Thanks, John Gruber, for showing us how it’s done.

Trust — or lack of it — is the crux. Zvi Zohar of Bar-Ilan University explained to me that historically, if someone said he was a Jew, “if he lived among us, was a partner in our society and said he was one of us, we assumed he was right.” Trust was the default position. One reason was that Jews were a persecuted people; no one would claim to belong unless she really did. The leading ultra-Orthodox rabbi in Israel in the years before and after the state was established, Avraham Yeshayahu Karlitz (known as the Hazon Ish, the name of his magnum opus on religious law), held the classical position. If someone arrived from another country claiming to be Jewish, he should be allowed to marry another Jew, “even if nothing is known of his family,” Karlitz wrote.

Several trends have combined to change that. In an era of intermarriage, denominational disputes and secularization, Jews have ceased agreeing on who belongs to the family, or on what the word “Jew” means.

Among close communities, and especially among those with long histories of discrimination and persecution, trust is the engine of belonging. Trust is bestowed first by the say-so of trusted others, and when that’s unavailable, the fall-back is to documentation of heritage, lineage, an extrinsic point of connection. To marry in Israel, it’s not enough to be a Jew: someone with authority has to declare you Jewish.

That be itself seems problematic: being oscillates, depending upon the point from which identity is constituted. It works the other way, too, with those who apply for a visa to the land of their ancestors to be told by the consulate that they have always been citizens. (At college, I had a friend who was born and raised in Britain, but held an American passport through a parent: when visiting the US, it amused him that regardless of his accent and birthplace, the border agents would always say ‘welcome home’.)

On one level, it’s situational, a matter of utility. Not being able to prove one’s Jewishness to the satisfaction of Israel’s rabbinical judges is only an impediment to those who wish to marry or take advantage of the Law of Return; it won’t prevent you from holding a Passover seder. (Though having your identity questioned in such circumstances might have its own consequences.) Similarly, that grandfathered claim to a passport or to sporting eligibility only becomes part of who you are should the need or opportunity arise.

For the most part, we still function on trust and tokens, but the changing character of our interactions outpaces both the formal and informal structures in which they are used.

But to get back in the mood for writing, it’s a happy coincidence that the latest spat over Nick Denton’s editorial methods appears at the same time as another brief profile of Felix Dennis, something the media desks seem to write up on a semi-regular basis.

Dennis changed American magazine publishing in the late 90s. It was obvious from Maxim’s first few British issues that it was doomed to fourth place in a market saturated by lad mags; it was also clear that Americans were buying import copies of Loaded with nothing of their own to compare. Conventional wisdom was that the format wouldn’t work: you had your serious gentlemen’s monthlies, the sporty-outdoors mags, the aging hipster mags, the pinkish Details in post-Truman decline. All neatly stratified and commodified. Instead, Maxim’s US launch in 1997, driven by Dennis and a no-bullshit British staff, immediately made GQ and Esquire look fusty, and put Details out of its misery.

Of all the lad mags, Maxim was the one you’d least have expected to succeed in the US, based upon content and market positioning. But that misses one key element: Felix Dennis. Ten years on, it outsells all its US competitors combined, most of which now imitate some or all of its house style. (Details is back on the shelves, though in name only.) As for Dennis himself, he’s no longer at the helm, predicting the slow decline of print mags; that didn’t stop him from getting around $250m for offloading his American titles last year. (Translation: even more time to spend writing doggerel in Mustique. As a poet, he’s a great magazine publisher.)

That’s your model for understanding Nick Denton and his American blog menagerie, his treatment of writers, his PPV earnings model, his zest for publicity. (The comparison is inexact: if Denton writes poetry, he keeps it to himself; his prose sings like a goose.)

All done with complete unnerving honesty. Which you have to admire — from a safe distance.

Update: Denton’s made the comparison himself. (Note to self: 2003 and Kinja seems like a long time ago.) But the report presents it simply in terms of Maxim’s content, not the wider aspects of how both Dennis and Denton seem to view publishing.

Reaching back to my mostly forgotten maths classes, you can simplify the calculation to a standard Apple British Coefficient of 1.2925, for those who don’t get to buy ex-VAT (or, more likely these days, on a weekend in NYC).

Convert the US price, add VAT, stick 10% on top for shits and giggles, then round up to the nearest £49 or £99.*

The MacBook Air fits this, as did the iPhone (figures rounded to nearest UKP):

Rounded up to nearest £99, you get £1199. Voilà.

* Unless it’s under £100, where you round to the nearest £5 or £9. Leopard’s $129 became (£65 + VAT) + 10% = £84, rounded up to £85.

It’s not just the passport that’s government property, but the particular form of identity it instantiates. John Darwin isn’t charged with faking his death, but with making a false statement to obtain a passport. Put another way, he tried to give up something that wasn’t his, and that something was himself.

To those exposed to complicated books written by French sorts, the idea that identity is imposed in facets from without is hardly novel. But in this context, ‘identity theft’ seems a strange term. The elements that make it possible, tangible or intangible, may be in your possession, but they’re rarely your property in the Lockean sense, to be used and disposed of at will. Instead, they carry all the anxieties of items on extended loan: which is, in essence, what they are.

And as Ben Goldacre notes, the creep of biometrics subjects bits of your own body to this transformation. It’s a different kind of identity theft: one that takes your property and returns it on loan, reconstituted as identity data.

Here lies the paradox: the repeated instructions (and helpfully-offered subscription services) to protect your identity carry the implication that it’s yours to protect. Except that it isn’t. It might be argued that you have a duty of care, the same that would stop you from leaving your mate’s car unlocked with the keys in the ignition when you borrow it for a late-night beer run. Except that it’s not. Instead, we’re asked to protect something that’s not our own, warned not to give away something that has already been taken.

Which is one reason why I’m observing No Music Day.

The ‘make records that get decent ratings, sell a few copies, and tour 500-capacity venues while sleeping in a van’ stage is one that can continue until you decide it’s too much bloody hassle.

But at some point, a fan who got into your music at student age may well end up in the advertising business, with the power to say, ‘hey, this track fits perfectly with…’ and you can insert the product here, but if you’re in the indiepop business, you’re going to be hoping beyond hope that it’s something with at least marginal credibility, and not tampons or fibre supplements. Dear gods, let it be Apple.

Consider it the musical equivalent of a mercy shag, albeit one that has the potential to get you on Saturday Night Live.

Thing is, you can’t predict when the commercial interest is going to kick in, and if you try too hard to court it, you become Moby — or worse, Liz Phair. But you don’t want to act too coy, because the last thing you want is the loyal fanboi who’s a junior producer at Creative Cokesnorters, Inc. thinking that your niche appeal is too precious to be exposed to the masses as part of a thirty-second sales pitch.

It raises a quandary: given that it generally takes a handful of years for your college-student fans to graduate and climb the ad-industry career ladder, is it worth flogging out another tour in a van before calling it a day? After all, there’s basically a point (again, hard to measure) where your commercial revival won’t happen till you’re dead.

Thus, the LFFI (not to be confused with this slightly more established financial venue) to quantify the likelihood of your favourite niche popster getting a career-enhancing, ad-fuelled moment in the limelight, and not alienating the fanbase as a result.