spooky action at a distance

yo i made rhis into a sweater

Precisely because it's riddled with problems and nowhere close to utopia, yet still part of the most looked-to city on the planet, Queens could in someways be a bizarro model for diversifying cities, towns, and suburbs everywhere, not to mention the thousands of sending communities from which people migrate. There is a remarkable record of tolerance precisely here, where the city (and the world) is at its most diverse. While diversification in the short term can bring challenges, the example of Queens strongly suggests that more difference over time means less conflict, and that it matters how contact happens, is managed, and is mediated. Deep difference can come to seem utterly natural. The idea that people who speak differently can't get along is just as wrong as the idea that people who speak the same will always get along. We won't all learn to speak each other's languages, but a few words can go a long way, and at minimum we need to grow familiar and comfortable with hearing them all the time. We need ways to communicate, which is why the city has not one but a dozen lingua francas. We need people who speak four, five, or six languages, the constant connectors who are on every block in certain parts of Queens. We need language keepers, who keep up endangered ways of speaking, knowing, and being, despite the loneliness and pressure, reflecting everything we are.

suburban women on september 15 1967 tuning in to star trek and seeing fuck-or-die mode spock getting in a sweaty man fight with captain kirk in amok time