Finished writing an article on Meccan (and by extension Saudi) urbanism and ended up creating an urban planning tool as an afterthought. Still improving this heavily to see where I can take it.
Developing an alternative to Goodreads with (1) a better, more modern UI, (2) voice integration so notes may be taken on the fly whilst reading, (3) an in-house Obsidian/Zettelkasten so that connections may be drawn in the same place, and (4) LLM integration for easier search.
Results as expected. Boomers are naturally idiots, but the 18-29 range and its steep decline from 1972 is fun to witness. Note that it’s also capped at 2024—almost two full years for further frustration on Gaza and with Iran, it inevitably went even lower.
I’m like Frank Lloyd Wright in that I’m building whatever. The plan is to write on American monocultural exports and its success in mimesis versus its free-fall now and similarities to the late-stage USSR. Had some data to play around with, so making something detailed.
An integral aspect of community-building and general social happiness is having a walkable city which comes with reduced car-reliance. Any city planning must first and foremost be based on Kierkegaard’s maxim.
Have been playing around with Claude to build a high-level platform on urban planning. The lower levels need to be tackled for perfection of course but so far I like it.
