#99% invisible

[grimbiliah]

I started listening to an audio book of The Power Broker recently, which is a book about Robert Moses (who was a bad guy in The Unsleeping City and also in real life) because I wanted to learn about what he did in real life. It’s very good so far.

I’ve discovered though, that there is a podcast called 99% Invisible which is about design and architecture, not really my area of interest; what’s interesting though, is that they have a series of episodes breaking down the book, and then bringing on a special guest. In the 11th episode they bring on Brennan Lee Mulligan. So now I’m listening to the book to get to chapter 45 so that I can then listen to a podcast where some guys interview Brennan lee mulligan about Robert Moses. It’s like naddpod all over again, where I got into it because later on BLeeM got on as a guest.

[thoughtportal]

this story is about a specific thing but also about how a system collapses when the keystone is removed

[chillinglikeashilling]

Petition for Kevin Perjurer and Brennan Lee Mulligan to be featured guests on The Power Broker podcast from 99% Invisible.

Petition for them to be included in the same episode honestly, I want to hear those two bouncing off each other on Robert Moses trivia, and I want to hear Brennan and the co-host Elliott get into all the ways Moses made New York a worse place.

Side note: I knew that I would already be biased against Moses because the first time I heard of him he was a literal BBEG in a DnD show but god he sucked so bad!!! So bad! And he wasn't even elected! How do you get to decide to displace half a million people without ever having been elected to public office!

[mysterywhiteboii]

[purpleluminea]

Not the cross over i expected, but it makes sense

[haveyouheardthispodcast]

Propaganda below the cut:

I highly expect this has been submitted before because it's excellent

It’s about all the little things in the world and how they’re made or what they’re for!!! It’s super slay and incredibly interesting

[flipjack]

Gillian on a new episode of the "99% Invisible" podcast

[shallowseeker]

You said one of your early metas sparked discourse. Can I ask what that is?

I rarely even know when Discourse is happening now. Through some miracle, I got adopted by the coolest mutuals, so. I usually only see the amazing stuff.

One day last year, I kept getting weird rando tags that said stuff like #wait is this the post that sparked all the discourse? #it can't be because this is so sensible and #I don't think the op is saying cas DESERVES to be homeless???? I didn't even know what "'Discourse" was at the time.

Anyway, Someone somewhere apparently called me a Republican. And some others said I blamed ppl for their own homelessness. Some accused me of hating the poor etc etc. And stuff. Anyway, someone was NOT having a good time on Tumblr! I can only imagine that I must have been a stand-in for something someone was Going Through in Real Life.

As for the post...

///

I can't actually find the post (it was on my vent blog, and I'm real bad at tagging, esp back then), but the gist of it was that Castiel is a stubborn asshole, but he's got keen emotional intuition, despite his "lost in translation" shtick.

After he knew the full scope of Sam's terminal illness and the Gadreel-hostile-hostage situation, he pretty immediately and intimately understood the bunker-kick-out situation. (He'd just been tricked by Metatron, too. I mean, hello? He gets it.)

I also mentioned that Castiel has, as far back as season 6 at least, had a tendency to want to be self-sufficient to the point of detrimental self-reliance. (I mean, dude hid key battle tactics from the rebel angels willing to go up against an archangel with him. *cough* Hello, Rachal. Balthazar.) And some ppl hated that. They wanted the root of all of his issues to be solely Sam and Dean.

Anyway, I don't think it's completely out of character for him to get a stiff upper lip about being seen as weak. Plus, he has a history of going radio silent and being cagey about situations, especially when his feelings and pride are hurt, so I simply mused that it's not outside the realm of possibility for him to stuff a bag with whatever cash and cards he's given and jump on a bus ASAP without telling them where he's going.

And Hell, it's not like Sam was never gonna get better. In 9x09, Dean refers to their separation as temporary. "Now, if that means that we keep our distance from you for a little while, then..."

Regardless, when Cas found out the deets of the situation, it all clicked for him.

///

I even pointed out that it seems like Cas walks away from the human experience...*gasp* proud of himself rather than weepy n' traumatized. After he fights the RitZien, he stares down death and says, "I want to LIVE." After that, he gets himself a lil' suit and a car and starts actively going out on cases.

I'll leave you with a thought by one of my fave little dudes: Rob Buckman. He wrote the incredibly famous Breaking Bad News and writes a LOT about weakness and resilience in the face of it. (I found out about him on 99% Invisible podcast btw.)

“The great thing about being ill from my point of view was that I found out that I could tolerate … a fair amount of pain and handicap … total ostracization from my friends and family ... and I didn’t collapse, and I didn’t turn into a different person. I didn't fold like a wet blanket. People can withstand a lot ... isn't that wonderful?"

That's Cas, on the other side of things, after dealing with the struggle of humanity. Sometimes getting to your lowest makes you feel weirdly secure. We get real hung up on, "Well, if it was ME, I'd have been traumatized and melted into a puddle of goo and held a grudge and had intense trust issues over it. " But it's not always a one-to-one-this-trauma-means-you-get-that-type-of-hang-up. Sometimes, we make good meaning from shitty situations, too.

[excalisbury]

It’s 99% invisible ministories time and I just learned Carlo Scarpa didn’t have a license and got in trouble with the Venice order of architects about it???!!?!!? How fucking dare they???? He was prosecuted in a courtroom HE DESIGNED ffs (the judge agreed with me btw)

Btw: if you ever visit Venice, see as many Scarpa buildings and rooms and such as you can. His stuff is so so so so worth it. Scarpa is to Venice as Gaudi is to Barcelona imo. He is that vital to what’s great about Venice when you look further than the old stuff the normal tourists visit.

[o-the-mts]

A podcast spending an entire year breaking down The Power Broker?  Is this nerd heaven?

[littledidiknow]

I refer to this episode in conversations all the time. The incredible movies from the 90s and early 2000s were largely possible due to the fluke of more theaters suddenly being available to show movies in. A sloppy summary below, but the whole ep is worth a listen.

"Back then [the 19060s], studios and theaters had a business arrangement: if a theater had a certain movie, nobody else in the area could play it. Seeing a film was kind of like seeing a painting or a Broadway show. It lived at one particular location, and you had to go there. But in the early 1970s, this began to change. Studios realized there was enough demand to release movies in the suburbs and the city simultaneously. Meanwhile, theaters divided their one big auditorium into two, three, or four auditoriums to make room for more screens.

Over the next six years, the number of movie screens in the United States increased by fifty percent. But these new movie palaces didn’t just pull moviegoers to the screen; they pulled movies to the screen.

Jack Foley was a distributor at Columbia and he says the megaplex was a Trojan horse for slipping strange, subversive movies into unsuspecting suburbs across America. If the latest teen movie was sold out, kids might end up seeing something like Being John Malkovich.  And Being John Malkovich was not an outlier. The year it was released— 1999 —was a year that many people believe was one of the best movie years ever. Not only did all these great movies get made, but they were able to find an audience in Megaplexes across the country.

But this mini golden age of interesting, unusual, original films didn’t last all that long. The megaplex building craze had been so fast and furious that by the early 2000s there were way too many theaters. As the theater bubble began to pop, the creative one did too. For a while, booming DVD sales provided another revenue stream for oddball movies with a niche audience, but as DVDs disappeared later in the 2000s, the major studios leaned more and more on their big, franchise blockbusters.

By the mid-2000s, the movies were becoming a “first weekend” business. Studios tried to break blockbusters wide, opening on as many screens as possible, and theater owners realized instead of putting a different movie on every screen, they could give the blockbusters multiple screens with a new showtime every 20 minutes. As blockbusters took up more and more screens, smaller movies got squeezed out."

[thoughtportal]

Every fall, a vacant Toronto storefront is possessed by Spirit Halloween, the pop-up shop haunting 1,500 empty spaces across North America. What does this seasonal invasion say about the retail apocalypse? And why are people so drawn to its eerie aisles? Explore the spooky rise of Spirit Halloween—where the scares are temporary, but the obsession is real. Spirit Halloween (https://99percentinvisible.org/?p=42850)

[evanfordebarden]

for any fans of Robert Caro's biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, i am putting up a new comedy show in NYC next week called The Power Joker. it's a "late night" talk show hosted my RM himself. the theme of the show is tolls and we've got a congestion pricing expert joining us, Charles Komanoff, along with the hosts of The Climate Denier's Playbook, Rollie Williams and Nicole Conlan. Plus a bunch of other great comedians and music from Zenizen. it's in NY, but also available to stream.

Sunday, Nov 3, 5pm

Caveat, 21A Clinton St

[eccentric-ocean]

Situated right near downtown Mumbai, India is an area of about 55 acres of dense, overgrown forest. In one of the most populous cities in the world, this is a place where peacocks roam freely — a space out of time. This forest is protected by a religious community. It has survived in a relatively undeveloped state in the middle of this gargantuan city. Importantly, it’s also home to an ancient tradition that’s in crisis — one that is central to the lives (and deaths) of a particular population.

There’s a certain point in this forest beyond which almost no one can step — only special caretakers of these grounds can go any further. They go by many names: khandia, nassassalar, pallbearer, corpse bearer. Their work here is holy.

[flipjack]

Gillian kayaking in LA!