#institutions

[philosophybits]

Our age reminds one of the dissolution of the Greek city-state: Everything goes on as usual and yet there is no longer anyone who believes in it. The invisible spiritual bond which gives it validity, no longer exists, and so the whole age is at once comic and tragic — tragic because it is perishing, comic because it goes on.

Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or

[thirdity]

The Empire is the institution, the codification, of derangement; it is insane and imposes its insanity on us by violence, since its nature is a violent one. To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement. This is a paradox; whoever defeats a segment of the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus, imposing its form on its enemies. Thereby it becomes its enemies.

Philip K. Dick, VALIS

[allthecanadianpolitics]

N.S. advocates say province has failed to consult as it overhauls disability support - Halifax | Globalnews.ca

Advocates for Nova Scotians with disabilities say the provincial government has failed to consult with people affected by an overhaul of hou

Advocates for Nova Scotians with disabilities say the provincial government has failed to consult with people affected by an overhaul of housing support and other services. Victoria Levack, who lives with cerebral palsy, and Anne Louise Desrosiers, who takes care of her son with Williams syndrome, both shared their concerns about a lack of consultation on the provincial plan to move people with disabilities out of institutions and off wait-lists for community housing after watching government officials speak at an all-party committee Tuesday. Levack questioned whether people with disabilities are being excluded from the conversation. “Not all disabilities are visible, but it seemed like there was nobody with actual experience living with a disability talking at the meeting today. Where were we?” Levack said in an interview Tuesday.

Read more.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[mostlysignssomeportents]

You can’t save an institution by betraying its mission

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in SAN DIEGO at MYSTERIOUS GALAXY on Mar 24, and in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on Apr 2. More tour dates here.

Paula Le Dieu is one of the smartest, most committed archivists I know. Many years ago, she shared a neat analogy with me about the paywalling of public archives, a phenomenon that has become rampant as public institutions have been pushed to seek private funding to close the gaps left by swingeing cuts.

Closing up these archives in order to give these new "investors" a chance to make their money back is pitched as just "good business." But – as Paula pointed out – this isn't how business works at all! If you are an early-stage investor to a startup, providing patient capital in its early stages, then later investors don't get to zero out your shares. If a museum or public broadcaster is a business, then the public is the early investor, and their share is access. Taking away free access is tantamount to wiping out our investment.

But of course, public institutions aren't businesses, and they don't exist to make profits. They exist to serve the public interest. If your public health system, public education system, public archives, public museum or public parks are making a profit, then something is desperately wrong.

Managers of these public institutions forget this lesson at their peril. Every public institution eventually faces an existential funding crisis, and when that crisis strikes, the only thing that will save you is public support. Back in 2014, I got to speak to a group of curators about this when I keynoted the Museums and the Web conference in Florence:

https://mwf2014.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/glam-and-the-free-world/index.html

Since then, I've had many chances to talk with Paula about her views on archiving in these apocalyptic times. She's come up with a crisp formulation of the point I tried to make in that speech – when archives trade access off for preservation, they sign their own death warrants. As I said in my speech, if you don't maximize public access to your archive, then there will come a day when they take away your funding and the public won't care because you locked them out of their own collection. When that happens, all your careful preservation work will be used to prepare the auction catalog for the sale of your collection to the "philanthropic" billionaires who insisted that you lock up the collection in the first place. Your meticulous documentation will become the manifest for a shipping container full of formerly public treasures that will henceforth reside in a lightless, climate-controlled warehouse in the Geneva Freeport.

My conversations with Paula came back to me this weekend when I listened to Corey Rubin talking with Brooke Gladstone on NPR's On the Media, about the universities that are seeking to avert Trump's attacks by sacrificing students and faculty who spoke out against Israel's genocidal attacks on Palestine:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/articles/mahmoud-khalil-and-a-new-red-scare-plus-press-freedom-under-threat

From Columbia's complicity in the kidnapping of green card holder Mahmoud Khalil, a grad student now held in immigration detention in Louisiana; to Yale professor Helyeh Doutaghi, suspended because an AI-driven pro-Israel site hallucinated a connection between her and Hamas:

https://coreyrobin.com/2025/03/15/mccarthyism-at-yale-then-and-now/

These institutions – and others, like the LA Children's Hospital, which halted gender-affirming care for trans kids – aren't merely "complying in advance." They are betraying their mission in order to save their bacon:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-02-04/childrens-hospital-to-stop-initiating-hormonal-therapy-for-trans-patients-under-19

This will come back to bite them in the ass. This is like firefighters doing a bit of arson on the side to make ends meet, and thinking that the townsfolk will continue to vote to maintain their budget.

I get it: it's damned easy to convince yourself that you need to destroy the village to save it. By "living to fight another day," you will get more chances to serve the public. Rationalization is a hell of a drug:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

Trump and his fascist movement wont't let up on their assault against institutions that support free inquiry, care, justice and openness. Rolling over for them now will not keep you safe tomorrow. But with every betrayal, these institutions alienate more and more of the public, without whose support they are ultimately doomed. Supporters will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no supporters.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/19/selling-out/#destroy-the-village-to-save-it

Image: Ajay Suresh https://www.flickr.com/photos/ajay_suresh/52009406881/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[catandgirlcomic]

A crab walks in.

[francepittoresque]

IL Y A 221 ANS | Numérotation des maisons de la ville de Paris ➽ http://bit.ly/Numerotage-Rues-Paris Le 4 février 1805, Paris se dote d’une grille métrique urbaine rigoureuse. Un décret instaure une suite unique par rue, pairs à droite, impairs à gauche, orientée par le flux de la Seine, les numéros étant peints à l'huile, en noir ou rouge sur fond ocre, suivant l'orientation des rues, le tout à la charge de la commune de Paris

[palatinewolfsblog]

"The real problem of humanity is the following:

We have Paleolithic emotions,

medieval institutions,

and godlike technology."

- E. O. Wilson

The Human Condition (for my old Friend @acommonloon ).