The real truth about it is we're all supposed to try
Thank you for being a paid supporter.
I only ever had a little baby gambling issue years ago so it’s great to be reminded every five minutes in Massachusetts that I could fire that whole thing back up now if I wanted to. If I dared to. Had the balls to like Julian Edelman does for example. Every time I see him in an advertisement for whatever gambling service it is he's pushing I'm reminded of his acrobatic catch in the Super Bowl vs. Atlanta and it makes me think that that could be me I could be just like that taking the Arizona Diamondbacks -143 over the Padres in a meaningless April game.
There's a story set in a casino in the new book. It goes a little like this:
Don't really know what to say about this response by police to the ongoing situation in Atlanta besides that it is very bad!
Dekalb County jail records show that at least twenty-two people have been charged with domestic terrorism after being arrested in the Weelaunee Forest yesterday evening.
— Atlanta Community Press Collective (@atlanta_press) March 6, 2023
If you haven't been paying attention to the protests against Cop City this Hell World from a few weeks ago explains how things got to this point.
Earlier this week marked the twentieth anniversary of the release of The Magnolia Electric Co. the beloved masterpiece by the late Jason Molina's band Songs: Ohia and being reminded of it in the way one is when a record reaches a milestone like that I have been listening over and over for the first time in years and it's woken some dormant part of me I had been obscuring from myself.
I very much appreciated Jason Diamond's piece on the record:
Jason Diamond
Writing about a beloved piece of art is always tough. I try to think about everything I’ve ever read or all the conversations I’ve had about it and I ask myself if there’s truly a point to me adding anything. I didn’t think there was much I could say about The Magnolia Electric Co. that hadn’t been said before, and I could pretend that the 20-year mark shouldn’t matter, but the number really does represent enough passing of time that the art in question has definitely aged. It’s from another generation. And that’s fitting because Molina, especially on this album, always felt like he was from another time as well. The America he’s singing about is post-Springsteen. Everybody that was born to run did just that as best they could. All the small towns were abandoned a decade or so earlier, the factories were finally shut down, the jobs were few, and the people left behind did what they could to scratch by or escape without actually leaving. Molina’s songs on this album are Rust Belt Noir. That’s the easiest way to describe them. It’s the soundtrack to walking alongside train tracks you can barely see because they’re covered in weeds since nothing has rolled over them in years. It’s half-started suburban developments that will never be completed. You hear these songs and you picture a place where the biggest employer in the town is the local quarry, the only thriving legal business is Dollar General, and the only places to go are the bar or some parking lot after dark. It’s bleak. Molina didn’t hide from that. He made it sound incredible, but he didn’t sugarcoat a thing It was what it was and it remains that today.
If you've never listened to this record or any of Molina's other music oh boy are you in for a treat. Start with this song (naturally) if you're unfamiliar. You will find many people who will tell you it's the best song ever written and they may or may not be correct but it's certainly worth hearing them out.
The real truth about it is no one gets it right
The real truth about it is we're all supposed to try
There ain't no end to the sands I've been trying to cross
The real truth about it is my kind of life's no better off
If it's got the map or if it's lost
We will try and know whatever we will try
We will be gone but not forever
Come on let's try and know whatever we will try
We will be gone but not forever
The real truth about it is there ain't no end to the desert I'll cross
I've really known it all along
Mama here comes midnight with the dead moon in its jaws
Must be the big star about to fall
Mama here comes midnight with the dead moon in its jaws
Must be the big star about to fall
Did you know this next thing because I did not. That Farewell Transmission was recorded basically in one take with the band playing on the fly following Molina's lead? And that the ending lines the haunting terrible warning of "listen....listen" was actually Molina instructing the band to pay attention so they'd know where to end it?
From an old interview:
I don't know why but that detail makes me want to cry.
By now most of you have probably gazed upon and subsequently been driven mad by this infamous 2018 The Atlantic cover.
It may well have been the opening salvo of our current transphobic era in polite liberal media for one thing but be sure to note the lesser-emphasized story in the top right corner. It’s a piece by Ed Yong who would go on to be one of the more reliable reporters throughout Covid titled “We’re not prepared for the next pandemic.” This irony has all been well covered by now but today I noticed something for the first time which is another story called out on the cover: “The surprising wisdom of Russell Brand” lol. I’m both delighted and haunted by the idea of a cursed magazine that we’re all forced to look at over and over and every time it comes into your field of vision there’s one more new insidious and ironic headline added.
Today's main thing is a piece by Karen Geier about whatever the hell is going on in Canada right now. Karen Geier previously wrote for Hell World on the Canadian trucker protests, mass graves found in the residential school system, and the country's response to covid.
The fight over 15-Minute Cities
I used to have a job working around the corner from Toronto’s iconic Much Music Headquarters at 299 Queen Street West, but as the company outgrew the space, we had to move. That brought us to a true hell-on-earth pocket of the city called Liberty Village. My commute went from 15 minutes to nearly an hour. Liberty Village is a place where the transit options are limited, there is absolutely no vibe, and the restaurants are not conducive to a quick falafel run with coworkers. Everyday that I had to ride the 29 Dufferin bus – the 29 Sufferin for the locals – I fell into a depression. The new commute changed my job from something I enjoyed to a high anxiety ass ache.
One third of Canadians get to work by car according to Statistics Canada. The average commute time for car owners in Canada is 24 minutes, but as you approach metropolitan areas, that number dramatically increases. The average commute for Toronto, our largest city, is about 56 minutes. Public transit commuters in urban areas also spend on average about an hour commuting, because of high rents near business districts. For most people here it’s financially impossible to “live where you work.”
What makes this problem worse is that despite having the absolute ideal conditions for coast to coast high speed rail connecting most of Canada’s biggest cities (90% of Canada’s population lives within 100 miles of the US border, in a neat little strip), Canada’s intra city transit infrastructure is a crazy quilt of bad ideas. We don’t even have a coast to coast intra city bus operator anymore, what with Greyhound having closed operations here in 2018.
So with worsening traffic, and rents getting even more expensive, why would Canadians suddenly balk at the idea of a plan to make most of what you need available to you within a 15 minute walk?
15-Minute Cities: What They Are
In 2016, Carlos Moreno, an associate professor at Sorbonne Business University, coined the term 15-Minute Cities. In a Ted Talk he explained the idea of making cities, through infrastructure changes and investment, more walkable. The way he saw it, most of the things you might need should be within a 15 minute walk of your home or office. This means that your family doctor, dentist, favorite restaurant, dog groomer, grocery store, liquor store and so on would all be located within this radius so you could leave your car at home if you want to, or, should you not have a car, you wouldn’t be cut off from accessing services in your city due to transit dead zones.
15-minute cities here would, much like Paris is doing, take advantage of streets closed to car traffic. The wide boulevards could then be used for mixed use trails, ample bike parking, and places for pedestrians to sit. The goal is better environmental outcomes and better mental and physical health outcomes for citizens.
Imagine having a chill walk home and getting a bunch of errands done after work instead of being in a car for 3 hours commuting and trying to get the same chores done in a suburban hellscape. Sounds pretty nice and civilized, right?
Not to our no-brain reactionaries, who’ve willfully misinterpreted the remit of 15-minute cities and turned it into a QAnon level conspiracy theory.
The first distortion of the concept was made by Jordan Peterson, Canada’s weepiest man. He assumed that 15-minute cities for some reason meant that you would be barred from going outside that radius, and that somehow it would be up to a woke bureaucrat to determine where you could choose a dentist. Of course, just like his more famous willful misinterpretation of Canada’s guidance on pronouns, he got it dead ass wrong, and never bothered to correct the error, because he got what he wanted: outrage at the government and more attention for himself.
Once Peterson and his ilk got started, the outrage careened in a predictable direction, with one typical angry over nothing woman quoted in Western Standard (a right wing tabloid) comparing the idea of walkable cities to – you guessed it – concentration camps.
Worse than that actually.
“Except this time the wall will be built electronically and all citizens will be captive, not just Jews,” she said. “Always starts out as a nice idea…until it is not.”
Conservative MP Nick Fletcher then demanded a debate in the House of Commons on the “international socialist concept of so-called 15-minute cities,” because of its potential to “take away personal freedoms.”
Let’s look at the reasons that the worst people you will encounter online are mortally against 15-minute cities:
It’s European
There’s nothing a US-worshiping, gun-toting, Christian Nationalist Canadian hates more than something that feels European. To them, Europe is a place where people have no dignity or autonomy, and they will fight to the death to never become like Europe. Never mind that the best parts of Canada are built on things that people love about Europe. Montreal’s Paris-like walkability and mixed use trails and sidewalks are great reasons to visit for example, because you will see the most and best of the city on foot or by bike, and stumble upon your new favorite cafe or restaurant that way. Christian Nationalists would prefer to see the mixed use trails that could help their kids have wholesome outdoor activities go away just to prove a point about not turning ‘socialist.’
It’s Part of The War on Cars
It’s no secret that Canadians love owning their cars, and that the auto industry is a massive employer here, as well as a cornerstone of our economy. Canada is also a massive gasoline and oil producer, meaning many Canadians are employed by those industries, and demand in those industries keeps food on their table. I work for a company that supports a major auto manufacturer, and the sheer scale of auto and gas influence on this country is not to be underestimated.
The Jordan Petersons of the world hear War on Cars and think that means the government will be taking vehicles away or making them so prohibitively expensive that people won’t be able to afford them, neither of which are the case. The War on Cars simply means that some spaces will be reclaimed for mixed use, especially in urban centers. This makes a lot of sense from an emissions and physical health perspective, but don’t let those facts get in the way of a good diaper soiling, like the time Don Cherry called cyclists in Toronto left-wing pinkos in a bizarre rant.
It Will Ease Canada’s Dirty Little Secret: Racial Segregation
Canadians love to pretend that Canada is not a racist country despite all the evidence to the contrary, from how Canada became Canada, to its systemic attempts at genocide of First Nations peoples, to its treatment of immigrants, to its policing.
Canada’s racial segregation is somewhat hidden, but it is absolutely real. There are areas where non-whites in any given city “tend to congregate,” which really means “are actually welcome.” These tend to exist outside of white, gated enclaves where the more rich and powerful people live.
What the idea of 15-minute cities suggests is that if people can afford to live where they work and mix and mingle freely, people might be exposed to more cultural diversity and realize that those exaggerated policing stories about “the big city” and “who commits most crimes” are mostly a product of racist police PR and are not reflective of reality. People might actually start to venture outside of white or Christian bubbles and discover that they like a world with more diversity. For the people the most mad about 15-minute cities this is the ultimate sin. They don’t want a world where there’s all this European, carless, race-mixing.
It’s Government Control Over People
We couldn’t even get a lot of these people to wear masks or get a tiny shot to protect themselves from a deadly disease, so I am not bothering to explain why the idea that the government is going to enslave us in our little zones is laughable. There is in no way any sort of serious legislation currently being tabled that would make 15-minute cities a reality anywhere in Canada right now. It’s a completely made up outrage.
So what is actually happening in is basically the town meeting scene of Footloose. Some complete fucking wieners who nobody would want to share an elevator ride with are EXTREMELY MAD about GOVERNMENT OVERREACH that is not actually happening, and knowing the way Canada is governed, has no hope in hell of ever actually being made law or being enforced. It’s just another way to figure out who you know who reads the worst media in the world. If these people want to self-segregate in their all-road, no-sidewalk, Costco parking lot fantasyland, we should probably let them, and save the good bars, mixed use trails, and leisurely nighttime strolls to the city lovers who really appreciate them.
Karen Geier is a Toronto based writer and brand strategist with bylines in The Guardian, Vice, The Cut, and Passage. Find her on Medium and Twitter.
Wait one more thing.
How many songs are there where you could make a case for every line not only being the best line of the song but the best line of almost any song?
Farewell Transmission
The whole place is dark
Every light on this side of the town
Suddenly it all went down
Now we'll all be brothers of the fossil fire of the sun
Now we will all be sisters of the fossil blood of the moon
Someone must have set them up
Now they'll be working in the cold grey rock
Now they'll be working in the hot mill steam
Now they'll be working in the concrete
In the sirens and the silences now
All the great set up hearts
All at once start to beat
After tonight if you don't want this to be
A secret out of the past
I will resurrect it, I'll have a good go at it
I'll streak his blood across my beak
Dust my feathers with his ashes
Feel his ghost breathing down my back
I will try and know whatever I try
I will be gone but not forever
I will try and know whatever I try
I will be gone but not forever
The real truth about it is no one gets it right
The real truth about it is we're all supposed to try
There ain't no end to the sands I've been trying to cross
The real truth about it is my kind of life's no better off
If it's got the map or if it's lost
We will try and know whatever we will try
We will be gone but not forever
Come on let's try and know whatever we will try
We will be gone but not forever
The real truth about it is there ain't no end to the desert I'll cross
I've really known it all along
Mama here comes midnight with the dead moon in its jaws
Must be the big star about to fall
Mama here comes midnight with the dead moon in its jaws
Must be the big star about to fall
Long dark blues
Will-o'-the-wisp
Long dark blues
The big star is falling
Long dark blues
Will-o'-the-wisp
The big star is falling
Long dark blues
Through the static and distance
Long dark blues
A farewell transmission
Long dark blues
Listen
Long dark blues
Listen
Long dark blues
ListenLong dark blues
Listen