🪼Don't question a thing 🪼

For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.

So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?

Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?

Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.

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They're not only beautiful green spaces but excellent public displays of history and art history, and if you care to look closely you can find out a lot just by studying stones.

For example- notice how few modern headstones are dedicated to young children versus the ones erected before vaccines were widespread.

The cemetery near here has the state's largest silver maple crowning its grounds. Many of the trees in older cemeteries are some of the largest and oldest trees in an area.

Cemeteries are for the living, not the dead. Enjoy them. Go birdwatching in them. Don't be stupid in them sure but don't be too afraid to touch them either.