Today's Articles (30/7/2025)
In a 1997 article on the radical possibilities of shade, Mike Davis offers another reason why cities fail to respond to extreme heat as an actual emergency. “Heat waves . . . do not produce mega-billion-dollar property damage and economic disruption like hurricanes, floods and great winter storms,” he writes. “They are thus of minimal concern to the insurance industry, the decisive shaper of federal and state natural disaster policy.”
Most tellingly Bloch pinpoints Singapore as highly successful at implementing “both green and gray” shade as public infrastructure: “125 miles of covered walkways” and an “urban forest” of 1.4 million trees, most of them planted in the last fifty years. As a result, the city has grown denser with shade and flora. He asks an arboriculture researcher why Singapore has been so successful. The answer is telling: “Some would characterize [Singapore’s prime minister] Lee Juan Yew as a strongman, or semi-authoritarian figure, and to some extent that’s very true. But [widespread shade] is one good thing that came from that system.” Bloch admits that “it’s unlikely that American governments can be as effective as Singapore’s, an autocratic nation-state long ruled by a strongman with a personal interest in shade.” (Lee believed the heat damaged Singapore’s economic health.) The problem, then, appears to be how to implement these solutions in a democratic way. “Let’s not pretend it’s impossible,” writes Bloch. And yet it’s difficult to imagine exactly how.
The reason people are always hurting your feelings
How valued and accepted you believe you are influences your reactions to perceived social slights. When people feel valued and cared for, they’re better able to brush off, for instance, snide remarks from their in-laws.
For closer ties, the dismissal of your feelings can be incredibly deflating, she continues. “It’s fair game to say to them,” Kao says, “‘That’s really invalidating and it makes me feel like my feelings are unimportant and I need to feel like my feelings are important to you.’”