“Barcelona plans to enact a citywide ban on all short-term rentals to address complaints that tourism is to blame for a local housing crisis and soaring rents.” - Bloomberg

Lost in the Woo-to-Q Pipeline - The Cut

Awful More than 550 hajj pilgrims die in Mecca as temperatures exceed 50C

“So many of Chomsky’s arguments, indeed the very phrases that he used, are becoming commonplace. Even while he is not directly quoted, his shadow looms large and his presence is ubiquitous." - Vivek Chibber at Jacobin

Border Force “officers routinely ask travellers to provide their passcode or password to devices so they can be examined, but they do not have the power to compel passengers to hand over their passcodes, the ABF has explained to the Australian Senate and in guidebooks provided to officers”

Liquid3, an “urban photo-bioreactor” that a Serbian startup has developed to replace trees.

I, for one, welcome our new green slime overlords.

A narrow glass box filled with a bright green liquid, on a snowy street at night.

On "blood quantum", indigenous identity, and federally recognised tribes in the U.S.A.

Defined as the degree of “Indian blood” one must prove to their tribe in order to be considered a member of a tribe, this measure was historically (and still remains) crafted by colonial powers to regulate and ultimately reduce the populations of Native American Nations. Today, blood quantum is the most widely used way to record “membership,” affecting not just personal identity but also political and social rights.

I’ll Show You My Indian If You Show Me Yours esquire.com

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A company that had built its name on celebrating knowledge and expertise was now at the mercy of machines that could not discern the difference between information and wisdom or between factual text and text that mimicked the patterns of factual-sounding writing.

“Playing with conventions, literary or social, taking them apart and exposing them as scaffolding that hides rather than reveals truths can be threatening to those who think they know exactly how the world is supposed to turn. The Trilogy repositions the reader. It forces her to see the world differently. That’s the magic.”

Remembering Paul Auster lithub.com

Reader: lithub.com

“a device that dispenses physical “attention receipts” that list exactly how much time you’ve spent watching YouTube videos”

A machine showing a receipt that lists youtube videos watched and their duration.

Instagram is testing “ad breaks” that force you to stop and look at an ad for a period of time before you can continue scrolling. The internet’s transformation into a pay to play game continues apace.

“A study of 26 years' worth of wolf behavioral data, and an analysis of the blood of 229 wolves, has shown that infection with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii makes wolves 46 times more likely to become a pack leader."

A good explainer about Māori wards in New Zealand local government, and why their new regressive government is disestablishing them

Stunning photo essay about Mexico City’s ancient floating gardens

A lake with tufts of vegetation. Mexico City is visible in the distance.

At the turn of the 21st century, corrugated cardboard accounted for just fifteen percent of the U.S. recycling stream. Today, it’s nearly half.

World in a Box: Cardboard Media and the Geographic Imagination placesjournal.org

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Image credit Title: Piles of recycling waiting to be sorted Creator: World Resources Institute Date: 2019 Type: Colour digital photo Rights: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

A mountain of cardboard waste

‘It’s also no coincidence that the biggest business case for these systems is to help communication in the corporate world: a semantic zone drained of novelty.’ Do chatbots dream of AI poetry?

Utopian Realism, a speech by Bruce Sterling

This is a great read, especially for anyone who’s spent time in Turin

A basic Turinese problem here is that Torino is progressive, but a heritage tourist industry, which is very attractive to tourists, has no avant-garde. Their stifling interest in your past holds you back. You can’t do “futuristic heritage industry.” Why? Because you can’t move forward into the past.

Utopian Realism, a speech by Bruce Sterling bruces.medium.com

Reader: bruces.medium.com

Image credit Title: Turin Creator: Ben Harris-Roxas Date: 20 April 2017 Type: Colour digital photo Rights: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.0

Why doesn’t Hollywood make more mass extinction films?

A man sitting surrounded by plants. A scene from the film Silent Running (1972).

“The desire of privilege and the taste of equality are the dominant and contradictory passions of the French of all times.” The crisis in French identity since De Gaulle

Interesting article on France diminished global influence and the crisis this represents for their national identity:

One would have to go back 20 years to find a moment when Paris last demonstrated the will to step out from beneath the shadow of the U.S. and exercise a critically important decision on its own. In 2003, it opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. French diplomacy, under the auspices of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, effectively cemented a coalition with Germany and Russia, depriving the American initiative of international legitimacy. Since that time, France has once more found its place in European affairs to be subordinate to Germany and within the orbit of U.S. countenance.

Macron and the French Identity Crisis intpolicydigest.org

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Timely, given the ongoing crisis in New Caledonia.

Image credit Title: Incendies sur Nouméa Creator: Lilian Alizert Date: 16 May 2024 Type: Colour digital photo Rights: Copyright Lilian Alizert

Smoke trailiing above a tropical city along a shoreline. The site is Noumea, New Caledonia.

A study of 84 countries found 60 multinationals account for more than half of the world’s plastic pollution. Six companies alone are responsible for 13%.