The Collins Concrete Murals

Today, I learned of the existence of the artists Henry Collins and Joyce Pallot Collins, who created concrete public murals in the U.K. between 1969 and about 1980. 

It started from this thread on BlueSky, which asked:

Does anyone know of a definitive list of the concrete murals of Henry Collins and Joyce Pallot? This Surbiton example is a favourite of mine, and their work in places like Colchester (where they were based), Southampton and Newcastle is well known. But what of the rest?

A couple of the Surbiton images that were shared:

Responses led a number of places, especially this site about their work in the city where they spent their life together and began doing murals, Colchester. 

The page about the Collinses on that site says,

They understood the public context of the work and employed an array of unlikely tools including spoons, spanners and even a nutmeg grater to produce a variety of finishes. The texture of the work was important to its overall look, while also discouraging graffiti.

Some visual samples of those varying textures:

A number of their murals are no longer in existence, while others have been moved, some restored, and others exist in degraded condition, given their age. This one in Gloucester is in the latter category:

There are a few more photos, including a close-up of it, in the BlueSky thread. 

The Collinses' murals appear to be an under-appreciated part of Britain's visual culture, if it takes a thread on BlueSky to pull together a thorough list of their murals. 

My speculation is that it comes from a combination of elite bias against the concrete medium and the locations, since the vast majority of their work is not located in London.

Some of the linked pages with images:

• Pallot and Collins Murals – Bexhill on Sea
• Joyce Pallot and Henry Collins – Gwent House Cwmbran (southeast Wales)  (keep scrolling on this page for the best photos)
• Droitwich Spa since Roman Times, St Andrews Shopping Centre, Droitwich, Worcestershire 
• Hitchin History Mural, Paynes Park, Hitchin, Hertfordshire 
• Cowley's Concrete Mural (near Oxford) 

Rush to Grab Power Before the November Elections

One name: Russell Vought. 

He wants to put himself (or people he controls) in charge of deciding how all the U.S. government's grant money — our taxpayer money — is spent. All of it: not just scientific grants. Yes, really.

Here are a couple of pieces about this proposed rule change, which is clearly illegal, but that means nothing these days: 

• A brief bit on Science Friday from today. 
• A story in The Nation, which should be accessible if you sign up for a free account. 
• And this thread on BlueSky by the author of The Nation story, epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves.

I'm going to quote Gonsalves's thread in full, because it's in keeping with why he wrote the thread:

Russell Vought is an evil man. This plan is nothing short of a personal take-over of federal grant-making. It will affect ALL of us. Political commissars will now be in charge of all agencies, reporting to him. But we are not powerless. See what you can do below.

First, write a letter to Congress. Personalize it. Get your friends and family to do the same. Will take 2–3 minutes of your time. 

Next write a comment on the proposed rule BEFORE July 13th. If you're not a scientist, this post explains what's at stake for your community here [and has great instructions and the comment link at the end].

If you are a scientist, this post has a primer for that too! 

This piece on Forbes also has a great piece about how the rule will affect your community.

And people need to know about this new proposed OMB rule. Consider writing an op-ed for your local paper.

This is it folks. All hands on deck. We need everyone now working to stop this. Please, please spread the word. Get five, better yet ten friends to take action.  

As the non-scientist explainer linked above put it,

Federal grants are not peripheral to how states and communities function. They represent, on average, 36 cents of every dollar a state spends. This rule puts that entire financial partnership between the federal government and the states under political control, without an act of Congress, effective October 1, 2026.

Vought's minions will be able to terminate any granted program at any time for any or no reason. New programs, of course, will have to align with Trump's ideology. Of course, all of the usual "anti-woke" words are used in the rule-making, so it's pretty clear what will not be funded.

The availability of grants will not be open and public, so — surprise! — this is an additional opportunity for graft. There will be no appeal process when applications are denied, and "organizational affiliation" can be used as the basis for denial. 

As usual, I find myself outraged that we need to write specifically formatted comments explaining to our government why it should not be trying to kill its people and destroy the infrastructure our tax dollars have been spent on for decades. But that's where we're at under the Trump regime as they rush to grab power before the November elections.

Write comments, write to Congress, write everywhere.
 

Three Stories About Policing

Three things I saw today about policing.

Police are not primarily crime fighters, according to the data (from Reuters):

U.S. police spend much of their time conducting racially biased stops and searches of minority drivers, often without reasonable suspicion, rather than “fighting crime.”

Overall, sheriff patrol officers spend significantly more time on officer-initiated stops – “proactive policing” in law enforcement parlance – than they do responding to community members’ calls for help, according to the report. Research has shown that the practice is a fundamentally ineffective public safety strategy, the report pointed out....

Here's a fine example of exactly that from our local press. Don't let the slightly weird headline fool you: Hennepin County sheriff conceals bodycam footage by calling officers 'undercover.' A 26-year-old Black Minneapolis man was stopped by two Hennepin County sheriffs for no reason. They assaulted him, arrested him, and charged him — even though all of this was witnessed and recorded by other people. The story is about whether their body camera footage should be considered privileged as part of them being undercover (even though they were wearing the word SHERIFF on their vests) but the basics of the story are part of the egregious pattern described in the Reuters report. 

And then there's this: 

American police killings are rising, even as murder rates fall (from The Economist). More aggressive cops are less restrained. 

Two Podcasts Make a Pair

I've mentioned the War on Cars podcast just a few times since I started listening to it in 2024 (here and here).

Two of its recent episodes are excellent.

One is called Changing Lanes. That's the title of a documentary that tells the story of what it has taken to win the electoral and policy fight to rebuild a dangerous car-oriented boulevard in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. There are many lessons in their experience, and it sounds like even more can be learned from the documentary – so I hope to be able to see it soon.

The most recent episode is with Ian Loader, Oxford University professor of criminology. It's called Rethinking Criminal Consequences for Drivers Who Kill. 

Contrary to what one might expect of a biking advocate, Loader does not want drivers to take more criminal responsibility within the current system. These are his concluding words in the podcast, but to understand what he means, you really have to listen to the whole thing:

The standard chain of logic with how we deal with road safety at the moment goes something like this: that driving is basically safe. It only becomes unsafe if individuals do it dangerously. And then therefore the chain of intervention goes something like: individual responsibility [to] enforcement [to] punishment. 

My alternative goes something like: the starting point is that mass motoring is a system of harm production even when people are driving carefully and considerately. And that the chain of intervention should be: start with systems, think about structure, and then bad driving has consequences — not necessarily punishment.

How we get any of the types of changes Loader describes to happen is the main problem. The work described in the Changing Lanes is part of the solution.

Today, Ugh

I'm overwhelmed by today's bad news (multi-decade sentences to the Prairieland defendants in Texas and multiple 6–3 SCOTUS decisions that wipe out various civil rights for everyone except corporations). The destruction continues.

I need to finish reading The Overstory, which is excellent but anti-escapist, and find something more diverting. 

The World Cup is not my thing, so I don't have that to fall back on. 

I must spend more time outside, and talk to more people. 

How to survive in the present moment.

Sometimes You Just Have to Say It

In the past few days, Facebook has shown me a couple of statements that resonate with the political situation we are in. First, this:



It reminded me of things said by people who live in completely Republican-dominated states. 

For instance, a few days ago, Jess Piper @piperformissouri.bsky.social posted this:

It’s wild to talk to folks about Missouri only to hear someone blame “the Democrats.” What Democrats? We’ve had a Republican legislative supermajority for over two decades and haven’t had a statewide elected Dem since 2018. Everything you see in this state is due to Republican authoritarianism.

That's in keeping with posts Piper has made at other times: whatever ills exist in Missouri, Republicans clearly have been in complete power for long enough that they have had every chance to at least begin to fix them. Instead, just about every measure of human well-being has gotten worse: schools, roads, health care, air. (They've had a trifecta since 2017, and controlled both houses of the Legislature continuously since 2003. When there was a Democratic governor between 2009–2016, all he could do was veto things, not pass anything positive.)

Lyz Lenz has said the same about life in Iowa since Republicans have dominated over the past decade. Everything has gotten worse for everyone since a Republicans became governor in 2011 and particularly since their trifecta began in 2017. 

And now we, of course, have the same thing on a national level. Alexander Ross @hardpolitics.bsky.social wrote this today:

Our country is tolerating Donald Trump presiding over severe national decline because the majority of white voters (who vote Republican) thought living under a Black president was worse than this. Not a popular or media-savvy assessment... it's also not wrong either.

Here's the second thing from Facebook:



We have to get these people out of office as soon as possible.

Late

The day got away with me. 

I spent part of it (re)watching Gosford Park, which I remember liking when it came out in 2001, but as is often the case with me, I had almost no memory of it. Lots of English people at a country house. Sometimes I had trouble understanding what they were saying. 

Now I see it through the lens of Downton Abbey, not surprisingly since it was written by Julian Fellowes. 

And I think there were too many aristocrat characters and not enough attention paid to the mechanics of character differentiation. How many bland, young blond men do you need to cast, really?

I do like to see Helen Mirren playing characters who aren't glamorous, though. That was nice.

Surely It's Pure Talent

Kristen Gillbrand should resign.

She's a good example of why Democrats like Angie Craig should not be in office when we here in Minnesota have a choice for U.S. Senate, if we are to overhaul what's wrong with this government. 

Obviously, Trump and the Republicans in Congress who have gone beyond enabling him are worse, if that's what the choice comes down to, but the corruption of corporatism, finance, and tech have gone beyond the Republicans.

The son of Sen. Gillibrand (an established crypto-booster) has just raised $30 million to set up his own digital asset exchange. His startup company has been valued at $300 million. Based on what? 

Well, gee, it must be the fact that he's 22 years old and graduated from Stanford a few days ago, is in bed with Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, and his mother is a U.S. Senator. (Story here.)

Probably mostly that last one led to the other ones, ya think? 

Four Chance Encounters in the World

I recently spent most of an hour early on a Sunday evening standing on a corner where two relatively busy streets in Saint Paul intersect.

The two most interesting sets of passersby I saw: 

1) Two parents, ambiguously gendered, walking a leashed miniature Samoyed as their 4-year-old son drove a tiny electric convertible Hummer while wearing a white dress shirt, black tie, and brown shorts.

I really wanted to take a photo of the family, but of course did not. 

2) A guy (I assume it was a guy) wearing a Scream mask, driving a red crotchrocket motorcycle. He sat across from me at the signal, revving his engine, for an uncomfortable length of time as far as I was concerned. I thought he would run the light, but he didn't. When it finally turned green and he roared away, I could see that he had a baseball bat strapped across the back of his seat.

I thought about calling the non-emergency cop number, and if I'd gotten his plate number, maybe I would have because what the heck? Was he going to softball practice wearing a Scream mask... or planning to bust some windows?

I also experienced:

A guy who yelled out the window of his car to me, "Fuck Trump and fuck the Jews!" So that was unexpected, and obviously disconcerting.

There was also a somewhat older, maybe somehow disabled guy on an Army-green ebike who went behind me on the bike path. As he passed, he said, "Yeah I agree with you. [Referring to the No Kings sign I was holding.] That's why we left Europe." I acknowledged him. 

As he rode out onto the street, he called back, "It's why I don't pay taxes anymore. You can't tell where they go" — or something like that.

20 minutes or so later, he came back past in the other direction and commented again about how he doesn't have to pay taxes anymore, and how you can't tell where the money goes. 

Whatever, man. If you aren't paying taxes and you're supposed to be, you're playing a dangerous game. It's pretty much only the rich who get away with it in the long run. And definitely don't go bragging about it to random people when you're out in public. 

On the other hand, if you don't need to pay taxes because your income is low enough that you don't need to file, that's fine, but don't say it's because we can't tell where the money goes. It's because you're poor. 

I still wish I had a photo of the family with the Hummer-driving kid wearing a tie.

Honorifics

I saw these two posts on BlueSky a couple of days ago:

Guy at the pyramids called after me “sir!” No response “maam!” No response, after a few seconds he tries again “cousin!” I think we’ve cracked it. There is a gender neutral honorific.
Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social

We really do need a gender-neutral honorific. I'm pretty good with pronouns, but I grew up in the South, and "Thank you, ma'am," "Thank you, sir" just flow on out of my mouth with no input from the brain.
 Fiddler Meg

Which was interesting enough, but the thing I came away thinking was, Wow, English has a category of words called "honorifics," and I recognize that term. When did I learn that word and why don't I remember learning it? And then, What a weird word it is. Sure, the "honor" part is clear, but "ific"? It sounds like something out of a super hero comic book.

I am not surprised to learn that many (maybe most) other languages also have honorifics. We are status-oriented bunch of homo sapiens who need to know who belongs where. There's even a name for anti-honorific first-person usages, which are called humilific. One example is the phrase "this unworthy person." 

As I suspected, there are some people who are not into honorifics, favoring egalitarianism in speech. Examples given on the Wikipedia page are Quakers, some socialists, and people during the French Revolution. 

Calling a person you don't know "cousin" seems to be in that vein, perhaps unwittingly. 

A Land of Not-Extremes

As the World Cup was getting underway, I guess a lot of Europeans were posting to social media about how hot it is here in various parts of North America. A few days ago, Kendra Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com put this on BlueSky: 

The reason many Western Europeans don't believe North Americans (including Canadians!) when we say our weather is not something to fuck with is tied to New World degeneracy theory. It's from the 18th century from a dude who never set foot here and posits everything in the New World is weaker.

Which was interesting enough, and there were several responses that were worth reading. But the one that really got my attention was this from someone named karpad:

Fun fact: the record coldest it has ever been in England is the same record cold it has ever been in Louisiana. The hottest it has ever been in England is about the same as the hottest it has ever been in Alaska. America is huge and our weather is extreme and Europe has no frame of reference

England, of course, is in no way the whole of Europe (where there are clearly more temperature extremes than that), but that sure does give you an idea of how much the Atlantic Ocean moderates temperatures. It's not much different from the Pacific Northwest, and for the same reason. 
 

Fifteen People Charged in Minnesota

Quoting Minneapolis City Council Member Robin Wonsley:

Instead of arresting the murderers of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the FBI was out today targeting our neighbors for standing up to ICE.

This is an act of political repression meant to intimidate and terrorize us for keeping our communities safe from violent federal agents this winter.

Trump sent masked secret police to terrorize our community and occupy our city. Across the world, Minneapolis residents are seen as heroes for the ways we resisted fascism. Our collective bravery and solidarity exposed the true costs of the Trump administration’s fascist playbook.

Now, with the tide of public opinion working against Trump, they are turning to legal retaliation to deflect from their massive failure to improve quality of life for working class people. The retaliatory tactics this administration is using today are frightening – but they are a sign of weakness.

In Minneapolis we are proud that everyday people on the ground took action to stand with our immigrant neighbors. Observation of law enforcement is not a crime. Protecting our neighbors against unconstitutional violence is not a crime. Standing up for and loving our neighbors is not a crime.

To everyone who has observed, responded to, and organized around ICE and federal agents’ illegal and violent actions: know that we are all with you and in this struggle together. We did not stand for ICE's occupation and we will not stand for blatant legal intimidation.

The U.S. Attorney and the rest of the feds at today's press conference don't care that two people are dead at the hands of their employees. They know who those killers are, and where they are. Instead, they're arresting people who were trying to stop this country's march into fascism.