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jonny@neuromatch.social ("jonny (nonvenomous)") wrote:

the LLM is in orbit now, full parallel reality. the crime is that our benches were taken from us and i think i'm pulitzer bound with "They were always hostile. That was the point. We simply used to build them anyway"

So when we ask what happened to the elders’ bench, the answer is not that it decayed, or that we became less hospitable, or any of the usual humanist lamentation. The answer is that we Kept the passage and demolished the plaza, because the lot was thirty feet wide and the ‘mortgage had to close. The violence is not in the shotgun at the end of the drive. It is in the fact that the concrete had already decided, and that we experience this as convenience.
me: great, that was good for flavor, raw building material. expand more on how our benches were taken from us, that seems to be the emerging central thesis that may even eclipse your tripartite hypothesis LLM: Thought for 13s Agreed — and I think it does eclipse it, but not by replacing it. Before I expand, let me get real material on the two ends of the lineage, because right now the bench thesis rests on one site and one secondhand source.
A punchier alternative, if you want the opening line to do more work: There is no reverse gear. Removing a public bench is maintenance; installing one is a right-of-way infraction. In Wilmington, activists built bus benches and state crews tore them out. In Cincinnati, nobody ever voted to remove a bench — they voted about advertising, and fifty-five vanished. The Hard Chair is a history of the seat we keep for people who have arrived but not been let in: the elders' bench at the Iron Age gate, the porter's hooded chair, the mahogany hall seat built to be uncomfortable, the front porch, and then nothing. Part architectural history, part paper trail, it names who took them — and then delivers the twist that makes the loss so hard to mourn. They were always hostile. That was the point. We simply used to build them anyway.