" In 1997, as Tony Blair entered Downing Street, the average house price was 4.5 times the average wage. A decade later, as he left the top job, that figure had more than doubled to 9.5 times. That is where they remain.

The desire to depict millennials and gen Z as weak and work-shy is entirely at odds with the facts: not only are adults in their 30s less likely to own a home than 20 years ago, and be in more debt, they are earning less than people their age a decade ago too. Young adults have never been hit this hard before, including after previous recessions: real hourly earnings for people in their 20s grew by 23% in the seven years after the recession of the early 1980s, and by 4% after the early 90s."

https://novaramedia.com/2022/02/10/older-generations-cant-deal-with-the-fact-theyve-had-it-easy/

"Web3 is only about adding an additional layer of complexity in the name of justifying the underlying cryptocurrencies. The web browser is augmented with a cryptocurrency wallet and part of the computation and storage is shifted from my server to the decentralized cryptocurrency infrastructure. [...]
I know some cryptocurrency enthusiasts will protest that their favorite blockchain is cheaper than Ethereum. And it’s true, underutilized cryptocurrencies may be one or two orders of magnitude less expensive to use in the “web 3” vision when compared with Ethereum. Which still means 6 orders of magnitude worse than the conventional distributed solution.

So why this hype? Because the cryptocurrency space, at heart, is simply a giant ponzi scheme where the only way early participants make money is if there are further suckers entering the space. The only “utility” for a cryptocurrency (outside criminal transactions and financial frauds) is what someone else will pay for it and anything to pretend a possible real-word utility exists to help find new suckers.

After all, a programmer doing the most basic test of a web3 prototype is going to need to get the cryptocurrency, spend the cryptocurrency, and any application will require all users to get the cryptocurrency as well. If this gets abandoned quickly due to the inevitable technical failure “web3” still accomplished its goal of getting more suckers in and extracting their money."

https://www.usenix.org/publications/loginonline/web3-fraud

"Current children’s cinema is composed predominately of flashy adventure-comedies (to name some recent hits: The Lego Batman Movie, Finding Dory, The Secret Life of Pets, Zootopia). Structurally and tonally, they feel almost exactly like blockbusters made for adults, minus any potentially offensive content. They aren’t so much made for children as they’re made to be not not for children. Perhaps this is why the genre is generally called “Family,’ rather than “Children’s.” The films are designed to be pleasant enough to a broad, age-diverse audience, but they’re not necessarily made specifically for young hearts and brains.

My Neighbor Totoro is a genuine children’s film, attuned to child psychology. Satsuki and Mei move and speak like children: they run and romp, giggle and yell. The sibling dynamic is sensitively rendered: Satsuki is eager to impress her parents but sometimes succumbs to silliness, while Mei is Satsuki’s shadow and echo (with an independent streak). But perhaps most uniquely, My Neighbor Totoro follows children’s goals and concerns. Its protagonists aren’t given a mission or a call to adventure—in the absence of a larger drama, they create their own, as children in stable environments do. They play."

https://www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2017/03/13/towards-a-true-childrens-cinema-on-my-neighbor-totoro/

The commitment to social and environmental sustainability is not unique to Powerhouse. Norway is wholly dedicated to reducing carbon-dioxide emissions across the country, with the ultimate goal of decarbonizing transportation altogether. For these efforts, Oslo was elected the 2019 European Green Capital. Powerhouse isn’t the only group dedicated to energy-positive construction; Haptic Architects and the Nordic Office of Architecture are planning an energy-positive airport city for Oslo.

Hopp suggests this kind of environment-focused collectivism is partly informed by Norway’s right to roam, a right codified by law that gives all Norwegians the freedom to pitch a tent almost anywhere they want.

Hopp says Snøhetta has integrated a version of the right to roam—being able to freely walk in, under, or upon a building as a member of the general public—into its work. “We believe that architecture is one of the most important cultural expressions of our time, and that it also has a social impact,” she says.

“When you have a generous building that is also able to include society, that changes how you perceive cities and the built environment around you—the singular you as well as the plural. It makes a big difference.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/12/norway-energy-positive-buildings/578245/

"Let’s think this through. The foundation of everything happening now is a sort of late capitalist nihilistic politics fueled purely by culture wars — an almost primitive flight from rationality driven by a half century of rising inequality and crumbling faith in ineffective public institutions. The American dream is dead: Children no longer do reliably better than their parents. The dream of a one-income supported household is over. In its place have sprouted the gig economy, crushing student debt, the death of unions and generalized precarity. The rich are unimaginably richer, and everyone else is spinning their wheels. The Republican response has been the culture wars, in lieu of actually redistributing wealth. This has been effective, ironically, because the sort of healthy institutions that would prevent culture war politics from being so powerful are the very institutions that are withering away. Technological changes and the atomization of mainstream media have intensified our division into warring political camps, identity-based tribes that further radicalize electoral politics, and are in turn radicalized by it in a non-virtuous cycle."

https://inthesetimes.com/article/the-ticking-bomb-of-crypto-fascism

"Greener cities and healthy ecosystems are just as important as built infrastructure for keeping people safe, the report emphasized. And urban planners might need to give up developing some of the most vulnerable coastal areas, or risk building in places that’ll be inundated with water in the future.

The report, authored by hundreds of experts from 67 countries, also synthesizes what the vast body of research tells us about how the climate crisis affects society as we know it — and what humans will likely have to do to adapt. Deadly heat stress could affect up to 76 percent of humanity by the end of the century, the report says. Up to 3 billion people around the world (nearly 40 percent of the current global population) could face chronic water scarcity if world leaders fail to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord."

https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/28/22953552/sea-walls-coastal-cities-climate-change-adaptation-united-nations-report

"Where capitalists once leveraged naked racism to ensure access to a cheap and disposable workforce, this time they are using the aesthetic of social justice and anti-racism."

https://jacobinmag.com/2022/02/gig-prop-22-flexibility-contractors-anti-racism-social-justice-lyft-uber-instacart/

"During his time in office, Pan Yue introduced many radical ideas about possible solutions for China’s environmental issues, including a proposal for more democratic control over environmental policy-making. Interestingly, the Chinese authorities have now embraced some of Pan’s ideas as part of a national policy effort that goes under the name of ‘Ecological Civilisation’ (shengtai wenming). Ecological Civilisation stems from the recognition that any possibility for the reversal of the country’s ecological decline must come from an overall rethinking of its development strategies. Practically, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party has, thus far, supported the establishment of an ecological compensation mechanism, supplementing GDP measurements with quality indicators that take into account environmental issues." - Introduction to the Commons, p.28

"Rogan’s success as a broadcaster also reveals deep problems with American media that can’t be fixed by limiting his reach. People listen to him in part because they don’t trust the mainstream media, and that mistrust is warranted. What we need is good, trustworthy journalism and analysis that helps people understand the world. If it’s not there, then we can’t be surprised when someone like Rogan fills the information vacuum. If it’s not him, it will be somebody else. Media studies professor Victor Pickard points out in his recent book Democracy Without Journalism? that what looks like a “fake news” problem is in fact more to do with a lack of well-funded, trustworthy journalism. More important than “content moderation” is building powerful public media."

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/02/on-experiencing-joe-rogan/

"For Romina Mayer, there was no question that she had to buy the KlimaTicket (the “Climate Ticket”) when it launched. For just €1095 per year, it gives her unlimited access to every form of public transportation in her country of Austria: All buses, undergrounds, trams and local, regional and national trains — private and public."

https://reasonstobecheerful.world/the-alpine-country-going-all-you-can-ride/