One particularly sleepless night, I found myself spiraling into what I’ve come to think of as “the advocacy paradox”: If I succeed completely in paying off all lunch debt, will that remove the urgency required to change the system that creates the debt in the first place? But if I don’t pay it off, actual children — not abstractions, but specific kids with specific names who like specific dinosaurs and struggle with specific math problems — will continue to experience real shame and real hunger tomorrow. The perfect threatens to become the enemy of the good, but the good threatens to become the enemy of the fundamental.

I Randomly Decided To Pay Off A School’s Lunch Debt. Then Something Incredible Happened.

“We’re getting to the point where ghosts are real. The future is here, valuing magic and mystery over reality. Not only are we aware of the difference, but we’re at peace with it.”

Louis Rosenfeld in reference to this.

“Covey’s take was “an abundance mentality springs from internal security, not from external rankings, comparisons, opinion, possessions, or associations.” In my experience, that internal security overflows into their inner circle and wider community, believing that more for the people around them doesn’t equal less for them personally, but precisely the opposite — the more people succeed, the greater chance I will as well. Which fuels my desire to go on the offensive, helping my peers and strangers alike.”

Abundance in a Time of Scarcity

Sites I like: 18f.org. “But we came to the government to fix things. And we’re not done with this work yet.” Fuck yeah ❤️‍🔥

the best defense, the most meaningful work, the best preparation you can do at the level of an individual life is to boost your local resilience. To become a person of place. To connect with the people and land where you live. This is what we’re built to do.

How I became ‘collapse aware’. This is not a depressing read (or listen, the author read option was great)! /via Dense Discovery

Log of the Bay is a LOG of radio traffic received on Marine VHF channels form a basement window in Oakland, California.

Akiya (vacant houses in Japan) “are becoming less like financial assets and more akin to natural resources, available to be harvested by those who wish put in the time and substantial effort to reclaim one from natural decay.”

A far-right attack on a community college reveals a blueprint for destroying higher ed

The problem goes far beyond a three-person majority on the trustee board of a small community college. NIC and many other institutions are in danger because, over the last decade and a half, a core group of extremists has slowly taken over the Idaho Republican Party in the same way that a parasitic wasp slowly takes over its host. This required no astroturfing or Koch-fueled cash infusions, just a regular, everyday indifference to hyperlocal politics. The tactic is underway elsewhere, but Idaho got a head start. This crisis is what happens when insurgency bears fruit.

Emphasis mine. Currently looking for more ways to be involved in my community.

Any code I’ve written, any glib digital creation, disappears into the infinite feed. But a playground will stubbornly stand for the next twenty years, pointing to big ideas in computer science. It’s something I think about often.

A playground to outlast the feed

IKEA Catalog from a Near Future

Some design fiction on the " …possible evolutions of home life, consumer trends and needs, and related topics in the categories of domestic life, food, urban life, travel, leisure, and entertainment."

The networks we use to communicate across fields and distances, to find our friends and learn from people unlike ourselves—and to organize ourselves to respond to acute crises and long, grinding institutional failures—are the same networks that are making so many of us miserable and/or deranged.

Into the wreck

Not Built For This is a 6-part series from 99% Invisible. It explores how climate change is laying bare the vulnerabilities in the American built environment and how communities across the country have been left to bootstrap their own survival.

American suburbs are full of ugly, empty, liminal spaces: spaces you are not meant to linger in or enjoy. They’re the creepy hallways of the built environment, and you can’t feel comfortable traversing them unless you’re zooming past them in a car.

American Suburbs Are a Horror Movie and We’re the Protagonists

America’s 7-Elevens to become ‘Japanese style’: “Japan’s 7-Eleven locations – referred to as konbini – have a different vibe. There, they put a focus on “tantalizing food,” according to TODAY. Items found at Japanese 7-Eleven stores include onigiri (rice balls), fried chicken, sushi, egg sandwiches, fresh pastries, mochi and hot bar items”

The internet isn’t for humans anymore. Bots use the internet more than we do; use shapes design.

The internet isn’t for humans anymore

If the web is now a metaphorical barren wasteland, pillaged by commercial interests and growth-at-all-costs management consultants, then I’m all the more motivated to keep my little patch of land lush, and green, and filled with rainbow flowers.

— My own little patch - Rach Smith

The scale of the algorithm exceeds even our own understanding; its returns benefit only its owners and leave the rest of us awash in noise and bereft of understanding.

— Unscalable, Hand-Crafted Lists of Links - Christopher Butler

Every place I’m from is gone because it’s not just a place, it’s a place at a certain time. It would take a time machine to go back.

— Should I move back to France? - Mike Monteiro

How a Connecticut middle school won the battle against cellphones (🎁 link)

Gabe Silver, another eighth-grader, echoed that sentiment. When the pouches first arrived, “everyone was miserable and no one was talking to each other,” he said. Now he can hear the difference at lunch and in the hallways. It’s louder. Students are chatting more “face to face, in person,” Gabe said. “And that’s a crucial part of growing up.”

I know there has been pushback against The Anxious Generation’s use of research, but I tend to agree with Zoë Schiffer from Platformer. Too much phone time (for kids or adults) just feels bad:

At the same time, we shouldn’t set aside the lived experiences of so many everyday smartphone users. For many of us, constant connectivity feels bad, and doomscrolling can heighten feelings of anxiety and depression. Meanwhile, getting outside and spending time with loved ones face to face can be the antidote to despair. I’m sympathetic to researchers who call attention to that dynamic, even if disputes remain about which claims are grounded in unassailable evidence.

They Didn’t Just Want to Build a Housing Shelter. They Wanted to Shift Public Perception:

Changing the way the public perceives shelters informed the design. From the nearby highway, the first glimpse you get of the structure includes an impressive mural by Australian artist Guido van Helten stretched across its 3,000-square-foot facade. A passerby might think this is an art museum, a shop, or possibly a school.