Photos
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
Archiving...
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
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
“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
Archiving...
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
"One thing I do have confidence in is my feeling"
A really interesting interview with André 3000 by Hanif Abdurraqib:
“The thing is, I can only give what I’m feeling. I’m interested in discovery. If there’s not any discovery, it doesn’t feel real to me. I’ve never considered myself the best producer or the best singer or the best rapper or any of those separate categories. But one thing I do have confidence in is my feeling.”
André 3000 is at peace - The Bitter Southerner
In what year was the first emoji-like character set developed? Your guess is almost certainly wrong.
Emoji History: The Missing Years - Get Info
The Brazilian JSOC for the environment
This is pretty wild. Brazil has created a (massively underfunded) JSOC for the environment.
In 2013, Cabral secured approval to build a unit of rangers who were committed to saving the environment, by force if necessary. The next year, he was shot in the shoulder when he and his men surprised illegal loggers in the woods; he was back at work in less than two months.
The members of the G.E.F. (the acronym stands for Specialised Inspection Group in Portuguese) are biology nerds who found themselves carrying guns—a gang of jungle Ghostbusters. They undergo intensive training, developed by a specialized police unit that fights organized crime.
Most members of his team had graduate degrees in the sciences. Renato, a muscular man of thirty-four with a shaved head, had specialized in fish ecology. During raids, he did a lot of the heavy lifting, keeping up a cheerful patter as he destroyed mine equipment; other times he fixed engines. Alexandre, forty-eight and the father of two young girls, had worked in a national park and in fisheries regulation before taking the G.E.F. training course. “I’d never imagined working with weapons,” he said, but he had shown an unexpected aptitude. He was generally a guard, calmly scrutinizing the surrounding forest with a gun at his shoulder.
The only nonscientist was Marcus—a former lawyer, forty-two, tall and rangy, with an easygoing manner. At the headquarters, in Brasília, he procured weapons and ammunition for the group; in the field, he was often a guard. Growing up in the interior province of Goiás, he aspired to be a photographer for skate magazines, until his parents persuaded him to go to law school instead. Halfway through, he attended a ceremony of the União do Vegetal, a Christian sect that incorporates ayahuasca in its sacraments. “During the opening chant, I left my body,” he recalled. “I started to see the Amazon rain forest and found myself walking through it in a uniform with a team, while Indigenous people chanted behind me. That moment filled me with joy, and there I discovered the mission of my life.”
The Brazilian Special-Forces Unit Fighting to Save the Amazon newyorker.com
Reader: www.newyorker.com
