Gillette has been designing razors since 1900–but they’re all designed for you to shave yourself. There’s another group of people who want to be shaved and rely on other people to do it for them: the elderly and people with disabilities. For caretakers, shaving someone else is a nerve-wracking process that requires navigating a lot of awkward angles with the constant fear of accidentally cutting them.

In 2017, Gillette began testing Treo, its first ever assistive shaving razor designed specifically to alleviate the challenges of shaving someone else. Treo, which is a finalist in the 2018 Innovation by Design awards, fuses a razor blade with tube of shaving gel that serves as its handle and gives shavers more control while keeping the mess to a minimum. For elderly men who can no longer shave themselves, it’s a product that can help them maintain a clean appearance and preserve a semblance of their youth.

“Shaving in that context is a massive part of those men’s dignity,” says Matt Hodgson, a principal design engineer at Gillette’s product development facility in the U.K. who led design for Treo. “It’s something they’ve done all the way through their lives.”

Treo is an example of inclusive design at its best–and it originated from feedback Gillette began to hear from its users. While many of the company’s advertising campaigns focus on the moment a father teaches his son how to shave, Gillette had started to get feedback on social media about what happens when a father no longer can shave himself. The verdict? None of its razors were designed to help.

To understand why it was so hard to shave someone else, Hodgson started by shaving a colleague in the office. Once he tried it, Hodgson realized just how difficult it was to do: unlike when you shave yourself, it’s hard to tell if you’re applying enough pressure to effectively cut the hairs while not inadvertently cutting the skin. And if shaving those tricky spots is onerous when you’re doing it yourself, it’s even worse when you’re doing it for someone else.

Hodgson also traveled to a local nursing home to observe assisted shaving in the wild. “I watched three guys being shaved,” he says. “It was something I’ll never forget. I sat there thinking, we can do so much better than this. In addition to all the problems I was finding, there were so many more in that situation, particularly when you’re shaving someone who’s in a vulnerable position.”

It wasn’t just that it was challenging to know how much pressure to apply to someone else’s skin to get the job done. The circumstances of shaving were entirely different too: Men were usually shaved sitting down or in bed rather than in the shower, meaning there wasn’t immediate access to water to wash off the razor. That also meant that using standard shaving cream would quickly become a mess. Because the person being shaved is typically in a seated or reclined position, shavers also needed to hold the razor at a different angle to get a close shave.

Hodgson and his team developed a series of five different prototypes over three months, returning to the nursing home with dozens of test razors for the caregivers to try out, before arriving at the final design. To tackle the problem of shaving occurring outside of the bathroom and away from a running tap, Hodgson added a special razor guard that was initially designed for the Indian market, where men’s hair is thicker and they tend to use less water when shaving. Whereas Hodgson had originally observed caregivers going through two or three disposable razors for a single shave in the nursing home, the guard helped with clogging and enabled shavers to do the whole face using a single razor. Treo’s handle doubles as a tube of water-based gel, developed to go onto the skin cleanly without creating the kind of mess that shaving cream would–an imperative for shaving that’s happening outside the bathroom. Hodgson also reoriented the angle between the razor head and this tube handle so that shavers can hold the device like a paintbrush or a pencil, giving them more control.

In the fall of 2017, Gillette began sending out this final design for free to nursing homes and individuals across the United States and U.K. as part of a pilot program. During testing, the team had primarily focused on professional carers who were shaving multiple men on a daily basis, but they wanted to know if the product would work for people in different situations. One pilot tester was Anne Baker, a woman who shaves her husband who has Parkinson’s about once a month before important events. “He was military. He was an executive. He always put his best face forward. His appearance was incredibly important to him,” Baker says.

She’s found Treo to be the answer to her fear over cutting her husband while trying to shave him, and wishes it had been around when her father–who worked for Gillette–was old. “This would have been a godsend when he was quite old and in a nursing home,” she says. “He would have loved this. He always wanted to be clean-shaven.”

Armed with positive feedback from the pilot, Gillette has started selling razors to a limited number of people through its website as it assesses whether to bring Treo to the mainstream. “We know the shave business inside out, better than anybody else,” Hodgson says. “But this was a completely different market.”

Donald Trump’s internet virality engine lurks deep in a section of Reddit known as The_Donald. It has more than 600,000 subscribers and was–along with Facebook, Twitter, and other sites–one of the spawning grounds for the Russian disinformation campaign in the lead-up to the 2016 election. Reddit noted much later, as other social media platforms were answering tough questions from Congress on foreign influence online in April 2018, that it had identified 944 user accounts it believed were associated with the Russian Internet Research Agency, noting that it had banned them all, the majority prior to the election.

Last week, new accusations of attempted foreign influence surfaced. A user posted an explainer that claimed he’d tracked a successor to the IRA’s earlier activities on the site. Reddit banned four of the main suspect domains–but was widely criticized for not having previously caught them. A Reddit spokesperson said the investigation into suspicious content is ongoing: “We have dedicated teams that enforce our site-wide policies, proactively go after bad actors on the site, and create engineering solutions to prevent them in the future.” Reddit would not confirm that the four domains it had banned were connected to Russian disinformation campaigns, only that they had broken site rules.

This was nothing new for Reddit, a site that has since its earliest days attracted the brightest and most toxic elements of the internet. CEO Steve Huffman, who hand-coded the site when he launched it with Alexis Ohanian in 2005 and who returned in 2015 to the company to try to save it in the wake of a scandal that threatened to topple it, has overseen the purges of many other types of noxious content on Reddit. Since 2015, the company has banned violence against animals, threats against individuals, gun sales, and sections of the site (“subreddits”) dedicated to the alt-right.

While r/The_Donald has been subject to much scrutiny, it has escaped such drastic punishment. Since its inception, Redditors opposed to Trump or activities of his online supporters, or opposed to its casual misogyny and uncivil discourse, have called for Reddit to ban it. In plenty of cases, they’ve had a point: Users and moderators of r/The_Donald have broken many, if not all, of the site’s rules.

I’ve been interviewing Huffman for my book since 2011. I’ve not only witnessed the evolution of his thinking in creating a “free speech” site, but have had a close-up view into the site’s working as its policies have changed. He’s told me he dislikes much about The_Donald, including its political views and tone. But he still argues that Trump supporters deserve an online home. “Now, I don’t always factor in ‘what’s good for the United States’ into my decisions,” Huffman told me. “But Reddit’s getting to a point where our actions do have an impact.” (It’s the fifth most popular destination on the American internet. One-third of all Americans view at least something on the site every month, by Reddit’s estimates.)

What follows is the story of r/The_Donald, a weird, insular world that helped give rise to President Trump and which has for years presented a singular challenge to Huffman and his team.

This book excerpt has been edited for length and clarity.

The bruising 2016 election cycle was almost at its end, and although [Reddit CEO Steve] Huffman and his teams had made some attempts at cracking down on the hate speech that Reddit had become associated with, new gates that enclosed the worst content on Reddit barely masked the reality: There was still a lot of awful stuff.

There were lightly veiled white supremacist subreddits, such as r/european, with a distinctly anti-Muslim sentiment. Others were dedicated to spreading a strain of ultra-right-wing, pro–”Western culture misogyny, such as r/PussyPass, which tallied allegations of women receiving preferential treatment, and a small universe of subreddits dedicated to “taking the Red Pill,” a reference to The Matrix, which in the movie signaled becoming indoctrinated with an uncomfortable, unpopular truth. More recently, the term had been appropriated by the “manosphere” to describe the epiphany one would undergo once coming to see their viewpoint on gender inequality against men, or men’s rights. R/TheRedPill and r/Incels were particularly sexist and overlapped with the alt- right and neoreactionary communities, with which they shared a vocabulary. They were places where women were treated as submissive, stupid possessions who should be trained to bow down to their “king” or “alpha” and where disgruntled young white men ranted about perceived ills. R/hitler still existed, though Huffman, when confronted with that fact, shrugged. He said he was confident that if that subreddit became popular or grew, his teams would cut it off.

None of these, however, attained the level of notoriety or popularity that did r/The_Donald.

R/The_Donald began as a straightforward, if slightly tongue- in-cheek forum dedicated to news about and advocacy for the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. It was created in June 2015 after Trump announced his candidacy, and immediately, posts mimicked his blunt, hyperbolic speech patterns. Growth was slow initially, which made sense—Bernie Sanders had seemed to be Reddit’s candidate of choice early in the 2016 election cycle.

In December 2015, r/The_Donald was still a mostly mild place, though infused with some of the wall-building rhetoric spouted by the candidate himself. Its extensive set of rules, maintained by the moderators, forbade most bigotry and racism, with the exception of Islamophobia, which it expressly permitted. Then the brigading and memetic warfare started.

Brigading is the invasion of a topic, thread, or entire message board by a group of individuals who have organized themselves online with the purpose of manipulating content or its visibility. This sort of plotting happens in massive private-message threads on Twitter, in Facebook groups, on private chat servers such as Discord, and, very overtly, on 4chan’s /pol, a “politically incorrect” board that had been created by 4chan’s founder in 2011 to siphon off and contain the overtly xenophobic and racist comments and memes from other wings of 4chan. This mostly off-Reddit organizing then plays out on Reddit as vote brigading, or attempting to silence individual voices by downvoting them into oblivion. Other products were meme generation and dissemination, harassment campaigns, and propagation of disinformation, largely aiming to disseminate far-right viewpoints. Brigading had long been against the site’s rules, but this activity was difficult to track, and almost impossible to differentiate from regular Reddit activity due to the fact that it looked an awful lot like normal Reddit activity: Those taking part were coming from disparate IP addresses, mostly domestic, and most of which otherwise interacted typically with the site.

The_Donald’s subscriber list grew in fits and lurches—and examining its growth patterns helps explain both its constituency and why it became both an outsized force on Reddit and Trump’s most active and vocal base of support on the entire Internet.

Early on, an influx of brigaders came from 4chan’s /pol board, and its Reddit counterpart, r/pol. There was more crossover of /pol users to Reddit after 4chan was abandoned by its creator, Chris Poole, in January 2015, after he’d  lost any semblance of ability to control the sprawling, vile communities it harbored.

Over the following year, Reddit’s political boards, most prominently r/The_Donald, experienced a substantial influx of traffic from former channers. They brought with them some of what became The_Donald’s signature vernacular, as well as meme- proficiency and lots of keks, which is 4chan slang for laughs and possibly a reference to the frog, sometimes Pepe the Frog, an image that thanks to memetic strategizing on 4chan and 8chan had been infused with anti-Semitic meaning and that the Anti-Defamation League subsequently declared a hate symbol.

A wave of likely racists had also joined in the late summer of 2015, after Huffman and his teams shuttered r/CoonTown. Its constituency subsequently migrated to other subreddits “where racist behavior has either been noted or is prevalent,” a study by six researchers associated with the Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory University, and the University of Michigan found. One of the top places it was discovered that these users migrated to during their time on Reddit was The_Donald. (A later semantic analysis by FiveThirtyEight confirmed that the nonpolitics subreddits on Reddit most closely related to The_Donald were r/fatpeoplehate, r/ TheRedPill, and r/CoonTown.)

Another constituency growing around this time, it would later become known, was Russian propagandists, apparently in an effort to sow disinformation and discord among the American electorate. Reddit later identified 944 user accounts associated with a Kremlin- tied troll farm; the largest posters were active on The_Donald, using upvoting schemes to make their posts more popular. While most of the accounts’ efforts were ineffective, a few were successful; one posted a sex video that falsely claimed to include Hillary Clinton, and it received more than one hundred thousand upvotes.

As the 2016 campaign season wore on, Donald Trump’s big tent on Reddit was his largest online supporter group, and it included a constituency of: racists; the 4chan migrants, largely in it for the keks; alt-righters; Gamergaters contributing sexism and conspiracy theories; some former Bernie Sanders supporters; Russian propagandists; and anyone lured by the promise of a place that tolerated Islamophobia. R/The_Donald was their clubhouse, a thriving “safe space” that blossomed into one of the most absurdist and influential communities in all of Reddit. With all this in mind, perhaps it makes sense that by mid-2016, The_Donald had become a two-hundred-thousand-strong community producing a steady stream of far-right talking points, coded racism, casual misogyny, Islamophobia, and the now-well-established alt-right “free speech” and hatred of the mainstream media.

Since its inception, Reddit’s community team had flagged T_D (for short) as problematic and devoted regular resources to monitoring it. But as T_D devolved into a place with its own rapidly evolving vernacular in part to code its extremism, and shitposting became a norm, the forum’s moderators and the Reddit admins keeping an eye on them together slipped into stranger and stranger territory.

The limits of free speech were indeed being stretched here— deftly and deliberately. Plenty of content and thousands of users were banned by T_D’s rotating cast of thirty-some volunteer moderators—users with usernames such as sublimeinslime, ivagi- naryfriend, and pm_me_yo_doggos, whose profile photo was a cartoon hybrid of Donald Trump and Pepe the Frog aiming an automatic rifle. “News” from questionable sources such as Infowars and Breitbart abounded; many of the far-right’s messages were honed here, and primed for appearance on Twitter and other social media where major news outlets might pick them up.

As memes, slang, and acronyms metastasized, the subreddit’s lingua franca evolved so far from what others might recognize as common usage—daily, even hourly—that it became onerous to track its lightning-fast online etymological evolution. This language was a key part of their defiance of the mainstream: “If you’re using the left’s buzzwords like ‘racist’ and ‘sexist’ then you’re gonna find yourself following leftist thought patterns,” one moderator wrote. “However, it’s very hard to accidentally align with SJWs by using words like ‘cuckold’ or ‘faggot.’ Our culture exists for a reason and we’re gonna cherish it, and enjoy the power it gives us.” The massive effort, in all its extremism, wasn’t lost on Donald Trump’s campaign. In the lead-up to the election, Donald Trump on his Twitter account reposted memes and videos that bubbled up on T_D, including, as far back as 2015, an image of Pepe that had been altered to resemble Trump. Former campaign staffers have admitted that from the war room that had been set up in Trump Tower in New York, they relentlessly monitored the huge forum for content to push out to Trump’s followers online. Before long, though, the subreddit’s moderators were directly in touch with campaign staffers, and, according to Reddit staffers, together they arranged for Trump to participate in an Ask Me Anything in July 2016.

Other portions of Reddit were apoplectic. Posts on r/TheoryOfReddit, a forum dedicated to meta-examination of on- site phenomena, had long pondered The_Donald’s meteoric rise, with posts ranging from “is it a cult?” to “is it an anti-muslim, anti-immigration subreddit?” On one day in late April 2016, as Trump moved toward securing the Republican nomination, ninety- three of the top one hundred posts on r/all originated from The_Donald. Even r/TheoryOfReddit gave up. It had just four moderators and said they didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with the backlash to every post that mentioned T_D.

By mid-2016, T_D was the most active community on Reddit, and therefore, among the site’s most influential. But the extreme engagement of its various factions was far from organic. When a post from T_D rocketed to the top of r/all, often it was the intentional result of an orchestrated campaign. The extensive slate of The_Donald moderators had developed an intricate and highly regimented structure, one that members of Reddit’s community team have referred to as “bureaucratic,” “coordinated,” and “militaristic.”

While most subreddits’ mod teams operate as volunteers—each dabbling in their free time in reading modmail and flagging spam— on The_Donald, moderators developed a communication system and hierarchy, wherein tasks were more cleanly divided; everyone had their role. Over IRC, Discord, other message boards, and on in-depth documents, editorial calendars of sorts, they developed a new system for ensuring that their content could gain steam in a controlled fashion.

Moderators of T_D harnessed and manipulated simple Reddit site customizations, using them in unorthodox ways to disseminate T_D content far beyond its pages. First, the typical Reddit downvoting function was cut off throughout T_D—meaning a post could only gain, not lose, traction. To gain subscribers, at times the moderators created a large Trump pop-up that visitors had to click on to make it disappear—but by clicking, they became subscribed to the forum, meaning they would regularly encounter its content on their custom homepage. At one point, the most problematic subsite hack T_D moderators utilized was locking a post of their choosing on the top spot on the site, where typically the subreddit’s current most popular post is found. Moderators referred to this as “stickying” a post; it is akin to “pinning” a tweet to the top of a Twitter feed. T_D had gamed the sacred algorithm. They had unlocked a way to disseminate content handpicked by moderators.

On June 12, 2016, T_D recruited more than eleven thousand new subscribers through exposure on r/all. Moderators of r/news had made a bizarre decision in the wake of a deadly attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando to disallow posts and comments about the attack, compiling all information into a single “megathread.” It resulted in a dearth of news about the attack on Reddit’s front pages, which are usually dominated by the day’s top news headlines. T_D swooped in to fill the void. With what amounted to planned brigades of upvotes, it propelled several posts to the home page. T_D had found a weak spot and used it to grow, again. “Of course, the subreddit was already well-versed in Islamophobia, so it was a particularly apt place to wildly speculate about [the shooter’s] motives, involvement with the Islamic State, and what should eventually happen with all Muslims in this country,” Vice News wrote at the time.

Huffman attempted to engage the broader Reddit community about the handling of the release of news after the nightclub shooting, on Reddit’s blog. In it, he made a tweak to how “stickied” posts could be employed, now dubbing them “announcement” posts and requiring they be text-based and created by a moderator. That brought the direct ire of The_Donald, which retaliated with the Internet equivalent of a raised middle finger: a bunch of swastikas in the headline of a post that contained nothing other than a subtle ask for upvotes from others who wanted to retaliate against u/spez. The_Donald subscribers gamely upvoted it—and it soared to the top spot on r/all. It read: “Don’t mind me, just taking my admins for a walk. Dear cucked admins, stop lying to people on the internet.”

Swastikas on the front page was unambiguously not a good look for Reddit. Angry, Huffman decided to double down. On June 16, he posted to r/announcements that over the past day Reddit had tweaked the algorithm that determined hotness on r/all. Now, rather than competing against one another for popularity, each given community would be judged against itself and its own recent viral activity in order to achieve front-page status. “Our specific goal being to prevent any one community from dominating,” Huffman wrote. “This undermines Reddit, and we are not going to allow it.” It was a direct move to limit the reach of T_D. Later, to further rein in T_D, Huffman specifically banned posts stickied by T_D from r/all, calling the subreddit’s tactics “antagonistic to the rest of the community.”

But by that time, T_D had more than three hundred thousand subscribers. There was no stopping it. Not that Huffman actually wanted to.

Donald J. Trump was elected 45th president of the United States on November 8, 2016.

Huffman said he should have seen it coming.

When asked at the end of November whether he believed Reddit had a role in the election’s outcome, Huffman was open to the possibility, saying, “It’s hard to say.” He said The_Donald, specifically, was a reflection of the conversation that was happening nationwide—only amplified, thanks to the nature of the see-what- you-want-to-see social web. “I think that’s one of the challenges you see when you democratize media and news consumption,” he said. “The feedback loop gets louder and louder and louder.”

Reddit investor Dave McClure had a near meltdown onstage at the Web Summit in Lisbon the day after the election, saying that social networks built by Silicon Valley are “a propaganda medium” that “assholes like Trump” use to get into office. “We provide communication platforms for the rest of the fucking country and we are allowing shit to happen just like the cable news networks, just like talk radio.” Later that day, McClure lamented, “Sometimes I feel like we’re just a bunch of nerds who don’t know how to play the game.”

A few weeks later, onstage at a conference in Brooklyn, Huffman was confronted with the question of whether Facebook’s longtime defense—that it was not a publisher of content, which would require editorial control, but rather merely a technology platform, useful for distribution of individuals’ content—was valid.

“They are filtering what we see,” the interviewer said of Facebook. “If you look at Reddit, do you see yourself becoming a social network or as a publisher, or—what is Reddit?”

Huffman gave a standard line, that Reddit is home to thousands of communities, which each choose what they see and discuss. He said that Reddit is a reflection of humanity in that way, but noted that like Facebook, what Reddit had done was open up communications between individuals to a before-unseen level, which meant a hugely greater breadth of conversation than the world had ever known. “I see our role as a communications platform, primarily, bringing people together.”

Afterward, in a private discussion, Huffman opened up a bit more. He said he did not believe that Facebook has a moral obligation to exert a sweeping hand of editorial judgment over what its users posted. “Right now what I see is a lot of self-righteous ‘Somebody’s to blame for this,’ ” he said. “They’re looking for a scapegoat.”

To Huffman, at the time, the existence of T_D and its divisive, uncivil, often conspiracy-theory-minded discourse was a matter of free speech—on which his once-absolutist thinking had begun to evolve—and would continue to evolve. He and Reddit had begun to treat different types of content differently. Noxious communities aimed at antagonizing Reddit were subject to banning by Huffman and his team. So was content of the crying-“fire”-in-a-crowded-theater stripe: Anything inciting violence or harm, regardless of its validity or intent, he’d empowered his teams of administrators to cut off. It has banned r/incels, r/european, r/hitler, r/pol, and put behind a no-advertising wall r/TheRedPill. But overtly political speech: This, to Huffman, was at least somewhat separate. It was what the First Amendment at its core was contrived to protect.

But it would not be simple to protect—nor even comprehend. “Political speech” had been redefined by savvy, aggressive trolls. And that left Huffman in the wake of the election a bit flabbergasted. “Do I force equal time to candidates during election season? Do we ban communities? No, no, no,” he said. “It just doesn’t make sense.” But he knew that what was unfolding on Reddit was consequential. He didn’t agree with it, but he was pretty sure he should protect it. “I mean, Trump won, right? Fifty percent of people voted for him, let’s not pretend that this is some aberration, that The_Donald is some freak occurrence.”

Excerpted from the book We Are the Nerds: The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet’s Culture Laboratory, by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, to be published on October 2, 2018 by Hachette Books, a division of Hachette Book Group. Copyright 2018 Christine Lagorio-Chafkin.

What a time to be almost alive.

That’s my mantra, as a pop-culture reporter in the age of Trump, floating through each week in a state of near-catatonic constant consumption. First, I devour a mountain of vegetables—the news unfolding in a reverse-chronological cascade—then I wolf down a second mountain of dessert, perhaps an embargoed screener for an upcoming Netflix series.

My plate is never clean, and I always feel dirty. Because too often now the vegetables and dessert blend together in a thick, mushy paste.

The president is, among other things, a former game-show host and reality-TV star. He may speak like someone with a third-grade reading level who is currently sundowning, but he was savvy enough to intuit that politics and entertainment were already blended together and that it made incredible business sense to make them indistinguishable from each other. Political news now encompasses sitcom silliness when Trump himself or one of his goons does something farcically stupid. It’s high-stakes drama pretty much the rest of the time.

We are all used to this now. It’s become The Way It Is, even as part of the drama focuses on the fight to make it Any Other Way. But as politics has become more like entertainment, what did political entertainment become?

We were promised great art in the Trump era, at a time when nobody knew what the era would look like. The first wave we got did not inspire much confidence. Spielberg rushed The Post into production, to assure everyone that newspapers will save us all. Michael Moore went on Broadway for some reason. As inspired as Anthony Atamanuik’s performance as Donald Trump was on The President Show–and how oddly predictive that show ended up being–it was hard to get excited to watch more of the president at the end of a long day. That’s the reason why I can’t say for sure whether Stephen Colbert’s Our Cartoon President even exists.

Those involved with making our nation’s supply of art regularly responded to politics with award-show speechifying, which was suddenly rendered redundant when the Emmys hosted Sean Spicer in 2017, a moment where Hollywood seemed to agree with the MAGA philosophy that nothing matters and this is all a game.

There was also a scramble to make shows designed to appeal to the supposed silent majority—the most obvious being Roseanne, which imploded spectacularly when its creator proved only too well to share the same values as the show’s mega-MAGA demo. But the spirit that inspired the revival still persists. In the spring of 2017, ABC canceled Last Man Standing, a low-rated, long-in-the-tooth sitcom where Tim Allen plays a disgruntled vlogger. After a pronounced outcry of  “liberal conspiracy!” swept the internet, though, Fox made a bet that it would win some resentment viewers by bringing the show back. As of last Friday’s debut–which soundly trounced Murphy Brown, the yang to Roseanne’s yin–in the ratings, the bet appears to have paid off.

Late-night TV has settled into a comfortable groove of hit-or-miss jokes about the outrages of the day–basically what late-night talk shows have always been–only more pointed in proportion with how outrageous the outrage, and occasionally dead serious. Recently, though, these shows have found creative success by acknowledging on-air how necessarily different their creators have to approach them now, considering the new breakneck pace of things.

The failure of SNL-style satire and Yeezy-style trolling

Saturday Night Live has more freedom in its format for commenting on news of the day, but too often that freedom is squandered. The show is still capable of producing sharp jabs that nail their target, like the faux-ad for Ivanka Trump’s perfume, Complicit. But all too often SNL is content to fall back on high-profile surprise guests reenacting a big moment from the week. Sure, it was a brilliant choice to immortalize Sean Spicer as Melissa McCarthy, but nobody needed the jokeless spectacle of Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro as Michael Cohen and Robert Mueller, channeling their Meet the Parents characters.

The tragedy of this approach is that it’s an effort to mimic the cultural success of Tina Fey’s role in taking down Sarah Palin a decade ago–a phenomenon that no longer seems possible.

Over the weekend, for instance, SNL recruited Matt Damon to play fratty, embattled SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The writers did an incredible job of boiling down every gobsmacking aspect of last Thursday’s historic hearing into a marathon, 13-minute cold open. They fully captured Kavanaugh’s alternately hostile and weepy command performance, along with the obsequious demeanor of the judiciary committee. Damon was funny in the role too, despite the fact that it may have been inappropriate to cast him in the first place, considering his past comments about the #MeToo movement. The clip has already been widely circulated and has cemented Kavanaugh’s reputation as a national joke. But that status will have zero impact on whether he is confirmed or not.

There’s no longer the possibility that a “gotcha” moment like Katie Couric’s famous Sarah Palin interview, or the subsequent Tina Fey impression that codified the joke, could happen now. The closest we’ve gotten to a “gotcha” lately is Sacha Baron Cohen’s show, Who Is America?, which got one lower-level politician in serious trouble, but otherwise didn’t leave much impact. Donald Trump’s election disproved the idea that being widely regarded as an obscene punchline could keep one out of higher office. The fact that Kavanaugh turned himself into a dank meme with his bizarre behavior and obvious lies isn’t disqualifying; it’s further reason to push him through. After all, if Kavanaugh does get through, the joke will be on the libs. And if you’re a member of the spite-fueled GOP that elected Trump, what more fitting way could there be to kick off a majority-conservative SCOTUS?

The musical guest on the episode of SNL that annihilated Kavanaugh was Kanye West, an artist who has lost the plot in the Trump era. West has long thrived creatively by making controversial statements that turn fans against him–and then winning them back with stone-cold classic bops. Even as Trump merely loomed on the horizon in 2016, though, Kanye’s statements began to go beyond the usual level of controversial and into the realm of unforgivable. Tweeting “Bill Cosby innocent!!!!” isn’t the same thing as interrupting Taylor Swift’s MTV award acceptance speech. It’s repulsive. You might even call it deplorable. Luckily, the album that followed, The Life of Pablo, was hot enough to make fans try not to think about the Cosby tweet.

That seems so long ago now.

Kanye West’s latest offering, Ye, was farted out over two weeks earlier this summer and quickly disappeared. Can you name one song from it? You probably cannot. The album release happened in the eye of the hurricane that’s been Kanye’s true artwork this year, his transition into full-blown MAGA scumbag. His tweets now are filled with alt-right talking points not worth repeating here, and he has publicly aligned himself with the movement’s heroes like Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk. Whether this is all part of a long-con performance art piece about prejudices or hats or whatever, Kanye West’s professed love of Trump and Trumpism has so overshadowed his art as to render that art beside the point. As if to prove as much, the two songs he performed on SNL this weekend were just warm-ups for his true viral moment on the show, an off-air Trump rant that landed online courtesy of Chris Rock’s Instagram Story.

If Kanye is using Trump to shock for the sake of shock, he wouldn’t be alone. An upcoming episode of Family Guy will reportedly feature the president hitting on the Griffins’ teenage daughter, Meg. While there’s nothing wrong with wanting to highlight Trump’s proclivities–it’s amazing how seldom his reported penchant for barging in on undressed teenage girls is brought up–having him prey on Meg Griffin is crude and artless. What purpose does it serve to create a fantasy version of slightly worse disgusting behavior than the kind Trump actually exhibited? The show might as well just avoid taking him on altogether . . . if South Park hadn’t decided to go that route last year, to diminishing ratings and relevance.

Taking the oath at the movies

Because movies generally take longer to turn around than TV shows, Trump-triggered movies only really began hitting theaters this year. (There were four of them at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival alone.)

Michael Moore traded the Broadway stage for his camera again to make Fahrenheit 11/9, a documentary that succeeds by focusing less on Trump than on the forces that got him elected and the forces that may defeat him yet. Over the summer, there were several movies that weren’t directly about Trump but still reflective of him. Armando Iannucci’s Death of Stalin wasn’t necessarily inspired by Trump, but as a rebuke of dictatorships, it can’t help but come across as a warning shot. Sicario: Day of the Soldado escalates the drug war at the U.S./Mexico border into the realm of terrorism, and there are echoes of tiki-torch racism in The First Purge.

Of all the recent films, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman is perhaps the most vital. As if it weren’t clear enough that the events of the film position Trump’s election as a grand victory for racists everywhere, a coda at the end recounts Heather Heyer’s murder by a neo Nazi in Charlottesville in August 2017, and the president’s equivocating reaction. The movie feels designed to fan the flames of its viewers’ never-dormant fury.

Later this month, Ike Barinholtz’s directorial debut, The Oath, will mark the most explicitly topical comedy of the Trump era. It takes place in an America where a Trump analog has triggered creeping fascism. At the start of the film, this president demands all citizens sign an oath of patriotic loyalty, and the action takes place around Thanksgiving, which is the deadline for signing. Barinholtz’s character and his wife, played by Tiffany Haddish, are hosting his politically mixed family for the holiday. Before the film turns into something of a thriller in its third act, it serves as a compelling snapshot of our rigidly divided era. It also makes the always-welcome point that it’s entirely possible to be on the right side of history and be kind of a dick about it.

In December, Adam McKay’s film about Dick Cheney, Vice, will almost certainly find something to say about our current predicament, and hovering far in the distance is The Apprentice, the first of what I imagine will be a robust series of movies about Donald Trump’s actual life (which I will hopefully never see). Any random one of the memoirs, tell-alls, and investigative books about the Trump White House which are released seemingly every week could be an HBO series.

As a consequence of news breaking so often and so thoroughly that it feels like our brains have broken with it, any movie about the Trump era made during the Trump era has a strong chance of feeling dated or incorrect by the time it comes out. Who would want to see Iannucci’s proposed Trump Truman Show movie, after all, if it premiered the day after Trump is impeached? (Okay, I probably still would.)

People will continue to create art inspired by Trump right now, though, because for many of them it will be almost easier to do so than not. You write what you know, and if what you know is experiencing life in a political Hell World, it almost can’t not come across.

Hopefully, though, the future of entertainment in Trumpland will be less about the world we live in than the world we aspire to. Obviously it’s a bad thing that nothing matters anymore, as we are constantly reminding ourselves, but if nothing matters, then it also means that there are no longer any limits.

Research has found that recognition can go a long way in improving employee productivity and engagement, but now managers and employers are challenged to extend their gratitude to an increasingly remote workforce.

While remote staff still appreciate acknowledgement and affirmation from their superiors, research suggests they are more likely to value quality time with their colleagues over direct praise, compared to those who work in-house.

According to a research by psychologist and author Paul White, everyone has their own preferred way of receiving praise and acknowledgement. In his 2012 book, The Five Languages of Appreciate in the Workplace, he breaks down how most employees want to feel acknowledged for their work.

According to his research for the book, nearly half of the 130,000 American workers who took a self-assessment appreciated words of affirmation most, approximately one quarter most enjoyed quality time with colleagues, just over 20% preferred to be acknowledged through kind acts or services, only approximately 5% most appreciate physical gifts, and less than 1% most appreciated a high five or other physical gestures.

“Feeling valued and appreciated is not only desired by people, but it’s critical to the function of the organization,” White tells Fast Company.“Businesses with team members who feel valuable and appreciated are more profitable, there’s less conflict, and they get higher customer ratings.”

As the workforce becomes more remote, White believes it’s similarly vital for businesses to understand how they can best extend that feeling of appreciation to their offsite staff.

Time Trumps Words for Remote Staff

While the order of most appreciated forms of gratitude remains the same for remote employees, White’s latest research found that they are more likely to value quality time with colleagues than those who work in-house. While only 25% of in-house staff most valued time with colleagues, that number increases to 35% for remote staff, which is almost on par with their appreciation for words of affirmation from superiors.

“Quality time really popped up [in the rankings], with 10% more of employees who worked remotely saying they prefer quality time over words, which is a big jump,” says White. “Remote employees often feel disconnected, and words alone often don’t send the same intensity of message.”

White explains that without casual communication at the water cooler or in the elevator, remote staff are at risk of only communicating with colleagues on work-related topics, which can leave them feeling disconnected from the rest of the organization.

“It starts to drive the relationship towards them just feeling like a work unit rather than a person,” he says, adding that in such circumstances a simple kudos for a job well done can seem impersonal or insincere. “You have to be far more proactively intentional to be able to effectively communicate appreciation with remote employees.”

Be the First to Open Up

In order to establish a personal relationship with remote staff, White believes it falls to the manager to kick-start those more intimate conversations. He adds that those who manage remote staff should schedule extra time into their communications with remote employees to ensure they have room for casual conversation between work-related subjects.

“If it’s only one person talking about themselves and the other asking questions, it can feel like 21-questions or an interrogation,” he said. “To build a personal relationship, there needs to be two-way interaction, and one way to facilitate that is to offer personal information about yourself.”

Starting phone calls and other interactions by sharing personal anecdotes, explains White, is an effective means of building that personal relationship with remote staff.

Take a Remote-First Approach To All Internal Communications

According to Shopify’s remote employee experience specialist, Chivon John, those who work with remote employees should strive to foster a remote-first approach to communications, even among in-house staff.

“If you’re having a meeting in the office, and you’re including individuals who are working remotely, avoid situations where you have a majority of attendees in a board room, and one person conferencing in,” she advises. “That can make them feel isolated, so try to level the playing field by having fully remote meetings, even when a majority of attendees are in-house.”

John, who helps manage the e-commerce platforms extensive remote workforce, (only 850 of its 3,000 employees work at the company headquarters in Ottawa, and 1,400 are fully remote) adds that when it comes to internal communications it’s similarly important to establish company-wide rules of engagement for remote staff, especially those working in different time zones.

“It’s important to encourage your staff and your teams to input into their calendar the remote staff member’s working hours,” she says. “You need to have a clear understanding of when people are available to avoid situations where those who work remotely feel they have to be available at inconvenient hours to connect with their team.”

Foster Communities Outside of Work

While maintaining a personal relationship with managers can help remote staff feel more connected to the office culture, many, according to White’s research, prefer having casual relationships with colleagues based on mutual, non-work-related interests. John adds that Shopify intentionally helps remote staff foster such communities through internal social networks.

“We encourage remote employees to create their own communities based around their interests,” she says. “Individuals have created local chapters with people who live in the same city, or people who have the same interests, and they often take them offline by organizing their own events.”

Networks based in the same city might get together for a monthly lunch, for example, while fans of the same artist or sports team can arrange to see an event together.

Providing remote staff with the tools and the ability to connect with coworkers on non-work-related topics, according to both John and White, is vital for organizations striving to foster a cohesive and inclusive workplace culture, even as the physical distance between team members is increasing.

Gas-guzzling SUVs or shared electric cars. Trump or Macron. Burgers or steak tartar. Despite globalization, Americans and European still have very distinct tastes when it comes to, well, almost everything. Homes are no exception–although new statistics underline some striking coincidences.

Porch, an app for finding contractors, recently conducted a survey of 600 people in the U.S. and Europe, hoping to identify differences in consumers’ preferences on home styles and materials. Some of the results are predictable: Americans and Europeans love the idea of waterfront living (44.8% and 51.9%, respectively), and both cultures prize the suburbs over rural and urban locations. But the survey also suggests striking differences: Almost a quarter of Europeans want to live in a greenbelt surrounded by nature, compared to 9.9% of Americans. Another stark contrast is the preferences of 23% Americans for gated communities and 28% for cul-de-sacs, compared to Europeans, among whom only 5.5% and 3.0% prefer those prototypically American inventions.

You don’t have to look far for scholarship on Americans’ love for gated communities, which are still soaring in the U.S. In the BBC documentary United Gates of America, journalist Charlie LeDuff and director Alex Cooke root it in a paranoid need for safety, and describe these communities as an expression of latent segregation and racism in America’s upper middle class. You can probably thank a Cold War-nurtured fixation on doomsday scenarios, too.

Americans also seem to like everything oversized: They prefer larger surfaces (4,982 square feet compared to Europeans’ ideal, 1,589 square feet), more bedrooms (four and three, respectively), more bathrooms (three and two), and a larger plot (10.6 acres versus just 0.9 for Europeans).

Materials are another interesting glimpse into both groups: Europeans lean toward wood roofs and stone walls, while Americans like brick and shingles. They agree on granite kitchen countertops, but Americans prefer tile floors to Europeans’ marble and stone floors. While everyone agrees that real wood flooring is ideal elsewhere, the runner-up for almost 30% Americans and just 11% of Europeans was carpeting. Carpeting.

If the results are accurate–despite the very small sample size–they paint a picture of a generalized ideal home for both groups. It’s a ranch. Made of brick or stone with granite countertops and hardwood floors. On the ocean. It seems we’re not so different after all.

On-demand car services can drastically improve the health of senior citizens, according to new preliminary data.

At the USC’s 2018 Body Computing Conference this past Friday, researchers showed how unlimited free Lyft rides can improve quality of life by a whopping 90% for seniors. The research was part of a pilot program announced last fall between Lyft and the University of Southern California Center for Body Computing, which aimed to study and connect senior citizens with transportation. In collaboration with UnitedHealthcare, the AARP Foundation gave a $1 million grant to the Keck Medicine of USC to test the impact of providing free Lyft rides on the health of elderly USC patients within the greater Los Angeles area.

The goal was to see whether accessible transportation greatly affected later-in-life healthcare, socialization, and activity levels. While the final study will not be published until early next year, researchers released preliminary data about its current progress.

“It’s not just missing doctors’ appointments,” Leslie Saxon, executive director of the USC Center for Body Computing, previously told Fast Company.“What really determines survival in an aging population is socialization–it’s any trip out of the house, and how active you are. That is the No. 1 determinant of basically who lives and who dies.”

Several million senior citizens miss medical appointments each year due to a lack of accessible and affordable transportation, with no-show rates hovering at 30% for sub-specialty doctor appointments, according to a 2016 study. The AARP reports that more than half of the U.S. non-driving population age 65 and over stays home on any given day because they don’t have transportation. They make fewer trips to the doctor (15%), to shop or eat out (59%), and for social, family, and religious activities (65%) than drivers in the same age group.

There’s also the issue of family burden. Providing transportation to a loved one takes a toll on younger generations who aren’t afforded the flexibility to tend to a parent’s medical needs.

“It often results in this hidden family dysfunction and cost where the child is taking off work to take the parent to [the doctor],” Saxon said on Friday. “It creates a lot of dynamics that aren’t comfortable for anyone.”

The Lyft program outfitted 150 participants with wearable devices to track behavior patterns as well as offered app-use training. There was also a concierge-style phone number participants could call for pickups, in case they were uncomfortable with smartphones.

USC Keck School of Medicine research coordinator Rebecca Ebert explained that the majority of participants were unfamiliar or afraid of not just relying on the on-demand car service, but using a smartphone.

They were all over the age of 60 and living with chronic conditions, and hailing from diverse backgrounds and income levels within L.A. Most lived alone and were either retired, unable to work, or on disability. The average age was 71, with the oldest being 92 years old. All had a transportation barrier.

For three months, subjects had unlimited Lyft ride access to whatever they needed, with a strong emphasis on doctor’s appointments. In terms of medical conditions, 49% needed access to internal medicine specialists (with a quarter of those receiving cardiovascular care) followed by 26% for surgery or surgical followups. There were also those who visited pain management therapists, cancer specialists, and psychiatrists, among others.

Following 4,806 free Lyft rides, researchers found that subjects took an average of one ride a day, ranging at about $20 for an average of 14 miles. The study’s preliminary findings reported a 35% increase in activity (based on steps taken) from baseline to ride access.

These subjects didn’t just go see their doctor; they began visiting friends, family, going out to the movies. In fact, 90% of patients said the free rides had a “positive impact” on their quality of life, with 68% conceding it made it easier to travel to medical visits. They started going out more: 74% said it increased their social visits. The Lyft users took double the amount of rides as those who relied on concierge services (who were also included in the study).

Meanwhile, 97% said they were (likely much to their grandchildren’s relief) more comfortable using their smartphone. “Our patients embraced the technology,” reports Ebert.

While it’s obvious that such a service greatly helps senior citizens, it’s unclear how to broaden accessibility and affordability. Lyft confirms the participants’ ride use averaged to about $400 a month, which would be out of the price range for many retirees–and not covered by insurance policies. Lyft and USC plan to further the study and provide more in-depth economic analysis.

This isn’t the first time Lyft addressed elder needs. The company has partnered with several different organizations and companies, including AARP and various senior living communities, to improve their concierge call service. In 2017, Lyft partnered with Brookdale Senior Living, one of the largest operators of senior living facilities in the country. (In 2015, Uber also announced efforts to better bridge its product with aging populations.)

Throughout these partnerships, Lyft is gathering information on how its service can improve senior citizens’ standard of living.

Louis CK continues to ruin the evenings of comedy fans by showing up at clubs and performing standup, whether the audience wants him to or not.

The comedian and very polite, yet very public masturbator showed up at New York’s Comedy Cellar late Sunday night, according to Page Six. And while some patrons walked out, others seemed happy to see him.

Per the New York Times, his 20-minute set was met with “wild applause” and he was given “a warm send-off” when he left.

But some attendees had the decency to feel uncomfortable with the act, particularly the jokes he made about his daughter, according to HuffPost.

The drop-in performance was doubly surprising when you consider that people are still writing think pieces about the last time he showed up on stage, in August, when he dropped into the Comedy Cellar for a supposed comeback set after his ersatz apology. That appearance was CK’s first standup gig since he was publicly outed as a major creep and harasser. In his follow-up performance, he once again did not address the #MeToo allegations in his set, because we guess he’s smart enough to know it’s not a laughing matter.

If you’re looking for comedians who never forced women to watch them masturbate, our Joe Berkowitz rounded up a list of 51 of them here.

Listen to the reception Louis C.K. received when he returned to New York's Comedy Cellar for another surprise set late Sunday night: pic.twitter.com/7uBw846xIX

— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) October 1, 2018

Decades ago in the United States, if you lived in a place that was struggling economically, you could reasonably assume that within a few years, it might turn around. This was because of a phenomenon known as convergence, which holds that growth rates in economically distressed areas tend to exceed those in areas that are already prosperous, so that in the future, the gap between them narrows.

According to new research from The Hamilton Project, an economic research group within Brookings Institution focused on inequality and economic disparities, this dynamic held sway through the middle of the 20^th century. “The Southeast rose from 50% of average national income in 1930 to 86% by 1980; during the same time, New England fell from 130% to 105% as the rest of the country caught up,” writes Hamilton Project director Jay Shambaugh.

To measure how regions and their levels of prosperity have changed over time, The Hamilton Project developed the Vitality Index, a measurement of several factors that indicate how a county is faring. While many similar measurements, like the Economic Innovation Group’s Community Distress Index, exist, The Hamilton Project assigns a weight to each metric in accordance with its importance to overall outcomes. Median household income is weighted at 45%, poverty rate at 24%, life expectancy at 13%, prime-age employment to population ratio at 9%, housing vacancy rate at 5%, and unemployment rate at 4%.

But The Hamilton Project research and development of the Vitality Index isn’t merely to show how little progress has been made over the past several decades. Rather, it’s designed to call attention to the need for new tactics and energy around how to support growth and vitality in distressed regions. The research opens a new book produced by The Hamilton Project, called Place-Based Policies for Shared Economic Growth. The title, Shambaugh says, is loaded. “Economists have often been skeptical of place-based policies,” he says. Policies designed to target the specific needs of a county or region are often difficult to push through politically. And, Shambaugh says, efforts to improve vitality in struggling places are often countered with the question of if it’d be more worthwhile to just encourage people to move to booming places instead. As housing costs have grown out of reach in those areas, though, migration has become less possible, and rates have consequently slowed.

“When you think of all these things together, it starts to make you think that whatever your views on place-based policies were a decade ago, you should probably at least reconsider them now,” Shambaugh says.

No one policy, Shambaugh says, will in itself re-energize the convergence trend that disappeared in the 1980s, but the book outlines several avenues to effect change in some capacity that, in aggregate, might help close the gap between prosperous and struggling regions.

One, proposed by David Neumark, professor of economics at the University of California, Irvine, advocates for a fully federally funded job creation program in regions struggling with high and persistent rates of unemployment. Rather than providing incentives for employers to create jobs in struggling communities like the U.S.’s “enterprise zone” program does, the Rebuilding Communities Job Subsidies, as Neumark terms the proposal, would use federal funding to intentionally create high-wage jobs for people through nonprofit partners. After 18 months of employment through the nonprofit, people would transition to private-sector jobs, which would also receive some measure of federal funding to boost pay. The combination of job training, local partnerships, and overall economic support, Neumark writes, is designed to create lasting impact and set struggling counties back on the path toward convergence.

Another group of professors propose a tactic that would encourage local research universities to extend their influence in the surrounding labor market by training workers and ramping up local sourcing and procurement to boost the economy. And Tracy Gordon, a tax policy expert at the Brookings Institution, proposes that the federal government overhaul the $700 billion it currently allocates in grants to states to ensure that it’s going toward evening the playing field between states with strong financial capacity, like California, and those that are struggling, like West Virginia.

“That addresses the big-picture question–are states getting the money they need?–while other proposals, like Neumark’s, are much more targeted to smaller areas on the ground,” Shambaugh says. That combination addresses the fact that economic disparities in the U.S. are largely concentrated by region, but within those regions, drastic differences still exist. Fulfilling the recommendations in Place-Based Policies call for more targeted, thoughtful, local investments from companies and institutions, and also significant movement in how federal government disperses its funds. The former, ideally, should be achievable. The latter–like the recent proposal from Elizabeth Warren to dedicate $450 billion in federal funding toward the affordable housing crisis–will be contingent on a sea change in power at the national level, but for the time being, provides a road map for how we can set the country back on a path toward greater economic parity.

People get comfortable with where they sit, what projects they work on, and what teams they are responsible for. For leaders, no‑drama days where everyone does their thing without any complaints or conflict feel great–so they assume that a calm, hassle-free existence is the one that produces the best work. As a result, they optimize for a steady state, where there are no surprises and people do as they’re told.

But comfort breeds complacency. As learning curves plateau, we lose interest in learning for the sake of learning, and our curiosity wanes. We stay engaged as we attempt to master something that interests us, but we start to disengage as soon as we gain control over tasks and our interest dissipates. On the other hand, when we experience periodic disruptions, we’re constantly exposed to new perspectives, which helps us stay fresh and alert. To build (and maintain) a strong team, you need to to keep shaking things up.

Most people aren’t motivated to do the same job forever

As a young manager, I viewed my job as keeping people engaged with their respective responsibilities. But I eventually realized that careers can’t sit stagnant–people want to see opportunities ahead of them, even when they’re comfortable with where they’re currently standing. If you don’t give them that opportunity–or at least challenge them to step up to it–you lose the upward mobility of junior people who are waiting for promotions and new possibilities, and your senior staff will get bored and start looking for new jobs.

Despite knowing all this, I was devastated when we had the first couple of departures from our core Behance team about two years after our acquisition by Adobe. At first, I felt abandoned: I couldn’t imagine how we would plug certain holes in our team and culture. But as soon as I saw emerging leaders step up and make some positive changes, I realized that I had underestimated the talent that existed in our team. The vacancy empowered new people to step into roles both they and I hadn’t thought they had the capacity to fill. If this hadn’t happened (which I didn’t want it to at the time), we wouldn’t have evolved into a better team.

People get better when they’re constantly challenged

Giving people promotions is one way to push people out of their comfort zones, but there are other things you can do to encourage your employees to grow. For example, General Electric is known for their rotational programs that move leaders in the turbine business to the lighting business. The programs are designed to spread best practices across business units and develop leadership capability, but it also serves the purpose of retaining key talent. Other companies assign “stretch assignments,” which are special projects that take someone out of their expertise, like exploring a new business opportunity or region. These assignments expose team members to other parts of the company or industry and help retain them by presenting new challenges and steepening their learning curve.

Introducing small changes can have a significant impact

Teams benefit from changes to their environment and processes. As you observe your coworkers and glance around your office, look for the things that were once exciting but have now become commonplace. Are there outdated charts on the wall that once monitored progress? Take them down and redo them. Are certain regular meetings or rituals now taken for granted? Switch up the format. Have little cliques formed based on where people sit? Move desks around.

It’s crucial to have a sense of community in the workplace, but if your staff becomes too comfortable socializing only in small groups, you lose the opportunity for cross-collaboration and overall team building that comes from chance meetings. In order to promote this, consider redoing seating assignments every nine to 12 months (or, in a larger company, every few years). Sitting next to new people in a different part of the office is an easy way to prompt new relationships and perspectives and keep things fresh.

Change is painful and especially unwelcome when there is nothing dire to fix. But what you must realize–and relay to your team–is that proactive changes that feel premature are far better than reactive changes that feel inflicted upon you. As my friend Tim Ferriss once said, “The more voluntary suffering you build into your life, the less involuntary suffering will affect your life.”

Your challenge is to develop a healthy rhythm to keep your team in a constant state of motion. If you don’t shake up life every now and then, life will shake it up for you. Too much calm exacerbates any disruption, so building up your and your team’s tolerance for change is a positive long-term strategy for increasing tenacity.

This article is adapted from The Messy Middle by Scott Belsky. It is reprinted with permission by Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2018 by Scott Belsky.

The way you’re advertised to says a lot about how the world sees you. In Netflix’s brain-bending new series, Maniac, the way ads reach characters says a lot about how we’re supposed to see the world of the show—and our world.

Sure, the subway ads promoting a tourist frolic on the moon convey some sense that we’re not in Kansas anymore. But the real tip-off is the existence of Ad Buddy, a form of payment whereby users can obtain goods and services by letting an actor recite ads directly into their faces in the physical dimension. It sounds a little terrifying at first, for everyone involved, and then it sounds a lot terrifying the moment you realize Ad Buddy is not exactly farfetched.

Maniac, which stars the Oscar-friendly duo Emma Stone and Jonah Hill as addled participants in a pharmaceutical trial, does not take place in the future; it merely looks that way. Instead, series creator Patrick Somerville insists it takes place in a parallel 2018 New York City.

“It’s just a different now,” he says. “It’s our same zeitgeist but maybe a different history of technology. There was a split in the timeline somewhere, although I can’t say exactly where.”

Wherever the break was, this version of the future contains Ad Buddys, although Somerville and his collaborator, director Cary Fukunaga, intentionally left the nuances of how they work a little murky. We find out right away that citizens can use them to pay for a trip on the subway, during which a man dressed like Peter Falk’s Columbo will recite ads the entire time, but you cannot use them to pay for cigarettes at a bodega. (“Those assholes record client conversations,” the bodega owner says of Ad Buddy, an echo of Google Home and, er, Amazon Echo. “They know you better than you know yourself.”) Eagle-eyed viewers might even notice Annie (Emma Stone) walking by a fleet of about 10 similarly dressed Ad Buddies waiting to be deployed like a bike-share dock.

We never learn exactly why some businesses offer Ad Buddy and others don’t. Perhaps some customers had bad experiences with them but we can only guess at what those might be. A scene that would have elaborated further ended up on the cutting room floor. The scene was set in a bodega where six strangers were each attempting to use Ad Buddy at the same time to shop and the bodega was entirely filled with Ad Buddies, customers, and chaotic noise. This scene would have clarified some of the hazards of the service, but perhaps it’s more fun to imagine them.

“There were a lot of feelings I wanted people to relate to that I wanted to find new ways to represent on the show,” he says. “The show was always going to be about loneliness and we needed to find examples of that within our heightened reality. I liked the rhetorical idea, with Ad Buddy, that if you just sprinkle a little bit of intimacy into an act of communication, it makes it a more effective pitch. Everyone is looking for intimacy and wants it but it’s strange when it gets combined with an app or a sales pitch.”

When he worked on the State Farm account during his copywriting days, Somerville was fascinated that the requested tone was that of a friendly neighbor. (If I’ve ruined your day by lodging the old State Farm jingle in your head, please know the company officially retired it in 2016.) The brand wanted its ads to sound like they were being told to you by a friend, despite the fact that everything about advertising runs counter to friendship. In Maniac, though, the same gig economy that gives users friend-like brand ambassadors also offers a simulacrum of friendship.

Friend Proxy is one of two silly business ideas Somerville entertained in his college days. It involved a storefront where people could come and hang out while he pretended to be friends with them. This service becomes a reality in Maniac, except instead of a storefront, the Friend Proxy meets users at a museum or a brunch and improvises synthetic intimacy. (The other idea he had in college was toilet paper with advertisements printed on it, and he managed to work that into the show as well.)

You probably have your own Friend Proxy, whether you realize it or not. The NFL announcers who crack jokes all the time to duplicate for lone viewers the experience of a group hang? They’re providing a service beyond just translating the action of the game. In the world of Maniac, Friend Proxy would be there for that lone viewer to turn to after clicking off the game and suddenly finding himself alone. You probably also have something like your own Ad Buddy, if you follow enough people on Instagram beholden to #sponcon.

If the services Somerville dreamed up for his series don’t exist as such just yet, they’re closer than you think.

“There will be more products or services designed around intimacy,” he says. “Whether or not they are actually more intimate, I don’t know. I don’t know how you make a product that achieves authentic intimacy and I don’t know that it would be good if you figured it out.”

The original Lego wind turbine was a limited-edition promotional set. Made especially for Danish sustainable energy company Vestas, you couldn’t even buy it, which is why you could find them going for as much as $1,000 on eBay. On Black Friday, however, anyone will be able to buy one–for $200.

The brand still has a long way to go. Right now, Lego says that about 2% of its plastic elements are made from sustainably sourced sugarcane.

Anahata sounds like any other Silicon Valley company in this era—female employees are outnumbered and feel out of place, mid-level executives are all plotting against each other, and the yoga-loving, sex-obsessed CEO dreams about colonizing the moon. It’s the subject of a new novel published on Medium today by Jessica Powell, The Big Disruption, a satire on the tech sector that explores how far these giant companies will go to wield power over all of us.

Powell knows the subject well—she ran Google’s communications division for years, and prior to that was the CMO of dating site Badoo. Now, she runs a early-stage startup that builds software for musicians. In her author’s note, she writes:

I wrote this book because we should be able to love and celebrate the products that we build—but without ignoring the hard questions they raise. We need to end the self-delusion and either fess up to the reality we are creating or live up to the vision we market to the world.

It’s the first full-length book deal for Medium, and Powell is donating the proceeds to #YesWeCode, a group that helps underrepresented groups access opportunities and achieve success in the tech sector, and to Book Trust, which helps children in low-income areas build their own home library.

Continually finding new ways to be hostile to visitors, the Trump administration has begun denying visas to the same-sex partners of foreign diplomats and United Nations employees, Foreign Policy reports. Same-sex partners will not be banned outright. Instead, under the new policy that went into effect on Monday, the United States will grant diplomatic visas to same-sex couples only if they are married—even if they’re from countries where gay marriage isn’t legal.

According to Foreign Policy, the rule is being applied retroactively, so same-sex partners of diplomats and U.N. officials who are already in the United Sates either have to get married by the end of the year or leave the country.

Of course, the administration is claiming that this new policy is simply in line with how it treats heterosexual couples, writing in a July 12 note to U.N.-based delegations that the new rule is “consistent with [State] Department policy,” and partners accompanying or hoping to join diplomats or U.N. employees must “generally be married in order to be eligible” for a diplomatic visa.

In a statement to NBC News, a State Department spokesman doubled down on this reasoning, saying the policy change is “to help ensure and promote equal treatment” between straight and gay couples, completely glossing over the fact that some couples simply can’t get married under their country’s laws. According to Samantha Power, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, only 12% of U.N. member states allow same-sex marriage–and it’s illegal to even be gay in one-third of the countries on Earth.

She denounced the new policy on Twitter as “needlessly cruel & bigoted”–and it’s hard to disagree.

Needlessly cruel & bigoted: State Dept. will no longer let same-sex domestic partners of UN employees get visas unless they are married. But only 12% of UN member states allow same-sex marriage. https://t.co/MjZpRVLYcf

— Samantha Power (@SamanthaJPower) September 28, 2018

Assertive people–even aggressive people–thrive in American workplaces. If your boss is intimidating or a coworker has a temper, even the most well-meaning business experts will often tell you to “toughen up” or move on. As the old saying goes, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” right?

Not when you have a workplace bully on your hands. According to a 2014 survey of employees in the U.S. by the Workplace Bullying Institute, more than a quarter of respondents reported that they had experienced bullying, harassment, or verbal abuse at work–and the actual number may be much larger. Unfortunately, our pervasive “tough love” work culture makes it hard for employees to acknowledge that they’re being bullied–even if they have a boss who regularly yells at employees. It’s even harder to know what to do next when you do realize that it’s bullying, and it needs to stop.

However, there is a silver lining. Two years after high-profile stories about harassment and bullying in the workplace–like Travis Kalanick’s resignation as Uber’s CEO and the arrest of Harvey Weinstein–these issues in the workplace have gained more national attention. October is National Bullying Prevention Month, which means there’s no better time to talk about how we can prevent more situations like this from happening. Here are some tips on how you can diffuse common bullying situations that you might encounter in the workplace.

When your boss or coworker is yelling at you

We get it–it’s normal to get emotional at work, and you can’t control how your boss or coworker reacts to confrontation. However, if you notice that yelling is their de facto response to conflict and irritation (and they do it regularly), that’s unacceptable behavior.

In this instance, the best course of action is not to yell back. Truly, the best thing you can do during an outburst like this is resisting the urge to fight fire with fire. Wait patiently until your boss or coworker has finished, and then acknowledge and summarize what you have heard them say to you. You should note that this doesn’t mean you agree with them, but you’re relating what you just heard.

Next, take time before you respond. During this pause, ask yourself: “How can I tell them what I need in a way that they will hear it?” This could be immediate (a calm request for them to lower their voice, with the right body language) or longer-term (“I have a lot of projects on my plate right now, and I need more time to complete this one.”) This conversation could take place in the moment or later, in a private meeting–depending on the context and your relationship with this boss or coworker.

Above all, in all of your communication with this person, focus on respect. No matter what you are doing to de-escalate the situation (and no matter what the other person might be doing in response), you’ll benefit more by communicating from a place of respect and being the bigger person. After all, most people don’t change their minds about something because someone yells at them, but they’re more likely to be receptive to hearing your views when they feel like you’re listening to what they have to say. Of course, if this behavior is ongoing even after attempts to de-escalate the situation, you need to report it to HR.

When you witness an act of bullying or harassment in real-time

Many of us have been in situations where we see someone at work get yelled at, belittled, intimidated, sexually harassed, or made uncomfortable. These colleagues may not be speaking up for themselves, and it might be hard to determine what to do (especially if there are office politics involved). However, as a bystander you can speak up, and often should. Here are three things you can do during the interaction:

1. Distract. This is a temporary action you can take in a situation where something needs to be done immediately, but you don’t have time to plan or go to someone else. For example, if you are concerned about two people in an isolated space, find a reason to go in that space and make your presence known.

2. Delegate. If you don’t feel that you have the ability to confront the situation, go to someone with more power who can stop the action and take appropriate steps. This could entail speaking to the offending person’s supervisor, department head, or HR.

3. Direct. Taking a direct approach means confronting the situation openly through effective communication that stops the action in the moment.

As a bystander, there is a fourth communication technique that is as important, or even more so, as the first three. That is the dialogue you have with the target or person responsible after the harassment has occurred. This is, by far, the hardest and least appealing step for bystanders to take.

If you don’t take this final step, you would have put a bandage on the situation, but not addressed the underlying issues. Of course, how you do this depends on what’s happening, and your relationship with the people involved. You should, however, continue to employ basic principles of respect. Be sure to open with lots of “I” statements, for example–“I noticed Jane looked uncomfortable when you two were alone earlier,” or, “You seemed pretty emotional in the meeting, especially when it came to Joe’s numbers.” Even simply stating that you observed what happened, after the fact, can make the offending person more aware of their behavior.

Bullying in the workplace doesn’t benefit anyone–and it’s unfortunate that office bullies continue to exist (and in some cases even thrive) in the workplace. However, one small step that we can take to stop them from inflicting further harm is to hold them accountable for their actions and refuse to accept their behavior. Over time, we can start to create a healthier work culture in America as a whole.

Steven P. Dinkin has served as president of the National Conflict Resolution Center (NCRC) since 2003. He has coauthored two books on conflict resolution: The Exchange: A Bold and Proven Approach to Resolving Workplace Conflict andThe Exchange Strategy for Managing Conflict in Healthcare.

It’s been a tough year for Tesla. With the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation behind it, the electric carmaker is ready to tout its production strides. Tesla announced today that it produced 55,239 Model 3 cars this quarter, meeting its self-assigned benchmark. Now investors are waiting to see if the company can meet its other third-quarter goal: profitability.

In total, the company produced 80,142 cars across all models. It delivered 83,500 cars total, slightly more than it produced. These figures were also in keeping with the company’s projections. But Tesla has failed to meet another goal it set for itself: It had wanted to produce 5,000 Model 3 vehicles per week on a consistent basis. Hitting this metric is supposedly a key step to getting the company profitable, and while Tesla did produce a little over 5,000 Model 3 cars one week in June—proving its facilities are capable—the company seems to be struggling with other components of the manufacturing process.

Where Tesla was in “production hell” a year ago, it is now in “delivery logistics hell,” according to Musk.

In tweets, Musk has attributed some of the issue with delivery to a shortage of car carriers. But he also says Tesla is making its own car carriers to meet demand.

That’s a strange solution for a company that seems to be running out of money. The company historically spends about $1 billion of its free cash flow every quarter. It lowered that figure last quarter and revised its capital expenditures forecast for the full year to below $2.5 billion, but Tesla ended last quarter with roughly $3 billion in accounts payable. It also had $2.2 billion in cash, $942 million of which were customer deposits.

The deposits have helped to keep the company from having to raise new funding, but that may no longer be enough. Tesla has $11.6 billion in debt, the bulk of which reaches maturity over the next three years. In early September, a report from Goldman Sachs said it expects Tesla to have to raise money on the capital markets in the first half of 2019. Last quarter, Musk said, he has no plans to do an equity raise.

It is increasingly difficult to make sense of Tesla’s math. To clear up the confusion, investors will be looking for Tesla to reach reliable profitability at the end of the month. In an email over the weekend, he told employees, “We are very close to achieving profitability and proving the naysayers wrong.”

New York City wants to be a global center for the cybersecurity industry.

The NYC Economic Development Corporation announced plans for a $30 million investment of city funds, coupled with up to $70 million in private investment, that it says could help create up to 10,000 good-paying jobs in the city.

“Cybersecurity has never been more important to the pillars of New York’s economy–sectors like finance, healthcare, media, and technology–and it will only grow more crucial,” said Manhattan Borough president Gale A. Brewer in a statement. “You only have to open a newspaper to see how vast the need for cybersecurity is today. Investing in this industry is timely, it plays to New York’s strengths, and it will deliver a real return.”

Among the city’s plans for the initiative:

• Opening a 15,000-square-foot cybersecurity center in Chelsea with the innovation company Sosa. The center would host events, a coworking space and a “cyber-range” for security simulations.
• Launching an international cybersecurity investment hub in Soho in conjunction with venture capital firm Jerusalem Venture Partners, supporting cybersecurity startups in the city.
• Adding cybersecurity training programs to the city’s colleges, including online learning programs and a one-year, Facebook-affiliated master’s program at the City University of New York. Another program would offer a six-week prep course at LaGuardia Community College, followed by a boot camp run by coding school Fullstack Academy, which aims to place 1,000 students into cyberjobs paying an average of $65,000 in its first three years.
• Working with Columbia University to support commercializing academic research in the field.

Imagine a world where you didn’t hide away your carpet stain remover or insect killing spray because they’re just too ugly.

Society, a new marketplace for green home cleaning products that launches today, is designing bottles that its founders hope customers won’t want to hide under the kitchen sink. While most non-toxic cleaning brands on the market opt for nature-inspired branding (like Seventh Generation) or bottles that look like they were pulled out of the 1950s (like Mrs. Meyers or Aunt Fannie’s), Society’s branding and packaging features pops of color and patterns inspired by modern artists.

“We live in a culture where we put our art on the walls, but then we hide all our products under the kitchen sink,” says Society cofounder Nandeet Mehta. (Mehta is an investor and CEO of Pyur Solutions, the parent company launching the Society brand.) “We wanted to create products that we were proud to display in our daily life, but that were also affordable, good for you, and effective.”

Once you’re a member, you can begin purchasing items in the Society marketplace, which will be sold at cost. Society products will cost about half as much as other green products on the market; the average nontoxic counter spray on the market costs between $6.99 and $8.99; S0ciety’s version will cost $4.99. Like many other marketplaces that have launched in recent years–from Brandless to Grove–Society’s products will only include natural microbes and enzymes, rather than synthetic chemicals.

[Photo: Society]

But Society wants its focus on design to set it apart from competitors. “When we went down the cleaning aisle of the supermarket, all the products looked like they had popped out of the ’70s and ’80s,” says Mehta. “That’s beginning to change slowly, but really hasn’t been significant improvement to their design for the most part. As a brand targeting millennials and generation Z, our bottles are inspired by art.”

To design the packaging, Society worked with Fay Design, the firm founded by Aron Fay, best known for his work on rebranding the MIT Media Lab. Mehta says each bottle within the collection is inspired by a very specific modern impressionist artist, like Ellsworth Kelly and Josef Albers, who are known for their distinct graphic style.

But ultimately, Mehta realizes that design is only one factor that will allow Society to win over customers. The brand will also offer convenience, by selling products online that will be delivered on a regular basis, allowing the customer to skip running out to the store to get new dish soap. And Society’s direct-to-consumer approach means that it will be able to offer better value than its counterparts.  “We think of ourselves as a mashup of Trader Joe’s and Costco, but online,” Mehta says.

The 60-second commercial for ShareTheMeal, an app that allows users to donate funds to help feed starving people through the World Food Programme (WFP), starts off celebratory, before turning dark and eerie.

First, viewers see a throng of journalists gathered around a woman named Miriam Adeke. The reporters are broadcasting that she’s made a groundbreaking medical discovery that could save up to a million lives a year.

“But there’s no discovery,” Adeke says, as the clamor and flashbulbs cut out. Adeke admits that she didn’t make a breakthrough because she didn’t go to medical school, or even complete her basic education. “I died of hunger at the age of 8,” she says. Cue the on-screen message: “Every year 3 million children die of hunger. Every time a child dies our future dies with them”–and a suggestion that people download the app to “help feed our future.”

That ad is now broadcasting before movies at theaters in over 30 countries, as part of a collaboration between the WFP and the Screen Advertising World Association, a global cinema trade association. The goal, says Corinne Woods, the director of communications, advocacy, and marketing at WFP, is to grow awareness of the issue of global hunger and how ShareTheMeal might solve it, particularly because the number of people going hungry continues to increase as a result of global conflicts and climate change.

At least 815 million people face undernourishment in the world today. Among those, 124 million were considered extremely food insecure last year, meaning they’re living on the edge of starvation. That’s up from 106 million in 2016. WFP currently spends about $7.4 billion annually on this problem, but it’s still only reaching around 91 million people. That money is supplied primarily through government aid, although there are also some corporate donations. The agency hopes everyday people can play a larger role in bridging the shortfall.

“If we don’t have enough money, those people die,” says Woods, who points out that the app makes that trade-off pretty clear. In general, WFP calculates that it takes about 50¢ to feed one person per day. With ShareTheMeal, users can choose to donate whenever they choose–the name itself works as an obvious reminder at meal time–or sign up to give a flat sum monthly. The money can be directed to a specific country in need, and users track the program’s overall impact, how different initiatives are progressing, and receive notices about their own contributions and how they’re being spent.

The movie ad includes a QR code that can be scanned by Facebook messenger to interact with the woman in the commercial–it’s basically a Miriam Adeke bot–and drive people to a ShareTheMeal donation page. In the U.S., the movie advertising groups Screenvision Media and National CineMedia have agreed to air the ads pro bono. The commercial was conceived by ad guru Sir John Hegarty and The Garage Soho, and directed by Lynne Ramsay in collaboration with the production company Somesuch & Co.

Since launching in 2015, ShareTheMeal has delivered more than 26.7 million meals to those in need. “The core proposition we developed together was to make the world wake up to the idea that every time a child dies, you lose the potential of that child, and what would have been, and that potential for [their] country or community,” says Woods. “When you’re supporting WFP, you’re not just feeding a child, but you’re also feeding the future and feeding their potential.”

If you’re curious about Ruby Rose’s net worth, feet, what she will be doing after Batwoman, or any other detail that people might search for online, be careful what you click on.

Internet security company McAfee has released its Most Dangerous Celebrity to search for in 2018 and Rose got the starring role. That means searches for Rose could generate risky links to potentially malicious websites. According to Gary Davis, chief consumer security evangelist at McAfee, hackers often rely on internet users’ curiosity about celebrities to feed links to malicious websites in the hopes that some sucker will click on them, thereby letting hackers install malware or steal personal information and passwords.

“It’s important for consumers to think before they click to be sure that they are landing on safe digital content and protecting themselves from cybersecurity threats that may be used to infect their devices or steal their identity,” Davis said in a statement.

Rose took the title from singer Avril Lavigne, who topped the most dangerous celebrity to search list last year, although they probably don’t list such accomplishment on their IMDb pages.

Here’s how this year’s top 10 shook out:

1. Ruby Rose
2. Kristin Cavallari
3. Marion Cotillard
4. Lynda Carter
5. Rose Byrne
6. Debra Messing
7. Kourtney Kardashian
8. Amber Heard
9. Kelly Ripa
10. Brad William Henke

The only male actor to appear on the list is Brad William Henke, and while I don’t know who that is, I am now to scared to Google him.

Civilization is back. But it is no longer the preserve of “Renaissance man” or of “the West,” or even of literate societies. Civilization is a way of talking about human history on the largest scale. From the cave paintings of Lascaux to the latest MoMA exhibition, it binds human history together.

But in at least one essential aspect, the concept of civilization remains fundamentally exclusionary. It is still the stuff of galleries, museums and UNESCO World Heritage sites; of prized images, objects and structures, rather than of living humanity. The prehistoric stone structures of Göbekli Tepe–where a heritage park has now opened, near the border between Turkey and Syria–are being mooted as everything from the Garden of Eden to the cradle of civilization and the world’s first temple. We still want a civilization raised up high above the everyday realities of its human makers and keepers. In troubled regions, such as the Syrian-Turkish border, monuments like these quickly become altars of  sacrifice for real human lives.

Importantly, there have always been other ways of understanding “civilization.” The 20th-century French anthropologist Marcel Mauss thought that civilization should not be reduced to a list of technical or aesthetic achievements. Nor should it represent a particular stage of cultural development (“civilization” versus “barbarism,” and so on). civilization could be found in material things, but above all it referred to a potential in human societies. In Mauss’s view, civilization is what happens when discrete societies share morally and materially across boundaries, forming durable relationships that transcend differences. It might seem an abstract debate, but it’s not. Let me try to explain.

Roughly four years have now passed since the military ascendance of Daesh or ISIS in the Middle East. ISIS routinely destroyed or sold antiquities, culminating in their 2015 assault on the ancient caravan city of Palmyra, in Syria, a World Heritage Site. Under ISIS occupation, Palmyra’s Roman theatre had become a stage for gruesome atrocities, including the public beheading of Khaled al-Asaad, a native of modern Palmyra, and until then its director of antiquities. In the spring of 2016, after a Russian-backed (and, as it turned out, temporary) liberation, Palmyra was hosting the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra. At their performance, an audience of Russian soldiers sat to hear Bach, Prokofiev and Shchedrin. The event was designed to present a particular, and I think misguided, idea of civilization. It was, in the words of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin via live link from Moscow, “part of humanity’s heritage.” Through the ages, Palmyra had opened its gates to all manner of foreign gods. ‘Everything,’ wrote the Russian ancient historian Michael Rostovtzeff in 1932, “is peculiar in the peculiar city of Palmyra.’ Yet nothing, perhaps, so peculiar as these events of 2015-16.

What was “civilized” about playing Prokofiev in the beautiful wreckage of one ancient Syrian city, while the living population of another, Aleppo, to the north, was simultaneously under attack? The ancient temples of Palmyra were not designed as works of art, to be passively viewed or admired, any more than the caves of Lascaux or Font-de-Gaume were intended as art galleries, or Göbekli Tepe as a prehistoric version of the Sistine Chapel. In antiquity, their cult statues demanded live offerings and sacrifices, and now it seemed that they were demanding them again. Sacrifice of this kind seems somehow bound up with our modern understandings of “heritage,” “art” and “civilization,” in ways that are rarely thought about or articulated. Surely what this tells us is that these are, to all intents and purposes, our own modern gods–the gods of the global north.

When people use the term “early civilization,” they are mostly referring to Pharaonic Egypt, Inca Peru, Aztec Mexico, Han China, Imperial Rome, Ancient Greece or other ancient societies of a certain scale and monumentality. All of these were deeply stratified societies, held together mostly by authoritarian government, violence and the radical subordination of women. Sacrifice is the shadow lurking behind this concept of civilization; the sacrifice of freedoms, of life itself, for the sake of something always out of reach–an idea of world order, the mandate of heaven, blessings from those insatiable gods.

There is something wrong here. The word “civilization” stems from a very different source and ideal. In ancient times, civilis meant those qualities of political wisdom and mutual aid that permit societies to organize themselves through voluntary coalition. The modern Middle East provides many inspiring examples. In the summer of 2014, a coalition of Kurdish units broke the siege of Mount Sinjar in Iraq to provide safe passage, food and shelter for thousands of displaced Yazidis. Even as I write, the population of Mosul is raising to life a new city from the war-torn rubble of the old, street by street, with minimal government support.

Mutual aid, social cooperation, civic activism, hospitality or simply caring for others: these are the kind of things that actually go to make civilizations. In which case, the true history of civilization is only just starting to be written. It might begin with what archaeologists call “culture areas” or “interaction spheres,” vast zones of cultural exchange and innovation that deserve a more prominent place in our account of civilization. In the Middle East, they have deep roots that become visible towards the end of the last Ice Age, around 10,000 BCE. Thousands of years before the rise of cities (around 4000 BCE), village communities already shared basic notions of social order across the region known as the “fertile crescent.” Physical evidence left behind by common forms of domestic life, ritual and hospitality shows us this deep history of civilization. It’s in some ways much more inspiring than monuments. The most important findings of modern archaeology might in fact be these vibrant and far-flung networks, where others expected to find only backward and isolated “tribes.”

These small prehistoric communities formed civilizations in the true sense of extended moral communities. Without permanent kings, bureaucrats or standing armies, they fostered the growth of mathematical and calendrical knowledge; advanced metallurgy, the cultivation of olives, vines and date palms, the invention of leavened bread and wheat beer. They developed the major textile technologies applied to fabrics and basketry, the potter’s wheel, stone industries and bead-work, the sail and maritime navigation. Through ties of kinship and commerce, they distributed these invaluable and cherished qualities of true civilization. With ever-increasing accuracy, archaeological evidence allows us to follow the founding threads of this emerging fabric of civilization, as it crosses the plains of lowland Iraq, weaves back and forth between the shores of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, through the foothills of the Taurus and Zagros mountains, and down to the marshy head of the Persian Gulf. civilization, in this new sense, forms a cultural tapestry of startling complexity and grandeur, centre-less and open-ended, woven from a million tiny social bonds.

A moment’s reflection shows that women, their work, their concerns and innovations are at the core of this more accurate understanding of civilization. Tracing the place of women in societies without writing often means using clues left, quite literally, in the fabric of material culture, such as painted ceramics that mimic both textile designs and female bodies in their forms and elaborate decorative structures. To take just one example, it’s hard to believe that the kind of complex mathematical knowledge displayed in early cuneiform documents, or in the layout of urban temples, sprang fully formed from the mind of a male scribe, like Athena from the head of Zeus. Far more likely, these represent knowledge accumulated in preliterate times, through concrete practices such as the applied calculus and solid geometry of weaving and beadwork. What until now has passed for “civilization” might in fact be nothing more than a gendered appropriation–by men, etching their claims in stone–of some earlier system of knowledge that had women at its centre.

From such a starting point, we can see the true history of living civilization. It reaches back far beyond the earliest monarchies or empires, resisting even the most brutal incursions of the modern state. It’s a civilization we really can recognise when we see it, taste it, touch it, even in these darkest hours. There can be no justification for the wanton destruction of ancient monuments. But let’s not confuse that with the living pulse of civilization, which often resides in what at first glance seems small, domestic or mundane. There we will find it, beating patiently, waiting for the light.

David Wengrow is professor of comparative archaeology at University College London. He is the author of The Origins of Monsters (2013) and What Makes Civilization? (2nd ed, 2018).

This article was originally published atAeonand has been republished under Creative Commons.