Category Archives: National Vanguard

NSF-LED National AI Research Institutes

July 29, 2021

WASHINGTON Today, the U.S. National Science Foundation announced the establishment of 11 new NSF National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes, building on the first round of seven institutes funded in 2020. The combined investment of $220 million expands the reach of these institutes to include a total of 40 states and the District of Columbia.

The institutes are focused on AI-based technologies that will bring about a range of advances: helping older adults lead more independent lives and improving the quality of their care; transforming AI into a more accessible plug-and-play technology; creating solutions to improve agriculture and food supply chains; enhancing adult online learning by introducing AI as a foundational element; and supporting underrepresented students in elementary to post-doctoral STEM education to improve equity and representation in AI research.

I am delighted to announce the establishment of new NSF National AI Research Institutes as we look to expand into all 50 states, said National Science Foundation Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. These institutes are hubs for academia, industry and government to accelerate discovery and innovation in AI. Inspiring talent and ideas everywhere in this important area will lead to new capabilities that improve our lives from medicine to entertainment to transportation and cybersecurity and position us in the vanguard of competitiveness and prosperity.

Led by NSF, and in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Google, Amazon, Intel and Accenture, the National AI Research Institutes will act as connections in a broader nationwide network to pursue transformational advances in a range of economic sectors, and science and engineering fields from food system security to next-generation edge networks.

In the tradition of USDA-NIFA investments, these new institutes leverage the scientific power of U.S. land-grant universities informed by close partnership with farmers, producers, educators and innovators to provide sustainable crop production solutions and address these pressing societal challenges, said USDA-NIFA Director Carrie Castille. These innovation centers will speed our ability to meet the critical needs in the future agricultural workforce, providing equitable and fair market access, increasing nutrition security and providing tools for climate-smart agriculture.

The new awards, each at about $20 million over five years, will support 11 institutes spanning seven research areas:

The focus of the 11 National AI Institutes are listed below:

NSF AI Institute for Collaborative Assistance and Responsive Interaction for Networked Groups.Led by the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), the institute, also known as AI-CARING, will seek to create a vibrant, fully developed discipline focused on personalized, longitudinal (over months and years) collaborative AI systems that learn individual models of human behavior and how they change over time and use that knowledge to better collaborate and communicate in caregiving environments. The collaborative AI Partners in Care developed as part of this institute will help support a growing population of older adults sustain independence, improve quality of life, and increase effectiveness of care coordination across the care network.

This institute is partially funded by Amazon and Google.

NSF AI Institute for Advances in Optimization. Led by Georgia Tech, this institute will revolutionize decision-making on a large scale by fusing AI and mathematical optimization into intelligent systems that will achieve breakthroughs that neither field can achieve independently. The institute will create pathways from high school to undergraduate and graduate education and workforce development training for AI in engineering that will empower a generation of underrepresented students and teachers to join the AI revolution. It will also create a sustainable ecosystem for AI, combining education, research, entrepreneurship, and the public at large. The institute will demonstrate foundational advances on use cases in energy, resilience and sustainability, supply chains, and circuit design and control. It has innovative plans for workforce education and broadening participation, including substantial leadership from a collaborating minority-serving institution.

This institute is partially funded by Intel.

NSF AI Institute for Learning-Enabled Optimization at Scale. Led by the University of California San Diego, in collaboration with five other universities across the nation, this institute, also known as TILOS, will aim to make impossible optimizations possible by addressing the fundamental challenges of scale and complexity. Learning-enabled optimization will be applied in several technical focus areas vital to the nations health and prosperity, including semiconductor chip design, robotics and networks. The research agenda is accompanied by plans for workforce development and broadening participation at all academic levels, from middle school to advanced research levels, including community outreach efforts to promote AI.

This institute is partially funded by Intel.

NSF AI Institute for Intelligent Cyberinfrastructure with Computational Learning in the Environment. Led by the Ohio State University, this institute, also known as ICICLE, will build the next generation of cyberinfrastructure that will make AI easy for scientists to use and promote its further democratization. It will transform the AI landscape of today by bringing in scientists from multidisciplinary backgrounds to create a robust, trustworthy and transparent national cyberinfrastructure that is ready to plug-and-play in areas of societal importance, such as "smart food sheds", precision agriculture and animal ecology. The institute will develop a new generation of the workforce, with sustained diversity and inclusion at all levels.

This institute is fully funded by NSF.

NSF AI Institute for Future Edge Networks and Distributed Intelligence. Led by the Ohio State University, this institute, also known as AI-EDGE, will leverage the synergies between networking and AI to design future generations of wireless edge networks that are highly efficient, reliable, robust and secure. New AI tools and techniques will be developed to ensure that these networks are self-healing and self-optimized. Collaboration over these adaptive networks will help solve long-standing distributed AI challenges making AI more efficient, interactive, and privacy preserving for applications in sectors such as intelligent transportation, remote health care, distributed robotics and smart aerospace. It will create a research, education, knowledge transfer and workforce development environment that will help establish U.S. leadership in next-generation edge networks and distributed AI for many decades to come.

This institute is partially funded by DHS.

NSF AI Institute for Edge Computing Leveraging Next-generation Networks. Led by Duke University, this institute, also known as Athena, will focus on developing edge computing with groundbreaking AI functionality while keeping complexity and costs under control. Bringing together a world-class, multidisciplinary team of scientists, engineers, statisticians, legal scholars and psychologists from seven universities, it will transform the design, operation and service of future systems from mobile devices to networks. It is committed to educating and developing the workforce, cultivating a diverse next generation of edge computing and network leaders whose core values are driven by ethics and fairness in AI. As a nexus point for the community, this institute will spearhead collaboration and knowledge transfer, translating emerging technical capabilities to new business models and entrepreneurial opportunities.

This institute is partially funded by DHS.

NSF AI Institute for Dynamic Systems. Led by the University of Washington, this institute will enable innovative research and education in fundamental AI and machine learning theory, algorithms and applications specifically for safe, real-time learning and control of complex dynamic systems. The core motivation for this institute is to integrate physics-based models with AI and machine learning approaches, leading the way towards data-enabled ethical, efficient, and explainable solutions for real-time sensing, prediction, and decision-making challenges across science and engineering.

This institute is partially funded by DHS.

NSF AI Institute for Engaged Learning. Led byNorthCarolinaStateUniversity, this institute will advance natural language processing, computer vision and machine learning to engage learners in AI-driven narrative-centered learning environments. Rich AI-driven virtual agents and powerful multimodal sensing capabilities will support learners and yield transformative advances in STEM teaching and learning. The institute will serve as a nexus for in-school and out-of-school STEM education innovation, empowering and engaging diverse learners and stakeholders to ensure that AI-driven learning environments are ethically designed to promote equity and inclusion.

This institute is fully funded by NSF.

NSF AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education. Led by the Georgia Research Alliance, this institute, also known as ALOE, will lead the country and the world in the development of novel AI theories and techniques for enhancing the quality of adult online education, making this mode of learning comparable to that of in-person education in STEM disciplines. Fundamental research in use-inspired AI is grounded in theories of human cognition and learning supported by evidence from large-scale data, evaluated on a large variety of testbeds, and derived from the scientific process of learning engineering. Together with partners in the technical college systems and educational technology sector, ALOE will advance online learning using virtual assistants to make education more available, affordable, achievable, and ultimately, more equitable.

This institute is partially funded by Accenture.

The USDA-NIFA Institute for Agricultural AI for Transforming Workforce and Decision Support. Led by Washington State University, this institute, also known as AgAID, will integrate AI methods into agriculture operations for prediction, decision support, and robotics-enabled agriculture to address complex agricultural challenges. The AgAID Institute uses a unique adopt-adapt-amplify approach to develop and deliver AI solutions to agriculture that address pressing challenges related to labor, water, weather and climate change. The institute involves farmers, workers, managers and policy makers in the development of these solutions, as well as in AI training and education, which promotes equity by increasing the technological skill levels of the next-generation agricultural workforce.

This institute is funded by USDA-NIFA.

The AI Institute for Resilient Agriculture. Ledby Iowa State University,thisinstitute, also known as AIIRA, willtransform agriculture through innovative AI-driven digital twinsthatmodel plants atanunprecedented scale. This approach is enabled by advances in computational theory, AI algorithms, and tools for crop improvement and productionfor resiliency to climate change.In addition,AIIRA will promote the study ofcyber-agriculturalsystemsat the intersection of plant science, agronomics, and AI;power education and workforce developmentthroughformal and informal educational activities,focusingon Native American bidirectional engagement and farmer programs;and drive knowledge transfer through partnerships with industry,producers, andfederal and state agencies.

Thisinstitute is funded byUSDA-NIFA.

Learn more about theNSF AI Research Institutesby visitingnsf.gov.Check out NSF's Interactive AI Map(the interactive pdf requires Adobe Reader).

For more on NSF's investments in AI, see the NSF Science Matters article, Expanding the geography of innovation: NSF AI Research Institutes 2021.

-NSF-

Media Contacts Media Affairs, NSF, (703) 292-7090, email: media@nsf.gov

The U.S. National Science Foundation propels the nation forward by advancing fundamental research in all fields of science and engineering. NSF supports research and people by providing facilities, instruments and funding to support their ingenuity and sustain the U.S. as a global leader in research and innovation. With a fiscal year 2021 budget of $8.5 billion, NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives more than 40,000 competitive proposals and makes about 11,000 new awards. Those awards include support for cooperative research with industry, Arctic and Antarctic research and operations, and U.S. participation in international scientific efforts.

Get News Updates by Email

Connect with us onlineNSF website: nsf.govNSF News: nsf.gov/newsFor News Media: nsf.gov/news/newsroomStatistics: nsf.gov/statistics/Awards database: nsf.gov/awardsearch/

Follow us on socialTwitter: twitter.com/NSF and twitter.com/NSFspoxFacebook: facebook.com/US.NSF />Instagram: instagram.com/nsfgov

Read the rest here:

NSF partnerships expand National AI Research Institutes to 40 states - National Science Foundation

Further targeted daily contact testing is being rolled out in England to frontline emergency services and some transport workers, following the governments close engagement with these sectors in order to avoid any potential disruption to crucial services.

Following clinical trial results, daily contact testing will be rolled out to further critical workplaces in England so that contacts who would otherwise be self-isolating can instead take daily tests, with an expected initial additional 200 testing sites.

Delivering daily contact testing to these critical workplaces builds on pioneering work by NHS Test and Trace and Public Health England which puts the UK at the vanguard of scientific research.

New testing sites will be allocated for frontline police and fire services to ensure critical staff can continue their vital work.

Frontline Border Force staff, working at some ports across the country will be able to take part in the Border Force run testing centres.

In addition, to ensure the transportation of critical goods and supplies and the smooth running of Englands transport network, testing sites will be set up to support the most critical parts of our transport and freight systems, which we will keep under review through close engagement with the transport industry. These include rail infrastructure, ports and airports, and haulage firms.

Daily testing will enable eligible workers who have received alerts from the NHS Covid 19 app or have been called by NHS Test and Trace and told they are a contact and to isolate will be able to continue working if they test negative.

Employers and workers taking part in Daily Contact Testing will be provided with guidance about the protocols they must follow.

Our brave police officers and fire fighters have shown throughout the pandemic that they have worked tirelessly to keep us safe and serve their communities.

Border Force have played a vital role in the national effort to keep goods and supplies coming into the country as well as keeping our borders secure.

Daily testing will keep our frontline teams safe while they continue to serve the public and communities across our country.

Our transport workers have done an incredible job throughout the pandemic to keep this country moving.

To make sure they can continue to do their vital work safely, Im pleased well be rolling out testing sites to key transport locations enabling staff to continue working with confidence.

Throughout the pandemic, our frontline emergency services have continued to keep us all safe, overcoming enormous challenges to do so, while workers across the transport network have kept the country moving

As we learn to live with the virus, we must do everything we can to break chains of transmission and stop the spread of the virus. Daily contact testing of workers in these critical sectors will help to minimise any disruption caused by rising cases in the coming weeks, while ensuring staff are not put at risk.

Self-isolation remains an essential tool for suppressing the transmission of the virus.

People who have been identified as contacts are at least five times more likely to be infected with COVID-19 than other members of the public. Vaccines are highly effective at reducing the risk of serious illness, hospitalisation and death, and we are encouraging everyone to continue to get the vaccine to enable us to tackle the virus.

View original post here:

Daily contact testing rolled out to further critical sectors - GOV.UK

Why would the radical right, particularly its most extreme elements, get involved with organised crime? There are, of course, a number of reasons, one of which involves something Ive mentioned several times already: arms trafficking.

Radical right extremists who want to arm themselves cant easily do so through any legitimate means. Even in countries with lax gun laws like the US, radical right extremists generally cant just buy up military-grade weapons and hardware without garnering unwanted attention from the authorities.

With a huge market for smuggled weapons around the world sources for these weapons include places like the former Yugoslavia and Ukraine and the involvement of a number of organised crime groups in this smuggling, its no surprise that radical right extremists would find themselves part of the game. Its also no surprise, then, that in the wake of radical right terror attacks in recent years, authorities appear to be paying increasing attention.

Another reason for radical right involvement with organised crime is financing. How radical right groups get their money and their funding is, as has been noted by journalists covering the radical right (myself included), an issue that itself requires much more attention.

Not all radical right extremists require some significant form of financing, nefarious or otherwise; it doesnt necessarily cost much money to write, draw and post hateful propaganda on Telegram for instance. But for radical right extremists with ambition, the costs can add up. For example, well-designed websites with professional-grade video, replete with flashy logos and almost-corporate branding, arent things one can buy up with a few pennies lying around.

In countries with weak rule of law, the tentacles of organised crime can weave their way into the fabric of the state. The phenomenon of state capture a form of corruption where private actors, from politicians and businesspeople to criminals, influence a states decision-making processes to their own advantage has been documented in places like Serbia, Turkey and other countries.

When radical right extremists join the game and themselves become part of the phenomenon of state capture something seen in Ukraine, for example, where much of the radical right is alleged to have the patronage of the countrys powerful interior ministry they give themselves a means of being protected from prosecution, an opportunity to act with greater impunity and, above all, a pathway to increase their status and influence.

Originally posted here:

What links organised crime with the radical right? - Open Democracy

Having pioneered offshore wind for more than two decades, installing more than 10 GW in its waters to date, the U.K. now finds itself at a pivotal moment as it shoots audaciously for an almost fourfold increase in capacity by 2030.

Getting to 40 GW will require critical reforms in policy, permitting and transmission, industry observers told S&P Global Market Intelligence, as well as a significant manufacturing and construction effort at a time when other countries globally are ramping up their offshore wind activities and competing for resources.

But in the U.K.'s favor are fortunate market fundamentals that helped it grow to become the world leader in the technology.

"We have the best resource and probably one of the best geographies for offshore wind in the world," Barnaby Wharton, director of future electricity systems at trade group RenewableUK, said in an interview. "We're very lucky that we have the North Sea, which is shallow and has great wind speeds."

A long journey

In the early days of offshore wind, the U.K.'s main challenges were about proving it works and bringing its costs down.

The technology is now proven: Offshore wind is already the U.K.'s leading source of renewable generation. And grid operator National Grid Electricity System Operator Ltd.'s latest "Future Energy Scenarios" report sees the sector growing rapidly to become "the backbone of [the U.K.'s] electricity supply in 2050," at anywhere between 70 GW and 113 GW, depending on the level of consumer and system change.

Cost is also no longer a roadblock: In the government's latest renewables auction in 2019, offshore wind projects were awarded contracts at prices significantly below the market rate for electricity.

But quadrupling capacity in less than a decade brings with it new hurdles. "It will come down to whether we can get enough volume through the planning regime, and enough grid connections in time," Alon Carmel, managing director at FTI Consulting, said in an interview.

Offshore wind projects, deemed nationally significant infrastructure, require approval from the national government. On average, it takes about a decade to bring projects from conception to operation, Wharton said.

Grid connections are increasingly becoming limiting factors in permitting projects. Vattenfall AB, the Swedish state-owned utility, saw its approval quashed for its Norfolk Vanguard wind farm in February because of the impact its transmission infrastructure would have onshore. A decision on its sister project, Norfolk Boreas, which would use the same onshore connection point as Vanguard, was delayed until late 2021.

The U.K.'s approach to offshore transmission to date has seen generators build individual cables to connect their wind farms, but the government is examining a more coordinated system to hook up multiple projects to one single onshore landing point.

"Unfortunately, the end [power] user is not out at sea, so you've got to find cost-effective ways to share connections between the next wave of mega-projects," Steve Read, managing director of Bridge Wind Management, an asset management company, said in an interview.

Lacking visibility

To some, a more pressing issue than permitting is policy reform, with critics arguing that the U.K. lacks a long-term vision for supporting new renewables capacity.

The U.K. runs contract for difference, or CfD, auctions where renewables developers submit fixed-price bids for their electricity. The government either tops up, or claws back, revenue from generators, depending on whether the wholesale power price is lower or higher than a project's CfD price.

The CfD and earlier U.K. government support programs for renewables have been critical to the success of offshore wind, attracting well-capitalized utilities like Iberdrola SA, rsted A/S, RWE AG, SSE PLC and Vattenfall which between them own nearly 8 GW of net wind capacity in U.K. waters, according to Market Intelligence data and a range of low-cost-of-capital investors and banks.

"Without government intervention, we wouldn't be where we are now," said Gary Bills, regional director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at consultancy K2 Management.

The third and most recent CfD auction took place in fall 2019; the next is slated to open later this year and will be the largest yet, at 12 GW. As it stands, there is no auction roadmap beyond that.

That means a significant number of projects in the U.K.'s offshore wind pipeline, which stands at more than 23 GW, do not know when they will be able to bid for contracts. About 5 GW of projects have secured CfDs but are yet to begin construction, according to RenewableUK.

"We need to make sure we have enough projects coming through in the CfD [auction]. The government goes from one CfD to the next without any real visibility," RenewableUK's Wharton said. Government officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Seabed lease auctions for the next wave of offshore wind projects are also "not quick enough and not big enough," Bills said.

The Crown Estate, which manages the seabed in England and Wales, ran its first seabed lease sale in a decade earlier this year, but the capacity on offer was four times smaller than the last round, when industry interest was only a fraction of what it is today.

The latest round fetched sky-high prices and saw market newcomers outbid incumbent utilities. Oil giant BP PLC, in a joint venture with EnBW Energie Baden-Wrttemberg AG, won two 1.5-GW lease areas and committed to paying a total of 1.85 billion in option fees across four years until a final investment decision. The companies think they can bring the projects through planning and into operation within seven years.

Manufacturing crunch

Beyond planning and policy, the capabilities and capacity of the U.K.'s offshore wind supply chain may be issues.

With offshore wind development ramping up globally, and projects being built in new markets like the U.S. and in Asia, wind-turbine manufacturers like Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy SA, Vestas Wind Systems A/S and GE Renewable Energy could quickly become stretched.

Some manufacturers are opening new facilities in the U.K. to cope with the expected rise in demand for turbines. Still, developers could hit a crunch point before the end of the decade.

"It's a completely arbitrary date but everyone says they want to start construction in 2027. If there are going to be bottlenecks, that's where it will be," Bills said.

The same could apply to shipping vessels and wind-turbine components. But observers say the issue of supply chain capacity could be partially solved by introducing regular CfD auctions, allowing companies to know exactly what projects are coming down the pipeline and when.

Without that visibility, the 40-GW target might be at risk. Only two of National Grid's four Future Energy Scenarios foresee the U.K. achieving its goal by the end of the decade. The remaining two get there by 2031 and 2035.

"The 2030 target is tough to hit," FTI's Carmel said. "It's definitely achievable, but there are some big obstacles."

Here is the original post:

An offshore wind heavyweight, UK squares up to 'tough' 40-GW target - S&P Global

J. Lawrence Turner| Guest Columnist

It says a lot about recent virulent objections to critical race theory (CRT) that Ruby Bridges is now part of the mix.

Bridges, who is Black, was a 6-year-old child when she walked a gauntlet of white rage in 1960 to enter a New Orleans school and become the first student to integrate the citys school system. During her entire first-grade year, she sat in a classroom alone, separated from her white classmates. Her image was memorialized in Norman Rockwells famous painting from the civil rights era, The Problem We All Face, rendering her a poignant symbol of racial injustice in the person of an innocent little girl wearing her Sunday-School best.

Today, Bridges is again walking a gauntlet of rage. White parents of children in the public school system of Williamson County, Tennessee, are up in arms about Bridges childrens book, "Ruby Bridges Goes to School," which she wrote expressly to teach elementary school students about overcoming racism. They claim the book, published in 2009 with a smiling 6-year-old Ruby on the cover, is one among several that is dangerous to their children.

COUNTERPOINT: Why we must stop critical race theory from entering American classrooms | Marsha Blackburn

They argue it describes too harshly the white mob that threatened her. They believe teachers should not introduce young students to words like "injustice," "unequal," "inequality," "protest," "marching" and "segregation." They are part of the national hysteria charging that books like "Ruby Bridges Goes to School" are a slippery slope at the bottom of which is the takeover of school curriculums by the dreaded critical race theory, a radical-left plot to demoralize white children and make them ashamed of the color of their skin.

In Memphis: City Council asks Lee to veto bill banning teaching of critical race theory

This preposterous logic not only accounts for critical race theorys existence, it completely validates the need for critical race theory.

Politicians and other opportunists who have made a bogeyman of CRT are acting on the same self-serving impulses that drove them during the civil rights era to fuel (or refuse to temper) white fear that race-mixing was dangerous to white women and children. Back then, Black and brown bodies were the threat. Today, Black and brown ideas are the threat. Those whose outrage is running amok arent affronted by a theory. They are affronted by the idea that the experiences and perspectives of those in the minority especially if they have endured oppression due to their minority status belong in the same curriculum and classrooms as the experiences and perspectives of those in the majority.

Marsha Blackburn: Why we must stop critical race theory from entering American classrooms | Opinion

Tonyaa Weathersbee: Bans on teaching racism's impact means Juneteenth is now about resistance and revelry

Instead, they demand a segregated and sanitized curriculum. They may have to put up with Black and brown bodies in their schools, as the law requires, but they will not put up with their stories, they will not tolerate their historical perspectives, and they will not acknowledge their experiences.

Back when Bridges and other Black children on the vanguard of integration were forced to walk to school under armed guard, white parents took to the streets. Today, they successfully lobby school boards and statehouses. The net result is that 22 state legislatures have introduced laws banning critical race theory; five, including Tennessees, have passed them. The net impact is that parents, such as those in Williamson County, feel free to define critical race theory as anything that makes them uncomfortable and demand the law squelch the source of their discomfort. Meanwhile, modern-day George Wallaces in public office and other positions of leadership cravenly stoke their fear, effectively bleating, Segregation of ideas now, tomorrow, and forever!

Critical race theory is the decades-old academic premise that racism still permeates much of American life and American systems legal, criminal justice, health, and education among them. Sadly, todays uninformed furor is proving the premise true. CRT also posits the name it, claim it, dump it approach to resolving the problem. If we acknowledge it exists, so the theory goes, we can do something about it. We can heal and more closely hue to the great truth we hold to be self-evident: that all of us are created equal and, by extension, that the perspectives of those who have not historically received a hearing are equal, too.

CRT controversy: Memphis lawmaker tells CNN that Tennessee legislature is trying to 'whitewash' history

Tennessee schools chief: State committed to keeping 'propaganda like critical race theory' from classroom

Ironically, few have done more over the years to further the process of healing and hearing than Bridges. She established the Ruby Bridges Foundation in 1999 to promote respect and equal treatment to all races or all differences. She has spent decades speaking to school children about her experiences as a child. In the process, she has taught them that we can learn from the mistakes of the past to do better in the present. She has educated, not by shaming any one group, but by showing all groups that mutual respect and love is preferable and possible.

That her lived experience, adapted specifically for young ears and imaginations, is being twisted into propaganda is a travesty. Again, she has become a symbol of the bulk of the current critique being leveled at a theory most of its detractors have no interest in understanding only vilifying. This is the real shame. The Problem We All Face is still alive and festering. We can all solve it. But first, we have to acknowledge its as real as the gauntlet Bridges walked as a child and that her story walks today.

The Rev. J. Lawrence Turner is senior pastor of Mississippi Blvd. Christian Church in Memphis.

Read the original post:

Outrage over critical race theory only serves to justify it | Opinion - Commercial Appeal

Plan design features, such as auto-enrollment, auto-escalation and target-date funds, helped DC plan participants stay the course and improve retirement outcomes, according to the mostrecent edition of the firmsHow America Savesstudy.

The adoption of automatic enrollment has more than tripled since year-end 2007, the first year after the Pension Protection Actof 2006 took effect, Vanguard notes in2021 How America Saves, now in its 20thyear. Consequently, automatic enrollment has helped employees save 50% more for retirement than those at companies offering voluntary enrollment.

The research exams retirement plan data from 4.7 million DC plan participants across the firms recordkeeping business, comprised of 1,400 plan sponsors and $1.7 trillion in DC assets under management.

At year-end 2020, 54% of Vanguard plans had adopted automatic enrollment, including 74% of plans with at least 1,000 participants. In 2020, because larger plans were more likely to offer it, 69% of participants were in plans with an automatic enrollment option.

Additionally, the research found that two-thirds of automatic enrollment plans have implemented automatic annual deferral rate increases. Automatic enrollment defaults have also increased over the past decade. According to the report, 57% of plans now default employees at a deferral rate of 4% or higher, compared with 30% of plans in 2011.

Vanguard notes that annual automated deferral increases resulted in participants saving 20-30% more after three years than employees without automatic increases.

Balanced Strategy

Professionally managed allocations have also helped more participants save for retirement and keep their focus on the long term, even in the wake of last years unprecedented market uncertainty.

Nearly all (99%) plans with automatic enrollment defaulted participants into a balanced investment strategy in 2020with 98% choosing a target-date fund as the default. In turn, participants increasing use of TDFs has led to a 75% decrease in extreme equity allocations among participants over the last 15 years.

TDFs have also tamped down frequent trading. Vanguard found that 96% of participants holding a single TDF did not make a trade last year. Not only did most resist dipping into their accounts, but participant saving rates remained stable. Its a testament to plan sponsors growing use of automatic solutions, which leverage inertia for the benefit of the participant, Vanguard says, adding, Of course, the idea of investor inertia is not a new learning, but it has now been battle-tested in a very unusual environment.

Savings Metrics

High-level metrics of participant saving behavior were steady in 2020, Vanguard notes. The participant-weighted participation rate was 78% in 2020, up from 74% in 2011. However, plans with automatic enrollment had a 92% participation rate, compared with a participation rate of 62% for plans with voluntary enrollment. The report further observes, however, that as more plans adopt automatic enrollment, the remaining pool of plans with voluntary enrollment has seen participation rates deteriorate.

The average deferral rate was 7.2% in 2020, which is up modestly from 6.9% in 2011. The median deferral rate was 6% in 2020, which Vanguard notes is unchanged for as long as it has been tracking this metric.

When including both employee and employer contributions, the average total participant contribution rate in 2020 was 11.1%, and the median was 10.2%. These rates have remained stable for the past 15 years, the report notes. When including nonparticipants, employees hired under automatic enrollment plans saved an average of 10.7%, considering both employee and employer contributions. Yetemployees hired under a voluntary enrollment design saved an average of only 6.8%, due to significantly lower participation.

Insights to Action

Last year, Vanguard Strategic Retirement Consulting (SRC) launchedHow America Saves: Insights to Action,a supplementary report offering effective plan design recommendations that can meaningfully improve participants outcomes.This years report encourages plan sponsors to focus on four key areas:

Retirement savings is just one piece of a participants broader financial picture, and they are increasingly looking to their employer plans for customized advice and solutions that take a more comprehensive approach to financial well-being, emphasizes John James, managing director and head of Vanguard Institutional Investor Group.

Read this article:

Vanguard: Auto Features, TDFs Boosted Retirement Readiness in 2020 - National Association of Plan Advisors

A Vermont dairy farm has won a national award for its environmental practices, which the farmers say should aid the fight against climate change and protect water quality."It's been quite challenging," Chase Goodrich said of the business of dairy farming in recent years. "It's been a fight for survival, for sure."With rising supply costs and consumers increasingly choosing plant-based drinks over cows' milk, many operations have made the tough decision to shut down.However, the Goodrich Family Farm in Salisbury, which sells milk to the Cabot Co-op Creamery for use in its famous cheddar cheese and other products, has a much more optimistic story to tell."Even though times are hard, we are doing good things," said Danielle Goodrich-Gingras, who manages the 900-head herd with her brother, Chase.The Goodriches just won a big national award from the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, an industry group.The U.S. Dairy Sustainability Award was granted in recognition of a new addition to the family's property.The major component of the technology takes cow manure and human food scraps, which emit the nasty greenhouse gas methane, and breaks them down in a system called a digester turning them into renewable natural gas.That renewable natural gas will help nearby Middlebury College reach its goal to power the campus with only renewable energy."To be named the most sustainable dairy farm in America was mind-blowing," said John Hanselman of Vanguard Renewables in Wellesley, Massachusetts, referring to the U.S. Dairy Sustainability Award.Video: Closed Vermont dairy farm getting new life as agriculture innovation hubThis year, the award also honors a farm in Ohio and one in Pennsylvania.Vanguard developed, owns, and operates the digester on the Vermont farm, giving the Goodriches lease payments in return helping the business diversify and stay viable.The technology also provides the farmers low-carbon, non-synthetic fertilizer and animal bedding made from waste, the Goodriches noted.Vanguard emphasized that an exciting innovation about the system is it actually removes phosphorus, keeping that element from flowing into Lake Champlain and feeding problems like algae blooms."It's a huge priority to know the next generation my nieces and nephews are always going to have clean places to swim and water to drink," Goodrich-Gingras said."Vermont is showing a model for the rest of the country, from a legislative standpoint and farm practices standpoint, that can be replicated and could really change our whole climate impact from the dairy industry," Hanselman added.Beyond attacking climate change, the partners in the project predict more on-farm digesters across the country will strengthen critical local food systems, by providing new income that can ensure families like the Goodriches can keep doing the jobs they love."Being the best we can be that's kind of what we wake up to do every day," Chase Goodrich said, describing the goal of the Goodrich Family Farm.The recipients of the U.S. Dairy Sustainability Award will be celebrated this fall at the meeting of the industrys Dairy Sustainability Alliance, according to New England Dairy.

A Vermont dairy farm has won a national award for its environmental practices, which the farmers say should aid the fight against climate change and protect water quality.

"It's been quite challenging," Chase Goodrich said of the business of dairy farming in recent years. "It's been a fight for survival, for sure."

With rising supply costs and consumers increasingly choosing plant-based drinks over cows' milk, many operations have made the tough decision to shut down.

However, the Goodrich Family Farm in Salisbury, which sells milk to the Cabot Co-op Creamery for use in its famous cheddar cheese and other products, has a much more optimistic story to tell.

"Even though times are hard, we are doing good things," said Danielle Goodrich-Gingras, who manages the 900-head herd with her brother, Chase.

The Goodriches just won a big national award from the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, an industry group.

The U.S. Dairy Sustainability Award was granted in recognition of a new addition to the family's property.

The major component of the technology takes cow manure and human food scraps, which emit the nasty greenhouse gas methane, and breaks them down in a system called a digester turning them into renewable natural gas.

That renewable natural gas will help nearby Middlebury College reach its goal to power the campus with only renewable energy.

"To be named the most sustainable dairy farm in America was mind-blowing," said John Hanselman of Vanguard Renewables in Wellesley, Massachusetts, referring to the U.S. Dairy Sustainability Award.

Video: Closed Vermont dairy farm getting new life as agriculture innovation hub

This year, the award also honors a farm in Ohio and one in Pennsylvania.

Vanguard developed, owns, and operates the digester on the Vermont farm, giving the Goodriches lease payments in return helping the business diversify and stay viable.

The technology also provides the farmers low-carbon, non-synthetic fertilizer and animal bedding made from waste, the Goodriches noted.

Vanguard emphasized that an exciting innovation about the system is it actually removes phosphorus, keeping that element from flowing into Lake Champlain and feeding problems like algae blooms.

"It's a huge priority to know the next generation my nieces and nephews are always going to have clean places to swim and water to drink," Goodrich-Gingras said.

"Vermont is showing a model for the rest of the country, from a legislative standpoint and farm practices standpoint, that can be replicated and could really change our whole climate impact from the dairy industry," Hanselman added.

Beyond attacking climate change, the partners in the project predict more on-farm digesters across the country will strengthen critical local food systems, by providing new income that can ensure families like the Goodriches can keep doing the jobs they love.

"Being the best we can be that's kind of what we wake up to do every day," Chase Goodrich said, describing the goal of the Goodrich Family Farm.

The recipients of the U.S. Dairy Sustainability Award will be celebrated this fall at the meeting of the industrys Dairy Sustainability Alliance, according to New England Dairy.

See the original post:

Vermont dairy farm honored with national award for sustainable practices - WPTZ

Start your day with LAist

Sign up for the Morning Brief, delivered weekdays.

On January 6, I was skimming the live blog on FiveThirtyEight.com while site contributors discussed the impending drama of challenges to the electoral college votes in Congress. Then, abruptly, the news coverage changed.

How To Participate

Since June 2020, we've asked for your stories about how race and ethnicity shape your life and and published as many of these stories as we can. We call this year-long effort Race in LA. Click here for more information and details on how to participate.

As the Capitol riot unfolded, others watched with anxiety and trepidation. I stood apart, feeling only an odd sense of relief. The events on Capitol Hill, to me, represented a national catharsis, an earthquake that exposed the fault lines running through the American social contract not only between citizens and government, but also between citizens and insurrectionists. It represented the true culmination of the looking glass through which I myself had passed two decades ago, in 2001.

In other words, I was not surprised.

I feel sympathy for those who have found the recent national narrative involving our government, legitimacy, power and democracy to be disturbing. But it is a relief to finally know that others are seeing this country as I have since I was 12.

Anju in yukata one summer at age 4 or 5, in Pasadena.

(Courtesy of Anju Kulkarni)

As far as non-white childhoods in America go, I think it's fair to say that mine was quite idyllic. My parents, who are immigrants from India and Japan, met at UC Berkeley, then a common instigator of interracial, international marriages. They put down roots in Pasadena, and I was nurtured by the academic community of Caltech.

My childhood memories consist mostly of sunset summers in the shadow of the Santa Monica pier, family drives to Joshua Tree and Vasquez Rocks, of winter poppy fields, donning yukata in the summer heat, dancing in front of the reliefs at the Venkateswara temple in Calabasas, and falling asleep surrounded by the scent of incense during zazen at the Zen Center in Koreatown.

These early years were a curious time to be a child in Los Angeles. The 1992 riots were still a fresh memory for every adult I knew. Even I was aware that a Black man named Rodney King had been assaulted near what is now the Barack H. Obama Highway. Even I knew Los Angeles had burned, and yet, growing up, I thought little about race. People regularly mistook me for Latina or Filipina or Middle Eastern, but there was no felt meaning attached to any of the labels, so my awareness of what race "meant" was low.

The Pasadena school I attended was a good mix of white, Black, Hispanic and a smattering of everything else. Any overt racism was often resolved through playground justice, and the closest I came to acknowledging race was when a Puerto Rican classmate remarked offhand that we were the only two mixed race students in our class. Huh. So we were.

September 11, 2001 marked the beginning of the crucible through which the true nature of this country would be revealed to me.

A newspaper headline from the day after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

(Aidan Bartos (@bartos) via Unsplash)

In comparison with my first decade, I have no good memories of the Bush years. In the months that followed, numerous experiences made it clear to me that I was no longer welcome, had never been welcome. Nativism began to mount.

A few months after 9/11, a boy followed me and a desi classmate after school, throwing rocks at us as he yelled, Taliban! Taliban! This was also the year white supremacist groups like National Vanguard would regularly leave hate literature on our doorstep.

As I type these words, it seems strange to me that my alienation from America seemed so natural at the time, but perhaps I have my family to blame for that. My parents, a biochemist and an astronomer, were students of world history: unflinching in their depiction of the scars left on the world by oppression in the form of colonization, war and genocide. Among my childhood picture books are stories about the Trail of Tears, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese internment, the Nanjing Massacre and the Underground Railroad.

The first Noble Truth in Buddhism is that life is suffering, and I took that lesson at face value. Despite the many slights that marked the years between 2001 and 2008, I had been taught from birth to view extremism as inevitable, fear of the unknown as a typical human instinct, and to expect hatred from those who perceived me as not them.

!or "Endure it!" is a common reproof in Japanese households. My coming of age was an object lesson in learning how to endure the role of outsider.

If narratives of white American versus non-white immigrant (or illegal immigrant/terrorist, as the terms went then, depending on one's flavor of xenophobia) weren't enough to already contend with, one year later I also had the dubious pleasure of encountering the full force of intra-community racism in the greater Los Angeles Asian American community.

Anju at age 8, dressed for a dance performance.

(Courtesy of Anju Kulkarni)

My school district for middle school and high school was majority East Asian, and I vividly recall one classmate saying to me at 13, Everyone here hates you because you are only half Asian.

When I corrected them that I had one Indian parent and one Japanese parent, they corrected themselves, The wrong kind of Asian, then.

If pressed to choose between such a flat rejection and thrown rocks, I will choose rocks every time.

I expected bigotry from white America. I was not prepared for it to come from a completely different field, from people with whom I thought I had much in common. The shootings in Atlanta, and subsequent news coverage on hate crimes against East Asian individuals over the course of the pandemic, have captured the attention of many friends and family. However, looking like I do, it hits me in a different place.

Perhaps what made all of these experiences more distressing was that what seemed obvious to my child self was dismissed as normalcy by the authority figures in whom I was supposed to place my trust.

It wasn't until I was in college that my Japanese mother realized many East Asian and white store clerks in the San Gabriel Valley and West L.A. would speak to her, but never with me. Parents of classmates, most of them East Asian, rarely allowed me over, and often made it clear my presence was unwelcome. The TSA made no pains to hide that my South Asian father and I could expect very different treatment compared with my East Asian-presenting sister and Japanese mother.

Anju, top, and her younger sister Maya.

(Courtesy of Anju Kulkarni)

More seriously, my many well-meaning white teachers, bless their hearts, were not equipped to discuss the state of the country during the "War on Terror" with a student who looked so very like the individuals the politicians and news anchors quickly condemned.

I remember with acute irony the English teacher in whose class I read Elie Wiesels "Night" and "The Diary of Anne Frank." This teacher took great pains to arrange annual field trips to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and yet never once voiced issue with the language of the Patriot Act, the creation and subsequent activities of ICE and DHS, nor the invasive government regulations that I would later find landed some of my Muslim peers on no-fly lists, even as minors.

Speaking for my self-righteous adolescent self, if you want to breed rebelliousness in a teenager, teach them about democratic government and civics and then say nothing when their government exploits the spirit of its own laws. If you want them to oppose war, start a war in which they have no say, but pressure them with military recruitment when they are 18.

If you want them to lose faith in a nation, show them voters who prioritize nativism and racial inequality, and make it clear that everything from their name to their face to their ancestry means that they can expect no better than grudging acceptance, no matter how hard they try to obtain it. By the age of 18, I viewed America as a joke. The only things I learned that mattered were one's race, connections and wealth, and those unfavored were simply out of luck.

To that effect, Obama's election was a godsend to me. Perhaps more crucially, it was my first general election. I have consequently participated in almost every election since. It gave the alienated American within me a respite from what I believed America to be. The relative diversity in the UC system was similarly a blessing.

At UC San Diego, where I majored in international studies, I had the privilege to meet many classmates who had faced their own versions of loss, ostracism and disillusionment.

Being racially profiled by police officers on suspicion of being undocumented, and experiencing regular harassment by white nationalists and evangelists all things I experienced while living in San Diego go down differently when everyone knows that a Black man leads the country, and one has friends with whom to commiserate.

Anju as a student at UC San Diego, circa 2008.

Even during the devastation of the Trump years, my peers and I continued to encourage each other through a combination of grim determination, nihilistic cynicism and sincere empathy.

After all, we were no longer 12, and at least now, we could vote.

I have no illusions about the intractable nature of these American fault lines, embedded in a history of slavery, xenophobia and nativism that many in our country can't acknowledge. I also know I am not the first person to realize they exist.

My coming of age simply precipitated a political awareness that is common knowledge for many people whose family histories are tied to these distinctly American forms of oppression and marginalization.

However, this awareness has left me tired and angry. Im not Latina, but Im treated by most strangers as if I were. Ive been spoken to in Spanish, even asked which part of Latin America I come from. As such, I greatly empathize with the many Latinos who face racism and nativism. My family is both East and South Asian, so I understand the worries and concerns many Asians have about American xenophobia. When it comes to anti-Blackness and white supremacy, I have a working imagination.

After all, the many East Asian views on race and racial purity I myself have experienced are strikingly similar to white supremacy.

The ambiguity of my appearance means that all of these different groups speak freely with me about what they think about each other. Thus, I regularly mourn how people with so much suffering in common are unable to muster the willingness to understand each other.

I don't believe I am special. In fact, I rate my ability to reason as exceedingly average. Thus, I find it infuriating when others don't see the harm in allowing prejudice to flourish, that they tolerate the failures we invite when we cling to structures that bolster marginalization.

My rage is superseded only by a deep, existential loneliness that deters me from making connections with others for fear of rejection. I worry about not clearing the bar for one of the conditional forms of acceptance reluctantly proffered by a world that prioritizes crude notions of "us versus them."

My struggles with race and identity in L.A. stem from similar conflicts and assumptions held by the various groups that claim me and reject me in turn. As a biracial child of two immigrants from different places, it has been hard to bear three countries worth of animosity, with their varied messages of who to hate, who to love, what to wear, what to eat, and how to live.

Anju as a child, front, dancing at the Malibu Hindu Temple.

(Courtesy of Anju Kulkarni)

The many masks and roles I have adopted to cope with disguising each facet of myself as a member of us to avoid being treated as them are stifling.

Either way, for a multiracial individual such as myself, singled out and simultaneously excluded for the identities I hold, theres no room for me in a world where people are concerned with picking sides and protecting their own, regardless of the cost to others.

That said, I already know how many small miracles happen in L.A. that would be unthinkable elsewhere. As a person of Indian Hindu and Japanese heritage, extremists back in my parents home countries would have me think I'm supposed to fear Muslims, despise Christians, hate Koreans and Chinese, and look down on just about everyone else, unless they are white and especially if they are Black.

However, that's not what my life has been.

A Black couple were the only people willing to rent to my Japanese grandparents when they first lived in the U.S. in 1957. The Zen Center established by a Japanese priest, where I learned about Buddhism, sits in L.A.'s Koreatown. My childhood friends regularly invited me to celebrate Hanukkah, Passover, and Christmas. A Black bus driver protected me from bullies every day to and from school for over four years. The godmother who showered my sister with unconditional love is Persian. My Muslim desi friends and I bond over politics and food.

My Indian father supports BLM. My Japanese mother studies Chinese so she can better speak with our neighbors.

For my part, I havent allowed my own adolescent experiences to stop me from engaging with the diverse members of Los Angeles fractured East Asian diaspora. My whole life is proof of the richness to be found in rejecting "us versus them," in reexamining the biases we hold and jettisoning those without substance.

As I sit here in L.A., a city that waits for the next big quake, tracking these American fault lines with my mind, I hear others who seemed astounded last Jan. 6 plaintively ask, "Is this who we are?

My answer is, "This is who we have always been." I first saw the cracks when I was 12, and they have not disappeared or changed in size.

The fissures are now simply at the surface for all of us to acknowledge together.

Where we go from here is not something I can answer, but I know what I will be doing. I've chosen public health as my career because I think we all do better when all of us are given the opportunity to thrive. I believe this is the best way to help create a more just, more interlinked world where our respective roots can better grip the soil to withstand the tremors of the future.

Hindus and Buddhists talk a great deal of dharma, one's duty in life. I am not so virtuous as to believe the worldview I have chosen is a moral obligation. It is simply the only vision of the world I can see in which someone like me will flourish.

Much of what I know of L.A., and California as a whole, suggests that such a future is possible. Where I remain unsure is how many people share my perspective.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Anju Kulkarni is completing her Masters of Public Health for epidemiology at the Susan and Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences at University of California, Irvine. She is currently an academic intern at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Born and raised on Tongva land in the San Gabriel Valley, she ponders cooking and cocktails in her spare time.

Go here to read the rest:

The Lasting Legacy Of Growing Up Post-9/11 As 'The Wrong Kind Of Asian' - LAist

Some key findings on discrimination and employment:

Some key findings on discrimination and healthcare:

Some key findings on discrimination and housing:

Some key findings on discrimination and homelessness:

Some key findings on discrimination and public accomodations:

The data analyzed in this report shows that discrimination against Black LGBTQ people is a real and ongoing threat to their lives and livelihoods. The discrimination that Black LGBTQ people face is a function of the stigma, lack of legal protections, erasure of Black LGBTQ identities, bias, rejection and violence the community faces in daily life. These challenges, which are often rooted in inaccurate beliefs and politically-motivated attacks, erect barriers in virtually every facet of Black LGBTQ peoples lives, denying them the equal opportunity to succeed and be accepted for who they are.

State and federal officials have many tools at their disposal to begin addressing systemic racism head on, including reshaping state budgets and creating task forces to promote genuine equity for Black and LGBTQ communities across a range of issues from policing to employment, housing, education and more.

The report also includes a section highlighting effective solutions along with brief guidance on how individuals, organizations and governing bodies can level these recommendations, including:

HRCs analysis uses an intersectional statistical model, a process for analyzing the data in a way that accounts for the multiple identities of Black LGBTQ people in addition to their race, sexual orientation or gender identity. It allows for the analysis to determine the rate of discrimination reported by similar survey respondents based on the product of their specific generation, gender, connection to their local communities and many other factors.

The survey was led by Community Marketing & Insights and the Center for Black Equity in October 2020, and supported by the Human Rights Campaign, AARP, Freddy Mac, Wilson Media and numerous Black LGBTQ media outlets. This report was sponsored by AARP. In addition, this report and HRC Foundations efforts to combat racism is made possible with the support of: Anonymous, Assurant Foundation, Baxter International Foundation, BBVA, Carlson Company and the Carlson Family Foundation, Cisco Systems, Inc., The Coca Cola Company, David Bohnett Foundation, Gilead Sciences, Inc., Google, Gucci America, Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Levi Strauss & Co., MetLife Foundation, The Morningstar Foundation, Norton LifeLock, Inc. (through Silicon Valley Community Foundation), Open Society Foundations, PVH, Rockefeller Foundation, State Farm, The TJX Companies, T-Mobile, Toyota, UPS Foundation, Inc., U. S. Bank, Vanguard Group Foundation, Verizon, ViiV Healthcare and Zendesk.

Read the original:

Ahead of Juneteenth - Human Rights Campaign

It would not be in Oprahs nature to pick an heir. But this is of no matter to Ziwe, the mononymous twenty-nine-year-old Nigerian-American performer who is in the midst of becoming our national inquirers unauthorized spawn. Everything that the pleasantness of The Oprah Winfrey Show made invisiblethe theatrical artifice of the interview structure; the hosts interest in a gendered performance art; the flirtatious conflation of journalismand narcissism; the over-all raging camp of the daytime enterpriseis easy to see when watching the media that Ziwe produces.

I cannot say that Baited with Ziwe, an interview series that dbuted onYouTube, in 2017, is enjoyable to watch, and thats the point. On Baited, Ziwe subjects non-Black people to interviews about race that quickly become inquisitions. It is a fantasy comedy of entrapment in which the Black woman tosses white navet down the hatch while playfully hoarding the lock and key. There is no right answer, say, to Ziwes demand of a white woman guest, a famous cook, to name five Black people off the top of your head, because Ziwe is not asking a question. And yet the guest works hard to answer in good faith, to look racially hip in the face of the ludicrous, because she believes, whether she will admit itor not, that her reputation is hinged on a kind of obeisance.

Last year, Baited moved to Instagram Live. Its new home, where politics are all about appearance, seemed appropriate; Ziwe questioned the legitimacy of the white allys existential crisis during our summer of quote-unquote racial reckoning. What is it that possesses white people to agree to speak to Ziwe? Wanting to look good? The fear of becoming irrelevant? The desire to participate in a phenomenon that they understand to be culturally Black, even at the promise of humiliation? Last years guests were often public figures who had said or done something offensive, something that threatened their social capital. And Ziwe, instead of giving them the stern but loving reprimand that decades of Oprah taught them was their due, used them for her personal project. The asymmetry was there even in the split-screen presentation of the show: the sombre interviewee, hair often pulled back, respectfully distanced from the iPhone camera; Ziwe looking like a glammed-up madam, with pastel eyeliner or full-length gloves, nosing up to the camera so that we are staring down the caverns of her nostrils, her brandished gums.

The Instagram series has been expanded into Ziwe, a carnivalesque variety-style talk show, produced by A24 and airing on Showtime. Vanguard talent such as Cole Escola, Bowen Yang, Patti Harrison, Sydnee Washington, Julio Torres, and Jeremy O. Harris drop in, letting us know that were in the hottest company. Ziwe, dressed in gorgeous high-femme outfits that verge on the parodic, is our demented girl boss, our anchor, which means we are always a bit seasick. The aesthetic is aestheticmost of the set is shaded in pink or its derivatives, including potted plants on the stage. There are framed photographs of Michelle Obama and Oprah on the walls, and gigantic storybooks on the floora wink at the spirit of faux intellectualism. Formally,Ziwe descends from the news-satire model of The Late Show with Stephen ColbertZiwe, an accomplished television writer, once interned for Colbertbut her show aspires to more than being a vaunted challenge to white-male-dominated late-night TV. The dbut seasonsix episodes, full of absurd games, musical skits, and more of those uncomfortable interviewsends up amounting to a creeping self-portrait of its namesake, rendered through flashy critiques of race and the media. The soul of the Ziwe persona was not really accessible via Baited, or through her heavily layered Internet characterpossibly because she is still sorting out the particulars for herself. In the finale of the Showtime series, a repeated visual motif is of Ziwe, baring her teeth, as she grabs at the edges of an old-fashioned television set. Despite all the fun and games, Ziwe is a one-womanshow, a baby-pink ouroboros, an endless loop out of which Ziwe the person is trying to escape.

Ziwe often relies heavily on the prefab obsessions of the liberal intelligentsia. The first episode of the show is called 55%, a reference to both the estimated percentage of white women who voted for Trump and the discourse that has exploded around that fact. The most viral segment of the pilot was Ziwes sitdown with the humorist Fran Lebowitz. There was the sexy juxtaposition, generational and racial, and the clash of egos. Early on, Lebowitz, legs crossed, warns Ziwe that she doesnt play games, a caution that the host summarily ignores. Lebowitz, to prove her progressive bona fides, begins to critique Barack Obama, and a chyron reads White Woman Has Opinion on Obama. (The editors of Ziwe are as much responsible for the queasiness of the interviews as Ziwe is herself.) As Lebowitz speaks, her words are bleeped out. The chyron: We will not be airing this because we want to go to the Roc Nation Brunch.

Here is the profoundly inventive element of Ziwe: the sendup of the Black grifter, the personality who exploits a desire for reconciliation, and ingeniously twists the fetish of Black female moral authority, for her own gain. Anytime a guest dares to question Ziweat one point, Bowen Yang, in on the joke, meekly asks the host about her wealthshe contorts her beautiful face, as if accusing the guest of disrespect. No one gets to come for the mad queen. Curiously, the show, not ready to skewer its host head on, opts to do so through other bits, as in a fake commercial for an Imperial Wives doll named Tina, who uses social-justice language for profit.

Ziwe is trapped in an interminable dance with whiteness, its muse. In a skit called Karens, from the first episode, Ziwe ensnares a focus group of white women in a number of racial faux pas. But because the participants are aware of their own shortcomings, the joke cannot land. The segment also feels dated, strangled by the unimaginative neologism of the fraught summer that preceded it.

We know what Ziwe wants to dismantle. But what does this self-described agent of chaos want to create? In interviews, Ziwe, a maven of self-promotion, claims that she sees her form of caustic satire as the conduit to a confrontational education. And yet Ziwe the show is pessimistic about the American belief in the power of anti-racist enlightenment. Its possible that Ziwe has a gloriously retributive bent, that it is satire that does not serve a higher purpose, that it simply delights in letting the jab sit and sting. The point is to watch people squirm, not to hear them speak. Although the six episodes cover different topicsimmigration, beauty standards, wealth inequalityZiwe returns repeatedly to the hypocrisies of liberal saints and stooges. In one segment, Ziwe visits a plastic-surgery office, and gets an affable white surgeon to suggest that her nose could be more refined. She gets Andrew Yang to embarrass himself more than he already has. She makes Gloria Steinem listen to her recite the lyrics to CardiB and Megan Thee Stallions W.A.P. Its like a kink.

I found myself most interested in Ziwe when the host was in the presence of other Black womenin other words, when the Ziwe persona was put to the test. In a recurring segment called Behind the Writers Studio, Ziwe baits her own writers, deriding them for their participation in the sketches that she herself commissioned. In the finale, she brings out Michelle Davis, who has written, and performed in, a faux-mercial in which Harriet Tubman hawks sports bras. Ziwe tells Davis, I think the lesson here is that you can be Black and anti-Black. This is the shows tricky apotheosis. Davis turns the tables on the host, insisting that she isnt anti-Black, and launches into a rendition of the Black national anthem, Lift Evry Voice and Sing. Ziwe, one-upped at the game of one-upping, can do nothing but giggle and sing along.

See the original post here:

Ziwe Is Trapped in an Interminable Dance with Whiteness - The New Yorker