hundred things more. It’s a question millions of significant others have got wrong on an average Saturday night — and not because they lacked the right data points. But also, training data for the “most flattering look” needs to come from somewhere. What’s the canonical data set for “do I look better in pink or red?” or “do these trousers go too far up my bum?” , machine learning , and . No two retailers can decide on the dimensions of a size 12 finds it difficult to deal with race Fat is a Feminist Issue Amazon publicity image Asking Alexa how you look is a bit like asking it who’s winning an argument, or to rate your self worth. It’s a subjective question that depends on context and is laden with nuance. Checking back with an algorithm that gives you a percentage, like a school assignment, assumes it’s possible or desirable to look 100%, and that . That we’re rateable by Robots, and can be gazed upon and judged by them in unremarkable, everyday ways. everyone has a score So to end, what I worry that the Woman’s Gaze won’t stick for around long enough to become a cultural artefact — that it will have popped up for long enough to make enough data for robots to understand. It seems possible that the liberation of the Woman’s Gaze might be very fleeting indeed.

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