Mango

We really need to start asking ourselves what a “future-proof” social media could or should actually look like.

Does any media company actually think about it? I know there are some big tech ideas like Meta or whatever but I’m serious, it feels like no one running anything has any real thoughts about the future except for in terms of propaganda or advertising. No one actually cares about the social part of social media which is why people have to build it on their own… Hence, the fediverse.

NotJustBikes is honestly a force of nature I think. His content is so awesome he’s basically created a new generation of urbanists. We need people like him because his content can actually change the world.

Of you don’t know where to start on his channel, the Strong Towns 4 part series is essential viewing. It’s a summary of the Strong Towns research project/community and it basically presents decades of expert research as a tidy little series. Everything else is window dressing to the core messaging of that - crappy spread out suburbs are financially insolvent and cannot sustain themselves. Towns and cities die without a reliable tax base. Everything boils down to that. There is a 30 year cycle where new suburbs pay for the old ones and in 30 years they become a net negative to city budgets.

Mississauga in Ontario recently ran out of municipal land… Their strategy has been suburban expansion for decades. Now they’re out of room. It wouldn’t have been a very exciting headline except now we know that new suburbs must be built to pay for the financial drain the old ones place on the city… So they MUST become more dense or else the city will become bankrupt.

There is also a video on the channel about how Guelph did a financial analysis on what parts of the city are financially productive and which are net negatives on the budget. I’m sure you can guess the results! Really cool 3D bar graphs of the city divided up into blocks/sections. it’s just interesting because politicians always always pander to suburban voters and people think suburban tax money pays for inner city programming or whatever and the reverse is the truth. The inner cities are the ones subsidizing the suburbs. Density = people = economy. Population density = productivity = money.

Imagine if politicians ignored homeowners and focused on the people actually funding the budgets? Suburbs are a financial drain only kept alive by the Ponzi scheme of creating new suburbs to find the old ones. Until you run out of land like Mississauga. Then you get slashing of budgets and lack of programs, decaying infrastructure, etc… Then cities just die like so many have across north America.

I predicted forcible demods…

But like, I feel like the one thing that would work is the one thing no one has been talking about.

A mod strike!

Maybe it has been suppressed because it would seem too radical but like, if the communities are going to die anyways might as well go out with a bang. Mods should all go on strike and spammers can run free and burn the site to the ground. That’s basically what happened with Twitter, right? Has Spez seen what has happened to the valuation of Twitter this past year or what?

I went on Reddit during the blackout and on the front page there were shitty tattoos of bdsm furries with their dick and balls out… If the front page could all turn into that and the enforcement of NSFW tags was lost due to lack of mods, I can’t imagine that the shareholders would be happy about what the site has become.

Mod + user direct action - everyone should post spacedicks/porn and mods should refuse to enforce the rules. Reddit wants to destroy the mods? Then reddit should see what a world without mods on the internet actually looks like… Especially before the IPO. Plus, the internet can get VERY active when it comes to participating in mischief instead of watching things slowly fall apart. I’d upvote spacedicks for the cause.

I have no idea why no one is talking about this unless posts/comments like that are being suppressed. Since it seems like most 3rd party apps have the best mod tools and most mods won’t keep up their work if they don’t have the right tools, the end result will be the same anyways.

Edit: they can’t afford to pay people to replace enough mods. Spez deserves a look at what reddit will become BEFORE the IPO in my opinion.

Totally agree with you that the fewer cars the better, and using cars and trucks as specialty tools.

Have you seen the YouTube channel NotJustBikes? His entire channel is a gold mine for this kind of stuff. He actually has a video on Canada’s only car-free community (Toronto Islands) and there is a very small number of transport vehicles available. Otherwise people just use those cart bike attachments for moving stuff around. The roads were built decades ago and basically have never need to be replaced because the bikes are too light to damage asphalt…

I’m studying in a medical profession where I frequently attend to people in their homes, sometimes urgently (midwife in Canada). We are all required to have private cars to drive to people’s houses and meet people at the hospital for births and assessments.

If the medical system would give me a free car to use for my profession that would be cool… But I’d also have to use it just like a private car because you can get called to a birth while grocery shopping since you’re on-call 24/7 as a primary care provider.

Home care does actually take others off the road which is a fun bonus though. The first week of birth and postpartum assessments taking place in the home saves clients about 8 car rides which is great because riding in a car or driving during labour is no bueno and postpartum riding sucks. After a C-section you can’t drive either. Even in a hospital delivery postpartum care occurs in the home which people find an absolutely fantastic experience. Those appointments aren’t emergencies but there can be emergencies…

I know of one bike midwife. But that’s extremely rare and all students must drive.