h. Play

Religion significantly expanded its place in American life during the midcentury era. Between 1946 and 1955, an estimated 30 million Americans joined churches. By 1958 nearly two-thirds of all Americans belonged to a religious organization, compared to just 40 percent before Word War II.

From a book on Minnesota’s mid century architecture.

That is so wild. It is incredible how religion prospers when new tech emerges. In my mind it shouldn’t because science is about facts, questioning and moving forward, the opposite of religion’s design.

It is also wild that in the same time period, the opposite happened in Europe: Faith has been going down ever since the start of the 20th century.

It highlights the two sides of those world wars: Americans, “believing” that they can fight “evil” and win. On the other side Europeans understanding and tasting pragmatism and the fact that most countries, infrastructures, people, have been utterly decimated. There’s no belief here, just pain, resentment and reconstruction.

ANYWAY

Meanwhile mid-century, church-ey America let something like this happen. I love it. It’s insane. It’s bold. The honeycomb façade is fabulous. It looks amazing inside, a mix of star destroyer and cave environment.

I’m just in awe about things symmetrically opposed like religion and modernism, which are sometimes going hand in hand and produce unreal things. Like this impeccable, powerful structure.

I’d personally convert it to a library/skatepark, but that’s just me.

We often say that it’s a waste of space that on the road there are cars with just one person in it.

Let’s talk about those 20m/60ft long buses with 3 mfs in them.

I CAN’T HEAR YOU

This is what I liked about the open blogosphere of 2000 to 2008. Whereas something like Twitter is optimized for the fast-take and the brutal one-liner, blogs allowed actual conversations. You could write something serious, develop the idea, and maybe some other people would engage with it, also at a serious level. But then the walled-gardens began to gain ground (Facebook, Twitter, and then later Instagram) and the era of the blogs came to an end. (Yes, they still exist, but they most exist as standalone essays, not engaged in conversation with other blogs.)

This is a good analysis but here’s the thing about online conversation: it is more often than not, useless. I’ve read millions of comments on blogs and they rarely added anything.

They follow a pattern through a spectrum. On one side you have the friend, who’s going to agree with you no matter what. And on the other side, you have an anonymous troll whose entire goal is to disagree with you.

This is a waste of anyone’s time and today with bots and AI? Yeah.

The interesting thing to me is that we keep saying that blogs and online reading MUST evolve into a conversation. The so-called engagement. I don’t think it has to at all.

Reading is about you. It’s about making sense of what you read, connecting to who you are and what you’re looking for. It is mostly a personal adventure. Later on, you will have a conversation with someone and naturally if something that you read changed your mind, you will talk about it. Maybe even mention the author or share the link.

More importantly, knowledge needs to simmer through. It takes time.

The obsession with engagement and becoming a “leader” a “voice” or an “influencer” is just fast food ego trip. It’s kind of weird.

Standalone essays are the bomb. Non-sponsored (aka 100% integrity), independent and smart opinions? All day, everyday.

Those two young men approach me. “hey, that’s a nice badge you have on, where did you get it?” I internally roll my eyes and reply “at work?”

Now they’re asking me if I’m interested in doing something related to religion. I’m probably looking confused. One of them tells me, matter-of-factly “you know, God?” pointing at the sky as if it made all the sense in the world.

I start to smile and tell them, “oh, I don’t do that” and he’s like, “you don’t believe in God?” to which I reply over my shoulder because I’m going places, “never did! Have a great day!” to which they answer lowkey agitated, “have a great day”.

I almost started to run into the sun with a giant smile behind my mask.

The Man You Trust is a book from Bill Harris. I modestly helped proofreading it back in May. It is a wonderful book, surprising, delightful. Intense. Different. The landscapes and situations described in it stayed with me the whole year.

I highly recommend it. I’d also suggest anyone working remotely close to Pixar to make an adult, animated movie based on it. Awards guaranteed. Actually, I’m begging you to make it. It’d be stellar.

Congratulations, Bill!

Yesterday this Waymo car cut me off with its little gyrating devices left and right. How rude!

I don’t know if it was driven by someone or fully on automatic. The move was smooth.

Waymo is about to start their services in Los Angeles. I can’t wait for people to stop pretending to drive when they’re addicted to their phones to the point of forgetting to move when the light is green. They won’t have to drive anymore and that’s progress. Sort of.

Still on my cult list wave, focusing on the 80s. They’re so whimsical and adorable! They often have this technology obsession, which mirrors the start of our new 2020s pretty well.

That logo is fire, can you guess from which movie it is from?

I also got into Chainsaw man. At first I thought “ugh” but now I’m into it, thanks to its enigmatic side characters. Japan’s cultural ability to mix up things –Demon Hunters meets Corporate Society here, is unparalleled. Yes, it can be seen as unimaginative or lazy but I think it creates new things like very few other design processes do. It pushes the envelope and although I dislike the cringe aspect of Chainsaw man, I dig the rest.

Who’s calling Austin Reaves “My Nigga” more, Pat or Russ? I’m debating with myself.

That the continent of Africa never went to the semi-finals of the World Cup is insane considering the passion for the sport on that land. Football there is like NASCAR for white folks here, only for 1.29B folks.

Morocco is going to be supported like it’s never been before.

France having kind of half of its team come from Africa is going to be interesting for those players, mentally.

Que le meilleur gagne, and inshallah.

Gentrification is so crazy. It had stopped in my neighborhood thanks to COVID, but now it’s back.

It makes a total of zero sense. Look:

• Restaurants: they added like 5 of them, with valet parking and shit. There’s a new Thai joint with a $40 noodle soup. Just typing this makes me angry.
• Offices: it’s 2022, people don’t care about no offices, and they still offer those while homelessness is rampant. I drive at night looking at those brightly lit brand new cubicles, chairs and desks. Not a soul in sight around. Same in the morning. It’s fucking embarrassing.
• Housing: they take years to complete shitty apartments with $3K/month rents that no one really wants at all.
• Community: they make a bike lane larger than an 18-wheeler with about a bicycle every 4 days on it. Due to this absolutely stupid design, traffic jam and road rage exploded.

All of that costs a lot of money and doesn’t bring much, if any. Sometimes I really feel like those investments are just money laundering processes, nothing else. They don’t care about people, places and communities. It’s just financial dump.