The case for … making low-tech ‘dumb’ cities instead of ‘smart’ ones

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor and some style.” - Dr. Maya Angelou, Poet and Civils Rights Activist
  - Dr. Maya Angelou, Poet and Civils Rights Activist

“Love is not only the story of butterflies or birds; it is also the story of jackals and hounds”
― M.F. Moonzajer


What is the nature of life?
Life is lines of dominoes falling.
One thing leads to another, and then another, just like you'd planned. But suddenly a Domino gets skewed, events change direction, people dig in their heels, and you're faced with a situation that you didn't see coming, you who thought you were so clever.

Andrei Kashcha’s City Roads tool will draw you a map of just the roads in any city around the world. 

Emma Marris has a five-point plan for dealing with the psychological toll of climate change — the constant news of fire! famine! war! floods! Republicans! — and working towards solutions to our collective global problem. Step 1, she writes, is to let go of the shame:

New Year’s Manifesto

The New Year seems to be a good time to try to set down some of my basic thoughts about the need for and the path to effective community engagement. As often happens on this blog, this is a very rough first draft. Refinements will follow. – Doug Borwick

Idea Factory: What Makes Malcolm Gladwell Tick

NO. THEY’RE MERELY INSANE. THEY STUDIED THE SCIENCE OF ECONOMICS, BUT INSIST ON THINKING IT IS A SOFT SCIENCE WHERE HUMANS CAN CHANGE THE LAWS AT WILL. THEY ARE THE EQUIVALENT OF PHYSICISTS WHO ROUTINELY ABOLISH GRAVITY AND WONDER WHY IT STILL WORKS:  Are Professional Economists Idiots?

These Musicians Moved To A Dying Village, Hoping To Revive It. They Got Caught In The Culture Wars Instead.

“In 1997, a group of German classical musicians moved to the village of Klein Jasedow, a tiny, nearly abandoned hamlet close to the Baltic Sea. The performers were looking to escape the careerist rat race, and hoped to find a place that united community, art, and nature — which they found, along with suspicion, fierce resistance from the locals, and even accusations of witchcraft. Can music bridge the divides between people? A report from an ongoing cultural experiment.” – VAN 

 The Gift of the Magi
… they had the intelligence to examine honestly the clues the world offered them. They had the wisdom to seek the truth for its own sake, whatever it might prove to be. These are believers in the mind, in other words, who undertook a great expedition because they trusted their thoughts, conjectures, and hypotheses—and refused to shake themselves back into the small thoughts of ordinary life.

And they didn't shape the evidence to fit an ideology.

The Future Of Entertainment: 10-Minute Shows On Your Phone?

Yup. A startup called Quibi has raised $1 billion in investment capital from every major Hollywood studio and most of the major tech companies. It has corralled an A-list tsunami to make programs—Steven Spielberg, Steven Soderbergh, Guillermo del Toro, Anna Kendrick, Zac Efron, Chrissy Teigen, Jennifer Lopez, Antoine Fuqua, Sam Raimi, Catherine Hardwicke, Idris Elba, Kevin Hart, Lena Waithe, NBC News, ESPN, BBC. The whole thing launches in April with a year of advertisements already sold. – Wired

How microrobots will fix our roads and save us billions

THAT SCRATCHING SOUND: It’s swarms of microrobots scuttling along beneath roads and footpaths, finding & fixing leaky pipes and faulty cables.

Ten poetry books that illuminate a decade’s struggles – People's World


Four actual Wonder Women discovered in ancient tombs in Russia Inverse  

Privacy experts have described as “very dangerous” revelations an Australian entrepreneur has developed facial recognition technology that is being used by US law enforcement agencies, allowing surveillance images to identify suspects by matching their social media profiles.

Australian police using face recognition software as privacy experts issue warning

Here’s what Australian startup founders are expecting to see in tech in 2020

The New York Times reported on Sunday that Hoan Ton-That - an Australian developer and one-time model - has developed a facial recognition app that allows a user to take a picture of a person, upload it and get to see public photos of that person along with links to where those photos appeared. It noted the development may “end privacy as we know it”.

THCP: A newly discovered, potentially more potent, cannabis compound New Atlas  

The case for … making low-tech ‘dumb’ cities instead of ‘smart’ ones Guardian. Important and interesting. 

Mold, foundation cracks, sinking houses: How a Florida Habitat for Humanity neighborhood fell apart Scalawag 

LIFE IN 2020: ‘OK, Boomer’ makes a Supreme Court appearance in age case.