The canopies are down

Snow with and without canopies.

I live in the Kingston Stockade District. The Pike Plan canopies were up for 50 years, and underwent a rehab around 2011 that was not the greatest quality. The lack of commitment to repair meant that some parts were held up with temporary jacks while others were in perfect shape. The design was not one single long wrap around, but had details roughly corresponding to the store fronts they were attached to. In fact they could have been painted to match the schemes of the buildings they were attached to, had more signage built on them, etc. But nobody was in charge of this kind of urban planning. 

This part of Kingston was hit hard as shopping centers like Kingston Plaza, just down the hill, with canopies (!) and huge anchor stores like Ames and Grand Union were sucking the life out of it. It only got worse as just to the north of Kingston, Rt. 9W developed an impressive number of customer-attracting shopping centers. Most of them are doing OK except for the Hudson Valley Mall, where I take the kids to instead of Headless Horseman for Halloween because it's so ghostly.

Everyone complains about parking in Kingston, but nobody wants to walk up the hill from Kingston Plaza, or park out of the range of the meters, or walk or bike. I found an article from 1926 complaining about parking in uptown, so it's nothing new. There are two or three "ghost" parking lots attached to undeveloped properties that I would have just eminent-domained if I had my druthers.

 Is there more light uptown? Does it look wider? It does! Will it bring back the kind of brick & mortar shops of the past? I don't see that happening. That's the economy not the canopies. 50 years of uptown publicity featuring the canopies is now outdated. There's a plaque on Wall & John St on the Kinsley Hotel extolling the Pike Plan that will need an apology underneath it.

As it is, with longtime quality venue BSP closed, the sidewalk basically rolls up here around 4:30pm.

 Historic photos do show awnings that used to be up, and they will be sporadically returned. We'll see!
It'll be a while before the big scar of housing plastic that runs where the canopies were attached is gone, surfaces reunited, paint jobs jobbed etc. Some money is allocated to help with that, but it's not going to be enough  for more than a start on repairs. Obviously Bender should shell out some cash to put up awnings, but charity is not one of his strong suits, although, he is responsible for housing the Kingston Library while their building is being renovated. There was a meeting about what the future might bring in terms of sttreetscape, there needs to be more of them. 

 The Streets Are Paved With Gold

Before I emigrated to this city, I was told "The streets were paved with gold", and they were right!

It's not high quality gold - like a half a karat gold - and not the whole street, just the yellow line down the middle.

What you think when you hear that over in the old country is that you can just dig up the street and use it for currency if things get tight, and things always get tight. 

Trouble is, everyone else has the same idea. When you dig it up, the department of Public Works comes and fills it up again, so really, that depresses the price of gold quite a lot. Plus, there's a little tax on it, like a property tax that goes up the more the streets have to have their gold refilled.  So, it's like finding a quarter on the sidewalk. 

Good luck finding anything for a quarter. 

It doesn't take a genius to figure out the real money is in the Public Works Department. Sure, there are laws restricting access to the street filling gold material, and it follows the chain of provenance just like criminal evidence does. It's actually pretty tight. But at every transition point, every transit point, there's a possibility of expropriation. And the gold gleaners have a pretty standard routine: dig up the streets in a particular pattern so the Public Works gold paving trucks will follow a predictable route, and grab just enough gold when it's exposed so it's under the "shrinkage" limit. Then you have to take it home to a home smelter, and that has to be hidden from the thermal detection vans that prowl the streets. It's one of those situations that quickly becomes more trouble than it's worth. 

So, the City Council recently decided that the positive publicity of "gold in the streets" is not worth it, and they actually lose money on it, so last month they started replacing the center lines with painted yellow ones like other cities have. It's actually a lot more visible than the old gold center lines. It means faster traffic, though, because people used to be more cautious and curious around the gold in the street. 

Remediating the street was a municipal task, so it went to the lowest bidder of course. They got a slightly higher quote than they wanted, but the Council signed off on it, and it was finished up last week, except for getting some of the specialized trucks off the streets that were parked there. 

My rock hunting niece called me yesterday with some very interesting information. She was walking on the way to the bus, and while crossing the street she heard some ticking in her backpack. It turns out she had turned on her Geiger counter by mistake, and to make a long story short, the yellow lines in the middle of the street are full of depleted uranium waste. So basically, we decided to replace the inert street gold with material that turned the whole city into a Superfund site. 

Surreptitiously peeling off some stickers on the remaining trucks, it turns out the real paving company, run by the mayor's cousin, has had many judgements against it and is forbidden from operating in the state. 

This story is still breaking, but there doesn't seem to be an  upside to it. Depleted uranium is pretty useless unless you want to poke a hole in a tank or something. It'll either have to be dug up or coated with a layer of lead and real yellow paint, which doesn't sound like a good solution. Online, people are posting how much they like the new, brighter yellow lines and for them, that's the end of the conversation.

Meanwhile, the other city attraction, the Fountain Of Youth, is being shut off after a study concluded that the water therein doesn't make you any younger. 

Is this a dystopia or a utopia?

It's time the USA got modern and transitioned the three branches of Government to the Digital Gig Economy. 

Legislators would be selected as needed for specific bills, enacted by departments calling in workers on demand, and adjudicated by a dynamic pool of potential clerks and judges.

The lean 'n' clean just-in-time government would strictly adhere to agile standards, working in two week sprints, with all progress posted publicly online Agile Board. All proposed actions: legislation, enforcement, procurement, etc, would be specified as unit tests and would have to pass these tests in order to be put into action. Furthermore, all laws would be subject to strict code coverage - no legal stipulation will be untested.

Tasks will be broken down into simple goals, which include testing and training, so that people can be drafted like jury service to serve as judges, legislators, and ambassadors.

Voting will be unnecessary, since the constant turnover of randomly drafted citizens will ensure that actions get the representation they need, and the aforementioned turnover will eliminate career politics and corruption.

Roles in the Agile Government will determined and vetted by machine learning, which having observed the processes involved, will continuously propose new legislation to optimize those processes. Newly conceived offices and positions will replace the traditional hierarchies so prone to inaction and corruption.

The crude concept of "working for a living" is then replaced with guaranteed environmental predictability, food, housing, education, health care, travel, digital infrastructure, distribution of goods, and dissolution of political borders. This will bring back the pre-cash economy, while the remnants of the old economics may still play out as a kind of sport.

-- Sept 27, 2020

Climate Reporting 

I'm troubled by the horse-racey reporting on the continuous record breaking of previous temperature and precipitation maxima.

The story is not that limit has been exceeded, it's that the limit _can be_ exceeded, and is likely to be surpassed in the near future.

Reporting like this leverages a comforting idea that these record breaks are rare, so you can be relieved when they are "over."

The new story is to be actively working to stop the causes, sustainably adapt to these changes, and shelter those fleeing these changes. Related to this is that while certain populations are much more at risk for disaster than others, the climates extra energy and water can show up in "less vulnerable" places as well. In short, you are not off the list.

The weirdness of secondary effects: fire tornados, heat domes that just stay put and stay hot, overheated bathtub surface water temperatures, ice NOT growing in Antarctic seas really makes you tear up your Bingo card.

Keeping Score.

 Declaration of Independence Grievances – Checklist

Government and Legislative Issues

☒ Prevented laws necessary for the public good from being passed.

☒ Refused to approve laws unless the people gave up their right to representation.

☐ Called legislative meetings in inconvenient locations to make governance difficult.

☐ Dissolved representative houses for opposing his policies.

☐ Refused to allow new representatives to be elected after dissolving legislative bodies.

Judicial and Legal System

☒ Refused to establish fair judiciary powers.

☒ Made judges dependent on his will for their office and salary.

Military and Enforcement Issues

☒ Created many new offices and sent officers to harass the people.

☐ Kept standing armies in the colonies without consent.

☐ Made the military superior to civil authority.

☐ Quartered troops among civilians without consent.

☐ Protected soldiers from punishment for crimes committed against colonists.

Trade and Economy

☒ Cut off colonial trade with the rest of the world.

☒ Imposed taxes without colonial consent.

Legal Rights and Due Process

☒ Denied colonists trial by jury.

☒ Transported colonists overseas for trial on false accusations.

Government Overreach and Tyranny

☒ Abolished colonial laws and fundamentally altered governments.

☐ Suspended legislatures and declared himself the sole ruler.

☐ Waged war against the colonies, burning towns and destroying lives.

☐ Hired foreign mercenaries to attack the colonies.

☐ Forced colonists into the British navy or army against their will.

Response to Colonial Petitions

☒ Ignored peaceful petitions for redress of grievances.

☒ Repeatedly acted as a tyrant rather than a fair ruler.

Is Creativity Dead - in Antarctica?

Comment to "Is creativity dead?" 

to nyt article:  "https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/26/opinion/social-media-algorithm-creativity.html"  

Look, !'m 201 years old and spent a lot of time growing up in Antarctica. If you want to see sameness, you can't beat 19th century Antarctica. 

 Listen to me, because I can barely remember it.

A six month night means you get to know the stars really well. The aurora australis bathed us in beauty while katabatic winds basically freeze dried everything. Even more than the Arctic, reality is stripped to essentials in a barren, continent sized desert. We were isolated from the cultural and political turmoil that took place in the 19th century. Narratives and structures like "religions" and "politics" were unimaginable in the dry frozen dark. We developed language that mimiced the sounds of the fulmars, whales, penguins, and seals that we were barely distinguished from. That meant a lot of our communication was singing.  We were humbled to be part of the animal kingdom. 

In my 40s, our world ended when some sailors blew in from Ushaia and kidnapped us. We had no idea of the world beyond the  Southern Ocean. I can't believe how often the sun rises and sets! We had never seen clothes that were not made of skins, land plants, and especially, wood.  Wood is a miracle. 

You youngsters are so easily distracted. You'll find it different after flood, fires and droughts reshape your culture to something closer to how I used to live. 

Comment on NYT: "A Big Climate Goal Is Getting Further Out Of Reach"

We're pretty obviously galloping madly in the "More Carbon" direction. The feedback loop of more heat means:

 - more release of methane from permafrost

 - less efficient uptake of CO2 from forests

 - Wildfires put their own carbon load in the atmosphere, which lasts after the cooling effect of the ash has precipitated. 

 - Extinction events for the biosphere due to moving growth zones and the reduction or cessation of the AMOC mean those creatures who survive will have a harder time of it.

- Positive feedback loops work faster and more reliably than economic growth.

There are a few straightforward solutions that are totally politically impossible. Stop drilling and processing now. Stop military action, which is a wanton carbon emitter at all stages of production and deployment. Plow those resources into sustainable tech, relocation off the coasts, housing for the upcoming waves of climate refugees. Whatever it costs - and money is largely fictional - it will be a tiny fraction of the cost of continuing. 

Regarding:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/climate/climate-action-tracker-temperatures-emissions.html?smid=url-share]