Interact
With my ties to Southwest Colorado (that naturally extend into Southeast Utah) Bears Ears is a very special place to me. It’s hard to communicate the beauty and historical significance in those lands if you haven’t visited and it’s so vast that even to say you have “visited” is a bit of a misnomer: what part? Mountains? Canyons? River? You could spend a lifetime visiting and barely scratch the surface.
This beautiful, interactive piece came across my radar in the first Trump administration and it’s excellent. If nothing else, it will help you understand the scale of the Monument.
Bears Ears is the first national monument created at the request of and with input from Native American governments. A coalition of the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes initially sought protection for an area covering 1.9 million acres, bounded to the west and south by the Colorado and San Juan rivers.
“We knew exactly what was within that geographical boundary,” said Shaun Chapoose, a tribal councilman for the Uncompahgre band of the Ute Tribe. “We knew the gravesites, we knew where the artifacts were, we knew where certain plants and herbs grew.”
Considering the sheer acreage of nationalized/public land in the U.S. and the indigenous peoples that were shoved out of it by colonialism, it’s important to underscore their involvement in the creation of this monument. It took real work and compromise amongst many different groups of people and competing priorities to get here. The first Trump admin axed about 80% of it. Biden’s administration restored it, and now it’s again “under review” by the new Trump administration, with an indeterminate fate.
The Atlantic has a more recent piece (published in January, pre-inauguration) that does a good job of relaying the local tensions over the Monument.
Interact
In this thread, I will explore some ideas on why Tokyo is so fashionable. Some of it does have to do with culture, but as you’ll see in the thread, culture is also shaped by political, economic, and institutional forces. IMO, one should look for structural reasons for outcomes.
Again with the social media threads, yes, but this is a masterclass!
Derek Guy makes some excellent observations and arguments as to why multiple facets (and forces) of Japanese culture & society right now are driving fashion choices in Japan’s largest city.
Is this the effect of appreciating craft? He argues that’s too simple of a reason.
But to be honest, when I feel the most optimistic about Sam Altman’s proclamation that “much of society will soon be up for debate” (paraphrasing), I hope for something like Tokyo’s fashion scene on a grander scale: a movement to value physical objects, experiences, and perhaps even digital craft in a way our current digital economy eschews.
Interact
From the Hollywood Reporter’s article, “How Watch Duty Became an Essential Resource for Angelenos During Wildfires”:
“I don’t want to sell this. To who? No one should own this. The fact that I have to do this with my team is not OK. Part of this is out of spite. I’m angry that I’m here having to do this, and the government hasn’t spent the money to do this themselves,” Mills says. “So, no, it’s not for sale. No, I’m not open to change all of a sudden, and I just don’t give a shit.”
There used to be a couple places you could reliably find good information on an unfolding natural disaster—namely Twitter and Facebook. But for reasons… [gestures broadly], this is no longer the case.
I had not heard about Watch Duty before this disaster, but if you live in the Western U.S.—and let’s face it, even in a neighborhood you think is safe from a wildfire event—this app should probably be on your phone.
Also, “I’m angry that I’m here having to do this, and the government hasn’t spent the money to do this themselves,” could probably sum up so much of modern life right now, sadly.
Interact
In the vastness of empty space surrounding Earth, the Moon is our closest celestial neighbor. Its face, periodically filled with light and devoured by darkness, has an ever-changing, but dependable presence in our skies.
An incredibly-detailed and interactive microsite on our moon and its relationship with the earth.
Fun fact: the earth’s rotation is slowing down. On an infinite time scale that will be a problem for us, but for now, enjoy that each day is slightly longer—2 milliseconds per century—than it used to be.
Interact
The United States is only beginning to try to reconcile the abhorrent ways white settlers treated the children of indigenous people.
Interact
If you counted to a million without taking breaks, it would take you more than 11 days. But to count to a billion would take you just under 32 years. And with breaks to sleep and eat? Almost a lifetime.