#They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

[theparadoxmachine]

My mom has asked me to share this petition to get a wider audience. She's never asked me to do something like this so I want to do what I can for her.

This is about a motel in her hometown that developers are trying to demolish so they can replace it with a parking lot. A lot of residents, my mother included, consider it a historic landmark in the town and want to save it.

It's been around since at least the 1950s and while that may not seem like much to people elsewhere, it's been around for longer than my mom's been alive and this country's tendency to tear things to the ground when they get a little old, the capitalistic love of planned obsolescence, is why so few things get preserved.

I know this is a relatively small thing given current events but this place means a lot to my mom so I'd really appreciate any attention this gets. Thanks friends!

#signal boost #historic preservation #I've got that song that goes #they paved paradise and put up a parking lot #stuck in my head

[qupritsuvwix]

#big think #strange maps #they paved paradise and put up a parking lot

[pelicanoctopus]

During a conversation with my partner a while ago, I compared different social media sites to different bodies of water, and the concept has been stuck in my head ever since. I need to write it out to move on, so, here goes:

The basic premise of the metaphor is that the "water" in each of these bodies of water (websites) = the thoughts and feelings people share on there. This is materially distinct from Content, which, depending on the nature of said Content, can be carried by the water, or sink beneath it, or be destroyed by it, or be dissolved into it.

The universal constant, here, is that if something goes into the water, whether it's Content or an actual person, it's going to get wet. If you put anything - works of art, advertisements, memes, dad jokes, research papers, newspaper articles - out into a social media website, people are going to have thoughts and feelings about it. The effect these thoughts and feelings will have on the Content itself is entirely dependent on the nature of said Content, just as an actual literal body of water will have different effects on a glass bottle than it will on a plastic bottle, or a milk carton, or a loaf of bread.

Likewise, the effect that visiting any given social media website will have on particular people varies widely, based on things like age, media literacy, familiarity with the platform, and past trauma, as well as more variable factors like whether the person in question has had enough food and rest lately. Some people only ever swim in swimming pools. Some people do open water triathlons. But even people who are trained in open water swimming know it can be dangerously overwhelming if they are tired, or sick, or injured.

With me so far? Okay. Moving on to the rest of the metaphor - the actual bodies of water (websites) themselves:

Twitter (I refuse to call it X): used to be a really nice river full of wildlife and other interesting things to look at. The water was pretty nice to swim in, though if you spent too long in the water, swimming against the strong current would exhaust even the strongest swimmers. Now? The whole place is so polluted and full of actual garbage that it makes me sad to even look at it, so I don't. Most of the cool people I used to spend time with at the river have stopped visiting. I worry about the health of people who still have to navigate the river as part of their job, and I am extremely judgemental of people who still choose to swim in it out of their own free will.

Facebook: an extremely overdeveloped river with boardwalks down the entire length of it. It's polluted, but only with the kind of pollution that's hard to see, because the businesses along the riverwalk won't tolerate garbage piling up. It's not really a river for swimming in, and if you try to swim anyway, people will think you're weird. I don't really have much reason to go there for my own sake, but I have friends and relatives who I can only see if I go there, so I visit sometimes and don't complain about the rotting-fish-and-petrochemical smell while I'm there, because it's not like the people I'm visiting have any control over that.

Cohost (in my experience so far): a pretty normal river, though it's not as deep or as wide as the rivers I'm used to. It's small enough that people debate about whether it's even a river at all, or just a creek. The smaller size is a good thing; if I can see the bottom, I'm not as likely to slip and fall all the way in when I was only trying to wade around a bit.

Tumblr: some kind of very very deep caldera lake. Pretty scenery and neat birds exist in abundance, but unless you go to the lake with people you already know, it can feel kind of lonely. Creatures that live nowhere else in the entire world live in the deepest parts of this lake. There are piles of rocks all over the shoreline, and I'm never sure if I'm supposed to leave them standing or knock them over.

Discord: a directory of backyard pools. Some are open to the public, but most of them are private. Some are big, some are small. Some are nice in-ground installations, and some came out of a box. Some have pleasant landscaping around them, and some are surrounded only by concrete, or gravel. Some are lovingly maintained. Some are only cleaned up when the owners are about to have a party. Others are never cleaned at all, and have become objectively disgusting. It all depends on which pool you visit, and whose backyard it's in.

Reddit: the ocean. It's so vast that it is impossible to visit every part of it in one lifetime. Truly bizarre things wash up on the shore all the time. The water is kind of nasty in most places, but let's be honest: most people don't go to the beach to swim, they go to the beach to be at the beach. Great for people-watching, even if people-watching at most beaches does wind up making you despair for humanity in general.

#social media #metaphor #they paved paradise and put up a parking lot #reddit is basically the website version of The Jersey Shore

[transienturl]

one of the cool upsides of the so far inexplicable bug where opening a new tab and loading tumblr fast enough causes some xkit rewritten scripts not to load is that you get to see your dash clearly with xkit working, but with no one appearing as a mutual with mutual checker, and thus get to experience the "every single mutual has unfollowed me" nightmare scenario

before realizing that hey wait, this is a bugged tab, it is actually fine, don't you appreciate this reality where you do actually have mutuals, now?

you would think this could only happen to a person once, but see, the thing is, I am not very smart and this exact thing has happened three times.

#they paved paradise and put up a parking lot #(I just discovered that I have never heard that song in full)

[tweeterwilbury]

#MY LIFE if i had listened to this song some years ago when i still was studying and i would have a chance of using it at school . somehow #maybe i wouldnt have hated my course so much if i had known about They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. Who knows? #i probably would have hated it even more . i probably would have drop out earlier . whatever #this was supposed to be just a spotify link but here I am . talking about things that went bad. #Spotify

[hezigler]

A Short History of America by R. Crumb and Joni Mitchell

"...paved paradise and put up a parking lot."

#r. crumb #joni mitchell #big yellow taxi #american history #pave paradise and put up a parking lot #Youtube

[crabanarchy]

you dont know what youve got (D cups) till its gone (top surgery)

#they pave paradise... put up a parking lot

[unpleasantsimms]

i haven’t checked my animal crossing island in a hmhm minute and i was falling in love again as i wandered around

#pave paradise and put up a parking lot #is my ethos #animal crossing #new horizons

[spynorth]

weird, vague, barely put together plot that might make no sense based only on the fact i have seen one episode but someone give me a thing where lucas becomes a companion or just forces his way onto the damn tardis or something and gets whatever doctor to take him back to dakar and i’m assuming don’t mess shit up laws apply to dr who also?? but anyways, he tries to change dakar and then series 9 in this au isn’t really him flipping his lid because of vaughn but he’s flipping his lid trying to get his life back bc of the things that have changed (my canon, lucas’ lucas north canon).

#i want pain. i want angst. #i want that they paved paradise and put up a parking lot emotion #it just came to me. #blah blah blah will flesh out more later blah blah blah #but i have ideas. #jimberly might be the only doctor i follow thats active rn i cant remember

[galwaygremlin]

okay WHO was going to tell me the a team was by ed sheeran

#listening: #ED SHEERAN APPARENTLY #song came out twelve years ago i thought he was more recent than that #for some reason this song; had a bad day; and pave paradise put up a parking lot are in the same group in my head #also can we tell i'm having a bad night klfsdaj

[actiongrrl]

Tag Drop

🦋

#OOC [🦋] -they paved paradise #PSA [🦋]- put up a parking lot #ANSWER [🦋]- with a pink hotel a boutique and a swingin' hot spot #SEMI [🦋]- don't it always seem to go #PARA [🦋]- that you've don't know what you've got 'til it's gone #CONVO [🦋]- they took all the trees #ASK MEME [🦋]- put 'em in a tree museum #MUSINGS [🦋]- and they charged the people #DASH GAME [🦋]- a dollar and a half just to see 'em #AESTHETIC [🦋]- hey farmer farmer put away that ddt now #ITUNES [🦋]- give me spots on my apples #MUSE [🦋]- but leave me the birds and the bees please #HEADCANON [🦋]- late last night i heard the screen door slam #LIKES [🦋]- and a big yellow taxi #PROMO. [🦋]- took away my old man

[edwardshundredyearoldspunk]

I'm begging joni mitchell to please, please betray her morals and come back to spotify plEASE

#joni mitchell I'm begging you girl #i know they paved paradise and put up a parking lot i know this #you know how i know this? #because it's one of the only songs you have on spotify #someone please kill joe rogan so we can get joni mitchell back on spotify

[doctorslippery]

(via (1) “The World’s Greatest Parking Lot” Ethel Greene, oil on canvas 1969 : megalophobia)

Hopefully, there would be a shuttle.

#paved paradise and put up a parking lot

[what-even-is-thiss]

Every year I get angrier and angrier listening to Big Yellow Taxi because yeah, yeah you were absolutely right, Joni Mitchell. They did pave paradise and put up a parking lot. And nothing has changed about that in the last 50 years, Joni Mitchell. It’s still a parking lot. With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot no less. You were right about that. You were absolutely right. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Nailed it. That is true. And I’m frustrated about it.

#roman said a thing

[miragespots]

sometimes too much happens at once and i spend weeks looking at the blank pages of this book and get too intimidated to write anything down at all.

dear friend: it hurts too much to try and write down your name. but i remember you. i promise i do now. i remember you. i miss you. i'm sorry i left the way i did. if i had understood i'd be giving you up, i wouldn't have ever rolled the dice like that. or maybe i would've. i'm stupid and self-sacrificing that way. but it wasn't worth it. it never has been. nothing was worth being away for so long.

i still have to figure out what to do from here. but i am going to get better, and i am going to come home.

that's a promise i intend to live up to.

#entry log #6/28/22 #we pave paradise and put up a parking lot

[chaifootsteps]

i miss the color palette and style of the hh pilot. it seems softer and less manufactured than whatever red barf we have now

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

#Anonymous #viv stuff #actual blog post #hazbin hotel critical