First day in Cairo without human contact since arriving (around 50ish days now). Also first day without contending with house fixups. Just me, my music, and drawing table.
Penciled in half a page of TSG so far today and figured out that I have around 30ish [uninterrupted] days' worth of work to bring TSG to a close once and for all. The “uninterrupted” bit is the tricky part, for days like today are evidently extremely hard to come by, at least until all work on the house is complete.
Why Soviet cities are insanely well designed – SovietBorn on Youtube: Not quite actually, she goes off to list many of the cons towards the last third of the video. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater though, there are ways to address the cons without abandoning everything that ever went into Soviet architecture.
China's City of the Future: Utopia or Dystopia – TechAltar on Youtube: Looks like Shenzhen is kind of out of this world.
Two long trenches cut through my place now, the result of a plumbing job. Already got the tiles to cover them up, but don't want to do that before I'm through with the electric work which will involve tearing into the walls. No drywall around these parts, it's all brick and concrete, so it's bound to result in a big mess. Four days' worth of a big mess to be precise.
Electrician was scheduled for this morning, but he never showed up and wouldn't even answer his phone. Dude just threw away a big payday for some reason. By the time he called back, I'd already given the job to someone else, who comes through end of the week.
That's many more days than I would've liked to be living with these trenches in the house. Cairo's the kind of place that tests your limits in more ways than one.
Ganzeer[dot]com is currently down, something to do with the fuckery involved in the forced transfer from Google Domains to Squarespace following their sale. Will attend to soon, I'm rather web-ignorant when it comes to this stuff.
Namibia Watering Hole – 24/7 lives stream of a watering hole in the Namibian desert, where a variety of animals come to quench their thirst. First time I popped in, I caught what I think is a hyena (it was night time) taking a little sip. You also catch much delightful out-of-frame wildlife sounds.
Decade of Danger – “the United States expended almost 10 million tonnes of ammunition during the Vietnam War, doing so at a pace of nearly two million tonnes per year during peak efforts in 1968 and 1969.[5] The roughly four million 155mm artillery shells the U.S. and EU have supplied to Ukraine over nearly three years of war would altogether weigh only about 180,000 tonnes. The American defense industrial base is still far from ready for sustained industrial war, and with history suggesting 12-to-24-month lead times being the norm for scaling up production even under emergency conditions, prudence counsels for accelerating the process (Figure 1). Billions of dollars spent on extra stockpiles during the Decade of Danger pales in comparison to the humanitarian costs and trillions of dollars in losses that conflict could bring.” They're calling this the “Decade of Danger” now?
Switch-Lit – Collaborative story-writing app for the collective imagination.
Not sure why big bulky A3-sized printer/scanner/fax workstations are far more easy to come by than straight up A3 flatbed scanners. I've looked everywhere since arriving and couldn't find a single one, so I had no choice but to get me the HP OfficeJet Pro 9730 Wide Format. Big bastard of a thing. Twisted by ankle hauling it down the stairs to the studio last night, almost fell over but caught myself, stood my ground, and landed with all that weight on said twisted ankle instead.
I am now incapable of standing. Getting old sucks.
Via Dense Discovery #333:
WE HAVE NEVER BEEN WOKE: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite by Musa al-Gharbi
“Musa al-Gharbi argues that the rise and influence of ‘wokeness’ in contemporary discourse is often overstated and misunderstood. With data and historical context, al-Gharbi challenges common assumptions about social progress, activism and political identity, offering a nuanced perspective on the limits and contradictions of what he calls ‘symbolic capitalists’. 'In education, media, nonprofits, and beyond, members of this elite work primarily with words, ideas, images, and data, and are very likely to identify as allies of antiracist, feminist, LGBTQ, and other progressive causes. Their dominant ideology is ‘wokeness’ and, while their commitment to equality is sincere, they actively benefit from and perpetuate the inequalities they decry.'”
Adding to my tbr, because it sounds spot on.
“Compared to other animals, humans are born prematurely, when many of their vital systems are still under-developed,” writes Yuval Noah Harari in his widely-celebrated book SAPIENS: A Brief History of Humankind. “A colt can trot shortly after birth; a kitten leaves its mother to forage on its own when it is just a few weeks old. Human babies are helpless, dependent for many years on their elders for sustenance, protection and education.”
This could at first glance be taken as a disadvantage, but actually it seems to have forced us to evolve in different ways.
“This fact has contributed greatly both to humankind's extraordinary abilities and to its unique social problems. Lone mothers could hardly forage enough food for their offspring and themselves with needy children in tow. Raising children required constant help from other family members and neighbors. It takes a tribe to raise a human. Evolution thus favored those capable of forming strong social ties.”
Therefore, one can consider the “nuclear family” to be a kind of human devolution.
After a bit of a [accidental] hiatus, the newsletter is back with issue #221: Because Cairo.
Digital Degrowth: Technology in the Age of Survival by Michael Kwet
RUIN ME, new single from Max Fractal.
Papeer – Curate a media feed from RSS, websites, and substacks and sync with your e-reader!
Bruce Sterling's Shelfie, in Ibiza!