July 11, 2020 in 3,356 words

_{• • • google suggested • • •}

_{^{• • • some of the things I read in antisocial isolation • • •}}

The Lingering Legacy of America’s First Cookie-Cutter Suburb

_{Inequality was built-in.}

_{Aerial view of Levittown in Long Island, New York. Embiggenable. Explore at home.}

FROM THE AIR, THE HOMES fan out like intricate beadwork. For decades, America’s suburbs have been a popular setting for television shows, from I Love Lucy to Desperate Housewives, chronicling entertaining trivialities against the backdrop of meticulously shorn lawns, the drifting smoke of barbecues, the infrastructure of cars and roads: a pleasantly domestic—but fraught—version of the American dream.

The idyllic ideal of modern suburbia in the United States was born in 1947 with the creation of Levittown, a large housing development in Long Island, New York. Businessman Abraham Levitt and his sons, William and Alfred, turned some potato fields into a neighborhood bearing their name, with more than 17,000 uniform, boxy, detached homes spaced equally along carefully meandering and manicured streets. The project, which reduced the building of each home to an assembly-line system of 26 steps for speed, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness, catered in particular to returning World War II veterans looking for safe and stable homes during a national housing shortage. The affordable cost allowed thousands of families to become homeowners, but only certain families.

_{Truck supervisor Bernard Levey with his family in front of their Levittown home.}

While the Levitts successfully turned their business plan into a quintessential symbol of family values, Levittown also was a symbol of exclusion. William Levitt, in charge of the housing development’s marketing and sales, did not sell houses to families of color. A clause in the standard lease for the first Levitt houses baldly stated that the homes could not “be used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race.” Government policies at the time, such as those of the Federal Housing Administration, supported such racist practices, blocking Black Americans and other people of color from the new suburbs and homeownership. An opposing group, the Committee to End Discrimination in Levittown, formed to fight the racism with protests and leaflets. The Supreme Court ruled in 1948 that house covenants with racial restrictions were “unenforceable” and unconstitutional, six years before the ruling on racial integration in Brown v. Board of Education.

Levittown provided a suburban template that is visible in aerial and satellite photos across the country—the now-familiar looping streets, studded with undistinguishable roofs, abruptly ending at other roads and arteries. Levittown, on the other hand, has evolved in its own way. The homes there have been so modified and expanded over the years that it’s almost impossible to see from street level the architectural uniformity that once reigned. However, though racial integration of the town started in the 1950s, its initial legacy is not gone. According to the 2019 census, though the town has a notable Latinx population, just 1.2 percent of Levittown’s residents are Black. …

A plasma shot could prevent coronavirus. But feds and makers won’t act, scientists say

_{A man receives a shot in a clinical trial of a potential vaccine for COVID-19.}

It might be the next best thing to a coronavirus vaccine.

Scientists have devised a way to use the antibody-rich blood plasma of COVID-19 survivors for an upper-arm injection that they say could inoculate people against the virus for months.

Using technology that’s been proven effective in preventing other diseases such as hepatitis A, the injections would be administered to high-risk healthcare workers, nursing home patients, or even at public drive-through sites — potentially protecting millions of lives, the doctors and other experts say.

The two scientists who spearheaded the proposal — an 83-year-old shingles researcher and his counterpart, an HIV gene therapy expert — have garnered widespread support from leading blood and immunology specialists, including those at the center of the nation’s COVID-19 plasma research.

But the idea exists only on paper. Federal officials have twice rejected requests to discuss the proposal, and pharmaceutical companies — even acknowledging the likely efficacy of the plan — have declined to design or manufacture the shots, according to a Times investigation. The lack of interest in launching development of immunity shots comes amid heightened scrutiny of the federal government’s sluggish pandemic response. …

How Dollar Stores Became Magnets for Crime and Killing

_{Discount chains are thriving — while fostering violence and neglect in poor communities.}

When Jolanda Woods was growing up in North St. Louis, in the 1970s and early ’80s, she and her friends would take the bus to the stores downtown, on 14th Street, or on Cherokee Street, on the South Side, or out to the River Roads Mall, in the inner suburb of Jennings. “This was a very merchant city,” Woods, who is 54, told me. There were plenty of places to shop in her neighborhood, too, even as North St. Louis, a mostly Black and working-class part of town, fell into economic decline. There was Perlmutter’s department store, where women bought pantyhose in bulk, Payless shoes, True Value hardware and Schnucks grocery store.

Almost all these stores have disappeared. As St. Louis’ population has dropped from 850,000, in the 1950s, to a little more than 300,000, owing to suburban flight and deindustrialization, its downtown has withered. The River Roads Mall closed in 1995. North St. Louis is a devastated expanse of vacant lots and crumbling late-19th-century brick buildings, their disrepair all the more dramatic for the opulence of their design. “This neighborhood has gone down,” Woods said. “Oh, my God, these houses.”

A new form of retail has moved into the void. The discount chains Family Dollar and Dollar General now have nearly 40 stores in St. Louis and its immediate suburbs, about 15 of them in North St. Louis. This is where the people who remain in the neighborhood can buy detergent and toys and pet food and underwear and motor oil and flashlights and strollers and mops and drain cleaner and glassware and wind chimes and rakes and shoes and balloons and bath towels and condoms and winter coats.

The stores have some nonperishable and frozen foods, too, for people who can’t travel to the few discount grocery stores left in the area. Rudimentary provisions like these allowed the stores to remain open as “essential” businesses during the coronavirus shutdowns. “These stores are our little Walmarts, our little Targets,” Darryl Gray, a local minister and civil rights activist, told me. “It’s the stuff you won’t get at a grocery store, that you get at a Walmart — but we don’t have one.” …

‘Mama Boko Haram’: one woman’s extraordinary mission to rescue ‘her boys’ from terrorism

_{Aisha Wakil knew many of Boko Haram’s fighters as children. Now she uses those ties to broker peace deals, mediate hostage negotiations and convince militants to put down their weapons – but as the violence escalates, her task is becoming impossible.}

_{Aisha Wakil, AKA ‘Mama Boko Haram’ in Maiduguri, Nigeria in April 2019.}

It was another scorching afternoon in Maiduguri. In the west of the city, in Nigeria’s north-east, 51-year-old Aisha Wakil sat in her office talking to a jihadi fighter named Usman. Wakil was draped head-to-toe in fine sequinned chiffon; a niqab covered most of her face, leaving visible only her dark eyes. Ka’aji, a sweet, woody incense that Wakil kept burning in a corner, perfumed the room.

Wakil and Usman kept their voices down. They were hashing out a secret plan to free a 16-year-old girl who was being held hostage by Boko Haram. It was May 2019, 10 years after the Islamist group had begun terrorising Nigeria as part of a jihad it was waging against the government. The violence, which had spilled into neighbouring countries, had left more than 30,000 people dead.

Over the years, Boko Haram had become notorious for kidnapping women and girls. The most infamous instance came in 2014, when its fighters captured 276 schoolgirls from a secondary school in the remote village of Chibok. But there were abductions before Chibok, and dozens after. Some of those captured were forced to become suicide bombers, and Boko Haram has used more than 460 female suicide bombers, more than any other terrorist group in history. The teenage girl who Wakil and Usman were discussing was one of the group’s latest victims. For months, Wakil had been pleading with Boko Haram fighters to free her.

With soldiers and local vigilantes trying to hunt them down, the group’s members had largely fled Maiduguri, the largest city in Borno state, and the other cities in the region. They set up camps tucked away in the arid bush land stretching across northern Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger. Some fighters went to live in hideouts in the vast former game reserve of Sambisa forest and on the remote islands dotting Lake Chad, where they kept thousands of hostages – women, girls, men and child soldiers forced to join their ranks. …

PREPARE TO SPEND A WHILE; it’s The Long Read.

4 Scams That Are Older Than You Think

The modern world might be a confusing mess where seemingly everyone is out to get you and your money, but it wasn’t always this way, right? Back in ye olden days, didn’t people used to be fair and kind and decent to be each other? No. No, they were not …

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William Shakespeare Was A Price Gouging Douche
Lately, we’ve seen a lot of news stories about price gouging. It’s a despicable practice where retailers treat essential goods like limited-edition Funko Pop!s, raising the prices on bottled water, canned goods, and um, face masks knowing that desperate consumers will be forced to shell out the cash. You might assume this is just an issue of modern-day capitalism, and, in ye olden days, merchants might be inclined to price things a bit more fairly — if to avoid a getting stabbed in the bean sack over a sack of beans. You’d be wrong, though.

According to a group of researchers, price gouging wasn’t just a thing that old-timey retailers did all the time, but one of its most-infamous practitioners was none other than William Shakespeare. When he wasn’t banging out classic plays, Willie Shakesdown pulled double duty as a landlord and money-lender. With the considerable profits he gleaned from these activities, Shakespeare would buy up huge stocks of grain, malt, and barley — which he’d sell tradesmen and his neighbors at inflated prices, the proceeds of which would then be funneled back into his money-lending business.

Eventually, like a pantalooned Al Capone, the taxmen caught up with him for tax evasion. Shakespeare was also prosecuted in 1598 by local authorities for hoarding grain during a time of shortage because, oh right, did we forgot to mention that part? At the time he was screwing over his neighbors, England was suffering from a climate shift which caused crops to fail, causing food shortages — meaning that he wasn’t just being a dick for dick’s sake, he was a dick who was extorting his neighbors on pain of death by starvation. …

UNRELATED (perhaps): 6 Absurd Things That Prove Hollywood Doesn’t Know Crap About Bathrooms

Have you ever wondered if you should bad mouth your co-worker while taking a dump? Considered pumping yourself up in the mirror before love making? Sat in a bathtub fully clothed? Well, if you have you’re probably living a movie, and this week “Doctor” Jordan Breeding sits in a fully-real bathtub and discusses some of the strangest bathroom movie tropes.

_{Inspired by the article 6 Weirdly Specific Ideas Movies Have About Normal Bathrooms}

How France extorted Haiti for one of the greatest heists in geopolitical history

_{Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer receiving Charles X’s decree recognizing Haitian independence on July 11, 1825.}

In the wake of George Floyd’s killing, there have been calls for defunding police departments and demands for the removal of statues. The issue of reparations for slavery has also resurfaced.

Much of the reparations debate has revolved around whether the United States and the United Kingdom should finally compensate some of their citizens for the economic and social costs of slavery that still linger today.

But to me, there’s never been a more clear-cut case for reparations than that of Haiti.

I’m a specialist on colonialism and slavery, and what France did to the Haitian people after the Haitian Revolution is a particularly notorious example of colonial theft. France instituted slavery on the island in the 17th century, but, in the late 18th century, the enslaved population rebelled and eventually declared independence. Yet, somehow, in the 19th century, the thinking went that the former enslavers of the Haitian people needed to be compensated, rather than the other way around.

Just as the legacy of slavery in the United States has created a gross economic disparity between Black and white Americans, the tax on its freedom that France forced Haiti to pay—referred to as an “indemnity” at the time—severely damaged the newly independent country’s ability to prosper. …

Sit With Negative Emotions, Don’t Push Them Away

_{If we want a life full of deep meaning, true love, and emotional strength, it’s going to involve the risk (and often the reality) of discomfort, conflict, and loss.}

I was 5 years old when Woodstock took place. The only thing I remember about it was a hippie on television saying, “If it feels good, do it.” Given the limits of my feel-good experiences at the time, I imagined not the sexual revolution and drug culture but hippies eating lots of candy and staying up past their bedtime watching television.

I think that a similarly radical life philosophy is brewing in our culture, and it started well before the COVID-19 pandemic turned the world inside out with fear of sickness and economic pain. It might be summarized as “If it feels bad, make it stop.” From schools to workplaces, we are told that ordinary negative emotions and experiences—fear of failure, or sadness over a breakup, maybe—should be treated or eliminated. Feeling bad is bad.

This is an error, as was the Woodstock motto. I don’t believe that either radical hedonism or eradicating bad feelings is the path to a good life, or for that matter, very sensible. To be clear, I am not talking about medical issues such as clinical depression, anxiety, or trauma. I am talking about the sadness and misfortunes that are inherent to a normal life, and even the “negative affect” that some people have in relative abundance. (Including me, by the way: No one studies happiness unless they find it elusive.)

People are experiencing more than just everyday bad feelings right now. Many have lost jobs and loved ones and are feeling the devastation of this once-in-a-lifetime tragedy. Even for those of us who haven’t, however, the pandemic is a particularly rough patch in our lives. But we have an opportunity here to assess the benefits of negative emotions and experiences—and how we can use them for personal improvement instead of trying to push them away. …

Lockdowns Could Be the ‘Biggest Conservation Action’ in a Century

_{Acknowledging the virus’s silver linings can feel ghoulish. But mounting evidence suggests that we’re in the midst of an unprecedented roadkill reprieve.}

Spring is a bloody season on American roads. Yearling black bears blunder over the asphalt in search of their own territories. In the West, herds of deer, elk, and pronghorn scamper across highways as they migrate from winter pastures to summer redoubts. A smaller-scale but no less epic journey transpires in the Northeast, where wood frogs, spotted salamanders, and eastern newts emerge from their winter hideaways and trek to ephemeral breeding pools on damp March nights, braving an unforgiving gantlet of cars along the way.

Among all creatures, it’s these amphibians—tiny, sluggish, determined—that are most vulnerable to roadkill. This year, though, their journey was considerably safer.

Greg LeClair, a graduate student at the University of Maine, leads The Big Night, a citizen science initiative in Maine through which volunteers tally up migrating frogs and salamanders and escort them across roads. This spring, he assumed that coronavirus concerns would shut down the project; instead, he rallied more participants than ever. “I think people were just home and had nothing else to do,” he told me. All of those volunteers found an amphibious bonanza. In previous years, LeClair said, the project’s participants counted just two live animals for every squashed one. This spring, they found about four survivors per victim. “The ratio of living animals to dead doubled,” LeClair marveled.

Maine’s amphibians are just one of the collateral beneficiaries of the novel coronavirus, which has ground civilization to a halt. Travel bans have confined many of us to our couches; post-apocalyptic photos of empty freeways have circulated on social media. With Homo sapiens sidelined, wildlife has tiptoed forth. Lions basked on a road in Kruger National Park, normally crowded with tourists. Wild boars rooted in Barcelona’s medians. Roadkill surveyors in places as far apart as Santa Barbara and South Africa told me they’ve seen fewer carcasses this year than ever before. In Costa Rica, where Daniela Araya Gamboa has conducted years of roadkill studies aimed at reducing the harm of cars, highways have become less perilous for ocelots, cryptic wildcats bejeweled with black spots. In the more than three months since the pandemic began, Araya recently told me, her project had logged only one slain ocelot. “We have an average of two ocelot roadkills each month during normal times,” she added. …

Video Goodnesses
_{and not-so-goodnesses}

_{Ed. Maybe later, probably not.}

FINALLY . . .

How Mexico City Crowdsourced a Map of Its Riotous Informal Bus System

_{The fourth episode of TED’s Pindrop podcast looks at the power of collective creativity.}

_{A microbus at Olivar del Conde, Mexico City.}

EACH DAY, AT LEAST UNDER normal circumstances, residents of Mexico City take 17 million rides in peseros—a fleet of green-and-white vans or microbuses that are part of the city’s informal transportation system. The peseros—30,000 strong—are a world of their own. They can be crowded. Some blast music. They serve areas of the city underserved by other forms of public transportation. They serve more riders than all the city’s forms of public transportation. But there’s one major problem. There was no map whatsoever.

“The only way of actually figuring out how to get from one point to another might be asking five people and then averaging out the answers,” says journalist, visual artist, and documentary filmmaker Gabriella Gomez-Mont. Unlike most pesero-riders, Gomez-Mont actually had an opportunity to do something about it. In 2013, she became Chief Creative Officer of the Laboratory for the City—a creative think tank within the government tasked with finding creative solutions to the city’s problems. (There are a lot of those; it is, after all one of the biggest cities in the world.) Her team of 20 came from many disciplines. Urban geographers, political scientists, social scientists, data experts, and more, working hand in hand with artists, designers, filmmakers, historians, philosophers, writers, and activists. To Gomez-Mont, this cross-disciplinary approach would be the key to unlocking the innovative solutions to a host of problems—including the unmapped bus routes.

_{Green and white micro- and minibuses are a fixture of Mexico City traffic.}

To create a centralized microbus map and timetable by traditional means would have taken years and a lot of money, and would never have stayed current as the unregulated pesero world continued to evolve to meet people’s needs (and make money). So the lab had an idea. “The superpower of Mexico City is its community,” says Gomez-Mont. “We put out a call to Mexico City citizens and said, ‘Help us map this.’” The lab came up with an app, Mapatón, and turned it into a citywide, real-world game. Every time riders mapped a route from point A to point B they earned points. The longer the route, the more points, which could be exchanged for rewards, such as cash and electronics. In just a few weeks, 4,000 public transport users—the tiniest fraction of the overall ridership—covered 30,000 miles, and gave the government valuable information on the bus routes, length of journeys, passage frequency, duration, and fares. …

_{Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Likely, if I find nothing more barely uninteresting at all to do.}