#Technology in Localization

[rsayoub]

Future-Proofing Localization: Insights from Rodrigo Corradi

Rodrigo Fuentes Corradi Introduction In a compelling Episode 61 of the Localization Fireside Chat, host Robin Ayoub engages with Rodrigo Fuentes Corradi, a veteran in the localization industry with a 25-year track record specializing in machine translation technology and human processes. Rodrigo now helps Language Service Providers (LSPs) and language technology companies to execute successful…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Cloudburst

Enshittification isn’t inevitable: under different conditions and constraints, the old, good internet could have given way to a new, good internet. Enshittification is the result of specific policy choices: encouraging monopolies; enabling high-speed, digital shell games; and blocking interoperability.

First we allowed companies to buy up their competitors. Google is the shining example here: having made one good product (search), they then fielded an essentially unbroken string of in-house flops, but it didn’t matter, because they were able to buy their way to glory: video, mobile, ad-tech, server management, docs, navigation…They’re not Willy Wonka’s idea factory, they’re Rich Uncle Pennybags, making up for their lack of invention by buying out everyone else:

https://locusmag.com/2022/03/cory-doctorow-vertically-challenged/

But this acquisition-fueled growth isn’t unique to tech. Every administration since Reagan (but not Biden! more on this later) has chipped away at antitrust enforcement, so that every sector has undergone an orgy of mergers, from athletic shoes to sea freight, eyeglasses to pro wrestling:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/07/09/the-importance-of-competition-for-the-american-economy/

But tech is different, because digital is flexible in a way that analog can never be. Tech companies can “twiddle” the back-ends of their clouds to change the rules of the business from moment to moment, in a high-speed shell-game that can make it impossible to know what kind of deal you’re getting:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/27/knob-jockeys/#bros-be-twiddlin

To make things worse, users are banned from twiddling. The thicket of rules we call IP ensure that twiddling is only done against users, never for them. Reverse-engineering, scraping, bots — these can all be blocked with legal threats and suits and even criminal sanctions, even if they’re being done for legitimate purposes:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Enhittification isn’t inevitable but if we let companies buy all their competitors, if we let them twiddle us with every hour that God sends, if we make it illegal to twiddle back in self-defense, we will get twiddled to death. When a company can operate without the discipline of competition, nor of privacy law, nor of labor law, nor of fair trading law, with the US government standing by to punish any rival who alters the logic of their service, then enshittification is the utterly foreseeable outcome.

To understand how our technology gets distorted by these policy choices, consider “The Cloud.” Once, “the cloud” was just a white-board glyph, a way to show that some part of a software’s logic would touch some commodified, fungible, interchangeable appendage of the internet. Today, “The Cloud” is a flashing warning sign, the harbinger of enshittification.

When your image-editing tools live on your computer, your files are yours. But once Adobe moves your software to The Cloud, your critical, labor-intensive, unrecreatable images are purely contingent. At at time, without notice, Adobe can twiddle the back end and literally steal the colors out of your own files:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

The finance sector loves The Cloud. Add “The Cloud” to a product and profits (money you get for selling something) can turn into rents (money you get for owning something). Profits can be eroded by competition, but rents are evergreen:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

No wonder The Cloud has seeped into every corner of our lives. Remember your first iPod? Adding music to it was trivial: double click any music file to import it into iTunes, then plug in your iPod and presto, synched! Today, even sophisticated technology users struggle to “side load” files onto their mobile devices. Instead, the mobile duopoly — Apple and Google, who bought their way to mobile glory and have converged on the same rent-seeking business practices, down to the percentages they charge — want you to get your files from The Cloud, via their apps. This isn’t for technological reasons, it’s a business imperative: 30% of every transaction that involves an app gets creamed off by either Apple or Google in pure rents:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell/posts/3788112

And yet, The Cloud is undeniably useful. Having your files synch across multiple devices, including your collaborators’ devices, with built-in tools for resolving conflicting changes, is amazing. Indeed, this feat is the holy grail of networked tools, because it’s how programmers write all the software we use, including software in The Cloud.

If you want to know how good a tool can be, just look at the tools that toolsmiths use. With “source control” — the software programmers use to collaboratively write software — we get a very different vision of how The Cloud could operate. Indeed, modern source control doesn’t use The Cloud at all. Programmers’ workflow doesn’t break if they can’t access the internet, and if the company that provides their source control servers goes away, it’s simplicity itself to move onto another server provider.

This isn’t The Cloud, it’s just “the cloud” — that whiteboard glyph from the days of the old, good internet — freely interchangeable, eminently fungible, disposable and replaceable. For a tool like git, Github is just one possible synchronization point among many, all of which have a workflow whereby programmers’ computers automatically make local copies of all relevant data and periodically lob it back up to one or more servers, resolving conflicting edits through a process that is also largely automated.

There’s a name for this model: it’s called “Local First” computing, which is computing that starts from the presumption that the user and their device is the most important element of the system. Networked servers are dumb pipes and dumb storage, a nice-to-have that fails gracefully when it’s not available.

The data structures of source-code are among the most complicated formats we have; if we can do this for code, we can do it for spreadsheets, word-processing files, slide-decks, even edit-decision-lists for video and audio projects. If local-first computing can work for programmers writing code, it can work for the programs those programmers write.

Local-first computing is experiencing a renaissance. Writing for Wired, Gregory Barber traces the history of the movement, starting with the French computer scientist Marc Shapiro, who helped develop the theory of “Conflict-Free Replicated Data” — a way to synchronize data after multiple people edit it — two decades ago:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-cloud-is-a-prison-can-the-local-first-software-movement-set-us-free/

Shapiro and his co-author Nuno Preguiça envisioned CFRD as the building block of a new generation of P2P collaboration tools that weren’t exactly serverless, but which also didn’t rely on servers as the lynchpin of their operation. They published a technical paper that, while exiting, was largely drowned out by the release of GoogleDocs (based on technology built by a company that Google bought, not something Google made in-house).

Shapiro and Preguiça’s work got fresh interest with the 2019 publication of “Local-First Software: You Own Your Data, in spite of the Cloud,” a viral whitepaper-cum-manifesto from a quartet of computer scientists associated with Cambridge University and Ink and Switch, a self-described “industrial research lab”:

https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/static/local-first.pdf

The paper describes how its authors — Martin Kleppmann, Adam Wiggins, Peter van Hardenberg and Mark McGranaghan — prototyped and tested a bunch of simple local-first collaboration tools built on CFRD algorithms, with the goal of “network optional…seamless collaboration.” The results are impressive, if nascent. Conflicting edits were simpler to resolve than the authors anticipated, and users found URLs to be a good, intuitive way of sharing documents. The biggest hurdles are relatively minor, like managing large amounts of change-data associated with shared files.

Just as importantly, the paper makes the case for why you’d want to switch to local-first computing. The Cloud is not reliable. Companies like Evernote don’t last forever — they can disappear in an eyeblink, and take your data with them:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/9/23789012/evernote-layoff-us-staff-bending-spoons-note-taking-app

Google isn’t likely to disappear any time soon, but Google is a graduate of the Darth Vader MBA program (“I have altered the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further”) and notorious for shuttering its products, even beloved ones like Google Reader:

https://www.theverge.com/23778253/google-reader-death-2013-rss-social

And while the authors don’t mention it, Google is also prone to simply kicking people off all its services, costing them their phone numbers, email addresses, photos, document archives and more:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/22/allopathic-risk/#snitches-get-stitches

There is enormous enthusiasm among developers for local-first application design, which is only natural. After all, companies that use The Cloud go to great lengths to make it just “the cloud,” using containerization to simplify hopping from one cloud provider to another in a bid to stave off lock-in from their cloud providers and the enshittification that inevitably follows.

The nimbleness of containerization acts as a disciplining force on cloud providers when they deal with their business customers: disciplined by the threat of losing money, cloud companies are incentivized to treat those customers better. The companies we deal with as end-users know exactly how bad it gets when a tech company can impose high switching costs on you and then turn the screws until things are almost-but-not-quite so bad that you bolt for the doors. They devote fantastic effort to making sure that never happens to them — and that they can always do that to you.

Interoperability — the ability to leave one service for another — is technology’s secret weapon, the thing that ensures that users can turn The Cloud into “the cloud,” a humble whiteboard glyph that you can erase and redraw whenever it suits you. It’s the greatest hedge we have against enshittification, so small wonder that Big Tech has spent decades using interop to clobber their competitors, and lobbying to make it illegal to use interop against them:

https://locusmag.com/2019/01/cory-doctorow-disruption-for-thee-but-not-for-me/

Getting interop back is a hard slog, but it’s also our best shot at creating a new, good internet that lives up the promise of the old, good internet. In my next book, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (Verso Books, Sept 5), I set out a program fro disenshittifying the internet:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

The book is up for pre-order on Kickstarter now, along with an independent, DRM-free audiobooks (DRM-free media is the content-layer equivalent of containerized services — you can move them into or out of any app you want):

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

Meanwhile, Lina Khan, the FTC and the DoJ Antitrust Division are taking steps to halt the economic side of enshittification, publishing new merger guidelines that will ban the kind of anticompetitive merger that let Big Tech buy its way to glory:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/biden-administration-corporate-merger-antitrust-guidelines/674779/

The internet doesn’t have to be enshittified, and it’s not too late to disenshittify it. Indeed — the same forces that enshittified the internet — monopoly mergers, a privacy and labor free-for-all, prohibitions on user-side twiddling — have enshittified everything from cars to powered wheelchairs. Not only should we fight enshittification — we must.

Back my anti-enshittification Kickstarter here!

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad- free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/03/there-is-no-cloud/#only-other-peoples-computers

Image: Drahtlos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Motherboard_Intel_386.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

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cdsessums (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monsoon_Season_Flagstaff_AZ_clouds_storm.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[shutter-pan]

[un-pearable]

as true as the jokes about “everyone wants to rewrite ninjago” are i feel like smthn people forget when complaining about the inconsistencies of the show is that…. it wasn’t planned? it’s not like most other animated shows lately - it didn’t start with a deeply fleshed out world or a meticulously designed pitch bible with grandiose plans for a long-term story or character arcs. the ninja don’t originally get their powers from heredity because they weren’t hereditary powers yet. the magic system doesn’t make sense bc they literally just made it up as they went! they go back and forth on stuff like whether non-elementals can learn spinjitzu bc it’s a collaborative piece of media made by people with vastly different levels of control over the story, the animation, the sets, etc. that varied over the course of the series. it’s totally understandable and exciting to see so many people reworking the early stuff with the lore and logic later seasons introduced but i personally feel that… if you’re doing that. you need to understand why the show is like that instead of writing it off as being bad and shitty. it was working with what it had. it’s only what it is now because of that awkward troubleshooting phase, not in spite of it

[mylittleredgirl]

my 2014 macbook is at the shop trying to resurrect the T key and i feel like i have left a pet at the vet overnight. what are they doing to her. will she be mad at me when i pick her up.

[localthumbcache]

max kaspar, the friendly ghost... hunter

[giediwyomingamericadeathtrap]

GIEDI WYOMING AMERICA DEATHTRAP

DISNEYLAND?

[phoenixyfriend]

Those Economics/Architecture Videos I've Been Bingeing

But eating less bandwidth than the previous version of this post.

This post has 100 links, because that's how many tumblr lets me add before it refuses to save the post anymore. (Legacy editor allows up to 250, but then I would have the colors.)

A lot of these are about NYC, because that's my personal main focus, but there are a few others. Also, I have absolutely no training in this field and only started watching these a few days ago but Ya Girl Is Bingeing and Really Loves Edutainment. All the descriptions are my own, btw. I'm not looking to gain clicks or references, I want you guys to know what you're getting into.

I was not involved in creating any of these videos, but it did take me over a week to watch them all and decide which ones to include, how to organize, and how to describe the contents.

I cannot speak to a lot of the deeper issues touched on, and do not agree with all the political or economic points brought up in these videos (as this is a wide range of people and topics), but they are by and large a good look at much of an industry that most people, myself included, don't know enough about, considering how crucial it is to our lives.

I'm open to channel/video recs but there are a few I ran into that seem well-done but have an audio quality I can't work with, so that's... unfortunate.

Stewart Hicks - Chicago-based, professor of architecture at the University of Illinois

Why Skyscrapers Are Losing Their Tops - Stewart Hicks - The general history of architectural styles for skyscrapers from the 1930s to the near future.

Why Do Architects Insist on Using Flat Roofs? - Stewart Hicks - Compares and contrasts the strengths and weaknesses of flat vs gabled roofs.

How Buildings Changed After the Eiffel Tower - Stewart Hicks - Thirteen minutes of history on structural engineering in bridges and skyscrapers.

The Bewildering Architecture of Indoor Cities - Stewart Hicks - Goes into the planned and unplanned variants of this phenomenon, which ranges from giant buildings intended to act as an entire community, to the unplanned network of underground tunnels or overstreet enclosed walkways that let people cross blocks upon blocks of a city without having to step outside.

How This Tower Barely Touches the Ground - Stewart Hicks - Addresses the engineering behind 150 N. Riverside in Chicago, and the zoning laws that caused its rather unique Y-shaped base in the first place, along with the requirements causing things like custom giant I-beams and necessitating a barge to host the crane since they had nowhere to anchor one on the ground.

How Chicago is Being Unbuilt: Back to Nature - Stewart Hicks - Explores the ways in which Chicago is undoing prior urbanization, and implementing some new eco-friendly infrastructure and various projects.

Why We Should Live in Our Office Buildings - Stewart Hicks - More and more office buildings are standing empty. With movements towards more mixed zoning and the return to walkable city models, some of those office buildings are getting retrofitted to be livable spaces and mixed-use locations.

How Architects Design for Less Lonely Living - Stewart Hicks - In a lot of places, like the US, the way we interact or avoid other people is impacted heavily by the organization of the buildings we live in.

House Sizes Are Getting Absurd - Stewart Hicks - Just a fun romp comparing the range of sizes (from the bare minimum of capsule hotels to the absurd mass of some modern estates) for various dwellings. Lots of very deliberate visualization.

Shopping Malls are Getting Desperate - Stewart Hicks - Discusses the decline of shopping malls, and the 'tricks' they employ to try to keep people happy and coming by.

The Architecture of Curb Appeal - Stewart Hicks - There's a lot that goes into making a house look good in a way that gets it sold. A lot of people hate it.

The Controversy Over Accessory Dwelling Units - Stewart Hicks - In many places, it's illegal to build a smaller livable space in your backyard. You know, places you put an adult child who wants their own space, or your mother-in-law, or just rent out to college students for the next ten months. But, at least in a few places, it's not going to be illegal much longer.

Toilets Need to Change - Stewart Hicks - Plumbing is such an important part of our daily lives, and it's still evolving!

The Hidden Meaning and Logistics of Fountains - Stewart Hicks - This one is just fun. 😊

The Genius of 2x4 Framing - Stewart Hicks - So apparently the US is a bit odd in how much of our architectural/construction industry uses light wood framing as a standard.

The B1M - Hosted by Fred Mills (British), more generally about construction, rather than just architecture

Why America Is Tearing Down Its Highways - The B1M - Explores the history of the interstate highway system, and how much of it was used for redlining and general segregation, along with the challenges faced by the plans to tear those highways down.

The $1.2 Trillion Plan to Rebuild America - The B1M - NGL I'm like. Ludicrously excited about this one. There's a lot going on! I hope it works out!

Why a Billionaire Tried to Stop This Bridge - The B1M - There's a new bridge being built between Detroit, MI and Windsor, ON. This bridge is going to help with the ongoing trade between the US and Canada; these two cities are already a major hub for one of the largest trading partnerships in the world (the largest where one side is not the European Union), so building another bridge is a reasonable undertaking. However, the new bridge will be just a few miles down from an existing bridge that is currently owned by a billionaire who makes a killing over his control of a major portion of this bottleneck of the trade route. (Also, more engineering challenges!)

The Statue of Liberty: Building an Icon - The B1M - Someone actually asked me about this recently and anyway you should all go learn about how the Statue of Liberty happened, she's a gem.

Why New York’s Billionaires’ Row Is Half Empty - The B1M- The usage of NYC luxury housing as a semi-liquid asset used as investment by the megarich, along with the rights acquisitions that led to their building in the first place, the gentrification they contribute to, and the tax write-offs they get for it.

Why Our Cities Are So Expensive - The B1M - How infrastructure investment by governments can and does frequently lead to gentrification. Focuses on London's Battersea Power Station revitalization plan.

Why New York's Skyscrapers Keep Changing Shape - The B1M - This is actually an exploration of more than just New York, covering much of the same topics as the above 'history of skyscraper design' video, with a great focus on the Chrysler building.

Why No One Wants This New York Skyscraper - The B1M - Investigates the ways in which the development of Two World Trade Center has been delayed over the past decade and change, along with a handful of other projects in the area.

The Wild Story of New York’s Abandoned Skyscraper - The B1M - There's a half-finished skyscraper on the western shore of Manhattan, and due to the errors in laying the foundation, there's an 8cm tilt in it. The parties involved in construction are duking it out in court about who's at fault, and until they're done, that thing is just... sitting there.

New York's Latest $3BN Skyscraper Explained - The B1M - Another stupidly tall skyscraper for midtown. You know. Because we need another one.

The $7BN Plan to Save New York's Most Hated Train Station - The B1M - Explores the history, current state, and planned upgrades to Penn Station of NYC.

New York's Most Hated Highway is Falling Apart - The B1M - The issues hitting the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and the difficulties in repairing it.

The Secret Subway That Could Save New York - The B1M - Hey do you want to hear about how we might finally be getting that Queens-Brooklyn line that doesn't need to pass through Manhattan first?

The Tunnel That's Failing New York City - The B1M - The tunnel that handles a massive amount of the human traffic between NJ and NYC is starting to break down due to age. This one included a line that actually gave me feelings: "Look, it's a 110-year-old system, you know, it's done its job. Like, we really can't ask any more of it." It did its best! For a long time! Thank you!

The US Government Wants to Destroy These Towers - The B1M - The federal government just wants to demolish some Historic Skyscrapers in Chicago, no biggie.

The Secret $4BN Tunnel Network Under Chicago - The B1M - Since the 1970s, Chicago has been building an absolutely massive set of tunnels hundreds of feet under the surface to handle regular flooding from storms and the climate crisis.

The Fight to Fix the Tilting Millennium Tower - The B1M - There's this skyscraper in San Francisco that's leaning a few centimeters to the side, which doesn't sound like a lot, until you learn that just a few more will mean the plumbing and elevators stop working.

The £100BN Railway Dividing a Nation - The B1M - Goes over the political, economic, and environmental arguments and concerns behind the highspeed rail intended to connect London to the North of England.

Inside London's £19BN New Railway (and its Nightmare Station) - The B1M - Genuinely fascinated at the number of Train Problems that England seems to be having.

Why Europe Doesn't Build Skyscrapers - The B1M - Explains the historical and modern reasons that limit the addition of supertall buildings across most of Europe.

The Insane Scale of Europe's New Mega-Tunnel - The B1M - Explores the engineering and environmental challenges of the Fehmarntunnel, a passage from Germany to Denmark of terrifying size.

Why Europe is Building a 57KM Tunnel Through a Mountain - The B1M - No, a different one. This one is between Italy and France.

We Went Inside the Largest Nuclear Fusion Reactor - The B1M - It's in France, there are over 35 countries involved, and it's just a Lot.

Inside The Lab That Tests Elevator Free-Falls - The B1M - There's this active mine in Finland where they test elevators for safety and it's pretty cool.

Finland Might Have Solved Nuclear Power’s Biggest Problem - The B1M - Finland has a new way of storing nuclear waste.

Nord Stream 2: The $11BN Megaproject That's Dividing - The B1M - It's an oil pipeline and it is causing problems for Everyone.

Why Russia is Building an Arctic Silk Road - The B1M - Russia is taking advantage of the melting ice caps to set up a new trade route through the arctic so shipping can go up through the north instead of down around South Asia and through the Suez Canal.

The $10BN Railway in the Jungle - The B1M - Mexico is building a new, very long high-speed rail line, and it's incredibly controversial.

Hong Kong's $11BN Underwater Railway Explained - The B1M - Hong Kong is putting in a new underwater tunnel (as part of a larger network expansion) for its subway system, and it's. Difficult.

China's Skyscraper Boom is Officially Over - The B1M - Just learned that China is outlawing most skyscrapers. There are a few cases where you can still maybe make one happen, if you can convince the government it's needed, but in most cases... nah. They're cutting you off.

The Unstoppable Growth of China's High-Speed Rail Network - The B1M - [insert gif screaming about trains here]

The Insane Engineering of Tokyo's First Supertall Skyscraper - The B1M - While the focus is ostensibly Main Tower, the video covers a lot of ground regarding earthquakes and the necessary engineering to resist the incredibly frequent occurrence. (Warning: Came out shortly after the Feb. 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake, and contains references to the event, urging people contribute what they could to help. The video was already almost finished when the Turkey-Syria earthquake happened, and rather than delay it for fear of it being in bad taste, they decided to use it to encourage people to help the victims.)

Japan’s $64BN Gamble on Levitating Bullet Trains Explained - The B1M - Let's talk about maglev, pros and cons.

Is This Asia's Next Financial Capital? - The B1M - Malaysia is building a lot, and it might herald a new financial superpower for the continent and the world.

Why India Doesn’t Build Skyscrapers - The B1M - The short answer is 'zoning laws that didn't achieve what the legislators hoped,' but it's changing.

The $4BN Railway Reshaping Delhi - The B1M - What it says on the tin.

The World's Most Extreme Construction Site - The B1M - Antarctica!!!

Egypt Built a Supertall Skyscraper in the Desert - The B1M - Egypt is straight up building an entire city in the middle of nowhere, primarily as a new seat of government, because Cairo is overcrowded... and a frequent site of protests.

Top 10 Projects Completing in 2023 - The B1M - Some impressive, expensive, and possibly unnecessary projects that are happening.

Tomorrow's Build is a second channel under The B1M, also hosted by Fred Mills. It's more focused on hypothetical, future projects than ongoing ones.

Barcelona’s Car-Free Superblocks Explained - Tomorrow's Build - Barcelona is planning to block off entire parts of the city from most car usage, excepting local delivery, mass transit, and emergency services.

The Hidden Crisis With Renewable Energy - Tomorrow's Build - Storage of energy from renewable sources that are not consistently available (e.g. solar is only available when the sun is out) is difficult, so here are a few options.

This Nuclear Plant is Built in 3 Months - Tomorrow's Build - Mail-order nuclear power is going to be a thing.

Greece is Turning its Olympic Ruins into a Casino - Tomorrow's Build - [good for them dot gif]

This Could Stop Construction Everywhere - Tomorrow's Build - So it turns out we're running out of sand. Which is important, because we need sand for concrete, and the easiest stuff to get (desert sand), doesn't work for that, which is why Dubai has to import sand for construction. So uh. Kind of a crisis. Sand pirates are a whole thing.

Architectural Digest - channel for the architectural magazine that dates back to 1920

Architect Breaks Down 5 of the Most Common New York Apartments - Architectural Digest - Just what it says on the tin! An architect explains brownstones, classics, railroad apartments, and loft/studio apartments. Lots of history, specifically that of the late 19th century tenement buildings and the art community and subsequent gentrification of SoHo.

Architect Breaks Down 6 Luxury Apartments from Billions, Gossip Girl & More - Architectural Digest - On the other end of NYC housing, we got the Rich People Places.

Architect Breaks Down Secret Details Of The Chrysler Building - Architectural Digest - An exploration of the external details of the Chrysler, with commentary on the historical context of art deco and related art movements.

Architect Breaks Down 3 Demolished New York Landmarks - Architectural Digest - Goes over the original Penn Station, Madison Square Garden,and the New York Herald building.

Architect Breaks Down The Evolving Skyscrapers Of New - Architectural Digest - I'm... not going to pretend I'm less than obsessed with NYC videos. Sorry! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Covers setback/wedding cake tiered, glass curtain wall, plaza towers, expressed structures, and the (hated) supertall.

Architect Breaks Down NYC Subway Stations (Oldest & Newest) - Architectural Digest - And we continue on NYC infrastructure history because I am insatiable.

Architect Explores New York City's Greenwich Village | Walking Tour - Architectural Digest - What a beautiful and inconvenient neighborhood, full of so many dead bodies.

Top Luxury - Despite the name, is about construction in general, including critique of megearich projects, so don't go in expecting it to be About The Luxury

World's Most Useless Megaprojects - Top Luxury - Did you know there are entire cities lying around empty? I already knew that, but there are just. So many giant projects that never got finished, ate up a lot of money, and are just kind of sitting around now.

5 Skyscrapers that Never Existed - Top Luxury - Some of these never got past the concept stage, and some ran out of funding, and at least one got turned into a fish farm by locals after it was abandoned.

Biggest Megaprojects in the World - Top Luxury - Exactly what it says on the tin! Guys, there are so many giant projects happening, and so many of them are controversial As Heck.

Why these Megacities are Still Empty - Top Luxury - Not entirely empty, but yeah, there are some megacities designed for one purpose or another that are more Ghost Town than Bustling Metropolis. Other than Naypyidaw, though, most of them are expected to gain larger populations soon, particularly Nusantara (which is being built specifically due to the sinking of Jakarta).

The Most Terrifying Bridges in the World - Top Luxury - Like half of these are in a specific region of China that just has. So many mountains.

Most Expensive Construction Mistakes in the World (Part 3) - Top Luxury - Have you ever fucked up so incredibly that it cost six billion USD to fix?

Not Just Bikes - Canadian living in Europe; city planning with focus on N. American car-centric zoning

Why City Design is Important (and Why I Hate Houston) - Not Just Bikes - Do you want more ammo to show people when they try to argue with you about walkable cities?

America Always Gets This Wrong (when building transit) - Not Just Bikes - How zoning and city planning needs to adjust in order for mass transit to actually work for people.

Suburbs that don't Suck - Streetcar Suburbs (Riverdale, Toronto) - Not Just Bikes - So there actually are good suburbs in the US and Canada, we just can't build them anymore because zoning laws make it impossible.

Stroads are Ugly, Expensive, and Dangerous (and they're everywhere) - Not Just Bikes - So there's this really popular and horrible form of street/road in the US and Canada that is bad at its job.

Would You Fall for It? - Not Just Bikes - 1950s pro-highway propaganda (which is referenced in many other videos from this channel), and the ways in which it was misleading and effective.

These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us - Not Just Bikes - This video actually did numbers on tumblr a few months ago. You know those stupidly big SUVs and Pick-ups? Yeah! They suck!

Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud - Not Just Bikes - With a few small changes, you too could live in a city that doesn't make you want to wear noise-cancelling headphones every moment of the day.

IT'S HISTORY - Various historic places... mostly NYC

Why can't you visit the Statue of Liberty's Torch? - IT'S HISTORY - Has some confusing image choices (photos from the early 20th century while talking about events from the 18th), but delivers on a fun history of the Statue of Liberty (and includes some facts that the other Lady Liberty video didn't get around to).

What's Left of New York's Lost Reservoir? - IT'S HISTORY - Apparently it turned into Bryant Park.

When Chicago built the Tallest Building in the World | The story of Sears Tower - IT'S HISTORY - Just what it says on the tin.. Big building, big history!

The Secret Tunnels Beneath New York - IT'S HISTORY - NYC has lost so many tunnels? Lost track of, forgotten, rediscovered... it's ridiculous. Half of these are for TRAINS. Those are HUGE. Led to me making this post (which contains a meme or two, but also a very important trigger warning).

Other

The lost neighborhood under New York's Central Park - Vox - Explains the history of Seneca Village: a primarily-black community of newly wealthy, often first-generation-freed peoples that was destroyed to make way for Central Park.

The Rise and Fall of American Malls - Bloomberg Originals - Covers the factors that led to malls becoming so common, and the many things that are contributing to the move away from them.

Megastructures: Building the Burj Al Arab | Dubai Engineering - Reel Truth Science Documentaries - This is fifty minutes of engineering and architecture, and really well done/presented. Mostly steers clear of the larger political controversy in favor of focusing on the math, though it can't entirely avoid the political and economic conflicts due to direct influence on the design by a the Crown Prince.

Why Venice is Europe’s Worst Placed City - Real Life Lore - We all know Venice is sinking, but this explains why and how (it's not just global climate change).

Why Wyoming is VASTLY Emptier Than Colorado - Real Life Lore - More of a general history lesson than architecture, but still fun.

Why Engineers Can't Control Rivers - Practical Engineering - I've had a few classes touch on this topic, but it was mostly back in high school. This video has some really good visualization on the main elements, and addresses that there are some places working on actual fixes!

Why Construction Projects Always Go Over Budget - Practical Engineering - Goes over the process by which costs are estimated, the limitations of those processes, and the risks that inevitably force the budget higher.

Czechia's Incredible 1960s Supervillain-Lair Hotel (And Why Its Architect Got Banned By The Regime) - The Tim Traveller - There's this really cool hotel that recently got refurbished.

Why Egypt Is Building a New Capital City - neo - Another video on the new city in Egypt, but with more in-depth exploration of the specific planning choices (where certain buildings are, especially).

The Forgotten Story of Modulex: LEGO's Lost Cousin - Peter Dibble - LEGO had a brand called Modulex that was used for architecture and city planning for a few decades. These days they mostly do signage.

Why Airplanes Are Still Worth Millions After They Stop Flying - CNBC - The various ways planes are broken down, sold for parts, and otherwise recycled.

[sophiesvalentine]

Shannel

[vintage-tech]

My move is complete as of 8am this morning. Now to put a metric shit-ton of stuff away...

[raffaellopalandri]

Book of the Day – The Age of Sustainable Development

Today���s Book of the Day is The Age of Sustainable Development, written by Jeffrey D. Sachs in 2015 and published by Columbia University Pres. Jeffrey D. Sachs is a world-renowned economics professor, author, educator, and global leader in sustainable economic development. The Age of Sustainable Development, by Jeffrey D. Sachs I chose this book because I often mention it when I present the…

[shutter-pan]

[life-of-architecture]

Kraków ul. św. Wawrzyńca 19-25 / Dajwór 27 Elektrownia Miejska, 1900-1914 hala maszyn z 1904 r. architekt: Jan Rzymkowski foto z 28 sierpnia 2016 i 18 czerwca 2022

Najstarsza publiczna elektrownia miejska w Krakowie ruszyła 18 lutego 1905 r. Tak wyglądała ceremonia otwarcia w relacji lokalnej prasy: Po przemówieniu inżynier Gajczak podał prezydentowi miasta [Juliuszowi Leo] nożyczki na poduszce, ozdobionej herbem m. Krakowa. P. prezydent przeciał wstążkę o barwach miasta, wiążącą koło rozpędowe do maszyny. W tej chwili puszczono maszyny w ruch i wszystkie lampy w zakładzie światłem elektrycznem rozbłysły. dziennik Czas, 20 lutego 1905 r.

Maszyny, które tamtego wieczoru zaczęły pracę, były dwoma silnikami o mocy 300 koni mechanicznych firmy Emil Škoda z Pilzna, spalającymi gaz dostarczany z sąsiedniej gazowni miejskiej, które napędzały prądnice wiedeńskiej firmy Allgemeine Union Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft, o wydajności 200 KW każda. Cały zespół został zaprojektowany przez inż. A.W. Schlayena i dostarczał początkowo energię do 345 odbiorców. W rok po uruchomieniu elektrownia zasilała 28 758 żarówek w Krakowie.

Wnętrze hali maszynowej co najmniej dwa lata później.

Reklama elektrowni z 1916 r.

Elektrownia w tym budynku działała przez osiemdziesiąt lat. Na zdjęciach szczyt z herbem miasta Krakowa oraz jedno z okien hali.

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Krakow, Poland 19-25 św. Wawrzyńca St. / 27 Dajwór St. The City Power Station, 1900-1914 machine room built in 1904 architect: Jan Rzymkowski taken on 28 August 2016 and 18 June 2022

The oldest public power plant in Kraków got launched on 18 February 1905. This is how the local press reported the opening ceremony: After the speech, Engineer Gajczak offered the City President [Juliusz Leo] a pair of scissors on a cushion decorated with the coat of arms of Kraków. Mr. President cut the ribbon in the city colors that tied the flywheel to its machine. At the same moment the machines got put in motion and all lamps in the building lit up with electric light. daily paper Czas, 20 February 1905

The machines in question were two 300 hp engines from Emil Škoda Factory in Plzeň, fueled by gas from the neighbouring city gas station, that drove two 200 kW generators from a Vienna company Allgemeine Union Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft. The whole set had been designed by Engineer A.W. Schlayen and delivered power to 345 receivers in the city, initially. One year later, the power station powered 28 758 lightbulbs in Kraków.

[interior of the machine room at least two years later]

[the station ad from 1916]

The power station worked in this building for eighty years. The main photos show the center gable with the Kraków coat of arms and one of the machine room's windows.

[meat-loving-meat]

I want to write a Vanyel/Stefen modern-with-magic AU soooo bad but I don’t know Valdemar lore like at all. There are six books standing between me and feeling comfortable enough in the lore to imagine what Valdemar might look like with the internet and planes

[rock-me-amadeus-epic-remix]

I failed my assessment for the cybersecurity course

I will now eat my weight in grilled cheese