It's not supposed to flake, or rust. They're signs of damage -- often of deep neglect.
buildings change hands, no one thinks about maintenance -- real estate investment means it changes hands before that ever matters, up until it does.
I was thinking today about bus stop rain shelters, as one does, and how a lot of people don't seem to realize that advertising ate the world a long time ago, not twenty years ago.
It's easy to tune out. But the bright colors of the cities are just ads, when you bother to look at them, and not the ads on your phone.
today on my bike ride through the rotting corpse of connecticut, as I do every few days;
I saw a building, wrapped in bright red vinyl, advertising yet another apartment complex. This one was empty.
The spalling mentioned above was showing even through the vinyl wrap. evictions long served, the shell game continuing.
I'm sure they'll knock down the 14 stories and put up 6.
and the parents are afraid of that, because the news is afraid of that.
no one asks why, it's just that the screens are addictive, claim the psychologists and the screen companies.
keep them off of them! it's ruining their grades! it's ruining their mood! it's making them apathetic!
zoomers are so cringe.
their parks close at 4pm, because there might be drugs in them. Or people who don't have a bed, looking for a place to sleep. Or, heaven forbid, pee.
or, worse, all that noise from the teens might drive down property values.
they kick you out of malls now if you're under 18 and don't have a parent around.
I wonder how many people actually know that. I don't think anyone over 18 has shopped at a mall in over a decade.
I hate to keep coming back to it, but the spalling is just so obvious once you know what you're looking for. I don't mean to make you dwell.
they tried to blame it on skateboards in the 90s, you know. I can't verify that one.
It hit me when I turned 30. seems smart. shift the obvious rot onto the skateboarders -- always clattering, cutting close, scaring people,
bleeding on the just-bleached pavement. surely they're what's destroying the buildings. But we made the plazas private.
Where no one ever walks. Rotting, all the same, and after the pandemic, the concrete shrapnel isn't even cleaned from the courtyard.
The rebar stains turn it the same color as the skateboarders did. less teeth, i guess.
the other day, when setting up a new install on my laptop, I was served a 6 hour ad on youtube.
church thing. Just played elevator music. Cursed. Left as soon as I could. Nothing good could come of that.
remember when they marketed an entire war, when we were kids, and the vast majority of people over 30 just. went okay, and supported it
I guess they were afraid of something. groomers, perhaps. I don't really remember, the justifications all sort of blur together.
it's trans day of visibility, and all I can think about is just how visible everything is
in 2017 a lot of well-meaning progressives
were making allegories to how people who didn't see themselves as supporting the nazis but nevertheless participated in the german state said they were just being "good germans". How all the germans left, who didn't flee, were that.
I think about them lately. One of them in particular. No spare cycles to help the fight -- they just bought a house.
Whereas the Bund, and the Weiße Rose, and countless others, were active into the 40s.
and then the rest, unable to leave, but helpless to do anything, as anything they say gets shouted down by most of any room.
the parents' fears on both extremes are justified -- one sides' fear makes the world more dangerous, the other sides' fear makes the world more isolated.
media sells to both sides -- they're in advertising. Advertising is better than arms dealing, you see. Because people who haven't lost a war in 60 years will keep buying weapons.
I can't really say roblox is a worse place to spend your time.
it's going to be weird when the bridges start falling and we're told it's normal, and with the pressures of the job and the pressures of landlords, we, too, just shrug and go with it. Because it's not like you can do anything else.
they're too busy trying to legislate trans people out of existence to maintain their properties.
can you imagine that?
millions, down the drain. But I guess that's the story of crusades, huh.
Enough that they can no longer scare us into staying hidden from each other. or us never finding out in the first place.
I know I'm a day late and it's bleeding into april fools. But the world's rotting around us and everyone feels like speaking out will get them yelled down, so they shrug and keep moving.
but, with all apologies to Mx. Malady,
we've been being visible like a flare placed where no one bothers to see it.
