The creative destruction of capitalism, or something

It’s true! I was just back in Altadena, and drove through whole areas of empty house lots surrounded by surviving trees. Though some tree species are especially flammable, overall they are far more likely to survive than structures, and houses generated the embers that fueled the fire’s spread.

Hilarious! As a 70s-80s Gen X kid, I’m fairly sure my chemical makeup is 1/3 lead, 1/3 microplastics, and 1/3 freakishly unnatural food dyes concocted by sketchy chemical plants in New Jersey

Though fires can ignite in open space, these are fundamentally structure fires in built environments, moving house to house as individual houses ignite and generate embers that can fly for miles, igniting other structures. Effectively fireproofing houses means neighborhoods will survive. (3/3)

In multiple California fires, houses have burned while trees survived. They aren’t a primary fire vector, but they provide shade, cooling, and important habitat. Fireproofing houses against flying embers and eliminating definitely flammable materials around them is a much better strategy. (2/3)

All the good passwords must’ve been stolen by the British Museum

One of the few things I miss from Twitter is the NYTinLA account, which mixed grim pronouncements about poor LA City governance in SoCal places *not* in LA, and things like “HAVE BEEN TOLD OF QUAINT VILLAGE TO THE SOUTH, “San Diego;” WILL INVESTIGATE

The blathering, oblivious certainty was PERFECT

I’m sooooo glad the tech and finance bros are conspiring to engineer the 5th “once in a lifetime” economic crisis of my life — and giving us climate disaster as a bonus!

At the end, Shelley has her Arctic explorer make a different choice than Frankenstein, who loses everything. Instead, he returns home with his crew, rather than forsaking all their lives in the name of ego-driven discovery she likely perceived as male vanity.(4/4)

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/m...

The film offers Frankenstein and his Creature redemption, which the novel withholds. After committing his first murder, the Creature exults, “I too can create desolation.”

It might be an epitaph for our technologically adept but emotionally bereft era. We certainly destroy; creation is harder.(3)

The new film is perhaps best enjoyed as a baroque elaboration on the book, often gorgeous on the big screen—even if the director’s affection for the story makes him shy away from the darkness at the heart of Shelley‘s novel. As this article illustrates, Mary had sorrows and darkness aplenty. (2)