The College Hill Independent Vol. 37 Issue 8

Cover Art

Natasha Boyko

FROM THE EDITORS

NEWS 02

Week in Double Deals Roxanne Barnes & Mia Pattillo

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Angela Her-kel Allison Meakem METRO

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No House Left Unflipped Giacomo Sartorelli

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Incetives for Roaches Peder Schaefer ARTS

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Earth, Water, Air, Fire Flo Li

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Too Cool for School Liby Hays FEATURES

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Beyond Objectivity Jorge Palacios SCIENCE & TECH

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2 + 2 = Bias Griffin Kao CLIMATE

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Nationalize the Electron!

Harry August & Sara Van Horn BODY

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Lemon Bread Nicolaia Rips

Although we’ve had our differences, I’ve come to appreciate the spells of nostalgia induced by the changing of seasons.

A Los Angeleno who grew up in a constant and somewhat naive 75 degrees, Providence unfailingly reminds me of the passage of time as fall transitions to winter each year.

However, I’ve learned the past is never really past and collapsing temporality can be felt in the body. Time lingers around location, and a college campus feels especially heavy with it.

I am 21 years of existence walking down Brook Street with a pair of headphones on. A prism of self refracted into a spectrum of color: me at 15 strangely attached to the Virgin Suicides soundtrack playing now, me at 17 with long hair and bright eyes, me at 19 with no hair and tired eyes.

Even unborn and future selves join the parade, equally as confused as to what I’m doing here.

DPS stops me, indicating that the the sidewalk is closed for construction. Take your rainbow across the street.

—MV

LITERARY 12

Four Poems Eli Makovetsky

13

Four More Gemma Brand-Wolf

MISSION STATEMENT The College Hill Independent is a Providence-based publication written, illustrated, designed, and edited by students from Brown and RISD. We are committed to publishing politically engaged and accessible work. While the Indy is financed by Brown University, we hold ourselves accountable to our readers across the Providence community. The Indy rejects content that explicitly or implicitly perpetuates racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism and/or classism.

EPHEMERA 14

Though this list is not exhaustive, the Indy strives to address these systems of oppression by centering the voices, opinions, and efforts of marginalized people in Providence and beyond.

Fun Games Isabelle Rea

The Indy is constantly evolving: we are always working to make our staff and content more inclusive. Though our editing process provides an internal structure for accountability, we always welcome letters to the editor.

WEEK IN REVIEW Sara Van Horn NEWS Mara Dolan Lucas Smolcic Larson Paula Pacheco Soto METRO Jacob Alabab-Moser Harry August Ella Comberg

ARTS Isabelle Rea Marianne Verrone SCIENCE & TECH Mia Pattillo Julia Rock Eve Zelickson LITERARY Shuchi Agrawal Emma Kofman

FEATURES Tiara Sharma Wen Zhuang

EPHEMERA Nicole Cochary Claire Schlaikjer

BODY Pia Mileaf-Patel Cate Turner

X Maya Bjornson Maria Gerdyman

16 NOV 2018

VOL 37 ISSUE 07

LIST Alexis Gordon Signe Swanson Will Weatherly WRITERS Ben Bienstock Mica Chau Jessica Dai Eduardo Gutierrez-Peña Liby Hays Jorge Palacios Giacomo Sartorelli Ivy Scott Marly Toledano Kayli Wren COPY EDITORS Grace Berg Seamus Flynn Sarah Goldman Miles Guggenheim Matt Ishimaru Sojeong Lim

ILLUSTRATORS Natasha Brennan Natasha Boyko Julia Illana Jeff Katz Halle Krieger Katya Labowe-Stroll Sophia Meng Sandra Moore Rémy Poisson Katherine Sang Mariel Solomon Ella Rosenblatt Miranda Villanueva Alex Westfall ILLUSTRATION EDITORS Alex Hanesworth Eve O'Shea

DESIGNERS Pablo Herraiz Garcia de Guadiana Bethany Hung Amos Jackson Katherine Sang Ella Rosenblatt Christie Zhong DESIGN EDITOR Jack Halten Fahnestock BUSINESS Maria Gonzalez

SENIOR EDITORS Eliza Chen Katrina Northrop Signe Swanson Will Weatherly MANAGING EDITORS Olivia Kan-Sperling Chris Packs Erin West MVP Christie Zhong

WEB Ashley Kim

The College Hill Independent is printed

by TCI Press in Seekonk, Massachusetts.

WWW.THEINDY.ORG

@THEINDY_TWEETS

BY Roxanne Barnes, Mia Pattillo ILLUSTRATION Natasha Boyko DESIGN Bethany Hung

WEEK IN Flushing the Swamp Never in the history of electoral politics has the accusation “My opponent is full of shit” been used more literally. Of all of the political name-calling that candidates engaged in this past election cycle, no race involved quite as much potty-language as the contest for Illinois governor. Just before his election to the Illinois governorship this past Tuesday, J.B. Pritzker pledged $330,000 to the city of Chicago to repay a tax break.

He had received this dump of good fortune after intentionally disabling all the toilets in one of his multiple Chicago homes in order to declare the home legally ‘uninhabitable.’

The Inspector General released the report in October, and officially recommended the money be returned, but made no comment about the official ‘fraud’ designation of the tax dodge, or about contacting authorities to force the then gubernatorial candidate to return the money. Though Pritzker quickly promised the money back, his opponent, Former Governor Bruce Rauner, a millionaire himself, wasted no time incorporating the issue into his campaign.

The language of the campaign quickly deteriorated after the Attorney General’s information dropped, in what became a bizarre battle between a multimillionaire and a billionaire for the votes of middle class Illinoisans. Dubbing Pritzker the “Porcelain Prince of tax evasion,” Rauner stated in a speech in October, “A man who ripped toilets out of his Chicago mansion to dodge his property taxes won’t work to reduce your taxes.”

Legislatively, Democrat J.B. Pritzker is an advocate for the working family. Pritzker plans to raise the state’s minimum wage, increase labor union power in government, and expand Medicare to cover all Illinoisans.

Although Pritzker’s outlook reflects a sympathetic policymaker, Pritzker and his wife––both heirs to the Hyatt hotels fortune––are worth $3.2 billion. The kind of mentality that justifies removing all of a house’s toilets so it’s reassessed at a lower value is definitely a mentality a bit clogged up with cash.

In an attempt to flush the Democrat out, Rauner has run ads dramatizing the tax break, with actors dismantling bathrooms in a large mansion with the slogan “Pritzker’s Plumbing,” and former Illinois Republican chairman Pat Brady hosted a press conference surrounded by prop toilets. Eager to keep the accusation rooted in what Rauner considered a serious fraud issue, though, the former Governor stated, “This is not a joke. This is not funny. This is not about pink toilets versus purple toilets. You know what this is about? Corruption.” As a counter, Pritzker claimed that he was simply following pre-existing rules, blaming holes in the property tax system.

Pritzker did promise to repay the money, even though he stands by the fact that Cook County didn’t technically classify the tax break as fraud. As a general rule, something which J.B. Pritzker has learned the hard way, one should never be on less steady moral ground than the guy carrying around prop toilets. Although Pritzker managed to keep his campaign from spiraling down the drain this November, the Independent hopes Pritzker won’t be as shitty of a legislator as he was a taxpayer.

DOUBLE-DEALS Double Trouble Twin sisters Monica Sparks and Jessica Ann Tyson may look identical, but only one clinched the spot on a western Michigan county board last Tuesday. If anything can help us from seeing double, it’s their opposing politics: Sparks is a Democrat and will be serving as Kent County Commissioner, while Tyson is a Republican who came in second place. Sparks abhors Trump, while Tyson lauds him. But Sparks may have to thank her sister for this spot; it was only after Tyson declared her candidacy that she decided to run as well.

“My sister is, in many ways, an inspiration,” Sparks said.

This is not Tyson’s first attempt at the county board.

After watching her sister try, fail, and try again, Sparks decided that she might be able to achieve where her sister had flopped. Perhaps this was yet another jab in a long-standing twinial feud. Did Tyson get the bigger bedroom when they moved into the new house? Had she been swooping in on Sparks’s crushes since middle school?

The twin sisters, who had been separated briefly before their adoption, became separated once more— now, in their political ideologies. Sparks prioritizes mental health and continuation of services, while Tyson is more concerned with infrastructure and schools. Despite this separation of paths, “we are not divided,” Sparks said. Admittedly, “divided” does generally imply an equality between the subjects whereas “separation” does not.

If we thought Thanksgiving dinner made us question our hereditary relationships, then we can only imagine what sort of trial this campaign trail—and their respective positions across the aisle—served for the twin sisters. But contrary to the conventional quarrel with our “socially liberal, economically conservative” cousin, this dramatic split in political views never created a rift in the twins’ relationship. “The left and

right wing belong to the same bird,” the twins said in unison. The Independent struggles to understand this analogy.

In all seriousness, the fact that two twin sisters were able to represent their respective parties and run against each other speaks volumes to the surge of female candidates this past election season. It is only tragic that gender equality must come at the cost of sibling equality, an inverse relationship no statistics model could have ever predicted.

Growing up, the twins never knew which parties their parents identified with. Perhaps this was intentional. Perhaps the parents knew that one day, the twins might split political paths, one running as a Democrat and the other as a Republican. And with all the grace and self control of parents who follow Parenting 101 books and try their very best to treat their children equally, the twins could never, and would never, know just which child was more favored in this election.

The Independent, on the other hand, is no parent.

Given the choice, we would probably concur with Kent County and deem Sparks the better twin, too. We would also probably try to find a bird with only a left wing.

-MP

-RB

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

WEEK IN REVIEW

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THROUGH

This article is the first installment of a month-long than getting rid of every internal combustion engine series,“Through the Muck,” tackling climate change in and gas furnace. Second, most paths to full decarbonRhode Island. ization require converting our cars and furnaces to electric, and then greening the electricity that powers Everyone in Rhode Island—from environmental activ- them. As more and more of transportation and heating ists to utility companies—is theoretically in agreement: energy comes from the electric grid as well, the stakes we must decarbonize our state’s energy system by of greening the electric grid are only amplified. mid-century. Decarbonization—think wind turbines, So where are we now? And where do we need solar panels, and electric cars—involves replacing the to go? According to the US Energy Information coal, oil, and natural gas we use to produce electricity, Administration, Rhode Island gets only seven percent heat our buildings, and power our vehicles with renew- of its electricity from renewable sources, and most of able energy. The why is easy: even National Grid, a the renewable energy comes, not from solar panels and private company with an almost complete monopoly windmills, but a biogas facility at the Johnston landfill. on Rhode Island’s natural gas distribution, has said In Rhode Island, 90 percent of electricity comes from that “climate change threatens our quality of life and natural gas­—the largest proportion of any state. While the livability of planet earth.” many espouse the environmental benefits of natural The how promises to be much more complicated. gas as a low emission “bridge” from coal to renewThe Rhode Island Division of Public Utilities and able energy, the fuel does not present a viable option Carriers, the government body tasked with regulating for clean energy. Natural gas only releases slightly the state’s energy companies, envisions decarboniza- less greenhouse gasses and reinforces our depention as reforming our current system, relying on tech- dence on fossil fuel infrastructure. To keep a reasonnological innovation and incentivized markets to clean able chance of staying within two degrees Celsius of up the grid. In sharp contrast, the George Wiley Center, warming (according to the Intergovernmental Panel a social and economic justice advocacy group in on Climate Change) we need to get to net zero emisPawtucket, is partnering with the Providence chapter sions by 2050—meaning that the electricity sector, the of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) to fastest and easiest to decarbonize, should be one of our demand the nationalization of the utility grid to democ- top priorities. ratize and decarbonize how electricity is produced and delivered. But solving the energy crisis does not simply +++ mean keeping carbon out of the air; it can also address the urgent crisis of energy affordability and utility shut- “Fundamentally, the utility model in New England is offs in Rhode Island. As Thea Riofrancos, co-chair of broken,” Macky McCleary, administrator of the Rhode the Providence DSA told the College Hill Independent, Island Division of Public Utilities and Carriers (DPU), these two issues are inextricably intertwined: “The told the College Hill Independent. As administrator of profit model that drives the shut-off crisis is the same the DPU, McCleary heads the agency that regulates model that drives the climate crisis.”

National Grid and oversees the process for determining energy rates. Like climate change, the pace of +++ the collapsing utility model is “glacial,” he said. “You don’t notice the creeping problem.”

Electricity production comprises only 20 percent of all To understand the true scale of this issue, we have carbon emissions in New England (cars, trucks, and to consider the highly regulated utility business in heating homes together make up 60 percent), meaning Rhode Island. For much of the 20th century, selling that greening our grid is not the be-all and end-all of electrons was much like selling water: a company was tackling climate change. But there are two compel- compensated by the number of units it sold, e.g. gallons ling reasons for the state to focus on it: first, the elec- of water or kilowatt hours of energy, and the more tric grid is the lowest hanging fruit. Installing solar energy people used, the more money the company panels and windmills is, for the most part, a lot easier made. In the past few decades, however, regulators

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have encouraged energy conservation by “decoupling” National Grid’s profit from the exact number of electrons sold.

Instead, National Grid now profits by building transmission infrastructure like power lines, generators, and telephone poles. As Mackay Miller, Director of US Strategy for National Grid, told the Indy, National Grid buys energy from independent power producers and passes it on to customers without a profit; in return, the DPU pays National Grid nine-percent interest on its infrastructure projects. “Our incentives are to add capital to the rate base,” Miller told the Indy, meaning that National Grid is incentivized to build those power lines and generators even when these projects are not in the best interest of the public—or the climate.

According to a report by Acadia Center, a local clean energy advocacy group, National Grid’s business model is “increasingly at odds with new technologies that can optimize the energy system.” Many cheap and green energy solutions—like rooftop solar panels or in-home batteries—create no extra revenue for National Grid. And because they decrease the amount of energy that people need to buy from National Grid, they actually undercut the company’s profit in the long term.

Because of huge investments in these efficient technologies by homeowners and state regulators, the demand for energy from National Grid is plateauing in Rhode Island—slowly undercutting the entire privatized utility model. This is McCleary’s “creeping problem”—a green energy future is incompatible with a utility model that depends on building more and more.

“So you end up having to bend over backwards,” said McCleary, creating more complicated regulatory systems, like decoupling, that try to align the interests of society with those of National Grid. Yet to community groups like the George Wiley Center, this privatized model is the root of the problem. +++ Beyond concerns of decarbonization and incentives, the utility model is broken in a much more urgent and damaging way. This is palpable at the George Wiley Center’s weekly meetings, where staff provide advice to those facing utility shut offs. Often, the Center doesn’t have enough chairs to seat everyone seeking assistance, Executive Director Camilo Viveiros told the Indy. In 2016 alone, National Grid shut off the electricity of 18,511 households in Rhode Island (in a state of only around 400,000 households).

Last Wednesday, four women attended the meeting, each of whom brought shut-off notices from National Grid. One woman at the meeting, Lisa, who asked to be identified only by her first name, is facing over $5,000 in unpaid bills to National Grid and was scheduled for a formal hearing with the company the next day. After a recent death in the family, requiring Lisa to pay for funeral arrangements out of pocket, and enrolling her youngest child in college, Lisa could not afford her energy bills. The payment plan that National Grid offered, Lisa told the Indy, still required an $800 down payment, which she cannot afford. If she can’t convince the company to reduce this amount, Lisa told the Indy she will have to get a second job on the weekends and make her son work outside of classes to avoid having her heat shut off for the winter. “My story is no

16 NOV 2018

BY Harry August, Sara Van Horn ILLUSTRATION Natasha Brennan DESIGN Ella Rosenblatt

THE WIRE Competing visions for a carbon-free electricity grid

different from everyone else’s,” she said. “They make you feel intimidated and belittled. I felt as if they were asking, ‘What do you do with all your money?’”

Another woman at the meeting, Destiny, could not afford to pay her entire energy bill after her second child was born and instead just paid what she could afford each month, usually between $100-150. Until recently, because Destiny’s child was under two years old, she qualified for the infant protection that prevented National Grid from shutting off her utilities. Now that her child is three, this no longer applies, and all of the bills that have accumulated in the past two years are due. Destiny received a notice that she will be shut off this week, and tried to explain her situation to National Grid. “They said it didn’t matter. They don’t care. They just wanted to shut me off,” she told the Indy. “It’s embarrassing. They make it seem like its my fault.”

To Viveiros, this is an outrage. Access to utilities “is a basic human right,” he told told the Indy. “We’re not shy about looking at the root cases of the problem, and it’s clear that anything that is profitized, anything that is commodified, should not be the approach to the problem.” Furthermore, from a public policy standpoint, the system does not make sense: “When people are shut off and forced into a nursing home, who pays for that? That’s the taxpayers. If a family and their kids are taken away from them because their utilities are shut off, who pays for that? The taxpayers. And if someone is forced into a shelter because their utilities are off, who pays for that? So for all of these things, we are subsidizing for the benefit of National Grid making $40 billion and exporting that to the CEOs in the UK.” +++ The DSA envisions a utility system that is localized, publicly-owned, and democratically-controlled. They outline an energy model that prioritizes decarbonization by eliminating the incentives that perpetuate the use of coal, oil, and natural gas while also stopping shut offs. “There are two pieces to thinking about energy injustice, and they are interconnected,” said Thea Riofrancos, co-chair of the Providence DSA. “One is the affordability issue, and the other is the energy system model. Both of those need to be addressed.”

Because renewable energy—like wind farms and deep water sources—are tied to specific localities, production would be distributed and administrative power decentralized, perhaps with municipalities controlling their own generation of electricity.

While the DSA has not drafted a specific plan for this model, (they started the campaign in 2017 and are “sort of inventing it or proposing it as [they] go along,” says Riofrancos), many models of public ownership do exist. In fact, about a third of electricity customers in the US are served by not-for-profit utilities (including the around 5,000 customers of the Pascoag Utility District in Rhode Island). And while public ownership does not guarantee that people will support clean energy, three of the greenest utility providers in the country (Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Austin Energy, and LA District Water and Power) are municipally run, Miller of National Grid wrote in an email.

Here in Rhode Island, where support for environmental initiatives are high, pushing for renewable energy will be much easier under a democratically-controlled energy system.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

The Rhode Island Division of Public Utilities and Carriers (DPU) offers a competing vision for how to extricate our state economy from the heavily-subsidized fossil fuel industry. While the DSA calls for full socialization to address both climate change and energy injustice, the DPU’s action plan relies on tweaking existing market structures. Administrator McCleary positions his vision for a clean energy revolution as one that is inevitable, but that will only happen fast enough with a nudge, or perhaps a good shove, from regulators like himself. “There’s no way that renewables don’t win,” he told the Indy, “you can’t beat someone who doesn’t pay for fuel.” At the same time, however, McCleary was clear that “The market is not God. It is up to the people to make sure it does the things that it should do.” This market optimism is certainly a deviation from the panic-inducing climate rhetoric increasingly peddled since the IPCC report. But considering the fundamental problems that set National Grid against long-term decarbonization and the radical, rapid transformation required, McCleary’s optimism rests on shaky ground. Even if the market does favor renewables, this optimism in technology and incentives doesn’t necessarily address the current injustices, like rate hikes and shut-offs, within the energy market.

A fundamental difference between the DSA’s and McCleary’s competing visions is simply whether a private company should be profiting off of delivering a basic need to customers in Rhode Island. Because National Grid has a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, they are guaranteed a profit margin, resulting in higher rates for ratepayers and, often, disregard for those suffering from shut offs: “They answer to shareholders, not to citizens,” said Riofrancos. But to McCleary and Miller (the strategy director of National Grid), having a privately-owned utility allows for increased access to capital markets, providing more available finances for large infrastructure projects.

McCleary told the Indy, “it’s actually quite easy to have utilities do stuff, you just have to pay them to do it.”

There is also the question of democratic participation, or the lack thereof, under the existing profitized model. “Utility regulation is not, in fact, democratic.

It is open and transparent,” McCleary explained, “but it is impossible for a democratic process to make engineering decisions.” According to McCleary, this lack of democratic participation does not necessarily exclude public input: “utilities are like unvoted forms of government. Fundamentally, they have to bend to the people’s will.” His argument, however, rests on the assumption that the people of Rhode Island exert some control over utility regulation—something many activists working on utility justice would reject. Citizens’ only access to the DPU is through public hearings, which are often not well advertised. As Riofrancos of the DSA said to the Indy, “the hearings exist, but no one knows about them. The people who know about them are National Grid lawyers.” McCleary also echoed these concerns, stressing to the Indy that National Grid has “dozens and dozens of lawyers to participate in these proceedings and we have three.”

The two visions also differ in their approach to ensuring that the energy transition is fair and that basic needs are delivered to all Rhode Islanders. Public ownership, the DSA believes, is the only ethical means of controlling access to utilities which constitute fundamental human rights. “Energy, gas and electricity,”

said Riofrancos, “are part of the many basic needs that individuals have. It doesn’t make sense for a private company to control something as basic as water, something that we need to power our lives.” McCleary and the DPU share the concerns of low-income customers, but prioritize the reduction of utility cost by designing an economic transition efficient that doesn’t cost Rhode Islanders an enormous amount of money.

“We know that a transformation is occurring,” said McCleary. “The regulators job is to reduce the cost of that transformation.”

For these reasons, and despite his conviction that the utility system is deeply misguided (“It’s obvious”), McCleary is not calling for a radically new energy system. “One of the biggest misconceptions,” he told the Indy, “is that you need to burn down the entire existing system in order to build a new one.” While Riofrancos may indeed see this as the eventual goal, “I am not someone who believes the revolution is coming tomorrow. I am completely in favor of reforms along the way,” she told Indy. “I would love to see National Grid allow people to only pay a portion of their income and have 80 percent no carbon by 2040. That would be great.” But, she said, “National Grid would resist that every step of the way.” +++ To combat this resistance from National Grid and fight for reforms that protect Rhode Island’s most vulnerable, those fighting for a carbon-free grid must build a coalition that prioritizes low-income and working-class Rhode Islanders. “We want to increasingly shift environmentalists to not concede to framing narrow, fault-based, market-based solutions,” Vivieros said to the Indy, solutions that leave out immediate justice concerns. “We are trying to stitch together some of those concerns that have been historically isolated from one other,” agreed Riofrancos.

Eliminating the for-profit model means building a movement strong enough to confront a crisis deeply entrenched in our economic system; that movement would unite environmentalists with advocates for economic and social justice. “It’s not even an option to ignore that kind of coalition building,” said Vivieros.

“It’s going to take a long time and we need a long term vision that’s going to be bold and creative enough.”

Transforming the energy grid in Rhode Island alone “can’t really do much in terms of having a global impact on the climate issue,” McCleary told the Indy.

“But what we can do is lead. We can show other states that it’s possible to deliver outcomes and improve quality of life at the same time.” Furthermore, Rhode Island is geographically prepared to take charge: it boasts a coastline ripe for wind energy, yet imports all of its fossil fuels from out of state. “It’s completely absurd,” Riofrancos said, “that in a state like Rhode Island we are using fossil fuel-based energy.”

HARRY AUGUST B’19 and SARA VAN HORN B’21 were responsible for the Thayer Street black-out last week.

CLIMATE

04

TOUGH

I came around to Angela Merkel.

Now she´s on her way out.

BY Allison Meakem ILLUSTRATION Peter Lees DESIGN Pablo Herraiz Garcia de Guadiana

Germany’s historically early exit from the World Cup this year wasn’t the summer’s only national tragedy.

Almost immediately following the Nationalelf’s fateful matchup against South Korea, Germany plunged into political crisis: the country’s most vital and famously resilient foundations, it appeared, were crumbling all at once.

For a few crucial weeks in July, it looked as though the Merkel government might fall in tandem with the once star-studded legacy of German soccer, as the Chancellor refused to cave to the harsh immigration demands of her Interior Minister, Horst Seehofer.

Seehofer, a notorious xenophobe and the former Minister President of Bavaria, had proposed his most drastic measure yet: the closure of the border between his state and Austria and the creation of Ankerzentren (migrant detention centers) at ports of entry––a radical shift in German immigration policy that was denounced by most of his coalition partners. As Seehofer and the Chancellor debated, Berlin became measurably fazed.

Not only was the government on the verge of collapse, the classic former reprieve therefrom—soccer—had developed into a source of rage as the national team, too, became subject to ample investigation for its own faux-pas. Every day in the U-Bahn on my way to work, the train cars’ television screens alternated between flashing pictures of beleaguered head coach Joachim Löw and fatigued Chancellor Angela Merkel, with provocative captions asking whether, “He will stay?” or, “Her time is done?”

I tried to ignore what I thought was sensationalist reporting. But as hard as I tried to shift my attention to something else, I couldn’t. Everything I knew––in fact, the only Germany I’d really ever known––seemed to be on the verge of collapse, with two of the most important figures of my childhood—Merkel and Löw—poised to imminently bid the public eye adieu. Ultimately, both just barely managed to hold on. But the fibers had snapped. +++ I was seven years old when Angela Merkel was first elected Chancellor in 2005. I distinctly remember the day because my parents had just gotten dial-up internet service and enthusiastically employed it to analyze

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possible government coalition configurations online.

When I saw my mom, who worked for the center-left Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) political foundation, grimacing, I asked what was the matter. “Looks like we’re going to have a female Chancellor,” she remarked. “But,” she added, “she’s conservative.” After eight years, the days of the SPD-led Schröder government had ended, giving way to an East German woman and member of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) with a PhD in quantum chemistry. An impressive résumé, and, yes, a glass ceiling broken for women, but, as my parents bluntly put it, “She’s Opa’s candidate”—harkening back to my grandparents’ more conservative leanings to highlight that we’d have much preferred another term of SPD leadership.

From then on, I regarded Angela Merkel as “Opa’s candidate.” Whatever she did, no matter how sympathetic she might appear, I’d remind myself that she was the conservative choice, not mine. Slowly, I—and my family—began to realize our party-based grudge had little basis. The CDU had been marred by a campaign finance scandal in the 1990s—creating great disillusionment with party and its administration. Amidst the ensuing culture of CDU skepticism, Merkel not only turned on her mentor—the storied Chancellor of reunification Helmut Kohl, who had been compromised by the allegations—but also vowed to fundamentally reform the party. In doing so, Merkel established herself as a unique persona unafraid to follow her own convictions in a system so often characterized by political conformity. It was subdued, but significant— and signaled to Germans that her party might bid its “boy’s club” reputation goodbye and finally play by the rules. Her East-German roots, too, promised to make German politics more inclusive, down-to-earth, and equitable.

Merkel indisputably brought reform and stability to Germany, but her tenure has also had no shortage of missteps. Her vote against marriage equality in 2017 was particularly disappointing (though the measure ended up passing overwhelmingly in the Bundestag, the German parliament), and her refusal to phase out coal has proven enraging and hypocritical—especially given her labeling of Germany as a global climate leader. More recently, Merkel’s initial reluctance to fire now former spy-chief Hans-Georg Maaßen following his apparent sympathy with far-right rioters in Chemnitz proved disastrous and had some question her loyalties. On a European level, political analyst Martin Schmid laments Merkel’s “failure to use the window of opportunity” following Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 election to the French presidency to fundamentally reform the European Union in face of Brexit and rising populist tides across the continent. Whether she would have succeeded in this, however, is tough to say; despite being considered its de-facto leader, Merkel is resented by many within the EU for

her handling of the Greek debt crisis and imposition of harsh austerity measures on struggling economies.

Controversy is, to some extent, inevitable over the course of a 13-year tenure, and Merkel’s personal awkwardness and professional efficiency have nonetheless rendered her a potent and respected force across the entire German political spectrum. She governs with a sort of tough love and, until recently, has proven unwavering under pressure. Schmid characterizes Merkel's Chancellorship as one “marked by managing crises.” It should come as no surprise, then, that she has earned the title of “Mutti, ”or “mom,” in German society. Much like a mother, too, Merkel has become a constant in German life. Whether such tropes—and obvious gendering of her role—are meant to be demeaning or endearing, they are inextricably linked to her steady, reasoned nature. Regardless, Merkel’s presence has undoubtedly had a positive impact on young Germans’ perceptions of gender and its relation to power: she has been in office for so long that many (myself included) can hardly remember a Merkel-less Germany. In fact, it is not a rare phenomenon for German children today to ask their parents whether it’s even possible for a man to be Chancellor, amusingly innocent commentary for all who are aware of what German women had to endure to gain suffrage exactly a century ago, much less be represented in positions of political prominence.

For a woman who has been unanimously considered the world’s most powerful over the past decade, Merkel has navigated sexism with considerable ease.

She is so firm in her convictions and so steadfast and professional in her politics that sexist smears against her bounce back off of a resilient, bulletproof shield.

Even her biggest rivals don’t dare attack her gender or appearance, and focus instead on her policies.

Perhaps this is due to the fact that Merkel has consistently shied away from labeling herself a “feminist”; somewhat controversially, Merkel prefers to show, not tell. Internationally, she’s become “one of the boys,” respected as a vital asset and equal. Barack Obama famously characterized Merkel as his “closest” ally throughout his eight years as president, stating that he could not have asked for a “steadier or more reliable partner on the world stage.” Images of Merkel as the sole woman flanked by dozens of men at global conferences and forums have simultaneously empowered and enraged women: pride, on the one hand, for a woman stands at the helm; anger, on the other, that she is so alone.

All the while, Merkel has quietly opened the door for women in the German political arena. Though Germany, like all countries, still suffers from gender inequality and underrepresentation, most major political parties are currently led by women: Merkel still (though precariously) sits at the head of the CDU; Andrea Nahles chairs the SPD; Annalena Baerbock leads the resurgent Bündnis ‘90/Die Grünen (The Greens); and Katja Kipping heads Die Linke. Even the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is guided by parliamentary leader Alice Weidel, emphasizing that representation does not always mean equity and underscoring Merkel’s limits as a model.

Now, following her announcement on October 29 to step down as leader of the CDU at the end of the calendar year following dismal performances by her party in the recent Bavarian and Hessian state elections, Germany is plagued by the uncertainty of what a 16 NOV 2018

LOVE

Only one thing is certain: her successor as chancellor in 2021 will not be a moderate. Regional elections this year have shown a resurgence of the leftist Greens— and the far right. Which pole Germany decides to swing towards in three years is yet to be seen. +++

future without Merkel will hold. She has been the head of government for 13 years, and the head of her faction for 18. As Schmid stresses, “she’s experienced three US presidents, four French presidents, and four British prime ministers during her time as Chancellor.” Given the longevity of Merkel’s tenure, her departure from the CDU’s helm promises to be a watershed moment in German political life. +++ The beginning of the end for Merkel was the summer of 2015. As the borderless Schengen zone became increasingly militarized and xenophobic towards refugees fleeing violence, Merkel was a dissenting voice on the European stage, famously telling Germany “wir schaffen das”—“we can do this”—and taking in over 1.1 million refugees, predominantly from Syria and Iraq.

The move no doubt ushered in massive demographic changes, was financially strenuous, and made Merkel no new friends politically (especially within her own party), but it was absolutely the right, and only humane, thing to do.

Many speculate that Merkel’s own experience growing up behind the Iron Curtain as the daughter of a Lutheran minister compelled her to this moral imperative, but her decision was also strategic. Germany has a rapidly aging population and a tepid birth rate, factors that stand to benefit from an influx of immigrants, as well as a history of relying on foreigners to bolster its economy: in the postwar period, guest workers (most notably from Turkey) spurred the Wirtschaftswunder, or German economic miracle. Refugees and migrants from the Middle East may be the newest iteration thereof. 2015 seemed to be a “win-win.”

A win-win, that is, until one considers all that has come since: backlash within Merkel’s own party, the rise of the far-right, increased culture wars, and xenophobic attacks. What in 2015 seemed to be a miraculous display of unflinching, mass German goodwill has quickly morphed into frustration, disappointment, and enormous polarization, as a result of a year that, regardless of where one lies on the political spectrum, indisputably changed the fundamental fabric of the country. Most left-leaning individuals of my partisan persuasion (who back the SPD or Bündnis ‘90/Die Grünen) feel 2015 changed society the better—officially characterizing Germany as a “nation of immigrants,” adding needed diversity, and fulfilling a moral imperative—while others, including most of the CDU, feel it changed for the worse—proliferating typical narratives of cultural erosion premised upon xenophobia.

Political assertions have turned increasingly violent: 2016 saw 3,500 attacks against refugees, followed by 2,200 in 2017—absolutely startling numbers by any measure. The far-right defends its heightened aggression by harkening back to such events as the 2015/2016 New Years’ sexual assaults in Cologne—perpetrated THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

In September of 2017, when Germany held its last federal elections—the first during which I was old enough to vote – many of my American friends asked me if I was “voting for Merkel.” After reminding them predominantly that Germany has a parliamentary system, where one by men of Middle Eastern votes for party rather than person, I clarified that the and North African origin—and only way one could explicitly cast a ballot for Angela the terror attack on a Berlin Merkel is if one resides within her congressional Christmas Market a year later. These district of Rügen and Greifswald, in Pomerania (which events are, of course, horrific, but using the behavior of I don’t), and that I wouldn’t dare vote for her party, lone wolves to justify militant (or latent) Islamophobia the CDU, with whom I vehemently disagree on almost is enormously inappropriate. Sadly, the rise of the everything. And yet, if Germany were run under the far-right AfD in 2013 has largely turned narratives of largely persona-driven American presidential system, migrants’ cultural incompatibility in German society Angela Merkel would have almost certainly won my mainstream. When the right’s scapegoat is a massive vote. Throughout her first three terms, Merkel showed group, Merkel becomes an easy individual and ideo- an impeccable ability to work across partisan lines in logical target representative of “the problem”: the strong coalition governments. Her tenure was charwoman who not only allowed, but also encouraged all acterized by cooperation, not confrontation. She has of this to happen. faced her fair share of challenges, but Angela Merkel Many fixate on Merkel’s decision to accept over has nonetheless achieved the delicate balance of a million refugees as the trigger for her own polit- becoming an individual force in a political system ical demise rather than recognizing this action as a based upon conformity and the collective. She is unrehumanitarian and moral necessity; Donald Trump, for markably remarkable. And she will be missed. example, enjoys claiming she has “ruined” Germany and the EU. With every political setback faced by the ALLISON MEAKEM B ’20 is tired of explaining that CDU, pundits shrug, claiming that Merkel “brought German conservatives such as Angela Merkel are still this upon herself ”—somehow adopting the mindset way more liberal than the likes of Nancy Pelosi and that one individual’s political survival and retention of Chuck Schumer. power is more valuable and important than the safety and security of millions fleeing persecution. Instead of placing the onus for Merkel’s declining popularity and the rise of the far right on her decision to be a rare moral leader in a time of crisis, I ask us to problematize the notion that a basic humanitarian action conducted by an extraordinarily wealthy country— the bare minimum, really—is considered a misstep by so many. Perhaps, then, we might regard Merkel’s departure from the CDU as a condemnation of where we (pitifully) stand morally as a society as opposed to censure of a uniquely principled leader. The necessity and inevitability of Merkel’s retreat reflects poorly on the German electorate, not her. +++ Merkel claims she will remain in her post as Chancellor until the 2021 federal elections, but few believe she can retain the nation’s top job without secured party leadership and backing. If her coalition—already plagued by instability—were to break apart, new federal elections would be held and Merkel would no longer appear on the ballot. Even if Merkel defies the odds and manages to hold on to the Chancellery for the next three years, her abdication of the CDU’s leadership is to some extent a surrender; a signing of the death warrant of her own political career and its accompanying doctrine of moderation and accommodation within a traditionally conservative framework. Some view her retreat spitefully, as giving in to those further to the right in the CDU; others, like my mother, believe “she deserves respect for her decision,” especially following repeated poor showings by the CDU on the state level. She accepts that Germans seem to be looking for new leadership, though it is not at all clear who or what this new leadership might be. Some names have been thrown out—Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Friedrich Merz, and Jens Spahn—but at this point everything is merely speculative.

Filling Merkel’s shoes as chancellor is a daunting task: a political generation has come and gone since Germany last had to seriously ponder new leadership.

NEWS

06

NO VACANCY

Worrisome real estate trends and the fate of Providence's abandoned properties

BY Giacomo Sartorelli ILLUSTRATION Mariel Solomon DESIGN Amos Jackson

The collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market in 2007 sent Rhode Island’s home prices plummeting and forced thousands of families from their homes; by 2008, the number of monthly foreclosures had tripled from that of the previous year. Ten years later, the Great Recession continues to have a disproportionate effect on the Rhode Island real estate market, due in large part to a history of strategic failures in housing policy at the municipal and state level. A 2010 report by HousingWorks RI, a housing policy institute connected to Roger Williams University, called attention to the fact that in the decade preceding the 2008 financial crisis, Rhode Island’s housing market was characterized by rising home prices, falling median income, and a stagnating housing stock. The combination of these factors left the state’s real estate market vulnerable to predatory lending practices, exacerbating the effects of the economic crash. In 2010, the statewide foreclosure rate was estimated to be the highest in New England, while the statewide percentage of housing production was the lowest in the country, despite a chronically oversaturated rental and buyer market.

Though Rhode Island’s post-recession housing and economic recovery have been on par with the rest of the country, recent housing statistics describe a real estate market with troubling similarities to the pre-recession climate, particularly in urban centers such as Providence, Warwick, Cranston, Pawtucket, and Woonsocket. The 2018 Housing Fact Book, HousingWorks RI’s annual report on Rhode Island housing, identified low property vacancies and a lack of affordable housing opportunities as the most pressing issues facing the state’s long-term housing security. Property vacancy is a measure of a municipality’s uninhabited properties, and low property vacancy signals a highly competitive rental and buying market, which tends to increase average rent and home values.

Should average rent and home values rise too quickly or too high, moderate and low-income families are pushed out of their neighborhoods. One way of mitigating the effects of low property vacancy is to invest heavily in housing production; however, municipalities must also invest in affordable housing options in order to ensure that populations at risk of housing insecurity continue to be able to afford homes and apartments.

Few municipalities in the state have matched their housing production rate with estimated population increases, and fewer still have invested adequately in affordable housing programs. HousingWorks RI estimates that a Rhode Island family with a combined income of $50,000 is only able to affordably buy a home in one municipality, Central Falls, and can only affordably rent a two-bedroom apartment in four of the state’s thirty-nine municipalities, down from six in 2016. A Rhode Island family with the median combined income of $36,861 is unable to affordably purchase or rent in any municipality.

These statewide trends are also reflected in the local housing market. Providence suffers from both a lack of new building activity and extremely unequal housing opportunities. The city will likely need 18,000-19,000 new multifamily units and 2,6002,800 new single-family units by 2025, an average of 3,000 new housing units per year for the next seven years. However, only four residential building permits were approved between 2017 and 2018, the lowest number in over a decade. While Providence is considered a single municipality, the East Side is so much more affluent than the rest of the city that its housing statistics heavily distort the municipal housing data.

The average single-family home in Providence, not counting the East Side, costs $168,000, but on the East Side the median single-family home price is $570,000.

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It should also be noted that while single-family home and two-bedroom apartment rent prices have stabilized at pre-recession levels on the East Side, two-bedroom apartment rent prices in the rest of Providence are now higher than they were in 2007. +++ To combat the competitive rental market, the City is attempting to rehabilitate chronically vacant properties deemed unmarketable due to outstanding building code or property tax violations. In 2015, Mayor Jorge Elorza announced the EveryHome initiative, an ambitious six-year campaign to renovate every abandoned residential property in Providence. The Elorza administration defines the initiative as a “suite of tools” for facilitating receivership of the city’s more than 700 boarded or vacant homes, with the goal of reintroducing the properties’ residential units to the housing market. If successful, the initiative would simultaneously increase the city’s housing stock and buoy sinking property values in neighborhoods blighted by abandoned properties.

Critics of the initiative have expressed concern over the feasibility of a total citywide rehabilitation of vacant properties through receivership, a notoriously slow and complicated process in which a court-appointed third party assumes custodial responsibility for a property that serves as collateral for a loan. City officials, however, have been quick to point out that receivership is, in theory, a more desirable alternative to foreclosure for both lenders (banks) and municipalities. Banks will typically auction off property seized through foreclosure to recuperate losses incurred when a borrower defaults on their mortgage, but the bank may also decide to hold on to the property and sell at a later date. If a bank is unwilling or unable to sell a property through auction, the building will remain vacant and typically fall into a state of disrepair, as the bank has no legal responsibility to maintain the property.

Receivers, on the other hand, are contractually obligated to prepare a property for sale. Any outstanding building code violations must be resolved and the receiver must be able to convey clear title before organizing the sale of the property. A successful receivership prevents vacant properties from remaining indefinitely vacant, is typically able to recuperate more of the bank’s losses, and clears the property’s title of any encumbrances such as unpaid property taxes.

As critics feared, EveryHome has fallen far short of its yearly quotas. In the first two years, only 45 properties were completely rehabilitated through receivership and 34 more were at different stages in the process.

The director of HousingWorks RI, Brenda Clement, told the Independent that, while the EveryHome initiative’s goals are laudable, clearing a property’s title can become an extremely complex and lengthy process in situations where a foreclosed property is also tax delinquent. However, Clement, who chairs an advisory committee to the City Council on housing policy, also emphasized that EveryHome is only one of many city initiatives aimed at addressing a range of housing issues, and that it is her opinion that receivership plays an important role in the city’s holistic approach to housing policy.

Some Providence City Council members do not share this view. In March 2017, members put the

future of the program to a vote, pushing to reallocate EveryHome’s portion of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds the city receives from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Though the City Council ultimately voted to maintain its funding, the program budget has shrunk to less than a third of its original budget of $1 Million.

The legal process that has so delayed the program has also become a point of contention for community members. Local housing rights advocacy groups have pressed the city to allow for greater community oversight of the initiative, but the complexities of the receivership process and the high turnover rate of EveryHome program directors have led to a perceived lack of transparency on the part of the City. In 2016, the Independent reported on Malchus Mills, a community member involved with the Providence-based activist organization Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE), and his concern that EveryHome would encourage the gentrification of low-income communities of color; however, Mills recently told the Independent that while gentrification is an ongoing concern for DARE and its subsidiary, Tenant and Homeowner Association (THA), THA has largely given up on its campaign to form a community oversight committee for the initiative. THA had previously called on the Mayor to set aside half of the EveryHome properties for low-income families and allow community members to vote on property receivers, but Mills said that the Mayor’s office was not receptive to their proposals. Though THA was ultimately able to organize meetings between the program’s leaders and community members, those meetings were “mostly useless because at the time they were asking folks to show up, people had to be at work. Folks are not going to risk losing their jobs to be at meetings that they feel are of no consequence.” Frustrated by a lack of goodfaith cooperation, Mills said that THA has now shifted its focus to help local contractors of color write bids for the vacant properties slated for redevelopment.

The task left to the city is unenviable. Plans for redevelopment must be weighed against the rights of banks and property owners, and administrators already burdened with a cumbersome logistical task are subjected to oversight by the Mayor’s office, the Department of Planning, and their affiliated subcommittees. Indeed, it is difficult to fault a program criticized for a lack of efficiency for wanting to reduce the number of groups it must consult before executing its functions; however, the city does itself a disservice by denying community members an active role in the development of housing policy. Exclusion begets distrust, and while public officials are no doubt working hard to undo the damage wrought a decade ago, they risk losing the support of the people they are charged with caring for. If there is a lesson to be learned from 2008, it is that lucrative real estate markets are a breeding ground for reckless and unsustainable economic activity. Municipalities should seek to insulate their most vulnerable communities from future market fluctuations, rather than chase economic growth by doubling down on developer-centric urban planning. Providence has already taken on a substantial risk by acquiring run-down properties from banks; it remains to be seen whether its investment will pay dividends to its taxpayers or to the institutions responsible for plunging it into catastrophe.

GIACOMO SARTORELLI R’19 hides his money in his mattress.

16 NOV 2018

ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS Providence navigates urban development

BY Peder S. Schaefer ILLUSTRATION Katya Labowe-Stoll DESIGN Amos Jackson

Last week the Ordinance Committee of the Providence City Council voted favorably on a bill that would increase the building height limit on a parcel of land— eyed by developer Jason Fane—from 130 feet to 600 feet. If approved, the zoning change would pave the way for the construction of Fane’s proposed Hope Point Tower, a 46-story luxury apartment building due for development in the Jewelry District. As the City Council considers changing the height restriction, it indicates, loud and clear, that the city is eager to welcome new development. As Councilwoman Jo-Ann Ryan said at the meeting,“Providence is open for business.”

The furor surrounding the Hope Point Tower mirrors debates across Providence and Rhode Island about the place of government in private development, particularly when it comes to the use of city and state tax incentives to encourage construction. Development and construction bring drastically varied interest groups to the table: labor unions want to ensure just compensation for workers; the city wants to increase tax revenue by encouraging wealthy residents to move to Providence; advocacy groups like Providence-based Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE) want to try to solve the housing crisis in Rhode Island by increasing the number of affordable units.

In addition to the Hope Point Tower, construction is rumored to start soon on Edge College Hill 2, a luxury student housing development on College Hill, and construction has already started on 93 Cranston Street in the West End of Providence, the spot of a new mixed-use development that will have housing for 39 low-income families and a grocery store. Much of the recent building boom in the Creative Capital––like the projects named above––is driven by financial incentives for development, which are increasingly defining what, where, and when developers choose to build.

Providence in particular relies on deal sweeteners like tax incentives and breaks to bring buildings to the city. The sheer number of undeveloped parcels in Providence is staggering, a holdover from the closing of industry around the city in the 1980s, as well as the rerouting of I-195. That has made it a high-stakes game for developers, who are interested in cheap land, and for government officials, who want to see the city grow.

Still, it’s expensive to build and maintain a property in Providence where construction costs are the same as in Boston, but rents significantly lower, meaning it takes longer for the developer to earn back their investment. This fact, coupled with high property taxes in Providence, leads developers to claim they need tax incentives to turn a profit. +++ Incentives for development in Providence are handed out by the City and the State. The State incentivizes via the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation, while Providence uses Tax Stabilization Agreements (TSA) approved by the City Council. In Providence, TSAs act as instruments to encourage development by significantly reducing the property tax owed on a property over the course of the agreement. “You take the value of the land on which the building is constructed, which is the baseline,” former City Councilman Sam Zurier told the College Hill Independent. Zurier voted on dozens of TSA deals during his time with the council. “Then you take the value of the land with the building on it, which is 100 percent of the value. The [TSA] takes you from the baseline value up to that 100 percent value over the time period agreed to.” A TSA is really just a tax-break with a deadline. A developer gets a reduced tax rate, indicative of a property valuation somewhere between the rate of the land and the land with the building, for the time period of the agreement, with the THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

rate increasing closer and closer to the actual valuation of the property as time goes on.

The TSAs Providence offers guarantee a lower property tax than normal for a set period of time, usually between 12 and 13 years, according to Zurier, but the length of TSAs have been increasing over the past few years, so developers continue to pay a lower tax rate over an extended period of time. For example, the City Council just approved the Edge College Hill 2 for a 20-year TSA that would save the developers $19 million in taxes over the lifetime of the agreement.

“The city rationale of all this is that if the developer didn’t come and build here we would only be getting the value of the land anyway,” Zurier told the Indy. “So we only win.”

As evidenced by Zurier’s enthusiasm for development, Providence is desperate to build out its tax base.

The City has faced budget woes for years, primarily due to an underfunded pension system, leading to no increase in school funding and infrastructure problems. More development, especially luxury development, could help solve the City’s budgetary challenges by increasing the value of taxable property in the longterm, as well as bringing more high-income residents into the city.

In theory the city’s logic is sound. If they didn’t hash out TSAs to encourage development, it would only be getting paid taxes for the empty land—a relatively small sum compared to the money that can be acquired through property taxes on developed land.

But, as Zurier pointed out, some argue that by “signing too many TSAs... the city is only painting itself into a corner,” meaning over-incentivizing would make it difficult for developers without a TSA agreement to compete on the balance sheet. “And no else can build if we’re giving everyone agreements,” Zurier told the Indy. +++

involved, but the status of that change is still in limbo.

On the other hand, State Senator-Elect Sam Bell, who represents District 5 in Providence, believes that the TSA system is flawed. Instead he urges the City to pursue a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) system that could encompass private and public sector development. “The vast majority of cities have switched to the TIF model, which gives developers the money they need upfront,” Bell told the Indy, mentioning the city of Madison, Wisconsin as a model in the usage of TIFs. Specifically Bell encouraged a bonded TIF model, in which the city takes out a bond to give developers cash in hand with the anticipation that the City will make the money back to pay the bond holder with increased tax revenue. What’s more, says Bell, TIFs can be used “for things other than corporate welfare. You can build parks and bridge that can drive development. Look what we did here in Providence with the opening of the rivers,” he said in reference to Providence’s uncovering of paved over rivers in the heart of the city in the 1980s and ‘90s. “It’s about spending money on better uses of public money than direct corporate welfare,” Bell said.

“The great thing about TIFs is that they authorize the use of public money in other ways.” +++ Labor unions in Providence also have an interest in the development debate, especially in the fight over the proposed Hope Point Tower. Michael Sabitoni, the president of the Rhode Island Construction and Building Trades Council, told the Indy that labor is supportive of government incentives, at both the City and State level, to drive development, but that they’d “like to see more enforcement and monitoring of the promises made by the developers,” particularly when it comes to hiring practices and workers compensation.

Sabitoni said that developers often misclassify workers so they can avoid having to pay workers compensation, will wiggle their way out of apprenticeship requirements, and sometimes will even pay laborers under the table to avoid taxes.

While Jason Fane, developer of the Hope Point Tower, has promised to use union labor if his project gets built, there’s no requirement for TSA-incentivized projects to use union labor. Although developers are supposed to follow the city’s First Source ordinance, which requires developers to hire Providence workers first, the ordinance has not been enforced since its introduction in 1985, according to DARE. “They’re supposed to abide by these rules or promises,” Sabitoni said. “But frequently they don’t. Until someone steps up and actually revokes one of these [incentive agreements] people are going to keep doing this.”

The debate over union labor and enforcement of the First Source ordinance is indicative of the problem with development incentives in Providence more broadly: equitable projects won’t start to go up in the city until we can work out kinks in the system. That means reforming the process by which incentives are handed out, such as through the TIF system that Sam Bell proposes, or the standardized TSA that Sam Zurier mentioned.

After all, the goal of development isn’t to beautify a city skyline, to fill vacant lots, or to grow out the tax base—instead, the goal of development should be to make our city more liveable for everyone. That means better parks and roads, more spaces for restaurants and entrepreneurs, and plentiful affordable and marketrate housing for all the neighborhoods of our city.

To low-income residents and advocates of affordable housing like DARE, TSAs are drawing attention away from the City’s housing crisis that demands more immediate action. According to data from Housing Works RI, a housing information clearinghouse based at Roger Williams University, 57 percent of the renters in the area are rent-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing.

DARE wants the city to use TSAs to increase affordable housing supply, helping drive down housing costs.

“We need to build more houses. We need to build more houses for low and middle income folks and to put people here in Providence to work,” Malchus Mills, an advocate with DARE, told the Indy. “The TSA agreement ought to set aside money so low-income and affordable houses can be built. If the outside contractors are not paying the taxes they should, and they’re not doing anything for the community, then why are we giving them the tax breaks anyway?” By offering developers reduced tax rates through TSAs, the City is sacrificing revenue that could otherwise be used to build up infrastructure and affordable housing in Providence, and the luxury housing developments that make up the bulk of TSA agreements don’t contribute toward lowering housing costs for most Rhode Islanders, according to Mills. “It doesn’t make any sense,” Mills told the Indy. “[The apartments] are all geared towards rich folks who don’t live here in the city, and they’re outpricing the folks who do live in the city.”

Zurier told the Indy that the Council has been trying to pass a standardized TSA agreement that would include a required pay-in by developers to an afford- PEDER SCHAEFER B’22 wants to see more cranes able housing fund, as well as streamline the application out of their comfort zone. process, making it easier for smaller developers to get METRO

08

BUILDING MY

OFRENDA

Though Día de los Muertos is now over, I often think about the ofrendas, or altars, that my mom sets up yearly. She drapes my deceased grandmother’s handmade lace tablecloth over a flimsy foldable table.

It stands inconveniently by the narrow corridor connecting the living room and kitchen. On it sits a large meal consisting of smoky mole, pan de muerto (a sweet bread made for Dia de los Muertos), fruits, and candies. The table is illuminated by a warm candle plastered with illustrations of saints, one for every dead family member. When I was a kid, I would bump into this wobbly table and fear that I had accidentally lit the house on fire.

My mom truly believed that our dead family members were going to show up and visit us during the night. One morning after Dia de los Muertos, I asked my mother: “If our family did eat the food we left out at night, how was it still there in morning?”

“They absorb the scent. The essence of the food.”

Then she would close her eyes and inhale with her nose to mimic what she meant.

I felt the need and curiosity to have an explanation for everything. My childhood was always marked with moments that made me question what is real and what was not. In Mexico, my parents did not attend school past the 6th grade, and as I grew older and entered high school, it was harder for me to explain my science and math homework to them. The topics seemed outside the scope of my parent’s understanding outside of the reality I lived at home, but that is exactly what excited me. These logical topics that I learned in school seemed exotic, seducing me with their ability to explain natural phenomena didactically through physical evidence in ways that my mother’s vague explanations did not.

When I entered seventh grade, I stopped believing in anything but science, since there was seemingly no evidence for the supernatural, my mother’s faith, nor the significance of practices like Día de Los Muertos. In discarding non-empirical knowledge, I created a worldview based on “facts”—to rationalize death, the fate of humanity, and my own futurity. Through extensive Wikipedia binging and watching science documentaries, I immersed myself in newfound information about the vastness of the universe and the insignificance of my life in the grand scheme of things. Maybe there was nothing after death, and my mother was just leaving food and candles for the open air. From there, I read more science fiction novels that allowed me to further speculate a future with mystical qualities that resembled mother’s spiritual practices while retaining my need for scientific explanation.

Recently, I began exploring the crossover between speculative fiction and magical realism in my writing.

As an adolescent, I found it exciting to speculate what next year’s scientific advancements could lead to, but now, studying science has made me wary of trusting scientists and secular perspectives. Nowadays, I speculate on what my ancestors would have thought about the world if they knew general relativity like I did, or what modern day Mexican culture would look like today if Mexico was never colonized.

Magical realist perspectives are not unlike those of speculative fiction. The literary genre that began

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FEATURES

Embodying ancestral knowledge in a scientific dystopia in Latin America in the mid 20th century arose from writers mixing European modernism with afro-indigenous narratives and imagery that were overlooked in the western world as outside of academic discourse.

It essentially interlaces realistic narrative with unrealistic “magical” components that are treated as non-magical, creating a story that is fantastical, childlike, and surreal while formulating real pointed argu- with an aching stomach. These practices give me ments on society. internal form and hold me close late at night. Death and living are unquantifiable phenomena of the human +++ experience, rationally unpredictable but experientially very real.

Drawing from these genres allows me to find comproEarly pioneers of magical realism made sense of mise between the dystopian present and the perspec- the worlds that they occupied through inclusive uses tives around decolonization that I am now developing, of knowledge. Likewise, the speculative fiction novel in hopes of making sense of my experience. When I first of today is the magical realist novel incarnated. It is a learned about orbits and Kepler’s laws, I couldn’t help colonized individual’s lived experience where climate but think about how my ancestors practiced cyclical change, the internet, late capitalism, and political rituals, sacrificing people for the sun to rise each day. figures like Trump make the future unforeseeable By calling upon the intangible and the speculative to through its own dystopian absurdity. Chang-Rae Lee, answer scientific questions, I can draw lines between author of On Such a Full Sea, a speculative dystopian disparate marginalized and privileged knowledges, fiction novel, stated in an interview that his novel was can converse in questions that I think about constantly. meant to be a social realist novel about China, however These literary genres blur the lines between tradi- it changed to become a speculative fiction novel tional and empirical knowledge. Perhaps these narra- instead. Speculative fiction has always had its roots at tive methods can aid us in envisioning a future by the present day sociopolitics. When authors speculate discussing the present day in all of its history, inten- about the world, they are often making a commention, and layers. tary on the flaws our present day society has and their Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World imagined a consequences. dystopian world that used eugenics as a means of As part of the universe, our intention is what sews producing political subjects but probably never fath- together reality and the tangible things we observe. I omed that it would manifest in technologies like found that pulling loose the strings that held together CRISPR, a method of editing the DNA in embryos that the universe for me left me looking to other strings is in continual development today. In a world in which carrying intentions which were not my own. people pay to know their ancestry through 23andme, Human beings are not programmed to simply unknowingly giving a corporation license to sell their learn for the sake of knowledge. We are constantly genetic information, we can begin reformulating our making sense of that knowledge and using it to cultinotions of what is possible and impossible, whether vate our own sense of identity and belonging, just as scientifically or otherwise. Perhaps the we can specu- people did in the past. I thought that learning more late decolonial futures that seem impossible in today’s about the universe could help me disentangle what it dystopia. means to be alive, but instead I was left feeling aimless, hollow, and uncertain about reality itself. Science is not +++ as straightforward in explaining everything as I had anticipated. It cannot comfort me when its informaWhen I feel ill or sad, my mother does a limpia on me. tion leaves me with no sense of purpose but to simply This involves rubbing an egg over my body while exist––this defies the very nature of human beings. saying an Our Father. The cold touch of the eggshell Diving deep into rational empirical knowledge makes my skin prickle. revealed to me how similar secular perspectives were The egg gets cracked into a glass of water, and she to magical ones, because no matter how coldly we try takes a moment to inspect the yoke carefully, then to synthesize the universe, we as human beings are points to something invisible, maybe it’s the little doing the synthesizing. We tie our own meaning to tendrils of egg white still attached to the yoke. death and existence and living and consciousness.

“There is the ojo you had. Oh my. No, you had Thinking through irrationality instead of rationality three ojos on you,” referring to the evil eye that envious unpacks even harder questions about the universe and people may have placed on me. the human condition and how they are intertwined.

When I remove the possibility to believe in spaces My ancestors may have laid food out for the dead or like these, outside of rational conventions, I am left sacrificed humans in order to keep the sun and moon cycles going, but these actions are built on the same

16 NOV 2018

BY Jorge Palacios ILLUSTRATION Justin Han DESIGN Christie Zhong

irrational desire Elon Musk holds for getting on the quickest ship to Mars. Both seek to find closure in death and the continuation of life. I think: what if my mother and father did not have an ofrenda where they can feed their parents again?

I had treated science as a religion and scientists as untouchable truth bearers, but it is important to acknowledge what objectivity does not tell us: about our subjective human experience and human actions and death and life and the value of human and nonhuman beings. When someone feels entitled to tell me to “get over” discrimination or genocide, they choose to ignore the human consequences of history in favor for their “objectivity,” creating misinformation and erasing emotional information within history.

Science does not account for the significance behind the darkness that lies inside my skin, the stories underneath my feet, or the how the maiz based foods I eat are actually sacredly related to me. To view the world in cold objectivity is to intentionally erase histories.

I don’t think of my parents’ epistemologies as fundamentally less true than what I study in physics.

Often I feel placed at the intersection of these two worldviews—of those defined by western science and those defined by traditional knowledge systems. It is daunting to make sense of them individually, let alone simultaneously. When I write stories, it feels natural to use both sides, because they express something authentic and real, instead of trying to suppress any one. Attempting realism without the constant mess of a mind I have, trying to balance the ancestors and knowledges inside me, is painful. The ways I’ve seen authors and artists use modernist tools of Europe—often objective, rational, positivist lenses—as a means to express indigenous and nonwhite worldviews is inspiring to me because they are shifting the dynamic of what art can be. Maybe my mother’s view on ancestors is nonsensical, childlike and unrealistic to the western academic eye, but combining it with our world that privileges scientific knowledge allows me to speculate my own decolonial perspective for the future. The absurdity of the modern day is driven by the magic of science and technology, and painting with the “magical” may render a more vivid picture of ourselves and reality

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

than simply outlining a literalist image of the future.

When I study the stars, I don’t just inhabit a scientists body, but also an indigenous ancestor’s body who is scanning the skies. One that knows the mechanics of astrophysics as well as the hidden relationships my past selves had with the sky. +++ As humanity nears the edge of environmental catastrophe, of nuclear war, of disenfranchisement and marginalization, perhaps even our ancestors can help guide us in making sense of the present/future.

There are parallels to be made between this world and the apocalyptic nature of colonization my ancestors faced, while still deriving a sense of self, and the world I inhabit. I find this especially inviting to envision what the future could hold for me and my ancestors, and in finding ways to heal from whatever dystopian reality we are in now.

In building my own ofrenda for a cousin I once knew, for my passed grandparents who I don’t remember, and all of my ancestors long dead who I’ve never known, I think about how important the intention behind carrying this tradition is to me. Laying food for dead people seems absurd because they may not exist anymore. Their rotten bodies are in the earth now. But their knowledges are in my mind and their presence is in my body.

This is to say, yes, my worldview might not always be physically real; but it is true, and the world today is riddled with absurdity. Writing speculatively alongside

“magic” is easy because it is my everyday reality. It is the mundane, the realistic, and the boundaries between what’s real and what’s not; difficult to synthesize in a singular drawing, so let me paint a picture with these pigments instead.

JORGE PALACIOS B/R’20 is stargazing.

FEATURES

10

SLOWING FOOD Using and watching Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

BY Flo Li ILLUSTRATION Alex Westfall DESIGN Amos Jackson

Being a foodie is most definitely entwined in my DNA. My mother famously recalls only eating noodles for about two months in her teens because her father was relentlessly trying to pin down the perfect recipe (the trick is to use duck eggs). Growing up between Hong Kong and the UK, and often away from my loved ones, mealtimes were and still are chances for us to intentionally spend quality time with each other. When I am home, every Sunday is reserved for my family: during the day, we have lunch with the cousins on my maternal side; in the evening, we go to the house of my 嫲嫲 (maa maa; dad’s mum) for dinner with the rest of his family.

My relationship with food has not always been particularly healthy or easy, however. Developing healthy eating patterns and rewiring my relationship with food has been a steep learning curve; but, surprisingly, learning how to cook has been a hugely impactful and therapeutic. One of the first meals I made for myself was a kale and rice bowl. Intensely nervous about overwatering or burning the rice, I carefully scooped it and the suggested water quantity into precise measuring cups. The recipe instructed me to add a little more water than necessary to the rice, so the kale could absorb something when I chucked it in towards the end. With my laptop precariously balanced on my tiny kitchen counter, I furiously Googled whether this would ruin the meal or not. Eventually, I surrendered to the recipe and did exactly as it told me. Well, not quite. I replaced the cheese mix with soy sauce, sesame oil and a fried egg. Now, three years later, I still make this meal and its various iterations regularly. Looking back, it is not a complex meal, nor was it actually that daunting, but it felt like a huge start. It showed me that even though I have no professional training whatsoever in food or cooking, I still know what I like, and eventually, how to suit my tastes.

The refrain that “anyone can cook,” as encouraged by the ghostly chef Gusteau in Ratatouille, still rings true in my ears. This is an idea that has been underscored by Netflix’s new docu-series Salt Fat Acid Heat.

The show is based off the book written by IranianAmerican chef Samin Nosrat, who also hosts the show; it centres the idea that the four eponymous elements pervade all cooking, cuisines, and dishes. The book and show offer guidance as to how these elements can be used to elevate simple home cooking. We are taken to four different regions in search of these four elements of cooking in the show, paying homage to how they are used globally. It is split into four episodes, each taking on a different element and region—“Fat” in Italy, “Salt” in Japan, “Acid” in the Yucatán and, last but not least, “Heat” in California.

The show contrasts with the typical American travel documentary food show, where we see the hosts, usually white American male chefs, speaking to other chefs whose cuisines and delicacies will cater to white Westernised tastes. Many of the people Nosrat brings onto the show do not have official positions within the culinary world, yet everyone is treated with the same respect, and is given a title. Take, for example, Lidia, titled “la nonne,” who teaches Nosrat how to make traditional Ligurian pesto; or Rodrigo, who shows her different varieties of salsa at a local taqueria and is 11

ARTS

given the endearing title of “salsa expert.” These titles drive home the idea that everyone has knowledge to share, and that we don’t have to be experts to cultivate a taste. Nosrat places these figures in comparison with the authoritative stereotype of the trained, rugged, ‘I’ve worked in this industry for over a decade’ white male chef, and, ultimately, encourages us to try. The gentle ‘you can try again tomorrow’ are the show’s closing words, which is an idea that certainly persists throughout the show.

While Nosrat does speak to other chefs, she often engages with people who make the basic ingredients for various cuisines. In the second episode focusing on salt, Nosrat travels to Shodo Island in Japan, where she encounters Yasuo Yamamoto, the owner of Yamaroku Shoyu, a traditional soy sauce brewery. Here we see shots of Yamamoto speaking to the microbes in the barrels of to-be soy sauce, encouraging them to grow.

Yamamoto explains his desire to keep the traditional Japanese method of brewing soy sauce alive despite the fact that “less than 1 percent of soy sauce production is done this way [in wooden barrels].” Nosrat also learns the art of miso from a local woman named Kazumi, the “miso master.” Kazumi hand-makes her own miso from a recipe passed down by her grandmother. We see Nosrat and Kazumi using a suribachi and surikogi (the Japanese equivalent of a mortar and pestle) to crush the steamed soy beans, and adding other ingredients like water and koji (fungus). Eventually, these ingredients form balls of miso paste that are flattened by hand and rocks and then left for about two to three years to ferment.

Nosrat gives these methods enough time and space to allow these experts to truly delve into their practices.

She also asks questions throughout the show, highlighting the immense care, respect, history and labour that goes into the production of such ingredients. In such a consumer-driven world, it is radical to see such devotion, energy, respect and curiosity given to ingredients and food itself. With the rise of New American cuisine, which largely samples flavours from other cuisines and regions and tailors them to suit white American tastes, it is exciting to see and learn where these now-ubiquitous ingredients of a globalised world and New American cuisine come from. Also, in comparison to most travel documentaries that try to see ‘a lot’ of regions, in Salt Fat Acid Heat, we get to see a lot of a little and we are still left wanting more.

That being said, the likelihood that the show’s audience will use anything produced on a specialised scale is rare. Perhaps, the show offers a somewhat romanticised view of what food production is actually like. But with that in mind, it still reminds us that the food we consume has a source, an origin and people who dedicate much time to its crafting. Nevertheless, this message is given a platform through a corporation––Netflix––whose ultimate goal is to make money by catering towards a largely middle and upper-middle class audience.

The show also sheds light on women in the culinary realm. Nosrat learns how to cook a steak with Amy Dencler, the restaurant chef at Chez Panisse, the renowned restaurant in Berkeley, California

where Nosrat began her culinary career (by endearingly writing a fan letter). It is joyful to see Dencler so masterfully and effortlessly grill a steak, a realm of cooking typically associated with and reserved for men.

Nosrat also does not shy away from portraying a more traditional realm of cooking for women—in the home kitchen. Nosrat’s mother features in the show and teaches her how to make tahdig, a traditional Persian rice dish with a crispy bottom. The theme of honouring tradition shines through in this tender moment, as we see the pair cook and work together with few words exchanged.

In a world where women’s bodies and relationships are, more often than not, policed and scrutinised, it is refreshing to see Nosrat eat with such enthusiasm and presence. She does not place herself in the trope of supermodel-turned-health-chef like Chrissy Teigen, nor does she fall into the trope of ‘guilty,’ ‘just-another-bite’ consumption like Paula Deen. And perhaps this is the most invigorating element of the show––the sheer, unbounded joy Nosrat has for good food and cooking. Her eyes pop when she tastes the melipona honey, her frequent sighs and exhales of “that’s so good” ripple through the show. Nosrat truly celebrates not only food, but also its process, highlighting the best things about it and the possibilities that lie in good food. Each episode ends with a meal she has made for a group of people, with shots of delight, enjoyment, and good company. While, of course, Nosrat attends to food with great care and precision, she makes evident that her “ultimate goal is to make people feel comfortable and taken care of, so they can just enjoy the moment.

And maybe, eventually, pass that onto others.”

And this is something that I certainly resonate with. Three years on from my first kale and rice bowl attempt, I have tweaked the recipe to make it align with my own tastes and locations. If I am at home, I will stir fry 芥蘭 (gai lan; Chinese kale), which is readily available at the supermarket, with minced garlic and ginger.

Seeing as I spend most of my time in the US, however, where such ingredients are less common, I chuck kale in a sizzling pan of oil with minced garlic and mushrooms. I enjoy engaging with my ingredients, dousing them in a fool-proof combination of soy sauce, sesame oil, chilli oil and sesame seeds. I attend to the vegetables, making sure to consistently fold and layer these flavours in carefully, so as to ensure that every corner of every vegetable gets a taste. Eventually, they wilt and the sesame seeds turn brown. With the hiss of the vegetables and the rice cooker jingle ringing in my ears, I realise that I have been entirely engaged in the making of this dish. With my spatula on call, I turn the heat up in the pan, add more oil, and crack an egg, watching carefully and avoiding splatters as it slowly bubbles and solidifies. Once I hear crackles and the egg’s orange orb is just shiny enough that even lightly prodding it with my chopsticks seems too risky (I don’t want the yolk to burst!), I take it off the heat and slide it into my bowl.

FLORENCE LI B‘20 wants you to come over for supper.

16 NOV 2018

Once Childhood Dismissing worries quickly—like a professional palm reader, you never and always talk to me about bees, their outlines wasted on filament paper.

Oh where did we leave the car? I, little and unsure, pull forgetme-nots.

Cicatrix mother trees fruit too sickly, an uneaten chrysalis. salted knots uncoil like my sister’s shade, peeled apart in summer she died on summer tides insisting; a sharp freeze will damage cell membranes, oceans go solid three point four degrees colder than oranges

Z.B.M We were a family spending our Sundays not far from home—car-park concrete distorted by winter. Inside a giant cockatoo swung flips at a pet shop but not much else. Flying up, running down the hallway, “When my work is over, and my day is done, I’m going to fly away home.”

They told us at Sydney’s, fish hid behind glass walls when crayons at the table bled their ink into water, the restaurant closed shortly after.

The day she was born I woke up to a promise that the world was secure on its axis, odd considering a bunk bed kept me flat near the ceiling. When we went to the hospital instead of seeing her, Mom and Dad had to tell us.

BY Eli Makovetsky ILLUSTRATION Eve O'Shea, Peter Lees

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Pillars of Salt your voice’s notes land on my sternum, ease in, ease in, acclimating to bone. you said i was a flower on a lemon tree each petal cool to the touch, relaxing in the shade of branches we missed the fruit. i hinted that thunder no longer moved me and you asked for a shell without hard edges, to place on your grave after you died. when I came back to the cemetery there was no milksap, only winter settling in the quiet of the stone.

LITERARY

12

Harmony in Red I cut my foot at the museum, Walked around afraid Trailing blood I looked at the wall between two paintings One: a panoramic landscape, Windswept and smudged Two: a blind sketch, Unformed idea turned masterpiece I looked at my foot, Thought of all the paint I could save If I just used my blood instead.

Pillars of Salt So I cry into my dinner because we ran out of salt Or I cry into that jar sitting over there on the shelf The shelf near the window so the light comes in at noon And the glass makes a rainbow on the kitchen wall When I was younger I would spend all my time in the school library where a glass prism hung from the window sill Waltzing softly with the shadowed books Embroidered with dust and stacked in the corners Where coffee stained the ceiling Like ink blot tests for amateurs Storm clouds collect on the ceiling of my room Like a little-known painting by a well-known artist Lonely on a grey wall in a hallway to be passed But I stop and look at the crepuscular light, The storm in my bedroom gathering against the window A cloud of breath in a golden frame Spilled across the ceiling by someone in a rush, Someone who forgot about the rainbow hanging in the window And thought the jar on the shelf was full of seawater So they didn’t realize We were out of salt

Sunburns I have forgotten what it means to live in the summer Gentle in my thin dress Like the fruit gathered on the kitchen counter Rotting happily in the warm sun For too long My body reeled, So resistant to the fading light, Demanding reincarnation In place of peeling skin.

High Tide Wrapped in the cold arms of the things and the people we’d lost We learned to love the rocks that tumbled through the tide and bruised our feet while our skipped stones sunk that long day in August when the heat was heavy with the dust of our words.

We talked like summer wind our voices carried through the air, hot and salty and quickly forgotten, footsteps in wet sand at high tide.

We named ourselves after the things we fear, and left everything else buried in the backyard under the big tree where bark beetles dance through purple summers.

We came back this year names changed our words carving canyons into the sea, gathered at our feet again to collect the things and the people we’d lost.

BY Gemma Brand-Wolf ILLUSTRATION Ella Rosenblatt DESIGN Ella Rosenblatt

13

LITERARY

16 NOV 2018

fun Daisy, Hatchet, Ima, Thomas, and Baby were feeling anxious about various things: their teeth, the weather, a party later that night, being funny, and the shape of their shoes. To rid themselves of their worries, they each decided to go on a walk. On their walks they brought different bags: a duffel bag, satchel, plastic bag, basket, and lunch box.

They also took different numbers of breaks, and brought along (in their bags) different numbers of crackers to eat as snacks along the way. But the characters were far too anxious to eat any of them, and at the end of the walk, they each had all of their crackers left along with a certain number of souvenirs they picked up on the way.

Ken Ken

choose your timer

Use the following clues and the accompanying chart to determine the cause of each character’s anxiety, their bag of choice, how many breaks they took, how many crackers they brought, and how many souvenirs they picked up along the way. No character will have the same option in any one category. www.kenkenpuzzle.com

can you spot the 9 differences?

games Daisy

Hatchet

Ima

Thomas

Baby

teeth weather party being funny shoes

teeth weather party being funny shoes

teeth weather party being funny shoes

teeth weather party being funny shoes

teeth weather party being funny shoes

duffel bag satchel plastic bag basket lunch box

duffel bag satchel plastic bag basket lunch box

duffel bag satchel plastic bag basket lunch box

duffel bag satchel plastic bag basket lunch box

duffel bag satchel plastic bag basket lunch box

4 breaks 5 breaks 6 breaks 7 breaks 8 breaks

4 breaks 5 breaks 6 breaks 7 breaks 8 breaks

4 breaks 5 breaks 6 breaks 7 breaks 8 breaks

4 breaks 5 breaks 6 breaks 7 breaks 8 breaks

4 breaks 5 breaks 6 breaks 7 breaks 8 breaks

22 crackers 20 crackers 18 crackers 17 crackers 16 crackers

22 crackers 20 crackers 18 crackers 17 crackers 16 crackers

22 crackers 20 crackers 18 crackers 17 crackers 16 crackers

22 crackers 20 crackers 18 crackers 17 crackers 16 crackers

22 crackers 20 crackers 18 crackers 17 crackers 16 crackers

20 souvenirs 19 souvenirs 18 souvenirs 16 souvenirs 14 souvenirs

20 souvenirs 19 souvenirs 18 souvenirs 16 souvenirs 14 souvenirs

20 souvenirs 19 souvenirs 18 souvenirs 16 souvenirs 14 souvenirs

20 souvenirs 19 souvenirs 18 souvenirs 16 souvenirs 14 souvenirs

20 souvenirs 19 souvenirs 18 souvenirs 16 souvenirs 14 souvenirs

1. The person who took 7 breaks had the fewest number of items in their bag at the end of the day with 33 crackers and souvenirs, while the person who took 4 breaks had the most at 41.

2. Hatchet, Ima, and Thomas never worried about teeth and weather, and they didn’t own plastic bags or baskets.

3. Whoever was anxious about the party took 5 breaks on the walk with their satchel and had a sum of 38 crackers and souvenirs in their bag at the end of the walk.

4. Whoever was anxious about teeth took 6 breaks with their plastic bag and had a sum of 34 crackers and souvenirs in their bag at the end of the walk.

5. Daisy took one more break than Hatchet, and Thomas took one more break than Baby (who did not bring the plastic bag).

6. Ima was not anxious about being funny, and Thomas did not bring the duffel bag.

Sir John Everett Millais, “Christ in the House of his Parents”

Fill in the blanks using words cut out from this newspaper! The type of word or phrase you should use is written under each blank. Send your finished story to indyephemera@gmail.

Oh goodness! What a/an _______________ day I’ve ADJECTIVE

had! It was the day of the _______________, so I was EVENT

already feeling _____________, and then I ran into ADJECTIVE

________________ at the _________________. I was so NAME

PLACE

surprised, I shouted

“_____________________________” and I swear I EXCLAMATION

almost __________________. After that, the only thing PAST TENSE VERB

I wanted to do was ______________ my ____________, VERB

NOUN

but that would have been___________. So I just said ADJECTIVE

“_______________________” and tried to stop my UNUSUAL PHRASE

_____________ from ____________________. I must say, BODY PART

VERB ENDING IN -ING

there really is nothing worse than ________________!

STRESSFUL NOUN

Find a path from the arrow on the left to the arrow on the right. You must visit the snacks through pairs. Your route does not have to visit every type of snack but you should not include more than one pair of any snack. Moves are up-and-down or side-to-side.

7 Daisy had more crackers in her bag than souvenirs at the end of the walk.

A BLACK MIRROR

BY Griffin Kao ILLUSTRATION Sophia Meng DESIGN Bethany Hung “These systems are simply mirrors for a biased society,” says Dr. Jerry Kaplan, a professor at Stanford University, speaking about deep learning models. A renowned expert in the field of artificial intelligence, having founded several AI startups and published three books on the subject matter, his voice quakes with intensity as we talk about the possibility of eliminating cognitive bias in our current artificial intelligence. “If the bias exists in society, these systems are going to be biased, because they’re based on the data they observe in the real world,” he continues.

Deep learning, a subset of artificial intelligence, describes a form of information prediction centered around neural networks, computer systems that model the human brain and nervous system. A neural network is composed of interconnected nodes that pass on signals to one another to propagate and store information through the system, loosely simulating the way neurons fire electrical signals to other neurons through their synapses. In deep learning, computer scientists feed these neural networks training data so that they can learn patterns which they can then apply to predict information, much like a child might learn to recognize what kinds of behaviors will get them in trouble versus what kinds of behaviors will earn praise.

“Word2vec” models are a type of neural network that essentially take in a corpus of text as data—these can range from famous novels to collections of news articles to large aggregations of Tweets—and determine which words appear near each other in the text in order to represent the words as vectors, or lists of numbers. Specifically, words appearing in the same sentence would be considered ‘near’ each other, and each number in the vector representation of a word is more or less a measure of how often it appears with another English word. Since similar words show up in similar contexts, their vectors should be close to each other and the cosine distances between them should be low. This isn’t a perfect approximation of word meaning, since words like “quiet” and “loud” might appear in the same location in the same sentence, but it allows word2vec models to reconstruct relatively accurate linguistic contexts for words by converting them into these lists of numbers.

Because these word2vec models allow us to represent English words as vectors (called word embeddings), we can perform mathematical operations on words by completing vector arithmetic on their vector forms. For example, if we did something like “king + woman – man,” we would get an output vector closest to “queen.” You can think of it as saying removing the man part of a king and adding the woman part gives us a queen—an analogous relation of sorts where “king is to man as queen is to woman.”

Word2vec is the basis of much of natural language processing and allows us to do useful things like text

15

SCIENCE & TECH

Cognitive bias in machine learning prediction and speech recognition, but it also reveals some alarming cognitive biases in our society. Since the training data that the models learn from is writing produced by people, all of our biases that exist in language data get emulated by models themselves, as Dr. Kaplan mentioned. In particular, most language models are extremely sexist, because the bulk of available writing is from eras more conservative than ours, and performing the equation “doctor + woman – man” will often output a vector close to “nurse.” However, in a world that is far from rooting out unfair biases, it’s nearly impossible to avoid creating such biased intelligent systems. Since such models must be trained on data we produce, they will always be reflections of our imperfect selves, and so we must learn to limit the power we give them. +++

intelligence—a fact that some schools have begun to realize, offering courses like the one Dr. Kaplan teaches at Stanford, “CS122: Artifical Intelligence – Philosophy, Ethics, and Impact.” When I asked Dr. Kaplan about the syllabus for the course, he told me that the course aims to teach students to think critically about the impact that a biased model might have instead of blindly entrusting such models with important tasks.

The idea is that to empower students to build machine learning software without a sense of social responsibility is akin to giving someone a gun without safety training. However, this begs the question, does safety training mean the gun itself is any less dangerous?

These measures that push awareness, transparency, or education are only effective to a certain extent. Understanding the cause of our racist, sexist, and typically intolerant machine learning models does not necessarily allow us to produce impartial systems, because the bias is inherent to the available data.

For example, if we revisit our problematic word2vec model, we see it’s virtually impossible to find unbiased data on which to train a model; the nature of the task requires a large amount of text and text that conveys real meaning, so we can’t realistically create new unbiased writing or string together totally random words.

In practice, most language models are trained on a number of large, publicly available corpora that aggregate wide-ranging pieces of writing. Some of these include Google Books Ngram Viewer, the American National Corpus, and Brown’s own Standard Corpus of Present-Day American English. A brief examination of Brown’s corpus immediately reveals where our models’ displayed sexism might come from—the corpus includes large sections of religious texts and a significant number of fiction pieces from writers like Charles Dickens (who was a notable misogynist). But even if we think about corpora composed of supposedly objective writing like the North American News Text Corpus, it is not hard to imagine that conservative reporting on problem areas of our society like the traditional gender roles or the pay gap might lead to our language models associating men with doctors and women with nurses. +++ When I speak with Dr. Kaplan he brings up the COMPAS software that learned to use race as a predictor of an incarcerated individual’s likelihood to become a repeat offender. He points out that, “from the standpoint of the courts, it’s not biased since it’s an objective analysis of the proportions present in training data” but then he iterates that, “from the standpoint of the individual, it’s completely unfair.” Since a Black individual with the same record as a white one will be labelled with a higher chance of re-offending, with this software Black people are re-admitted at much higher rates, both reflecting and perpetuating an already existing racist practice in policing. The reality is that, in order for a model to learn patterns used in predicting accurate information, the model must be fed real data—data produced by a flawed and biased population—and so our models will always echo the problematic thinking they consume.

Dr. Kaplan affirms that “you can’t lay the sins at the feet of the programmer, or the techniques, since it’s inherent in the data,” again suggesting that the cognitive bias exhibited by our machine learning models is part of a larger structural issue in which the nature of the field means that our intelligent systems will always mirror the world we as humans have created.

But where does that leave us? When I ask Dr. Kaplan what this means for the field of machine learning, he talks about continuing to raise awareness and quantifying bias, but also acknowledges that “the essence of the problem is that these systems can institutionalize and perpetuate bias in electronic form.”

Since we will continue to construct racist, sexist, and generally discriminatory machine learning models until we’ve fostered a society free from unfair biases, the only solution in the interim is to curb the influence that they wield.

Cognitive biases like the sexism in our language models are relatively common in the rapidly expanding field of machine learning. As models are given more and more power to make decisions, we’re beginning to see that these biases have farther reaching consequences.

For instance, allowing our models to identify highrisk repeat offenders in the criminal justice system (Equivant’s COMPAS system) or criminal suspects in local law enforcement (Amazon’s Rekognition software) has greatly exacerbated racial profiling and has contributed to mass incarceration by targeting people of color.

A number of tech companies have taken actions that suggest an increasing understanding of the ethical implications of prejudice in their machine learning systems. Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, for example, published a list of ethical principles to guide their usage of artificial intelligence this past summer. Among the principles, he writes that AI should “avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias” and, more generally, should not be used in “technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm.” Likewise, Microsoft has founded a number of internal groups to manage the research and application of new AI developments, like the FATE (Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics in AI) research group. Most of these groups are pushing for awareness, an understanding of where these biases come from and the impact they have, as the broader GRIFFIN KAO B'20 is wondering why he hasn’t had a solution to bigoted machine learning. They believe female computer science professor yet. that transparency surrounding the data sets on which AI systems are trained would allow those biases to be identified before they can do potential harm.

In addition, since much of the cognitive bias witnessed in our smart systems can be traced back to the programmer level, many researchers believe that remedying these oversights begins with educating future computer scientists on the ethics of artificial

16 NOV 2018

BY Nicolaia Rips ILLUSTRATION Eve O'Shea DESIGN Christie Zhong

THE LIFE OF LORIMER

Lorimer was a zesty youth. His baker made him with lemon rind and bitter vanilla. The lemon was shriveled and white-yellow and the baker found it at the bottom of his garden, hidden behind a magnolia bush. The crops had not been fruitful that year, the rain infrequent and the soil cracked. Prices of fruit were astronomical, much higher than bonbons and infinitely more than laptops. Across the globe, scurvy was rampant. The lemon was precious.

The baker carried it back to his kitchen, cupped in his hands. There, with long deft strokes of his paring knife, the skin gave way to gloop and ooze. The baker tasted the zest and shuddered. It was almost unbearably sour. These days you had to make do with what little there was, so he chose to use it anyway. He stuck the mold in the oven, set the timer for 158 hours and walked away, preparing for the next recipe. In the oven, nestled in the folds of batter was a tiny seed. It glinted.

The seed the seed the seed the seed the seed a pip a seed a lemon pip a seed.

In the days following Lorimer’s birth he could barely see, like a newborn puppy. This didn’t stop him from walking, and by day two he would toddle solemnly around the house. His mother, Marianne, was concerned about this, fearing for her furniture and her new son’s soft skull. Marvin, her husband, attempted to assuage her fears over breakfast.

“Darling,” he said, peering over the top of his newspaper. (The headlines were particularly bad that day: “GMO Children: Risky Business?”) He glanced at his son. “Lorimer’s fine! The doctor said he’d start seeing any day now.”

“I know, I know.” Marianne sighed. “I just don’t understand how he walks so confidently without seeing.”

“It’s a sign he knows where he’s going in life! We have a little prodigy on our hands.” Marvin did not believe this. There was little he did believe because he often thought the world was murky so he felt he was allowed to lie about his thoughts frequently.

The next week blue invaded the whites of his eyes.

The doctor had been right. Lorimer was perfectly healthy. He didn’t have a heartbeat though. The doctor said this was an irregularity some GMO children experienced. It wasn’t an issue if the heart didn’t fully form.

There wasn’t enough research done to know if it was an issue.

By the time Lorimer was four, he would hoard whatever shiny things he could find. Pennies, earring backs, nails, razors. He would store them under his bed, and whenever his parents couldn’t find something, they would have to look through the piles of sharp shimmering things. He liked how they glistened and would crawl under the bed to stare at them, polishing each piece individually with an intensity he reserved for listening to bird calls and bike riding.

By the time Lorimer was six, he decided that he would only eat yellow foods. Bananas, egg yolk, squash, cheese, mustard, corn. Never lemons though.

Never ever lemons. This annoyed Marvin. He thought yellow was the ugliest color, reminiscent of medicine and urine. Marianne said it was cheerful.

By the time Lorimer was ten, he had blonde curls that fell down to his waist. They were beautiful and bright. Whenever Marianne would try to cut the curls he would hold her hand in his, and squish and squirm until she felt her fingers start to cramp.

By the time Lorimer was twelve, he was enrolled at the local secondary school.

One day when he was leaving home ec (his favorite class), Lorimer saw a group of older kids bullying someone. The child was huddled on the pavement, his knees and arms craning towards his head as the other kids kicked him. With each kick came an insult.

Green blood, cooked in an oven, colored with dye, smelled of chamomile. It ran towards Lorimer.

A teacher ran outside and yanked the boys off the bleeding child. “Someone!” He shouted. “Bring him to the nurse!” He grabbed two of the bullies by the ear and herded the rest to the principal’s office.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Lorimer kneeled down next to the boy. The hurt kid was large and soft with ginger hair. Lorimer looked at the boy, half alive, half on the pavement. The blood on the pavement enticed Lorimer. He swirled his hand in it and lifted it to his mouth, sucking each finger clean, until his own flesh was pink and puckered. The pain was warm and the fear sweet and Lorimer felt a fleeting wholeness. A wholeness that started in his chest and encompassed every limb and made him shiver all over.

That night, after blissful hours in fullness, going to bed in elation, Lorimer started sweating in his sleep.

When he woke up his mind was restless and he cramped all over. His mattress was damp and reeked of citrus.

Lorimer crept into the kitchen, his bare feet padding on the linoleum. He creaked open the fridge an inch.

There, on a platter, were three chicken breasts with tiny black olives around them, left over from dinner.

Lorimer dug his fingernails into the chicken and tore it into chunks. He crammed them into his mouth, primed with saliva, raw with need and yet his stomach still burned and his forehead sweat and the himness of him drained out with each breath. It made him miserable and mean and he ate and ate and ate until he gave up on the fullness he craved. He scattered the bones on the floor and slammed the refrigerator door shut because he no longer cared if his parents woke and he stalked back to bed.

By the time Lorimer was sixteen, girls started to notice him. They liked his smile and his quiet charm.

They thought his eyes were deep, glacial even. He was pretty enough to be inoffensive to young girls, handsome enough to awake feelings. They thought he was sensitive. He spent time with himself, he knew who he was.

Gwendolyn thought Lorimer was intoxicatingly attractive. At least, she found him as intoxicatingly attractive as a sixteen-year-old could. Her experience was limited to magazine covers and occasionally practicing kissing on her pillow.

She decided to ask Lorimer to be her boyfriend during geometry one day. She passed him a note, and decorated it with little hearts. He passed it back, telling her to meet him outside the playground after school.

The rest of the day passed in a blush haze of hormones At exactly 4:09, Lorimer sat on the swing set waiting for Gwendolyn. He had picked up smoking clove cigarettes. It made him feel older. He blew rings into the air and languished in his own presence.

At exactly 4:11, Gwendolyn appeared. Her knit hat was yanked down to her eyelashes, and her scarf covered her chin and mouth. She was a small bundle with a glowing nose. Lorimer patted the swing next to him and so they swung side by side.

There was a rawness about Gwendolyn. She had been taken out of the oven a little too early. Because of this her teeth came out under-grown and too soft to do any good. So, the baker pulled them out, two at a time and fashioned her a set of shiny glass ones. They were sharp and sparkly.

They stopped swinging. This was the moment.

Gwendolyn was ready. Lorimer let his hand twist its way up her coat before gently pushing aside her scarf.

She had a plump bottom lip and a sweetly defined cupid’s bow. He pressed his lips onto hers. The world flipped for Gwendolyn, the pressure delicious. Her eyes fluttered shut. He tasted sweet but the cloves masked a rot that confused her. She opened her mouth and mildew and mold tumbled in, making her gag, closing her throat.

Suddenly, Lorimer bit down. Gwendolyn screamed.

His hands clenched around her neck. She tasted of animal crackers and he bit and sucked and gnawed at her to get every flavor. He wanted that feeling of fullness. He wanted all of it. Lorimer felt glorious.

Her teeth shattered. Skin crumbled under his hands as he pulled at it. She was the mixture of her ingredients, nothing more than flour and egg yolk.

Dipping his hands in the goop he smeared it across his

arms, across his face. He pressed his fingers, coated in the mess of her, into his skin. Pressed until it seeped through. Pressed until it coated his organs and warmed him. When he was done, had taken his fill, there was nothing left but broken glass and a wool scarf.

Lorimer felt so good. And then, about a week later, he didn’t feel good anymore. He began to get headaches and his chest burned. Marianne offered him Advil and Tums.

One Tuesday night, he hurt so much that he couldn’t be still. He stumbled into the bathroom and spit into the sink. It came out purple and he stared at it and then himself in the mirror. When did he get so sunken, when did he lose his color? He began to search his skin. It was cold and wet. With each touch, a clear slime came off him and webbed his hands. He struggled to remove his shirt, his fingers wet, grasping, trying, plucking at the buttons to his pajama top. Once off, he realized he hadn’t found what he was looking for.

At the center left of Lorimer’s chest there was a raised lump. It was roughly the size of a pea, as big as two finger tips pressed together. Webbing out from it were lines of gold and white, weaved into his skin. Bile tickled the back of this throat and he gagged. Juice flowed out of his mouth and into the sink. He bent over as the juice kept coming, sour and sticky all over the porcelain. It flooded the sink and coated the floor, hitting his ankles, hitting his thighs until he couldn’t stand anymore and gave in to the softness of the liquid.

Finally, when there was no more, he coughed and from his mouth came a seed, blackened and drained.

Together they floated, emulsified in the bile, perfectly spent. A seed.

His parents found him in the bathroom the next morning, preserved. His skin was pitted and his knees frozen at his chest.

Marianne cried for three days and four nights and then never talked about him after, never shed a tear.

She wouldn’t say it but she felt a lightness at his death, a lightness she hadn’t felt since he was delivered to their house in the clean pink bakery box. By the time they buried him, he had grown so cramped, so poky, so miniature that he could fit squarely in someone’s palm.

The postmortem showed Lorimer never grew a heart. There was, however, a small almond shaped indent where it should have been.

NICOLAIA RIPS B‘20 loves citrus.

BODY

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GROSS NATIONAL COOL Objects I found in Tokyo 2. Kintarō-Ame Candy While researching my trip to Japan, I was surprised to find that “Gross National Cool” was an actual governmental concern. A “Council for the Promotion of Cool Japan” had been officially assembled in 2013 for the promotion of Japanese coolness abroad. Hadn’t the battle already been won?

As it turns out, ‘Cool Japan’ is a continuation of Japan’s ‘pop cultural diplomacy,’ incentive, which dates back to World War II's aftermath. During an eight-year US occupation (1945-1952), Japan was forced to rewrite its constitution to include tenets of democracy and economic liberalism, in line with the Allies’ interests.

National priorities shifted from military expansion to the cultivation of intellectual property, including patents, business strategies, and mass media. 'Pop cultural diplomacy' was adopted as a strategy to revitalize the economy and restore international goodwill. The mission's sucess is more than evident. Were Japan’s web of soft power to suddenly materialize, we would see billions of individuals across the globe, their bedrooms or attic storage boxes overflowing with Japanese games, toys, and licensed products, seized within it. The sun never sets and the backlight never dims on Japan’s pop cultural empire…

Like the best pop-cultural commodities, Japanese merchandise has a crystalline density––the build-up of a back-and-forth between creatives, profit-driven higher-ups and a capricious international consumer base, egging one another on into crafting ever-richer, ever-intensified cliche-amalgams.

Yet when I arrived in Tokyo the day after school ended, my spirits sank. Circadian rhythms wonked, I was waking up in the middle of the night and reading the Marxist rants my friends wrote as finals on my laptop. As I traipsed through the nine floors of otaku merchandise, I was haunted by a phantasm from manga marginalia––a self-portrait of the mangaka sweating profusely at her desk due to impending deadlines and lingering flu symptoms. The generosity of the virtuosic artist borders on masochism...I would rather be less frequently entertained than have anyone subject their body to abuse. And aren’t so many products generated, as my friend Alec put it, by the “collective hallucinations” of advisory boards, of needs that needn’t exist..

Intellectual property comes at a cost. My jet leg was like a coat of glue, with all the weight of misspent human effort settling over me like leaden particulates.

Another phantasm haunting me was my own home, due to Japanese designers playing off the mystique of American entities, like Trader Joe’s, Route 66 and...

Rhode Island.

like normal.

I am now unsure how to reconcile my more critical impulses with my magpie-eyed love of collecting...the contradiction may live in the objects themselves, which speak of exhaustion and inventiveness in due measure.

Now, to borrow a tact from the “light novel,” Reborn as a Vending Machine I Now Wander the Dungeon: I will dispense for you the objects and a few facts. You are free to draw your own conclusions.

A. SWEETS 1. UHA Taste Sugar x Kindai University KISS Labo Gummies

The [Brand] x [Brand] collaboration format was supposedly originated by Collette, a French boutique open between 1997 and 2017. Now, brand crossbreeding is the dominant format for high-profile product releases (Louis Vuitton x Supreme, Nike x Off-White1, et al.). The packaging for these gummies treats a focus-group/crowd-sourced development platform held in Kindai (formerly Kinki) University, as if it were a brand-collaborator. A UHA press release translated from Japanese states, “Within the “Academic Theater”, Associate Professor Taga Takeshi of Kinki University, who specializes in biological component analysis at the molecular level is working to collaborate on new confectionaries (...) KISS LABO (Kiss Lab) allows college students to disseminate ideas freely and to gather with the aim of developing the candy of their dreams.“ The kisslabo_uha instagram features photos of between two and four female students in custom-embroidered lab coats, posing with a promotional poster and product shelf.

These candies were part of Kindai University x Kiss LABO’s first official rollout, a lipstick and gummi line made using “rare full-length collagen” extracted from Chika Tuna. (As with U.S. protein culture, always the debate in nutrition over how intact molecular structures stay when they’re metabolized and reintegrated into new cells.)

I picked up these hard candies because they seemed like a more blase version of the ones I’d found in LA:

I now learn that both packets feature Kintarō, translated as “Golden Boy,” a character from Japanese folklore. He is a child with superhuman strength raised by a mountain witch, who wrestles animals or else befriends them.

Kintarō-Ame candies, which date back to the Edo period (1603-1868) are created using the ‘cane’ technique. Cross-sections are sliced off of an elongated cylinder to form multiple images, a method also used to make beads and strata-cut animations. “Kintarō-ame“ is now a Japanese idiom for things that are identical, the equivalent of “spitting image.”

4. Pop Team Epic Takeshobo Hokai Cookies These cookies tie in with Pop Team Epic, a popular four-panel gag comic and anime adaptation that plays on tropes of Japanese entertainment. The cookies are meant to fracture into pieces, evoking the destruction of the headquarters of the comic’s publisher, Takeshobo.

At every turn, I encountered Cool USA –– remnants, distortions, and inventive recyclings of the same American power that first opened Tokyo’s markets.

The gummies are designed to resemble tuna eyeballs, with a rubbery texture like octopus or kelp.

They remind me of the petroleum food futuristic humans eat in a story from Breakfast of Champions.

Another instagram post from KISS Labo reveals their latest crowd-sourced idea: an ame-candy whose flavor changes with the introduction of two different kinds of saliva.

Why––and at what environmental consequence, had I come at all?

Gradually, the paroxysm of guilt wore off, as did 1. (and Nike x Off-White x The Indy’s cover) my jet lag, and I spent the rest of the trip buying things

17

ARTS

Menu items from one of the Pop Team Epic Pop-Up Cafes. Not pictured: the “Subculture Kuso-Onna Souffle Cake".

16 NOV 2018

WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS Liby Hays

WHAT ARE GACHA?

when, in a display of grief over the death of Emperor Hirohito, his red-and-white stripes were changed to black-and-white.

Gachapon/Gashapon or Gacha are coin-operated machines with a gambling mechanism by which one of five different toy designs is dispensed at random.

The acquisition of duplicates is supposed to encourage trading between Gacha collectors.

If you go to a Gacha wall, you can see Gachas in all conceivable declensions.

To design a hypothetical Gacha series, choose a group parameter from column A and a style or format from column B. A

B

Domestic animal Sea creature Extinct animal Insect Monument Museum artifact American franchise Japanese franchise Retro Sci-fi robot Soldier Folk legend Celebrity Infrastructural component Prophylactic measure Video game asset Pile of garbage

In costumes In a cup/egg/amuse-bouche spoon Squishy Diorama Squashed Funny pose Sleeping Packaged Snack Dessert Derby Functional mini machine Water bottle topper Dog tag Ring Wind-Up Clamshell phone

More liberated Lady Liberty

Animal workplace fatigue.

(This reminds me also of this black-and-white Where’s Waldo gacha I saw. Much more difficult to find in monochrome..)

C. FASHION 8 Architectural Knowledge (December 2017)

Technological developments structure the course of art history (more saturated paint pigments leading to impressionism, peer-to-peer networking leading to rabies pride stimboards, etc.), but the opposite is also true. The use of orthographic perspective in diagrams made it easier for engineers to record the specifics of mechanical workings and pass this information on, and in this way, illustration facilitated industrialization.

I interpreted the girls in this architectural magazine as an anthropomorphization of diagrams themselves.

B. COLLECTIBLES 5. Sekaido Mini T-Square and Generic Mini Multi-Ruler The ABC (Already-Been-Chewed) aesthetic of these gacha also recalls the Apple logo...(Now imagining if the Apple Logo was redesigned to have discrete bite-marks taken out of it. Would probably be protested by its iPad-loving baby fanbase.)

They brandish tape measures or land surveying If there was ever an academic faction concerned 7. Osaka’s Kuidaore Taro Clown Mascot x Attack instruments, and the proportions of their aprons correwith minis, one of the most contentious debates would on Titan Phone Charm spond with egress plans. Measure is the man of all be: are mini rulers actually mini at all? How can somethings… thing be small-scale if its scale is technically fixed, 9. Fickle Tee consistent with the full-size version of the object? By this logic, mini rulers are not mini, just inefficient.

6. Miniature World: The Purer 5 Types Gacha

This flayed clown, which I relate to on a personal In many people’s eyes, this shirt indicates moral level, turns out to be the amalgamation of an anime deficiency. But I see fickleness as a form of agility. character and a local mascot.

I’ll let this hat be my coda…

Attack on Titan is a widely popular manga and anime about humans living in a walled city and getting constantly assailed by skinless, cannibalistic giants.

Kuidaore Taro is a puppet-clown man, merchandized to the hilt in Osaka souvenir stalls.

He was originally the mascot of a restaurant called Cui-Daoré and became nationally famous in 1989

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

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FRIDAY 11.16 Ending Racism and Injustice in the Food System RI Department of Health (3 Capitol Hill, Cannon Building) // 2-3:30PM This discussion, led by Soul Fire Farm co-director and Farming While Black author Leah Penniman, will address how we might overhaul a system which simultaneously draws on a wealth of Black agricultural knowledge while leaving Black communities in the US without access to ecological resources and healthy food. There will be limited seating available, so register fast on the event FB page with the title above.

The Hempsteadys, Stop the Presses, Sammy Kay, & Upper Management Shelter Arcade Bar (103 Dike St) // 7PM-Late This is basically a ska night. You wouldn’t be able to tell from the event title, or the fact that it’s being held in an arcade bar, but it is. Did they expect people to just sort of walk in and be pleasantly surprised by an entire trombone section tucked behind the Frogger machine?

SATURDAY 11.17 Performance Testers at the Mill Earnscliffe Woolen-Paragon Worsted Company Mill Complex (29 Manton Ave) // 10AM-12PM This May, this mouthful of a mill will be home to “She Died For Our Convenience,” a huge choral performance honoring the women who worked from 1898-1960 in the textile mill. However, it is November, and this rehearsal session is mostly for figuring out “how people will move around the very large outdoor space.” There will be coffee and snacks provided in any case, and this list writer (LW) would urge you to go and see if you can be a part of this very cool production come the warmth of springtime.

Noir at the Bar AS220 Main Stage (115 Empire St) // 6-8PM A dark and stormy night. You’re trying to find solace in a bowl of chickpeas which cost $4.50, the accompanying ‘Gansett washing down your sins’ bitter aftertaste. A dark silhouette grazes your shoulder and escapes out of the corner of your eye. Femme fatale? Your shadowy LW? You’ll never know. Also, there’s a noir fiction reading, and it’s this event. Drink responsibly... with a hint of mystique.

SUNDAY 11.18 NationalizeGrid Campaign 101 Planning Session 479 Lloyd Ave // 3-4:30PM You read about it on page 3, now see what it takes to build an ecosocialist movement! This is a planning meeting for a much larger information session about the campaign, so it might be good to email ahead if you want to come and help. You can reach them at info@provdsa.org.

MONDAY 11.19 On Protest, Art, and Activism Part 2 Granoff Center for the Creative Arts at Brown University (154 Angell St) // 11AM-4PM Since the 2016 election, it’s been easy to distrust any art produced or criticized under the banner of progressivism.

Jerry Saltz’s prediction that “[under Trump] artists will work with mechanics to disable deportation buses by night” has proved laughable at best. Considering this, we at the List think this show does a much better job of curating a meaningful exhibition on art’s potential to be disruptive, drawing on a long archive of feminist practice on loan from the Whitney. Featuring work by Guerrilla Girls, Hermine Freed, Howardena Pindell, and others.

TUESDAY 11.20 Transgender Day of Remembrance Flag Raising Ceremony Providence City Hall (25 Dorrance St) // 5:30-7PM Join Mayor Elorza, TGI Network of Rhode Island, RI Pride, Youth Pride and the Providence Human Relations Commission to recognize Transgender Day of Remembrance, honoring trans* lives lost to violence and injustice.

WEDNESDAY 11.21 KABLAM! Ogie’s Annual 90’s Party!

Ogie’s Trailer Park (1155 Westminster St) // 9PM Calm your nerves with some gushers-infused vodka and a ‘pull the tape out of a VHS tape’ de-stressing activity booth before you go back to wherever you’re from and eat Thanksgiving dinner with your awful parents, who never bought you a Furby when you were a kid!!!!! Lol, jk.

THURSDAY 11.22 TURKEY BURN! North Kingstown Golf Course (615 Callahan Rd, N. Kingstown) // 7AM Join RI’s most devoted car-heads this Thanksgiving morning to pregame your family dinner with a big, festive drag race. That’s right: every Thanksgiving, a bunch of men gather at a golf course in North Kingstown and burn, not calories (as one would at, say, the more institutionalized Turkey Trot 5k Run events that many American communities host), but their own rubber tires. Sounds hot.

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