Category: The City

A government that’s certain to win

I’m not that negative about the Dominic Cummings job ad, because:

  • Unlike a lot of people in governments everywhere, he seems to have a clue what he is doing.
  • That a person who’s winning would quote Boyd is not a coincidence.
  • Using a blog in this way (or Trump tweeting like he does) is the direct e-government that everybody has always been asking for. Not so fun now that we have it, is it?
  • Governments and institutions are breaking or already are broken in this age. They do need large scale overhaul.
    This is even worse in Germany where the institutions are bigger and the ahistorical denial of reality is immense. It’s going to be really ugly when they go down.
  • A city like Berlin, that can’t get anything done to save its life, would probably be massively improved by this approach. Our local government here can’t find its own asshole without help from McKinsey. Please somebody do this for Berlin.
‘Two hands are a lot’ — we’re hiring data scientists, project managers, policy experts, assorted weirdos…

“In the new city of the supertalls, man is born free but everywhere is in salad chains. The people are being made skinny to fit the skinniness of the buildings to come.”

“Whether the art that comes out of The Shed will be any good, or just social media-ready kitsch delivered in unnourishing experiential baggies for the ’gram, we don’t yet know.”

Every city worth a damn will be colonized and sterilized.

The Needles and the Damage Done

English language critique of Turkish rap produced in my backyard here in Berlin. That’s the way I like it.

My easily incensed people

A Turkish guy in a van turns the corner tight enough to almost run us over. He then stops and pulls down the window: “Möchtest du mir etwas sagen?”

To which I better don’t reply: “Ja, ‘senin ananı babanı sikeyim.'”

These guys are so easily triggered. Once I did say this and the dude followed me through half of Schöneberg in his car.