a friend to the bees

An old, decrepit laundromat gets replaced by an upscale bakery? And people are mad? It’s not that the poor hate organic vegan cupcakes, it’s that most of us don’t have a way to do laundry in our own home.

Run-down corner stores replaced by hand-made designer clothing boutiques? We don’t hate your eco-fabric shawl, but I can’t eat that for dinner after work like I could have a can of beans I grabbed from that corner store when I don’t have time to take the bus to the real grocery store after work.

What gentrification brings in and of itself is not typically bad, it’s that gentrification brings institutions of leisure and pleasure and makes it so that the poor have to go farther out of their way for basic necessities. It turns low-income living spaces into local tourist attractions. It can even create food deserts by putting restaurants, grocery stores, etc. in that the majority of the lower class cannot afford.

With schools, with workplaces, with anywhere that's not immediately medically necessary, there is a very obvious alternative available to forcing people to wear masks: cancel the events entirely, make it so people don't gather in close proximity, pay whatever needs to be paid to make that happen.

Ive taken a few occupational health and safety courses, and in my province there is a mandatory Worker Health and Safety module from our Ministry of Labour that needs to be completed by every worker. One of the things that these teach is hazard reduction in the workplace and, surprise, a lot of the concepts are easily applied to hazard reduction literally anywhere.

Hazard reduction comes in multiple flavours: elimination, substitution, engineering, administrative, and PPE. 

As we see on this useful graphic: these various methods of controlling hazards have different levels of effectiveness. Setting aside elimination and substitution as they can’t apply to the current topic, the most effective control is engineering, which is applying whatever infrastructure changes are necessary to keep people away from the hazard. This is the ‘government pays everyone to stay at home’ method. Following that is administrative controls, which I figure mandatory social distancing falls under, though only if its actually enforced. The least effective method of controlling a hazard is personal protective equipment. 

Let’s do a quick metaphor: say you work in a factory which has recently been filled with bees. The bees came in the factory on their own and there are so many of them that working is almost impossible. Removing the bees will take a long time, but there are people working on that. In the meantime, your boss told you that you need to go back to work, and that you should wear a mask because there are bees. This situation ends with the factory getting sued for failure to ensure a safe workplace, and losing. 

Do you support gender non-conforming women when they don’t appeal to your aesthetics? When it isn’t meticulously tailored suits and expensive haircuts? Do you support the GNC women who can’t afford or don’t want to be “dapper” or fashionable? Or do you feel on some level that women are only entitled to masculinity so long as they’re still “making an effort”? Do you still expect masculine women to uphold traditional femininity to be respected? Do you still think women exist to be looked at?

The Library of Congress has published over 11,000 high-resolution shots of U.S. roadside attractions, and released the images (to which it had purchased the rights) into the public domain. The photos were taken by architectural critic and photographer John Margolies, who spent forty years documenting his travels along U.S. highways, photographing billboards, drive-ins, diners, car washes, mini-golf, novelty buildings, and other roadside constructions.

According to the Washington Post, Margolies wouldn’t photograph a building or object “unless and until he can capture the subject in full sun with a cloudless sky, with no people in the frame.” The result is clear, uncluttered imagery of quirky art and architecture.

Trees.