Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and undeniably Indigenous

Predictably, not everyone has been happy about it. Critics have included local planners, politicians and, especially, residents of Kitsilano Point, a rarified beachfront neighbourhood bordering the reserve. And there’s been an extra edge to their critiques that’s gone beyond standard-issue NIMBYism about too-tall buildings and preserving neighbourhood character. There’s also been a persistent sense of disbelief that Indigenous people could be responsible for this futuristic version of urban living. In 2022, Gordon Price, a prominent Vancouver urban planner and a former city councillor, told Gitxsan reporter Angela Sterritt, “When you’re building 30, 40-storey high rises out of concrete, there’s a big gap between that and an Indigenous way of building.” 

https://macleans.ca/society/sen%cc%93a%e1%b8%b5w-vancouver/

How technology has changed the world since I was young

If I were to write my take on how radically I feel the world has changed, it would have a lot of overlap with Noah’s, although it probably wouldn’t be as well written.

But when I look back on the world I lived in when I was a kid in 1990, it absolutely stuns me how different things are now. The technological changes I’ve already lived through may not have changed what my kitchen looks like, but they have radically altered both my life and the society around me. Almost all of these changes came from information technology — computers, the internet, social media, and smartphones.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/how-technology-has-changed-the-world

Sleep-dependent synaptic down-selection – ScienceDirect

We have proposed that this function [of sleep] is to renormalize synaptic weights after learning has led to a net increase in synaptic strength in many brain circuits. Without this renormalization, synaptic activity would become energetically too expensive and saturation would prevent new learning. There is converging evidence from molecular, electrophysiological, and ultrastructural experiments showing a net increase in synaptic strength after the major wake phase, and a net decline after sleep.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1084952121000318

US is recycling just 5% of its plastic waste, studies show | US news | The Guardian

I hadn’t realized the situation was this bad. I’m not going to completely stop using single-use plastic — it’s pretty hard to avoid — but it definitely shifts my tradeoff. Going forward I’ll assume all plastic ends up as landfill.

The Department of Energy also released a research paper this week, which analyzed data from 2019, and came to the same number: only 5% of plastics are being recycled. The researchers on that report wrote that landfilled plastic waste in the United States has been on the rise for many reasons, including “low recycling rates, population growth, consumer preference for single-use plastics, and low disposal fees in certain parts of the country”, according to a press release.

Per NPR, the idea of plastic recycling was never realistic; it was primarily an ad campaign from the oil industry to make people feel better about plastic.

US is recycling just 5% of its plastic waste, studies show | The Guardian

How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled | NPR

Index Funds Are A Proof Of Concept For Market Socialism

This is a really fascinating idea. One place where it maybe breaks down: you could argue that the innovation and competition in a capitalist economy from the parts that aren’t index funds, both on the company side (in companies that aren’t big enough to be part of the indexes) and on the funding side (from wealthy early-stage VCs looking for outsized returns). But then maybe you could rescue this idea by leaving those parts in place, but saying that above a certain size companies ‘graduate’ into these widely shared index funds?

https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2017/08/17/index-funds-are-a-proof-of-concept-for-market-socialism/

The Latest Victims of the Free-Speech Crisis

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, the issue of free speech on college campuses has received a new wave of scrutiny. Palestinian student groups have faced threats of censorship for their statements, donors have warned about pulling funding, and employers have blacklisted students who blamed Israel for Hamas’s attack.

But as far as free speech is concerned, 2023 has been a relatively normal year for colleges and universities. Just don’t confuse “normal” with “good.”

Protecting free speech requires defending the rights of both sides of any conflict. That will only get harder if we ignore just how long colleges have been falling short. Today’s headlines can distract from the fact that campuses have been in crisis for the better part of a decade.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/pro-palestine-speech-college-campuses/676155/