Month: July 2017

Every morning some time between 5:30 and 7am somewhere randomly in the park I run into a guy doing the same thing as me.
He’s got his kid in a backpack, and a dog, and a giant sun umbrella.
We always have a 3 min conversation until L get restless.
He works from home, for himself, tending his little portfolio, low key value-equity, and doing consulting side gigs. Unlike me, he has the stomach for bitcoin and other high-vol stuff. Like me, he seems to have walked away, but unlike me, he had stomach to not walkback. Unlike me, he is an obvious extrovert and he is not even pretending.

lovinghk:

this is no news to hongkongers, but it is worth reviewing how bad this is from others’ point of view. 

(photo: lam yik for new york times @ 9 jul 2017)

Crackdown Chills Hong Kong’s Indie Music Scene

(source: new york times @ 9 jul 2017)  … Few indie musicians in Hong Kong were surprised by the raid. Hidden Agenda, for example, has shuttered three previous locations because of regulatory problems since 2009.

Policy experts say that Mr. Hui’s troubles at Hidden Agenda, the beating heart of Hong Kong’s “live house” indie music scene, illustrate how zoning and performance rules in this city of 7.4 million are so restrictive that they impede artistic expression and cultural development.

Hong Kong has fewer than 13 small-scale live houses, mainly in industrial buildings, and seven others, including Hidden Agenda, that would be considered midsize or large, said Adrian Chow, a composer and producer who supervises the music group at the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

Many of those venues would struggle to survive even without onerous regulations because the property market is among the world’s most expensive. What’s more, a recent industrial “revitalization” program gave landlords financial incentives to convert industrial buildings into offices, but it also drove up the value of such space in districts like East Kowloon, a popular area for live houses.

Jan Curious, the stage name for the singer in the band Chochukmo, called it ironic that restrictions on live music in this semiautonomous Chinese city were harsher than those on the mainland, where political speech is far more restricted.

The authorities there do not care about policing concerts, he said. “Maybe they’ll come and ask you for money. But they won’t tell you to stop.”

If anyone thinks living under Trump is bad, imagine this.

My heart goes to Hongkongers.

nyrra:

traeken:

i genuinely don’t fucking understand why we spend 80% of our lives in school and doing jobs we hate when we should be spending our lives traveling and playing and being excited to be alive

And cooperating for living, food shelter art. Learning skills. Thinking, meditating.

Yesterday’s coop shift yielded a revelation that it’s okay to say “American Indians” again. Is this true?
And is it true that it is now improper to say “Aboriginals” in Australia? If anyone who lives there reads this, and knows, could they confirm, please?

Estonian designers keen to house miserable deprived Britons

wolfliving:

*Suffering from economic oppression and ruthless exploitation by a repressive nomenklatura, the obscure Britons, in their forgotten corner of Europe, scarcely have roofs over their heads.

*And yet, there’s hope from dynamic, democratic Estonia.  They’re not exactly “houses,” because the Britons are too far-gone for that, but they’re a kindly emergency shelter that could be perched in a vacant lot or derelict factory space and at least the Britons won’t freeze.

https://www.dezeen.com/2017/07/05/kodasema-koda-house-launches-tiny-25-square-metres-prefab-home-uk/

In a bid to solve the UK’s housing crisis, Estonian design collective Kodasema has launched its prefabricated 25-square-metre micro home that takes less than a day to build and can be relocated to make use of vacant sites.

The Koda house costs just £150,000 as a package – including the cost of planning and building regulations, as well as delivery, site preparation, installation and connections to water, electricity and sewage.

The structure, which doesn’t need foundations and can be moved on the back of a lorry, aims to “shake up” the UK property market by encouraging self-build culture and better use of empty plots of land.

Kodasema sees the affordable and prefabricated design as a solution for “meanwhile planning” situations, which could be installed as temporary housing on disused sites across London….

This is beautiful in a weirdly dystopian kind of way.

For now… i want one…

Made it to an enormous playground at least four times the size of ours. It is named after a police officer.
There are people, grown men, sleeping here. I don’t want to wake them up but they stir awake anyway. There are remnants of someone’s dinner on the bench. This playground has a latrine in the corner, and I try to dissuade L from playing in that puddle. The playground drinking fountain is also be used for washing feet. I feel like we’re invading someone’s home. I wish that we didn’t, but I’m sure this place is nicer than the shelter in this weather, so I understand, and I convince L that we should quietly leave.