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Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House: Incredible memoir about mostly-emotional abuse in a queer relationship. Short chapters in somewhat varying styles, with constant references to the index of fairytale elements that make it that much creepier. Machado writes beautifully about her lust, her shame about exposing “dirty laundry," and her experience of having her reality denied until she thought that was normal and ok.
Edward Niedermeyer, Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors: From 2018. The book’s main thesis is that Tesla has always faced challenges delivering on Musk’s outsized promises, but that luck and bravado have enabled it to maintain a soaring stock price. Focuses on production/engineering issues, like whether they actually had the claimed fast chargers or chargers that operate on solar power, rather than on treatment of workers, etc. Unfortunately, the book undercuts its own thesis, which is that Musk has been definitively exposed as unreliable, because after every exposure documented, enough people shrug or cry fake news to keep Tesla stock high. Still, it’s hard to think the party can last forever; as Niedermeyer points out, the legacy car companies are not shy about investing in competing cars and can actually make a lot of cars that work, something that Tesla has not shown. Also, the future of electric cars is probably not mostly in high-end, luxury brands, but in basic production configurations that can be built into cheap cars as well as a few high-end models, again something that the big makers can do and Tesla can’t. Of course, the market can stay irrational longer than you or I can stay solvent. So I guess we’ll see.
Cory Doctorow & Rebecca Giblin, Chokepoint Capitalism: Focuses on monopolization in the creative industries and how not just antitrust but other broken laws, including intellectual property laws, need to be fixed to fight it. Among other things, pithily notes that “giving more copyright to creators who are struggling against powerful buyers is like giving more lunch money to your bullied kid.” Any benefit is just going to be extracted from them, in the absence of bargaining power. One reason to consider creative industries as keystones, aside from their cultural power, is that they starkly show the problems with monopsonies (buyer-side monopolies): “One important and under-recognized characteristic of monopsony power is that it can arise at much lower concentrations than monopoly does: a buyer responsible for just 10 or 20 percent of a producer’s sales can have substantial power.” Since most creators face monopsony intermediaries like record labels or movie studios, this is highly relevant. “Amazon shakes down publishers, and, in turn, publishers shake down their workers and authors [and libraries],” and creative workers are especially vulnerable to this because there are so many noneconomic incentives to create, so artists will often feel pressure to accept—and if they don’t, there are others waiting in the wings to do so.
The book also explains why newspapers are dying (predatory takeovers left them vulnerable to being destroyed when the internet came in, and advertising intermediaries are taking up to 70% of the remaining ad revenue) and the various shenanigans music labels use to avoid paying artists (including by getting streaming platforms to give them revenue streams that they don’t have to share with artists, unlike “royalties”).
The second half explores not just antitrust, but mandatory financial transparency for creators, copyright, contract, and labor law solutions that might make things better. There’s some difficulties—at one point they both suggest lowering royalty rates for music streaming to make it easier for competition to enter the market and increasing rates paid to creators—but a lot of what they offer is worth thinking about. (Even that might be managed; they optimistically suggest that better databases could cut out a lot of overhead, though we would also likely need to figure out how to pay labels less.)
Elena Cooper, Art and Modern Copyright: The Contested Image: Repetitive/badly organized but with a lot of rich sources about late 18th-early 20th century UK treatment of copyright in visual works. Suffers from insisting that it disrupts the existing accounts when I don’t actually see any contradictions, only some (valuable) rich detail about how copyright principles worked for paintings that were created to be valued as physical artifacts as well as, or more than, intangible assets, as well as for early photos. Most interesting to me was the discussion of how art collectors wanted copyright law to discipline painters—to prevent them from making similar paintings that might compete with their own artifacts. Relatedly, they wanted copyright to transfer with the object, so that they could authorize the creation of engravings—a valuable licensing market in most of the 19th century. And—art collectors being better represented in the halls of power than painters, despite the social renown of some painters—they got what they wanted for a while. We might find it hilarious or disingenuous, but the collectors argued that art was “degraded” if artists could just paint a bunch of similar paintings and sell them instead of creating new ones, and also the practice encouraged deception because doing that was boring, so artists were likely to fob off most of the work to “assistants” and then put their names on the paintings. “As the barrister Blaine stated in a paper on artistic copyright published in 1861, copyright was not just about correcting ‘the wrongs which artists suffer’ but also ‘the wrongs which artists commit.’” She emphasizes that things that might look to us like modern moral rights—legal prohibitions of misrepresenting authorship, in particular—were aimed in significant part against artists themselves so that they wouldn’t defraud purchasers by representing work done mostly or entirely by assistants as their own.
Printsellers also got in on the action, insisting that, when they bought the copyright in a picture, artists should be deemed infringing if they painted a similar picture, in order to protect the printsellers’ copyrights. (This argument still goes on; the character of Sam Spade was involved in a similar dispute, as were some cardinal paintings used by the Franklin Mint and a competitor, as were the songs Run Through the Jungle and Old Man Down the Road, both by the same composer/singer.)
She argues that changes in the social meaning of painting helped resolve tensions between collectors and painters: “[W]hereas collectors saw painting as giving rise to a unique material artifact [which should not be repeated by the painter], painters preferred the view that painting was a repeatable performance, akin to an oral retelling. These tensions were eventually resolved in the early twentieth century, with a shift in aesthetic understandings of painting, which conceived of painting as an unrepeatable textured surface. In this new aesthetic context, the distinction between the physical and the intangible was easier to draw.”
Cooper also provides interesting details about portraits of people—first paintings, then photographs—though I didn’t find the argument that copyright served as an early right of publicity all that convincing. It did so pretty much by accident and disappeared as a means of protecting publicity rights as soon as it was technically possible to take pictures of people without their consent, suggesting that this was a legal spandrel rather than something that really offered publicity rights avant la lettre. Still, rules about ownership of copyright in a painting did generate concern, and ownership by the commissioning party seemed particularly appropriate to many lawmakers in the case of portraits. What Cooper doesn’t talk about is that, in the case of many portraits, especially of women and children, the commissioning party wouldn’t have been the person portrayed: copyright ownership would have been part of ownership/legal custody of the people portrayed, not rights they held in their own images. As for photos, she argues that a de facto understanding emerged, albeit not recognized in the law: copyright in a “private” photo commissioned by the subject (or the subject’s legal guardians) would be owned by the commissioner. In contrast, a “public” photo done for distribution/publicity would have its copyright owned by the photographer, often in return for a royalty to the sitter for photo sales; the sitter would often agree to sit exclusively for one photographer.
Also discussed: before the modern conception of derivative works, whether a photo of a painting infringed the copyright in the painting was conceptually complicated by the question of whether photos in general represented creative work deserving of their own copyrights. In finding infringement in photo-of-painting cases, she argues, courts disregarded the creative labor of the photographer—something we today might well acknowledge but say was directed at an illegitimate goal (copying an existing work).
Patrick Radden Keefe, Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks: Magazine profiles of various people, mostly bad guys plus an anti-corruption fighter; Anthony Bourdain; a lawyer who defends death penalty cases; and another lawyer who turned her crime boss brother in to the police and then wrote a bestseller about it. Mostly, bad people are as boring as good ones, and equally convinced of their own genius but more convinced of their entitlement to do and take whatever they want. The death penalty lawyer may be an actual saint, though.
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, Don’t Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life: Cute on the surface, but in some ways a very depressing book. The schtick is that he wrote this book because the data showed that the most highlighted parts of his previous book were self-help advice bits. Some dating advice: while conventionally attractive people do best on the apps, runners-up have extreme looks: “blue hair, body art, wild glasses, or shaved heads.” They’re only attractive to a subset of people, but those people really find them attractive. Sexy occupations are often sexier to het women than higher salaries: A man in the hospitality industry who earns $200K is as attractive to het women as a male firefighter who earns $60K (male lawyers, police officers, firefighters, soldiers and doctors do best, if you’re interested), though there’s depressing sexism in the differences: a woman’s occupation doesn’t matter once you take her attractiveness into account (though we know from elsewhere that attractiveness influences occupational success).
At the same time, your satisfaction with a partner can be predicted more by your overall life satisfaction, depression status, and affect than by any characteristics you share or don’t share with the partner. Shared demographic characteristics and the conventional attractiveness of one’s partner don’t seem helpful at all in predicting relationship success. So, a good rational actor would seek out “massively undervalued groups in the dating market”: short men, extremely tall women, Asian men, African-American women, men in less desirable fields for men (education, hospitality, science, construction or transportation), and conventionally less attractive men and women. Your best bet for happiness is looking for a person who is satisfied with life, attaches securely, is conscientious, and has a growth mindset.
Likewise, “parents” in the abstract don’t have much effect on life expectancy, overall health, education, religiosity, and adult income (that is, compared to the other things like overall circumstances that surround kids, including wealth). They can modestly affect religious affiliation, drug/alcohol use and sexual behavior—especially of teens—and how kids feel about their parents. But some neighborhoods are really good neighborhoods to raise kids and you should move there. This was the most frustrating/shocking part of the book, where he wrote about neighborhood choice as if it were a … choice for a lot of people.
The same problem emerged in the chapter about how to become a successful artist. The core thesis is one I wholeheartedly believe: The harder you work, the luckier you get. Artists who show at many venues or travel for many gigs in different places are likelier—not likely, but likelier--to hit it big, and they are likelier to be able to sustain themselves as an artist. But not once did he discuss the ways in which “work hard/produce lots of work” is itself something to which not everyone has access. I think he’d say that he’s giving self-help advice, not policy advice; it is the job of policy to change things until “the harder you work, the luckier you get” is equally available to anyone, but it comes off as “if you weren’t able to work hard and make lots of instances of art, you don’t deserve to succeed at art.” Or maybe the similarly depressing, “if you aren’t able to make lots of art, maybe become an accountant.” Instead, he directs us not to “whine” that our art is better than insiders’, because “most of the people inside the club started their lives outside the club. They had to do something to become a vouched-for artist whose career was on cruise control.” Although it was hilarious to read about Bob Dylan forgetting that he’d written a song that he heard sung by Joan Baez.
Further, because “I’m not writing a legal treatise; I am writing a self-help book,” he argues that—whether you want to succeed as a creative or in other businesses—you should look for “local monopolies,” because “having legal protection against competiton is a huge assistance.” This is why car dealerships make so many millionaires—state laws make it hard to open a new dealership. On the flip side, it’s pointless to open a business that competes with an existing monopolist.
In related news, based on happiness studies, it’s helpful to work satisfaction to work with your friends, to work from home, and to work listening to music. But being a fan of a particular sports team tends to make you less happy, because even if your team is a winning one, the joys of winning get familiar while the sting of individual losses never does. “Being a passionate fan of four sports teams … is roughly the equivalent for one’s mood of being sick in bed an extra 2.2 days every year.” Alcohol doesn’t much improve the experience of going to a show, having sex, hanging out with friends, watching TV, or reading—the underlying activities do most of the mood elevation work—but it does improve the experience of traveling/commuting, waiting in line, resting/relaxing (which doesn’t on its own make us as happy as we think it will), smoking, and washing/dressing/grooming.
Andrew Liptak, Cosplay: A History: A very Star Wars-focused history of cosplay, padded somewhat by potted histories of related phenomena, including historical reenactments. Very much about franchise toleration and less about fair use, though also clearly written from a place of love. (There is discussion of the Lucasfilm litigation against the creator of the original Stormtrooper helmet; Lucasfilm won in the US—on trademark grounds—and lost in the UK—on copyright.) Significant quote from an insider: “We’re not interested in shutting anyone down unless we see someone trying to turn a real profit. When someone sells stormtrooper armor for under a grand, we know that no one’s making any money in that transaction. But as soon as you’re selling twenty or thirty suits a year for more than that, that’s when we want to come in and stop them.” Lucasfilm’s compromises were to “allow” a lot of cosplay, but prohibit appearances with politicians or “in places like strip clubs or bars,” while relying on cosplayers to help promote the franchise/take credit for things like visits to sick kids. Likewise, members of the main Star Wars cosplay organization could “make and sell their own merchandise like patches and coins internally, but not to the general public or for a profit.”
Other brief notes: Cosplay is another kind of performance, copying to achieve something new. Bjo Trimble shows up as an early technological innovator. I liked learning that, with the arrival of Blu-Ray, people identified parts of the original Boba Fett suit, including a dental expander and a Casio calculator pad. I also learned of the “cosplay music video,” a new-to-me cousin of the vid, described variously as “a trailer of sorts for the season’s cosplay and convention scene” and as reenacting or creating scenes but “stopping short of a proper fan film, which would have a longer story and plot. These instead act as more of a character study.”
The discussion of licensed versus unlicensed costume/parts makers is interesting though clearly muted; licensing means negotiations and slow going, as well as fitting into a niche so that you don’t compete with the mass market Halloween costumes. On the other hand, buying from a small business is risky, not just because of scammers but also because builders get overwhelmed by trying to turn a hobby into a business. There’s also a concept of unfair copying of work by cosplayer insiders—“recasting”—which insiders consider different from copying costumes from franchises themselves because it skips a bunch of hard work. And former cosplayers now can professionalize, not just among cosplayers but also by taking the skills they learned to make costumes, special effects and props on different pro productions. There, they may find frustration since cosplayers often have longer timelines and less interest in creating something that is imperfect but durable, cleanable, and adjustable enough to survive a shoot.
Ryan North, How to Invent Everything: Charming semi-history of human innovation as a manual for a time traveler stuck in the past. I loved the Crosstime Engineer (yes, I know now) and so it was fun for me despite the occasional dry lists.
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended on It: BATNA/Getting to Yes, Voss argues, downplays the crucial importance of emotion and leads to “wimp wins,” where you get your bottom line but not the best deal you could have gotten. The idea of extracting the last bit of value from an opponent is more appealing to me for a hostage negotiation than for buying a car, I admit, but there’s a lot of interesting stuff, including about listening in a way that makes your counterpart feel heard; asking open-ended questions (how am I supposed to do that?) to get the other person invested in solving your problem; and embracing the power of no, which can unlock real negotiation.
Edward Niedermeyer, Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors: From 2018. The book’s main thesis is that Tesla has always faced challenges delivering on Musk’s outsized promises, but that luck and bravado have enabled it to maintain a soaring stock price. Focuses on production/engineering issues, like whether they actually had the claimed fast chargers or chargers that operate on solar power, rather than on treatment of workers, etc. Unfortunately, the book undercuts its own thesis, which is that Musk has been definitively exposed as unreliable, because after every exposure documented, enough people shrug or cry fake news to keep Tesla stock high. Still, it’s hard to think the party can last forever; as Niedermeyer points out, the legacy car companies are not shy about investing in competing cars and can actually make a lot of cars that work, something that Tesla has not shown. Also, the future of electric cars is probably not mostly in high-end, luxury brands, but in basic production configurations that can be built into cheap cars as well as a few high-end models, again something that the big makers can do and Tesla can’t. Of course, the market can stay irrational longer than you or I can stay solvent. So I guess we’ll see.
Cory Doctorow & Rebecca Giblin, Chokepoint Capitalism: Focuses on monopolization in the creative industries and how not just antitrust but other broken laws, including intellectual property laws, need to be fixed to fight it. Among other things, pithily notes that “giving more copyright to creators who are struggling against powerful buyers is like giving more lunch money to your bullied kid.” Any benefit is just going to be extracted from them, in the absence of bargaining power. One reason to consider creative industries as keystones, aside from their cultural power, is that they starkly show the problems with monopsonies (buyer-side monopolies): “One important and under-recognized characteristic of monopsony power is that it can arise at much lower concentrations than monopoly does: a buyer responsible for just 10 or 20 percent of a producer’s sales can have substantial power.” Since most creators face monopsony intermediaries like record labels or movie studios, this is highly relevant. “Amazon shakes down publishers, and, in turn, publishers shake down their workers and authors [and libraries],” and creative workers are especially vulnerable to this because there are so many noneconomic incentives to create, so artists will often feel pressure to accept—and if they don’t, there are others waiting in the wings to do so.
The book also explains why newspapers are dying (predatory takeovers left them vulnerable to being destroyed when the internet came in, and advertising intermediaries are taking up to 70% of the remaining ad revenue) and the various shenanigans music labels use to avoid paying artists (including by getting streaming platforms to give them revenue streams that they don’t have to share with artists, unlike “royalties”).
The second half explores not just antitrust, but mandatory financial transparency for creators, copyright, contract, and labor law solutions that might make things better. There’s some difficulties—at one point they both suggest lowering royalty rates for music streaming to make it easier for competition to enter the market and increasing rates paid to creators—but a lot of what they offer is worth thinking about. (Even that might be managed; they optimistically suggest that better databases could cut out a lot of overhead, though we would also likely need to figure out how to pay labels less.)
Elena Cooper, Art and Modern Copyright: The Contested Image: Repetitive/badly organized but with a lot of rich sources about late 18th-early 20th century UK treatment of copyright in visual works. Suffers from insisting that it disrupts the existing accounts when I don’t actually see any contradictions, only some (valuable) rich detail about how copyright principles worked for paintings that were created to be valued as physical artifacts as well as, or more than, intangible assets, as well as for early photos. Most interesting to me was the discussion of how art collectors wanted copyright law to discipline painters—to prevent them from making similar paintings that might compete with their own artifacts. Relatedly, they wanted copyright to transfer with the object, so that they could authorize the creation of engravings—a valuable licensing market in most of the 19th century. And—art collectors being better represented in the halls of power than painters, despite the social renown of some painters—they got what they wanted for a while. We might find it hilarious or disingenuous, but the collectors argued that art was “degraded” if artists could just paint a bunch of similar paintings and sell them instead of creating new ones, and also the practice encouraged deception because doing that was boring, so artists were likely to fob off most of the work to “assistants” and then put their names on the paintings. “As the barrister Blaine stated in a paper on artistic copyright published in 1861, copyright was not just about correcting ‘the wrongs which artists suffer’ but also ‘the wrongs which artists commit.’” She emphasizes that things that might look to us like modern moral rights—legal prohibitions of misrepresenting authorship, in particular—were aimed in significant part against artists themselves so that they wouldn’t defraud purchasers by representing work done mostly or entirely by assistants as their own.
Printsellers also got in on the action, insisting that, when they bought the copyright in a picture, artists should be deemed infringing if they painted a similar picture, in order to protect the printsellers’ copyrights. (This argument still goes on; the character of Sam Spade was involved in a similar dispute, as were some cardinal paintings used by the Franklin Mint and a competitor, as were the songs Run Through the Jungle and Old Man Down the Road, both by the same composer/singer.)
She argues that changes in the social meaning of painting helped resolve tensions between collectors and painters: “[W]hereas collectors saw painting as giving rise to a unique material artifact [which should not be repeated by the painter], painters preferred the view that painting was a repeatable performance, akin to an oral retelling. These tensions were eventually resolved in the early twentieth century, with a shift in aesthetic understandings of painting, which conceived of painting as an unrepeatable textured surface. In this new aesthetic context, the distinction between the physical and the intangible was easier to draw.”
Cooper also provides interesting details about portraits of people—first paintings, then photographs—though I didn’t find the argument that copyright served as an early right of publicity all that convincing. It did so pretty much by accident and disappeared as a means of protecting publicity rights as soon as it was technically possible to take pictures of people without their consent, suggesting that this was a legal spandrel rather than something that really offered publicity rights avant la lettre. Still, rules about ownership of copyright in a painting did generate concern, and ownership by the commissioning party seemed particularly appropriate to many lawmakers in the case of portraits. What Cooper doesn’t talk about is that, in the case of many portraits, especially of women and children, the commissioning party wouldn’t have been the person portrayed: copyright ownership would have been part of ownership/legal custody of the people portrayed, not rights they held in their own images. As for photos, she argues that a de facto understanding emerged, albeit not recognized in the law: copyright in a “private” photo commissioned by the subject (or the subject’s legal guardians) would be owned by the commissioner. In contrast, a “public” photo done for distribution/publicity would have its copyright owned by the photographer, often in return for a royalty to the sitter for photo sales; the sitter would often agree to sit exclusively for one photographer.
Also discussed: before the modern conception of derivative works, whether a photo of a painting infringed the copyright in the painting was conceptually complicated by the question of whether photos in general represented creative work deserving of their own copyrights. In finding infringement in photo-of-painting cases, she argues, courts disregarded the creative labor of the photographer—something we today might well acknowledge but say was directed at an illegitimate goal (copying an existing work).
Patrick Radden Keefe, Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks: Magazine profiles of various people, mostly bad guys plus an anti-corruption fighter; Anthony Bourdain; a lawyer who defends death penalty cases; and another lawyer who turned her crime boss brother in to the police and then wrote a bestseller about it. Mostly, bad people are as boring as good ones, and equally convinced of their own genius but more convinced of their entitlement to do and take whatever they want. The death penalty lawyer may be an actual saint, though.
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, Don’t Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life: Cute on the surface, but in some ways a very depressing book. The schtick is that he wrote this book because the data showed that the most highlighted parts of his previous book were self-help advice bits. Some dating advice: while conventionally attractive people do best on the apps, runners-up have extreme looks: “blue hair, body art, wild glasses, or shaved heads.” They’re only attractive to a subset of people, but those people really find them attractive. Sexy occupations are often sexier to het women than higher salaries: A man in the hospitality industry who earns $200K is as attractive to het women as a male firefighter who earns $60K (male lawyers, police officers, firefighters, soldiers and doctors do best, if you’re interested), though there’s depressing sexism in the differences: a woman’s occupation doesn’t matter once you take her attractiveness into account (though we know from elsewhere that attractiveness influences occupational success).
At the same time, your satisfaction with a partner can be predicted more by your overall life satisfaction, depression status, and affect than by any characteristics you share or don’t share with the partner. Shared demographic characteristics and the conventional attractiveness of one’s partner don’t seem helpful at all in predicting relationship success. So, a good rational actor would seek out “massively undervalued groups in the dating market”: short men, extremely tall women, Asian men, African-American women, men in less desirable fields for men (education, hospitality, science, construction or transportation), and conventionally less attractive men and women. Your best bet for happiness is looking for a person who is satisfied with life, attaches securely, is conscientious, and has a growth mindset.
Likewise, “parents” in the abstract don’t have much effect on life expectancy, overall health, education, religiosity, and adult income (that is, compared to the other things like overall circumstances that surround kids, including wealth). They can modestly affect religious affiliation, drug/alcohol use and sexual behavior—especially of teens—and how kids feel about their parents. But some neighborhoods are really good neighborhoods to raise kids and you should move there. This was the most frustrating/shocking part of the book, where he wrote about neighborhood choice as if it were a … choice for a lot of people.
The same problem emerged in the chapter about how to become a successful artist. The core thesis is one I wholeheartedly believe: The harder you work, the luckier you get. Artists who show at many venues or travel for many gigs in different places are likelier—not likely, but likelier--to hit it big, and they are likelier to be able to sustain themselves as an artist. But not once did he discuss the ways in which “work hard/produce lots of work” is itself something to which not everyone has access. I think he’d say that he’s giving self-help advice, not policy advice; it is the job of policy to change things until “the harder you work, the luckier you get” is equally available to anyone, but it comes off as “if you weren’t able to work hard and make lots of instances of art, you don’t deserve to succeed at art.” Or maybe the similarly depressing, “if you aren’t able to make lots of art, maybe become an accountant.” Instead, he directs us not to “whine” that our art is better than insiders’, because “most of the people inside the club started their lives outside the club. They had to do something to become a vouched-for artist whose career was on cruise control.” Although it was hilarious to read about Bob Dylan forgetting that he’d written a song that he heard sung by Joan Baez.
Further, because “I’m not writing a legal treatise; I am writing a self-help book,” he argues that—whether you want to succeed as a creative or in other businesses—you should look for “local monopolies,” because “having legal protection against competiton is a huge assistance.” This is why car dealerships make so many millionaires—state laws make it hard to open a new dealership. On the flip side, it’s pointless to open a business that competes with an existing monopolist.
In related news, based on happiness studies, it’s helpful to work satisfaction to work with your friends, to work from home, and to work listening to music. But being a fan of a particular sports team tends to make you less happy, because even if your team is a winning one, the joys of winning get familiar while the sting of individual losses never does. “Being a passionate fan of four sports teams … is roughly the equivalent for one’s mood of being sick in bed an extra 2.2 days every year.” Alcohol doesn’t much improve the experience of going to a show, having sex, hanging out with friends, watching TV, or reading—the underlying activities do most of the mood elevation work—but it does improve the experience of traveling/commuting, waiting in line, resting/relaxing (which doesn’t on its own make us as happy as we think it will), smoking, and washing/dressing/grooming.
Andrew Liptak, Cosplay: A History: A very Star Wars-focused history of cosplay, padded somewhat by potted histories of related phenomena, including historical reenactments. Very much about franchise toleration and less about fair use, though also clearly written from a place of love. (There is discussion of the Lucasfilm litigation against the creator of the original Stormtrooper helmet; Lucasfilm won in the US—on trademark grounds—and lost in the UK—on copyright.) Significant quote from an insider: “We’re not interested in shutting anyone down unless we see someone trying to turn a real profit. When someone sells stormtrooper armor for under a grand, we know that no one’s making any money in that transaction. But as soon as you’re selling twenty or thirty suits a year for more than that, that’s when we want to come in and stop them.” Lucasfilm’s compromises were to “allow” a lot of cosplay, but prohibit appearances with politicians or “in places like strip clubs or bars,” while relying on cosplayers to help promote the franchise/take credit for things like visits to sick kids. Likewise, members of the main Star Wars cosplay organization could “make and sell their own merchandise like patches and coins internally, but not to the general public or for a profit.”
Other brief notes: Cosplay is another kind of performance, copying to achieve something new. Bjo Trimble shows up as an early technological innovator. I liked learning that, with the arrival of Blu-Ray, people identified parts of the original Boba Fett suit, including a dental expander and a Casio calculator pad. I also learned of the “cosplay music video,” a new-to-me cousin of the vid, described variously as “a trailer of sorts for the season’s cosplay and convention scene” and as reenacting or creating scenes but “stopping short of a proper fan film, which would have a longer story and plot. These instead act as more of a character study.”
The discussion of licensed versus unlicensed costume/parts makers is interesting though clearly muted; licensing means negotiations and slow going, as well as fitting into a niche so that you don’t compete with the mass market Halloween costumes. On the other hand, buying from a small business is risky, not just because of scammers but also because builders get overwhelmed by trying to turn a hobby into a business. There’s also a concept of unfair copying of work by cosplayer insiders—“recasting”—which insiders consider different from copying costumes from franchises themselves because it skips a bunch of hard work. And former cosplayers now can professionalize, not just among cosplayers but also by taking the skills they learned to make costumes, special effects and props on different pro productions. There, they may find frustration since cosplayers often have longer timelines and less interest in creating something that is imperfect but durable, cleanable, and adjustable enough to survive a shoot.
Ryan North, How to Invent Everything: Charming semi-history of human innovation as a manual for a time traveler stuck in the past. I loved the Crosstime Engineer (yes, I know now) and so it was fun for me despite the occasional dry lists.
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended on It: BATNA/Getting to Yes, Voss argues, downplays the crucial importance of emotion and leads to “wimp wins,” where you get your bottom line but not the best deal you could have gotten. The idea of extracting the last bit of value from an opponent is more appealing to me for a hostage negotiation than for buying a car, I admit, but there’s a lot of interesting stuff, including about listening in a way that makes your counterpart feel heard; asking open-ended questions (how am I supposed to do that?) to get the other person invested in solving your problem; and embracing the power of no, which can unlock real negotiation.
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I've really liked CMM's fiction, so this memoir sounds harrowing but really good.
The happiness studies are pretty interesting! I have to say that as a tennis fan, I rarely dwell on losses but big wins make me feel fuzzy when it's someone I'm a fan of. Maybe because I'm not a super hardcore fan, but I think it might also be because tennis is an individual sport? I love both Williams sisters, Nadal, Andy Murray, and others, and while they've won a lot, maybe the knowledge that a lot of people expected them to retire many years ago and/or that they've already exceeded the expectations really anyone could have for an athlete definitely makes me not too disappointed in the losses and then that transfers to newer folks I'm a fan of. Maybe because I don't buy too much into hating the rivals (unless they do horrendous stuff off court) - it doesn't make me mad that others win and I'm usually a little happy for the winner. I really wonder if team sports make it easier to focus on losses and feel more emotional. Like, if you're less resilient about a loss than the actual athlete... why?
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From:
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