idio3
15d ago
Since it's 9th of May today, of course Victory Day events are taking place. This has historically been mostly ignored in Western/Central Europe, aside from minor things like ambassadors laying flowers on whatever monument is available locally. Over the past few years, these things have been successfully prevented through organized performance art style protests drawing gigantic crowds of journalists. Of course, something similar happened again this year:
https://streamable.com/e/fnrnke
None of this is news, of course. What is interesting is that they haven't updated them at all in about two and a half years now, with these performance art events now kind of falling into irrelevance. This year they actually didn't even prevent the thing they were trying to prevent and the only attention they garnered was derision from their opponents. Whether it means that the media and the general public are now less interested in this kind of pseudoshock content, or is this subject in particular now being retired?
idio3
14d ago
Traditionally Russians have this thing, where they (in contrast to rather lukewarm interest in Western Europe) send their ambassadors, cultural orgs, and anyone else who is in any way official - to go and put flowers on wherever local WW2 monument is. The propaganda point there is fairly obvious - hey, we still remember the war that we won, while the rest of you don't, and are probably cryptonazis or at least sympathizers anyway.
In the past few years the actions of local governments have really, really nicely played into that message, since EU members have acted unbelievably and consistently dumb in pretty much everything they did as far as foreign policy is concerned. There are extremes, like near-baltic microstates, where governments themselves are arresting people for flowers or flags, but in the actual EU, this was mostly done via the sort of organized performances by shady activists like the ones on the video above, just on a larger scale. It worked fine, with journos being able to get a headline of glorious victory of activists or whatever, but this year they've been relegated to just part of the background.
That area is at the price level where accessibility of private schools is of a larger concern - and the best ones are unsurprisingly all clustered around there (and north to Lincoln Park, yes).
There definitely are kids there.
That's kind of sad. While it's perfectly valid way for children to form bonds (they aren't extremely particular) it becomes somewhat less appropriate for adults, who typically look for something other than just any random person who happens to be nearby. In any case - nothing at all is stopping you from doing that in a huge block house. The problem you're describing lies in transient nature of housing which is overwhelmingly rental in American urban areas. But that's a consequence of American middle class idiosyncrasies, not a cause.
Intersex relationships are going to be somewhat of a competition due to simple biology, we can't really do much about that as a species or society, outside of weird stuff like arranged marriages, which carry a huge amount of their own burdens.
But you misunderstand my point about regular connections. These aren't meant to be competitive, they simply select for compatibility. Surely you've had friendships that faded away over time, right? Not necessarily because you lack physical access to someone, but simply because either you or him (or both) have, over time, found someone else they choose to spend time with. It's not about someone winning or losing here. And trapping you both in a close proximity without any alternatives would hardly be a better outcome...
Okay, well here we go to the crux of the matter. Just as before - this isn't the cause of American middle class behaviour, it's the effect of it. There is nothing inherently bad about schools located in dense urban environments. Ability to quickly and easily walk to your school could hardly be considered a detriment by any sane person.
But yes, when a large proportion of people with the means to do so - do, in fact, flee to a lawn - the ones that don't - are quite strongly pushed to do the same. Overwhelming majority of above-average schools in, say, continental Europe are in major cities. Some Parisian schools have great reputation, while their suburban ones are widely considered to be dogshit. This follows the exact same indicators as it does in America, by the way.
So yes, you have discovered yet another extremely negative externality of lawn worship. It fucks up the urban livability in yet another way...
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