geography

Is this gonna be another Ello? I like the mission statement of this platform, but I'm always wary when a new social media site comes along — because I know there's every chance it won't be here in six months.

Maybe UpTrust will prove me wrong. I hope so. How is your experience so far?

Good evening potential troublemakers! . Good evening to those crazy enough to think they can change the world,  and stupid enough to try!  For us?  We think taking Mass transit into Arlington, Texas to see a Baseball of Football Game is inevitable and the Vision 34 Corridor was created for that purpose.  July 2, 1902 to Dec 24 1934  the Interurban Electric Railway operated between Dallas and Fort Worth via Arlington Texas.  This right of way remains,  and our intention is reactivation of this historic corridor. Long held hate is the obstacle to progress in America however as this route once restored might have the ancillary effect of elevating and reconstructing southwest Dallas, and Southeast Fort Worth which has the designation of the lowest Life Expectancy in the entire state of Texas and has long been the contained communities our public safety system feeds on. Naturally they are majority minority, and suffer the worst decoupling from the Social safety net in the Nation.  The future is found in the past, and Transit oriented development the keystone to progress in this original commercial corridor that founded this Metroplex.  America my friends is an ideal and a symbol of righteousness and good that has liberated the world from darkness. As we approach the 250th Anniversary of this sacred trust , we affirm that we can chart a new course for the future by reconstructing this part of our past,  and ignite 25 Billion dollars of Redevelopment across 35 miles between the 9th and 11th largest American cities with the heart of its 4th largest Metroplex. Arlington is the Dream city and it's time to overcome the bigotry blocking Billions of dollars in TOD in the South I30 corridor.

Impossible you say??   Inevitable my friends. America was built by people who did not ask permission to attempt the impossible. As we approach July 4th..  America must renew its commitment to the Declaration of Independence and the sacred creed that states all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  The Vision 34 Corridor will do exactly that for the DFW Metroplex while constructing the Autonomous Interconnected future. 

I am James ,  Director and Founder of Smart City Mobility Company, and creator of the Vision 34 Corridor. 

Crazy enough to nearly pull off the impossible. 

TBEX Wichita. Attending our first TBEX conference in Wichita, Kansas. This event brings creators and destinations together to collaborate in an effort to increase tourism. 

For the next 100+ years, every American gen will be worse than its precedessor. There's a strange American exceptionalism that believes that the US is uniquely positioned to be great forever. Likewise, there's this immaturity that takes it for granted that every generation ought to live better than its parents' generation. The sentiment, "my parents could afford to buy a house after working just for a few years and it's impossible now."

I would argue that America's superpower status is a temporary condition of history. The US gained access to an extraordinary rich geographic  land mass from the native tribes unlike Europe and Asia. And it was 2nd order country until really the late 1800s/early 1900s. The devastation caused by WWII allowed the US to become the sole superpower.

But there's absolutely no inherent reason why it would stay that way.

When we say we're the best and a superpower too, we're mostly talking about economic indicators to measure progress. Versus say education, health care, gun violence, mental health (anxiety, depression, medication use), obesity, physical health, suicide rates, and so on which have been getting worse over time.

A lot of the wealth generated in the past 50-80 years could have been reinvested into the commons but instead was kept by the wealthiest families and institutions. And I don't see any reason why they would willingly cede that power or invest it back into society.

Having said all this, it's likely true that the US will continue to still have a high standard of living RELATIVE to other countries. 

But unless some radical social/economic changes are made like UBI, I'd expect the average American family will continually have a worse livelihood, health, education, etc. than their parents for the foreseeable future. But, there will still be the wealthy class that will get to reap the majority of benefits.

China's Economic Slowdown: Challenges, Debt, and an Uncertain Future. This excellent video explores China's economic challenges, particularly its slowing growth, increasing debt, and the risks associated with these trends. Despite expectations that China would become the world's dominant superpower due to its rapid economic rise, issues such as economic mismanagement, deflation, and high debt levels are creating significant problems. The country's debt crisis, fueled by heavy borrowing for infrastructure and real estate projects, is especially concerning, as it's tied to unsustainable growth expectations.

The housing market in China, reliant on speculative investment and inflated property prices, is a key driver of the country's economic issues. Additionally, China is facing increased internal unrest, particularly among younger workers, and a significant reliance on state-owned companies that have been over-leveraged.

While these problems are concerning, experts argue that an outright collapse of China's economy is unlikely due to its financial safeguards and global influence. However, China’s rise to dominance may have plateaued, and its future remains uncertain. The country's economic future will have significant implications for the global economy, but it's unclear whether it will stabilise, stagnate, or eventually surpass the U.S. economically.

Despite the severity of China's economic challenges, many experts believe that a total collapse is improbable. Rather, China's economic slowdown will likely lead to a period of stagnation and reform, with possible long-term adjustments to its economic structure. However, it's clear that the expectations surrounding China's dominance have not materialised, and its future is now filled with uncertainty.

Telepathy is Real. I've just listened to the podcast The Telepathy Tapes and now I believe telepathy is real.

The baseline premise is that nonspeaking autistic people have telepathic abilities with people who recieve them with open-mindedness and love. They have it with each other, and are able to meet in another realm at a place they call The Hill, where they can speak freely with each other and learn massive amounts of content instantaneously. In the final episode of the season, we get loads of clips of what individual nonspeaking autistic people wanted us to know, information they painstakingly spelled out one letter at a time. They are concepts and perspectives I've only heard from the deepest meditators I've ever come across. They are concepts that, in my opinion, can't be pretended with that level of accurately by anyone who hasn't had direct experience of Oneness.

Since then, at night before I fall asleep I practice opening my heart and exploring for The Hill. I also imagine creating invite-only Flow sessions where nonverbal autistic people and their family member and/or personal aid join, and we speakers open our hearts to listening from there. We would also speak what we find out loud, and the nonspeakers can use their spelling techniques to guide us when they want to.

Since the movie Arrival came out I've stayed captivated by its premise. Benevolent aliens arriving to show us a new way to see reality and bridge divisions. The thought that belevolent teachers are already here in the form of nonspeaking autistic people, they've always been here, and they're the people we've tended to ignore and pity is so incredibly compelling to me and gives me immense hope for humans, the earth, and the future.

The church I grew up in, and still attend when I travel home, has a member named Erin who is nonverbal autistic, though she can say "mama." My attention has always been particularly drawn to her. She seems to see me, but in a different way than other people. One Sunday during worship, she pointed into the air and behaved the excited way she did when she saw someone she really likes. I was maybe 7 or 8, and it seemed entirely true to me that she was actually seeing someone and not just imagining it. I loved it, and loved seeing clear evidence that the invisible person was someone joyous to be with.

The podcast says that the reason they are nonverbal is muscular- a lack of fine motor skills, which is what speaking is. But that they can communicate very slowly with gross motor skills by pointing to a board with letters or tapping them on an ipad. It makes sense to me that a fully capable brain inside a body that demands slowness and introspection would naturally find the realms that meditators spend their lives intentionally cultivating, as well as realms beyond.

I want to listen to what they want to teach me.

How do we realign the incentives in Healthcare to actually support wellbeing? Currently, there are many conflicts of interest and misaligned incentives in the Western medical system. For example, Doctors by default fight for their patients to live as long as possible, even when that’s not what might actually benefit the patient’s overall wellbeing (or even when it contradicts the patient’s stated preferences), because they rightfully fear litigation for not doing enough.

In general, the medical system is full of multi-polar traps like this. Collaboration and humility and vulnerability are devalued, because unless everyone simultaneously were to adopt them (which would actually benefit everyone), then individuals suffer for adopting them.

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.

where can i drop in for hiking/walking shoal creek area? what are the cross streets?

Roads as interconnection of all, metaphor for selves. This is kinda silly and obvious in some ways, but the other day I was really struck by a simple fact I’d never considered: All the roads are really one road…

I live on Bryker Dr, and it dead ends into 34th street on one end and 30th on the other. So I think of this as a singular, discrete street that is 4 blocks long, and a couple car lengths wide. That’s how most people think they’re thinking about it.

But actually we’re all thinking of it as something much greater than that, we just don’t always realize we are. The street is my access to the rest of the world—and it is concretely (pun intended) connected to every other street in North America.

So is it really my street, or is it one giant system? My finger is obviously a finger, and obviously doesn’t exist separately from my body. If I were dismembered, it wouldn’t be my finger for very long, would it?

I think this is a beautiful metaphor for a self. We usually think we’re thinking of ourselves like we do roads, with beginnings and endings. But we’re actually the entire system, wholly interconnected with every other part. Getting from a small street in Austin to a small street in Winnipeg takes a long time, but in some incredibly real and grounded sense, there’s no separation between them.

( technically minus a few old roads that maybe don’t have any connections, but c’mon )

Roads as interconnection of all, metaphor for selves. This is kinda silly and obvious in some ways, but the other day I was really struck by a simple fact I’d never considered: All the roads are really one road…

I live on Bryker Dr, and it dead ends into 34th street on one end and 30th on the other. So I think of this as a singular, discrete street that is 4 blocks long, and a couple car lengths wide. That’s how most people think they’re thinking about it.

But actually we’re all thinking of it as something much greater than that, we just don’t always realize we are. The street is my access to the rest of the world—and it is concretely (pun intended) connected to every other street in North America.

So is it really my street, or is it one giant system? My finger is obviously a finger, and obviously doesn’t exist separately from my body. If I were dismembered, it wouldn’t be my finger for very long, would it?

I think this is a beautiful metaphor for a self. We usually think we’re thinking of ourselves like we do roads, with beginnings and endings. But we’re actually the entire system, wholly interconnected with every other part. Getting from a small street in Austin to a small street in Winnipeg takes a long time, but in some incredibly real and grounded sense, there’s no separation between them.

( technically minus a few old roads that maybe don’t have any connections, but c’mon )