Friday Faves - Your Weekly Strong Towns Roundup

 

Happy Friday! We’d like to extend our warmest well-wishes to everyone who’ll be observing Juneteenth and/or Father’s Day this Sunday. Whether you’ll be with family, friends, or having a day to yourself, at home or out in your community, we hope you have a happy weekend.

We wrapped up our Member Week last week, and it’s been a delight to welcome so many new people to the Strong Towns movement. A big thanks to everyone who either renewed their membership, or joined in for the first time. And if you’re interested in getting involved, yourself, it’s not too late: You can still become a member of Strong Towns today!

 
 

Comment of the Week:

This comment came from our Facebook Group. Join the conversation here!

 
 

Here’s what Strong Towns staff were up to this week:

Lauren: An electrician I know just installed four chandeliers in a local bank for their lobby remodel, each valued at several thousand dollars. When we heard “chandelier,” we both expected some glittering installation with dripping crystals, or maybe something more modern and geometric (but no less glittery). What he ended up installing were flat disks framed in black plastic. This Tweet thread hits on not just the problem with modern architecture, but with modern construction, as a whole. Even the projects intended to communicate grandeur, to make a statement, are finished quickly and cheaply, almost as if we don’t expect them to last at all.

Rachel: If you’re ever feeling hopeless with the constant barrage of bad news that most media outlets traffic in, I recommend visiting the Solutions Journalism Exchange, which spotlights stories of people who are stepping up to address problems in their cities and regions. The story I’m sharing this week from that site is about a pastor in Flint, Michigan, who recognized a basic need in his neighborhood and stepped up to fill it, following our core Strong Towns Approach to Investment: “(1) Humbly observe where people in the community struggle. (2) Ask, what is the next smallest thing we can do right now to address that struggle? (3) Do that thing now. (4) Repeat.” Pastor Leo Robinson saw how far his neighbors were having to travel, often on the bus, to do their laundry at the laundromat, so he installed washers and dryers in his church basement and will soon open them up for neighbors to use when needed. The story instantly reminded me of some past guests on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast who, similarly, are developing a community laundry co-op in Cleveland. All of these leaders are seeing a basic human need (clean clothes) that many people take for granted, and taking simple steps to help their neighbors meet that need—an example we can all learn from.

(Source: Loco Steve.)

Michelle: The first ever Greater Northwest Passenger Rail Summit will be in Billings, Montana, from August 22 to 23. This event, hosted by the Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority, will provide many networking opportunities for people throughout the region to meet and collaborate. Registration is open now.

(Source: Unsplash.)

John: Has one of Google’s artificial intelligence chatbots become sentient? Google says no but one of its own engineers, Blake Lemoine, disagrees. Lemoine has had many conversations with the program (known as LaMDA) and has compared the experience to talking with an eight-year-old who happens to know physics. “As he talked to LaMDA about religion, Lemoine, who studied cognitive and computer science in college, noticed the chatbot talking about its rights and personhood, and decided to press further,” The Washington Post reported last weekend. “In another exchange, the AI was able to change Lemoine’s mind about Isaac Asimov’s third law of robotics.”

Lemoine has an eclectic background not just in computer science but also the military and religion. According to The Post, Lemoine concluded LaMDA was a person in his capacity as a priest, not a scientist, and then tried to conduct experiments to prove it. His claim that LaMDA has reached sentience has spurred a vigorous debate over the state of the art, AI ethics, and the meaning of personhood. Lemoine has been put on administrative leave by Google for violating its confidentiality agreement. You can read clips of his conversation with LaMDA on Lemoine’s Medium page.

(Source: Independent.)

Jay: The lyrics of one of my favorite David Bowie songs, “Life on Mars,” invites listeners to dream of leaving a difficult, somewhat tortured and violent terrestrial culture for another option: “Take a look at the lawman/Beating up the wrong guy/Oh man, wonder if he’ll ever know/He’s in the best selling show/Is there life on Mars?” Whenever there is the remotest sign of intelligent life outside Earth’s atmosphere, it definitely gets my attention—and the attention of a lot of other folks as well, even if the possibility is remote. This week, a lot of the astronomy world is abuzz with talk about interesting signals detected by a 500-foot-wide Chinese radio telescope and reported by government media, but then quickly taken down.

—

Finally, from all of us, a warm welcome to the newest members of the Strong Towns movement: Gabe Abatecola, Kirk Abolafia, John Allison, Rory Aptekar, Alec Ball, Ash Barton, Sol Bassa, David Batchelor, Neil Baunsgard, Mitchell Beyer, Tyler Bigler, Tyler Borrelli, Evan Bost, Jeffrey Boutte, Jamie Bright, Robert Britton, George Brown, Michael Brown, Rohan Burnside, Wendy Carman, Nathan Castle, Sarah Clark, Jeffery Colvin, C.S. Coolidge, Ryan DeBarr, Nithin Hananjayan, Matt DiPietro, Mayumi Doyama, Kurt Dresner, Jenni Easton, Stephanie Fanos, Felicia Foster, Benjamin Fuller, Maureen Ganley, Diane Garte, Steven Glick, Alicia Goforth, Elaine Goldberg, Linda Grenfell, Daniel Grilli, Justin Gurr, Joe Guzzardo, Cheryl Hammond, Tony Harrington, Eva Hatziz, Jared Helmberger, Roger Henderson, Emily Hinsdale, Joshua Holt, Sam Hutchins, Matthew Iden, Andrew Iovanna, Anthony Isaacs, Joel Rodney Johnson, Susan Johnson, Korawich Kavee, Virginia Little, Michael Lofton, Luke Lorentz, Terrance Mc Ginn, Austin Mock, Mckay Moline, Kirsten Moody, Christine Mullan, Joseph Murphy, William Murphy, Mel Myers, Darin Nance, Joseph Nemec, Gregory Nielsen, Jaclyn Nunziato, Bernie O'Donnell, Dina Padovan, Chris Pelly, Ove Peronard, Mallory Phillips, Eleanor Ponomareff, Nick Porcelli, Al Putnam, Rolando Ray, Danielle Richard, Athena Roberts, Linda Robledo, Evan Running, Adriano Salvatore, Maya Sanchez, Christian Schick, Michael Schuller, Paulette Shnier, Konrad Siemek, Hannah Sillars, Eric Smith, Myles Smith, Tristan Snyder, Jeffrey Starkweather, Angela Stathos, James Sweeney, David Taylor, Karla Theilen, Ian and Ellen Thomas, David Thompson, Kristine Thompson, Thomas Topero, Thi Truong, Patrice Turbide, Nathan Turner, Nathan Ulsh, Ryland Vassar, Katherine Waddell, Ryan Walters, Heliena Walton, McKenzie West, Alexander Whittle, and Christopher Woodward.

Your support helps us provide tools, resources, and community to people who are building strong towns across the country.

What stories got you thinking this week? Please share them in the comments!

 
Top StoryStrong Townsfriday faves