Linky Friday: Wherever I May Roam
For always roaming with a hungry heart. – Alfred Lord Tennyson
Wherever I May Roam:
[Ro1] At any point in life, people spend their time in 25 places
[Ro2] “Free Range Parenting” has reached the legislative portion of it’s movement.
[Ro3] Ten places horses still roam freely that you can see in North America. I’ll personally vouch for Corolla in the Outer Banks, one of the most amazing things in nature-watching free horses on pristine sea shore.
[Ro4] It isn’t Star Treks holodeck, yet, but free-roaming VR gaming is sure trying. Only bad news, you have to go to Macau to enjoy it.
[Ro5] “Free to move about the cabin,” takes on new meaning with Emirates introducing in-flight VR options.
[Ro6] Roaming people are the bread and butter of the travel and hospitality industry, but like seemingly everything else these days, politics is making a mess of things.
[Ro7] There has been so much migration to Liberal, Kansas (no, that’s not a pun or joke set up) that the demographics change is affecting the accents of locals.
[Ro8] This is a neat way to do it: Visualizing 200 years of US immigration as if it were rings in a tree
[Ro9] The elephant in the room regarding zoning issues when trying to run a Renaissance Festival 50 feet to the wrong side of a line. Elephant is supposed to know which part of the land is zoned, apparently.
Only Knowledge Will I Save
[Kn1] Artist turns deconsecrated church into a permanent, giant (49kg brass ball on 29M cable) Foucault pendulum.
[Kn2] First they marched on Washington, now the Juggalos apparently have the key to defeating the surveillance state.
[Kn3] This is one of the best practical research ideas I’ve seen in a long time: Archivist in a Backpack project from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill equips community partners with tools to start material and oral history archives.
[Kn4] “Deep Learning” is going from theorem in academia to adaptation with companies. Sounds easier than it is, and still plenty of questions about just how much human input is required to ” always act ethically when building any machine learning system.”
[Kn5] As knowledge apps begin to go premium fee-based, how about the original multi-source streaming service that is still free, your local library?
[Kn6] Mom always claimed it did but now there is evidence that piano practice does indeed make a kids smarter, especially in linguistic agility.
[Kn07] Leading scientist in their fields talk about the importance of their “other” passions and how broad interests are important for keeping a mental edge. Everything from sowing, comic book artist, martial arts, gardening, woodworking, model aircraft, cooking and more.
Off the Beaten Path I Reign
[Re1] Japanese “naked hermit” had a perfect end of life plan going for 29 years till the government got involved.
[Re2] Fukushima became a “nuclear ghost town”, but perhaps even more amazing than the scenes straight out of an apocalypse movie, there has been zero looting.
[Re3] Feeling adventurous? Here are some of the last unexplored places on Earth, if you can get to them.
[Re4] Indigenous peoples have always been vulnerable to diseases by outsiders, but this remote tribe in Brazil ran into Venezuela refugees that brought a measles outbreak.
[Re5] Wildness, Wilderness, and government definitions that mark the difference.
[Re5] When it comes to wild and protected areas, designating them as such doesn’t mean they are better off.
[Re6] Want to get away from it all? Prison Inside Me meditation center will treat you to the solitary regime for the low, low, price of $450 a week (travel to Korea not included).
[Re7] 90% of the US population lives on 15% of the land. Break up the population density by time zone, nearly half live in EST while only 6% live in MST. So if its space you’re looking for, “Go west, young man.” even though that famous phrase is probably apocryphal.
In bed in Antartica, 1910s
Where I Lay My Head is Home
[Ho1] Amazon Key delivered to you car, now it wants to just let itself in your home subject to user agreement, of course.
[Ho2] The wives and children left in the wake of the ISIS collapse are caught between countries, without a home, and with no plan as to what should be done with them.
[Ho3] A delegation of Republican lawmakers weren’t home for the 4th of July holiday, which wouldn’t be a thing except they were in Russia instead.
[Ho4] Homes in San Francisco are notoriously expensive, and the “look what this place went for” is practically it’s own thing now, but $2 million for a burned out drug den in Castro is still eye catching.
[Ho5] There are different videos of how to do this floating around, but at least one family in France has moved into a “3D Printed” house, and many are hoping it’s a sign for future social housing issues.
[Ho6] A lot of people conflate the two but important differences between refugees and immigrants in terminology, legal status, and how to address those problems.
[Ho7] Boomers are all about #vanlife in Portland and elsewhere
[Ho8] Meanwhile Millennials love them some RV’s.
Ro7: Until I watched the video clip, I thought that the a in hat and hand was supposed to be pronounced the same way. The thing is, I don’t think anyone outside america pronounces the two differently. The interesting question is how the different pronunciation developed in America but not elsewhere.Report
I was about to say that I do say them the same. But then I experimented with starting to say one and sort of morphing it to the other and it does indeed differ a bit. I think its more elongated in hand, like the mouth is preparing for the “n”. I love linguistics.Report
I’ve always been fascinated by accents. My own West Virginia version has softened quite a bit over the years (especially after years of living in Europe for some reason) but it is still there. Despite the mockery I will continue to pronounce color, hollar, y’all, Appalachian, and yonder the appropriate way, as my forebearers did.
It’s interesting, we were talking the other day about how other languages have their regional dialects, but with America being such a “young” country and a melting pot there really is a uniquely, complex American twist to how we as a people have developed regional accents.Report
For our SF Bay area folks, that featured picture from the linky Friday post might be some historical interest to you…Report
Seth Grossman, the Republican nominee in NJ-2, is evidently an extraordinarily classy sort of guy, with a wide range of good and normal opinions. This is one of the milder ones:
Unlike some of the other races where the GOP has nominated repellent assholes, this is an open seat, in a currently GOP-held district, and the race in November is probably going to be competitive. One would like to think that the fact that this guy is a grotesque bigot will limit his ability to win an election, but that has not been a very reliable line of defense of late.Report
So, as this is about “roaming” and there is an article about Boomers in Vans at Ho7, may I present my mother. She and her husband have logged around half a million miles I think on four, about to be five, continents. They have literally driven it to Iceland, Tierra Del Fuego, with future plans to drive from Vladivostok back to England, which they have driven multiple times. They are currently shipping the tiny RV from Australia to Africa, with the plan being to drive it up the length of the continent. They elected to retire (2001) to this tiny life, spending virtually every second together.
You can read about it here.Report
I’m in awe, because this is so awesome. May we all fulfill so much of life’s promise.Report
How the hell do you drive something to Iceland?Report
Take a ferry to the Farrow Islands, drive to the other side of the island and take another ferry. It sounds silly, but that is what they did.Report
Oh, I figured you meant something like that; I just found the mental image of an amphibious RV amusing. And your mom’s retirement sounds amazing. Much jealousy.Report
An amphibious RV rated for ocean travel would be… interesting.
That said, if you just want to tool around a lake.Report
You send me two other links but keep that one to yourself? How dare you sir…I’m Kidding. What an amazing story, love it, What a wonderful way to live life. Thank you for sharing that.Report
Ho4: It’s not the homes that are expensive, it’s the land underneath them; it’s the location, location, location. So in a situation like this the actual structure can have negligible, or even negative, value and the package of land+house have substantial value.Report
Indeed, and when one thinks of the historic nature of the Castro in the LGBT community, it is little wonder that the price rose so high.Report
Ro7: Interesting, maybe apocryphal, story about Liberal, Kansas. What I was given to understand was that the original town charter forbade churches within the city limits.Report
Ho4: Road Scholar is right here. Land is expensive in the Bay Area and other major metros for a variety of reasons. In Manhattan and SF proper, there is a natural limit to the amount of land around unless you want to tear up the parks.
But the regulatory policies of the surrounding areas are much, much worse and add to the problem. In March, I went to a winery event in Livermore. Livermore is a town of 90K or so people 46 miles outside of SF. There were a lot of really angry old people with signs like “Listen to your constituents” and “Build parking. Not housing.”
Quite frankly, too many Americans have their wealth in home equity and they are willing to sell out and damn their children and grandchildren to maintain this wealth and equity. There is probably no good solution to this until a massive die off of boomers. So Palo Alto people say “Move to Livermore” and Livermore people say “Get the hell out of here.”
I’d say the situation is untenable but it seems quite tenable so far.Report
It’s not really “a variety of reasons”. There’s a basic dynamic to ground rents, aka land values, that’s been understood since Smith and Ricardo and the French Physiocrats. The regulatory issues exacerbate the problem but housing is fated to be expensive in desirable locations regardless.
Quite frankly, too many Americans have their wealth in home equity and they are willing to sell out and damn their children and grandchildren to maintain this wealth and equity.
Ding, ding, ding, ding! The fundamental issue arises from the unearned wealth accruing to the ownership of land. There’s a solution that’s been known for some time but implementation at the local level is practically impossible for the politics you cite.
There is probably no good solution to this until a massive die off of boomers.
Why do you believe younger generations would behave any differently? This dynamic has been in play for as long as fee simple land titles have existed.Report
I gotta agree with the rejection of generational warfare. This isn’t a problem with a particular generation.Report
TBH, I find this whole business of naming “generations” rather silly, like we’re massive cohorts of cicadas emerging from the earth every 17 years. According to the “official” definitions I’m a (late) member of the BB generation, but so is my sister 16 years my senior. And our lived experiences couldn’t be more different – socially, economically, technologically… everything.
That being said, I think there’s some purchase to noting the common experiences of people born in certain time frames. But I believe that sort of thing needs to be more fine-grained and certainly can’t be reduced to this weird decadal essentialism.Report
@road-scholar
The thing is that the situation we find ourselves in isn’t exactly what Ricardo et. al. had in mind. The early economists were worried about agricultural land becoming ever more expensive, and that didn’t happen, so I don’t think we’re dealing with some kind of inevitable phenomenon here.
I also agree this isn’t really about generations, this is an insider-outsider problem, it’s just older people have had more time to become insiders.Report
[Ho3] I sort of hate living in a time where I have to give reasonable consideration to ideas that seem like they are straight out of conspiracy theories. Corker’s remarks here make me think that there were things going on with this trip that are not reported at all to the public. I recall that when Corker announced his retirement from the Senate last year, he said something like the next 15 months were going to be the most important of his Senate career. Also, Huntsman never seemed like a crazy person.
What is going on here?Report
It is weird is heck how contemptuous the russians quoted in that piece are. They aren’t being diplomatic or even acting like they care about good relations. I doubt there is anything more than a bunch of R pols trying to suck up and being duped but it’s a weird time we live in. That is for sure.Report
That’s because they are assuming “channel separation”. They are speaking, probably in the Russian language, on Russian media, for the consumption of Russian citizens and voters. Advertisers, corporate PR, and politicians do this sort of thing all the time.
If they were speaking to US media, it would sound much different.Report
I just finished Kill All Normies, which is one of the most aggravatingly half-baked books I’ve read in a very long time. There are some very persuasive bits, and some very unpersuasive bits, but there’s also just a lot of disorganization, some bits segue from perceptive analysis to just laundry lists of bad actors [1], and I think she makes some of the customary mistakes in overestimating the importance of social justice activists on college campuses and, um, Tumblr.
I admit I kinda don’t get the Tumblr thing.
ISTR elsewhere seeing her say that one of the problems with the alt-right is that it inflames the left, which becomes more heated and obnoxious as a counter-reaction. That’s an interesting point, but one which goes largely unexplored here.
On the other hand, I’ve seen a lot of people say she’s too sympathetic to the alt-right and, well, no. She focuses more on their misogyny than their racism and anti-semitism, and I think infers a good deal too much about the level of homophobia on the alt-right into their acceptance of Milo.[2] But she has no love for either the alt-right or chan culture and it’s screamingly obvious.
Anyway, I’d say the book is well worth reading if you’re interested in such things, but there are severe problems with it.
[1] Mostly on the alt-right, some on the left.
[2] The book is astoundingly bad on the subject of transphobia. There’s no mention of transphobia in the book all, except for dudgeon over the fact that trans activists in the UK protested Germaine Greer for being a TERF. Ugh.Report
Good set of links. Probably spend the weekend digging through them all.Report
Thank you Oscar, we aim to please.Report
Kn1: I love Foucault Pendulums. I read a history of the first one long ago.Report
My favorite I’ve seen, which drew me to the article, was actually in a church albeit on a smaller scale. My daughter was on a field trip to Haarlem, NE, and the St Bavo cathedral, which is spectacular in its own right with wooden vaults and one of the finest organs in the world. But they had a demonstration where they had set up a Foucault pendulum in the nave which was quite amazing. A good memory and would be interesting on the scale this guy did it.Report
Kn6: I would assume one could expand this to any musical instrument, since the underlying mechanism appears to be understanding music and being able to listen for the correct notes. Piano playing adds an element of hand-eye coordination and muscle memory that playing, say, a French Horn, but the horn presents different challenges (your ear has to be really good for the tones, and there is embouchure and breath control, etc.) .
Kn7: Duh. All work and no play; brains need to shift gears; mind body link (physical activity improves mental activity); etc. I love my work, but I still need to blow shit up in a video game, go swimming, go hiking, play Lego’s with the kid, do some wood working, plant a garden, etc.Report