Transmission #9: Humane Architecture, COVID origins, epic fuckups and indoor waterfall maintenance.
Design, ideas and other flotsam
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This is Transmissions by me, Martin Brown. Father. Husband. Design Lead at Craig Walker and lecturer at RMIT. Marty to most.
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Design
When Is the Revolution in Architecture Coming?
Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs
An impassioned plea for more humane and expressive architecture, something beyond the cold, rectangular boxes of glass, steel and concrete that, with minor adornment and variation, comprise much of what we see erected in modern cities. It’s a point of view that is trumpeted by the likes of Prince Charles and Donald Trump… but that doesn’t make it entirely wrong. How did we get to the present, where the world’s finest architecture prizes reward such a bleak vision of what is possible? I don’t think, as the author posits, that it’s entirely about a drift in aesthetic preferences amongst an architecture elite who have lost touch with what people want (though that’s certainly sometimes the case, no doubt), but has more to do with the death of genuine craft in building, economics, design by spreadsheet, and the spineless politics that manifests in anything that costs a lot of money to build.
Beautiful, humane architecture still happens, but maybe it’s just happening on a different scale. Below is a house in North Fitzroy that I regularly ride past, and I love it to death. Talk about humanity!
Dieter’s dials. (ht @presentcorrect)
Ideas
Origin of Covid — Following the Clues
Nicholas Wade, Medium
In a what might be a strangely worrying trend, the second article in this edition that doesn’t entirely disagree with Donald Trump’s views on the matter. This is a compelling article that states the reasons why one might believe that the so-called lab-leak hypothesis behind COVID’s origin might not be anti-China shitstirring. Like any good conspiracy theory, there’s a lot of coincidences that all seem to point in the same direction: that the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated at a lab in China. It seems unlikely that we will have definitive proof either way, but we’re living in a post-truth world now, so feel free to make up your own mind and post it on the internet. For the record, my official point of view is that I have no idea.
The Killing of Osama bin Laden
Seymour Hersh, London Review of Books
When trying to prise apart truth from narrative, I always think of this article from Seymour Hersh a few years ago. It is a terrific dismantling of how media narratives, and ‘official stories’ get built - and just how false they can turn out to be. What many people like to frame as conspiracies are almost always not a shadowy, well-orchestrated plot by highly competent and nefarious puppeteers, but a bunch of people lying shamelessly to cover up some epic fuckup. There’s some extraordinary paragraphs in this story. Here’s one:
Says Obama, ‘It’s important to note that our counterterrorism co-operation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding.’ That statement risked exposing Kayani and Pasha. The White House’s solution was to ignore what Obama had said and order anyone talking to the press to insist that the Pakistanis had played no role in killing bin Laden. Obama left the clear impression that he and his advisers hadn’t known for sure that bin Laden was in Abbottabad, but only had information ‘about the possibility’. This led first to the story that the Seals had determined they’d killed the right man by having a six-foot-tall Seal lie next to the corpse for comparison (bin Laden was known to be six foot four); and then to the claim that a DNA test had been performed on the corpse and demonstrated conclusively that the Seals had killed bin Laden. But, according to the retired official, it wasn’t clear from the Seals’ early reports whether all of bin Laden’s body, or any of it, made it back to Afghanistan.
Fuckup-not-conspiracy is a useful mindset to bring into most discussions around blame. Except for when it actually is a conspiracy. Or just sit it out until Michael Lewis writes a book about it.
Quotes
“Kiers is one of several scientists whose recent studies have found that plants and symbiotic fungi reward and punish each other with what are essentially trade deals and embargoes, and that mycorrhizal networks can increase conflict among plants. In some experiments, fungi have withheld nutrients from stingy plants and strategically diverted phosphorous to resource-poor areas where they can demand high fees from desperate plants.”
– Ferris Jabr, The Social Lives of Forests, New York Times
Chart of the Week
(ht @jordanzakarin)
Other
Great visual storytelling from the New York Times: How do they make a coronavirus vaccine? (I’m amazed we can figure this stuff out. We’re quite astounding creatures, really).
NFTs don’t solve copyright issues for digital artists. Far from it. How many layers of copyright infringement are in Emily Ratajkowski’s new NFT?
Luxury brands are getting in on the NFT space. Will this be a thing? Is this really web 3.0? It’s too early to tell, but maybe.
What happens when all the Crypto whales exit and put their cash back into the real world? The always excellent Tyler Cowen has some thoughts.
Andre Agassi could tell which way Boris Becker was about to serve by watching his tongue. Not only that, he sometimes went the wrong way on purpose so Becker wouldn’t catch on.
Maintenance porn, Changi Airport edition: