In the 1980s, researchers and semioticians began to try to imagine a way to label nuclear waste that would be legible for the thousands of years it would be dangerous. By the 1990s they had come up with a series of symbols, increasingly complex messages, and easy to translate phrases that could be used to at least make an attempt to communicate a danger to a far-future archaeologist.
One key segment begins like this:
“This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us.“
Unfortunately, the scholars did not take into account how hilarious it is to just put that shit on everything, which is why for $21 you can buy a cute little yard sign saying just that, but in the text style of those “Everyone as welcome here” signs you see in expensive neighborhoods.
So, good luck to future archaeologists trying to sort out which of our warnings are ironic and which are accompanied by dangerous levels of ionizing radiation. The texts we leave behind will probably make about as much sense as that ancient Sumerian “dog walks into a bar” tablet.
Can’t talk (there’s no signal inside) but I think I just found a place of honor! I bet all kinds of highly esteemed deeds are commemorated here — capsandnumbers (@Capsandnumbers) March 23, 2022
No Highly Esteemed Deeds
The Nation covers a class realignment focused on asset ownership rather than income or relation to the means of production, and specifically real estate asset ownership. One thing they note which I had not known is that homelessness as we know it today really only took off in the 1970s:
Although poor Americans have always resided in substandard housing, street homelessness only became a large-scale urban phenomenon in the late 1970s. A relatively early study of the homelessness crisis, Peter Rossi’s Down and Out in America, distinguishes between “old” homelessness and contemporary “literal homelessness” by noting that in the decades prior to the rise of mass homelessness, “the homeless by and large were familyless persons living in very inexpensive (and often inadequate) housing, mainly cubicle and SRO [single-room-occupancy] hotels.” By 1979, Rossi wrote, “It became more and more difficult to ignore the evidence that some people had no shelter and lived on the streets.”
Not A Place of Honor
This New Yorker article about the Margaritaville Retirement Communities is absolutely worth your time. The proponents note that it’s “like being in college,” in that there’s a lot of people like you (white, financially comfortable, apolitical) and you can get pretty much anywhere you need to go on foot or by golf cart. It actually does sound fun. But it also sounds like a nightmare?
Dangerous and Repulsive
The school newspaper is shut down, bullying and harassment are up, and several beloved teachers are being forced out at a Texas high school following a collapsed initiative to support LGBTQ+ students. Texas is also facing a shortage of high school teachers for some reason.
It’s part of an explicit strategy of vilifying gay and trans people, of systematically eroding support for students and teachers alike, and of bankrupting school districts by encouraging vigilante lawsuits. Don’t worry though, there’s an ultra-right-wing charter school operation ready to take the place of your ruined public school system!
Mainstream Democrats have responded by blaming the gays for being too strident and trying to pivot to the center, as though letting the Child Tax Credit expire and plunging millions of children back into poverty would be a good way to mollify Q-anon cultists who believe Democrats are all satanic child molesters.
Cultivating Joy
A tiny cabinet converted into a tiny apartment for chihuahuas.
Tinycat!
Secretly Ironic 