vox--2020-07-17--What comes after Zoom fatigue

What comes after Zoom fatigue

It ’ s well over a hundred days into the Covid-19 crisis , and I have to make a confession .
I hate doing everything over video chat .
I hated it at the start , and I hate it in new ways now .
You ’ ve probably heard of “ Zoom fatigue.
” I ’ ve transcended Zoom fatigue .
At this stage in the pandemic , I ’ m experiencing something more advanced , like that moment on a long run when you ’ ve fought through fatigue , tapped into your body ’ s store of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Whether I like it or not , most of my work life and social life will happen via webcam in the weeks and months to come .
Despite my complaints , however , this does not have to be a bad thing .
Even after the pandemic ends , video chat will play an increasingly important role at work , for school , in health care , and in our relationships with friends and family .
The pandemic not only pushed this technology into new scenarios of our daily lives but also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it .
Folks that hadn ’ t tried Zoom , FaceTime , or Google Meet before March became power users in record time .
Some of these new users have even embraced the software ’ s virtual backgrounds and AI-generated face-smoothing effects .
( The software is extremely easy to use now compared to 15 years ago , when I first used it . )
While few of us want to keep doing Zoom happy hours after the pandemic ends , more of us are comfortable using it than ever before .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Zoom ’ s chief product officer Odel Gal told me .
“ All the people that were resistant to using the technology were forced to use it.
” So what does our future of talking through screens actually look like ?
In an effort to answer a capricious question , I talked to Apple , Facebook , Google , Microsoft , and Zoom about their post-pandemic plans for video chat .
The companies all reported record numbers of new users and total usage , and they were predictably optimistic about what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spaces .
But much to my surprise , the companies were pretty quick to acknowledge the shortcomings of video chat .
That ’ s because there is no substitute that is as good as talking to people in person .
In the near future , though , the next best thing might not be so bad .
Video chat as we know it is barely two decades old .
Starting around the time Skype launched in 2003 , what was once a futurist ’ s fantasy became a problematic reality .
But the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year or two away from being actually usable .
So you might say that we ’ ve struggled with Zoom fatigue for quite some time , when you consider that abysmal picture quality , stuttering audio , and the general awkwardness of talking to screens have always been features of the video chat experience .
Years later , the tech ’ s persistent shortcomings , like how you can ’ t quite make eye contact with the other people on a video call , continue to feel frustrating .
When most of your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ happening via video chat , these annoyances become downright exhausting .
Zoom fatigue is the feeling of utter hopelessness after your ninth video call of the day , and experts say it ’ s brought on because the technology overtaxes your brain .
Presented with a cropped , often blurry image of a human and a few milliseconds of lag throughout the conversation , your mind splits its attention between what people are saying and what ’ s happening on the screen , longing for nonverbal cues that just don ’ t cross @ @ @ @ @ @ @ burnout , ” though the “ fatigue ” descriptor better encapsulates how we ’ re tired of video calls but have to keep doing them .
Others suggest the real problem is that we ’ re all depressed by the state of our lives in the pandemic .
Regardless , video chat has always had fundamental flaws that make it prone to creating unsatisfying experiences .
“ We are constantly presented with the promise of instantaneous connection that seamlessly connects us with the people we love and the people we work with , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Jason Farman , a faculty associate with Harvard University ’ s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society , explained .
“ I think we ’ ve seen that promise for well over 100 years.
” It was about 100 years ago that the telephone , first widely adopted as a business tool , started to become popular as a way to talk to friends .
Skeptics at the time warned that phones upended the idea of social trust , since you couldn ’ t see who you were talking to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an attempt at a solution in the 1920s by accompanying a telephone call with a televised image .
President Herbert Hoover famously tested the device , placing a video call from Washington , DC , to New York in 1927 .
The television feed only worked one way , so those in New York could see the people in Washington , but not the other way around .
AT & T president Walter S. Gifford said at the time that devices like this would , eventually , “ add substantially to human comfort @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for decades trying to improve these devices , which were rudimentary and room-sized in their early versions .
The company introduced a “ two-way television phone , ” dubbed the Iconophone , in 1930 , and then in the ’ 60s , it introduced a much more advanced contraption called the Picturephone at the World ’ s Fair in New York .
Those who tested it complained about bad picture quality and awkward controls .
Nevertheless , the Picturephone did go to market in 1970 , when customers in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lease the equipment for $ 160 per month plus extra costs over the included 30 minutes of call time .
This was extremely expensive , and AT & T discontinued the project in 1978 .
Though it invented several more video phones over the years , including the full-color $ 1,500 VideoPhone 2500 , AT & T never had any major commercial successes with video calling .
A few decades later , internet-connected computers and phones transformed the whole proposition of video chat , especially after broadband speeds became the norm .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , any laptop with wifi and a webcam became a video phone .
Then , in 2011 , the iPhone 4 came along with a front-facing camera and the FaceTime video chat that worked on 3G networks , and millions of people could make video calls on the go .
But it didn ’ t immediately catch on .
Around that time , not even one-fifth of Americans had tried video calling online or on their phones .
While I do remember trying FaceTime when it launched , until the pandemic , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than talk on the phone or over text , especially in my personal life .
I only ever remember feeling disconnected or distracted in video chats before the pandemic — and it seems I wasn ’ t alone in that .
A group of Yale researchers recently found that we can actually understand emotions better through voice than video .
In recent years , though , videoconferencing has become essential in certain industries .
Knowledge workers and those who have the luxury of working remotely have increasingly relied on the technology .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ improved , and it seems to be getting better as companies compete with each other to make calls feel more natural and realistic .
Google ’ s video chat tech now employs artificial intelligence to tune out background noise , for example , and Facebook uses an AI-powered camera in Portal , its suite of video-calling devices , to track the movement of subjects .
Andrew Bosworth , Facebook ’ s head of augmented and virtual reality , told me the company designed this feature to “ keep it feeling like it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ image that your brain kind of starts blurring out , which is what happens with so many video calling setups.
” Yet the fundamental flaws with the medium generally persist .
Video calls typically take more work than a phone call , if only because they require an additional sense , and they don ’ t quite live up to the authenticity of an in-person meeting .
Still , they ’ ve found a home in the conference room .
Most of the major tech companies have now built their own video chat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , like Google Meet and Microsoft Teams , aimed at business customers .
And of course , there ’ s Zoom , which we ’ re all tired of now .
What comes after Zoom fatigue is what I ’ d call Zoom acquiescence .
It ’ s an inevitability .
During the pandemic , we ’ ve all started relying on video chat technology for health care , religion , entertainment , and simply keeping up with friends .
It will remain relevant in our lives going forward , especially for work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by telephones a century ago , we ’ re likely witnessing a transformation in communication — a leap forward with no return .
The new thing is scary , imperfect , and often off-putting .
We might as well make the best of it .
“ We ’ ve been forced to use these tools for things that we otherwise never would have dreamed of , like buying and selling houses , ” said Nicole Ellison , a professor at the University of Michigan ’ s School of Information .
“ We ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a better , more-calibrated sense of what we really need to do face to face.
” We might not , for instance , need to go to the doctor ’ s office as often .
While telemedicine has existed for years , the pandemic forced all kinds of doctor ’ s appointments to happen online .
Some experts think there ’ s no reason to go back , arguing that over half of doctor ’ s visits don ’ t require an in-person meeting .
Research has also shown that telemedicine is significantly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mental health care , and these benefits could mean more people seek help .
Video calling ’ s most useful applications also go beyond simply allowing two people to chat with each other .
Several of the experts and video chat company representatives I interviewed brought up a different use case for the tech : as an additive to otherwise limiting scenarios , like a kid ’ s birthday party , for example .
While the pandemic has meant that parties have to happen over Zoom or FaceTime , there ’ s no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a video component as the threat of the virus subsides .
Grandma and grandpa weren ’ t able to make the trip ?
Fire up the webcam and put them on the TV when it ’ s time to blow out the candles .
That idea might seem a little weird , but hosting a party with a video chat component certainly sounds less weird today than it would have six months ago .
If it was already evident that videoconferencing had become a mainstay of many offices , that it could be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a new idea to me .
That explains my initial surprise when the folks from Microsoft Teams started telling me how their workplace software had taken on new roles , like social networking , in many users ’ lives .
In other words , the pandemic has fundamentally changed our relationship with these tools and with digital spaces generally .
“ I think one of the durable things that will happen here is that video and broadcasting — not to the world , but to a small group — what ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be the next generation of the social network , ” Jared Spataro , corporate vice president for Microsoft 365 , said .
“ I ’ m convinced that that will be true.
” But as we ’ ve learned from Zoom ’ s periodic meltdowns , repurposing office software for our social lives is a tricky business .
Part of why we have felt fatigue from video calls during the pandemic is because the technology was designed for a different purpose than having virtual happy hours or hosting graduation parties .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re using the same laptop for work calls and fun times .
Little tweaks like virtual backgrounds and fun filters help liven things up , but the next generation of the social network would really benefit from some new hardware .
Tech bloggers worried about Portal when it launched because honestly , who wants to put a camera and microphone made by the privacy nightmare that is Facebook in their home ?
But as the pandemic has begun to change how many of us think about privacy , maybe a dedicated video phone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The privacy concerns might just work themselves out as more people make more video calls , and companies continue to improve the technology .
Dedicated video-calling devices might finally be ready for primetime .
Facebook told me that Portal sales have increased by a factor of 10 since mid-March ; they were reportedly “ very low ” as recently as last fall .
The company is also selling a $ 150 Portal TV , which is essentially a webcam for your living room .
Then there ’ s the Nest Hub Max @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that recently gained the ability to host Google Duo and Google Meet group video calls .
( The Amazon Echo Show is a similar device but lacks the group call feature for now . )
Even Zoom is now selling hardware of its own by partnering with a company called DTEN on an “ all-in-one personal collaboration device ” that has multiple cameras that adapt to different rooms .
The company announced the new Zoom for Home initiative earlier this week and is now taking preorders for its first device , the DTEN @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the beginning , ” Gal , from Zoom , told me .
“ But I think the idea is you ’ re not using your laptop all the time for communication .
You are using a dedicated device that is outside of that that is kind of smarter.
” In my former life covering gadgets , I tested a lot of these devices and struggled to understand how they ’ d fit into most people ’ s everyday lives .
Yet , about a week after stay-at-home orders had me trapped in my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better video phone machine .
In the end , I got a Logitech Brio , an HD webcam that ’ s dead simple to use and move around the apartment .
When the time comes , I can put it on top of my TV and invite my extended family to my birthday party , where they ’ ll be able to have more normal-seeming conversations with my wife and me and our two unhinged chihuahuas .
The possibilities for hanging out in digital spaces get more exciting when you look into the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already getting pretty weird and interesting .
In recent months , we ’ ve witnessed the explosive popularity of Animal Crossing : New Horizons , a Nintendo game that lets you build your own island and explore the digital worlds built by others .
There have also been a growing number of virtual events , like concerts in Fortnite .
The bright minds at Oculus hope these trends translate to virtual reality , where they ’ ve built a social app called Facebook Horizon .
Now in beta , the app looks like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pixelated universe in the dystopian thriller Ready Player One and also reminds me of the time Mark Zuckerberg toured a hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico in VR using the Facebook Spaces app .
Of all the companies coming up with new ways we can talk to each other online , Facebook and Oculus might be best positioned for a radical transformation .
At least that ’ s the impression I got from my conversation with Bosworth , the Facebook executive in charge of Portal as well as the company ’ s Oculus division .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ experiences sounded much more interesting to me than talking to a grainy 2D image on a screen .
“ The bottlenecks that we have to providing people the augmented reality vision that we kind of share — where we do have those holograms speaking to people and it feels like you ’ re seeing them face to face — those are exactly the problems that we ’ re tackling in my group , in AR/VR , ” Boz told me .
“ But those are probably going to be a little bit further @ @ @ @ @ @ @ away.
” So it ’ s doubtful that we ’ ll be talking to holographic versions of each other in two years .
But tech that offers lifelike three-dimensional images without the need for glasses or a headset does exist .
Earlier this year , a Brooklyn-based startup called Looking Glasses started shipping the world ’ s highest-resolution holographic display , which looks like a glass box and creates a dynamic image floating in space .
It ’ s not hard to imagine using a device like this for video calls , since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a face look like an actual face .
Another concept for making video calls feel more like real-life interactions takes its inspiration from a window .
It ’ s called the Square and is a camera-equipped display dreamt up by the futurists at Argodesign , a self-described “ innovation firm ” based in Austin , Texas .
Meant to be used at work , the Square is equipped with a shade that you ’ d slide up when you ’ re available , and coworkers could effectively drop in and chat through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cameras in the unit , and together they create a parallax effect that ’ s not quite 3D but does create some dimension in the image .
Mark Rolston , the founder of Argodesign , says the company has working prototypes of the Square and seems eager for a company to start producing the device or something like it .
“ We know it ’ s possible , and we know someone will make it , ” Rolston said .
“ We ’ re not really worried about that moment , that inflection @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to tease the world a little bit.
” That sentiment sums up the entire history of video chat .
We ’ ve been fielding teases since the 19th century .
Each new invention comes a little bit closer to a product that really works and could bring us closer together .
But even in the era of iPhones , something is still not quite right with video calls .
The technology seems like it ’ s inherited many of the problems of early telephones but without the breakaway success .
Then again , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ At a certain point , a critical mass of people had them , and those who had them used them — a lot .
Now , a critical mass of people have video chat technology , and thanks to the pandemic , we ’ re using it .
So bring on the holograms .
Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moment : to empower you through understanding .
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It’s well over 100 days into the Covid-19 crisis, and I have to make a confession: I hate doing everything over video chat. I hated it at the start, and I hate it in new ways now. You’ve probably heard of “Zoom fatigue.” I’ve transcended Zoom fatigue. At this stage in the pandemic, I’m experiencing something more advanced, like that moment on a long run when you’ve fought through fatigue, tapped into your body’s store of endorphins, and also lost a toenail.
Whether I like it or not, most of my work life and social life will happen via webcam in the weeks and months to come. Despite my complaints, however, this does not have to be a bad thing.
Even after the pandemic ends, video chat will play an increasingly important role at work, for school, in health care, and in our relationships with friends and family. The pandemic not only pushed this technology into new scenarios of our daily lives but also forced people to learn how to use it. Folks that hadn’t tried Zoom, FaceTime, or Google Meet before March became power users in record time. Some of these new users have even embraced the software’s virtual backgrounds and AI-generated face-smoothing effects. (The software is extremely easy to use now compared to 15 years ago, when I first used it.) While few of us want to keep doing Zoom happy hours after the pandemic ends, more of us are comfortable using it than ever before.
“What happened with a pandemic is interesting,” Zoom’s chief product officer Odel Gal told me. “All the people that were resistant to using the technology were forced to use it.”
So what does our future of talking through screens actually look like? In an effort to answer a capricious question, I talked to Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Zoom about their post-pandemic plans for video chat. The companies all reported record numbers of new users and total usage, and they were predictably optimistic about what’s next for living in digital spaces. But much to my surprise, the companies were pretty quick to acknowledge the shortcomings of video chat.
That’s because there is no substitute that is as good as talking to people in person. In the near future, though, the next best thing might not be so bad.
Zoom fatigue, historically explained
Video chat as we know it is barely two decades old. Starting around the time Skype launched in 2003, what was once a futurist’s fantasy became a problematic reality. But the potentially transformative technology has always seemed a year or two away from being actually usable. So you might say that we’ve struggled with Zoom fatigue for quite some time, when you consider that abysmal picture quality, stuttering audio, and the general awkwardness of talking to screens have always been features of the video chat experience.
Years later, the tech’s persistent shortcomings, like how you can’t quite make eye contact with the other people on a video call, continue to feel frustrating. When most of your human interaction for months on end is happening via video chat, these annoyances become downright exhausting.
Zoom fatigue is the feeling of utter hopelessness after your ninth video call of the day, and experts say it’s brought on because the technology overtaxes your brain. Presented with a cropped, often blurry image of a human and a few milliseconds of lag throughout the conversation, your mind splits its attention between what people are saying and what’s happening on the screen, longing for nonverbal cues that just don’t cross over.
Some call it “Zoom burnout,” though the “fatigue” descriptor better encapsulates how we’re tired of video calls but have to keep doing them. Others suggest the real problem is that we’re all depressed by the state of our lives in the pandemic. Regardless, video chat has always had fundamental flaws that make it prone to creating unsatisfying experiences.
“We are constantly presented with the promise of instantaneous connection that seamlessly connects us with the people we love and the people we work with, and that’s always a fiction,” Jason Farman, a faculty associate with Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, explained. “I think we’ve seen that promise for well over 100 years.”
It was about 100 years ago that the telephone, first widely adopted as a business tool, started to become popular as a way to talk to friends. Skeptics at the time warned that phones upended the idea of social trust, since you couldn’t see who you were talking to, but Bell Labs quickly cooked up an attempt at a solution in the 1920s by accompanying a telephone call with a televised image.
Herbert Hoover, famously tested the device, placing a video call from Washington, DC, to New York in 1927, when he was secretary of commerce. The television feed only worked one way, so those in New York could see the people in Washington, but not the other way around. AT&T president Walter S. Gifford said at the time that devices like this would, eventually, “add substantially to human comfort and happiness.”
AT&T worked for decades trying to improve these devices, which were rudimentary and room-sized in their early versions. The company introduced a “two-way television phone,” dubbed the Iconophone, in 1930, and then in the ’60s, it introduced a much more advanced contraption called the Picturephone at the World’s Fair in New York. Those who tested it complained about bad picture quality and awkward controls.
Nevertheless, the Picturephone did go to market in 1970, when customers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, could sign up for the service and lease the equipment for $160 per month plus extra costs over the included 30 minutes of call time. This was extremely expensive, and AT&T discontinued the project in 1978. Though it invented several more video phones over the years, including the full-color $1,500 VideoPhone 2500, AT&T never had any major commercial successes with video calling.
A few decades later, internet-connected computers and phones transformed the whole proposition of video chat, especially after broadband speeds became the norm. And when Skype debuted in the early aughts, any laptop with wifi and a webcam became a video phone. Then in 2011, the iPhone 4 came along with a front-facing camera and the FaceTime video chat that worked on 3G networks, and millions of people could make video calls on the go. But it didn’t immediately catch on. Around that time, not even one-fifth of Americans had tried video calling online or on their phones.
While I do remember trying FaceTime when it launched, until the pandemic, I never actually wanted to video chat rather than talk on the phone or over text, especially in my personal life. I only ever remember feeling disconnected or distracted in video chats before the pandemic — and it seems I wasn’t alone in that. A group of Yale researchers recently found that we can actually understand emotions better through voice than video.
In recent years, though, videoconferencing has become essential in certain industries. Knowledge workers and those who have the luxury of working remotely have increasingly relied on the technology. The quality of video calls has also vastly improved, and it seems to be getting better as companies compete with each other to make calls feel more natural and realistic.
Google’s video chat tech now employs artificial intelligence to tune out background noise, for example, and Facebook uses an AI-powered camera in Portal, its suite of video-calling devices, to track the movement of subjects. Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s head of augmented and virtual reality, told me the company designed this feature to “keep it feeling like it’s alive as opposed to this fixed image that your brain kind of starts blurring out, which is what happens with so many video calling setups.”
Yet the fundamental flaws with the medium generally persist. Video calls typically take more work than a phone call, if only because they require an additional sense, and they don’t quite live up to the authenticity of an in-person meeting. Still, they’ve found a home in the conference room. Most of the major tech companies have now built their own video chat platforms, with the most prominent ones, like Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, aimed at business customers. And, of course, there’s Zoom, which we’re all tired of now.
Actually, video chat is good?
What comes after Zoom fatigue is what I’d call Zoom acquiescence. It’s an inevitability.
During the pandemic, we’ve all started relying on video chat technology for health care, religion, entertainment, and simply keeping up with friends. It will remain relevant in our lives going forward, especially for work. Much like those who were gobsmacked by telephones a century ago, we’re likely witnessing a transformation in communication — a leap forward with no return. The new thing is scary, imperfect, and often off-putting. We might as well make the best of it.
“We’ve been forced to use these tools for things that we otherwise never would have dreamed of, like buying and selling houses,” said Nicole Ellison, a professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Information. “We’ll essentially come out of this with a better, more calibrated sense of what we really need to do face to face.”
We might not, for instance, need to go to the doctor’s office as often. While telemedicine has existed for years, the pandemic forced all kinds of doctor’s appointments to happen online. Some experts think there’s no reason to go back, arguing that over half of doctor’s visits don’t require an in-person meeting. Research has also shown that telemedicine is significantly more efficient than traditional in-person visits for mental health care, and these benefits could mean more people seek help.
Video calling’s most useful applications also go beyond simply allowing two people to chat with each other. Several of the experts and video chat company representatives I interviewed brought up a different use case for the tech: as an additive to otherwise limiting scenarios, like a kid’s birthday party, for example. While the pandemic has meant that parties have to happen over Zoom or FaceTime, there’s no reason we can’t include a video component as the threat of the virus subsides. Grandma and Grandpa weren’t able to make the trip? Fire up the webcam and put them on the TV when it’s time to blow out the candles.
That idea might seem a little weird, but hosting a party with a video chat component certainly sounds less weird today than it would have six months ago. If it was already evident that videoconferencing had become a mainstay of many offices, that it could be a prominent part of our social lives is a new idea to me. That explains my initial surprise when the folks from Microsoft Teams started telling me how their workplace software had taken on new roles, like social networking, in many users’ lives. In other words, the pandemic has fundamentally changed our relationship with these tools and with digital spaces generally.
“I think one of the durable things that will happen here is that video and broadcasting — not to the world, but to a small group — what’s happening in our lives actually is going to be the next generation of the social network,” Jared Spataro, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365, said. “I’m convinced that that will be true.”
But as we’ve learned from Zoom’s periodic meltdowns, repurposing office software for our social lives is a tricky business. Part of why we have felt fatigue from video calls during the pandemic is because the technology was designed for a different purpose than having virtual happy hours or hosting graduation parties. It’s even worse if you’re using the same laptop for work calls and fun times. Little tweaks like virtual backgrounds and fun filters help liven things up, but the next generation of the social network would really benefit from some new hardware.
Tech bloggers worried about Portal when it launched because honestly, who wants to put a camera and microphone made by the privacy nightmare that is Facebook in their home? But as the pandemic has begun to change how many of us think about privacy, maybe a dedicated video phone isn’t so scary after all. The privacy concerns might just work themselves out as more people make more video calls, and companies continue to improve the technology.
Dedicated video-calling devices might finally be ready for primetime. Facebook told me that Portal sales have increased by a factor of 10 since mid-March; they were reportedly “very low” as recently as last fall. The company is also selling a $150 Portal TV, which is essentially a webcam for your living room.
Then there’s the Nest Hub Max, a smart display from Google, that recently gained the ability to host Google Duo and Google Meet group video calls. (The Amazon Echo Show is a similar device but lacks the group call feature for now.) Even Zoom is now selling hardware of its own by partnering with a company called DTEN on an “all-in-one personal collaboration device” that has multiple cameras that adapt to different rooms. The company announced the new Zoom for Home initiative earlier this week and is now taking preorders for its first device, the DTEN ME.
“It’s just the beginning,” Gal, from Zoom, told me. “But I think the idea is you’re not using your laptop all the time for communication. You are using a dedicated device that is outside of that that is kind of smarter.”
In my former life covering gadgets, I tested a lot of these devices and struggled to understand how they’d fit into most people’s everyday lives. Yet, about a week after stay-at-home orders had me trapped in my apartment, all I wanted was a better video phone machine. In the end, I got a Logitech Brio, an HD webcam that’s dead simple to use and move around the apartment. When the time comes, I can put it on top of my TV and invite my extended family to my birthday party, where they’ll be able to have more normal-seeming conversations with my wife and me and our two unhinged Chihuahuas.
Imagining a holographic future
The possibilities for hanging out in digital spaces get more exciting when you look into the very near future. Virtual hangouts are already getting pretty weird and interesting. In recent months, we’ve witnessed the explosive popularity of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a Nintendo game that lets you build your own island and explore the digital worlds built by others. There have also been a growing number of virtual events, like concerts in Fortnite.
The bright minds at Oculus hope these trends translate to virtual reality, where they’ve built a social app called Facebook Horizon. The app looks like a slightly more cartoonish version of the pixelated universe in the dystopian thriller Ready Player One and also reminds me of the time Mark Zuckerberg toured a hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico in VR using the Facebook Spaces app.
Of all the companies coming up with new ways we can talk to each other online, Facebook and Oculus might be best positioned for a radical transformation. At least that’s the impression I got from my conversation with Bosworth, the Facebook executive in charge of Portal as well as the company’s Oculus division. The future of truly science fiction-inspired, hologram-based experiences sounded much more interesting to me than talking to a grainy 2D image on a screen.
“The bottlenecks that we have to providing people the augmented reality vision that we kind of share — where we do have those holograms speaking to people and it feels like you’re seeing them face to face — those are exactly the problems that we’re tackling in my group, in AR/VR,” Boz told me. “But those are probably going to be a little bit further out, at least a couple years away.”
So it’s doubtful that we’ll be talking to holographic versions of each other in two years. But tech that offers lifelike three-dimensional images without the need for glasses or a headset does exist. Earlier this year, a Brooklyn-based startup called Looking Glass started shipping the world’s highest-resolution holographic display, which looks like a glass box and creates a dynamic image floating in space. It’s not hard to imagine using a device like this for video calls, since the light-field technology could make the image of a face look like an actual face.
Another concept for making video calls feel more like real-life interactions takes its inspiration from a window. It’s called the Square and is a camera-equipped display dreamed up by the futurists at Argodesign, a self-described “innovation firm” based in Austin, Texas.
Meant to be used at work, the Square is equipped with a shade that you’d slide up when you’re available, and coworkers could effectively drop in and chat through this virtual window. There are multiple cameras in the unit, and together they create a parallax effect that’s not quite 3D but does create some dimension in the image. Mark Rolston, the founder of Argodesign, says the company has working prototypes of the Square and seems eager for a company to start producing the device or something like it.
“We know it’s possible, and we know someone will make it,” Rolston said. “We’re not really worried about that moment, that inflection point. We’re just trying to tease the world a little bit.”
That sentiment sums up the entire history of video chat. We’ve been fielding teases since the 19th century. Each new invention comes a little bit closer to a product that really works and could bring us closer together. But even in the era of iPhones, something is still not quite right with video calls. The technology seems like it’s inherited many of the problems of early telephones but without the breakaway success.
Then again, what made early telephones so transformative? At a certain point, a critical mass of people had them, and those who had them used them — a lot. Now, a critical mass of people have video chat technology, and thanks to the pandemic, we’re using it. So bring on the holograms.


vox--2020-07-17--A proposed anti-trans rule would let homeless shelters judge who’s a woman

A proposed Housing and Urban Development rule would allow federally funded homeless shelters to judge a person ’ s physical characteristics , such as height and facial hair , in determining whether they belong in a women ’ s or men ’ s shelter , according to a copy of the rule ’ s text obtained by Vox .
Advocates say this ultimately targets both trans women and cisgender women with masculine features , which could force them into men ’ s shelters and put them at risk for harm .
The proposed rule , which was first announced by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ July 1 , would essentially reverse the Obama-era rule that required homeless shelters to house trans people according to their gender identity .
While the new rule would bar shelters from excluding people based on their transgender status , it would also allow shelters to ignore a person ’ s gender identity — and instead house them according to their assigned sex at birth or their legal sex .
In other words , a trans woman can ’ t be turned away from a shelter for being trans , but she can be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s shelter .
Dylan Waguespack , a spokesperson for True Colors United , an advocacy group that focuses on supporting LGBTQ homeless youth , told Vox in early June that HUD Secretary Ben Carson is “ talking out of both sides of his mouth.
” “ They are trying to put forward this narrative in which transgender people are protected from discrimination , but in fact , when you read the proposal itself , it does the exact opposite , ” he told Vox .
“ It creates unsafe conditions and unsafe barriers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the midst of a global pandemic.
” The copy of the rule obtained by Vox has already passed congressional review , according to several sources familiar with the process , which is one of many steps needed before the text is released publicly .
When asked about the text and status of the rule , HUD pointed Vox to their July 1 press release .
The rule ’ s language , according to the leaked text , states that single-sex shelter staff “ may determine an individual ’ s sex based on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seeking access to the temporary , emergency shelters is not of the sex , as defined in the single-sex facility ’ s policy , which the facility accommodates.
” In order to do this , HUD will allow shelter staff to take into account “ factors such as height , the presence ( but not the absence ) of facial hair , the presence of an Adam ’ s apple , and other physical characteristics which , when considered together , are indicative of a person ’ s biological sex.
” In essence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s-only shelter staff to use a visual appraisal of a woman ’ s appearance to judge whether that person is woman enough to use the facility .
If a shelter operator judges a homeless woman ’ s appearance to not fit what they believe is her assigned sex at birth , they would then be allowed to ask for proof of that person ’ s sex before housing her in the woman ’ s facility .
“ Evidence requested must not be unduly intrusive of privacy , such as private physical anatomical evidence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but lack of government identification alone can not be the sole basis for denying admittance on the basis of sex , ” reads the rule ’ s text , as it currently stands .
There are two main problems with forcing trans homeless people into spaces that correspond with their birth-assigned gender rather than their gender identity .
The first is that such a policy exposes trans people , especially trans women , to potential violence and sexual assault inside those spaces .
And as a result , trans people are more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rather than risk going to a shelter .
Because of a cycle of discrimination and poverty , trans people are more likely than their cisgender peers to experience homelessness .
According to the National Center for Transgender Equality , 29 percent of trans people live in poverty , and one in five trans people in the US will be homeless at some point in their lifetimes .
The numbers are even starker for Black trans people : A 2015 report indicated that 34 percent of Black trans people live in extreme poverty , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people .
And while the rule is likely to fall hardest on trans women , it also opens the door to targeting butch women with more masculine presentations , as has already happened with gendered bathroom policing .
Waguespack told Vox Friday that Carson is showing a “ willful disregard for the survival of transgender people ” and risks putting trans people in harm ’ s way .
“ He ’ s on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of the law , ” he said .
“ It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ US hear the message loud and clear that they are legally entitled to gender-appropriate homelessness services under the law.
” Democratic lawmakers have pushed back on the proposed rule The proposed HUD rule is the latest in a long line of anti-trans policies rolled out by the Trump administration .
Almost immediately after he took office in 2017 , the administration rolled back an Obama-era memo for schools to fairly treat trans students .
Then in July of that year , Trump announced he would be ordering the military to ban trans people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trans prisoners as well in May 2018 , deciding that in most cases , trans people should be housed according to their assigned sex at birth .
Perhaps most critical was the administration ’ s attack on LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections in the Affordable Care Act , finalized in a new rule on June 12 .
Even though it has yet to be released , the HUD rule has already received congressional pushback .
In a letter to HUD Secretary Ben Carson dated June 29 , Rep. Jennifer Wexton ( D-VA ) and Rep. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agency to reconsider the release of the HUD rule because of the Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County on June 15 , which held that discrimination against trans people is considered sex discrimination .
“ The release of a potentially applicable Supreme Court decision during the period of our regulatory review is unique and raises concerns about the applicability and implementation of the proposed rule , ” reads Wexton and Waters ’ s letter .
Carson responded to the lawmakers with a letter of his own on July 13 , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ premise that Bostock would apply to the proposed rule .
“ [ A ] n individual ’ s sex is relevant in the specific category of cases covered by the Department ’ s proposed rule , which is concerned with single-sex temporary or emergency shelters , ” read the letter .
“ These facilities , by virtue of their temporary nature , are not deemed ‘ housing ’ , do not fall within the purview of the Fair Housing Act .
Therefore they may lawfully elect to serve only one sex .
We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ sex ’ referred ‘ only to biological distinctions between male and female.
’ ” Carson goes on to claim that the existing rule , which requires shelters to house trans people according to their gender identity , “ permits any man , simply by asserting that his gender is female , to obtain access to women ’ s shelters.
” Associating vulnerable trans women with predatory men is a classic anti-trans dog whistle .
In truth , there ’ s no evidence of wide-scale instances of men posing as trans women just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Instead , advocates say the opposite is true — that putting trans women in men ’ s shelters is a recipe for harassment and potential assault .
Even the rule ’ s text admits that there ’ s little proof that trans women are a threat to cis women in women ’ s shelters .
“ While HUD is not aware of data suggesting that transgender individuals pose an inherent risk to biological women , there is anecdotal evidence that some women may fear that non-transgender , biological men may exploit the process @ @ @ @ @ @ @ order to gain access to women ’ s shelters , ” reads the proposed rule .
Carson and Wexton have had a lengthy — and public — back and forth on trans issues , stemming back to a May 2019 hearing of the House Committee on Financial Services in which the lawmaker asked Carson whether the agency had any plans to change the Equal Access rule , which currently requires homeless shelters to house trans people according to their gender identity .
At the hearing , Carson said there were no plans to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ day the agency announced its intention to change the rule .
Wexton immediately called the move out on Twitter .
In an October 2019 HFSC hearing , Wexton challenged Carson over comments in which he called trans women “ big , hairy men ” at an internal meeting with HUD staff in San Francisco a month earlier .
Carson refused to apologize , instead decrying “ political correctness.
” On Friday , Wexton again clashed with Carson over the proposed rule in responding to his letter .
“ Secretary Carson ’ s insistence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — despite the Bostock ruling and clear consensus among experts and service providers opposed to this rule change — betrays a disturbing determination to target and endanger trans Americans , ” she said in a statement to Vox .
“ The Secretary has made one bad faith argument after another to try and push this anti-trans rule forward , and the weak justifications he makes in this letter are no different.
” Once the HUD rule is published in the Federal Register , it then goes up for public comment for 60 days @ @ @ @ @ @ @ asking for public comment on is what physical characteristics should a shelter operator be able to use to judge a person ’ s “ biological sex.
” “ HUD requests comments on what are good faith considerations that are indicative of a person ’ s biological sex .
Should HUD define what constitutes a good faith belief for determining biological sex and what type of evidence would be helpful for determining an individual ’ s biological sex ?
How , if at all , should government IDs be considered ?
” reads a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rule ’ s text obtained by Vox .
Advocates say this asks the public for thoughts on how shelter operators might legally spot a trans person .
“ The idea that there could be a list of characteristics for an intake staffer at a homeless shelter to refer to in order to decide where someone will be forced to sleep — or even decide if they can access shelter at all — is Orwellian at best and , at worst , reminiscent of early 20th-century eugenics , ” said Waguespack .
Every @ @ @ @ @ @ @ answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

A proposed Housing and Urban Development rule would allow federally funded homeless shelters to judge a person’s physical characteristics, such as height and facial hair, in determining whether they belong in a women’s or men’s shelter, according to a copy of the rule’s text obtained by Vox. Advocates say this ultimately targets both trans women and cisgender women with masculine features, which could force them into men’s shelters and put them at risk for harm.
The proposed rule, first announced by HUD in a press release issued on July 1, would essentially reverse the Obama-era rule that required homeless shelters to house trans people according to their gender identity. While the new rule would bar shelters from excluding people based on their transgender status, it would also allow shelters to ignore a person’s gender identity — and instead house them according to their assigned sex at birth or their legal sex. In other words, a trans woman can’t be turned away from a shelter for being trans, but she can be forced to go to a men’s shelter.
Dylan Waguespack, a spokesperson for True Colors United, an advocacy group that focuses on supporting LGBTQ homeless youth, told Vox in early June that HUD Secretary Ben Carson is “talking out of both sides of his mouth.”
“They are trying to put forward this narrative in which transgender people are protected from discrimination, but in fact, when you read the proposal itself, it does the exact opposite,” he told Vox. “It creates unsafe conditions and unsafe barriers to housing and services for trans people in the midst of a global pandemic.”
The copy of the rule obtained by Vox has already passed congressional review, according to several sources familiar with the process, which is one of many steps needed before the text is released publicly. When asked about the text and status of the rule, HUD pointed Vox to their July 1 press release.
The rule’s language, according to the leaked text, states that single-sex shelter staff “may determine an individual’s sex based on a good faith belief that an individual seeking access to the temporary, emergency shelters is not of the sex, as defined in the single-sex facility’s policy, which the facility accommodates.”
In order to do this, HUD will allow shelter staff to take into account “factors such as height, the presence (but not the absence) of facial hair, the presence of an Adam’s apple, and other physical characteristics which, when considered together, are indicative of a person’s biological sex.”
In essence, the proposed rule encourages women’s-only shelter staff to use a visual appraisal of a woman’s appearance to judge whether that person is woman enough to use the facility.
If a shelter operator judges a homeless woman’s appearance to not fit what they believe is her assigned sex at birth, they would then be allowed to ask for proof of that person’s sex before housing her in the women’s facility.
“Evidence requested must not be unduly intrusive of privacy, such as private physical anatomical evidence. Evidence requested could include government identification, but lack of government identification alone cannot be the sole basis for denying admittance on the basis of sex,” reads the rule’s text, as it currently stands.
There are two main problems with forcing trans homeless people into spaces that correspond with their birth-assigned gender rather than their gender identity. The first is that such a policy exposes trans people, especially trans women, to potential violence and sexual assault inside those spaces. And as a result, trans people are more likely to choose sleeping in the streets rather than risk going to a shelter.
Because of a cycle of discrimination and poverty, trans people are more likely than their cisgender peers to experience homelessness. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, 29 percent of trans people live in poverty, and one in five trans people in the US will be homeless at some point in their lifetimes. The numbers are even starker for Black trans people: A 2015 report indicated that 34 percent of Black trans people live in extreme poverty, compared to 9 percent of Black cis people.
And while the rule is likely to fall hardest on trans women, it also opens the door to targeting butch women with more masculine presentations, as has already happened with gendered bathroom policing.
Waguespack told Vox Friday that Carson is showing a “willful disregard for the survival of transgender people” and risks putting trans people in harm’s way. “He’s on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of the law,” he said. “It’s critical that trans people across the US hear the message loud and clear that they are legally entitled to gender-appropriate homelessness services under the law.”
Democratic lawmakers have pushed back on the proposed rule
The proposed HUD rule is the latest in a long line of anti-trans policies rolled out by the Trump administration. Almost immediately after he took office in 2017, the administration rolled back an Obama-era memo for schools to fairly treat trans students. Then in July of that year, Trump announced he would be ordering the military to ban trans people from serving. The administration went after trans prisoners as well in May 2018, deciding that in most cases, trans people should be housed according to their assigned sex at birth.
Perhaps most critical was the administration’s attack on LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections in the Affordable Care Act, finalized in a new rule on June 12.
Even though it has yet to be released, the HUD rule has already received congressional pushback. In a letter to HUD Secretary Ben Carson dated June 29, Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) urged the agency to reconsider the release of the HUD rule because of the Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County on June 15, which held that discrimination against trans people is considered sex discrimination.
“The release of a potentially applicable Supreme Court decision during the period of our regulatory review is unique and raises concerns about the applicability and implementation of the proposed rule,” reads Wexton and Waters’s letter.
Carson responded to the lawmakers with a letter of his own on July 13, which was obtained by Vox, rejecting the premise that Bostock would apply to the proposed rule. “[A]n individual’s sex is relevant in the specific category of cases covered by the Department’s proposed rule, which is concerned with single-sex temporary or emergency shelters,” read the letter. “These facilities, by virtue of their temporary nature, are not deemed ‘housing’, do not fall within the purview of the Fair Housing Act. Therefore they may lawfully elect to serve only one sex. We note that the Bostock decision assumed that ‘sex’ referred ‘only to biological distinctions between male and female.’”
Carson goes on to claim that the existing rule, which requires shelters to house trans people according to their gender identity, “permits any man, simply by asserting that his gender is female, to obtain access to women’s shelters.”
Associating vulnerable trans women with predatory men is a classic anti-trans dog whistle. In truth, there’s no evidence of wide-scale instances of men posing as trans women just to enter women’s spaces. Instead, advocates say the opposite is true — that putting trans women in men’s shelters is a recipe for harassment and potential assault.
Even the rule’s text admits that there’s little proof that trans women are a threat to cis women in women’s shelters. “While HUD is not aware of data suggesting that transgender individuals pose an inherent risk to biological women, there is anecdotal evidence that some women may fear that non-transgender, biological men may exploit the process of self-identification under the current rule in order to gain access to women’s shelters,” reads the proposed rule.
Carson and Wexton have had a lengthy — and public — back and forth on trans issues, stemming back to a May 2019 hearing of the House Committee on Financial Services in which the lawmaker asked Carson whether the agency had any plans to change the Equal Access rule, which currently requires homeless shelters to house trans people according to their gender identity. At the hearing, Carson said there were no plans to do so, but the very next day the agency announced its intention to change the rule.
Wexton immediately called the move out on Twitter.
One day after @SecretaryCarson told me he isn't anticipating any changes to protections for LGBTQ people in shelters, HUD announced a proposal to gut that very rule.
He either lied to Congress or has no idea what policies his agency is pursuing. Either way, it’s unacceptable. pic.twitter.com/zn99sEKvth — Rep. Jennifer Wexton (@RepWexton) May 22, 2019
In an October 2019 HFSC hearing, Wexton challenged Carson over comments in which he called trans women “big, hairy men” at an internal meeting with HUD staff in San Francisco a month earlier. Carson refused to apologize, instead decrying “political correctness.”
On Friday, Wexton again clashed with Carson over the proposed rule in responding to his letter. “Secretary Carson’s insistence on pressing forward with this discriminatory policy — despite the Bostock ruling and clear consensus among experts and service providers opposed to this rule change — betrays a disturbing determination to target and endanger trans Americans,” she said in a statement to Vox. “The Secretary has made one bad faith argument after another to try and push this anti-trans rule forward, and the weak justifications he makes in this letter are no different.”
Once the HUD rule is published in the Federal Register, it then goes up for public comment for 60 days. One of the issues HUD is asking for public comment on is what physical characteristics should a shelter operator be able to use to judge a person’s “biological sex.”
“HUD requests comments on what are good faith considerations that are indicative of a person’s biological sex. Should HUD define what constitutes a good faith belief for determining biological sex and what type of evidence would be helpful for determining an individual’s biological sex? How, if at all, should government IDs be considered?” reads a passage in the public comment section of the rule’s text obtained by Vox.
Advocates say this asks the public for thoughts on how shelter operators might legally spot a trans person. “The idea that there could be a list of characteristics for an intake staffer at a homeless shelter to refer to in order to decide where someone will be forced to sleep — or even decide if they can access shelter at all — is Orwellian at best and, at worst, reminiscent of early 20th-century eugenics,” said Waguespack.


vox--2020-07-17--How a vaccine gets made, explained (to kids)

School ’ s out for summer .
And maybe longer , as scientists race to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus .
But why is it taking so long ?
The first of four episodes of Today , Explained to Kids : Summer Camp , Vox ’ s explainer podcast for kids , answers that question by taking kids back to the Island of Explained to talk to scientist Maria Elena Bottazzi , a microbiologist who co-leads vaccine development at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston , about the development of a vaccine .
We also take a curious kid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and learn more about why designing an experiment isn ’ t always as easy as it seems .
Listen to the episode with the young people in your life — or just because — and then come back here to download our episode discussion guide and a fun ( and kinda gross ) experiment you can do with kids ( or , again , by yourself ) that builds on what we learned in the episode .
Grown-ups : The discussion guide riffs on what we learned in the episode and the experiment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issues .
Just like science experiments , it ’ s all about open-minded observation , asking questions , making predictions , and challenging conclusions .
Thanks to early childhood education specialists Rachel Giannini and Saleem Hue Penny for developing our learning materials !
Listen to more Today , Explained to Kids episodes : Support Vox ’ s explanatory journalism Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

School’s out for summer. And maybe longer, as scientists race to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus. But why is it taking so long?
The first of four episodes of Today, Explained to Kids: Summer Camp, Vox’s explainer podcast for kids, answers that question by taking kids back to the Island of Explained to talk to scientist Maria Elena Bottazzi, a microbiologist who co-leads vaccine development at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, about the development of a vaccine. We also take a curious kid, Mikah, to meet the Experimoth and learn more about why designing an experiment isn’t always as easy as it seems.
Listen to the episode with the young people in your life — or just because — and then come back here to download our episode discussion guide and a fun (and kinda gross) experiment you can do with kids (or, again, by yourself) that builds on what we learned in the episode.
Grown-ups: The discussion guide riffs on what we learned in the episode and the experiment to help start a conversation about social issues. Just like science experiments, it’s all about open-minded observation, asking questions, making predictions, and challenging conclusions.
Thanks to early childhood education specialists Rachel Giannini and Saleem Hue Penny for developing our learning materials!
Listen to more Today, Explained to Kids episodes:
Support Vox’s explanatory journalism


vox--2020-07-17--Why Israel hasn’t annexed the West Bank

Why Israel hasn’t annexed the West Bank

All eyes were on Israel on July 1 , when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ’ s government was set to annex parts of the West Bank — but then , well , nothing happened .
On this week ’ s episode of Worldly , Vox ’ s weekly international podcast , senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp , international security and defense reporter Alex Ward , and senior foreign editor Jennifer Williams discuss what happened — or rather , why nothing happened — and what it all means for the future of the long-sought “ two-state solution ” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict @ @ @ @ @ @ @ approximately 30 percent of the West Bank would have dramatically altered the situation in the Israeli-occupied territory , which is home to nearly 3 million Palestinians as well as around 500,000 Jewish settlers .
And , as Vox ’ s Jen Kirby explains , it would have upended years of consensus about the two-state framework , historically supported by the United States and the international community .
Under that plan , the vast bulk of the West Bank would eventually , as part of a final peace deal between the two sides , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the core of an independent state of Palestine .
But peace talks have stalled for years , and there is no deal anywhere on the horizon .
So the Israeli right has been pushing for Netanyahu ’ s government to just go ahead and unilaterally annex significant portions of the West Bank that it wants to keep , making them officially part of Israel proper , regardless of what the Palestinians think about it .
Netanyahu promised to follow through on a plan to do just that on July 1 , but then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him ) .
Not only is Netanyahu currently on trial for corruption charges , but Israel is also facing a massive coronavirus resurgence that has quickly outpaced the first outbreak .
Benny Gantz , who is due to serve as the next prime minister , is urging Netanyahu to address the relentless second wave first .
Possibly more consequential is the swift international condemnation of Israel ’ s annexation plan — the United Nations says it ’ s illegal , and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson penned an op-ed against the plan .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the move , despite it being a direct result of the Trump administration ’ s “ peace plan.
” To hear more about all the factors that led to Netanyahu ’ s sudden reversal , how US politics plays into this , and what it all means for the future of the two-state solution , listen to the full episode of Worldly , which you can stream below .
And subscribe to Worldly on Apple Podcasts , Google Podcasts , Spotify , Stitcher , or wherever you listen to podcasts .
Every day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

All eyes were on Israel on July 1, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was set to annex parts of the West Bank — but then, well, nothing happened.
On this week’s episode of Worldly, Vox’s weekly international podcast, senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp, international security and defense reporter Alex Ward, and senior foreign editor Jennifer Williams discuss what happened — or rather, why nothing happened — and what it all means for the future of the long-sought “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Netanyahu’s plan to annex approximately 30 percent of the West Bank would have dramatically altered the situation in the Israeli-occupied territory, which is home to nearly 3 million Palestinians as well as around 500,000 Jewish settlers.
And, as Vox’s Jen Kirby explains, it would have upended years of consensus about the two-state framework, historically supported by the United States and the international community. Under that plan, the vast bulk of the West Bank would eventually, as part of a final peace deal between the two sides, be transferred to the Palestinians to form the core of an independent state of Palestine.
But peace talks have stalled for years, and there is no deal anywhere on the horizon. So the Israeli right has been pushing for Netanyahu’s government to just go ahead and unilaterally annex significant portions of the West Bank that it wants to keep, making them officially part of Israel proper, regardless of what the Palestinians think about it.
Netanyahu promised to follow through on a plan to do just that on July 1, but then everything seemed to go wrong (for him).
Not only is Netanyahu currently on trial for corruption charges, but Israel is also facing a massive coronavirus resurgence that has quickly outpaced the first outbreak. Benny Gantz, who is due to serve as the next prime minister, is urging Netanyahu to address the relentless second wave first.
Possibly more consequential is the swift international condemnation of Israel’s annexation plan — the United Nations says it’s illegal, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson penned an op-ed against the plan. Even the United States hesitated to support the move, despite it being a direct result of the Trump administration’s “peace plan.”
To hear more about all the factors that led to Netanyahu’s sudden reversal, how US politics plays into this, and what it all means for the future of the two-state solution, listen to the full episode of Worldly, which you can stream below.
And subscribe to Worldly on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.


vox--2020-07-17--Celebrity endorsements used to be expensive. Now any company can hire an A-lister.

If you happen to be in the market for a home in Grand Junction , Colorado , an unlikely person might sway your decision on a real estate agent : Ice-T , the rapper and star of television shows like Law & Order : SVU and Ice Loves Coco .
“ Get at Christie DeHerrera , okay ?
” he says in a front-facing camera video .
“ She ’ s the best in the business , she loves her work , she gets the job done .
And plus , she ’ s a fan of Ice-T. ” Why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ DeHerrera , Colorado real estate agent ?
It ’ s the result of a new feature from Cameo , the app where people pay celebrities and influencers to record personalized messages for them , but this time for businesses .
Promotional Cameos , which soft-launched in the second week of July , offer average companies the chance to hire , say , a Barbara Corcoran or a Lance Bass to vouch for their homemade soda or IT software , minus the legal hurdles and enormous price tags of traditional celebrity endorsements .
This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pop icon Christina Milian offering a promo code to streetwear site Drillionaire Dreams , which has 57 followers and Facebook and a website that comes with a security warning .
For a generation accustomed to seeing A-listers post Instagram sponsored content for little-known brands , it was only a matter of time before a platform came along that removed the possibility of getting swallowed in a star ’ s Instagram direct messages tab while considerably lowering the price .
Cameo , which launched in 2017 , is among the few companies for which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Leopold says the app has seen a big rise in interest , and 500,000 of its 1.2 million videos have come from just the past four months .
The reasons are fairly predictable : Celebrities are in fact just like us , in that they were also under quarantine for most of the spring ( albeit in far nicer houses ) , furloughed from film sets , concert tours , and red carpet events and suddenly finding themselves with a lot more free time .
On the flip side , during quarantine nearly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of long-distance relationship with friends and loved ones , and a shoutout from a favorite reality star or athlete could go a long way .
Still , there is something viscerally weird about scrolling through a website and seeing a dollar sign attributed to a celebrity .
“ You know local night clubs ?
If one in Colorado all of a sudden has Akon performing there , you ’ re like , ‘ What happened ?
’ ” jokes Joe Gagliese , co-founder and CEO of influencer talent management company Viral Nation .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ desperate ” for celebrities to do or shill have drastically evolved over the past 30 years ; what seemed like “ selling out ” in the ’ 90s is now often praised as hustling .
( As Real Housewife of Beverly Hills favorite Lisa Rinna , once an official spokesperson for adult diapers , says , “ I ’ ll do anything to make a buck.
” ) The A-list will always be mostly untouchable : “ You don ’ t see a lot of the huge celebrities on there because they ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of their time for a thousand bucks when they make $ 500 million a year , ” Gagliese explains .
But Cameo has succeeded because it culls from the ever-growing caste of microcelebrities and nano-influencers like 90 Day Fiancé villain Larissa Dos Santos or TikToker Lauren Godwin , or , what a Medium profile of Cameo described as “ the D-list.
” Here , shamelessness is heralded as a virtue rather than a fault ; that Cameo is seen as “ the gig economy for niche celebs ” is not exactly an issue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remained mostly stable throughout the pandemic , too .
“ Through this climate of unexpected events like Covid , like Black Lives Matter , I think it shows you the power of authentic digital content is relevant to consumers , ” says Qianna Smith Bruneteau of the American Influencer Council , the new ( and first ) trade organization for digital creators .
Today , endless sponsored posts on famous people ’ s Instagrams have blurred the line between influencer and celebrity , and as more influencers rise in status , more celebrities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s why distinguished ( literally ) actors like Sir Anthony Hopkins and Dame Judi Dench are joining TikTok and Will Smith and Naomi Campbell are becoming vloggers ; social media flattens our ability to separate celebrities into tiers .
The top talent on Cameo — your Mandy Moores , your Sarah Jessica Parkers — often view Cameo as a way to give back to fans .
Scrolling through , many famous faces tout the causes they ’ re participating for .
According to Leopold , however , only about 1 percent of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The pandemic has only made the distinctions between celebrity and influencers muddier .
There are now more famous people than ever before in history , and a current conversation in these spaces is : What are they all for ?
On June 16 , writer and podcaster Akilah Hughes tweeted a video with the message , “ If you ’ re an influencer and you are on the beach right now and posting pictures of that and ignoring Black Lives Matter and the moment this country is in , you ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a salesperson for brands.
” Cameo lays this dichotomy bare by asking what celebrities are willing to do for money .
A hilarious Jezebel investigation into whether famous people would say things like “ tax the rich ” and “ join the DSA , comrades ” showed that for many celebrities , questions like “ What am I actually doing here ?
” aren ’ t exactly top of mind .
“ Creators are in a legitimacy crisis from public perception , ” Bruneteau says .
“ Brands one hundred percent understand the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sees people taking selfies , going to events and getting free products , and they think that this is not a real job.
” Organizations like the AIC are attempting to change that perception and help people understand that to be an influencer often means essentially running a small business where the product is oneself .
That influencer marketing is thriving and growing rapidly — a 2019 poll conducted by Lego showed that one-third of children ages 8 to 12 aspired to be a vlogger — isn ’ t up for debate .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ s job as exclusively “ product endorser ” isn ’ t a world anyone wants to live in .
Is there another way ?
What will the future of sponsored content look like ?
Bruneteau hopes the answer lies in education , as some colleges are now offering programs on digital marketing and content creation .
Gagliese sees the exploding influencer economy as a necessary replacement for the old models .
“ Influencer marketing is a really great frontrunner in the diversity of marketing space , ” he says .
“ What I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deterioration of classic media .
You look at TV campaigns and traditional advertising , they were on their way out .
We sped that process of light years , so now you have all these brands who are like , ‘ Well , I have all this money that I was going to spend at X or Y places , but now where am I going to put it ?
I think there ’ s going to be a big move of marketing dollars into the influencer space.
” The obvious question , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virtually unlimited dollars from his wildly successful syndicated network television drama ?
Does he need the $ 2,500 it pays to promote Colorado real estate agents ?
I received a reply from Ice-T ’ s email that , unfortunately , “ Ice is going to pass ” on answering my questions .
None of the celebrities I reached out to were willing to sit for an interview , but via a publicist , Floyd Mayweather told me , “ I like to go through the requests and choose which products and services I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ script .
So , to me my business shout outs have to be organic , and I need to either love it or want to learn more.
” Though the company has yet to seriously push its latest offering , COO Arthur Leopold says they ’ ve had “ hundreds of requests ” from businesses in its first week and about 1,500 celebrities and influencers have opted in ( prices for Promotional Cameos are about five to ten times higher than their normal rates ) .
The move for Cameo was a natural @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a bunch of mom-and-pop type companies booking Cameos to promote their car dealership or whatnot , which we thought was great , ” he says .
“ Some talent were willing to do those , and a lot of talent weren ’ t .
We realized that there was an opportunity to create a marketplace that democratizes access to celebrities in such an easy way.
” Prices vary widely ; while a regular Cameo from Ice-T will cost you $ 350 , one from recurring Seinfeld guest Fred Stoller is just $ 20 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ endorsements involve layers of coordination between managers , agents , brands , and lawyers , not to mention the cost of all of these things on top of the actual celebrity ’ s fee .
The FTC , meanwhile , has repeatedly enforced its guidelines on proper sponsored content labeling , though regulations are up for review for the first time in a decade this year .
The rules don ’ t apply , however , when the celebrity doing the endorsing doesn ’ t post the video to their own social channels @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which customers are buying the rights to license .
What happens if , say , a pizza restaurant hires Brett Favre to say how great their pizza is , and then it turns out the pizza gets a bunch of people sick with E. coli ?
“ We can take down a Cameo if it ’ s being used nefariously or if the talent is uncomfortable with it , ” Leopold says .
“ But in 1.2 million Cameos , I think we ’ ve taken down about four or five.
” Promotional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the transactional nature of stereotypical influencerhood , which is why I imagine it will be successful .
Personally , I look forward to seeing former Illinois Gov .
Rod Blagojevich or Tomi Lahren shill for a car dealership in Missouri .
If this is the future of influence , at least we ’ ll get to laugh .
Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
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If you happen to be in the market for a home in Grand Junction, Colorado, an unlikely person might sway your decision on a real estate agent: Ice-T, the rapper and star of television shows like Law & Order: SVU and Ice Loves Coco. “Get at Christie DeHerrera, okay?” he says in a front-facing camera video. “She’s the best in the business, she loves her work, she gets the job done. And plus, she’s a fan of Ice-T.”
Why is Ice-T suddenly a spokesperson for Christie DeHerrera, Colorado real estate agent? It’s the result of a new feature from Cameo, the app where people pay celebrities and influencers to record personalized messages for them, but this time for businesses. Promotional Cameos, which soft-launched in the second week of July, offer average companies the chance to hire, say, a Barbara Corcoran or a Lance Bass to vouch for their homemade soda or IT software, minus the legal hurdles and enormous price tags of traditional celebrity endorsements.
This is how we get videos of 2000s pop icon Christina Milian offering a promo code to streetwear site Drillionaire Dreams, which has 57 followers and Facebook and a website that comes with a security warning. For a generation accustomed to seeing A-listers post Instagram sponsored content for little-known brands, it was only a matter of time before a platform came along that removed the possibility of getting swallowed in a star’s Instagram direct messages tab while considerably lowering the price.
Cameo, which launched in 2017, is among the few companies for which the coronavirus has been a boon; Leopold says the app has seen a big rise in interest, and 500,000 of its 1.2 million videos have come from just the past four months.
The reasons are fairly predictable: Celebrities are in fact just like us, in that they were also under quarantine for most of the spring (albeit in far nicer houses), furloughed from film sets, concert tours, and red carpet events and suddenly finding themselves with a lot more free time. On the flip side, during quarantine nearly everyone was in at least some kind of long-distance relationship with friends and loved ones, and a shoutout from a favorite reality star or athlete could go a long way.
Still, there is something viscerally weird about scrolling through a website and seeing a dollar sign attributed to a celebrity. “You know local night clubs? If one in Colorado all of a sudden has Akon performing there, you’re like, ‘What happened?’” jokes Joe Gagliese, co-founder and CEO of influencer talent management company Viral Nation.
Our ideas about what counts as “desperate” for celebrities to do or shill have drastically evolved over the past 30 years; what seemed like “selling out” in the ’90s is now often praised as hustling. (As Real Housewife of Beverly Hills favorite Lisa Rinna, once an official spokesperson for adult diapers, says, “I’ll do anything to make a buck.”) The A-list will always be mostly untouchable: “You don’t see a lot of the huge celebrities on there because they’re not going to take a half-hour of their time for a thousand bucks when they make $500 million a year,” Gagliese explains.
But Cameo has succeeded because it culls from the ever-growing caste of microcelebrities and nano-influencers like 90 Day Fiancé villain Larissa Dos Santos or TikToker Lauren Godwin, or, what a Medium profile of Cameo described as “the D-list.” Here, shamelessness is heralded as a virtue rather than a fault; that Cameo is seen as “the gig economy for niche celebs” is not exactly an issue.
The influencer economy at large has remained mostly stable throughout the pandemic, too. “Through this climate of unexpected events like Covid, like Black Lives Matter, I think it shows you the power of authentic digital content is relevant to consumers,” says Qianna Smith Bruneteau of the American Influencer Council, the new (and first) trade organization for digital creators.
Today, endless sponsored posts on famous people’s Instagrams have blurred the line between influencer and celebrity, and as more influencers rise in status, more celebrities start looking like professional endorsers. It’s why distinguished (literally) actors like Sir Anthony Hopkins and Dame Judi Dench are joining TikTok and Will Smith and Naomi Campbell are becoming vloggers; social media flattens our ability to separate celebrities into tiers.
The top talent on Cameo — your Mandy Moores, your Sarah Jessica Parkers — often view Cameo as a way to give back to fans. Scrolling through, many famous faces tout the causes they’re participating for. According to Leopold, however, only about 1 percent of Cameo talent donate their fees to charity.
The pandemic has only made the distinctions between celebrity and influencers muddier. There are now more famous people than ever before in history, and a current conversation in these spaces is: What are they all for?
On June 16, writer and podcaster Akilah Hughes tweeted a video with the message, “If you’re an influencer and you are on the beach right now and posting pictures of that and ignoring Black Lives Matter and the moment this country is in, you’re not an influencer, you’re a salesperson for brands.” Cameo lays this dichotomy bare by asking what celebrities are willing to do for money. A hilarious Jezebel investigation into whether famous people would say things like “tax the rich” and “join the DSA, comrades” showed that for many celebrities, questions like “What am I actually doing here?” aren’t exactly top of mind.
“Creators are in a legitimacy crisis from public perception,” Bruneteau says. “Brands one hundred percent understand the value of creators, but the public sees people taking selfies, going to events and getting free products, and they think that this is not a real job.”
Organizations like the AIC are attempting to change that perception and help people understand that to be an influencer often means essentially running a small business where the product is oneself. That influencer marketing is thriving and growing rapidly — a 2019 poll conducted by Lego showed that one-third of children ages 8 to 12 aspired to be a vlogger — isn’t up for debate. But the idea of an influencer’s job as exclusively “product endorser” isn’t a world anyone wants to live in.
Is there another way? What will the future of sponsored content look like? Bruneteau hopes the answer lies in education, as some colleges are now offering programs on digital marketing and content creation. Gagliese sees the exploding influencer economy as a necessary replacement for the old models. “Influencer marketing is a really great frontrunner in the diversity of marketing space,” he says.
“What I think Covid did was speed up the deterioration of classic media. You look at TV campaigns and traditional advertising, they were on their way out. We sped that process of light years, so now you have all these brands who are like, ‘Well, I have all this money that I was going to spend at X or Y places, but now where am I going to put it? I think there’s going to be a big move of marketing dollars into the influencer space.”
The obvious question, though: Doesn’t Ice-T have virtually unlimited dollars from his wildly successful syndicated network television drama? Does he need the $2,500 it pays to promote Colorado real estate agents?
I received a reply from Ice-T’s email that, unfortunately, “Ice is going to pass” on answering my questions. None of the celebrities I reached out to were willing to sit for an interview, but via a publicist, Floyd Mayweather told me, “I like to go through the requests and choose which products and services I can just speak into without reading a script. So, to me my business shout outs have to be organic, and I need to either love it or want to learn more.”
Though the company has yet to seriously push its latest offering, COO Arthur Leopold says they’ve had “hundreds of requests” from businesses in its first week and about 1,500 celebrities and influencers have opted in (prices for Promotional Cameos are about five to ten times higher than their normal rates).
The move for Cameo was a natural one: “We started to see a bunch of mom-and-pop type companies booking Cameos to promote their car dealership or whatnot, which we thought was great,” he says. “Some talent were willing to do those, and a lot of talent weren’t. We realized that there was an opportunity to create a marketplace that democratizes access to celebrities in such an easy way.” Prices vary widely; while a regular Cameo from Ice-T will cost you $350, one from recurring Seinfeld guest Fred Stoller is just $20.
Is it legal? Traditional celebrity endorsements involve layers of coordination between managers, agents, brands, and lawyers, not to mention the cost of all of these things on top of the actual celebrity’s fee. The FTC, meanwhile, has repeatedly enforced its guidelines on proper sponsored content labeling, though regulations are up for review for the first time in a decade this year.
The rules don’t apply, however, when the celebrity doing the endorsing doesn’t post the video to their own social channels. Cameo technically owns each video, which customers are buying the rights to license. What happens if, say, a pizza restaurant hires Brett Favre to say how great their pizza is, and then it turns out the pizza gets a bunch of people sick with E. coli? “We can take down a Cameo if it’s being used nefariously or if the talent is uncomfortable with it,” Leopold says. “But in 1.2 million Cameos, I think we’ve taken down about four or five.”
Promotional Cameos are a rather hilariously on-the-nose example of the transactional nature of stereotypical influencerhood, which is why I imagine it will be successful. Personally, I look forward to seeing former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich or Tomi Lahren shill for a car dealership in Missouri. If this is the future of influence, at least we’ll get to laugh.