Linkworld: A Brutal World
Cities:
Photo by DVIDSHUB 
[Ci2] A lot of what we do is driven by a desire to avoid poor people.
[Ci3] Michael Goebel explains the importance (or profoundness) of urbanization in human history.
[Ci4] World cities mashup.
[Ci5] This is such an incredibly New York City story.
[Ci6] According to Michael Hobbes, our housing woes have spread from San Francisco to Boise. But if housing isn’t affordable, what is even the point of having a Kansas City?
[Ci7] Baghdad is apparently becoming a happening place.
Jobs:
Photo by kodiax2
[Jo2] A different kind of cheerleader.
[Jo3] Is being agreeable helpful or hurtful to your career prospects? Well, depends on whether we’re talking about the US or Japan.
[Jo4] It makes sense for Silicon Valley and Seattle to be the major leagues with some of these towns as the minors.
[Jo5] When blue collars flee a city, white collars may not be far behind.
[Jo6] I thought Minneapolis should have been a front-runner for Amazon, but apparently they were really worried about employee recruitment.
Violence:
Photo by Swedish National Heritage Board
[Vi2] An interesting discovery about a bloody, bloody massacre in Sweden.
[Vi3] Feral pigs in Australia can drink us all under the table.
[Vi4] Kristina Killgrove explains how climate change affected the outcome of ancient wars.
[Vi5] Fascinating: The US’s first air force goes back to the Civil War.
Immigration:
Photo by Dimitris Graffin
[Im2] ICE has difficulty telling kids from adults and are relyuing on some dubious methodology.
[Im3] Teachers in Arizona are upset that school districts are bringing in immigrants to work for wages they don’t want to work for.
[Im4] The drop in student visas is real.
[Im5] NPR looks at Hungary’s xenophobia problem.
[Im6] I consider most immigration issues to be more complicated than both sides often make them out to be, but not birthright citizenship.
More:
Photo by Nick Kenrick..
[Mo2] The importance of colonialism in Africa is, according to one study, receding.
[Mo3] Nikresh Shukla explains that no colonialism was not good.
[Mo4] Is Israel making inroads with South America?
[Mo5] Themyscira born!
[Mo6] Neat: An Etymological map of Mexico.
[Mo7] Iceland loves its elves. I choose to find it charming, and as with Tamara Winter it speaks to the importance of national mythology.
[Mo8] Some lawyers in Quebec are attempting to invalidate its laws. All of them.
[Mo3] “The student is not alone in his ignorance. As a country, we are woefully uneducated about the realities of the British Empire. . . . I find it troubling that the British Empire is credited with ending the transatlantic slave trade, something it started.”
The British Empire did not start the transatlantic slave trade, that would be the Portuguese, and the British Empire is not credited merely with ending that, but being most responsible for the end of de jure slavery in both the Old and New World as well.Report
The transatlantic slave trade existed for over a hundred years before the United Kingdom managed to get a foothold on the New World, let alone import slaves to it.
Whether the world would be a better place or not without the era of imperialism is a very difficult question to answer. It would certainly be a very different place. I think you can make a good faith argument that without colonialism, most humans would be living in very traditional and hierarchical societies. The anti-colonialists never seem to explain how liberal and modern technology would spread without free trade, and many of them are trade skeptics to. The Indian subcontinent could easily be split into several Hindu and Muslim kingdoms rather than three republics.Report
Yeah, I agree with this, and am reluctant to be tricked into the pro-colonial position, but it would be a good debate topic in that one could marshal facts on both sides.Report
Colonialism was clearly not a good thing. Many atrocities were committed under its name like King Leopold II’s regime of thievery and murder in the Congo. At the same time, the best I can say for a world without colonialism is that it would be different but not necessarily better. I can see it being worse in many ways from a small or big l liberal point of view. Many anti-colonialist argue that without colonialism, indigenous societies would modernize on their own terms like Meiji Japan. Others really seem to argue that but for colonialism, leftist utopianism.
I’m not seeing this. Lots of non-European countries and empires attempted Meiji style modernization and failed because of internal and external forces. Ethiopia managed to avoid being conquered but the Ethiopian elite decided not to go the entire way to modernization because it suited them. The Meiji state wasn’t exactly a beacon of liberal values but it was more based on Prussia’s bureaucratic government. I’m guessing that Ethiopia is going to be more common than Meiji Japan. Meiji Japan will be more common than liberal democracy.Report
[Jo1] the bus drivers were still picking people up – they just weren’t accepting their money. Free rides for everyone. A brilliant move, really. The transit authority was the one done out of fare revenues; they could have ordered the drivers to stop but then they’d really be the villains.Report
Thanks for the correction!Report
[Ci6] & [Ci7] Waiting for the stories about how the San Francisco housing crisis has reached Baghdad.
[Im1] This is exactly the sort of story that drives antipathy towards immigration enforcement, and support for sanctuary cities and similar policies.Report
There was something similar happening in Kabul at the height of the US presence (circa 2010). Between expatriates re-entering the country, rural residents migrating to the city, and money flowing into the capital (and into people’s pockets) from all the contract services, numerous new exclusive developments were built around the city center while the poor people accumulated in ad-hoc shanty towns around the periphery.Report
Im1: The definition of a dick move.Report
Ci2: And in America, poor people comes with a heavily racial component. This makes matters more complicated. The automobile-centric, strictly zoned suburb that emphasizes single-family homes on generous lots is a real effective way to exclude poor people.
Ci6: I’m not surprised. Out-ring suburbs in the Bay Area are also fighting new housing. The housing crisis is a political crisis. It probably won’t be solved until enough boomers die to prevent construction at the lower level or when a solution can be imposed from above.
Im2: ICE is an entirely dubious political identity that exists to inflict pain and suffering. Its not surprising that their methodology used to distinguish between children and adults is equally dubious.
Im3: Its rich that xenophobic Arizona is using immigrants to bust citizen labor.
Im5: The entire debate is on the relationship between culture and nationality. Many countries like Japan, the Koreas, Israel, Iran, Hungary, and France like to emphasize that they have a particular culture and want the citizens of the nation to embrace this. The wariness about immigrants in general, and Muslim immigrants in particular, is that they will not embrace the national culture and might even hate it and speak against it.
Im6: This is horribly unjust.Report
Ci1-
Michael Siegel’s great piece on path dependence notwithstanding, this is the worst argument for maintaining brutalism I’ve ever seen. Built in an era of cheap energy (which people thought was going to get even cheaper) they are for the most part, the Anti-LEED
Ci4 – in Bang York one *does* get their kicks below the waistline.
Jo4 – To consider Portland OR a minor league tech hub on par with Wilmington and Columbus is an odd categorization. Portland ME maybe.
Mo6 – some of their explanations are not merely disputed, they are also not the most likely explanation for the origin
Mo8 – I am surprised Canadian law is structured like this. I thought official bilingualism was only at the federal level and in the province of New Brunswick. .Report
[C16] What’s the point of having a Kansas City? Well I’ve heard they have some crazy little women there and it’s possible to get you one.Report
[Ci2] : (From Link) …Studies have shown that integrated learning environments are beneficial for children of disadvantaged households and do no harm to children whose families have higher incomes.
This seems doubtful (and I’ve never heard it). Are they’re defining “do no harm” to mean something very different than “reach their full potential”?Report
[Im3]: But critics argue the teachers are being taken advantage of in a practice that helps keep wages low and perpetuates yearslong austerity policies.
It’s not “austerity” if the gov is spending more money. Part of what is preventing Teachers from being paid more is the gov’s resources are being squeezed by unfunded pensions and other entitlements.
In a way it’s clever. If we’re going to insist on both high gov services and low taxes, then the gov needs to be creative on how it does things.Report
They have John Goodman doing an ASMR commercial for McDonald’s.
We deserve whatever is coming.Report
If you must have a video featuring a burger (that coincidentally happens to have a ton of ASMR triggers), please enjoy this one starring Andy Warhol.Report
ASMR?Report
I don’t really get it either.Report
It’s a thing. I don’t know what else to say but that it’s a thing.Report
Tamara Winter’s observation on the importance of national mythology relates to Im5. The immigration skeptic argument is that they oppose immigrants because immigrants are unlikely to fully buy into national mythology. A non-European or even a European immigrant to Iceland is unlikely to take up belief in elves. I think that this is a dumb reason to limit immigration. It also shows that national mythology can serve as a big double edged sword. It can divide and exclude as easily as it can unite. This is true even when dealing with citizens. Leftists have been generally treated with disdain for not fully buying American mythology.Report