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The National Endowment for the Arts has been with us for sixty years, coinciding conspicuously with the ascendancy of nihilistic works that pollute our public spaces. Justin Shubow aims to change all of that. He’s a top candidate to chair the NEA under the second Trump administration and has a particular interest in the proper design of federal architecture. What have columns and Roman arches to do with the re-moralization of the free citizen? Listen in to find out.
Plus, James, Steve and Charlie adjust to Biden’s just-declared 28th amendment; they work their way through the confirmation hearing highlights; and lose themselves in a David Lynch-like daydream.
– Sound clips from this week’s open: David Lynch on movies (KGSM MediaCache) and “Mr. Baseball” on family (MLB Media)
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I was following for a while a group of various European architects and city planners who find modern building designs abhorrent.
The architects in Norway who are part of this movement call it The Nordic Uprising.
I consider the current state of things to be the McDonaldization of our Commons. These days if you are shown a photo of a city, or if you are traveling internationally, it is hard to tell where you are by looking at the architectural surroundings. You could be in Cleveland OH or over in Belgium or the Netherlands.
I am hopeful that someone with Justin Shubow’s ideals does have an ability to re-shape our world.
One of the photos I collected:
Have Rob and Peter bowed out? I know Rob is studying at Princeton for a theological degree. That would keep me very busy so I guess that’s his reason. Peter?
Peter’s schedule has gotten more difficult with growing demands for Uncommon Knowledge, and he wasn’t available today. But he and I have a special bonus episode up any day now.
Thanks for the heads up. I’m looking forward to it. Pretty sure that Peter won’t interrupt you as much as “Lucretia”.
Has there been an official change of hosts? Of course I love Steven and Charles but I’m missing the O.G. lineup. I notice that Rob and Peter make time for their OTHER podcasts…
“We are in an energy race with China, not a clean energy race.”
Exactly. We are ruled by fools.
1,000,000,000 destitute poor don’t give a damn about global warming.
Steve, the Coen Brothers as a rule have wonderful endings to their films (especially A Serious Man, No Country for Old Men, and Fargo.)
I don’t hold out much hope for the National Endowment for the Arts. I think the program has enabled mediocre, talentless con artists (the only “art” they’re skilled at), to survive and thrive. This country has produced great artists and is producing them now, but the institutions – museums, “art” schools, media (art criticism) – have been taken over by an elite who does not want artistic skill, intelligibilty, order and beauty to regain their place. They have a lot – including a lot of money – to lose.
And it used to be that the destitute poor did not live in the USA. Plus those who were poor were either the disabled, the elderly or children raised by parents who didn’t work due to alcohol or drug issues.
Now the entire middle, middle class is using peanut butter and tuna fish to get thru the last few days of each month.
“Entire”? Ummm, no.
Sorry for universalizing. It is a bad habit of mine.
But each month I notice how the looks of desperation are set in stone in the faces of grocery shoppers on an earlier and earlier date. In Calif, eggs are now 59 cents a piece, at most places where I live. (And sure I could travel to the CostCo in Ukiah but by the time I factor in the gas to go out of the county and back, the eggs would be even more expensive.)
When I go and shop for groceries between the 25th to 31st of each month, stores are almost empty. But two days ago, people already looked worried.
The COV lockdowns really pulverized economies in the Blue states. There should have been a more viral recovery but then we faced the supply side shortages in 2021. Billions of dollars that should have entered Calif ports were not allowed to do so due to the language inside the Pfizer and Moderna contracts. That language required that X number of dock workers be vaxxed, or else the goods would just sit offshore. Biden even stated this but did not explain it in full, so it made him look crazy. (Which for once he wasn’t.) He said the goods couldn’t come off the ships until people got vaxxed. He was right.
Additionally the state has experienced a huge destruction of food processing and distribution centers. On top of that, our utility companies, which are not affected at all by normal consumers but only by stock holders, have raised the utility rates to tremendously high levels. Their justification for doing this is that they have been buying green energy sources from somewhere or other. But I have little faith they re doing anything more than raising prices beyond more than what most people can afford.
As of Jan 1st, there is an additional 60 cents a gallon tax on gasoline – something that leaves me to wishing in my weaker moments that there were more Luigi M’s around to do in governors that do these things. Of course this price increase also affects the costs of everything.
I hope such factors never affect you and those who live in red states, Painter Jean.
But Gates and others in the WEF are fully committed to bringing about another plandemic.
Gates prefers those plagues that affect our food supply, as he has a habit of shorting on the goods he knows ahead of time will be in short supply and then he goes long on those products from other nations. (A strategy I think he used during the hoof and mouth disease that England underwent in the 1990’s.)
An avian flu pandemic could bring about a vast nationwide extermination of chickens, eggs and cattle. (It is now believed that cattle can carry avian flu, or at least whatever testing methods that are used allows the PTB to tell us that.)
The Deagle predictions are right on the internet for anyone who cares to read them to consider. We really do not need to have someone announce that a social credit score is going to eliminate people right and left. If prices are so high that the bottom third of society who are not illegal aliens and therefore are not given guaranteed government help can’t survive, I hope more affluent people find it in their hearts to have compassion.
Supposedly 2/3 of the country is living paycheck to paycheck right now. It shouldn’t be more than 20% if you ask me. Inflation is stupid.
As far as buildings offering the public a glimpse of beauty, this style of building is what architects in the Nordic Uprising are steamed over:
Carol, I’ve caught you repeating hoaxes about Bill Gates before. As he is currently only #15 on the Forbes billionaire list, perhaps you should transfer your misattentions to one of the top 14.
I gather you’re an aficionado of fringe conspiracy blogs and websites.
As a general principle, I will note that predictions have no evidentiary value.
Really Tara? You are going there? Really?
I am publishing a retort to this, as I don’t wanna jam up a conversation that was not about this and my defense of my one comment is a rather lengthy.
What city is this, and was it destroyed by bombing during World War II?
That was my thought as well. In addition to the possibility that, even if not so destroyed, they may have been just plain unsafe. For a variety of reasons.
But since many of the buildings appeared to have been replaced with… nothing… my bet was on some kind of war damage.
A Google reverse image search says the picture is Königsberg (Prussia) and Kaliningrad in Russia. It is the capital of the Russian province of the same name, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania along the Baltic Coast.
The Brezhnev (now Putin) Doctrine: “What’s mine is mine. And what’s yours is mine, too.”
The ugliness of the new architecture suggested Eastern Bloc to me. As well as the disappearance of the cathedral in the background.
I’m glad to see that EJH came up with a google reverse image search and answered your pertinent question.
And here is one on-line publication that has two pages worth of clickable articles regarding the uprising of both architects and the public against the soul-killing ugliness of so many modern buildings. There is at least one account of how polling shows that the public prefers beauty over blandness, even though the minimalist, post modern era has architects who insist that beauty is quaint and that we humans need to move along past such a notion: https://www.architecturaluprising.com/
Also the photos are properly labeled and feature building names and/or locations.
I think people are infatuated with Roman/Greek columns. When the topic of architecture has come up before on Ricochet, some people will post pictures of classical buildings with their columns and people marvel at the beauty, dignity, and grace of them. And some of them meet those descriptions. But sometimes, the building is just a big concrete box that has some columns on it.
I’m probably alone on this, but I think that building looks cool.
It looks like a super-high-speed photograph of a terrorist attack!