William Higbie

1 followers · 3 following · 776 views

on the atlas · 9

highlights · 47

By taking a backstage role and letting Estevez run the front of the house, he gave the shop the space to take on a life of its own, animated by the young skaters and misfits who treated Supreme like a second home.
Almost 25 Years Later, Supreme Is Still a Skate Shop
When it opened on Lafayette street in 1994 in what was an old office space Supreme immediately became a skater hangout, thanks in no small part to its first employee, Gio Estevez, who was deeply plugged into the tight-knit New York City skate scene. Its founder, James Jebbia, who owned a shop called Union before working for Stüssy, had a deep appreciation for the aesthetics and general vibe of skateboarding, but he didn’t know the ins and outs of an industry notoriously suspicious of, if not outright hostile to, outsiders.
Almost 25 Years Later, Supreme Is Still a Skate Shop
More than 90 percent of the people who are convicted and sent to Angola will die on the premises, according to a 2015 report from the American Civil Liberties Union.
This New Orleans ‘genius’ is on a quest to learn more about rising deaths in prisons | PBS NewsHour
“When we think about prisons and jails, it is the place where governments have an enormous amount of authority and power and individuals have the least amount of power and agency, and it’s between those two spaces that we often see some pretty horrendous things happen.
This New Orleans ‘genius’ is on a quest to learn more about rising deaths in prisons | PBS NewsHour
The Justice Department said in a scathing report in January that Louisiana’s corrections department “routinely confines” thousands of inmates beyond their release dates each year, in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
This New Orleans ‘genius’ is on a quest to learn more about rising deaths in prisons | PBS NewsHour
n September, men imprisoned at Angola filed a class-action lawsuit decrying work conditions as cruel and often dangerous, including working in the prison’s fields for little or no pay in 100-plus degree temperatures.
This New Orleans ‘genius’ is on a quest to learn more about rising deaths in prisons | PBS NewsHour
As you drive up, you look and see rows of Black bodies bent over in the fields and a guard on horseback with a rifle keeping guard. It looks very much the same as it did pre-Civil War.”
This New Orleans ‘genius’ is on a quest to learn more about rising deaths in prisons | PBS NewsHour
A former slave plantation, the 18,000-acre site holds more than 6,300 incarcerated people. But shadows of its past are everywhere, Armstrong said.
This New Orleans ‘genius’ is on a quest to learn more about rising deaths in prisons | PBS NewsHour
Detroit declared bankruptcy because it did not have enough income from taxes to support the infrastructure. Instead of helping Detroit, the auto companies took everything away
When Detroit Was Revolutionary
We were so paranoid and careful to avoid speaking on the telephone, and we kind of suspected our phone was bugged by the Detroit Police and FBI. We thought there were bugs in our house, so we held meetings at certain trees in the park. About twenty years later, I found out in my Red Squad files that one of our people was an informant, and to this day we don’t know who it was.
When Detroit Was Revolutionary
We helped elect people to the city council and pass laws that were beneficial to the people, like a free clinic, free daycare center, free school, free food, free this and free that. We were very successful for a couple years — it felt like the golden age of Ann Arbor.
When Detroit Was Revolutionary
When Huey P. Newton and Eldridge Cleaver said white people could not join but could start their own party, we felt they were talking to us. We were already organizing, so we thought it natural to call ourselves the White Panther Party. Our poster child was the MC5. They were preaching the gospel and getting people interested
When Detroit Was Revolutionary
While studying at Wayne State University, she helped cofound the avant-garde art cooperative Red Door Gallery, which became the Detroit Artists Workshop.
When Detroit Was Revolutionary
Leni Sinclair, cofounder of the White Panther Party and the Detroit Artists Workshop, stood at the center of a local scene where political and cultural ferment merged.
When Detroit Was Revolutionary
"Are two artists/developers on their first go the people who should be building this? No. But this is a model on how this can be done and can anchor a community that can be built around it."
At a new Detroit apartment project, 2 unlikely developers fight to keep the city funky
ecause the federal metric used by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development uses suburban income figures, it skews what is considered "affordable" upwards in a historically poor city — coming in at those rates is no easy task.
At a new Detroit apartment project, 2 unlikely developers fight to keep the city funky
Forty-one are at 80 percent or below of the Area Median Income, while 17 units are at 50 percent or below and the remaining 18 are at 120 percent of AMI — the federal standard for workforce housing.
At a new Detroit apartment project, 2 unlikely developers fight to keep the city funky
"When you got people like that, trying to work that hard and honestly, they're not trying to get rich on it. It's just something they believe in. I think that it, quite honestly, is the secret sauce in this thing because, without that, I don't think you would have gotten all of us lenders working as hard as we did on this thing."
At a new Detroit apartment project, 2 unlikely developers fight to keep the city funky
And Vieregge, of Invest Detroit, said in his three decades working on projects, the Dreamtroit capital stack is "the most complex structure I've ever seen."
At a new Detroit apartment project, 2 unlikely developers fight to keep the city funky
Together, we were able to get Dreamtroit's amazing project financed, while still ensuring that 90 percent of the units are below 80 percent AMI, with 22 percent of the units below 50 percent AMI. That's a remarkable success, especially in the New Center area, which is seeing a lot of new investment."
At a new Detroit apartment project, 2 unlikely developers fight to keep the city funky
Victor Abla, regional preservation director for the Detroit office of project lender Local Initiatives Support Corp., more commonly known as LISC, said the complexity of the funding structure is rare, particularly for a project that's largely made up of affordable housing
At a new Detroit apartment project, 2 unlikely developers fight to keep the city funky
"We have no quiet hours," Goldenberg said.
At a new Detroit apartment project, 2 unlikely developers fight to keep the city funky
It will be loud, sometimes late into the night, with the Marble Bar's Lincoln Factory parties, people working on art and other creative projects and other noise.
At a new Detroit apartment project, 2 unlikely developers fight to keep the city funky
The mantra: Live here, create here, sell here.
At a new Detroit apartment project, 2 unlikely developers fight to keep the city funky
If Naimi and Goldenberg — an artist behind Recycle Here and a filmmaker, respectively — are perhaps Detroit's most unlikely pair of developers to successfully pull off a project of this scale, the project itself is also among the funkiest and most ambitious to be completed in years.
At a new Detroit apartment project, 2 unlikely developers fight to keep the city funky
In all, it's bringing 76 units of affordable and workforce housing to the area just a couple blocks south of Henry Ford Hospital, plus some 38,000 square feet of entertainment and retail space to be occupied by tenants like Marble Bar, which is opening a nearly 9,000-square-foot outpost called the Lincoln Factory there,
At a new Detroit apartment project, 2 unlikely developers fight to keep the city funky
the silicon valley hustle-and-network-to-raise-money-at-parties culture is really not that different from the coffee-chat-business-card-who-do-you-know8 culture in DC.
Why I quit working at an AI startup to join the Department of Energy
It is fitting that the attitude of software engineers in silicon valley who "just want to build cool stuff" and don’t think critically about the impact and power of their work is consistent with the casualness in how they dress at work.
Why I quit working at an AI startup to join the Department of Energy
being an effective operator is just as important as technical knowledge. In hiring for federal employees (aka feds), the government tends to prefer those willing to give 5-year commitments, because each program takes ~2 years and you’re on the learning curve the first time and executing effectively the 2nd time.
Why I quit working at an AI startup to join the Department of Energy
Congress authorizes the DOE to spend money on certain programs (which ranges from millions to billions of dollars per program) and the DOE is tasked with pushing that money out to a broad variety of actors ranging from national labs and academia to startups and big corporations and then managing those projects over time.
Why I quit working at an AI startup to join the Department of Energy
Most parts of the DOE, including the one I’m in, are essentially funding allocators.
Why I quit working at an AI startup to join the Department of Energy
I had to push to get the IT helpdesk to onboard me and I had issues logging into my laptop for the first two weeks.
Why I quit working at an AI startup to join the Department of Energy
But I think there is a growing awareness that while we invented all those things, we don’t build them here - American innovation did not result in American-made infrastructure or American jobs
Why I quit working at an AI startup to join the Department of Energy
The exciting thing is that not only is MESC a new office, but the entire Under Secretary for Infrastructure as a whole is new.
Why I quit working at an AI startup to join the Department of Energy
Theories of impact aside, it also helped that Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) in 2022, which significantly empowered the Department of Energy (and other agencies, like the Environmental Protection Agency) to fund climate technologies in fairly novel ways
Why I quit working at an AI startup to join the Department of Energy
That may be good advice, but I have an opposite perspective: find underleveraged areas of impact and bring your attention to bear in these areas.3
Why I quit working at an AI startup to join the Department of Energy
But my conclusion is, that’s why its a great place to work!
Why I quit working at an AI startup to join the Department of Energy
I won’t take the time to try to argue for this theory of change, because I think most people at least somewhat accept the government is important. The issue is not about the impact but more often along the lines of: “it’s too slow,” “it’s too bureaucratic and political,” and “the pay sucks.”
Why I quit working at an AI startup to join the Department of Energy
working in the federal government is not something we would consider as high leverage.
Why I quit working at an AI startup to join the Department of Energy
I arrived at 3 possible paths for me to align my work with the climate crisis, all of which I explored fairly extensively: bringing my AI skills to a climate-tech startup that meaningfully used AI to directly drive decarbonization, running for state office, and working in the federal government.
Why I quit working at an AI startup to join the Department of Energy
t I believe is directly related to the fears our intellectuals express about college students: “After 35 it’s easier to get a new spouse than it is to get a new close friend.”
When Students Change Each Other’s Minds, It’s Called Friendship – Blue Book Diaries
People who will, in the middle of a busy life, actually sit still while you carefully identify your premises and show why you think they lead to a controversial conclusion? They’re almost certainly people who care about you as a person.
When Students Change Each Other’s Minds, It’s Called Friendship – Blue Book Diaries
it’s typically because students are forming real friendships, in which important conversations happen organically—not because of a “culture of free debate.”
When Students Change Each Other’s Minds, It’s Called Friendship – Blue Book Diaries
For your constant state of evolution: that new hot restaurant or it-girl or “up-and-coming” neighborhood.
Thank you, New York.. You’re a special place. | by Kene Anoliefo | Medium
For that one black cab driver who stops after the last five empty taxis sped past, uninterested.
Thank you, New York.. You’re a special place. | by Kene Anoliefo | Medium
For being wide enough to accommodate the dreams of whoever passes through your gates, from the quiet ones whispered at night in hushed tones across the pillow, to the reckless ones, declared with persistent and determined ferocity, all the way to the ones not spoken at all, but clung to silently and desperately like an invisible life preserve.
Thank you, New York.. You’re a special place. | by Kene Anoliefo | Medium
For a family that formed spontaneously but will endure for a lifetime.
Thank you, New York.. You’re a special place. | by Kene Anoliefo | Medium