LOVE AND FURY: LOS ANGELES FIRES PART 2

All related: (a) Are we unable to connect some glaring obvious dots?; (b) The abuse of Community; (c) Analysis of next-phase Computer Age re: the homesphere and its protection

Dear Snoops,

In our last newsletter, we expressed a deep love for Los Ang., in special-particular as a true City of Homes — one of few, if not truly the world’s foremost.

Today, a fury, summoned by the fires, but directed back at us, the inhabitants of Los Angeles, mainly for ourselves not being furious enough.

(Back to décor analysis next week, btw.)

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PART A: COMMUNITY AS DISASTER RELIEF

The homesphere is a precious domain of individuality; it is spiritual self-realization through material environment. An utter joy, if one let’s it be. And charming, in many ways, how this sphere is also a fairly glaring expression of Shared Culture, and a desire to participate in it.

And tho Los Angeles is a city where really the private domain reigns, it nonetheless views itself as a city of Community — as seemingly every city views themselves to be, each imagining no other cities truly are.

In the wake of these fires, thus, Community has taken action.

Innumerable GoF*ndMe’s, some flooded and others scraping by (as if the more connected of us are more deserving — is that Community?); an intrepid Altadena bar owner taking requests to venture into the new Unknown of gutted neighborhoods and check in at your address - is it still there?; the Citizenry making use of an Arco parking lot as an ad hoc aid distribution center — let’s hope someone forwarded you the Google Sheets with its location.

There is, of course, enormous value in these actions. But, why is Community - by f*cking miles - the most prominent tool of disaster relief rn? And, why are we proud and not absolutely f*cked off about it?

In these days, as Community soothes us, saves us, we see its value most starkly. But, Community is being abused:

• Impossible is it for Community to zoom out, to connect a city’s worth of needs to one another; Community is instead, in practice, very bounded (kind of the pleasure of Community, really, is that it is subgroup)

• Patchy is it for Community to offer our services via some Meta-algorithm platform; and in some future-disaster (inevitable), will we have 5G?

Community should not have to do disaster relief.

We are grateful, of course, that it has stepped into empty shoes. It is as if our Mayor and our Governor are completely surprised that an easily anticipated fire might produce an equally as antipcate-able Community need. The messy f*cks are letting us “feel empowered” by having us take on 90% of the work.

Should it not be that “FOR SCALE”, from its Echo Park headquarters, already know locations nearby that would be converted to shelters; that would serve as distribution centers for aid; that we would not have to wait for some Intern*t-viral Community volunteer to inform us about whether said headquarters is still standing? (There is an official list just for the Palisades fire, it seems.)

Community in Los Angeles has made the city proud, but the Community is not nearly as furious as it should be. We deserve disaster relief better than “Community Reacts”; we deserve one where those whose job it is to see us all as one have actually Prepared. We deserve better than to be relied upon by those that in fact we should be relying upon.

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PART B: INTELLIGENCE

More for another time, but D.Y.K. that Artificial Intelligence is a f*cking water-guzzling f*ck, an atrocious version of “progress” attacking a precious resource. ASIDE: In all of FOR SCALE’s regrettable ChatGPT experiments, it has lied to us: fabricating the titles and synopses of books; fabricating quotes and assigning them to random people. Disastrous.

What the f*ck are we doing to ourselves?

We must, unfortunately, sympathize with an angry, warped climate, which made these fires so much worse than perhaps they might have been, if they had been. It has been thoroughly abused.

In the name of what?

In rebuilding, as we imagine the new Homes in our City of Homes, perhaps we should consider connecting some dots for f*ck’s sake. Perhaps we should remind ourselves that for good work to happen, Artificial Intelligence is completely unnecessary and decidedly just Not Worth It.

It certainly wasn’t a part of what at first made the experiments of a Future Housing in L.A. so brilliant, if ultimately failed (endless and easily replicable without being suburban-soulless; something an average *individual* could afford; aesthetically superior).

Our vision of a homesphere, which frankly should be yours too, is one not of Luxury Vastness and Limited-Access High Class Privilege, but it’s for f*cking everyone and its nice as f*ck. This was the dream of Gregory Ain and the Case Study Boys-and-one-girl.

That for Community to rebuild, it should not be rebuilt using the tools that are putting it at risk. [Who does this serve? (There is an answer; it’s on Wall Street.)]

Call us crazy.

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Wishing you safety and love,