assemblageblog

veblenesquegorge: Nothing on the internet is really all that important. That article about “Girls”...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 17:45:25 -0400

Nothing on the internet is really all that important. That article about “Girls” will probably be there tomorrow and the next day. The internet is forever! And Lena Dunham didn’t get to where she is today by reading dumb shit on the internet and making dumb jokes on Twitter. She makes dumb jokes on HBO. And now people care about her dumb jokes on Twitter. What the hell are you doing with your life, changing your Facebook photo to a red equal sign? C’mon. Stop wasting time. You could die tomorrow, but most likely you will die unfulfilled when you’re really old. And your grandkid will say, “‘Great, Grandma, Where Did You Stand On ‘Leaning In’?” And you will just have a stroke.

Good god this is hilarious: Jim Behrle’s “What Writing Programs Ought To Teach You when They Teach You about Writing,” on the Awl.

In related news the other day my actual grandfather actually told me I need to “lean in” more.

a must read on start-up culture, or rather, the invocation of “culture” by the start-up...

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 09:44:25 -0500

a must read on start-up culture, or rather, the invocation of “culture” by the start-up world:

A world of startup privilege hides blithely unexamined underneath an insipid, self-reinforcing banner of meritocracy and funding. An economic and class-based revolt of programmers against traditional power structures within organizations manifests itself as an (ostensively) radical re-imagining of work life. But really, you should meet the new boss. Hint: he’s the same as the old boss.

mikasavela: A page from a satirical novel about “Newyorkitis”...

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 23:57:31 -0500

mikasavela:

A page from a satirical novel about “Newyorkitis” by John Harvey Girdner, 1901. An(other) early take on the urban lifestyle being born.

Notes for a Walmart Reader

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 16:01:57 -0400

For Walmart, real estate too is a logistical practice. The stores and distribution centers are strategically located to optimize the flow of goods; they form a dynamic and expanding network whose locations are calculated in miles and minutes. Walmart executives thus abstract territory much as barcodes abstract merchandise. In other words, the nation’s largest company sees its territory essentially as a data field over which “all those numbers” are monitored, tracked, allocated and redirected in pursuit of market coverage.

Walmart’s distribution centers, which are as important as their stores, are hybrid structures — part architecture, part infrastructure — whose locations are determined by corporate growth strategies. By the end of 2008, Walmart’s domestic distribution network consisted of more than 100,000 suppliers, 147 distribution centers, two data centers, the U.S. transportation infrastructure (mostly the publicly funded highway system), 7,200 tractors, 53,000 trailers, 7,950 drivers, and more than 85,000 employees.

All Those Numbers: Logistics, Territory and Walmart | Jesse LeCavalier, Design Observer

The same reasoning that drove Wal-Mart to push for cost-effective LED lighting and fuel efficiency for its vehicles also leads them to micro-manage the behavior of their employees, including the time they spend in the bathroom. The same infrastructure that allows them to send fleets of tractor/trailers carrying relief supplies on a moment’s notice also puts tremendous strain on the environment around the components of that infrastructure. What makes perfect organizational sense at the large scale can be inhuman at the local level. Wal-Mart is hardly the only corporation that suffers this problem, but their sheer size and aggressive behavior makes them an obvious first target of criticism.

An architect or designer who subordinates the logic of local interaction and a human sense of scale and perception to the demands of networks and distributional judgment will produce buildings and systems that finally benefit only the ones who own and control them. Voting, political parties, and interest groups are how citizens at least nominally control or influence the networks we call states and force them to reckon with reasoning that occurs at different levels from the global and national. What mechanisms are there to force the same reckoning on Wal-Mart’s owners, shareholders, and managers?

Maurice Meilleur, commenting on All Those Numbers: Logistics, Territory and Walmart

On June 20, 2011, the US Supreme Court put an end to the largest civil rights class action lawsuit in American history: Betty Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., a case that pitted over 1.5 million female Wal-Mart workers against the country’s largest private employer. Suing on behalf of all women who had worked at Wal-Mart between 1998 and 2011, the plaintiffs in Dukes accused the retail giant of discriminating on the basis of sex in pay and promotions, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
….
The class’s enormous scale — a consequence, of course, of the enormity of Wal-Mart — raised philosophical and technical questions about class actions that promised to have broader political consequences. […] if certified classes could grow to represent groups numbering in the millions, was there such thing as a class that would fail, on size alone, to meet the class action requirement of “commonality”? Could a class, in other words, be too big to win?

Sex Class Action | Dayna Tortorici, n+1

Portugal’s planned PlanIT Valley, [is] a 225,0000-resident ultra-intelligent city built from the...

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 12:43:47 -0400

Portugal’s planned PlanIT Valley, [is] a 225,0000-resident ultra-intelligent city built from the ground up to incorporate over 100 million sensors and technological infrastructure to streamline everything from traffic to power usage, water resources, and emergency services.

With multiple phases culminating in a 2015 completion, PlanIT Valley is a city-scale experiment in integrated technical/economic/social infrastructure, spearheaded by parent-company Living PlanIT. The technology firm hopes that its Urban Operating System, will allow the built-from-scratch environment of PlanIT Valley to showcase the untapped potential of machine-to-machine communication – integrating devices, buildings, and systems to adjust variables in real-time, such as power consumption, availability of health care services, waste pickup and more. In concert with sustainable energy solutions and intelligent design, the UOS aims to radically reduce waste and carbon emissions while improving social and economic functioning.

Source

A new study suggests that reading design blogs like Apartment Therapy and Design Sponge is good for...

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 12:08:50 -0400

A new study suggests that reading design blogs like Apartment Therapy and Design Sponge is good for you. “Participating in a taste regime allows consumers to assemble coherent sets of objects, associate meanings with those objects, and then create routines that serve to maintain the physical order of objects and their associated meanings.”

My own informal survey shows that concurrently owning a taxidermied squirrel, Hudson Bay blanket, and a “curated” collection of mason jars makes you an asshole. (h/t my friend Lindsay)

Quiz: Donald Judd or cheap furniture? (h/t Cabinet, the magazine...

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 14:32:10 -0400

Quiz: Donald Judd or cheap furniture? (h/t Cabinet, the magazine for the highbrow furniture set)

What galls me about the current situation is that a structural problem of capitalism has been...

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 22:48:08 -0400

What galls me about the current situation is that a structural problem of capitalism has been dumped into the lives of young people as their personal problem.

Richard Sennett in The Guardian (via mirrortheories)

In 2003, only two colleges charged more than $40,000 a year for tuition, fees, and room and board; by 2009, 224 were above that mark. The total amount of outstanding student loan debt is now more than $1 trillion.

Jeff Seligno in the New York Times

Over the last thirty years, the university has replaced the labor union as the most important institution, after the corporation, in American political and economic life. As union jobs have disappeared, participation in the labor force, the political system, and cultural affairs is increasingly regulated by professional guilds that require their members to spend the best years of life paying exorbitant tolls and kissing patrician rings.

the editors of N+1

pootee: RIOT SHIELD WITH COMPLEX MATHEMATICAL EQUATION USED IN...

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 10:32:52 -0400

pootee:

RIOT SHIELD WITH COMPLEX MATHEMATICAL EQUATION USED IN FINANCIAL MARKETS CONTAINING DERIVATIVE INVESTMENT INSTRUMENTS, 2012

thingsmagazine: Venice from the air

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 16:40:19 -0400

thingsmagazine:

Venice from the air

goggle map hactivism?

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 12:26:55 -0400

goggle map hactivism?

midsummerish: “the problems of writing and authorship are not distinct from other social problems....

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 21:20:08 -0400

midsummerish:

“the problems of writing and authorship are not distinct from other social problems. they are part and parcel of major phenomena that extend through every aspect of human life.”-bruce sterling, 2011

blech: The cover, Ronald Mcdonald, and colour palette pages...

Fri, 11 May 2012 12:27:08 -0400

blech:

The cover, Ronald Mcdonald, and colour palette pages from a 1970s McDonaldland specification manual, as posted by Jason Liebig.

In Philadelphia a plan is under consideration to shut down 40 underperformed schools and further...

Thu, 10 May 2012 13:12:00 -0400

In Philadelphia a plan is under consideration to shut down 40 underperformed schools and further privatize the public school system. The plan calls for “achievement networks” of 25 privatly-run schools that companies will bid for control of. Parents are worried that, “By allowing parents to choose the schools their children attend, they say, officials can blame failure on the parents and the individual schools or network, rather than district leadership.”

Last November Dana Goldstein wrote about education activists using the Occupy narrative to protest Bloomberg’s similar approach to education reform.

This isn’t the first time the concept of “occupation” has been deployed by New York City parent activists. In 1966, in East Harlem, black parents fed up with the failures of racial integration turned instead to racial separatism, demanding “veto power” over the hiring of a white principal at their children’s middle school, IS 201. Over the next two years, the community control movement gained the support of Mayor John Lindsay and the Ford Foundation, and the Brooklyn neighborhood of Ocean Hill-Brownsville won control of its local schools. Black Power activists affiliated with the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and other groups demanded that black children read books written by black authors; that the school system actively recruit black teachers; and that inner-city students stop being “socialized” into white, middle-class culture, and instead learn the histories and artistic contributions of their own African ancestors.

On May 9, 1968, the Ocean Hill-Brownsville school governing board fired 18 white teachers, and the United Federation of Teachers called a strike. While the teachers picketed, parent activists physically “occupied” neighborhood schools, presiding over classes and putting Black Power pedagogical theories into practice.

Goldstein makes the case that today’s emphasis on top-down reform is also ideologically driven, but to very different ends. Charter schools and “school choice” proponents garner money and attention from Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg because these program support their data-driven and market based worldview. Ironically, these programs get some of their greatest support from progressive funders and politicians.

The second best part of May Day was leaving my job during the middle of the day to go to Union...

Sat, 05 May 2012 11:36:33 -0400

The second best part of May Day was leaving my job during the middle of the day to go to Union Square (without having planned to at all). The first was upon coming back to get my stuff, all my co-workers still in the office are at the windows on the 9th floor above Broadway watching the endless street procession below. Up and down the street the ends of ties are blowing out the windows of each office building.

That evening I was discussing the “point” of Occupy with a friend sympathetic to their causes but critical of the strategy (or “lack of strategy”). This seems a common and endless conversation. Natasha Leonard says a lot of the things I am thinking during this conversation:

So, again, technically speaking, Occupy’s official inception was perhaps the first in a line of resounding failures. But of course, it was a success. The point to take away is that, in the case of genuine interventions into politics and life as usual, any pre-existing dialectic of success and failure is shattered. I believe Occupy has been such an intervention, as evidenced by the struggle commentators have faced when trying to judge it by standard schematics of success and failure.

Mohamed Keita writing in an NYT op-ed: In January, Beijing issued a white paper calling for...

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 12:40:05 -0400

Mohamed Keita writing in an NYT op-ed:

In January, Beijing issued a white paper calling for accelerated expansion of China’s news media abroad and the deployment of a press corps of 100,000 around the world, particularly in priority regions like Africa. In the last few months alone, China established its first TV news hub in Kenya and a print publication in South Africa. The state-run Xinhua news agency already operates more than 20 bureaus in Africa. More than 200 African government press officers received Chinese training between 2004 and 2011 in order to produce what the Communist Party propaganda chief, Li Changchun, called “truthful” coverage of development fueled by China’s activities.

China and African governments tend to agree that the press should focus on collective achievements and mobilize public support for the state, rather than report on divisive issues or so-called negative news.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Ethiopia, which remains one of the West’s foremost recipients of development assistance and whose largest trading partner and main source of foreign investment is China. The prisons in Ethiopia, like those in China, are now filled with journalists and dissidents, and critical Web sites are blocked.

The age of heroic modernist urban planning is not dead! Like the Bauhaus before it, it’s just...

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:39:00 -0400

The age of heroic modernist urban planning is not dead! Like the Bauhaus before it, it’s just gone Ikea. The furniture giant is constructing an entire new neighborhood in the docklands of East London:

Ikea’s builders say they’re not interested in a Disney-style kind of an animatronic spectacle. Rather, they’re seeding Strand East with evocations of spontaneous urban life in hopes that it will become spontaneous urban life; they say they’d be happy to see it shift and evolve to suit market conditions. It’s not clear, though, how this desire will coexist with Ikea’s desire to keep the place under its control.

The answer, Mr. Müller says, is that the Swedes have a long-term interest in success – much like a municipal council does, and, in fact, Ikea will be acting very much like a municipal government.

In a model the author insists is more common in Scandinavia, the neighborhood will be owned by Ikea, with all residences and business space rented out. When the Ikea people talk about a neighborhood that is an affordable and “well-designed” “product,” I’m sure we can expect a series of industrial chic dorm rooms with Poäng chairs. An intentional Bushwick.

kitten-riot: this music video is really Important because: a....

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 17:24:55 -0400

kitten-riot:

this music video is really Important because:

a. women reclaiming public space/space where harassment occurs
b. reappropriation of physical harassment thru the use of handprint imagery
c. reappropriation of masculine object (baseball bat) for self-defense by women
d. men shown performing physical labor as work/women shown performing physical labor for pleasure
e. deconstruction of ageism thru the inclusion of young & elderly women being complete badasses
f. centering around performance by women of color, which is refreshing when we as a culture just had to deal with the fucking white girl mafia
g. doooooope. beat. not going to pretend i don’t love this song (or rye rye in general)

towerofsleep: lukesimcoe: Reading… In physical form, but the...

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 12:53:02 -0400

towerofsleep:

lukesimcoe:

Reading… In physical form, but the entirety of the book is available on Google Books. Click-through.

RTMI

from Valero Doval’s “Enigmatic Cities” series...

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 10:26:07 -0400

from Valero Doval’s “Enigmatic Cities” series
“Imposed Square”
Collage and pencil on found print
8”x11”

via It’s Nice That.