Linkage

Things Katy is reading.

150 British Jews tell Met top cop: you’re racist assuming we all support Israel

in The Skwawkbox  

We the undersigned, being Jewish, wish to support and join a complaint against the Metropolitan Police, for their racist and anti-Semitic assumption that all Britain’s Jews support Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza.

We further believe that the decision of the Metropolitan, Police to delay the starting time of the March Against Genocide in Gaza on 17 Feb. 24 from 12.00 to 1.30 pm ‘to accommodate an event at a synagogue along the route’ is lslamophobic, based as it is on the assumption that the large numbers of Muslims taking part pose a threat to Jews worshipping in congregations nearby.

The Staggering Ecological Impacts of Computation and the Cloud

in The MIT Press Reader  

I can't help thinking that the author's desire to see "a sustainable Cloud" is misguided. What does "the Cloud" do? What's it for? Why do we need it?

To get at the matter of the Cloud we must unravel the coils of coaxial cables, fiber optic tubes, cellular towers, air conditioners, power distribution units, transformers, water pipes, computer servers, and more. We must attend to its material flows of electricity, water, air, heat, metals, minerals, and rare earth elements that undergird our digital lives. In this way, the Cloud is not only material, but is also an ecological force. As it continues to expand, its environmental impact increases, even as the engineers, technicians, and executives behind its infrastructures strive to balance profitability with sustainability. Nowhere is this dilemma more visible than in the walls of the infrastructures where the content of the Cloud lives: the factory-libraries where data is stored and computational power is pooled to keep our cloud applications afloat.

White Christian nationalism: the most powerful identity politics

by Don Moynihan 

As always, the cruelty is the point:

Christian nationalism has provide little in terms of tangible benefits for the the group from which it draws its support, while seeking to erode the rights and status of almost everyone else. The losers under Christian nationalism will be the targets of White reactionary politics. Again, from Perry:

"Religious, racial, and sexual minorities lose as their very existence (not to mention their cultural and political influence) is publicly demonized and perhaps in some cases curtailed. Working class White Americans (even the Christian ones) exchange the possibility of a better economic future for the false promise that some mythical Christian heritage and values will be preserved."

Second, there are some areas where Trump has delivered, such as on abortion access, that provide guidance to what he will do in a second term. Judges appointed by Trump are primed to present to SCOTUS cases that allow them to push the boundaries of Christian nationalist values. More such judges, more cases, offered to a SCOTUS supermajority that no longer feels the need to find a middle ground on these issues.

Third, Trump’s approach to governance will be more sophisticated in a second term. He has a blueprint for governing that bears the imprint of supporters who are open about the goal of imposing Christian nationalist values. This includes familiar areas such as immigration, and education. Trump lawyers committed to a Christian nationalist agenda will operate in concert with their judicial brethren. The Alabama IVF decision rested on an 1872 law. Trump allies plan to leverage the 1873 Comstock Act to prevent the distribution of abortion medication. The1872 Alabama law was about civil lawsuits for wrongful death of children, and the Comstock Act is about the shipping of obscene materials. But sufficiently motivated Christian nationalist lawyers are happy to explain how each law prohibits the use of technologies that would not be invented for a century.

American Taylor Swift fans are flummoxed by the MCG’s lack of parking. But Australia still has way too much of it

in Crikey  

Aside from the less pleasant aesthetics of American stadiums’ surroundings, car parks are surprisingly costly. “In Australia, each parking space in high-density locations is worth about $100,000”, says urban planner David Mepham, who recently published the book Rethinking Parking. “Yet a lot of that parking is not very well used, if it’s used at all.”

In Melbourne, an estimated 25-41% of parking in apartment blocks in the inner city — which developers are often mandated by law to build — stand vacant. Such unused parking costs Australians more than $6 billion.

For public projects, the cost can be even higher. The Victorian government recently announced a new car park for Frankston station, which will cost approximately $174,000 per space. That money could buy a lot of extra bus services or bike infrastructure, so people wouldn’t need to drive there. But as the Morrison years taught us, politicians still go to great lengths to cut the ribbons on new car parks.

The Tragedy of the Tragedy of the Commons

in Scientific American  

It's hard to overstate Hardin’s impact on modern environmentalism. His views are taught across ecology, economics, political science and environmental studies. His essay remains an academic blockbuster, with almost 40,000 citations. It still gets republished in prominent environmental anthologies.

But here are some inconvenient truths: Hardin was a racist, eugenicist, nativist and Islamophobe. He is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a known white nationalist. His writings and political activism helped inspire the anti-immigrant hatred spilling across America today.

And he promoted an idea he called “lifeboat ethics”: since global resources are finite, Hardin believed the rich should throw poor people overboard to keep their boat above water.

To create a just and vibrant climate future, we need to instead cast Hardin and his flawed metaphor overboard.

Doctor Who's identity crisis

by Christopher H. Bidmead in The Telegraph (UK)  

I have so much to say about this. Practically nobody agrees with me on such things these days, but as a mission statement, "make Doctor Who like Doctor Who" seems eminently sensible. Keep it special.

Our purging of silliness from the show wasn't just political correctness. It made the stories much better. The Doctor's ''sonic screwdriver'', for example, was magical baggage we had to lose. A pen-sized gizmo that could blast through tempered steel, translate Azurian into English, and fend off the Karturi by generating an impenetrable neutron dome might be just the ticket in real life, but in fiction was a sure-fire story-killer. We didn't want our audience shouting out from behind the sofa ''where's the sonic screwdriver?'' whenever peril threatened.

We wanted a strong narrative line, and we relished the way our storylines could arc over four episodes, bristling with cliffhangers. All of which seems to be missing from the current season. Perhaps it's fear of a short audience attention span that has contracted the stories to single or double episodes. To compensate, we get snappy dialogue and a couple of cracking lead actors who do a lot of running around.

If a quarter of a century ago the first two laws of Doctor Who were ''Science'' and ``Story'', then the third was ''Keep It Special''. It might be a super sight gag, or a spooky spine tingle, but if it had shades of Benny Hill, or The Prisoner, out it went.

Being Denied a Press Pass at CPAC Was the Best Way to Cover the Conference

in Mother Jones  

My inquisitor had come to CPAC to see what people were saying about school choice and was disappointed to discover that the answer to that question was nothing. Education policy, he lamented, was nowhere to be found at this event. Indeed, what passed for policy discussions at CPAC this year was largely limited to mass deportations and attacks on trans athletes. The sober panels about the national debt, balancing the budget, or Social Security reform that once commanded top billing were a relic of another era before CPAC became an extension of Trump Inc., devoted to all the MAGA grievances like racial equity, the evils of windmills, or bans on gas stoves. When I finally was able to explain that I was a reporter who’d been denied a press pass, the man launched into an earnest yet incomprehensible spiel about how the government is censoring people. Politely, I fled into the crowd watching Bannon.

After two days of passing as a CPAC attendee, I marveled at how weird it was to be on the other side like this. Over the past 15 years, I have attended dozens of right-wing conferences and events, even in the Trump White House, and always as a credentialed reporter. This time, instead of being treated like the enemy, I was briefly embraced as part of the tribe, and it became clear how seductive this could be for some people. I saw up close how people felt liberated to be their worst deplorable selves in what they believed was a safe space, surrounded by supportive, like-minded enablers.

What Does All This Trans Stuff Mean?

by Zoe "Doc Impossible" Wendler 

There’s basically two reasons someone transitioning gets made into a Big Deal: the trans person excitedly making it a big deal, and someone who doesn’t believe trans people should exist gets upset about it.

Trans people usually make a big deal out of our transitions because a lot of us have suppressed this part of ourselves for a long time, and it feels really good to let that part of ourselves out for everyone else to see. Some of us might have known we were trans for most of our lives. Some of us, like me, might not have known until recently. Either way, we had to hold that part of ourselves in, essentially telling ourselves a lie about who we thought we were, or were trying with all our heart to be.

And living like that? Wow, it sucks.

How NIMBYs are helping to turn the public against immigrants

in Vox  

In principle, there is no reason why population growth must push up the cost of shelter. Immigrants need homes — but they are also disproportionately likely to work in construction and, thus, increase the economy’s home-building capacity.

The problem arises when governments effectively prohibit the supply of housing from rising in line with demand. Between 2012 and 2022, Americans formed 15.6 million new households but built only 11.9 million new housing units. As a result, even before the post-lockdown surge in migration, there were more aspiring households than homes in America’s thriving metro areas.

This was largely a consequence of zoning restrictions. Municipal governments have collectively made it illegal to erect an apartment building on about 75 percent of our country’s residential land. In large swaths of the country, there are households eager to rent or buy a modest apartment, and developers eager to provide them, but zoning restrictions have blocked such transactions from taking place.

This creates a housing shortage. You can house 32 families much more quickly and cheaply by building a single apartment building than by erecting 32 separate houses. To require all of your community’s housing units to be single-family homes isn’t all that different from prohibiting the manufacture of all non-luxury cars. In both cases, you end up with artificial scarcity and unaffordability.

Victorian social housing tenant disputes surge, despite government's $5.3b investment

in ABC News  

In short: Housing advocates fear the social housing sector is buckling under strain as more and more people are priced out of the private rental market.
The body representing tenants in housing disputes says its workload has almost doubled year-on-year.
What's next: The state government says it's tackling need with record investment in the sector.