Elsewhat

By Neale Van Fleet on January 24th, 2025

(Ex) Youtuber Tom Scott helps visualize the massive difference between a million and a billion. This video is a few years old, but does the best job of this that I’ve seen yet. You may want to fast forward.

By Neale Van Fleet on January 21st, 2025

This simple carving by Montréal-based Chloé Desjardins caught my eye by feeling incredibly light despite being made of marble.

By Neale Van Fleet on January 5th, 2025

In artist Jun Ong’s luminous installations, rays of light pierce through concrete, stone, and steel. In his ongoing Stars series features LED strips that intersect with the human-built environment in monumental, illuminated geometries.

Important to note, the above piece is on a former Buddhist temple, hence the iconography.

Though aesthetically very different, I also see echoes in this work of Gordon Matta-Clark‘s geometric works like Conical Intersect, pictured below. Both combine existing architecture with larger geometric shapes.

By Neale Van Fleet on December 16th, 2024

By Neale Van Fleet on December 11th, 2024

Yesterday I attended a talk at The Canadian Centre for Architecture given by members of HouseEurope!, an organization of architects pushing for laws which will encourage the renovation/restoration/adaptation of buildings using pre-used materials where possible as opposed to demolition and rebuilding from scratch.

They make some bold claims about the benefits of renovation:

↗︎ Renovation saves homes by keeping prices stable.
↗︎ Renovation saves jobs by boosting local markets.
↗︎ Renovation saves energy by preserving what is there.
↗︎ Renovation saves history by valuing the existing.

The organization pushes for tax and zoning reform to encourage renovation over demolition. Something we could use over here as well.

By Neale Van Fleet on December 8th, 2024

My favourite blog post every year is friend of Elsewhat Sean Michaels’ list of best songs of the year. I always find a ton of new music I didn’t know about, and usually have it as a playlist I listen to for months.

See the list here →

By Neale Van Fleet on November 29th, 2024

When my family and I rent a car and drive through Montréal, we play a game of looking out for works by a graffiti artist named Kong. His pieces are cute, but that’s not really the point. The appeal of his work is that he does his pieces in the craziest of places. Sometimes they’re on bridges, sometimes on the side of buildings. We always wondered how he did his pieces, that is until we found this video.

By Neale Van Fleet on November 26th, 2024

Listening to the audiobook for Sand Talk, How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World by Tyson Yunkaporta, I came across this passage which discusses a sort of spirituality which resonated with me:

There are at least four parts to your spirit, from an Aboriginal point of view, and this shadow is only one of them. Your highest self may be what they call the “super ego” in psychology is your big spirit, and it goes back to sky camp when you die. …

Your shadow spirit is that part of you that wants things you don’t need and makes you think you’re better than other people and above the land, and it takes all the other parts of your spirit to hold it in check. If the rest of your spirit is not clear and in balance, it gets away from you, causing conflict and destruction. You gossip behind people’s backs, spread uncertainty, deliver judgements, or upset people, take more than you need, and accumulate goods without sharing. It makes you a competitor instead of a human being. But only when it’s out of balance. If it is checked by the other parts of you, it becomes a stable ego that drives you to act upon the world in perfect ways. You don’t know what you’re going to do, but you’re going to have to do it in a way you’re You need to believe in ghosts to balance spirit and live the right way in this world. You can use any metaphor you like. For example, ego, id, superego, persona. Frontal lobe, monkey brain, neocortex, and lizard brain. Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and d’Artagnon. Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Malfoy. Monkey spirit, pig spirit, fish spirit and tripataka. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Whatever stories your cultural experience offers you, you can still perceive spirit through metaphor and bring it into balance to step into your designated role as a custodian of reality.

This idea of accessing spirituality through metaphor really resonated with me.

By Neale Van Fleet on November 22nd, 2024

This is a bit of a touchy subject, but one that is important to discuss, especially considering the disastrous results of the recent U.S. election. Media analysis show On The Media reran an episode of theirs entitled ‘Why Men and Boys are Struggling‘, which features an interview between host Micah Loewinger and author Richard Reeves:

Micah Loewinger: You write about how many advised you against writing this book. I also want to acknowledge the cognitive dissonance of the thesis and the book that some listeners might identify, which is that men and boys are struggling at a time when men still very much run our society. There are many ways you could quantify this. There are three times as many men in Congress than women, less than 10% of the Fortune 500 companies are run by women, and casual misogyny is pervasive throughout our culture.

…

Richard Reeves: The way you ask the question depends on where you look. If you look at the apex of our society, it’s absolutely true that there’s still a long way to go. I would say, especially in the US in terms of female representation in politics, for example, and in boardrooms and in other areas of society.

If we look further down, then we see a very, very different picture. For working-class men, for black boys and men, those with less economic power, there’s a very different story. It can simultaneously be true that men at the top of the distribution are doing better on many fronts, including in terms of earnings. It can also be true that most American men are earning less today than most American men did in 1979. This is very much a class and a race story.

…

In 1972 when Title IX was passed to support women and girls in education, men were about 13 percentage points more likely to get a four-year college degree. Today, women are 15 percentage points more likely than men to get a four-year college degree. There’s been this huge overtaking in education. We also see that in high school, where girls account for 2/3 of the top 10% of students ranked by GPA

Much like the Democrats running their recent presidential campaign on the premise that “the economy is doing great”, while ignoring the fact that most of the middle class is struggling with housing and food costs, I think these issues are important to at least address.

Listen to the whole episode →

By Neale Van Fleet on November 6th, 2024

Today I learned about the existence of oxbow lakes. These are pockets of freestanding water left over when a river meanders away, leaving an echo of the river from a previous course.