The rich, weird, and frustrating world of Depression-era travel guides
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
>The FWP [Federal Writers' Project] was a work-relief program, and its primary mission was to help writers survive the Depression, while putting cash into circulation and contributing, however modestly, to the economic recovery. But it was also a literary endeavor of unprecedented scale. When the FWP was finally dissolved, along with the rest of the WPA, in 1943, Time magazine gave it the epitaph “the biggest literary project in history”—a claim that does not seem to be disputed.
> ... the FWP managed to produce at least 1,000 publications and gather reams of unused material. (Some of these manuscripts, especially individual life histories and the testimonials of formerly enslaved people, would be treasured and interrogated by future scholars.) Each successful publication chipped away at assumptions about the FWP, proving that it was no hopeless boondoggle for failed writers and unimaginative hacks. Reviewers were generally impressed, finding that the books far surpassed their expectations.
I'd be keen to see this sort of visionary thinking revived with the aim of restoring town hall/local journalism, currently in a parlous state now that newspapers no longer receive meaningful advertising revenues.
My grandparents talked about the Depression a lot while growing up.
Books like this were also incredibly useful for when you did travel, though. Before the Internet, the way you learned about a place was through books.
If you were headed to Wisconsin, there was no "Ok CIA, what's the best cheeseburger on this freeway?". You either stumbled across something while you were driving, or found it in a book.
While there are great things about the information age, one downside is that hidden gems tend to be un-hidden at speed, and rapidly loose their lustre as they attempt to expand to absorb the demand.
Haha good one
Me: "Hey, CIA? My ex-girlfriend once sent me a message about her favorite Indian restaurant. I'd really like to try it, but deleted all of our messages like five years ago."
CIA: "Got you fam. It's actually Nepalese..."
Same as the codename for the CIA's Earth-oriented remote-sensing satellites.
For example, the FBI has global jurisdiction over cyber matters and that agency specifically will send agents physically to other countries to coordinate with local law enforcement, seize assets and affect arrests
They’re all watching
I don’t think anything will really change until other countries are doing the same to us. Like imagine law enforcement from the House of Saud showing up at your door alongside local US police and they arrest you and eventually ship you off to Saudi Arabia all because a data packet passed through their borders. That’s allot of people’s experience with the US right now.
Congress doesn't even know what laws they pass and isn't scrutinizing like "wait, enthusiasts expect the FBI to do domestic things, unless you rewrite this Defense Spending Bill we're all blocking it from getting out of committee", instead, defense contractors pre-write whatever they want that expands the role of the agency they already have the most contacts with so they land the ensuing contract.
There isn't any law or constitutional issue that would add a redundancy to limiting the change of these agency charters.
And finally, we just have to assume that these autonomous agencies with $10bn annual budgets are operating professionally within the bounds of their mandates.
Apple's Maps app on desktop can be excellent for something like Utah's Canyonlands. Semblance of 3D plus reasonable detail means you can explore, look for routes down cliffs, etc. All the orange rock just feels warm to browse from afar - ha!
Is it supposed to be one of those jokes that either aren't funny or you don't get?
Now archived at Sussex university. Angus Calder's work on ww2 "the peoples war" leveraged it.
it would be interesting to compare the underlying patterns. The WPA had a leftist view, so did Mass Observation