The Bluestocking, vol 38: Eyelids, iCandy and I voted Remain, don't blame me
Happy Friday, everyone. Looking forward to watching the new Black Mirror episodes on Netflix this weekend (although who can watch more than one at a time? It's too depressing) and reading the rest of Andrew Solomon's Far From the Tree. Out running this week I became keenly aware that I haven't listened to any new music for about five years, so I am very much in the market for recommendations. (My running playlist includes "Turn Around" by Phats and Small, to give you an idea of what we're dealing with here.) Help me!
I promise that the newsletter will become less politics-fixated soon, once the US election is over and once Brexit is sorted out (ha ha HA). And as long as we don't have an early election next year, which I still think seems the likeliest possibility.
Also: if you like this, why not forward it to a friend, or tweet/Facebook the link? It's tinyletter.com/HelenLewis
Helen
Inside the world of ethnic plastic surgery
“You’ve got some nice Caucasian features,” Dr. Edmund Kwan says, inspecting my face at his Upper East Side plastic-surgery practice, where the waiting room includes an ottoman larger than my kitchen table. “You’re half-Asian mixed with what?” Chinese mom and white dad, I reply. “You inherited a Caucasian nose. Your nose is nice. Your eyes have a little bit of Asian mixed in.” He proposes Asian blepharoplasty, a surgical procedure to create or enlarge the palpebral fold, the eyelid crease a few millimeters above the lashline that many Asians lack. “You’ve got nice big eyes,” he admits, but eyelids more like my father’s would make them look bigger.
People do all kinds of things to belong. But maybe this trend is not as simple as we might imagine.
The man who made apps so addictive
Fogg called for a new field, sitting at the intersection of computer science and psychology, and proposed a name for it: “captology” (Computers as Persuasive Technologies). Captology later became behaviour design, which is now embedded into the invisible operating system of our everyday lives. The emails that induce you to buy right away, the apps and games that rivet your attention, the online forms that nudge you towards one decision over another: all are designed to hack the human brain and capitalise on its instincts, quirks and flaws. The techniques they use are often crude and blatantly manipulative, but they are getting steadily more refined, and, as they do so, less noticeable.
Fogg’s Atlanta talk provoked strong responses from his audience, falling into two groups: either “This is dangerous. It’s like giving people the tools to construct an atomic bomb”; or “This is amazing. It could be worth billions of dollars.”
Ian Leslie has written a perturbing insight into the heart of Silicon Valley's proposition: getting you addicted to its products.
Why We Lost The Brexit Vote
Our European counterparts pointed out that the number of immigrants moving to the U.K. was relatively limited, compared to, for example, Germany. Or they called attention to the fact that European migrants paid more tax and used fewer public services than British citizens, which was true.
They noted that our economy was growing, that we were almost at full employment, and thus that migration was more or less inevitable. They showed us how our rate of financial distribution to the areas under pressure was much lower than, say, Germany’s, and concluded that we should just spend a lot more money addressing the challenges there.
We were never able to counter these arguments. To be honest, we failed to find any evidence of communities under pressure that would satisfy the European Commission. At one point we even asked the help of Andrew Green at MigrationWatch, an organization that has been critical of migration. But all he could provide was an article in the Daily Telegraph about a hospital maternity ward in Corby. There was no hard evidence.
Very long, but very interesting look by one of David Cameron's former aides about the mistakes of the Remain campaign. Most jaw-dropping bit: when they try to look for evidence migrants are depressing wages and putting too much pressure on public services so they can argue at the EU for limits to the free movement of people. Only they can't find any. Even Andrew Green, (whose "think tank" - basically him and a fax machine - has been pumping out press releases on the subject for a decade) can't help.
The Trumpologists
The whole kind of exercise of “who is the real Trump?” and that what we see really is the real him. It’s not Stephen Colbert. This is not a persona that’s adopted for a performance. That’s really him. He thinks that’s still a winning possibility for him, that he is a success. I think he deeply believes that. He can’t countenance—you know, his brain won’t take in that there’s like another possibility. He will continue to call it a success, and at the same time pursue this scorched‑earth approach that we’ve now seen on full display.
Politico gathered together half a dozen Trump biographers a couple of weeks ago to analyse his meltdown. Their psychological analysis has been borne out.
Quick links: Hillary's debate performances were cleverer than anyone has given her credit for (story of this election). A profile of Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign manager, who is trying to emerge from this smoking mess with a career. David Runciman on the "education gap" tearing British politics apart. A BuzzFeed investigation into how extreme views are becoming mainstream across Europe. LUVVIETASTIC: all the Hamlets teach you how to say "To be or not be". Airport noise complaints follow the same pattern as below the line comments or anti-semitic tweets: a tiny number of people are responsible for most of them. Tanya Gold braves the most alarming commission in journalism: interviewing Jeremy Paxman.
Guest gif: Every morning got me like . . .
