Amelia Bedelia, Meet Samuel Alito - What the Supreme Court Justice’s leaked draft opinion reveals about originalism. - link
DeafBlind Communities May Be Creating a New Language of Touch - Protactile began as a movement for autonomy and a system of tactile communication. Now, some linguists argue, it is becoming a language of its own. - link
What the “Life of the Mother” Might Mean in a Post-Roe America - “We are going to see more deaths and more injuries,” Ghazaleh Moayedi, an ob-gyn in Dallas, said. “I don’t have to speculate about that at all.” - link
Trump Brings His Big Lie Playbook to the G.O.P. Primaries - Tuesday was a mixed bag for candidates endorsed by the former President, who is making fresh suggestions of election fraud. - link
Lalo Alcaraz and the Long Journey of a Latino Political Cartoonist - Does winning a prestigious award mean that Alcaraz is now accepted by the mainstream? - link
From Vox
One Good Thing: Watching the cherry blossoms in the end times -
A visitor taking pictures of blooming cherry trees at a farm of the Flower Association of Japan in Yuki, northeastern Ibaraki prefecture. | Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images
The Japanese tradition of hanami is the highlight of every spring.
For outsiders who can’t resist the urge to make sweeping generalizations that will later prove highly embarrassing, Japan provides particularly dangerous ground. As someone who spent parts of 2006 and 2007 as a foreign correspondent in Tokyo, I should know.
It’s a culture that seems to carry over practices virtually unchanged over millennia, yet embraces the new relentlessly, an island nation that dwelled in enforced isolation for centuries, yet eagerly adapted the foreign when available, from shock doctrine Western industrialization after the Meiji Restoration in 1868 to the packs of leather-clad, 1950s-style rockers I would see gathering in Yoyogi park on Sunday afternoons. Land of contrasts and all that. Tread carefully here, and know the many, many things you don’t know.
But there are certain aspects of Japan that are clear to anyone, even a young reporter on his first night in the country, dropped off the Narita Airport shuttle at the lobby of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. One of those things is the coming of the cherry blossoms. Every spring on Japan’s four main islands, from the bottom reaches of Kyushu to the southern tip of Hokkaido, the country pauses to witness the sakura, the brief flowering of the cherry blossoms. It’s a moment, a few days at most, when a country that otherwise feels as though it is in perpetual motion, comes to a halt to engage in hanami— gathering to see the blossoms, well, blossom.
You could say that the cherry blossom is the national symbol of Japan, and while you would be trespassing into cliché, you wouldn’t be wrong, exactly. Saga was the first Japanese emperor to organize a hanamigathering early in the 9th century AD, and the “Tale of Genji,” perhaps the world’s first novel, includes scenes of aristocrats celebrating hanami. In 1594, the great Shogun Hideyoshi Toyotomi held a five-day hanami party for 5,000 attendees in Yoshino, part of a tradition that would continue, spring after spring, to the current day.
Each year as the winter dwindles, Japanese look to the sakura zensen, the cherry blossom report, to know when and where the trees will flower. Advance notice is critical — in a normal year, more than 60 million people will travel to and within Japan to view the bloom, pumping some $2.7 billion into the economy, according to an analysis from Kansai University. Much of that will be spent by Japanese companies hosting corporate hanamiparties for employees. As the sakuraseason begins, you can see the most junior workers, tasked with securing a picnic spot for the office hanami, flocking to 1,000 cherry blossom viewing spots around the country so their superiors can eat and drink in full view of the trees.
And why do they come? Perhaps like the 17th-century haiku master Matsuo Basho, they wish to engage in mono no aware, the art of appreciating impermanence, symbolized by the flowers that bloom each year in a momentary brilliance of white and pink, before falling to the earth. “How many, many things / they call to mind / These cherry blossoms! / Very brief —”
Or perhaps, as I did in my one very brief Tokyo spring, they come for the party. During that one week in spring, in the capital’s comparatively few parks — per person, Tokyoites enjoy perhaps a quarter of the greenery of a resident of New York or London — the sakurashow off with a riot of color that offsets the concrete and the neon. There’s no better place to be than beneath those airy boughs on an April evening, drinking sake and beer with colleagues and friends.
Yet one does not need to have the soul of Basho to know that there is something special about the blossoming. Yes, the blossoms are beautiful not just in themselves but in their brevity, a fact which they remind us of when they inevitably fall to the ground after the bottles and the bento boxes have been cleared. “If the cherry blossom can still be relied upon to bloom at a specific time, it can also be relied upon to die soon after,” the novelist Hanya Yanagihara wrote in 2019. “For 51 weeks, one waits, and within seven days at most, one is consigned to waiting once more.”
The turning of the seasons provide rhythm and meaning in Japan, with its “rigorous and distinct sense of aesthetics, one that has been founded on a celebration of seasonality.” So many of my memories of my time in Japan are tied to the seasons: the turning of the autumn leaves as I walked the temples of Kyoto with my mother; the snowflakes coating the grounds of the Imperial Palace one winter evening; the paper lanterns of the Obon festival glowing along a Tokyo alleyway on a hot August night. And yes, hanamiin the spring, always in the spring.
It’s not the seven days of bloom that give hanamiits significance, but the 51 weeks of waiting on either side — waiting, but knowing the time will return, as it always has. The blossoming may be brief, but the oldest of the trees can live for centuries or even longer. Through earthquakes, tsunamis, revolutions, and war, the trees have their turn, as reliable as the spinning of the Earth.
Which is why what has happened to the sakuraseason in recent years is so disquieting. In 2020 and 2021, pandemic restrictions closed Japan to foreign tourists and halted hanamiparties, the latter a loss that Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike compared to “taking hugs away from Italians.” Restrictions in the capital were finally lifted this spring, just a few days before the trees reached full blossom on March 22, providing a long- needed dose of normality, even as omicron-driven case counts drifted upward.
Sakurafaces a longer-term threat: climate change. Cherry trees require a month of winter temperatures below 41 degrees Fahrenheit to fully bloom. As the climate has warmed in Japan, the timing of the blossoming has altered, possibly even delaying some flowering. But in Kyoto last year, the peak bloom was the earliest on record in some 1,200 years, due to early spring heat. One study of Washington, DC’s own iconic cherry trees — a gift from the Japanese government more than a century ago — estimated that with moderate warming, peak bloom could be five days earlier by the 2050s and 10 days earlier by the 2080s.
All is change in the world, as the Buddha said, and to experience hanami is to appreciate that beauty is inseparable from impermanence. But what comforts the ache of witnessing the blossoms is the promise that they will return again and again. Should that be lost, then all we will have left is loss.
For more recommendations from the world of culture, check out the One Good Thing archives.
Why must we pay to have a slightly less miserable time at the airport? -
Travelers wait in a long queue at the security checkpoint of Orlando International Airport the day before the Thanksgiving holiday on November 24, 2021. | Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
TSA PreCheck, Clear, and how the airport splits travelers into haves and have-nots.
As a general rule, the airport is not fun. And this summer, as people prepare to get back out there and airline travel nears pre-pandemic levels, it could be even more of a mess. You can make the ordeal a little less miserable and a little bit quicker if you’re willing to pay for it. Even then, you might not be successful.
Of all the tasks one undertakes during air travel, navigating the security line is among the worst. It is a simultaneously mundane and stressful undertaking; The waiting is deeply boring, and the thought something might go awry and you’ll miss your flight is deeply annoying. Luckily! You have options to try to cut down on time, jump to the front of the line, or go to a different line altogether. Unluckily! Those options are going to cost you.
You may very well decide those costlier options are worth it, especially if you travel a lot. (I have TSA PreCheck, which I’ll talk about later, and I greatly enjoy it.) But that you’re inclined to pay at all points to a bigger issue: Across the economy, there are all sorts of ways for certain people to pay to skip the line, dividing consumers in a vaguely dehumanizing way. The consumer experience has become so bad that letting people try to pay to get around it is a viable business model.
At the airport, travelers are split into microgroups of haves and have-nots based on what they’re willing to fork over, not only in the security line but also at the gate and where they sit on the plane. Instead of letting some people pay to get ahead, wouldn’t it be better if the whole ordeal were just improved for everyone?
Having to wait a little bit longer at the airport isn’t the end of the world, but the situation is far from ideal. According to one analysis of the country’s biggest airports, depending on the time of day and the day of the week, security wait times can stretch well over 30 minutes at peak times at airports such as Newark, Miami International, and Boston Logan. Not fun, indeed.
The stratification of the security line
There are many ways you can pay to jump the line at the airport. As the Washington Post explains, you can pay hundreds of dollars to book concierge services that escort you around. But I’m going to focus on a pair of more common (and domestic) options:TSA PreCheck and Clear, both of which let you move a little faster, albeit in different ways.
TSA PreCheck, launched in 2013, is an expedited screening program. You stand in a separate line and get to avoid some of the most annoying parts of dealing with the regular screening — for instance, you get to keep your shoes on and don’t have to take your laptop out of your bag. (Why anyone still has to take their shoes off at all in the security line is a question for another day.) It costs $85 to apply and, once you’re approved, it lasts for five years. At $17 a year, that’s not a bad deal.
Clear is a private company that verifies identity using biometrics. It’s not available everywhere yet — it’s in about 40 airports — but it’s growing. How it works is members go to a kiosk to get their eyes, fingers, or faces scanned, and once that happens, a Clear “ambassador” escorts them to the front of the TSA line. It costs $179 a year, so compared to PreCheck it’s quite a bit pricier.
Zach Griff, who covers the travel industry for The Points Guy, recommends getting both Clear and PreCheck for the fastest experience in the airport line. He also acknowledges it’s expensive, coming in at about $200 a year total. To people who can’t or don’t want to pay, it’s also not super fair. “There’s no question that Clear kind of stratifies the security line based on means and how often you’re traveling,” he said.
Delta and United Airlines have made investments in Clear; it’s a way for them to give some of their customers a better experience. American Airlines, thus far, has eschewed working with the company. “They’ve repeatedly said that they’d rather invest in services and technologies that are easily accessible to more people,” Griff said.
Both services can be nice for people who have them, but they are a Band-Aid for a bigger problem, which is long security lines and a chronically underfunded, understaffed TSA. The first iteration of Clear went into bankruptcy, in part because TSA was able to cut down line wait times, explained Michael Restovich, senior adviser at global security firm Command Consulting Group and former assistant administrator of security operations at TSA.
Clear also divides travelers in a way that can feel a little gross. If you haven’t bought the service and you’ve been at an airport where Clear is in business, you may have noticed a member cutting in front of you in the security line. Or maybe a Clear ambassador has approached you while you wait frustrated in the regular line, trying to see if your current level of desperation will serve as a selling point. Maybe you think that everyone could move faster if the regular and TSA PreCheck lines were just evenly distributed, or that everybody, TSA PreCheck and not, might be fine keeping on their belts. Not a huge deal, but bothersome.
The situation isn’t always ideal for the people paying.
Because Clear isn’t available everywhere, passengers sometimes still wind up waiting in a bit of a line. “There might be two or three people that are waiting to put their bag on the belt to go through, you don’t necessarily go in front of them,” said Ken Lisaius, vice president of public affairs and communications at Clear. He also noted that Clear offers a free service to reserve a time at the security line in some airports.
The more people get PreCheck, the less advantageous it becomes as those lines get just as long as the regular ones. Moreover, just because you pay for PreCheck doesn’t mean you’ll always get it. Sometimes you get put into the normal line anyway for security reasons because TSA doesn’t want people getting expedited screening every time. In other words, people with TSA PreCheck aren’t always promised the benefits they’re signing up for.
“It’s a shame that they charge $85,” Restovich said. “I think probably if people were willing to submit their application online, it ought to be for nothing. It ought to be if you are cleared.”
“A lot of passengers, I think, get confused thinking that if you’re buying through the problem you’re always going to be TSA PreCheck, and that’s not true,” said Maxel Shabay Izquierdo, a vice president at TSA Council 100, which represents TSA officers. “We like the actual algorithm of unpredictability.” In other words, part of TSA’s approach to security is that passengers don’t exactly know what measures they will and won’t face when they’re at the airport.
But then again, people often find things big and small to get upset about at the airport. “Something’s always going to tick them off,” Izquierdo said. He also pointed out there’s a reason people are recommended to go to the airport early. “There could be lines. Lines are inevitable.”
That being said, the conversation around why someone might want TSA PreCheck or Clear is a nuanced one, and it doesn’t always have to do with speed. Praveen, a 26-year-old law student whose last name has been withheld to protect his privacy, says he believes PreCheck has helped him avoid some risk of racial profiling. “I grew up in a post-9/11 world, so I always tried to mitigate my presence at airports. Let me try to get through this with the least amount of trouble,” he said. TSA Precheck “just expedited the process and gave less time for an issue to occur.” He says before paying for PreCheck in 2019, he got stopped almost every time he went to the airport.
You can pay your way to the front of the line because the line sucks
Price discrimination, where companies charge customers differently for pretty similar goods or services, is hardly a new phenomenon. It’s not limited to travel, though flying can feel particularly bad and opaque.
Time is a valuable commodity, and the economy has become so unequal and the consumer experience so deteriorated that people who can pay to save it do. One 2021 survey found that more than half of consumers are willing to pay for faster deliveries. According to 2018 research from PwC, customers say they were willing to pay up to a 16 percent premium for better service. In dealing with businesses and with the government, having less money — or being less willing to spend it — translates to a time suck. The people who can pay to skip the line or get the faster service do, and everyone else is forced to compete with what feels like a dwindling pool of resources.
The consumer isn’t really the villain here. It’s understandable — if you have the means — to want to pay to get to the front of the line if you can. Companies have also gotten very good at extracting money from people in exchange for something modestly better, or something that’s the same but faster. In places like the airport, this is on full display.
“The airlines have done a fantastic job of extracting revenue from conveniences. That is their business model whether we like it or not,” Griff said.
Would it be better if things were more equal and people didn’t feel tempted to spend for speed? Yes. In the meantime, most of us are stuck in the regular security line, looking over at the Clear people and wondering whether that $179 a year for a retina scan would be worth it after all.
We live in a world that’s constantly trying to sucker us and trick us, where we’re always surrounded by scams big and small. It can feel impossible to navigate. Every two weeks, join Emily Stewart to look at all the little ways our economic systems control and manipulate the average person. Welcome to The Big Squeeze.
Have ideas for a future column? Extra services you pay for that feel unfair, or something in the economy that’s just bugging you that you can’t quite put your finger on? Email emily.stewart@vox.com.
The future of 911 is a little bit creepy -
Phonemakers and carriers are developing new technologies that are meant to improve emergency response. | Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images
As the 911 system adapts to the age of cellphones, it’s gaining access to all kinds of new data, too.
Over the coming weeks, AT&T is rolling out cellphone location tracking that’s designed to route emergency calls to 911 more quickly. The company says the new feature will be nationwide by the end of June and should make it easier for, say, an ambulance to reach someone experiencing a medical emergency. At first glance, it seems like a no-brainer. But it’s also a reminder that as phone companies promise to save lives, they’re also using a lot more data about you in the process.
The AT&T upgrade is part of a broader effort to modernize the country’s approach to emergency response. T-Mobile has also started using location-based routing, and experts told Recode that the technology could eventually be universal. At the same time, the federal government is in the midst of a nationwide push to get 911 call centers to adopt a technology called Next Generation 911, which will allow people not only to call 911 but also to send texts including images and video messages — to the emergency line.
Meanwhile, Apple and Google have created new software that can directly pass on information from someone’s device, like information stored on a health app. The hope is that more data will save crucial time during emergencies, but privacy experts are already warning that the same technology could be misused or exploited.
“I just worry what happens the next time there’s a tragedy, the next time people are scared, and the next time there’s an opportunity to use this data in ways it was never intended,” Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), told Recode.
One of the main ways phone networks plan to use this data is to connect callers with the right 911 operator more quickly. Because the 911 system was designed to work with landlines, calls to 911 made via cellphones (mobile phones place the majority of 911 calls) sometimes get routed to the wrong 911 center. In places that use older technology, cellphones will generally connect to the 911 operator associated with the antenna on the cell tower that processes the call, not the 911 operator in the jurisdiction the person calling is currently in. When these calls are misdirected, it can sometimes take several minutes to be connected to the right dispatcher.
To address this problem, carriers are turning to the sensors in smartphones, like GPS, wifi antennas, accelerometers, and pressure sensors. Depending on the phone you have, either Apple or Google can then use these sensors to estimate your current location. (Google’s system is called Emergency Location Service, or ELS, and Apple’s system is called Hybridized Emergency Location, or HELO.) With AT&T’s and T-Mobile’s new systems, when someone makes a call to 911, the phone network will use this location estimate to make a best guess as to where someone is, and then connect the call to the right 911 operator. AT&T says the whole process should take about five seconds and is supposed to locate someone’s call within 50 meters of their actual location.
This isn’t the only data 911 centers have at their disposal. Apple already allows people to load their medical information — like what health conditions they have and medications they’re on — into their devices, and depending on the technology used by the jurisdiction you’re in, that info could be automatically sent to emergency responders when they dial 911. Some Apple Watch models also have a built-in fall detector that can dial 911 on its own.
Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has ordered carriers to start transmitting vertical location data in addition to horizontal location data, making it easier for first responders to identify what floor someone might be on in a multistory building during an emergency. And as the federal government rolls out Next Generation 911, it’s also laying the groundwork for 911 operators to collect data from other connected devices, like cars with certain crash notification systems, building sensors, and wearables. This is all in addition to a host of other changes that a growing number of the country’s thousands of 911 call centers have been slowly making: upgrading software, sharing and collecting more analytics, and just getting better training. The idea behind all of these updates is that, with more information, dispatchers can make better decisions about an unfolding situation.
“A lot of the underlying efforts around transforming 911 is really trying to help the current nation’s 911 system, prioritize health and safety for call takers and dispatchers, and really just trying to ensure that the right person is being dispatched at the right time,” explains Tiffany Russell, the mental health and justice partnerships project director at the Pew Charitable Trusts. “This police-first model is not necessarily the best response to handle these really complex problems or issues related to mental health.”
In an emergency, more information could be helpful, but there are also reasons to worry about 911 collecting additional data. Allowing 911 operators to receive image- and video-based messages could create new opportunities for racial bias, Russell points out, and texting may not be the most efficient way for an operator to communicate during an emergency. The 911 system has played a fundamental role in and contributed to some of American policing’s worst problems, including over-policing, racist police violence, and deeply flawed approaches to domestic violence and behavioral health.
Another growing concern is data privacy. While AT&T told Recode that location data is only used when a 911 call is in progress, there are circumstances where 911 operators can directly request that information from a carrier, even if the person who made the call has hung up, according to Brandon Abley, the director of technology at the National Emergency Number Association. There is no way for an individual user to disable the location information sent during 911 calls.
These concerns with the 911 system aren’t new. When the FCC rolled out enhanced 911 — an early program to improve the kind of information 911 operators receive about wireless callers — civil liberties organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warned about the risk that federal agencies could try to access the data created by the new technology, or it could end up in the wrong hands. A recent FBI guide to cellular data shows that law enforcement does sometimes try to collect data created by carriers’ enhanced 911 capabilities. It’s also abundantly clear that cellphone location data generally isn’t well protected. Agencies like the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have bought app-created location data on the open market, and as long as they have the right legal paperwork, law enforcement can reach out to any company that collects data about someone and ask for information.
“They are not responsible with our data, there are not proper assurances in the law to limit how they use it,” Andrés Arrieta, the director of consumer privacy engineering at EFF, told Recode. “Sometimes even when there are, they keep misusing it.”
These risks stand to get a lot more serious — and a lot murkier — as 911 centers across the country start receiving far more data from people’s devices. This could take some time, since 911 call centers are generally run on the local level and vary considerably in terms of the technology they use. Still, it’s critical to remember that even if a new service is designed or marketed as a new way to save lives, there’s no guarantee that’s the only way it will be deployed.
This story was first published in the Recode newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one!
From The Hindu: Sports
Spanish GP preview | Verstappen looks to use momentum to catch up with Leclerc - Max Verstappen’s consecutive wins has cut Charles Leclerc lead in the Formula One drivers standings, making the Spanish Grand Prix another exciting contest
Srikanth pulls out of Thailand Open, gives Nhat Nguyen a walkover in second round - Srikanth, seeded eighth, gave a walkover to his Irish rival Nhat Nguyen
Jofra Archer to miss entire summer of cricket for England - Jofra Archer will miss the entire summer of international cricket for England after a stress fracture to the lower back
Gabon releases Aubameyang’s letter announcing his international retirement - Barcelona striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang wrote to the Gabon federation that he was retiring from international football after 13 years of representing his country
Indian women's archery team wins recurve bronze at World Cup Stage 2 - The fifth-ranked Indian women’s recurve team of Ridhi Phor, Komalika Bari and Ankita Bhakat won the bronze medal at the Archery World Cup Stage 2 by defeating Chinese Taipei
From The Hindu: National News
Use Infra Fund and subsidy on drones, farmers told - Union Minister asks them to add value and brand their produce
S.M. Krishna asks CM to protect ‘Brand Bengaluru’ - Rain damage may send wrong message to investors who may take their investments to other states, says former CM
Action committee seeks probe into death of Abu Dhabi businessman - Statement of Haris’ mother recorded
Hardik Patel’s resignation scripted by BJP, says Gujarat PCC president - Gujarat Congress unit president Jagdish Thakor claimed Hardik Patel quit Congress fearing jail in sedition cases
IAS officers transferred in a minor reshuffle - Additional CEO Jyoti Buddha Prakash and Health Commissioner Vakati Karuna transferred
From BBC: Europe
Ukraine invasion could cause global food crisis, UN warns - UN chief Antonio Guterres warns that developing countries face disaster due to rising prices.
Russian soldier pleads guilty in first war crimes trial of Ukraine conflict - The 21-year-old admits killing an unarmed civilian, in Ukraine’s first war crimes trial since war began.
EU reveals its plans to stop using Russian gas - It will invest in pipelines in other countries but will speed up a shift to green energy.
Juan Carlos: Spain’s ex-king to return after two-year exile - Juan Carlos left Spain in 2020 after he was linked to an inquiry into alleged corruption.
Ivan Kuliak: Russian gymnast given one-year ban for wearing pro-war symbol on podium next to Ukrainian - Russian gymnast Ivan Kuliak is given a one-year ban for wearing a national war symbol on the podium at an event in Qatar in March.
From Ars Technica
Modular, DIY-friendly Framework Laptop gets updated with 12th-gen Intel CPUs - Laptop also gets structural upgrades and an optional 2.5Gbps LAN module. - link
HP’s new Spectre laptops include options with Intel Arc, less noise - HP Spectre laptops try out Intel discrete graphics, boosted webcams, new hues. - link
2 vulnerabilities with 9.8 severity ratings are under exploit. A 3rd looms - Security flaws in VMware and F5’s BIG-IP are being exploited by malicious hackers. - link
North Korea’s COVID outbreak hits over 1.7M; WHO is “deeply concerned” - Kim blamed the outbreak on officials’ “non-positive attitude, slackness, and non-activity.” - link
Apple details new iPhone features like door detection, live captions - The announcements were made to celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
I had an idea for a movie plot where a retired CIA agent searches for his kidnapped daughter in Paris. -
Turns out that idea was taken. I then had another idea for a movie where the same agent is kidnapped with his ex-wife in Istanbul, but it turns out that one was taken too.
