The Pandemic Emptied Europe’s Cities. What Will Bring People Back? City life came to a standstill from London to Berlin when the coronavirus struck. Now worries of a lasting exodus are pushing urban authorities to address long-festering problems. (more)

The 15-minute city isn’t a conspiracy. It’s just a bad idea. Wouldn’t it be lovely to find most of what you need within a short walk of home? Advocates call it the 15-minute city and want everyone to enjoy this lifestyle. Opponents call it a conspiracy to trap people in their “urban village” by blocking roads and breaking up cities. (more)

The 15-Minute City: Where Urban Planning Meets Conspiracy Theories. In 2012, Portland, Ore., adopted a plan for “20-minute neighborhoods,” in which residents could live within a half-mile of amenities such as grocery stores, parks and elementary schools. (more)

Paris’s mayor has a dream of ‘the 15-minute city’. They’re very hard to find now, even in dense cities (the average New Yorker now spends around 43 minutes getting to work, and that’s not on foot). (more)

an area (esp a city, or a neighborhood in a city) where you don't need a car. cf walking, pedestrian

very-SmallPark http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1473823 (more)

Denied by AI: How Medicare Advantage plans use algorithms to cut off care for seniors in need. *An algorithm, not a doctor, predicted a rapid recovery for Frances Walter, an 85-year-old Wisconsin woman with a shattered left shoulder and an allergy to pain medicine. In 16.6 days, it estimated, she would be ready to leave her nursing home. (more)

Making great strides Learning from the revolution on Milan's post pandemic streets. Our conversation about Milan, London, Paris and other cities has led us to a kind of manifesto of new ideas for urban and transport planning in the post-Covid period. (more)

wonder drug - make sure you get the real stuff - if you don't have to give the pharmacist your driver's license, it's not the real stuff

The Mom Test: how to talk to customers and learn if your business is a good idea when everybody is lying to you - Rob Fitzpatrick (more)

Interviewing Martin Cagan on 6 User Research Trends for 2022. Trend #1: Measuring product value will be recognized as more important than measuring usability. (more)

customer development interviewing

Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s... Mead was a communicator of anthropology in modern American and Western culture and was often controversial as an academic.[3] Her reports detailing the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific (Coming of Age in Samoa) and Southeast Asian traditional cultures influenced the 1960s sexual revolution.[4] She was a proponent of broadening sexual conventions within the context of Western cultural traditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mead

Suzanne Treister's Hexen Tarot deck from 2009-2011 has cards as: (more)

Venkatesh Rao: Against Waldenponding. How to Actually Manage Attention Without Smashing Your Phone and Retreating to a Log Cabin (more)

Venkatesh Rao: Against Waldenponding: II. Interestingly though, it is NOT our digital devices that are the untrustworthy horcruxes in this story. The true horcruxes are the objects that waldenponders believe are more deserving of your attention: the Walden ponds. See earlier 2018-10-05-RaoAgainstWaldenponding (more)

Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher.[3] A leading transcendentalist,[4] he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau

The tarot (/ˈtæroʊ/, first known as trionfi and later as tarocchi or tarock) is a pack of playing cards, used from at least the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play games such as Italian tarocchini, French tarot and Austrian Königrufen, many of which are still played today. In the late 18th century, some tarot decks began to be used for divination via tarot card reading and cartomancy leading to custom decks developed for such occult purposes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot (more)

using your Mobile/Cell Phone in multiple countries (more)

Neal Stephenson notes the value of Science Fiction in creating a Shared Vision for inventors to execute on. Researchers and engineers have found themselves concentrating on more and more narrowly focused topics as science and technology have become more complex. A large technology company or lab might employ hundreds or thousands of persons, each of whom can address only a thin slice of the overall problem. Communication among them can become a mare’s nest of email threads and Powerpoints. The fondness that many such people have for SF reflects, in part, the usefulness of an over-arching narrative that supplies them and their colleagues with a shared vision. Coordinating their efforts through a command-and-control management system is a little like trying to run a modern economy out of a Politburo. Letting them work toward an agreed-on goal is something more like a free and largely self-coordinated market of ideas. (more)