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Josh Wallaert

@jwlrt.bsky.social
185 followers 704 following 38 posts

Editor, writer. Kinda quiet. New here and I'll probably read more than talk. Bikes, streets, music, ethics + infrastructures of care, SF Bay.

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Josh Wallaert @jwlrt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I have such love for my weird, personal corners of the internet. I don't know how many times a week I google single curly quote and hop on over to typographyforlawyers to copy-paste this lil guy ‘ There are faster ways, I guess, but I like the ritual.
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Billy Fleming @joobilly.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Had a great time yapping with @dianabudds.bsky.social about my new book, the broken state of design, and the kinds of better, postcarbon worlds we can still build in @fastcompany.com www.fastcompany.com/91612547/pos...
fastcompany.com
Our post-carbon future is already here—if you know where to look
A new book by the landscape architect Billy Fleming illustrates how communities have successfully addressed decarbonization and climate justice.
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Éireann @eireannmor.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
In classrooms we have the perfect situation for this. Collaboration, sharing, improvising, imagining, practicing collective ownership are all within our powers there. We make real whatever we do together. Play from the ground up
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Places Journal @placesjournal.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
“The conversation we should be having isn’t even really about wildfire policy. It’s about how we distribute risk; about who is allowed to profit from dangerous landscapes, who is wealthy enough to live with exposure, and who is left to absorb the consequences after catastrophe.” —Emily Schlickman
placesjournal.org
When Fire Returns
Two wildfires ravaged the same California hills, 50 years apart. Can we continue to build, and rebuild, on land that will inevitably burn again?
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Jacob Kushner @jacobkushner.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
For 3 years, I followed one community through an endless cycle of floods, demolitions, and evictions, in a single Nairobi slum. For @placesjournal.bsky.social, my deep dive into how the city's poorest residents are being evicted in the name of "climate resilience" placesjournal.org/article/doub...
placesjournal.org
Doubly Displaced
Fleeing floods and drought in rural areas, Kenyans find precarious refuge along Nairobi rivers. Now, residents say the city’s Climate Action Plan is being weaponized against them.
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Billy Fleming @joobilly.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
I'm over in my favorite European design mag, Landezine, this week to talk about my new book (due out in 2 weeks!), design culture and capitalism, and the small but important role we might play in responding to the climate crisis. landezine.com/building-pos...
landezine.com
Billy Fleming: We Need a Wider Aperture – Landscape Architecture Platform | Landezine
Interview with Billy Fleming on landscape architecture’s service to capital and what design could become in a just postcarbon transition: moving beyond he…
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Josh Wallaert @jwlrt.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Good find! I've updated the link in the Places article to point to the Wayback page.
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Josh Wallaert @jwlrt.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
I choose to believe Mamdani's people knew what they were doing when they set up that 'Wheels' verse on Day 9 of his administration. They knew they were going to need it.
static.klipy.com
Mamdani Prasshant
Alt: Mamdani crying on the bus meme with Ms Rachel
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Sam Bloch @samkbloch.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Sickening new study from ASU about data center waste heat * Discharge warm air 14-25 degrees above normal * Equivalent to 40,000 household emissions * Raise air temperature by 4 degrees within five city blocks * Which leads to more AC cranking and more waste heat news.asu.edu/20260518-env...
news.asu.edu
Turning down the heat from data centers | ASU News
Heat pollution from data centers can boost air temperatures in downwind neighborhoods by as much as 4 degrees Fahrenheit, researchers at Arizona State University report in a new study conducted in the...
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Josh Wallaert @jwlrt.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Oh this is special! "One day I woke up with the vision of a very yellow field, a long strip of yellow, that would be the equivalent of the duration of forsythia blooming (and the same color). ... These drawings became a way of telling time (time to draw, drawing time; spring time)."
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NiCHE Canada @nichecanada.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
"Guts are a collaboration between animal, land, and the logistics of bodies." - New from @maxliboiron.bsky.social, @clear-lab.bsky.social, in @placesjournal.bsky.social! placesjournal.org/article/thro... #plastics #envhist #science #water
placesjournal.org
Through the Guts
What can plastic fragments found in an animal’s digestive tract tell us about the waters it has traversed?
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Places Journal @placesjournal.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
What can plastic fragments found in an animal’s digestive tract tell us about the geographies it has traversed? For Places, @maxliboiron.bsky.social wrote about the different world animals reveal through their appetites. “The heart of gut forensics is not classification, but learning how to see.”
placesjournal.org
Through the Guts
What can plastic fragments found in an animal’s digestive tract tell us about the waters it has traversed?
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Oakland Review of Books @oaklandreviewofbooks.org · 27/05/2026
"Please do not hang out in the street!" Let Jessalyn Aaland take you on a tour of the Oakland DIY music spaces of her early 21st century... www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/please-do-no...
oaklandreviewofbooks.org
Please do not hang out in the street
Oakland DIY music spaces of the early 21st century.
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Oakland Review of Books @oaklandreviewofbooks.org · 30/05/2026
Seeing like a machine! Alex Park reads Trevor Paglen's new book on AI images: www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/trevor-pagle...
oaklandreviewofbooks.org
AI’s empty head can see only the apple
In his new book, Trevor Paglen tries to look through a machine's eyes.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
A devastating and tender piece by Mohammad Nahleh on the hideousness of Israel's war on Lebanon, on Iran, and on everything and everyone in the Middle East that won't bow down to its supermacist will.
If children in southern Lebanon first struggled to parse this cosmic clash of Iranian stars and Israeli interceptors, they track it now — in the wake of the United States and Israel’s ongoing attacks on Iran — as seasoned observers. That fluency follows a deep history, as generations here have learned to interpret the sky in synergy with the expansion of the U.S. arsenal. I was born in the same year that the U.S. Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter began to be used by the Israeli military. 4 In the cool nights of our hometown of Taybeh when I was a child, the Black Hawk inhabited my thoughts alongside other predators. I had never seen one. But I heard them often, and they lived in the stories elders told by the hearth, which gave form to the new dangers spreading across the borderland.
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dubravka @dubravka.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
another incredible text by Mohamad Nahleh - can't recommend his "purging of a wretched empire" enough averyreview.com/issues/71/pu...
averyreview.com
The Avery Review | Purging a Wretched Empire
The Avery Review is an online journal dedicated to thinking about books, buildings, and other architectural media.
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Josh Wallaert @jwlrt.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
I mean, look at this photo! By the time I got here my brain was melting like the light leaking through the windshield, and I was just thankful Mohamad Nahleh had the wheel.
A photo from "Empire Loves a Dark Sky," by Mohamed Nahleh, captioned "U.S. Highway 67 between McDonald Observatory and Odessa, Texas, February 20, 2026." Most of the image is black, except for a narrow band illuminated by the headlights of a vehicle traveling on a two-lane rural highway. The photo is taken from inside the vehicle, and there are optical distortions, perhaps caused by light reflecting off the windshield. It looks like a nightmare.
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Josh Wallaert @jwlrt.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
...eating Lebanese food in Texas, eating Bullseye BBQ in Lebanon, diagramming the operations of empire, witnessing "a theater of abundance amid ruin." The cowboys boast they have made the sky dark so they can own the night.
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Josh Wallaert @jwlrt.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
...are underwritten by petrostate collaborators. Here is the Texas railroad commission that issues flare exceptions for the oil wells mapped by a comic book illustrator. Here is the writer driving through the night, toward the Black Hawk base, toward the telescope gift shop...
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Josh Wallaert @jwlrt.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
...to a raptor, whose percussive wings a child in southern Lebanon learns to fear, as adults read the sky to know whether the harvest will be interrupted by war. Or here is the first International Dark Sky Reserve to span an international border, where the astronomers' reveries...
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Josh Wallaert @jwlrt.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
I had to stop so many times while reading this to rewire my brain. Like (*spoilers*) here is the 1977 Army contest "Name That Bird," through which Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak is assimilated by his oppressors, his name inscribed in the Black Hawk helicopter, returned through the Arabic translation...
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
As a very proud UCP author, I'm delighted to support the peopIe who helped publish my book in their effort to unionize. Help them out by signing their petition here: We’re the UCP Workers Guild. Help our union get recognized! . Write one here: actionnetwork.org/letters/were...
actionnetwork.org
We’re the UCP Workers Guild. Help our union get recognized!
The University of Chicago Press produces and distributes books and journals that meet the highest standards of scholarship, foster public understanding, and enrich cultural life. For over 130 years, p...
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Zach Mortice @zachmortice.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
On the "pedestrian purgatory" of the pedway: "Limbo is a waiting room — a liminal space, of which the Pedway has plenty — but in Purgatory there is a job to do."
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Amanda Kolson Hurley @amandakhurley.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
Love this, wish the reason for the commission were different
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Places Journal @placesjournal.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Urban historian Stathis G. Yeros will be in San Francisco next week to talk about his recent book, QUEERING URBANISM, from @ucpress.bsky.social. "Combining urban history, architectural critique, and queer and trans theories," the book traces a history of insurgent spaces in the fight for justice.
glbthistory.org
Upcoming Events — GLBT Historical Society
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Caroline Tracey @cetracey.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
SALT LAKES is in the latest issue of @nybooks.com! www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
nybooks.com
This Bitter Earth | Rosa Lyster
The world’s salt lakes are the canary in the coal mine for the climate crisis, and they are shrinking at a drastic rate.
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Josh Wallaert @jwlrt.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
It's getting great reviews! bsky.app/profile/tres...
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Marc Hedlund @marcprecipice.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
This is enraging as a cyclist who depends on bike lanes for my family’s safety and the safety of everyone. More broadly, this is a worrying pattern: gaining trust with safe behavior and then becoming less safe over time.
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Billy Fleming @joobilly.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
It's Earth Day, which means you should preorder my new book, "Building Postcarbon Futures: Land, Justice, and Energy Transitions." cup.columbia.edu/book/buildin...
cup.columbia.edu
Building Postcarbon Futures | Columbia University Press
What would a postcarbon future look like? How would a more just, decarbonized world require us to change the way we live? What would it take to build this wo... | CUP
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Gillian Brockell @gillianbrockell.com · 22/04/2026
Pulitzer-worthy reporting here from Minnesota immigrant news @sahanjournal.bsky.social. 70+ children detained during Operation MetroSurge. 30 sent to Dilley. Two dozen held >20 days, a Flores violation. 7 still detained as of March 10. ~20 have been deported. sahanjournal.com/immigration/...
sahanjournal.com
ICE detained more than 70 Minnesota children, data reveals
Immigration officials detained more than 70 Minnesota children between Dec. 1 and March 10, a Sahan analysis of court records and federal deportation data shows.
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Josh Wallaert @jwlrt.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
2010s: Two mayoral administrations spend ten years fighting an [alleged] billionaire who removes seating in his Privately Owned Public Space [sic]. They win $14,000 in fines. Security guards continue to turn people away from public terraces. "They're closed," with a wink. (see footnote 82)
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Josh Wallaert @jwlrt.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
1901: Days of rioting after NYC removes Central Park benches during a heat wave. Private rocking chairs smashed. Rent-to-sit attendant chased off by a woman with a hat pin. Crowd tosses police officer into a pond. The people win funding for 5,000 new free benches. A usable past!
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Josh Wallaert @jwlrt.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
an honor! Thank you for this powerful & important work.
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Charmaine Chua @charmainechua.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Why is ICE buying so many warehouses, and what does this have to do with the warehouse's shifting place in the US economy? In Places Journal, I chronicle the long arc of Warehousing's carceral geography and the speculative building boom that ICE is absorbing. placesjournal.org/article/the-...
placesjournal.org
The Warehouse, in Plain Sight
That concrete box off the freeway wasn’t designed for storage so much as capture. It’s a disappearing machine. We need to see it clearly.
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Josh Wallaert @jwlrt.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
For me, this article shows the power of a general strike aimed at ICE warehouse conversions. Look at Salt Lake City. If the Teamsters driving UPS trucks out of the hub on S 6400 W develop a certain kind of solidarity with immigrants detained on W 300 S, they could jam things up pretty good.
Satellite photo of the industrial fringe of Salt Lake City, showing surplus land between the airport, railyard, and a copper tailings pond at the edge of the Great Salt Lake. A pin at 6020 W 300 S shows the latest warehouse bought by the US government, for conversion into an ICE detention facility.Images from the real estate listing for 6020 W 300 S, Salt Lake City, the latest ICE warehouse purchase. One image is a satellite map with labels for nearby warehouses (Costco, Sephora, DHL, etc.) and infrastructures (the airport and freeway exits). The other image shows a huge empty warehouse space, with a concrete floor, high ceiling, harsh lighting, and dozens of loading docks.
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Josh Wallaert @jwlrt.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
"The ships, the trucks, the loading docks: these are containers of immiserated labor, and so they are also containers of revolutionary potential," says @charmainechua.bsky.social.
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Leah Sottile @leahsottile.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Last week, a worker one of Amazon's Portland area facilities died on the warehouse floor. Employees were told to look away and keep working. A new story by @ryanjhaas.bsky.social for @thewesternedge.bsky.social - reporting this news first. www.thewesternedge.media/p/everyone-i...
thewesternedge.media
‘Everyone is Replaceable’: Death Rattles Oregon Amazon Facility
A worker died at Amazon’s Troutdale warehouse last week. Employees were told to look away.
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Oakland Review of Books @oaklandreviewofbooks.org · 08/04/2026
"Black sonic politics in Oakland, in nine sounds," a playlist. By Alex Werth (as told to Tommy Craggs): www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/black-sonic-...
oaklandreviewofbooks.org
Black sonic politics in Oakland, in nine sounds
A playlist.
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s. e. smith @sesmith.lol · 07/04/2026
A @kimkelly.bsky.social byline is always an automatic click for me but this @orionmagazine.bsky.social piece on building solidarity across climate and labor is SO GOOD.
orionmagazine.org
All for One - Orion Magazine
The urgent need for solidarity between the climate and labor movements
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404 Media @404media.co · 19/03/2026
YouTube documentarian Chris Parr, who grew up not too far from North Oaks, set out to change that earlier this year. For a brief few days, after recording the area with a drone, he literally put North Oaks on the map. Then it was gone again.
404media.co
Mapping Google's Unmappable City
How filmmaker Chris Parr put North Oaks, Minnesota on the map.
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Safe Street Rebel @safestreetrebel.com · 17/03/2026
We’re back. Two weeks ago, a driver killed a 2 year-old child at 4th and Channel—the third pedestrian fatality of 2026. Since then, all SFMTA has done was repaint the existing crosswalks for a photo op. So the community took matters into our own hands.
Photo showing a curb extension installed by community members directly in front of the memorial for the child who was killed at the intersection two weeks prior.
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Oakland Review of Books @oaklandreviewofbooks.org · 10/03/2026
it's a movement!
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Places Journal @placesjournal.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
The mutual aid networks that keep people safe in South Minneapolis were forged across decades of organizing, uniting activists through expansive visions of community care. This work — of showing up for others, defending neighbors from violence + dispossession — lies at the heart of queer abolition.
placesjournal.org
The Long Fire at Lake and Minnehaha
The mutual aid networks keeping people safe in South Minneapolis were forged through decades of organizing around expansive visions of community care. This is the work of queer abolition.
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Places Journal @placesjournal.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
The Long Fire at Lake and Minnehaha: Sexual Policing, Settler Colonialism, and the Minneapolis Uprising An Arcus/Places Prize Lecture from @myrlbeam.bsky.social, on building a queer abolitionist politics in South Minneapolis. 📅 February 25, 2026 6:00pm PT 📍 Bauer Wurster Hall, UC Berkeley CED
ced.berkeley.edu
Myrl Beam: The Long Fire: Sexual Policing, Settler Colonialism, and the Minneapolis Uprising | Arcus/Places Prize Lecture - UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design
In this talk, Myrl Beam traces the powerful and yet under-examined role that sexual policing and settler colonialism have on ideas about policing, safety, and
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Ingrid Burrington @lifewinning.com · 24/02/2026
I'm something of a supply chain risk myself
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Josh Wallaert @jwlrt.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
🛠️⚙️🦈📐🩶
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Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
“This is my praise song for Farwell Canyon—that glorious Coyote-blessed and bewitched cathedral of salmon—for my enemy who is also my relative, and for the fish we love and share.” Unmissable Julian Brave Noisecat essay on rivers, memories & imagining otherwise. placesjournal.org/article/farw...
placesjournal.org
Farwell Canyon
The Chilcotin River in present-day British Columbia has long divided — and joined — the Secwépemc and Tsilhqot’in nations, each with an ancient claim to the land and the cherished salmon run there.
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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
You’re laughing. The Mellon foundation is providing grants to gender and area studies programs and you’re laughing.
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Places Journal @placesjournal.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
In the birthplace of Ghana’s cocoa industry, neighbors negotiate the expansion of a harvest path — and with it, an alternative model for development in the populous West African nation. A new essay in Places by Ghanaian architect and researcher Courage Dzidula Kpodo.
placesjournal.org
Ending Well
In the birthplace of Ghana’s cocoa industry, neighbors negotiate the expansion of a harvest path — and with it, an alternative model for development in the populous West African nation.
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