The UK

The parks are appealingly unkempt and some of them contain this beautiful woman.

Genuinely charming anti-vax sticker

Post offices are underground, and you can still send telegraphs

Watch out for the paint

An interesting axis on which to consider culture.

One of the most important aspects of culture that we take for granted is our social norms. We follow norms constantly. And we rarely recognize how much we need norms: social norms are the glue that keep us together, they give us our identity and help us to coordinate and cooperate at such a remarkable level. What’s more, social norms are the key that unlocks societal order, and even the possibility of constructing a human society. If people didn’t abide by socially expected rules, their behavior would be unbearably unpredictable. We wouldn’t be able to coordinate our actions to do most anything—from getting place-to-place to having meaningful conversations to running schools, organizations, and our governments.

But my research has shown that some groups have much stronger norms than others; they’re tight. Others have much weaker norms; they’re loose. Of course, all cultures have areas in which they are tight and loose—but cultures vary in the degree to which they emphasize norms and compliance with them. Since I got my Ph.D. in cross-cultural psychology, I’ve been studying tight-loose cultures in over a hundred groups, and I’ve discovered that this distinction can help us understand differences across nations, states, organizations, and social classes, and even our own households. It’s what I call a “fractal pattern” of culture. Remarkably, tight-loose has a very similar pattern in terms of its antecedents and consequences across different levels. Tight-loose also causes a lot of conflict, but once we understand its logic, we cultivate greater cultural empathy and manage our divides more constructively.

https://behavioralscientist.org/tight-and-loose-cultures-a-conversation-with-michele-gelfand/

A lovely little short story from 1989.

“Have you ever heard of Singularity?” he asked.

She shook her head. “What’s that?”

“Singularity is a time in the future. It’ll occur when the rate of change of technology is very great–so great that the effort to keep up with the change will overwhelm us. People will face a whole new set of problems that we can’t even imagine.” A look of great tranquility smoothed the ridges around his eyes. “On the other hand, all our normal, day to day problems fade away. For example, you’ll be immortal.”

She shook her head with distaste. “I don’t want to live forever,” she said.

He smiled, his eyes twinkling. “Of course you do, you just don’t know it yet.”

http://skyhunter.com/marcs/GentleSeduction.html

Asking some very tough questions about school.

Most of these are the kinds of facts that I would expect school to teach people. Some of them (eg the branches of government) are the foundations of whole subjects, facts that I would expect to get reviewed and built upon many times during a student’s career. If most people don’t remember them, there seems to be little hope that they remember basically anything from school. So what’s school even doing?

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/a-theoretical-case-against-education

…imagine there’s a drug that will quash your love of online shopping. Should you take it?

According to philosophers who study decision-making, our ability to make that choice rationally depends on whether the change is “transformational”—that is, on how deeply it affects our underlying preferences. We are what we want; our preferences define who we are. When we deliberate over a choice, whether it’s between cereal boxes or life partners, we weigh our options against our current preferences, and we try to imagine which outcome will make us happiest. But when faced with decisions that have the potential to transform those very preferences, we’re necessarily at a loss. Which set of preferences should serve as the basis for making the choice?

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/ozempic-reshaping-desire-since-2023

I’ve been a fan of David Pearce’s work for many years; I’m glad to see it getting more attention.

There’s more to life than just not being in pain. There’s love, family, beauty, knowledge, community, etc. But there’s also more to life than having money. And most of us realize that very poor people struggling to put food in their mouths can’t fully enjoy love, family, beauty, etc. The world is on fire, and although some of us live on nice little islands of bearability, it’s hard to enjoy them when you can look just off your island and see everyone else on fire. If the fires got put out, maybe we could enjoy the other stuff more whole-heartedly instead of always looking over our shoulder at a world full of endless misery.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/profile-the-far-out-initiative

This is probably the first Brutalist architecture I’ve ever liked, and I’m actually surprised that it qualifies.

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/04/jamie-mcgregor-smith-sacred-modernity/

https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/157210818652/the-orgin-and-constraints-of-shitgibbon

Shitgibbon frequencies

A fairly charming list. I agree with maybe 75% and am unsure about another 15%.

https://dynomight.net/things/

Predictably, not everyone has been happy about it. Critics have included local planners, politicians and, especially, residents of Kitsilano Point, a rarified beachfront neighbourhood bordering the reserve. And there’s been an extra edge to their critiques that’s gone beyond standard-issue NIMBYism about too-tall buildings and preserving neighbourhood character. There’s also been a persistent sense of disbelief that Indigenous people could be responsible for this futuristic version of urban living. In 2022, Gordon Price, a prominent Vancouver urban planner and a former city councillor, told Gitxsan reporter Angela Sterritt, “When you’re building 30, 40-storey high rises out of concrete, there’s a big gap between that and an Indigenous way of building.” 

https://macleans.ca/society/sen%cc%93a%e1%b8%b5w-vancouver/