I watched The Soul of a Cyclist on my flight home today. It’s a very lovely documentary about people who like to ride vintage bikes, shot in Portugal and England. Recommendended for bike lovers just looking for something charming to watch.
Coming to Germany certainly hasn’t done anything to make me covet a fancy German mid-drive cargo bike any less.
I had a free day because of the way my flights worked out, so I took the train from Frankfurt to check out rainy Heidelberg.
But in Gilded Ages — such as the one that dominated the turn of the 20th century and the one we’re now in — the ultra-rich abandon such humility. The linkages between wealth and power becomes apparent for all to see. Conspicuous consumption becomes the handmaiden of conspicuous clout.
In such times, the wealthy brag about their access to politicians, talk openly about how many tens of millions of dollars they’ve donated to campaigns and about the “return” on these “investments,” and want everyone to know how they’ve turned their affluence into influence and their influence into even more affluence.
Ultimately, these insults to democracy — delivered by the new oligarchs shamelessly, openly, and arrogantly — go too far. They invite a backlash.
This episode of The War on Cars with Adam McKay was exactly what I needed to hear in this political moment.
This was an episode about the climate emergency, but it was also an episode about why it’s important to let ourselves feel the anger, the sadness, and the grief necesssry to process the captured nature of the systems that govern us, and how processing those feelings is necessary to have the energy and wherewithal to take action and move forward.
Brussels has a metro. Look at it!
Little Brother
Tuesday, November 15, 2022
Finished reading: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow 📚 I wish I found this book when I was younger. I didn’t truly understand public-private key encryption until I read Cryptonomicon. This was an easier explanation. More importantly, this book is grounded in the defense of civil rights.