architecture

Gun violence in the USA schools. This weekend Stephanie got onto an instagram rabbithole which took her into some dark, near-conspiracy places about gun violence. The sad bit was of course the increase in polarization, rather than an increase in compassion, or even solutions focus. It’s much easier to blame an other than try to sort out a super complex, nuanced, and ambiguous problem.

This topic is interesting in general to me, and it kicked off a beautiful discussion on the UpTrust slack thread (it seems we’re influencing ourselves to be better online conversationalists everywhere!), but it also made we wonder how to solve the school-shooting issue in the USA? What are the nuanced, synthetic perspectives? For example, even comparing data about school shootings across the world can be shaped, interpreted, mixed. Many of the countries that have fewer school shootings (all of them) have much higher death-by-firearm rates, or death by gang-violence, or war, etc. So it’s difficult to get good comparisons, even if we ignore cultural approaches. Also

How do we take an integral approach which addresses all four quadrants?
- UL psyche: mental health—but what does this mean? Where does the money come from to increase such mental health?
- LL culture: US roots in revolution and gun ownership, media, glorification of shooters
- UR behavior: Gun safety training? mandatory? What can we learn from Israel and Switzerland, who have similar or higher gun ownership rates but no school shootings? Quick research: it seems like increasing metal detectors and stuff is NOT a solution that works. What other behavior changes do?
- LR systems: Gun control—even as a gun owning Texan, I think it’s obvious at this point that things need to change. I don’t have much research or understanding so probably people have a lot to say about the nuanced ways of doing this, and I’m sure I’m naive in my suggestion here but it seems like there could be various licenses like there are for driving; the more dangerous a weapon is, the more training you have to prove you’ve had like getting a commercial driver’s license. It also seems like we could clearly do a two year experiment: Write a new law that expires in two years and look at the data: did we stop the shootings?

anyway this is super inchoate, but I’d love to get the collective brain’s nuanced take that can genuinely steel man all sides, understanding and including the validity of the right-wing arguments as well as seeing the problems of the left-wing solutions, the bits left on the table.

When it comes "the global warming debate," there are often third ways that are ignored. Often the framing is global warming and climate deniers or something like that.

but it seems like there are obviously multiple perspectives here, and these two black and white boxes keep us from really seeing potential solutions.

Bjorn Lomborg for example believes in man-made climate change, but also doesn’t like the alarmism. Although he cherry picks data like he accuses others of, he also I think rightfully points out lots of flaws in the arguments that help us identify solutions. Much of the hurricane damage increase over time is because we’re building bigger and more expensive houses in hurricane alleys; for this problem, we can stop building there; everybody stopping flying altogether until 2100 delays increases the increase by a few weeks, so stopping flying isn’t the solution. Often the solutions are smaller, more local, less sexy: want less polar bears to die? Increase regulation on poaching. (Polar bear populations are up over the past decade because of this, apparently). I would love to identify and popularize these solutions, so they are spoken in the same breath as global warming rather than it being all gloom and doom and end of the world.

There are real tricky questions about what we’re trying to preserve and for whom, as well. If all we care about are humans and climate migration, then building infrastructure in places like Haiti and even evolving to coal power would be more helpful.

Attempted Trump Assasination- Was he actually hit by a bullet? (meta commentary: I imagine the future of uptrust will host more conversations of this nature… so let’s see how we navigate it)

On Saturday, former president Donald Trump was the target of an attempted assassination.

Two things I want to talk about–

1. Was Trump actually hit by a bullet? I’m skeptical that a bullet grazed his ear, and think it’s more likely that a piece of shrapnel clipped him. I’m not intending to minimize the fact that someone definitely tried to kill him, but rather I am irritated by his spinning and inflation of the story if there is a truer thing to be said about what happened.

2. The secret service really fucked up. How on earth do they miss a lone sniper on a roof that many of the bystanders identified before them? I don’t think there is a conspiracy theory here, but do believe someone should probably be fired for their oversight.

I’d like to hear others’ opinions on this + where your credibility comes from. Name your news source or experience that leads you to believe what you’re sharing.

How should I landscape my house? I am working on landscaping the home I bought in October, starting with the front yard due to a couple of issues. First, there is a big dip in the yard that floods every time it rains heavily. Second, the driveway is right in front of my bedroom window, causing headlights to shine into my room when people come and go, and limiting my ability to open the windows due to privacy concerns.

I’ve hired a permaculture landscaper who is currently working on a design. Meanwhile, I need to decide what to do about the driveway and whether to add a carport.

I could really use some opinions on the following:

• How would you deal with the flooding issue?
• What would you suggest for the driveway or adding a carport? I can move the driveway to the other side of the house or leave it as is.

I can post photos if there’s a way to do that. I have many ideas also but curious to hear what folks think with this info.