Monthly Archives: August 2018

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People aren’t welcome in cities, and governments and planners seem to do everything they can to drive them off.  This civic misanthropy has reigned since the 1970′s, and it is a turn against liberty and against the ancient concept of “the freedom of the city.” This pernicious thinking follows when city officials stop thinking like civic officers and start thinking like corporations.  In this crabbed view of the polis, anybody in the city  who isn’t spending money right here, right now. is but a nuisance at best, and a source of trouble or even danger at worst. They must be shooed away from everywhere, as if they were prowling raccoons.

“The Law, in its infinite majesty, forbids rich and poor alike, from sleeping under bridges.”

Hostile architecture: an uncomfortable urban art – in pictures

There’s water in a lake, water in a river,
Water in the deep blue sea.
But water in a rock – Lord! That’s a miracle!
Who’s got the miracle? We!

There’s water that you part; water that you walk on;
Water that you turn to wine.
But water from a rock? Lord! That’s a 
miracle truly divine.

Stephen Sondheim, “The Miracle Song” from Anyone Can Whistle

The water on Venus got lost slowly,” he said. “The CO2 built up. There was no way to take it out of the atmosphere. It gets hotter. The fact that it gets hotter makes it even hotter. Which makes it even hotter. That’s what would happen in the collapse model. Planets have minds of their own. They are super-complex systems. Once you get the ball rolling down the hill. … This is the greatest fear. This is why we don’t want to go past 2 degrees [Celsius] of climate change. We’re scared that once you get past 2 degrees, the planet’s own internal mechanisms kick in. The population comes down like a stone. A complete collapse. You lose the civilization entirely.

Adam Frank, quoted by Chris Hedges on Truthdig.