Do you ever feel that older cities are just more interesting than new ones?
Well, it isn’t just because they’re old.
It’s because of something called “vernacular architecture”… 
What makes the cobbled streets of York so charming? Or the jettied houses of Plovdiv? Or the terraced villages of Bhutan? Or the round tulou houses of Fujian?
The answer is vernacular. What is it? Well, vernacular clearly isn’t a specific style of architecture. 
Before industrial mass-production, rigorous town planning, bureaucratised building regulations, architecture schools, and engineering degrees…
…things were built according to local needs and constraints and traditions, using locally available materials. 
So vernacular is a *way* of building.
And it’s how most things were built for most of history, all around the world.
Whether Shibam in Yemen or Dinan in France, both were built without architects and engineers who were “professional” in the modern sense. 
But how did focus on need (function) and available building materials (convenience/cost) make these old places all look so different?
Such principles also underpin most modern construction, and yet cities around the world look more similar than ever. 
There’s a few key differences. One is that “available building materials” used to mean something very different.
Whereas now steel and concrete and glass are globally available and ubiquitous construction materials, that wasn’t the case in the past. 
People used whatever they could, be it marble, bamboo, limestone, pine, mudbricks, slate, turf, oak, clay, reeds…
What was available as a construction material varied from region to region, hence a natural variety in regional architectures. 
Another difference is that less globalised (and less nationalised) cultures tend to produce highly localised, more divergent styles.
How the problem of needs versus resources was solved differed immensely from region to region, simply because they were less interconnected.
And that’s why traditional architecture varies so wildly.
Each region and culture found its own way of doing things, according to local needs, traditions, and constraints.
Hence why you can (often) tell which region or country you’re in simply by its buildings. 
This sort of carefully tuned regionalism doesn’t explain everything, however.
Another important factor is that there weren’t as many government-imposed restrictions on how houses should be built or towns should be planned.
People just got on with it…
…thus producing the opposite of a planned town with homogenised architecture and standardised streets.
When lots of people do lots of different things with relatively little oversight over the course of several decades or centuries, the result is a street layout like this. 
Then again, though the grid plan seems like a modern invention, it is actually thousands of years old.
From Mesopotamia to China to Mesoamerica, cities have been laid out on grids since the start of human civilisation.
Regulations or town plans are not new. 
Just consider Ancient Rome, which took its grid-based urban planning and strict architectural style wherever it went, from Britain to Algeria to Jordan, and everywhere in between.
This might be “traditional” in some sense, but it isn’t really vernacular. 
Something like Le Corbusier’s speculative Plan Voisin for Paris, or even the endless rows of cookie-cutter houses in suburbs, are a result of the same thinking behind Ancient Roman urban planning.
Vernacular, meanwhile, encourages variety and diversity — it’s more interesting. 
Strict town plans and building regulations are useful and important — they help with things like transport or sanitation, and mitigate against risks like flooding or fire.
But, imposed too strictly, they mean it is now illegal to build something like France’s Mont Saint-Michel. 
So vernacular architecture results in regionally and culturally specific styles of building. It’s why different countries and places… look different.
And it’s part of why we are so drawn to older places, and why tourists flock to every town with the slightest bit of history. 
Because, unlike places with globally standardised architectural styles and overly strict town planning, the older, vernacular places speak to their history, region, and culture.
And, by virtue of being less planned, they are filled with personality, character, and charm. 
Vernacular architecture also tends to be more human-scale as a direct result of how it was built.
Such places are therefore often more suited to social integration and to community, to healthier and happier lifestyles, and all the other benefits of human-scale design. 
Not to mention that vernacular architecture is much more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
Long before climate control, people figured out how to make buildings cool in summer and warm in winter — and they did it by using local materials, rather than importing them. 
Insensitivity to local climate, ecological unsustainability, designed for cars rather than communities, badly scaled for human beings, bland and uniform aesthetics…
These are just some of the problems of modern urban design which the vernacular might help us solve.
Keeping the communication going. It is your child’s lifeline to you and the reality you want them to embrace.
“My son hadn’t socially transitioned, he still looked like a boy. By midsummer, his exploratory therapist said that he had a breakthrough. The therapist wasn’t worried about him wanting to medicalize, but he was also not sufficiently aware of the immensity of the ideological brainwashing. He thought my son was too smart to be captured. I was aware though—and I was worried. I knew how many smart kids were captured. But my son seemed happy, entirely unconcerned about being called “sir” on occasion. He was growing into a handsome young man. We didn’t talk about gender ideology. On Sasha Ayad’s advice, gender topics were for him and his therapist to discuss.
Then the too familiar punch in the gut came in the Fall, when he started a part time job and was adored and praised by everyone there—he was still thinking of himself as transgender, and this was not going to change. Ever. He was impatient to socially transition and start taking hormones at 18. On the outside nothing changed. I still saw a happy teen. I had less than 6 months left.
I tried to calm myself with thoughts that this was the often-mentioned Boomerang Effect. My little home-grown, intuition-based “theory”, which I wrote about for PITT, was that The Boomerang Phase was actually The Uncertainty Phase, where teens double down on gender ideology to combat fading conviction and a growing sense of cognitive dissonance. It is a difficult, emotional phase, and probably the phase when they are most easily influenced.
I didn’t know whether my “theory” was correct, but I also felt I had little choice but to push back during this phase. I wasn’t going to stand idly by, watching him being led deeper into the cult by trans influencers. I started to integrate information on the trans ideology into our homeschooling via different podcasts and documentaries by figures including Helen Joyce, Stephanie Davies-Arai, Douglas Murray, Jordan Peterson, Barry Wall, John Uhler, Chloe Cole, Kellie-Jay Keen, etc. It was scary at first, as I was worried about his reaction and our relationship. Some days he would pull his hood over his head, but I saw that he was still listening, and he would perk up within minutes after a podcast or a documentary was over. We watched What is a Woman, and he lived, but we skipped the intro and the ending. Whatever bad mood they caused, it didn’t linger. I never made it personal and never asked him where he was at with his own gender identity.
We watched hours of podcasts and the manner of how he was sitting at the table started to change. He didn’t cover his face anymore, he sat straighter.
His 18th birthday came and went, with no big announcement, but the uncertainty was still overwhelming. By February I was telling myself that I should stop with the gender critical stuff and we should focus on something else, but then The Affirmation Generation came out, and I just had to show it to him. When I asked what he thought about it, he said there was nothing there that he didn’t already know. I was still too anxious to ask what it all meant for him. If he was still thinking of himself as transgender, I didn’t want him to verbalize these thoughts to me, thus potentially making them something he needed to defend.
Then at some point in early spring he laughed at a gender critical meme I sent him. Then he made a couple of gender critical jokes. But when I casually said that gender was just a modern and ideological term for personality, he rejected the idea. This made me doubt everything yet again. A month or two later he made fun of the idea that biological sex was nonbinary, and I felt in my bones that this was over. The curse was lifted. I exhaled.
Are we there yet? I wish I knew. From what I’ve read, some never leave the cult entirely and come back to it in the times of stress. But for now, I won’t think about that. I too need a break. In retrospect, he has been incrementally desisting for the last nine months—there were little signs all along, but how do you trust them when you are on a rollercoaster? I’m sure that if I were to ask him about his desistance a year from now, he’d say that he made up his mind entirely on his own and that all the podcasts we listened to didn’t matter. Maybe he’d say that he simply grew up, and he would be right. But I would not have been able to live with myself if I didn’t make the information about the ideology and biological reality available to him.
The last year went by too slowly and yet too fast. I’m grateful, humbled, empowered, still not entirely back to normal. I know how lucky we are, how, in retrospect, comparatively easy it has been—a mere 21 months, and he hasn’t even worn a skirt or a bra. And now it is over, almost like it never happened, like a bad dream you’d rather forget.”
This is call to action by one parent who is very concerned about the pernicious effects of gender ideology on children. Apparently, he lost his child to the transgender cult – because that is what cults do – insert a wedge between parents and their children to break the bonds of family and support networks to increase the likelihood of gaining a convert to the cause.
Visit his website to find out more.
As a Canadian teacher I won’t promote this ideology while I teach. It is corrosive and harmful to child development and a stable childhood identity – that in itself should give Educators pause.
This debate needs to happen in society. Parents, teachers, and educational institutions must speak honestly and freely about what gender ideology is and what is being taught in schools.
Identities do not win sports titles – physical bodies do. Sadly, once again we have to fight for the basic rights of females in our society and reaffirm the material reality we all share.
Arguing with certain people can be very frustrating as they seem to not want to engage with what is being said. Instead, the use of hyperbole, insults, and emotionally charged language are meant to infuriate and obfuscate with the goal of winning the superficially wrought emotional battle (arguing versus agitating). The Activist Left are engaging you with a Dialectical (See the third meaning) approach – they need you to strongly react so as to subsume your argument/position in order to advance the dialectic. Deny them their secret weapon and here’s how.
Fuzzy on what Dialectic is and how it is used? Find out here:
“In short, it’s the fusion of opposites in a way that understands them from a higher-level perspective, which is necessarily synthetic.”
If you want to be a Commie Disruptor, and I mean an effective one we have to break you from falling for Dialectical Traps while making you feel you are still being effective in combating the Woke. So we’re going to have break this down a bit and look at the components.
As previously mentioned the Woke use inflammatory agitation tactics to draw you into their contrived inanity.
Before we break down this aspect you must understand that…
You are being used by the Woke
I mean like used in the humiliating sense. When you engage in inflammatory Woke inanity you are doing EXACTLY what they plan and want you to do.Like lemmings off a bridge…Self Negation.
This usage of you should irritate and anger you, perhaps even more so than their stigmatization. Back to Agitation. This is simple:
Racist, Nazi, Fascist, Bigot, Anti-White, Anti-Christian, Nationalist, Christian Nationalist, White Nationalist, White Supremist, TERF, Transphobe, etcetera and etcetera.
Either you or they are being portrayed as these things right? Something about these terms rile you up, right?
Letting the Left twist and distort language and words that should have good meaning into bad ones or stigmatize us with hacks you off, right?
They shouldn’t be able to do these things!!! We shouldn’t let them do these things!!!
Right?
“You’re damn right in being completely justified in defending yourself and your family and your country against this inflammatory Woke inanity.”
Hmmm…I can’t blame anyone for this disposition, indeed sometimes I even fall for it.
I get it.
But you’re being used. Your justifiable obstinance to ideologically defend yourself is being used against you, to defeat you.
This tactic works on you because…
The Woke aren’t idealistic…they’re Operational.
They Operationally use your values and virtues against you. They Operationally use your railing against their inanity to negate you and undermine your Liberty.
So you’ll often here me an others say “Don’t step into the Wizard’s Circle” or Political Warfare Traps.
Don’t engage their Dialectical Inanity. We tell you to point out their real targets which is to undermine your Liberty and your Natural Rights, and normalcy, and your family, and your faith.
But the inflammatory stigmatization they impose on you is still there. Still inflammatory, sullying your way of life.
Furthermore while their inane beliefs aren’t real the effects of their inanity and prejudice against the “Oppressor” classes (white, male, woman, straight, Christian, normal) is VERY real.It’s not very satisfying at all to let this stand! To let them do this to us! See no one here is saying do nothing. Indeed do MORE but don’t do it THEIR WAY.
Watch.
Leftist Agitator: “All these MAGA people who are upholding White Nationalism are a threat to ‘our Democracy’!”
Now you’re reeeeally gonna want to call this Agitator “anti-white” or rail against the label of “White Nationalism”.And I would tell you “Don’t do it!” “It’s a trap! It’s a Dialectical Wizard’s Circle! You will negate yourself and help pseudo-legitimize their inanity Avoid!”
Then what I would do is point out that what this Agitator is doing is well first Agitating to amplify engagement and second point out what the real target is.Your Liberty.
How so? Again going back to previous threads the intent of the Agitator is to optically make it >look< like there is a “right wing” problem.
Why? So fence sitting, undecided Centrists (Left and Right) will be alarmed at “right wing attacks on Democracy” and vote in someone to “take care of this problem.”
So who exactly would take care of this problem? Neo Communists. Who have no compunction creating laws and policy to undermine your Liberty.
And all it took was for YOU to contribute by engaging in inflammatory Woke inanity.
But I do concede it’s not very…satisfying to only do this, only point out their end game. Even when it’s probably the most effective thing to do.
So let’s try this.
When confronted with inflammatory Woke inanity, tell them.
“We reject and will not tolerate your prejudice against your Contrived ‘privileged classes’ it doesn’t matter how many of you believe in it.”
“We also reject and will not tolerate your attack on our Liberty, Family, Faith and way of Life which is what you really are trying to destroy in the name of ‘Progress’.”
“We also know that this an Agitation tactic”
“You have NO LEGETIMACY”
See there, didn’t mention or amplify “White Nationalism” or “Anti-White” because it will be used against you, yet still addressed exactly the things they are attacking and more. Not just the local prejudice but the Woke’s ACTUAL Target.
YOUR’S AND EVERYONE’S LIBERTY.
Instead you rejected their Contrived prejudice, exposed their real target (Liberty), exposed their tactic (Agitation), and exposed their fake pseudo-real nonsense for what it is, illegitimate. And minimizing your own negation and the erosion of American Liberty in the process.
I know it’s hard. But it CAN be done with satisfying justification.HIT them where it counts.
THEY ABSOLUTELY >HATE< THIS
Do MORE of it!!
DON’T get used
DON’T get Negated
EXPOSE Them
DISRUPT their Operations
FIGHT for Liberty
Final Note: I need to make a CLEAR distinction here
While Woke ideological framework and inanity is not Objectively Real.
Their impact on society is VERY VERY Real and must be unequivocally rejected and fought against
Make sure you tell our anti-woke compatriots you know this.”
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…