confluence, episode 21: dearly beloved

links and updates from the past week

I wrote a little about Prince’s death and I also broke a story about violence in prisons which is kind of terrible- and just one day after the story came out, a prisoner was actually killed in an altercation. So I guess that’s a thing.
I finished a book – Open City by Teju Cole, which I am still processing, and managed to not buy an awesome tricycle.
I also wrote a sad story about Prince George’s smile (it’s not really sad but it also doesn’t make sense unless you spend time on the internet).
I’m also about to reactivate my Tidal account to listen to the new Beyonce album and some Prince rarities.
Here’s a bunch of ferrets in a backpack:

I left Vancouver – and I feel fine
Have you heard it’s expensive to live in Vancouver? It is, and the exodus is on. Last year, Eric Karjaluoto wrote about his love affair with the city over two-and-half decades… and why he’s considering leaving.

“A lot has changed in the 13 years since I moved away from Prince George. At that time, you needed to be in close proximity to your clients, to be available for in-person meetings. I hardly ever meet with clients any longer. In fact, most of our work is remote, and none of our clients care where we are. Our opportunities come from what we’ve done, and what we can do, not due to the city we work in.”
“I know this next comment will get me in trouble, but that doesn’t make it any less accurate: Vancouver isn’t really a creative city, anyway. It’s a picturesque city made up of glass shoeboxes—but a creative hotbed? I’m not so sure.”

Fast forward four months and he’s posted a series of interviews with people who have already left the city and how they’re doing.
Right now, a lot of discussion is on how to make the desirable Vancouver more affordable. I suspect a more successful tact for the province would be on making the affordable cities more desirable. So it’s interesting to hear from people who have decided to leave about what they like- and dislike- about life outside of the Lower Mainland.
Tweeting to my neighbours:
Andre Torrez:

“A Twitter feature I’ve wanted to see for a long time is the ability to geo-tag (assign a location) to my tweet and have it only be posted to people’s streams who are in that location.
“That is, I tag my tweet for San Francisco and only people who follow me and have set their location for San Francisco can see my tweet.
“The tweet should be viewable to anyone who were to look atmy profile and it can be retweeted and favored like any other tweet. The difference is that it wouldn’t be posted to people’s streams that haven’t chosen to listen to that location. Giving me comfort in knowing I’m not flooding people’s timelines in snowy New England with photos of another ridiculous California sunset.
“Anyway, feature requests are really easy to throw out at teams building products when you aren’t inside. It’s just a feature I would love to see someday. Twitter has always operated on one level and I think it would be a nice option to have a second layer I could feel comfortable posting into.”

As a frequent #cityofPG hashtag user, yes yes yes

Systemic racism does not mean everyone in a system is racist
Andray Domise explains systemic racism to those who refuse to understand:

“It is not fuelled by a collection of ghouls, gorgons and malevolent spirits working in the name of racial oppression. It doesn’t even require that its participants themselves be racist. All it requires is a resistance to change and a willingness to ignore the fact that the original design of our social systems — education, child welfare, policing, health, immigration — were crafted to marginalize, if not exclude, racialized groups.”

As cities change, the song remains the same
Alex Teplitzky:

“Listening to Rick’s playlist for Pernod’s 38, I realized that there is really just one thing that captures the feeling of a place as places are in the process of transitioning or disappearing, just one thing that allows you to hold on to the sentiment of a space and time: music.

“A song gains a foothold, and songs phrased in a playlist establish many points and feelings. As has been done by our ancestors, we’ll show these playlists to our offspring and say: These songs are about a place that you will never go to. These places don’t exist anymore.”

Prince’s death is a great reminder not to ditch your music collection for streaming
I recall when David Bowie died there was a popular tweet about how great it was that everyone could gather around the internet and share their favourite songs and performances. Prince, unlike Bowie, had not embraced giving your music away for free, and so things were a little different. In some ways, that was good, as pointed out by Dan Kois in Slate:

“Instead of watching old concert vids or playing songs I know by heart—both of which I’ll have time for in the coming days, weeks, years—I’m reading my friends’ and acquaintances’ personal memories of Prince.”

While I’ve fully embraced streaming, I do try to have the albums that are most meaningful to me on hand- by which I mean I have the albums in a back room, and the ripped files on a backup drive and available via Google Play. Most of my listening is done on Spotify, but then when something happens like Prince dying and I need to listen to his albums, they’re there. It works for me.
By the way, my personal favourite Prince story is the one k-Os shared on q– well worth the punchline.
How booming cities made urban planning Canada’s hottest job

A giant water slide is coming to Prince George

We need to do something about album credits
Paul Cantor:

“Now, CD jackets are a thing of the past, liner notes merely whatever is on an album’s Wikipedia page, which poses lots of problems—not just for people contributing behind-the-scenes, who now have nothing tangible to explain their life’s work, but also because it’s just flat-out confusing.

“A recent article at the website Genius details how a 20-year-old from Austria who calls himself Cali the Producer basically fooled the entire music business into thinking he’d worked on songs by Kanye West, Justin Bieber and Chris Brown, among others.”

A day in the life of a fictional female reporter

“11:13 am: Internet.”

CBC will now capitalize the words Indigenous, Aboriginal & Native when referring to Indigenous people
Move south? Here’s what Indigenous Peoples need
Chelsea Vowel:

“Reserves were created to be economic and social wastelands, holding cells for inconvenient Indians, until the project of assimilation could be completed. They were never intended to be viable communities, and the fact that they continue to operate as designed is no fault of Indigenous Peoples. Despite these worst-laid plans, our communities are also sites of resilience and strength, places where our cultures and languages continue to exist.
“They are places for extended family and kinship supports. In a sense, they are what remain of our homelands, after colonialism claimed the rest of the land and resources.
“Limited to such tiny geographic areas — about 0.2 per cent of all land in Canada — First Nations will never thrive. Thus land and resource redistribution must be on the table. Indigenous communities need larger land bases, and the ability to benefit from the resources on those lands, as they see fit. This is the path to self-sufficiency, just as it has been for Canada.”

If relocation is the answer, what is the question?
âpihtawikosisân:

“Since Canada can no longer pursue non-consensual development relocations during the process of non-consensual resource extraction, the voluntary movement of communities would make things a heck of a lot easier.
“‘How can the colonial state gain access to land and resources?’ is still the question.
“The answer is still relocation, but a ‘kinder, gentler, more voluntary’ relocation apparently.”

Naming is colonoliasm
Matthew Dance:

“Edmonton and its surrounds have been in use for at least 8000 years. Area archaeological sites date back to 6000 BC. To put that into perspective, if Settlers have been here for 2.6mm (remember that Edmonton was discovered in 1754), First Nations people have been occupying and using Edmonton for 8cm.
“That is a thin veneer of Britain indeed.”

Iron Man will be in the reboot of Spider-Man
Yessssss.