Look, we’re idiots: None of us knows what, exactly, goes into city planning, but we assume it’s probably a lot of distinguished gentlemen emailing each other about math, statistics and blueprints. But somewhere along the line, somebody accidentally CC’ed the insane asylum, and we wound up with the following civilizations that simply should not be.

(via @tylercowen)

Drank a half bottle of wine tonight that cost $28 (for the carafe) and tasted EXACTLY like Kool-Aid dosed with brandy. Yes; I’m back in NYC.

— Tim Carmody (@tcarmody) January 29, 2012

Spent too much money tonight on books, booze, and pizza. In other words, happiest guy in the world.

— Frank Chimero (@fchimero) January 29, 2012

One freezing evening we happened upon the young men in this film, who were illegally dismantling a former Cadillac repair shop. They worked recklessly to tear down the steel beams and copper fasteners. They were in a hurry to make it to the scrap yard before it closed at 10 p.m., sell their spoils and head to the bar.

Surprisingly, these guys, who all lacked high school diplomas, seemed to have a better understanding of their place in the global food chain than many educated American 20-somethings. The young men regularly checked the fluctuating price of metals before they determined their next scrap hunt, and they had a clear view of where these resources were going and why.

Chicago Screenshots is a (slowly growing) collection of Chicago-centric movie and television stills, presented as architectural and urban landscape photography.

In a world full of McMansions where the structure takes up all the land, the Eames made structure and nature one.

(via @gary_hustwit)

Like a keypunch card it was, in a way. Long. And slim. And punctured.

I lived in it for a couple of years. Strange to say (perhaps), I might have lived there happily for many another year.

But that is a very long story. And it moves both backwards and forwards.

I absolutely love these. Atelier Olschinsky’s Legendary Cities.

Lukas Augustin:

I have lived from 2006-2008 in Kabul doing my civil service for a humanitarian aid organization. This March I had the chance to go back with my fiancé to show her the place I love and to capture the beauty of this country with our cameras.

Unspeakably beautiful.

(via stellar)

It’s fascinating how readily we’ve come accept this notion that we must have respect for a car’s “power,” as though it’s some force of nature beyond all human control. Sure, someone who goes into the wilderness, starts poking grizzlys with a stick, and then gets eaten should maybe have a little more respect for the power of the bear, but that’s a different scenario. Oddly though, if a bear is just doing its bear thing and kills somebody we’ll go out of our way to destroy the bear. Yet if a human being kills somebody with a car we just charge them $42 and blame the victim.

Via Lauren Stephenson, who has up and absquatulated to Buenos Aires (in truth, the move was a long time in the making) and who sent this video to my friend Charlie, who’ll be Buenos Aires-bound come November.

I love it when my friends from different realms mix and match.