Is modern architecture a “hideous cultural atrocity”? Is insisting on classical buildings the hallmark of a dictatorship? Readers engage in an aesthetic and philosophical debate.

Feb. 11, 2020

Everyone can admire the historical legacy of classical architecture, but its time is past. It’s as absurd to insist that every building wear classical dress as it would be to require public officials to don knee breeches and wigs. America is a country that has long embraced progress and freedom; conformity and a single official style are the hallmarks of dictatorships.

Inventive, socially responsible architects flourished in Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1920s, enriching lives and creating buildings that are now acclaimed as classics. Hitler and Stalin suppressed modernism as an alien assault on traditional values and required that all but a handful of buildings follow traditional models. Talent was suffocated or driven into exile. //

I recall the comment of Prince Charles about the plans for the modernist addition to the National Gallery in London: “What is proposed is like a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and elegant friend.”

At the same time, I have been to enough Soviet-era “people’s palaces” to shudder at the prospect of official style. I agree wholeheartedly with those who are pushing back against any “official” architectural style, but at the same time I get that we can do better when designing our public buildings.

Enough of the starchitects? Form may follow function, but form also communicates a message. Buildings that resemble fortresses are not welcoming. Those that turn their backs to the street deaden the surrounding neighborhood. A courthouse designed to convey equal justice under the law and transparency might be preferred over one that looks Kafkaesque. //

There’s now hard science to support President Trump’s draft executive order. Today we know that modern architecture stresses the human brain. It’s actually harder for people to look at, take in or even make a memory of any modern building compared with a classical or traditional one. We also know that it is harder for people to walk down a modern street lined with glassy skyscrapers than a traditional one lined with four-story brownstones.

According to a new IAEA report, they haven’t been able to access data that monitors Iran’s nuclear program since late February, not just with the surveillance cameras but also it has “not had access to the data from its online enrichment monitors and electronic seals, or had access to the measurement recordings registered by its installed measurement devices” since Feb. 23.

The IAEA had 2,000 tamper-proof seals on nuclear material and equipment that provided for electronic information to be communicated to inspectors. They also had automated measuring devices that generated data. Now that access has been cut off.

That’s not all.

The IAEA is also saying that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium is around 16 times the limit laid down in the 2015 nuclear deal.

On top of that, Iran refuses to explain traces of uranium found at several undeclared sites to the IAEA.

Generate and verify the MD5/SHA1 checksum of a file without uploading it.

Generate the hash of the string you input.

Cities are considering measures to phase out gas hookups amid climate concerns, spurring some states to outlaw such prohibitions //

A growing fight is unfolding across the U.S. as cities consider phasing out natural gas for home cooking and heating, citing concerns about climate change, and states push back against these bans.

Major cities including San Francisco, Seattle, Denver and New York have either enacted or proposed measures to ban or discourage the use of the fossil fuel in new homes and buildings, two years after Berkeley, Calif., passed the first such prohibition in the U.S. in 2019.

‘How is it that despite 100 years of engineering advances, the same project now took five times as long? Did we just forget how to build things?’ //

Bridges, roads, and other modern infrastructure projects in the United States take exceptionally longer to complete compared to those in other nations. A new video from Kite and Key creators breaks down exactly why a combination of government regulations and bad management causes such lengthy delays in assembling the transportation and urban foundation of American cities.

The Golden Gate Bridge and Empire State building are just two examples of speedy and successful construction projects in the United States, the video begins, but now significantly smaller buildings, bridges, and other proposals are taking an abnormally long time to finish. //

“Better safety isn’t the reason that America is falling behind. After all, countries like Germany and Canada, build new infrastructure, much faster and cheaper than we do. And they do it without a body count,” the narrator explained.

In reality, it is a fatal combination of government regulation and bad management that is killing American infrastructure plans and creating decades of setbacks. The video shows how laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act were “well-intentioned” at the time of their creation yet ultimately fail to accomplish much but delaying new construction.

“Its goal was to make sure that new construction factored in environmental concerns … maybe it’s all worth it to protect the planet right? But here’s the craziest part: nothing about NEPA actually requires that. All you have to do is identify environmental issues. There’s nothing that forces you to actually do anything about them. In fact, in some cases, these regulations actually make us less green,” the narrator continued, noting examples such as in Montana, where the U.S. Forest Service delayed cutting back forests and a wildfire burned “nearly half the land” during the NEPA waiting period.

black nationalists gathered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, over the weekend to mark the 100-year anniversary of the Black Wall Street Massacre that left 300 people dead in a Tulsa neighborhood once known as “Black Wall Street.”

Among the chants at the National Black Power Convention was this crowd favorite: “Kill everything white in sight,” as reported by BizPac Review. //

”We’re pushing death to white supremacy. Death to capitalism. Death to imperialism. And death to fascism.

“We are pushing an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a head for a head, and a life for a life. Once they die, we must understand that we can never give them the pain that they gave us.

“So once they get buried … once they are buried, we must bury them, dig them up and kill them again. Bury them. Dig them up. And kill them again.”

The vile rhetoric led to cheers from the crowd. Think that through.

Since public schools are spectacularly successful leftist recruitment centers, weakening public attachment to them through lockdowns was a dangerous move for Democrats. //

Between May and October 2020, homeschooling more than doubled among U.S. households with school-age children, from 5.4 percent that spring to 11.1 percent that fall, according to new Census Bureau data.

Not to mention the charts show when a lot of the prices started soaring — strange how you can trace a lot of them to starting to go up after the end of January. I wonder what was happening then?

Now, of course, if President Donald Trump were in office, Krugman would be screaming his head off about how we were heading for the dumpster because of this. But now, under Biden, “not a big deal” and “transitory blip.”

If we apply our basic principle about Krugman being wrong, then unfortunately that means we may need to start worrying.

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BREAKING: UNICEF says any efforts to block children from accessing pornography online might infringe on their human rights
UNICEF Report Says Pornography Not Always Harmful to Children - C-Fam
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Emerald Robinson ✝️
@EmeraldRobinson
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May 29, 2021
Scoop: Attorney dealing with Fulton County GA on audit of more than 145k ballots from 2020 election tells me that alarm went off today at secure building where ballots were kept. The building was found left wide open & unattended.
Emerald Robinson ✝️

@EmeraldRobinson
This is a picture is that the attorney provided of the door left open at the supposedly secure building were the ballots are being kept.