Roddy

[Thomas Hawk @thomashawk]

Found Ektachrome Slide Dated, January 1972, State Street, Chicago, Illinois

I pulled this one out of the box and just sat there. Some slides you glance at and put back. This one I couldn’t stop looking at.

Christmas time on State Street, Chicago, Illinois

Bond’s big red neon is burning on the left. Wieboldt’s is packed, people inside grabbing last minute gifts and staring at the Cinnamon Bear displays. Burton-Miller and Cole’s signs are glowing too. The whole block is alive with shoppers going in and out of the stores that used to make this the greatest shopping street in America.

Way down there you can just make out the Chicago Theatre sign. And even farther, those two round towers sitting on the river are Marina City. Bertrand Goldberg designed them in the early sixties. They were still new then, these giant concrete corn cobs with apartments and a parking garage and a marina underneath. Everybody in Chicago knew them.

Richard J. Daley was mayor. He had just won his fifth term that spring. The machine was still running strong and downtown was still the place you went at Christmas. The suburban malls were starting to steal customers but on a night like this you wouldn’t have known it. State Street was lit up and full of cars and people.

And those cars are all boats. Full size Chevys and Fords and Dodges with chrome bumpers you could land a plane on. Vinyl roofs. Bench seats. That yellow one is a Checker cab. Two lanes of American steel rolling under Christmas lights.

This slide is one of the ones that makes the whole collecting hobby worthwhile. This is not AI. This is 55 year old historical authenticity.

[Roddy @roddyrockets]

Everyone is late to realizing Vance’s political career is cooked, especially after that last clip. It has been demonstrated over and over again that Tucker has no power, his entire base is 3rdworldist. Vance is not smart enough to realize he can easily distance himself from him and lose nothing. Tucker will continue to push incrementally more absurd positions and alliances until Vance is forced to publicly cut him off and it will be way too late (already is) Vance looks like a Manchurian juvenile being strung along by a low iq lunatic to any reasonable person.

[Chris Malchow @_thecolorfulkid]

Wisconsin in September

[Roddy @roddyrockets]

@mrwittmayer @derridium “You will become the enemies you choose”

[Roddy @roddyrockets]

@PalmerLuckey @paulg

[Roddy @roddyrockets]

@Asmongold @mehdirhasan @shannonrwatts

[Roddy @roddyrockets]

@usgraphics I have a feeling Elon renaming it X is a multiyear play to launder brand equity to his “everything brand/app” and once it gets more established in other domains (eg payments) they will rename it “Twitter by X” or something

[Roddy @roddyrockets]

@usgraphics Ive been saying similar things about the excessiveness of ui animations (basically all of them) for years. Blows my mind that more people dont share the same opinions.

[Roddy @roddyrockets]

@usgraphics @benjitaylor +1 but also @benjitaylor you could get more premium subscription signups if you give them the option of different post styles eg carousel, 4 standard/stamp, or whimsy

[Jacob Titus @jacob__titus]

General Dynamics annual reports, 1967–1977

[Roddy @roddyrockets]

Because broad “tourism” cannot be gatekept, I predict travel with the intention of participating in a ticketed event like a music festival, or something rarer like the Olympics, will become increasingly more popular. When attendance is logistically limited, status increases.

[Aporia @aporia9n]

It's less so Instagram than travel massification, while the supply of beautiful places stays basically fixed.

Cheap flights + more wealth + more leisure turned international travel from sth you did a few times a year into a normal activity. Plenty of 25yos now travel 6-10x a year and have already been to 30+ countries.

And it's not just the Santorini/Bali/Venice/Machu Picchu etc. anymore. The crowds have moved down to tier-2, tier-3 and supposedly "off the beaten path" places too.

A generation or two ago, casually flying to a Greek island for a week was a pretty big luxury. Now huge numbers of normal people can do it. Flights are cheap, booking takes 5 mins, Google Maps means you basically can't get lost, everyone speaks enough English, you have Uber/eSIMs/cards everywhere. You can organise a perfectly decent 3-day trip to almost anywhere in 30 mins.

And travel has moved massively down the age/income curve too. It’s not only retirees or successful 45yo guys doing 2 big holidays a year anymore. For a lot of 22-30yo in London/Paris/NYC/Berlin, travelling is just another normal leisure activity now (dinner, drinks, festival, weekend in Lisbon, 3 days in Naples, ski trip, Croatia wedding, Greece in August, Marrakech in November).

So yh obviously people also burn through the famous places way faster. Once you've done Paris/Rome/Barcelona/Santorini/Bali, you start moving down the list. Albania, Montenegro, Georgia, the Azores, smaller Greek islands, whatever. So the crowding inevitably diffuses from tier-1 destinations into the places that were supposedly the alternatives.

There’s also almost no information asymmetry left. 25 years ago knowing the amazing beach, tiny village, restaurant or viewpoint was itself scarce knowledge. Now everyone lands with the same Google Maps pins, TikToks, Reddit threads and “48 hours in X” itinerary. We democratised access to the world while the supply of genuinely beautiful places/viewpoints/beaches is basically fixed.

But is it really a bad thing after all? A 25yo spending £300 on Porto instead of £200 drinking in London for the weekend might actually be making the better trade. And millions more people can casually see places that would have been a major luxury for their parents/grandparents.

Yes Instagram/Tiktok explain why everyone takes the same exact picture once they get there. But cheap travel + more leisure + more wealth + zero information friction explain why everyone is there in the first place.

[Roddy @roddyrockets]

@jewndahalfmen I think it might be these specific behaviors have been mimetically adopted subconsciously and at scale via shortform video. Cuz the algo is also drawn to “mean girls out of your league” it simultaneously trains everyone else to immitate them.

[Alexander Lacherbauer @lacherbauer]

Helmut Jahn’s “Terminal of Tomorrow,” @united’s Terminal 1 at ORD, has aged remarkably well over nearly four decades. It’s a rare airport terminal whose design remains both timeless and efficient. Thoughtful architecture can really outlast changing trends and demands.

[𝐬𝐨𝐯 @sovietsoleri]

Chicago sunset

[𝐬𝐨𝐯 @sovietsoleri]

My request is simple just want sodium lights back

[Roddy @roddyrockets]

@orthonormalist @captive_dreamer 🎯🎯🎯

[Roddy @roddyrockets]

@mrwittmayer 😂😂😂

[Roddy @roddyrockets]

@powerbottomdad1 Independence Day should be added to the Criterion Collection

[Roddy @roddyrockets]

@jeff82874662 Mazel tov!!