So I agree with like 70% of these podcasts. I learn something new and have my mind changed by like 29% of these podcasts. And I think Katie and Jesse are elitist Coaster a-holes in 1% of these podcasts.
Like talking about 15 minute cities. Yeah, urban planning is awesome and if I could afford a home in a 15 minute city that wasn't full of filth and tents lining the streets, it would be amazing. But it also doesn't account for the reality of the vast majority of the physical area of this country that houses the farms and manufacturing and energy facilities that make the high density coastal cities run.
There is a significant amount of infrastructure that needs to be put in place before the whole world can live in these types of cities and who is going to pay for that to make it fair for everyone? My husband and I just moved from Seattle because I am an electrical engineer, my husband is retired, we were carless, and we could barely afford our rent for our tiny apartment in downtown. I watched the tent cities grow on a daily basis on my walk to work. How does homelessness fit into a 15 minute city?
And seriously, is Marin County going to make itself a 15 minute city? Not a chance. Are millionaires and billionaires going to give up there New Zealand emergency bunkers. No. This is a program to separate classes. It's like toll roads, reduce congestion for the people who can afford it. It's divisive. It's watching private jets go to Davos while we are told we shouldn't use our cars.
Yes there is some far out coverage, but the Great Reset, when you stop and really look at it, is pretty freaking weird and dystopian without a real plan to address the issues that are detracting from the existing 15 minute cities.
"I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!" kept playing in my head as I listened to the 15 minute cities segment. For someone who's a Pervert For Nuance, Jesse dismissed the entire matter as the fault of Right-Wing Conspiracy Theorists. Listening to the British councilwoman, she seemed a bit worked up, but everything she said seemed accurate according to what J&K discussed. Same with Brita Thunburg, who expressed the same concerns that Katie mentioned minutes later. These is definitely one of those 1% of segments where it had me wondering what I was listening to.
I agree. I would hate to live in a super-managed "15 minute city,"
I understand the argument for "congestion pricing" for driving into certain parts of a handful of dense first-class cities with good mass transit alternatives. New York, London, Paris, Tokyo. But not for every little city and town across the country.
I'd also understand the arguments for "slow streets" and pedestrian-only main streets to encourage a more walkable city.
But I would not want to live in a typical suburban region and have to worry about managing my trips in and out so as not to run over the "free" limit. I also think it's unworkable in practice. No doubt they'll start giving special passes to--for example--parents of special needs kids who may need to drive their kids to a special school. Then they'll give passes to people who need to see a medical specialist who is out of area. Pretty soon, a good chunk of the population will have some sort of special "free trip" pass making the rest of the people feel like suckers. It would be a horrible hellscape, and in the end, just another tax for the government to wastefully spend.
I have No Idea why Katie loves the idea so much, and why Jesse didn't push back. If this was the first episode of BAR I heard, I'd never listen again.
The most reasonable expectation based on how UK politicians behaved during the 2020 lockdowns is not just that they would issue special passes but that the punitive rules would be applied with extreme and unyielding rigidity to the plebes while the governing class would consider itself free to do wheelies in the pedestrian zones.
Exactly, I'm not eager to make myself a sitting duck for this kind of scenario. The threshold for what people will demand in the name of "safety" only gets lower. It's not right-wing conspiracy theorizing to envision and be concerned about this.
Yeah. The idea is fine. An experiment. Maybe it'll be voted down. Looks that way.
The problem: EVERY attempt to change / influence / nudge / FORCE business and society to stop destroying this planet will be met with this charge. That's obviously happening now. This is Q-Anon levels of bozo conspiracy mongering and shouldn't be given credence. This is not a sneaky first step to creating a hellscape. It's not crazy or Fascistic! to want to decrease the number of cars on the road. I want that.
Fuck cars, fuck suburbs. They’re bad for people and bad for the environment and if you’re a car junky who is so dependent that they cannot imagine a world without, I invite you to consider how much better the back half of your life will be if you don’t become so unfit you’re totally dependent.
Before I got my car in Chicago, I had to take public transport to work. Sometimes I would bike the 10 miles to the hospital. Taking public transport meant transfers, and my commute took about 1 1/2 hours each way, with walking in between. Often I had safety concerns, because I worked night shifts. When I got my car, it meant joyful freedom. My commute went down to 25 minutes. I didn't have to be scared taking a bus at 11: 00 pm in bad neighborhood anymore.
I take a road trip to Michigan every three weeks or so to see my mom. And It's fun, and I don't feel guilty.
I had a pretty similar life in Chicago, and I'm so glad I moved to the suburbs. I also have kids whose lives are much better in the burbs than they were in the city.
I hear you- but what is the average person's carbon footprint compared to the Davos people who want this thing? Private planes, multiple homes? And if most cars end up being electric in the not to distant future, then what are we worried about that for?
Yes and no. I read estimates that there are currently 1 Billion cars on Planet Earth. We cannot move to a future where there are 1 Billion “clean” electric cars. Why? Because the manufacture of those 1 Billion electric cars will be its own ecological apocalypse. IMHO.
The idea is the brainchild of the Chief Executive not the council, and in the UK experienced Councillors know that fighting with the Chief Exec is a bad idea.
I don't think you've actually followed the 15 minute cities discourse online. Sure there are people like yourself who think that the height of humanity is driving an F150 a minimum of 20 minutes to get anything, but the majority of 15 min city talk is completely unhinged believing that a 15min city is akin to putting people in camps.
I have both a full-size pickup truck and a PHEV and I’d call myself a YIMBY and I also think there are weird coercive-controlling-surveilling aspects to some of this “15 minute city” talk that I don’t like. So make of that what you will, but I don’t think you can easily pigeonhole people on this.
I absolutely love living somewhere walkable and I spent the majority of my adult life car-free by choice til I moved to a city where that wasn't really a choice. Personally I love the idea of living in a 15 minute city in terms of the actual urban planning aspects. Having lived in both walkable cities and places where a car is required I feel that the former is unequivocally superior for my personal happiness, not to mention fitness etc. But I am also a tinfoil hat Snowden acolyte and I cannot consent to the type of surveillance and rules people are talking about here. Surely there must be a way to make cities and towns walkable without doing something like that?! If the walkability and public transit are really that good then people will naturally avoid driving because it's faster and more pleasant to walk or because they want to avoid traffic and having to pay for parking.
You're making some big assumptions here. The one about me driving an F150 (or any kind of truck) is 100% wrong. I suspect that the other about a majority of the discourse being unhinged is similarly incorrect. At a bare minimum, the two audio clips that were in the segment don't support that assertion, but rather were some pretty basic concerns.
Ok sorry, your Chevy Suburban or Nissan Armada. But yes you've confirmed you haven't been following the discourse or know much about urban planning history.
Personal attacks aren't helping your case here. You do realize it's possible to disagree without trying to make the other person some caricature of what you hate?
But Oxford isn't going to be a 15 minute city. You can't get anything built in Oxford, there's not going to be any additional schools, doctors offices, supermarkets within 15 minutes of your home. The only infastructre that will be build is the traffic cameras, because they want the revenue. That guy is still going to be driving 45 minutes to drop his children off at school, and he'll have to make more than 100 trips a year.
I lived in Oxford for several years. It's a medieval city (or older not a historian) so not built for cars. For the most part, getting in and out of the city centre is pretty easy on public transport, but if you're trying to get from one site to the other, you have to take the ring road and it can be a pain in the ass. Also, the way Oxford has build up over time, most smaller areas in the city (Iffley, Jerico, Cowley) have at least some shops and other necessaries. The problem is that the smaller stores like Tesco Express jack up the prices compared to the larger supermarkets.
Something like the 15 minute city could work in Oxford, but I don't think it would be transferrable to more modern cities or the US where everything is built with cards in mind. If it forces the government to invest in more schools, doctor surgeries, and public transport, I'm all for it.
And shire is pronounced more like shure. OxfordSHIRE (like where hobbits live) was making my ear bleed. The shire bit is much softer - Oxfordshure.
1) Nothing is stopping you from living in a suburb.
2) As an American, the World Economic Forum has very little influence over your life. If you're worried about "The Great Reset" even a little bit, you're buying conspiracy garbage. There is no sinister grand plan!
3) Countries around the world manage to have dense, walkable neighborhoods that are safe, comfortable, and affordable. If local jurisdictions in the US and the UK want to try to emulate that, why would you (now a suburbanite!) feel like you should be able to stop them?
4) Why should suburbanites be able to drive their cars downtown for free? They contribute to wear and tear on roads, emit pollution, and make quality of life worse in jurisdictions that they literally don't pay any taxes to. Taxing those vehicle trips is fair! If you're mad that some people can afford the tax and others can't, take it up with our whole freaking economic system.
I think The World Economic Forum hold a fair amount of sway. A large number of current world leaders and politicians were trained under their "Young Global Leaders" program. And they all parrot similar corporatist ideas about how governments must work more closely with global business leaders, and how we must trust experts, and how we need more surveillance and censorship to keep us safe from hate and misinformation.
It's not some paranoid conspiracy theory, it's just pointing out that a large lobby group has some really awful ideas. Much like the Koch brothers.
I am not against congestion tax. I'm not against toll roads. But taxes like these can be regressive depending on how they are implemented, and that isn't fair. I think based on historical trends, capitalism seems to be the most functional type of economic system, but I also think more government regulation could make it more fair so that everyone received a good education and health care and had a decent place to live. Whether in a well-planned 15MC or in the suburbs.
Other countries have the communities you speak of. If the US had thriving, clean, affordable 15 minute cities I would prefer to live there. I'm 100% not trying to stop them, I just don't believe they are going to be executed in a way that is fair and actually improves life for the majority of people. I lived without a car and rarely leaving a 2 mile radius in Seattle, Portland, and SF for most of my adult life. But it did limit my options and my interactions with people who weren't just like me. If I didn't have to care for my ageing mother, I would not be living in Little Rock, AR. BUT I also really like having a little space and being able to take off for hiking in my state parks whenever I want and not paying half my income for rent and not being surrounded by people who agree with me on everything.
I'm also not a conspiracy theorist but there are a lot of things happening that look to be leading to the sort of world the WEF is a proponent of. For example, Bill Gates is the largest private owner of farmland in the US. Doesn't that seem weird? Saying that this will never happen here only works until it happens here. Why not talk it out early?
Relatively, yes, a small percentage, but still the highest acreage of any single person. So yes, for whatever reasons he owns it, it seems weird to me that a software developer is the owner of more farmland than any other single human in the US.
Wait until you find out about the chairman of Liberty Media Corp., John Malone, who owns 2.2 million acres. (According to The Land Report, Bill Gates isn't even in the top ten private landowners.)
Driving a car downtown may not be a "right" but it can have enormous benefits. The converse, which silos people even more than they already are siloed, seems less than ideal.
I was pleased that multiple times after Jesse said "so this is just a right wing conspiracy theory" Katie would go on to say, "well no, there is real truth to what thy are concerned about". Because Jesse doesn't know the details and Katie is openly not concerned about a surveillance state and would trade that surveillance and the risk of control for convenience there was never any actual engagement on the substance of people's concerns.
"Oxford city putting up bollards for the express purpose of making travel more of a pain and literally fining people for leaving their neighborhood too often for the purpose of behavioural control" were stated goals of the city planners there, but was hand waved away as "the city has always enforced where you can and can't drive, roads have yellow lines". As though those are anywhere near equivalent exercises of the city's power.
I'm all for convenient cities, but there are clearly coercive elements being added which are the actual concern, not the presence of corner stores.
The whole idea you have to "make" it a 15 minute city in the first place is sort of bizarre. Cities develop that way because it's convenient for people to get where they need to go quickly and easily. If city councils didn't zone everything in stupidly restrictive ways or mandate massive parking lots everywhere or forbid mid sized development in the first place, then of course business owners would want to set up shop in convenient places where foot traffic is available, and the foot traffic would be there in part because these are places they want to go for things.
We're in a situation where a bunch of mostly-invisible government intervention has massively changed the way cities are laid out, and people look at this situation and say, "Well, what *other* government interventions can we perform to counteract the existing ones?" It's mind boggling to me. Especially as a conservative, since we ought to *prefer* ditching stuff like this. But my own side is convinced concepts like walkability are a progressive conspiracy. And I can hardly blame them when Oxford's solution is petty tyranny and unfit for purpose.
I think 15-minute cities are a fairly sound idea as a rejection of 1970s planning. Back then, they thought "Let's separate the city into large zones of different usage, and people will drive between them on large free-flowing motorways."
Now we've realised it's impossible to build a city around cars. Because they're so space-inefficient, that you end up with endless sprawl, thereby making the city unnavigable except by car, thereby resulting in terrible traffic congestion.
But that will take decades of infrastructure investment to undo. Blocking off roads will not achieve that. Sometimes you can improve a road by blocking off motor-vehicle through-traffic. But it's not a universal solution.
Agree. The problem is we can't trust them after what we've seen them do. Katie said once long ago that she was worried all this "woke shit" was going to become institutionalized - or part of our government. That was one of the things she said that has stuck with me. And she was right. We're at a crossroads now where there is one side that has all the money and power and another side that doesn't have any of it: no money, no education, no power and if they're white, no social prioritizing.
The issue that you leave out is that the cost of the cities is directly related to the policies that prevent 15 minute cities to exist.
That is, it's extremely difficult to build housing in NYC which drives up prices dramatically. Additionally your lovely suburban and exurban neighborhoods cost a fortune to build and maintain.
I think there's still a chance for "urban suburban" areas to do something like that. With the light rail coming in around Seattle finally, many of the outlying areas should be doing this. Building up a mixed use town center with lots of apartments.
I mean, I know what you're talking about in terms of it being a heavy lift for a city like Seattle that frankly sucks. The main thing that bothers me so much about Seattle is the combination of a desire to be a world class city and the unwillingness to make the transitions necessary. Wanting a light rail station without wanting to build apartments as an example.
Reminds me of BART, where it has taken decades to get any kind of housing development at the East Bay stations, even though they reserved plenty of space for parking. And the system keep expanding east even though train capacity had been reached, so you were basically just displacing passengers who lived closer to SF and were more likely to have walked to the station with exurban commuters who always drove.
Now they built a pretty large development on top of Macarthur station in Oakland, but some of the stations in Berkeley etc are still in low rise single-family-home neighborhoods.
Light rail is at least cheaper than a true rapid transit system like BART, but you still want new housing on the route. Otherwise it’s just a gift to existing homeowners on the line.
Awesome! I will check out these links. When I lived in Portland OR I loved the fact that it was so well planned and zoned. Their transportation was out of this world. But it always has such a weird vibe. I know these cities *could* work with the right circumstances and, if we're totally being honest, with a more homogeneous population that all agreed on the same social mores.
I think Toronto has a weird vibe. It seems bland and like their isn't a personality there. Maybe ( probably!) I just haven't been to the right neighborhoods.
*Cries in Torontonian* But you're right though, this city is not particularly well-planned nor do we have much of a personality in the same way Montreal and Vancouver do, but it's a nice place to live.
Perhaps San Francisco's best claim to competence (one of the few) is MUNI.
Honestly, you can get almost anywhere in the City on it. It will take a while and can be an experience (not necessarily one you want) but it is possible.
I lived in SF for two years and loved MUNI except when I was getting rubbed up against by creepers and when it smelled like pee. This was like 20 years ago, pre-downtown tech, and I would not live there again because of how downhill it went. I also spent about 8 yrs in PDX before it's downfall and then 15 yrs in Seattle until COVID and the George Floyd riots destroyed it. Portland is an incredible city with amazing transportation even to the suburbs. But weirdly I got harassed on the streets more there than anywhere else I have ever been in my life.
I have never quite been able to figure out why this is a thing but east coast cities are so much more pleasant than west coast ones, even the grimy/dangerous places like Philly. The level of street harassment is negligible in comparison Seattle or Portland. Why are west coast homeless people so much more unhinged?
I am lucky to live right across from two awesome MUNI lines.
And MUNI IS AWESOME WHEN
+ they are running (they are not 24x7), not delayed, not so full they literally just drive on past, not taking shortcuts that bypass your stop (yes, that happens),
And they certainly do make most journeys take at least 2x if not 3 or 4x.
They are also not great for taking home more than a day's worth of groceries.
I can't recommend MUNI and nothing else to people who aren't prepared to get their groceries on a daily basis, and what does that enormous cost and time suck do to equity?
Are you not taking the bus because of the pandemic? Because I forgot to mention that, that for the first 18 months of the pandemic, I wasn't taking it. It's only recently I've started getting back on to it.
Yeah, pandemic = no bus. No bus = no movie theaters, but pandemic = no movies anyway. It's a city! Literally everything I need to live my day-to-day life is within a mile of me (and I walk three miles a day for health reasons, regardless). Before the pandemic, it was no big deal to take a train to PFA and back, or go to see a nightclub act (hey, Muni *does* run all night, you know), and I expect in a short time I'll be doing all that again. The only thing that's tough is hiking, since all the people who used to drive to trailheads with me have "aged out" of touching rock ... but it's the Bay Area, there's plenty of options a short uber away from some train/bus or another.
I'm sure I'm front running the next episode with this, but at the event last night, Jesse was circulating among attendees and came over to where I was sitting and he approached a young mom who was holding up her toddler son while she introduced herself and him to Jesse. Jesse said hello and something like, Do you know what a podcaster is?
I couldn't help but groan when Jesse corrected Katie for using "he" in reference to Sam Brinton, as she's talking about how he ("allegedly") targeted a Tanzanian fashion designer's to steal her luggage, stole said luggage, stole her custom fashions which were her in part a source of livelihood, and in an act of shameless testicle-swinging wore those stolen custom made fashions at public events.
Why does Katie have to respect an "alleged" criminal's preferred pronouns when after it came out that the "alleged" Club Q shooter is non-binary a large chunk of the Gender Stasi on Twitter denied the guy is "really" non-binary and didn't feel obligated to play along? (It's not about the severity of the crime because when men kill and/or rape women, and go on to say they're "women" to go to women's prisons, the media & the activists — when they exist as separate entities — insist on honoring the pronoun rules.
I've sort of noticed Katie getting more based about the gender stuff, but I also think they're not gonna have an easy time walking things back in the event that they realize the whole pronoun respecting thing is extending way too much benefit of the doubt lmao (and to be clear, I mean in general. Not just in a criminal context)
YES! Jesse is always pronounsplaining Katie! He’ll interrupt and correct her multiple times in one segment about one person which disrupts the flow and makes things confusing - why does he care so much about being 100% perfect on using a person’s preferred pronouns every single time??
I hate it when Katie uses "they" while talking about a known person. If someone is living as a woman, sure, call her "she" even though "she" has an adam's apple and a beard, I don't care. But in trying to refer to Brinton as "they", Katie is just confusing herself and her audience. She constantly interrupts the flow of the pod to correct herself when she forgets to use "they", and when she gets it right, it just makes me have to try harder to understand whether she is referring to Brinton, or to Brinton and someone else, or to another group altogether.
I hate it when Katie uses "they" while talking about a known person. If someone is living as a woman, sure, call her a she even though she has an adam's apple and a beard, I don't care. But in trying to refer to Brinton as "they", Katie is just confusing herself and her audience. She constantly interrupts the flow of the pod to correct herself when she forgets to use "they", and when she gets it right it just makes me have to try harder to understand whether she is referring to Brinton, or to Brinton and someone else, or to another group altogether.
The opposition to 15 min cities is part of a general anti-urbanism that’s increased on the right in the last few years.
I’m pro- the idea, if anything, but the simple truth is lots of mainstream politcians did say during lockdowns that we could expect more of these in the future as climate change bit, and they were dry runs. Lockdowns really did happen in the Uk as elsewhere, and really were characterised by a lot of petty tyranny and senseless cruelty, I think you have to start off by admitting that’s another true fact and that gives substance to peoples paranoia
Yes, I remember when 2 people started a snowball fight in a park in the UK during lockdown, lots of people joined in and had a great time... then the two original snowball throwers were fined £10,000 each for instigating a public gathering during lockdown. I guess I can see why people might be paranoid about restrictions in the light of shitty punitive measures like that
I am sympathetic to this, but the alternative is to let Google do it instead. Most people are still mistrustfully eyeing governments, which in democratic countries have at least taken some effort to set up checks and balances and means of scrutiny. In the meantime, large tech corporations have been amassing citizen data in a far more holistic, real time tracking manner than any government department, and are now in a position to influence urban planning and workplace norms to suit their business plans. None of this seems to inspire any scrutiny on the right in the same way concern about government overreach historically concerned both right and left. I am still trying to work out why.
It seems most likely we'll get the worst of both worlds: government control facilitated by partnerships with big tech companies that shield them from the checks and balances built into our democracy. Exhibit A: Sidewalk Labs (an Alphabet company) and those LinkNYC wifi & phone charging terminals that record everything going on around them, ostensibly for "anti-terrorism" purposes. The government doesn't have the resources or technical expertise to effectively monitor people the way they want to but big tech companies do and they're happy to accept government money. Our government surveillance apparatus is already heavily integrated with companies like Google and Meta in ways most people can't even imagine. Google Maps was originally a startup funded by In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital firm (yes that is a real thing). The more you learn about this stuff the more you realize that we're already living in this exact dystopia, it's just not widely acknowledged yet, probably because the powers that be don't quite understand how to use all that data effectively for coercion (yet).
It seems like activist journalists have a paternalistic, condescending view of what journalism should be: we are right, we tell you what to believe and you will believe it. If readers come to different conclusions it just means that they need to be told the right way to think even harder. If someone never comes around to agreement it is because they are stupid or evil, and their disagreement is an existential threat.
What annoys me the most is when these activist journalists activistsplain science to scientists in that particular field.
Climate scientists have been getting this for years. Scientists who study AGW get called climate change deniers because they push back on the most catastrophic predictions -- its extraoridinarily unlikely that we will hit 8 degrees of warming. There's a decent chance we'll end up just below 2.0 degrees. Or if they push back on the idea that every extreme weather event is a result of AGW. This year's rains in California were typical California weather. There are some weather events that are made worse by climate change, but this one was not. Or yet another piece on how nuclear energy will not not solve climate change because the only true solution is to drastically cut consumption and the actual scientists who ran the numbers on carbon emissions don't know what they're talking about.
I felt bad for all those climate scientists. It was only once Covid hit and activist journalists started distorting my field I started to truly understand what they'd been going through. Nothing like a journalist who a year ago would have given you a blank look if you mentioned the adaptive immune system proclaiming that T cells are a right wing conspiracy theory. Or explaining why anecdotes are a higher quality of evidence than randomized trials but only for certain things.
This is so interesting to me. Can you tell us more about your field and how activist journalists butchered it during covid? I'm very interested in science but very uninterested in anyone who shouts "trust the science!!" and then refuses to accept any scientific evidence that contradicts their ideology. All the actual scientists and medical professionals in my life tend to be orders of magnitude less alarmist and more open minded than the journalists who write about their fields.
I used to work in microbiology and immunology. One of the things that angered me the most was the insistence that post-infection (aka natural) immunity did not occur with this coronavirus. We have four other human coronaviruses and for every one of them, if you get infected, you won't get reinfected for a year or two. You're also pretty well protected against severe disease until you get really old. There was basically zero chance that SARS-COV2 would not be like all the others, especially since people who got classic SARS still have T cells and antibodies that recognize it. It was pretty clear early on in the pandemic that people who had been infected were not getting reinfected very soon after and that's really the most important piece of evidence.
At that time there were also a lot of reports about dropping levels of antibodies and that allegedly meant that immunity had waned. That supposedly meant that post infection immunity didn't exist. Except that that's a typical immune response and they were testing antibodies in the blood and another type of antibody that's found in the mucus is more important in preventing infections.
Most of the reporting made it seem like immunity was just antibodies but T cells are the other arm of the adaptive immune system. THey're probably more important than antibodies for keeping people out of the hospital. It's now clear that they can also abort an infection before it is detectable, probably by killing infected cells before they can produce viral particles. We test for antibodies to a pathogen rather than T cells because it's much easier to detect antibodies for a specific antigen.
We also had a number of journalists (I think Ed Yong was one of them) writing about people who claimed to be suffering from Long COVID who'd never tested positive via PCR and didn't have antibodies against SARS-COV2. (These patients tended to be affluent, highly-educated non-scientists so there was some baseline affinity.) The most likely explanation is that they had something else, but there were a number of articles about how the lack of immune response meant that Long Covid was caused by a lack of immune response. This fed into the idea that post infection immunity sometimes didn't happen.
Once it became undeniable that post-infection immunity did exist, journalists insisted it wasn't as good as vaccine-induced immunity. There are a number of reasons to doubt that: an infection exposes you to all the virus's proteins so the immune system can recognize pieces of all of them. There are features of the mucosal immune response that are unique and being exposed to a pathogen via the nose is going to induce a mucosal immune response while an intramuscular injection is not going to be good at inducing those features. The benefit of getting your immunity from a vaccine over an infection is that you don't get infected. It's a huge benefit if you're 90. If you're 16 whether there's a benefit is within a rounding error.
It really angered me to see journalists insist that post-infection immunity didn't exist and was a dangerous conspiracy theory. Especially when they insulted people who mentioned these basic principles of immunology. There were a lot of highly-educated non-scientists going after experts in immunology.
I think part of this was because journalists didn't want to ask public health officials hard questions because they were experts. I suspect that many public health officials and activist journalists understood that post-infection immunity existed but were worried people would say they'd already had the virus and go about their lives as usual and that would lead to bad things.
When it comes to the "you can get infected and have no adaptive immune response" line I think that was also about the fear that people who thought they'd been infected would go about thier lives as usual. I also think that it had to do with the fact that those long Covid patients were sympathetic to journalists. Many disease activists have pushed the idea that suffering from a particular condition means you know the cause and mechanism of the disease and know what is effective even if scientific studies have found it ineffective. A lot of journalists have bought into that ideology.
Yessssss as a fellow bio person all of this. I don't know if you saw this in your area, but the worst was when actual scientists I know who should have known better started amplifying this stuff. It happened with the lab leak as well.
“just means that they need to be told the right way to think even harder.”
This conflation of imagery got a snorting laugh that I can’t stop, I’m just walking around weirding people out and when asked whats so funny, I can’t, in polite company tell them, which just makes me laugh *even harder* (do you see what you’ve done!?!?)
That is very much the crux of the problem, I think: people who cosplay as journalists who really should just be activists or community organizers or some such. They seem to believe that readers can't be trusted to draw their own conclusions from reported facts because they might come to conclusions different than the journalist themselves.
Reminds me of this one from the San Francisco Chronicle telling people that "Rejecting the use of 'Latinx' is transphobic." Current ratio: 1,393 Comments, 122 Likes (and supposedly 453K views)
Paternalistic because a poll of people with Latin American descent showed only 2% used the term in reference to themselves (in 2019 at least), and 40% found it offensive.
If I am middle class (white collar) on a leafy side-street that is now blocked to through-traffic, that is a win for me. But it is a loss to the poorer residents living on the main road who will now get the extra diverted traffic and pollution. Search “London LTN” on Twitter to see videos made by residents who are suffering from the extra traffic diverted down their roads.
If I work from home at my coding job, I am unlikely to use my 100 permitted car journeys through the controlled checkpoints. If I am a warehouse worker who had to schlep myself to work every morning, my journey time will be increased or I will get fined.
And if you're—say—an electrician or gardener: Well then, screw you and your gross callused fingers. Maybe you should've got a degree in marketing instead.
Yeah, I get there are other ways of doing things, but at the our elites are now incapable of delivering big infrastructure projects quickly at a reasonable cost. If they could lay down tram lines like my Victorian ancestors, then I would have more sympathy for their plans to shut down roads.
You two need to stop worrying about "butchering" people's names, it's not offensive, at least it shouldn't be. If a French or German or Nigerian person pronounces your boring American names wrong, would you care? No. You can't possibly be expected to pronounce all the foreign names of the world.
And if someone has an unusual name that is commonly mispronounced even in their own home country, that is their parent's fault, not anyone else's. Baby naming 101.
Although, to be fair, Katie can't pronounce the name Leah correctly.
I come from a bilingual place and the two native languages don't even pronounce my extremely simple and common name the same. People who take offense to this have almost universally been trained to do so.
When we had twins my husband and they'd been called Baby A and Baby B for two days after their birth, he suggested he name one and I name the other (we had a list of names reflecting his home country in Eastern Europe). I named Baby B and he named Baby A.
I stumbled on Baby A's name for a while but finally nailed it (it's not hard to say but people put the accent on the wrong syllable). When we were new to the Episcopal Church we were attending (not going now) and we were talking to a woman who mispronounced Baby A's name, she looked up and said, with the confidence of Hermione Granger correcting Ron ("it's LeviOsa, not LeviosAA")... at age 5.
Anyways. I hadn't heard this anecdote from Kmele before & it's a good one!
By the standards of Newton MA in the late 70s / early 80s, my name was exotic and unpronounceable. Still remember the sense of dread I felt whenever we'd have a substitute teacher taking attendance, and s/he would stop at my name and hesitate, before completely butchering it. (I started insisting on "Alex" pretty early on.) It never occurred to me to be offended though. What would be the point?
My last name is both unpronounceable and extremely funny to English speakers. Teachers used to get to my name on the list and just call my first name because they didn't even want to try. Best not to let these things give you a persecution complex because they're really not all that important (or unusual)!
I wonder if "woke" (and before that "PC") culture has infiltrated so much that people are literally afraid of mispronouncing a "foreign" name, that they preempt themselves from having to even attempt to say a person's name by saying something like, "I'm sure I'd mispronounce this, so I'll just ask you to say it/spell it"?
I can see how that could mostly be a middle class/PMC worry, but I could also see working/lower class people being afraid of running afoul of the norms of their "social betters".
(I was raised with a solidly middle class ethos, even though it was on a decidedly "blue collar" wage, and I cannot imagine not even being able to *attempt* to say, e.g. "Alejandro".)
It's a double standard as always because if you're white and your name is foreign in a funny way nobody gives a shit about butchering it, trust me! They'll do it gleefully and make lame jokes about it for weeks or even years after meeting you (I let people do this because I know they're enjoying themselves but at this point I've heard 'em all a million times). I have seen people do exactly what you describe for POC, though. It seems like a polite and respectful way to address the situation but the key is to not jump down someone's throat when they don't do that or don't get it right, because it genuinely doesn't fucking matter and most people are just trying their best.
So on the whole Great Reset and 15 minute cities. Two points.
1. I read The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab, the originator of the "Great Reset", a long time ago and have followed his writing since. His writing and ideas are very creepy in its techno utopianism. You really don't have to be very conspiratorial to find his ideas and their popularity to very very worrisome. The conspiracy theorists are off in many of their criticisms, but they are probably not as off as we would hope. No satanic cult, but those who subscribe to his world view see non-elites as widgets to be manipulated and controlled. It is very explicit.
2. There is a bit of a feedback loop where you implement these kind of ill-advised policies. First there is the bad policy, then there is an over the top pushback, and then the defenders embrace the over the top version of the idea. This leads to the critics going ever further in their criticism until you reach very absurd places. This happened with a lot of covid policies and seems to become a bigger and bigger part of public policy. Both the left and the right can be on either side. It is all just tribalism, but it is really damaging to the polity and the possibility of good policy.
Yeah. I think it's reasonable to argue that the WEF don't actually have much power.
But the conspiracy theorists don't seem completely off-base in their characterisation of the WEF's ideas. You only have to dig just below the shiny optimistic branding, and there's a clear pattern of extreme authoritarianism. I recall seeing Schwab give glowing praise to Xi Jinping as a socio-economic visionary. Around the same time the CCP was implementing total surveillance, a social credit system, and shipping trainloads of people off to re-education camps.
I'm not sure why we tolerate our politicians spending so much time at this guy's events considering his sinister ideas.
So I live in a very walkable city in a country with great public transit IMO (Israel). The way they have achieved this is mostly by taxing the crap out of cars and pouring money into public transit. It makes some sense for our country because we have a very high population density, and it would not have made sense in the semi-suburban area of the US we lived in before.
I love being able to walk my kids to school, but it's annoying that even on days when I feel crappy I still have to. I love having a bunch of family-owned shops within a ten blocks of my apartment where I can find all manner of grocery items, small home improvement knicknacks, toys, clothed, books, baked goods, etc. It is not so nice that I have to shlep those things home on foot. It's very nice that the garbage collectors come every day. It's not as nice that I have to walk my trash to a dumpster one block away from my apartment (and that there are tons of street cats living in dumpsters). It's very nice that I can walk to tons of parks and have one literally right outside my building, but it's not nice that I don't have a backyard.
Ideally, places with lots of population density would look like where I live and places that don't wouldn't, and people could choose where they want to live. Unfortunately, a lot of cities in the US (and maybe the rest of the world?) Just don't function like this. I was very lucky to grow up in an American city where we had parks to go to, stores and schools within walking distance, and a small backyard. But the public transportation sucked and the traffic and parking situation was really bad.
I have no idea what the solution is, but I'm with Katie that carrots work better than sticks. I also personally don't think any of this will have a huge impact on climate change.
Oh and another, sort of funny thing--one of my friends is super into walkable cities and posted something from Israel in a walkable cities group, and apparently it just immediately devolved into an argument about I/P with hundreds of comments. It's so interesting that Israel has a lot of things that people on the left are fans of (and me too!) like universal health care, public preschool, paid maternity leave, etc, and they all work pretty well, but you will NEVER see anyone on the left citing Israel as an example of successfully implementing left-leaning policies. I totally understand why, but it's definitely an interesting cultural phenomenon.
Maybe because Israel implemented left policies like universal basically free college through the massive subsidies the American government for some reason drops on them, and that's fucking bullshit? We can't get free college but the political vassal that's actively murdering and displacing the Palestinians for Americans can?
The vast majority of American aid to Israel is made up of subsidies that Israel can only use to purchase equipment/technology from private American companies. It's not money that Israel is free to spend as it wishes.
Of course, the question of foreign aid vs. domestic spending is always a matter of debate. I think those who argue in support would say that the US spends a very small fraction of its annual budget on foreign aid (and even less on military aid) and they feel that they get a lot of bang for their buck. In the case of Israel, I think the US govt feels that they gain a lot strategically from having a strong military ally in the middle east, that Israel has more opportunities to test new technology in an actual combat environment (which gives them a lot of data), and that having Israel so dependent on them gives them a strong voice in Israeli politics. I know that from the American side it often feels like Israel isn't doing what the US wants, but from the Israeli side the US has a much stronger voice both in political and military decisions than in probably any other country. Often what the US sees as being in its best interest is not what Israel sees as being in ITS best interest--but it's very rare that the American perspective is discounted completely. Personally, I think it introduces a lot of ambiguity into the situation and I would like to see Israel try to be more reliant on its own economy/rebuild its military manufacturing sector and to stop taking so much aid from America (possibly all).
In terms of free college, I think it's pretty easy to see that 3-4 billion dollars a year wouldn't make free college in America a possibility (or even the total amount that America allocates to foreign aid in a year). Of course, Israeli government spending (both on defense and on social spending) dwarfs that amount, and we pay for it with our super high taxes. So to say that Israel pays for things like universal healthcare because we get a 3-4 billion dollar military subsidy from the US while I also pay 17% VAT, 80+% import tax on cars, and way more income tax than I ever paid in the US is pretty laughable.
The truth is, people on the American left don't want to use Israel as an example of successfully implemented leftist economic policy because the discussion will always become focused on other things, like Israel's military decisions and cultural/religious values, which while perhaps liberal for the region are much more conservative than the vast majority of people on the left. Which is why I totally understand why people don't want to bring it up.
Btw we don't have free college either--it is definitely less expensive here than in the US, just like pretty much everywhere, which I would argue is more about tuition inflation in America.
ETA: also, as an American who moved to Israel, we make up a super small percentage of the population and I most of them live in RBS, not Efrat...
Many of the best neighborhoods I’ve lived in, including the one where I live now, have relatively high density, but nothing like NYC or the denser parts of SF, have a real mixture of apartment buildings and single family homes, enough parking (private and street) that you can usually find a spot, and a grocery store, pharmacy, elementary school, some cafes and restaurants within 5-15 minutes walk, and bus or subway transit to the metro center. You can drive but you don’t have to, the roads aren’t crazy, there’s decent income diversity, but enough resident homeowners that the city is responsive. Problem with replicating it is that now there are HOA subdivisions with single-family restrictions all over the place, and anything remotely “historic” is impossible to build in, plus the permitting costs and inclusive unit mandates, so most new development is block-sized apartment complexes, and that becomes what people associate with anything new, instead of the more gradual changes of an occasional 4 plex replacing a rundown ranch house, or a garage (that nobody uses as a garage) turned into a granny flat. Hopefully in California things are starting to move that way, but it will be slow. In the meantime I’m for more EVs, all else being equal.
In my neighborhood there's a mix of 3-5 story apartments and bigger buildings, a couple of real high rises, but it's not like Manhattan. Honestly, I do feel like the street cats are the worst part...
Another piece of context that might be missing is that COVID lockdowns in the UK were crazy: I recall a story that was circulating about a guy that was fined for walking his dog out in the middle of nowhere. So it might seem like less of a stretch that you’d be restricted from leaving your home after you’d gone through that. https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-uk-police-are-using-drones-to-lockdown-shame-walkers-2020-3?amp
Yeah, early in the first lockdown, Derbyshire Police started fining people who were walking their dogs in the Peak District. That kind of overreach was the exception rather than the rule though. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-52055201
My dad grew up in a 15 minute city in Ohio - my mom affectionately called it a town with "1-stop light and a Dairy Queen."
I think my issue with the 15 minute city is how do you deal with the issue of class stratification. In the US not everybody lives in the same type of neighborhood - a lot of people travel (by car) to go to parts of the city where the nicer lakes/parks/music venues are located. A 15 minute city seems like a way to have a semi-gated neighborhood. You may not be able to keep everybody out, but you can significantly reduce bridge and tunnel riff raff from taking up parking.
The irony here is that car oriented suburbs are waaaaay more about class stratification than walkable areas. It's literally about physically separating yourself from the poors.
Disagree strongly on this one, at least in the past 10-20 years. I moved to the suburbs during COVID and our neighborhood is not only ridiculously more diverse (was a surprise to me), but also there is a way bigger mix nearby of apartments, condos, townhomes, and single family.
Do I miss some things about living downtown? Of course! Still, I can’t get behind the idea that urban environments are by default more progressive or egalitarian when it comes to stratification. Hell many of them aren’t even that walkable once you leave the East Coast. They may pretend to be, like when gentrifiers complain about gentrification, but they most definitely aren’t in practice.
About 10 years ago, the US school district with the most languages spoken was Tukwilla. It's a suburb of Seattle. Some of that was due to Seattle being really expensive even then. But Tukwilla was also really appealing to a variety of immigrant groups.
Strong disagree! I live in a small town about nine miles from downtown Pittsburgh. It is a 15 minute place. And it is very mixed, class and money wise. No one in my neighborhood could afford to live in the city. I'm a nurse and was able to buy my own home. I live next door to a carpenter and a teacher. Politics wise, out town is nearly 50/50. You won't find that kind of diversity in the city.
15 Min cities discussion - The Elites are a dysfunctional group that fights among themselves a lot yes...but they all have the same goals of gaining/maintaining their power over the masses and they all agree that workers are dumb sheep that they are entitled to rule over. They all agree that workers are trash and that we need to be oppressed for our own good. They all agree that we are trash.
They don't need to have a conspiracy when they all have the exact same goals, desires and fears. Did all the media get together in a smoke filled room and decide they were all going to work together to help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 primary? Or was it simply that all the media corporations are owned by rich douchebags who all independently hated Bernie Sanders and independently used their power and influence to harm his campaign?
Hmmm. I think something else was going on. For one thing initially everyone was behind Clinton when she and Obama were running against each other. Then the establishment went to Obama. I never liked Bernie and I am sure a lot of people felt likewise. Would 2016 have been different if Bernie had won the primary? I do not know
2008 and 2016 are not exactly analogous. Obama was widely loved by the elites. While seen as a more risky candidate to run, the elites knew that, were he to get elected, the economic status quo would not be affected.
Bernie Sanders was a threat to the Democratic Party and the economic status quo. That is why they used their power to harm his campaign but didn't do the same against Obama.
I am not sure they want to oppress anyone. They just believe they know what is best for everyone and you will be happy with their decisions because they have the best ideas. If you don't think they know best you are clearly stupid or don't have sophistication to understand the world like they do. It's all because they care. It's paternalism.
The funny thing is Bernie has similar instincts, but doesn't really have the power or influence to make those instincts into policy like those in the World Economic Forum.
To be fair, basically everyone "thinks they know best". The people who have money and power (elites) are the ones that can enforce it over others, same as it ever was.
The main question is who are the elites and what specific things do they believe?
As I suspected, they’re nowhere near as restrictive as some parties have made them out to be.
It may also be worth remembering that Oxford is one of the most commutable & cycle-friendly cities in the UK and, as it dates back to medieval times, the city centre is *already* one of the least traffic friendly places in Europe. This may be why it has been one of the first to look into this...?
It’s clear that, as a concept, the notion of the 15-Minute City is probably *much* less suited to cities in the US where it would have to be dramatically remodelled from the Oxford scheme, but here in Europe, I do find it baffling that THIS is the new thing that the Piers Corbyns of the world have latched on to... It’s town-planning, ffs! If it doesn’t work, go to the council meetings and complain. It’s so Alan Partridge. (Leaving aside Jimmy Concepts, who at this point is a hair’s width away from arguing with fire hydrants and tweeting that breadbins are a Marxist plot.)
The idea of a 15-minute city is a great one. But it's definitely going to be used an excuse to close roads indiscriminately and tax cars into oblivion. Because that's the new trend in urban planning. Like in the 70s when One-Way-Systems were the future. Until recently when we finally realised that they speed up traffic, but make everyone drive further, thereby becoming self-defeating.
So I agree with like 70% of these podcasts. I learn something new and have my mind changed by like 29% of these podcasts. And I think Katie and Jesse are elitist Coaster a-holes in 1% of these podcasts.
Like talking about 15 minute cities. Yeah, urban planning is awesome and if I could afford a home in a 15 minute city that wasn't full of filth and tents lining the streets, it would be amazing. But it also doesn't account for the reality of the vast majority of the physical area of this country that houses the farms and manufacturing and energy facilities that make the high density coastal cities run.
There is a significant amount of infrastructure that needs to be put in place before the whole world can live in these types of cities and who is going to pay for that to make it fair for everyone? My husband and I just moved from Seattle because I am an electrical engineer, my husband is retired, we were carless, and we could barely afford our rent for our tiny apartment in downtown. I watched the tent cities grow on a daily basis on my walk to work. How does homelessness fit into a 15 minute city?
And seriously, is Marin County going to make itself a 15 minute city? Not a chance. Are millionaires and billionaires going to give up there New Zealand emergency bunkers. No. This is a program to separate classes. It's like toll roads, reduce congestion for the people who can afford it. It's divisive. It's watching private jets go to Davos while we are told we shouldn't use our cars.
Yes there is some far out coverage, but the Great Reset, when you stop and really look at it, is pretty freaking weird and dystopian without a real plan to address the issues that are detracting from the existing 15 minute cities.
"I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!" kept playing in my head as I listened to the 15 minute cities segment. For someone who's a Pervert For Nuance, Jesse dismissed the entire matter as the fault of Right-Wing Conspiracy Theorists. Listening to the British councilwoman, she seemed a bit worked up, but everything she said seemed accurate according to what J&K discussed. Same with Brita Thunburg, who expressed the same concerns that Katie mentioned minutes later. These is definitely one of those 1% of segments where it had me wondering what I was listening to.
The only thing I can figure is that every so often the heterodox people have to flex that they're not MAGA. It's always annoying.
Yeah I get that vibe as well. We need to be beyond left and right now.
I agree. I would hate to live in a super-managed "15 minute city,"
I understand the argument for "congestion pricing" for driving into certain parts of a handful of dense first-class cities with good mass transit alternatives. New York, London, Paris, Tokyo. But not for every little city and town across the country.
I'd also understand the arguments for "slow streets" and pedestrian-only main streets to encourage a more walkable city.
But I would not want to live in a typical suburban region and have to worry about managing my trips in and out so as not to run over the "free" limit. I also think it's unworkable in practice. No doubt they'll start giving special passes to--for example--parents of special needs kids who may need to drive their kids to a special school. Then they'll give passes to people who need to see a medical specialist who is out of area. Pretty soon, a good chunk of the population will have some sort of special "free trip" pass making the rest of the people feel like suckers. It would be a horrible hellscape, and in the end, just another tax for the government to wastefully spend.
I have No Idea why Katie loves the idea so much, and why Jesse didn't push back. If this was the first episode of BAR I heard, I'd never listen again.
The most reasonable expectation based on how UK politicians behaved during the 2020 lockdowns is not just that they would issue special passes but that the punitive rules would be applied with extreme and unyielding rigidity to the plebes while the governing class would consider itself free to do wheelies in the pedestrian zones.
Exactly, I'm not eager to make myself a sitting duck for this kind of scenario. The threshold for what people will demand in the name of "safety" only gets lower. It's not right-wing conspiracy theorizing to envision and be concerned about this.
Yeah. The idea is fine. An experiment. Maybe it'll be voted down. Looks that way.
The problem: EVERY attempt to change / influence / nudge / FORCE business and society to stop destroying this planet will be met with this charge. That's obviously happening now. This is Q-Anon levels of bozo conspiracy mongering and shouldn't be given credence. This is not a sneaky first step to creating a hellscape. It's not crazy or Fascistic! to want to decrease the number of cars on the road. I want that.
Fuck cars, fuck suburbs. They’re bad for people and bad for the environment and if you’re a car junky who is so dependent that they cannot imagine a world without, I invite you to consider how much better the back half of your life will be if you don’t become so unfit you’re totally dependent.
I love the burbs! And I love my car.
Before I got my car in Chicago, I had to take public transport to work. Sometimes I would bike the 10 miles to the hospital. Taking public transport meant transfers, and my commute took about 1 1/2 hours each way, with walking in between. Often I had safety concerns, because I worked night shifts. When I got my car, it meant joyful freedom. My commute went down to 25 minutes. I didn't have to be scared taking a bus at 11: 00 pm in bad neighborhood anymore.
I take a road trip to Michigan every three weeks or so to see my mom. And It's fun, and I don't feel guilty.
I had a pretty similar life in Chicago, and I'm so glad I moved to the suburbs. I also have kids whose lives are much better in the burbs than they were in the city.
My god
I hear you- but what is the average person's carbon footprint compared to the Davos people who want this thing? Private planes, multiple homes? And if most cars end up being electric in the not to distant future, then what are we worried about that for?
Yes and no. I read estimates that there are currently 1 Billion cars on Planet Earth. We cannot move to a future where there are 1 Billion “clean” electric cars. Why? Because the manufacture of those 1 Billion electric cars will be its own ecological apocalypse. IMHO.
The idea is the brainchild of the Chief Executive not the council, and in the UK experienced Councillors know that fighting with the Chief Exec is a bad idea.
I don't think you've actually followed the 15 minute cities discourse online. Sure there are people like yourself who think that the height of humanity is driving an F150 a minimum of 20 minutes to get anything, but the majority of 15 min city talk is completely unhinged believing that a 15min city is akin to putting people in camps.
I have both a full-size pickup truck and a PHEV and I’d call myself a YIMBY and I also think there are weird coercive-controlling-surveilling aspects to some of this “15 minute city” talk that I don’t like. So make of that what you will, but I don’t think you can easily pigeonhole people on this.
I absolutely love living somewhere walkable and I spent the majority of my adult life car-free by choice til I moved to a city where that wasn't really a choice. Personally I love the idea of living in a 15 minute city in terms of the actual urban planning aspects. Having lived in both walkable cities and places where a car is required I feel that the former is unequivocally superior for my personal happiness, not to mention fitness etc. But I am also a tinfoil hat Snowden acolyte and I cannot consent to the type of surveillance and rules people are talking about here. Surely there must be a way to make cities and towns walkable without doing something like that?! If the walkability and public transit are really that good then people will naturally avoid driving because it's faster and more pleasant to walk or because they want to avoid traffic and having to pay for parking.
I agree with that! Make walking/public transit more pleasant than driving.
You're making some big assumptions here. The one about me driving an F150 (or any kind of truck) is 100% wrong. I suspect that the other about a majority of the discourse being unhinged is similarly incorrect. At a bare minimum, the two audio clips that were in the segment don't support that assertion, but rather were some pretty basic concerns.
Ok sorry, your Chevy Suburban or Nissan Armada. But yes you've confirmed you haven't been following the discourse or know much about urban planning history.
Personal attacks aren't helping your case here. You do realize it's possible to disagree without trying to make the other person some caricature of what you hate?
Narrator: No, he did not.
Ah, Ford Bronco driver.
But Oxford isn't going to be a 15 minute city. You can't get anything built in Oxford, there's not going to be any additional schools, doctors offices, supermarkets within 15 minutes of your home. The only infastructre that will be build is the traffic cameras, because they want the revenue. That guy is still going to be driving 45 minutes to drop his children off at school, and he'll have to make more than 100 trips a year.
I lived in Oxford for several years. It's a medieval city (or older not a historian) so not built for cars. For the most part, getting in and out of the city centre is pretty easy on public transport, but if you're trying to get from one site to the other, you have to take the ring road and it can be a pain in the ass. Also, the way Oxford has build up over time, most smaller areas in the city (Iffley, Jerico, Cowley) have at least some shops and other necessaries. The problem is that the smaller stores like Tesco Express jack up the prices compared to the larger supermarkets.
Something like the 15 minute city could work in Oxford, but I don't think it would be transferrable to more modern cities or the US where everything is built with cards in mind. If it forces the government to invest in more schools, doctor surgeries, and public transport, I'm all for it.
And shire is pronounced more like shure. OxfordSHIRE (like where hobbits live) was making my ear bleed. The shire bit is much softer - Oxfordshure.
1) Nothing is stopping you from living in a suburb.
2) As an American, the World Economic Forum has very little influence over your life. If you're worried about "The Great Reset" even a little bit, you're buying conspiracy garbage. There is no sinister grand plan!
3) Countries around the world manage to have dense, walkable neighborhoods that are safe, comfortable, and affordable. If local jurisdictions in the US and the UK want to try to emulate that, why would you (now a suburbanite!) feel like you should be able to stop them?
4) Why should suburbanites be able to drive their cars downtown for free? They contribute to wear and tear on roads, emit pollution, and make quality of life worse in jurisdictions that they literally don't pay any taxes to. Taxing those vehicle trips is fair! If you're mad that some people can afford the tax and others can't, take it up with our whole freaking economic system.
I think The World Economic Forum hold a fair amount of sway. A large number of current world leaders and politicians were trained under their "Young Global Leaders" program. And they all parrot similar corporatist ideas about how governments must work more closely with global business leaders, and how we must trust experts, and how we need more surveillance and censorship to keep us safe from hate and misinformation.
It's not some paranoid conspiracy theory, it's just pointing out that a large lobby group has some really awful ideas. Much like the Koch brothers.
I am not against congestion tax. I'm not against toll roads. But taxes like these can be regressive depending on how they are implemented, and that isn't fair. I think based on historical trends, capitalism seems to be the most functional type of economic system, but I also think more government regulation could make it more fair so that everyone received a good education and health care and had a decent place to live. Whether in a well-planned 15MC or in the suburbs.
Other countries have the communities you speak of. If the US had thriving, clean, affordable 15 minute cities I would prefer to live there. I'm 100% not trying to stop them, I just don't believe they are going to be executed in a way that is fair and actually improves life for the majority of people. I lived without a car and rarely leaving a 2 mile radius in Seattle, Portland, and SF for most of my adult life. But it did limit my options and my interactions with people who weren't just like me. If I didn't have to care for my ageing mother, I would not be living in Little Rock, AR. BUT I also really like having a little space and being able to take off for hiking in my state parks whenever I want and not paying half my income for rent and not being surrounded by people who agree with me on everything.
I'm also not a conspiracy theorist but there are a lot of things happening that look to be leading to the sort of world the WEF is a proponent of. For example, Bill Gates is the largest private owner of farmland in the US. Doesn't that seem weird? Saying that this will never happen here only works until it happens here. Why not talk it out early?
It seems weird to you that the investment group of the third richest man in America owns less than 0.03% of the nation's total farmland?
Relatively, yes, a small percentage, but still the highest acreage of any single person. So yes, for whatever reasons he owns it, it seems weird to me that a software developer is the owner of more farmland than any other single human in the US.
Wait until you find out about the chairman of Liberty Media Corp., John Malone, who owns 2.2 million acres. (According to The Land Report, Bill Gates isn't even in the top ten private landowners.)
Also weird. Under the radar. I am going to look that up.
Driving a car downtown may not be a "right" but it can have enormous benefits. The converse, which silos people even more than they already are siloed, seems less than ideal.
Get the bus. If there is no bus, advocate for one.
Hear hear!
I was pleased that multiple times after Jesse said "so this is just a right wing conspiracy theory" Katie would go on to say, "well no, there is real truth to what thy are concerned about". Because Jesse doesn't know the details and Katie is openly not concerned about a surveillance state and would trade that surveillance and the risk of control for convenience there was never any actual engagement on the substance of people's concerns.
"Oxford city putting up bollards for the express purpose of making travel more of a pain and literally fining people for leaving their neighborhood too often for the purpose of behavioural control" were stated goals of the city planners there, but was hand waved away as "the city has always enforced where you can and can't drive, roads have yellow lines". As though those are anywhere near equivalent exercises of the city's power.
I'm all for convenient cities, but there are clearly coercive elements being added which are the actual concern, not the presence of corner stores.
People from Oxford absolutely love these changes.
The whole idea you have to "make" it a 15 minute city in the first place is sort of bizarre. Cities develop that way because it's convenient for people to get where they need to go quickly and easily. If city councils didn't zone everything in stupidly restrictive ways or mandate massive parking lots everywhere or forbid mid sized development in the first place, then of course business owners would want to set up shop in convenient places where foot traffic is available, and the foot traffic would be there in part because these are places they want to go for things.
We're in a situation where a bunch of mostly-invisible government intervention has massively changed the way cities are laid out, and people look at this situation and say, "Well, what *other* government interventions can we perform to counteract the existing ones?" It's mind boggling to me. Especially as a conservative, since we ought to *prefer* ditching stuff like this. But my own side is convinced concepts like walkability are a progressive conspiracy. And I can hardly blame them when Oxford's solution is petty tyranny and unfit for purpose.
I think 15-minute cities are a fairly sound idea as a rejection of 1970s planning. Back then, they thought "Let's separate the city into large zones of different usage, and people will drive between them on large free-flowing motorways."
Now we've realised it's impossible to build a city around cars. Because they're so space-inefficient, that you end up with endless sprawl, thereby making the city unnavigable except by car, thereby resulting in terrible traffic congestion.
But that will take decades of infrastructure investment to undo. Blocking off roads will not achieve that. Sometimes you can improve a road by blocking off motor-vehicle through-traffic. But it's not a universal solution.
Agree. The problem is we can't trust them after what we've seen them do. Katie said once long ago that she was worried all this "woke shit" was going to become institutionalized - or part of our government. That was one of the things she said that has stuck with me. And she was right. We're at a crossroads now where there is one side that has all the money and power and another side that doesn't have any of it: no money, no education, no power and if they're white, no social prioritizing.
The issue that you leave out is that the cost of the cities is directly related to the policies that prevent 15 minute cities to exist.
That is, it's extremely difficult to build housing in NYC which drives up prices dramatically. Additionally your lovely suburban and exurban neighborhoods cost a fortune to build and maintain.
I think there's still a chance for "urban suburban" areas to do something like that. With the light rail coming in around Seattle finally, many of the outlying areas should be doing this. Building up a mixed use town center with lots of apartments.
I mean, I know what you're talking about in terms of it being a heavy lift for a city like Seattle that frankly sucks. The main thing that bothers me so much about Seattle is the combination of a desire to be a world class city and the unwillingness to make the transitions necessary. Wanting a light rail station without wanting to build apartments as an example.
Reminds me of BART, where it has taken decades to get any kind of housing development at the East Bay stations, even though they reserved plenty of space for parking. And the system keep expanding east even though train capacity had been reached, so you were basically just displacing passengers who lived closer to SF and were more likely to have walked to the station with exurban commuters who always drove.
Now they built a pretty large development on top of Macarthur station in Oakland, but some of the stations in Berkeley etc are still in low rise single-family-home neighborhoods.
Light rail is at least cheaper than a true rapid transit system like BART, but you still want new housing on the route. Otherwise it’s just a gift to existing homeowners on the line.
Excellent comment
Yeah. I agree it’s unlikely to work.
Awesome! I will check out these links. When I lived in Portland OR I loved the fact that it was so well planned and zoned. Their transportation was out of this world. But it always has such a weird vibe. I know these cities *could* work with the right circumstances and, if we're totally being honest, with a more homogeneous population that all agreed on the same social mores.
I think Toronto has a weird vibe. It seems bland and like their isn't a personality there. Maybe ( probably!) I just haven't been to the right neighborhoods.
*Cries in Torontonian* But you're right though, this city is not particularly well-planned nor do we have much of a personality in the same way Montreal and Vancouver do, but it's a nice place to live.
I love New Orleans! It is just a wacky mix that ends up being awesome.
Perhaps San Francisco's best claim to competence (one of the few) is MUNI.
Honestly, you can get almost anywhere in the City on it. It will take a while and can be an experience (not necessarily one you want) but it is possible.
I lived in SF for two years and loved MUNI except when I was getting rubbed up against by creepers and when it smelled like pee. This was like 20 years ago, pre-downtown tech, and I would not live there again because of how downhill it went. I also spent about 8 yrs in PDX before it's downfall and then 15 yrs in Seattle until COVID and the George Floyd riots destroyed it. Portland is an incredible city with amazing transportation even to the suburbs. But weirdly I got harassed on the streets more there than anywhere else I have ever been in my life.
I have never quite been able to figure out why this is a thing but east coast cities are so much more pleasant than west coast ones, even the grimy/dangerous places like Philly. The level of street harassment is negligible in comparison Seattle or Portland. Why are west coast homeless people so much more unhinged?
I am lucky to live right across from two awesome MUNI lines.
And MUNI IS AWESOME WHEN
+ they are running (they are not 24x7), not delayed, not so full they literally just drive on past, not taking shortcuts that bypass your stop (yes, that happens),
And they certainly do make most journeys take at least 2x if not 3 or 4x.
They are also not great for taking home more than a day's worth of groceries.
I can't recommend MUNI and nothing else to people who aren't prepared to get their groceries on a daily basis, and what does that enormous cost and time suck do to equity?
I’ve lived a block from Great Highway since 1995 and I’ve never had a driver’s licence. I’ve taken a bus less than 10 days since the pandemic started.
Nice. To live by the ocean and Safeway😃
Wow, how are you getting by? Mostly by foot?
Are you not taking the bus because of the pandemic? Because I forgot to mention that, that for the first 18 months of the pandemic, I wasn't taking it. It's only recently I've started getting back on to it.
Yeah, pandemic = no bus. No bus = no movie theaters, but pandemic = no movies anyway. It's a city! Literally everything I need to live my day-to-day life is within a mile of me (and I walk three miles a day for health reasons, regardless). Before the pandemic, it was no big deal to take a train to PFA and back, or go to see a nightclub act (hey, Muni *does* run all night, you know), and I expect in a short time I'll be doing all that again. The only thing that's tough is hiking, since all the people who used to drive to trailheads with me have "aged out" of touching rock ... but it's the Bay Area, there's plenty of options a short uber away from some train/bus or another.
thanks! I just watched the one on commuting--it's great!!! Highly recommend.
I'm sure I'm front running the next episode with this, but at the event last night, Jesse was circulating among attendees and came over to where I was sitting and he approached a young mom who was holding up her toddler son while she introduced herself and him to Jesse. Jesse said hello and something like, Do you know what a podcaster is?
And the boy started crying.
So the boy knew about podcasters
That's the Jesse-est story I've ever heard :D
In my mind, in this scene, Jesse is played by Michael Cera.
OMG- Same!!!
Prior to that the little guy had been happily blowing kisses to everyone nearby. I hope he’s recovered.
I couldn't help but groan when Jesse corrected Katie for using "he" in reference to Sam Brinton, as she's talking about how he ("allegedly") targeted a Tanzanian fashion designer's to steal her luggage, stole said luggage, stole her custom fashions which were her in part a source of livelihood, and in an act of shameless testicle-swinging wore those stolen custom made fashions at public events.
Why does Katie have to respect an "alleged" criminal's preferred pronouns when after it came out that the "alleged" Club Q shooter is non-binary a large chunk of the Gender Stasi on Twitter denied the guy is "really" non-binary and didn't feel obligated to play along? (It's not about the severity of the crime because when men kill and/or rape women, and go on to say they're "women" to go to women's prisons, the media & the activists — when they exist as separate entities — insist on honoring the pronoun rules.
Proposed rule. If you do the crime your pronouns are mine
I noticed an uptick in Katie getting corrected on pronouns by Jesse. I'm starting to wonder if it's intentional on her part.
I've sort of noticed Katie getting more based about the gender stuff, but I also think they're not gonna have an easy time walking things back in the event that they realize the whole pronoun respecting thing is extending way too much benefit of the doubt lmao (and to be clear, I mean in general. Not just in a criminal context)
YES! Jesse is always pronounsplaining Katie! He’ll interrupt and correct her multiple times in one segment about one person which disrupts the flow and makes things confusing - why does he care so much about being 100% perfect on using a person’s preferred pronouns every single time??
I hate it when Katie uses "they" while talking about a known person. If someone is living as a woman, sure, call her "she" even though "she" has an adam's apple and a beard, I don't care. But in trying to refer to Brinton as "they", Katie is just confusing herself and her audience. She constantly interrupts the flow of the pod to correct herself when she forgets to use "they", and when she gets it right, it just makes me have to try harder to understand whether she is referring to Brinton, or to Brinton and someone else, or to another group altogether.
I hate it when Katie uses "they" while talking about a known person. If someone is living as a woman, sure, call her a she even though she has an adam's apple and a beard, I don't care. But in trying to refer to Brinton as "they", Katie is just confusing herself and her audience. She constantly interrupts the flow of the pod to correct herself when she forgets to use "they", and when she gets it right it just makes me have to try harder to understand whether she is referring to Brinton, or to Brinton and someone else, or to another group altogether.
The opposition to 15 min cities is part of a general anti-urbanism that’s increased on the right in the last few years.
I’m pro- the idea, if anything, but the simple truth is lots of mainstream politcians did say during lockdowns that we could expect more of these in the future as climate change bit, and they were dry runs. Lockdowns really did happen in the Uk as elsewhere, and really were characterised by a lot of petty tyranny and senseless cruelty, I think you have to start off by admitting that’s another true fact and that gives substance to peoples paranoia
Yes, I remember when 2 people started a snowball fight in a park in the UK during lockdown, lots of people joined in and had a great time... then the two original snowball throwers were fined £10,000 each for instigating a public gathering during lockdown. I guess I can see why people might be paranoid about restrictions in the light of shitty punitive measures like that
I am sympathetic to this, but the alternative is to let Google do it instead. Most people are still mistrustfully eyeing governments, which in democratic countries have at least taken some effort to set up checks and balances and means of scrutiny. In the meantime, large tech corporations have been amassing citizen data in a far more holistic, real time tracking manner than any government department, and are now in a position to influence urban planning and workplace norms to suit their business plans. None of this seems to inspire any scrutiny on the right in the same way concern about government overreach historically concerned both right and left. I am still trying to work out why.
It seems most likely we'll get the worst of both worlds: government control facilitated by partnerships with big tech companies that shield them from the checks and balances built into our democracy. Exhibit A: Sidewalk Labs (an Alphabet company) and those LinkNYC wifi & phone charging terminals that record everything going on around them, ostensibly for "anti-terrorism" purposes. The government doesn't have the resources or technical expertise to effectively monitor people the way they want to but big tech companies do and they're happy to accept government money. Our government surveillance apparatus is already heavily integrated with companies like Google and Meta in ways most people can't even imagine. Google Maps was originally a startup funded by In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital firm (yes that is a real thing). The more you learn about this stuff the more you realize that we're already living in this exact dystopia, it's just not widely acknowledged yet, probably because the powers that be don't quite understand how to use all that data effectively for coercion (yet).
It seems like activist journalists have a paternalistic, condescending view of what journalism should be: we are right, we tell you what to believe and you will believe it. If readers come to different conclusions it just means that they need to be told the right way to think even harder. If someone never comes around to agreement it is because they are stupid or evil, and their disagreement is an existential threat.
What annoys me the most is when these activist journalists activistsplain science to scientists in that particular field.
Climate scientists have been getting this for years. Scientists who study AGW get called climate change deniers because they push back on the most catastrophic predictions -- its extraoridinarily unlikely that we will hit 8 degrees of warming. There's a decent chance we'll end up just below 2.0 degrees. Or if they push back on the idea that every extreme weather event is a result of AGW. This year's rains in California were typical California weather. There are some weather events that are made worse by climate change, but this one was not. Or yet another piece on how nuclear energy will not not solve climate change because the only true solution is to drastically cut consumption and the actual scientists who ran the numbers on carbon emissions don't know what they're talking about.
I felt bad for all those climate scientists. It was only once Covid hit and activist journalists started distorting my field I started to truly understand what they'd been going through. Nothing like a journalist who a year ago would have given you a blank look if you mentioned the adaptive immune system proclaiming that T cells are a right wing conspiracy theory. Or explaining why anecdotes are a higher quality of evidence than randomized trials but only for certain things.
This is so interesting to me. Can you tell us more about your field and how activist journalists butchered it during covid? I'm very interested in science but very uninterested in anyone who shouts "trust the science!!" and then refuses to accept any scientific evidence that contradicts their ideology. All the actual scientists and medical professionals in my life tend to be orders of magnitude less alarmist and more open minded than the journalists who write about their fields.
I used to work in microbiology and immunology. One of the things that angered me the most was the insistence that post-infection (aka natural) immunity did not occur with this coronavirus. We have four other human coronaviruses and for every one of them, if you get infected, you won't get reinfected for a year or two. You're also pretty well protected against severe disease until you get really old. There was basically zero chance that SARS-COV2 would not be like all the others, especially since people who got classic SARS still have T cells and antibodies that recognize it. It was pretty clear early on in the pandemic that people who had been infected were not getting reinfected very soon after and that's really the most important piece of evidence.
At that time there were also a lot of reports about dropping levels of antibodies and that allegedly meant that immunity had waned. That supposedly meant that post infection immunity didn't exist. Except that that's a typical immune response and they were testing antibodies in the blood and another type of antibody that's found in the mucus is more important in preventing infections.
Most of the reporting made it seem like immunity was just antibodies but T cells are the other arm of the adaptive immune system. THey're probably more important than antibodies for keeping people out of the hospital. It's now clear that they can also abort an infection before it is detectable, probably by killing infected cells before they can produce viral particles. We test for antibodies to a pathogen rather than T cells because it's much easier to detect antibodies for a specific antigen.
We also had a number of journalists (I think Ed Yong was one of them) writing about people who claimed to be suffering from Long COVID who'd never tested positive via PCR and didn't have antibodies against SARS-COV2. (These patients tended to be affluent, highly-educated non-scientists so there was some baseline affinity.) The most likely explanation is that they had something else, but there were a number of articles about how the lack of immune response meant that Long Covid was caused by a lack of immune response. This fed into the idea that post infection immunity sometimes didn't happen.
Once it became undeniable that post-infection immunity did exist, journalists insisted it wasn't as good as vaccine-induced immunity. There are a number of reasons to doubt that: an infection exposes you to all the virus's proteins so the immune system can recognize pieces of all of them. There are features of the mucosal immune response that are unique and being exposed to a pathogen via the nose is going to induce a mucosal immune response while an intramuscular injection is not going to be good at inducing those features. The benefit of getting your immunity from a vaccine over an infection is that you don't get infected. It's a huge benefit if you're 90. If you're 16 whether there's a benefit is within a rounding error.
It really angered me to see journalists insist that post-infection immunity didn't exist and was a dangerous conspiracy theory. Especially when they insulted people who mentioned these basic principles of immunology. There were a lot of highly-educated non-scientists going after experts in immunology.
I think part of this was because journalists didn't want to ask public health officials hard questions because they were experts. I suspect that many public health officials and activist journalists understood that post-infection immunity existed but were worried people would say they'd already had the virus and go about their lives as usual and that would lead to bad things.
When it comes to the "you can get infected and have no adaptive immune response" line I think that was also about the fear that people who thought they'd been infected would go about thier lives as usual. I also think that it had to do with the fact that those long Covid patients were sympathetic to journalists. Many disease activists have pushed the idea that suffering from a particular condition means you know the cause and mechanism of the disease and know what is effective even if scientific studies have found it ineffective. A lot of journalists have bought into that ideology.
Yessssss as a fellow bio person all of this. I don't know if you saw this in your area, but the worst was when actual scientists I know who should have known better started amplifying this stuff. It happened with the lab leak as well.
Yes. I wanted to ask them why they said this. They had to know to was nonsens…
“just means that they need to be told the right way to think even harder.”
This conflation of imagery got a snorting laugh that I can’t stop, I’m just walking around weirding people out and when asked whats so funny, I can’t, in polite company tell them, which just makes me laugh *even harder* (do you see what you’ve done!?!?)
That is very much the crux of the problem, I think: people who cosplay as journalists who really should just be activists or community organizers or some such. They seem to believe that readers can't be trusted to draw their own conclusions from reported facts because they might come to conclusions different than the journalist themselves.
Reminds me of this one from the San Francisco Chronicle telling people that "Rejecting the use of 'Latinx' is transphobic." Current ratio: 1,393 Comments, 122 Likes (and supposedly 453K views)
https://twitter.com/sfc_opinions/status/1628373641535660032
Paternalistic because a poll of people with Latin American descent showed only 2% used the term in reference to themselves (in 2019 at least), and 40% found it offensive.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/many-latinos-say-latinx-offends-or-bothers-them-here-s-ncna1285916
And then this one about non-binary in Spanish languages.
https://twitter.com/WickedWillow02/status/1629229699615293440
“Racist” still has some power.
“Homophobic” has some too, but less.
“Transphobic” is a joke term that most sane people just ignore.
You missed the class politics of LTNs.
If I am middle class (white collar) on a leafy side-street that is now blocked to through-traffic, that is a win for me. But it is a loss to the poorer residents living on the main road who will now get the extra diverted traffic and pollution. Search “London LTN” on Twitter to see videos made by residents who are suffering from the extra traffic diverted down their roads.
If I work from home at my coding job, I am unlikely to use my 100 permitted car journeys through the controlled checkpoints. If I am a warehouse worker who had to schlep myself to work every morning, my journey time will be increased or I will get fined.
And if you're—say—an electrician or gardener: Well then, screw you and your gross callused fingers. Maybe you should've got a degree in marketing instead.
The lot of you are functioning with only one idea of house cities work, and it shows. The North American urban style isn't universal.
Yeah, I get there are other ways of doing things, but at the our elites are now incapable of delivering big infrastructure projects quickly at a reasonable cost. If they could lay down tram lines like my Victorian ancestors, then I would have more sympathy for their plans to shut down roads.
https://twitter.com/ediz1975/status/1629849078396755968?s=46&t=NeAy1wBWOne2itItYZEFzA
You two need to stop worrying about "butchering" people's names, it's not offensive, at least it shouldn't be. If a French or German or Nigerian person pronounces your boring American names wrong, would you care? No. You can't possibly be expected to pronounce all the foreign names of the world.
And if someone has an unusual name that is commonly mispronounced even in their own home country, that is their parent's fault, not anyone else's. Baby naming 101.
Although, to be fair, Katie can't pronounce the name Leah correctly.
I come from a bilingual place and the two native languages don't even pronounce my extremely simple and common name the same. People who take offense to this have almost universally been trained to do so.
My favorite example is Kmele Foster (of The Fifth Column) who said that his own mother doesn't even pronounce his name consistently.
When we had twins my husband and they'd been called Baby A and Baby B for two days after their birth, he suggested he name one and I name the other (we had a list of names reflecting his home country in Eastern Europe). I named Baby B and he named Baby A.
I stumbled on Baby A's name for a while but finally nailed it (it's not hard to say but people put the accent on the wrong syllable). When we were new to the Episcopal Church we were attending (not going now) and we were talking to a woman who mispronounced Baby A's name, she looked up and said, with the confidence of Hermione Granger correcting Ron ("it's LeviOsa, not LeviosAA")... at age 5.
Anyways. I hadn't heard this anecdote from Kmele before & it's a good one!
By the standards of Newton MA in the late 70s / early 80s, my name was exotic and unpronounceable. Still remember the sense of dread I felt whenever we'd have a substitute teacher taking attendance, and s/he would stop at my name and hesitate, before completely butchering it. (I started insisting on "Alex" pretty early on.) It never occurred to me to be offended though. What would be the point?
That is funny. I do not know how many Alejandros I went to school with.
My last name is both unpronounceable and extremely funny to English speakers. Teachers used to get to my name on the list and just call my first name because they didn't even want to try. Best not to let these things give you a persecution complex because they're really not all that important (or unusual)!
100% my first thought, and imagining a 5 year old getting annoyed by that put a huge smile on my face.
I wonder if "woke" (and before that "PC") culture has infiltrated so much that people are literally afraid of mispronouncing a "foreign" name, that they preempt themselves from having to even attempt to say a person's name by saying something like, "I'm sure I'd mispronounce this, so I'll just ask you to say it/spell it"?
I can see how that could mostly be a middle class/PMC worry, but I could also see working/lower class people being afraid of running afoul of the norms of their "social betters".
(I was raised with a solidly middle class ethos, even though it was on a decidedly "blue collar" wage, and I cannot imagine not even being able to *attempt* to say, e.g. "Alejandro".)
It's a double standard as always because if you're white and your name is foreign in a funny way nobody gives a shit about butchering it, trust me! They'll do it gleefully and make lame jokes about it for weeks or even years after meeting you (I let people do this because I know they're enjoying themselves but at this point I've heard 'em all a million times). I have seen people do exactly what you describe for POC, though. It seems like a polite and respectful way to address the situation but the key is to not jump down someone's throat when they don't do that or don't get it right, because it genuinely doesn't fucking matter and most people are just trying their best.
So on the whole Great Reset and 15 minute cities. Two points.
1. I read The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab, the originator of the "Great Reset", a long time ago and have followed his writing since. His writing and ideas are very creepy in its techno utopianism. You really don't have to be very conspiratorial to find his ideas and their popularity to very very worrisome. The conspiracy theorists are off in many of their criticisms, but they are probably not as off as we would hope. No satanic cult, but those who subscribe to his world view see non-elites as widgets to be manipulated and controlled. It is very explicit.
2. There is a bit of a feedback loop where you implement these kind of ill-advised policies. First there is the bad policy, then there is an over the top pushback, and then the defenders embrace the over the top version of the idea. This leads to the critics going ever further in their criticism until you reach very absurd places. This happened with a lot of covid policies and seems to become a bigger and bigger part of public policy. Both the left and the right can be on either side. It is all just tribalism, but it is really damaging to the polity and the possibility of good policy.
Yeah. I think it's reasonable to argue that the WEF don't actually have much power.
But the conspiracy theorists don't seem completely off-base in their characterisation of the WEF's ideas. You only have to dig just below the shiny optimistic branding, and there's a clear pattern of extreme authoritarianism. I recall seeing Schwab give glowing praise to Xi Jinping as a socio-economic visionary. Around the same time the CCP was implementing total surveillance, a social credit system, and shipping trainloads of people off to re-education camps.
I'm not sure why we tolerate our politicians spending so much time at this guy's events considering his sinister ideas.
The Brinton story is the most literal case of cultural appropriation I've ever heard of.
So I live in a very walkable city in a country with great public transit IMO (Israel). The way they have achieved this is mostly by taxing the crap out of cars and pouring money into public transit. It makes some sense for our country because we have a very high population density, and it would not have made sense in the semi-suburban area of the US we lived in before.
I love being able to walk my kids to school, but it's annoying that even on days when I feel crappy I still have to. I love having a bunch of family-owned shops within a ten blocks of my apartment where I can find all manner of grocery items, small home improvement knicknacks, toys, clothed, books, baked goods, etc. It is not so nice that I have to shlep those things home on foot. It's very nice that the garbage collectors come every day. It's not as nice that I have to walk my trash to a dumpster one block away from my apartment (and that there are tons of street cats living in dumpsters). It's very nice that I can walk to tons of parks and have one literally right outside my building, but it's not nice that I don't have a backyard.
Ideally, places with lots of population density would look like where I live and places that don't wouldn't, and people could choose where they want to live. Unfortunately, a lot of cities in the US (and maybe the rest of the world?) Just don't function like this. I was very lucky to grow up in an American city where we had parks to go to, stores and schools within walking distance, and a small backyard. But the public transportation sucked and the traffic and parking situation was really bad.
I have no idea what the solution is, but I'm with Katie that carrots work better than sticks. I also personally don't think any of this will have a huge impact on climate change.
Oh and another, sort of funny thing--one of my friends is super into walkable cities and posted something from Israel in a walkable cities group, and apparently it just immediately devolved into an argument about I/P with hundreds of comments. It's so interesting that Israel has a lot of things that people on the left are fans of (and me too!) like universal health care, public preschool, paid maternity leave, etc, and they all work pretty well, but you will NEVER see anyone on the left citing Israel as an example of successfully implementing left-leaning policies. I totally understand why, but it's definitely an interesting cultural phenomenon.
I've been saying for years that the land acknowledgement folx should be admiring the Israelis reclaiming their land and yet...
> I totally understand why
Really? I don't.
Because if they did everyone else would start yelling about I/P and it would totally derail the conversation
Maybe because Israel implemented left policies like universal basically free college through the massive subsidies the American government for some reason drops on them, and that's fucking bullshit? We can't get free college but the political vassal that's actively murdering and displacing the Palestinians for Americans can?
The vast majority of American aid to Israel is made up of subsidies that Israel can only use to purchase equipment/technology from private American companies. It's not money that Israel is free to spend as it wishes.
Of course, the question of foreign aid vs. domestic spending is always a matter of debate. I think those who argue in support would say that the US spends a very small fraction of its annual budget on foreign aid (and even less on military aid) and they feel that they get a lot of bang for their buck. In the case of Israel, I think the US govt feels that they gain a lot strategically from having a strong military ally in the middle east, that Israel has more opportunities to test new technology in an actual combat environment (which gives them a lot of data), and that having Israel so dependent on them gives them a strong voice in Israeli politics. I know that from the American side it often feels like Israel isn't doing what the US wants, but from the Israeli side the US has a much stronger voice both in political and military decisions than in probably any other country. Often what the US sees as being in its best interest is not what Israel sees as being in ITS best interest--but it's very rare that the American perspective is discounted completely. Personally, I think it introduces a lot of ambiguity into the situation and I would like to see Israel try to be more reliant on its own economy/rebuild its military manufacturing sector and to stop taking so much aid from America (possibly all).
In terms of free college, I think it's pretty easy to see that 3-4 billion dollars a year wouldn't make free college in America a possibility (or even the total amount that America allocates to foreign aid in a year). Of course, Israeli government spending (both on defense and on social spending) dwarfs that amount, and we pay for it with our super high taxes. So to say that Israel pays for things like universal healthcare because we get a 3-4 billion dollar military subsidy from the US while I also pay 17% VAT, 80+% import tax on cars, and way more income tax than I ever paid in the US is pretty laughable.
The truth is, people on the American left don't want to use Israel as an example of successfully implemented leftist economic policy because the discussion will always become focused on other things, like Israel's military decisions and cultural/religious values, which while perhaps liberal for the region are much more conservative than the vast majority of people on the left. Which is why I totally understand why people don't want to bring it up.
Btw we don't have free college either--it is definitely less expensive here than in the US, just like pretty much everywhere, which I would argue is more about tuition inflation in America.
ETA: also, as an American who moved to Israel, we make up a super small percentage of the population and I most of them live in RBS, not Efrat...
This comment sounds unhinged. It's also full of lies. For example, college isn't free.
Many of the best neighborhoods I’ve lived in, including the one where I live now, have relatively high density, but nothing like NYC or the denser parts of SF, have a real mixture of apartment buildings and single family homes, enough parking (private and street) that you can usually find a spot, and a grocery store, pharmacy, elementary school, some cafes and restaurants within 5-15 minutes walk, and bus or subway transit to the metro center. You can drive but you don’t have to, the roads aren’t crazy, there’s decent income diversity, but enough resident homeowners that the city is responsive. Problem with replicating it is that now there are HOA subdivisions with single-family restrictions all over the place, and anything remotely “historic” is impossible to build in, plus the permitting costs and inclusive unit mandates, so most new development is block-sized apartment complexes, and that becomes what people associate with anything new, instead of the more gradual changes of an occasional 4 plex replacing a rundown ranch house, or a garage (that nobody uses as a garage) turned into a granny flat. Hopefully in California things are starting to move that way, but it will be slow. In the meantime I’m for more EVs, all else being equal.
In my neighborhood there's a mix of 3-5 story apartments and bigger buildings, a couple of real high rises, but it's not like Manhattan. Honestly, I do feel like the street cats are the worst part...
Another piece of context that might be missing is that COVID lockdowns in the UK were crazy: I recall a story that was circulating about a guy that was fined for walking his dog out in the middle of nowhere. So it might seem like less of a stretch that you’d be restricted from leaving your home after you’d gone through that. https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-uk-police-are-using-drones-to-lockdown-shame-walkers-2020-3?amp
Totally depended on the local government and police. Most of them were pretty chill. But some regions went full tyrant.
Yeah, early in the first lockdown, Derbyshire Police started fining people who were walking their dogs in the Peak District. That kind of overreach was the exception rather than the rule though. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-52055201
My dad grew up in a 15 minute city in Ohio - my mom affectionately called it a town with "1-stop light and a Dairy Queen."
I think my issue with the 15 minute city is how do you deal with the issue of class stratification. In the US not everybody lives in the same type of neighborhood - a lot of people travel (by car) to go to parts of the city where the nicer lakes/parks/music venues are located. A 15 minute city seems like a way to have a semi-gated neighborhood. You may not be able to keep everybody out, but you can significantly reduce bridge and tunnel riff raff from taking up parking.
The irony here is that car oriented suburbs are waaaaay more about class stratification than walkable areas. It's literally about physically separating yourself from the poors.
Disagree strongly on this one, at least in the past 10-20 years. I moved to the suburbs during COVID and our neighborhood is not only ridiculously more diverse (was a surprise to me), but also there is a way bigger mix nearby of apartments, condos, townhomes, and single family.
Do I miss some things about living downtown? Of course! Still, I can’t get behind the idea that urban environments are by default more progressive or egalitarian when it comes to stratification. Hell many of them aren’t even that walkable once you leave the East Coast. They may pretend to be, like when gentrifiers complain about gentrification, but they most definitely aren’t in practice.
About 10 years ago, the US school district with the most languages spoken was Tukwilla. It's a suburb of Seattle. Some of that was due to Seattle being really expensive even then. But Tukwilla was also really appealing to a variety of immigrant groups.
Except in some US cities it's increasingly the poors who end up living in the suburbs because the urban areas are so expensive
Nah. Maybe the inner suburbs while the rich go to the exurbs.
I mean this is exactly what's going on in my city. Obviously it's not universal.
I don’t know of a single large metro area where the rich live in the exurbs. Do you have one?
Especially on the coasts, the inner suburbs are the most expensive and it’s not even close.
I feel like you are extrapolating from a really small sample size.
Meh, sometimes it's about paying $300K vs. $1M for a house. Really depends a lot on the cities and suburbs one's talking about.
Or 125,000K vs 700,000K in my town.
Oh, man, I miss the Rust Belt! (Not the winters, though! :-) )
I freaking love winter! I mean, it gets old, but I like the pain.
Strong disagree! I live in a small town about nine miles from downtown Pittsburgh. It is a 15 minute place. And it is very mixed, class and money wise. No one in my neighborhood could afford to live in the city. I'm a nurse and was able to buy my own home. I live next door to a carpenter and a teacher. Politics wise, out town is nearly 50/50. You won't find that kind of diversity in the city.
I love small towns like that. There are tons of them across America. It's not all urbs/suburbs. So some of this controversy is baffling to me.
It's like tiny houses. How are they fundamentally different from mobile homes and trailers?
Tornado targets have plumbing hookups.
I sure hope that Tanzanian lady is real, because if real, she is INSANELY TALENTED and I want to take out a loan to buy that red dress.
I wish she had links to a storefront or something. I love her clothes.
If it's coming from Tanzania I think you could afford it.
15 Min cities discussion - The Elites are a dysfunctional group that fights among themselves a lot yes...but they all have the same goals of gaining/maintaining their power over the masses and they all agree that workers are dumb sheep that they are entitled to rule over. They all agree that workers are trash and that we need to be oppressed for our own good. They all agree that we are trash.
They don't need to have a conspiracy when they all have the exact same goals, desires and fears. Did all the media get together in a smoke filled room and decide they were all going to work together to help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 primary? Or was it simply that all the media corporations are owned by rich douchebags who all independently hated Bernie Sanders and independently used their power and influence to harm his campaign?
Hmmm. I think something else was going on. For one thing initially everyone was behind Clinton when she and Obama were running against each other. Then the establishment went to Obama. I never liked Bernie and I am sure a lot of people felt likewise. Would 2016 have been different if Bernie had won the primary? I do not know
2008 and 2016 are not exactly analogous. Obama was widely loved by the elites. While seen as a more risky candidate to run, the elites knew that, were he to get elected, the economic status quo would not be affected.
Bernie Sanders was a threat to the Democratic Party and the economic status quo. That is why they used their power to harm his campaign but didn't do the same against Obama.
I am not sure they want to oppress anyone. They just believe they know what is best for everyone and you will be happy with their decisions because they have the best ideas. If you don't think they know best you are clearly stupid or don't have sophistication to understand the world like they do. It's all because they care. It's paternalism.
The funny thing is Bernie has similar instincts, but doesn't really have the power or influence to make those instincts into policy like those in the World Economic Forum.
To be fair, basically everyone "thinks they know best". The people who have money and power (elites) are the ones that can enforce it over others, same as it ever was.
The main question is who are the elites and what specific things do they believe?
Katie being high on the podcast is why teen girls are unhappy.
The actual facts around what Oxford City Council & Oxfordshire County Council are proposing can be found here: https://news.oxfordshire.gov.uk/joint-statement-from-oxfordshire-county-council-and-oxford-city-council-on-oxfords-traffic-filters/#
As I suspected, they’re nowhere near as restrictive as some parties have made them out to be.
It may also be worth remembering that Oxford is one of the most commutable & cycle-friendly cities in the UK and, as it dates back to medieval times, the city centre is *already* one of the least traffic friendly places in Europe. This may be why it has been one of the first to look into this...?
It’s clear that, as a concept, the notion of the 15-Minute City is probably *much* less suited to cities in the US where it would have to be dramatically remodelled from the Oxford scheme, but here in Europe, I do find it baffling that THIS is the new thing that the Piers Corbyns of the world have latched on to... It’s town-planning, ffs! If it doesn’t work, go to the council meetings and complain. It’s so Alan Partridge. (Leaving aside Jimmy Concepts, who at this point is a hair’s width away from arguing with fire hydrants and tweeting that breadbins are a Marxist plot.)
The idea of a 15-minute city is a great one. But it's definitely going to be used an excuse to close roads indiscriminately and tax cars into oblivion. Because that's the new trend in urban planning. Like in the 70s when One-Way-Systems were the future. Until recently when we finally realised that they speed up traffic, but make everyone drive further, thereby becoming self-defeating.
Yes, we should tax negative externalities (cars).
Remember the X-Files and “Trust No-one?” This is the new civic mindset. What can possibly go wrong? /s
Mulder was right though.
Yes. People are taking their cues from fiction because it was right according to the plot.