This week I finished:
As of today, Sunday, my usual day to post on what I finished this week, my solar battery is very low (as I posted yesterday: And just like that, I’m almost out of power for a couple days. Batteries have a lot of problems), so I’m limiting my time using the computer. For now, I’ll just post the works. When there’s more sun, I’ll write more. As of Sunday evening, that time looks like Tuesday at the earliest.
On Tyranny, by Timothy Snyder: .
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The White House Effect, directed by Pedro Kos, Jon Shenk and Bonni Cohen:
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A Vindication of Bjorn Lomborg, by Marian Tupy inQuillette and Climate Change Might Have Spared America From Hurricanes, by Bjorn Lomborg in the Wall Street Journal:
I recently wrote about a plot by Bjorn Lomborg. I also read Tupy’s book Superabundance and mentioned it in mine, Sustainability Simplified. I found these articles before, but both were behind paywalls. I also joined Lomborg’s newsletter. His year-end newsletter’s links bypassed the paywalls, so I got to read them this week. The links above are his, that bypass the paywall.
Decade of Fire, directed by Vivian Vazquez Irizarry: I suspect most New Yorkers know the phrase “the Bronx is burning” or something like it. I hope most Americans know of the difficult times the Bronx faced, as part of a nationwide problem in cities, in the 1970s especially, but into the 80s with crack, and continuing today.
Not everyone knows the causes. It’s tempting to blame racism, either that people of color in the areas or white people setting the rules, as the cause, but there is no scientific basis for race.
This movie does two things. It reveals the rules:
- Redlining, which trapped people of color in small regions
- Creating suburbs with restrictive clauses based on skin color, which gave whites a place to escape
- Creating highways into cities, which facilitated that escape and wreck the areas they went through, such as the Cross Bronx Expressway through the Bronx, the first highway into an inner city
- Setting up an insurance system that financially rewarded arson
- Media that blamed the people there for the effects of the greater forces buffeting them
Next, it personalized the experience. Irizarry lived through the experience. She recounts and illustrates her story, along with family members, neighbors, and footage.
The combination gives gravity and emotion. I’d already read The Color of Law and brought its author, Richard Rothstein, to the podcast, along with his daughter. They cowrote the follow-up book. I lived in a redlined neighborhood in Philadelphia growing up. This movie expanded my understanding and compassion for a situation still plaguing many cities in this nation.
The movie isn’t just history. It also recounts how now that cities are revitalizing, similar forces that created ways to profit in wrecking them are now finding ways to profit in displacing people to redevelop them. It’s despicable, fed by ignorance.
Here’s the movie online: (here’s the Roger Ebert review)
