This article in the NYT about nuns choosing to end their lives on their own terms amongst fellow sisters and friends, rather than in ahospital-hooked up to machines-is a deeply inspiring and moving piece which i think many of us could learn from.

Best passage, “We approach our living and our dying in the same way, with discernment,” said Sister Mary Lou Mitchell, the congregation president. “Maybe this is one of the messages we can send to society, by modeling it.”

Bruce Sterling speaking at the close of Reboot 11 a conference of “Nordic geeks”. He prophesizes that the coming decade will be one characterized by “Dark Euphoria”. Which he defines as an excitement and dread over the un-imagined/un-imaginable (to date) possibilities of the contemporary/future. The resulting response can be seen in two similar but different (in terms of “class”) “movement”. The first Sterling labels Favela Chic, the second Gothic High Tech.

My favorite bit, is his “practical” advice on environmentalism, specifically “geek friendly” environmentalism.

He offers a general principal for our Gothic generation; “stop acting dead“ Hair-suit green just changes the polarity of the 20th century, doesn’t offer the answer. As he puts it “Economizing is not social.”

Watch video (here)

Mat Webb spoke in the opening session about the value of macroscope (as opposed to microscope). What was interesting is he used the term not just in relation to scale, but also as object/value. Meaning he talked about how certain tools/resources can serve/function as a macroscope not just in terms of defining a sense of scale.

Watch video (here)

“Regeneration”, London, Lower Lea Valley, Olympics, “the Fence”; http://bit.ly/qc0hn and a photo tour http://bit.ly/aQYWC

Umm, wicked???

The short “entails six imaginations of disoriented systems that take a catastrophic turn”.

The great Confederate cavalryman, Jeb Stuart is pissed off that his father-in-law has sided with the Union. Just before facing him in battle, Stuart remarks upon his father-in-law, “He’ll regret it but once,” Stuart vows. “And that will be continuously.“

Via Ta-Nehisi Coates (here)

Admittedly a bit late on this one. Via Bruce Sterling at BeyondtheBeyond

“That’s the plausible premise right there — spaghetti-at-the-wall hacking that assembles, rather than invents.” http://bit.ly/Up5hE

Couldn’t agree more with the sentiment expressed herein.

Also love this song, just a little-bit of dub, a little bit of step and not too much techno…

From the horses-mouth, it’s all hybridity and the challenge of global commons in the next QDR ? http://bit.ly/17zO45

“One way the United States could respond would be to (re)embrace a grand strategy that focuses on sustaining a healthy international system, the maintenance of which is not only central to our national interests but is also a global public good-something everyone can consume without diminishing its availability to others.“

Great post by Owen Hatherly discussing an oft unobserved reality of British Brutalism.

Quoting Reyner Banham, Hatherly focuses on the pro=pedestrian nature of British Post War architecture.

“Brutalism, he notes, is an architecture that abhors the motor car.“

Read full (here)

This “magazine” ’s sixth issue Urbanisms: Model Cities, had two pieces that caught my eye/imagination. The common thread was Latin America.
This one (here) by José León Cerrillo and Peter J. Russo explores the complex geometries between cannibalism and Modernist Mexican structures. Its opens with a longtime favorite of mine, Oswald de Andrade’s Manifesto Antropófago. It closes with a computer interactive graphical appropriation of imagery and text.

the City that built itself by Joshua Bauchner, explores the cannibalized, small politics in action. Specifically, he visits Caracas, where approximately 80,000 residents have made “fifty-year-old superblock housing projects into the locus of sprawling improvised settlements“. The article also examines the political history beyond the early Modernist superblocks construction under the regime of Jimenez. One interesting note, is that although now supporting a much higher density than originally planned, the superblocks and surrounding landscape still serve as a structure/infrastructure for the current re-purposing of the blocks by the local community/councils.

Love the map on this “page” http://tinyurl.com/ln9wje

And this image gives some sense of the scale of the original project in relation to the city.

Photo By Joshua Bauchner