McFilter

Interesting Things on the Internet: November 11th 2019

• "Very few white-collar workers at P&G really do anything..." There is so much of this around. It's one of the reasons that Julian refers to DoES Liverpool as a home for corporate refugees, because we are (mostly) "set free to tinker and explore."
• Clare, Kelman, and Working-Class Art with Professor Simon Kövesi. "The UK establishment seems to accept poverty as the British respond to rain: with a shrug and a closing of the door."
• Politics is for Power, Not Consumption "If you feel unfulfilled, melancholy, paralyzed by the sadness of the news and depth of our political problems, there is an alternative: actually doing politics." A good reminder that retweeting and getting annoyed with social media and the news isn't being political
• Maintainers III: Infrastructure and climate. Great write up of the Maintainers conference from Laura, particularly for the section on Chuck Marohn's keynote: "Chuck moved on to an example of two adjacent blocks which were jumped over by post-war growth. One block was still basically small shacks; another tore down what were considered slums, and built a taco drive-through. This looks like growth, a positive thing. However, over time the small businesses change, but there's still a range of small operations. The taco joint is now neglected, and on a journey to become - as this is America - probably a used car lot, and then eventually a derelict site (which a developer will request a tax subsidy to build on). And yet the taco block is worth only $600k now, despite all the public infrastructure which enables it; the 'blighted' block of run-down businesses has a total value of $1.1m. The old stuff, after a century of neglect, is outperforming the recent shiny new building. "