Yes this sort of things fascinates me - the links from the past explain how fundamental things are structured today. A Harvard professor has a few books about this and talks specifically about how railroads stops from way back when are responsible for much of the layout of suburbia today. I'd imagine much of the placement of things is based on railroads from the steam era.
Vice seems to have fallen victim to the increased polarization and agenda-ridden stories that have swept up so many media companies. They used to report on unique angles, find edgy topics to talk about...the last few years they regurgitate the same left-leaning talking points that one can find in any number of other media outlets.
They lost their soul and became what they probably used to hate.
They accepted funding from large media companies (Disney), and got rid most of their founding members, and original employees replacing them with "journalists" that largely float around between those properties that "regurgitate the same left-leaning talking points"
And in between all that is a sprinkling of truly high quality journalists who are doing none of that crap.
As I said elsewhere in this thread, I really hope they'll find a new home somewhere - where the context for their work is not being ruined by all the one sided culture wars "reporting". Oh, and all the drugs stuff.
I'm truly over the divisiveness so prevalent seemingly everywhere. Please let some nuance in, perhaps magic will happen.
Given they were forced to file bankruptcy on behest of their creditors whom are taking over the company, both of which are highly political and partisan (including George Soros) I would not hold my breath for a return to "quality journalism" anytime soon
They've gotten away from high-quality docs in recent years (as has much of the media) but the Abandoned series from ~2016 was a beautiful portrait of the underbelly of America and the people who live there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDniDNY03JE
A tangent: Granola Shotgun is one of my favorite blogs and Johnny has a unique viewpoint on many issues like urbanism, homesteads, town planning, etc. A quote from him that summarizes his writing to me: "So this is what America is actually like. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Look out your window. Take a drive down to your local big box store. Walk around your neighborhood. This is reality. Just sayin’."
I have little specific interest in these topics but love his storytelling and detailed posts.
Not Just Bikes is a great channel on urban development, and he did a series on Strong Towns' ideas specifically. I like this one, "How Suburban Development Makes American Cities Poorer".
I always laugh when watching his videos because it feels like his go to bad example is London Ontario. I recognize it in all the bad example B roll he uses.
Granola Shotgun reminds me of blogging in its prime. Maybe 15 years ago? I had a big RSS feed of several blogs like this that I really loved. Over the years I’ve either gotten worse at finding them or the average blog has gotten much worse.
Yes, I miss the days where independent blogs ruled the web. Everything has transitioned to social platforms optimized for instant gratification where there is no room for deeper thoughts. Or lives on a 3rd party like Medium. Most of the blogs I used to read daily have transitioned to being people who tweet a lot and rarely write longer content.
Glad to see there are other fans of Granola Shotgun on HN. Most of the titles Johnny uses are probably too vague to capture interest here, but a few submissions have made the front page:
The guy comes off as a somewhat of a jerk in those examples, I don't think I will be subscribing to his RSS feed.
In the first one, he seems to keep getting in conflicts with people about his photography of their property or community, over and over. I'm reminded of the phrase "If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole".
In the second one, he starts off with, "I visited friends" and then proceeds to go on a rant against those purported friends, criticizing the fact that they bought a bunch of stuff from Julia Child's estate and display it as artwork on the wall rather than I don't know....baking stuff with it or something? Not a friend I would want. I'm starting to see a pattern here.
The third one is just "Levittown sucks revisited", not a very good introduction to Levittown. The pictures emphasize "all of these houses look the same", which well duh. They were one of the first examples of mass produced housing in the US so of course they were built off the same blueprint. More interesting takes on Levittown look at what happened to the houses and neighborhoods as the place got older.
But yeah, I guess I've got to agree with the "this is America take a look" part. I'm a fan, he's not.
I'd argue that it's equally as impossible to set up trigger warning policies.
While some trigger warning like the ones you mentioned are valid, the term has been perverted to include all sorts of things[0] where you could get in trouble for talking in public about insects or needles.
It's an impossible task to list out and educate people on everything that might possible trouble or offend. Once you open that door, there is no finite end to a list of triggers.
Many news outlets will say "Warning, the following story contains graphic imagery," and people don't think this is unreasonable; nor do they expect more specific content warnings in the future. This tells me it's possible to be considerate of common triggers while still drawing the line somewhere
> This tells me it's possible to be considerate of common triggers while still drawing the line somewhere
I agree it is, but right now it's very difficult to have the discussions necessary to draw those lines—supporters of trigger warnings only want to discuss the cases where they're clearly justified (fireworks & veterans) and pretend all uses are similarly valid, and critics of trigger warnings only want to discuss the cases where they're clearly not (slimy things), and pretend that all uses are similarly invalid. Determining where the lines should be drawn will be a long, complicated, painful discussion, but currently there's no way to have that conversation. If your opinion is somewhere in the middle, most internet commentators will lump you into the all-for or all-against group.
I agree it is, but right now it's very difficult to have the discussions necessary to draw those lines
When something is 1) subjective or very hard to measure and 2) used as an emotional bludgeon then then people are going to call "shenanigans" and even start to exhibit knee-jerk doubt about such things. Often, this is a tragedy, as the issues may well be both real and difficult to discuss.
The quality of such debate and discussion has been hurt by the "Eternal September" nature of online discussion. The internet gives everyone a voice, especially if you have time to waste. Hence, clueless Freshmen and middle-schoolers have disproportionately loud voices online.
That's a good point. Internet commenters tend to overgeneralize. Fortunately, those people aren't strictly needed for a solution. The only party who needs to listen is the content provider (in my example, the news outlet).
> Many news outlets will say "Warning, the following story contains graphic imagery,"
Since blood leads, this is, in my personal estimation, done primarily to increase immediate viewer count, not avoid - and thus retain in the more distant future - discomfiting sensitive current viewers.
> Many news outlets will say "Warning, the following story contains graphic imagery," and people don't think this is unreasonable
Yes, but students shouldn't expect that warning before a class on horror films. If you're unable to see graphic imagery, you should drop the class.
Similarly, students shouldn't expect to be warned about a discussion of slavery in a course about the American civil war. And you really shouldn't be able to get a degree in American history if you're unable to study the civil war.
No that's totally different. Broadcast news programs are often watched by small children. Parents reasonably want to shield children from graphic content which they are too immature to understand. However university students are almost entirely adults and thus expected to have the intellectual and emotional maturity to deal with the real world unfiltered.
> It's very difficult not to dismiss this as infantile.
Which is, in turn, why many people don't take these things seriously. Of course, perhaps there is a justification for "trigger warnings" and "safe spaces" in colleges, but the issue of whether those 1) belong in the classroom as opposed to elsewhere on campus, and 2) should be a feature of colleges at all, is completely derailed by things like this.
At the same time, in a country that values free speech people are allowed to have idiotic opinions. The fact that people are giving those opinions credence because they are "on the Internet" is probably closer to the issue.
Really? You don't think people are capable of being traumatized by pregnancy, death, or insects? Personal injury and insects are among the most common phobias and pregnancy should be fairly obvious as to why it's on that list (I don't want to elaborate because that could be traumatizing).
Maybe you should try having more empathy for oppressed groups and individuals rather than writing off anything you can't immediately connect to your own experience as infantile.
"Maybe you should try having more empathy for oppressed groups and individuals rather than writing off anything you can't immediately connect to your own experience as infantile."
None of the items I listed involve oppression or special subgroups of people. They are basic components of the human condition.
An inability to deal with the basic aspects of being alive is, ipso facto, infantile.
Pregnancy predominantly effects women. If I need to argue that women are oppressed, I don't think we can have a discussion. Phobias effect the neurodivergent and your dismissal of this is ableist.
You're inserting your own value system, via the word "basic." It's indisputable that anything is an "aspect" of "being alive," but whether something is too "basic" to warrant consideration is entirely your construction. It is reactionary to dismiss oppressed peoples' self-descriptions of their oppressions. It would be progressive of you to listen to the oppressed and learn how to be a better ally. Do you want to be reactionary and backwards-thinking or progressive and forwards-thinking? How do you want to be remembered?
Whether or not they can be traumatized is not the issue. If those things traumatize someone, they should be getting personal professional care, not wastefully burdening every institution and individual they interact with.
You don't need a trigger warning policy, necessarily. Just a culture that promotes being aware of common triggers. This notice goes in the opposite direction.
>It's an impossible task to list out and educate people on everything that might possible trouble or offend. Once you open that door, there is no finite end to a list of triggers.
It's not necessary to exhaust the full list. Analogously: it's impossible to list out and educate people on every form of negative externality, but we still have laws to address the big ones, and that helps.
What is really needed is the common sense and personal decision to get help with issues which are distressing so that reminders of those issues doesn't cause anxiety, stress, or a break-down.
>Just a culture that promotes being aware of common triggers.
I'd argue we pretty much already have this. Most people are aware of when a delicate topic is delicate and will treat it as such or avoid it, depending on the context. Trigger warnings seem to be a hammer in search of a nail, or more likely to me, something that was perhaps well intentioned at one point that is now just a means of attention seeking.
> While some trigger warning like the ones you mentioned are valid, the term has been perverted to include all sorts of things[0] where you could get in trouble for talking in public about insects or needles.
This is going to sound like a bad joke.
Fear of needles are more legitimate than might appear at first blush. Those of us with a needle phobia will experience a sudden drop in blood pressure, precipitating unconsciousness. In some cases this leads to death, making it one of the few phobias that can outright kill you.
I had the good fortune to undergo desensitization via allergy shots.
In a word, yes. Spend some time Googling around and analyzing backlink profiles in high spam areas (designer goods, pharma, etc) and you'll see tons of pages propped up by link spam ranking highly. If you are smart about it some automated link building tactics still work very well. It's not sustainable but most people take a "churn and burn" approach and just move on to a new domain if it gets torched by Google.
Usually the linking scheme is more creative then what this article shows though. More tiers and not just linking to every site from every other site. For super competitive terms this still seems like a short term strategy but for less competitive it may still be viable.
I think google has taken steps to stop this from an algorithm stand point but really I think most of there attempts are more marketing based. IE trying to scare people into not doing it anymore.
It also doesn't take exploiting sites to do it. You can just buy some aged domains and throw up wordpress.
