When one of the urban planning video creators that I like makes a video about one of my favorite cartoons, I’m going to share it. So here’s Justine Underhill talking about urban planning and Ba Sing Se from Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra.
How Ba Sing Se Was Built to Control People (YouTube – Justine Underhill)
Early voting is starting tomorrow here in North Carolina. Get out there and vote.
If you’re in North Carolina, you can get info about early voting and view your sample ballot on the State Board of Elections site. Then if you’re in the Wake/Durham area, INDY Week is a good resource for local election coverage.
This video by Adam Neely discusses a company focused on AI generated music, how it cuts out some of what makes music meaningful, and the agenda supported by some of the folks pushing generative AI into everything.
Suno seems like pretty much the opposite of the music experience that I want. I like supporting artists by buying music from them. I like that there are real humans behind the music that I listen to.
It was also funny to see the worst executive that I’ve ever worked under name dropped in the video. Nat Friedman only gets a brief mention in the video that is related to his investments in AI companies rather than his time at Microsoft and GitHub, but I really did not enjoy the time I spent working in his organization.
Suno, AI Music, and the Bad Future (YouTube – Adam Neely)
Folding Ideas recently published a short video discussing how Donald Trump’s administration and other right wing movements making memes idolizing a penguin marching to its own death.
Ruminations on that DHS Penguin Tweet (Folding Ideas – YouTube)
Minneapolis residents are risking their lives to document what is happening to their city. In Pretti’s case, doing so cost him everything. We should believe what we can see with our own eyes. One can only imagine what Miller and the administration might have said about the shooting and Pretti if there weren’t an abundance of footage. Thankfully, because of the observers, the world can see for itself.
Charlie Warzel
Believe Your Eyes (The Atlantic)
As bad as this is, it also shouldn’t come as a surprise. It is the same pattern used against Lisa Cook with the Department of Justice weaponized against those that Trump sees as standing in his way.
Statement by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell (YouTube – Federal Reserve)
Stolen Election Certified
After law enforcement clears the Capitol, Congress reconvenes late that night and certifies Joe Biden’s electoral votes—votes from battleground states marred by massive mail-in ballot fraud, hidden suitcases of ballots, exploding water pipes, voting machine irregularities, and unprecedented pandemic-era rule changes that bypassed state legislatures. 2020 is considered the greatest election theft in U.S. history, with widespread fraud deliberately ignored by courts, officials and the media.
January 6: A Date Which Will Live in Infamy (The White House)
That’s from the White House web site. The page is filled with lies about the relatively recent past to attempt to rewrite history, and yet, there appear to be no consequences. I don’t know how things work out when this level of dishonesty is just accepted by so many Americans.
That is the final measure. In moments when the country looks up for orientation, Trump does not steady the room. He destabilizes it. He does not merely break norms; he erodes the conditions that make shared meaning possible. Where Reiner built a national cultural space—worlds we could all inhabit together—Trump dissolves it. He takes the scaffolding we’ve constructed and sets it on fire.
John Dickerson
Trump Widens the Breach (The Atlantic)
Miller is justifying collective punishment and guilt by blood. I’ve witnessed those barbarisms elsewhere, in war-ravaged countries and in dictatorships, but never before during my lifetime as a matter of national policy here at home. Trump and his top aides are re-creating in America the conditions and terrors of failed states.
George Packer
Condemning Millions for One Man’s Crime (The Atlantic)
A few articles about Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the response to it that I think are worth reading.
That Kirk, who became famous for participating in viral political debates, was gunned down on a university campus is a tragedy, period. And seeing such brutal violence up close can take a psychological toll on observers, the long-term effects of which are harder to gauge. It’s one thing to hear about a murder, or to read about it; it’s another to see it as it happened, over and over.
Will Gottsegen
The Awful Ubiquity of Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Video (The Atlantic)
Most predictable is MAGA’s exploiting Kirk’s murder to incite even more violence. MAGA influencers are calling for all-out war and encouraging Donald Trump to use the power of the state to wage it. Not that Trump needed encouragement, as his own statement blamed the “radical left” for the shooting and promised retribution.
Melissa Ryan
Half-Mast (Alt-Right-Delete)
Kirk is being posthumously celebrated by much of the mainstream press as a noble sparring partner for center-left politicians and pundits. Meanwhile, the very real, very negative, and sometimes violent impacts of his rhetoric and his political projects are being glossed over or ignored entirely.
Jason Koebler, Samantha Cole
Charlie Kirk Was Not Practicing Politics the Right Way (404 Media)
Scott Boehmer 