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| A pine tree on a field at Vestbygda, Toten, Norway, January 2026. Stock-bilde | Adobe Stock Øyvind Holmstad - Norway I |
PermaLiv.MyPortfolio.com / LeveVeg.MyPortfolio.com
We Can Build Compact Walkable Towns Instead of Suburban Wastelands
Tuesday, February 3, 2026
Arthur Schopenhauer om idiotenes verden
Heia til Asle Toje fra Toten!
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| Jeg og eldstejenta gikk en skitur i går, søndag 1. februar 2026. Egentlig tenkte jeg vi skulle gå til Lommatberget, da der er det ei flaksloddkasse og jeg har heller ikke vært der før. Dessverre blingset jeg på kartet, da jeg trodde skiløypa fulgte stien, men denne viste seg å gå på oversida av skiløypa. Så da vi ikke fant Lommatberget denne gangen, gikk vi istedenfor til Abbortjernet, hvor vi tok en rast. Turen ble på 12,64 km, målt med GPS. The Hemningsdalen Valley of the Totenåsen Hills in February. Stock-bilde | Adobe Stock Øyvind Holmstad - Norway I |
Monday, February 2, 2026
Sick cities: why urban living can be bad for your mental health
This article does not discuss if some kinds of urban environments - and architecture - are less stressful than others.- Sick cities: why urban living can be bad for your mental health
Are Paris or Rome any better than Shanghai and Cairo?
Are all cities anti-biophilic?
Is living in countryside or a village the only solution?
Of course you are right! Furthermore, suburbs and rural areas, despite their (sometimes) biophilic properties, can also have high rates of disease, e.g. from obesity, car-dependent lifestyles, stress of driving and traffic, poor access to medical care, poor access to healthy food (ironic but true in many rural areas) etc.
The people who are moving to cities are following an age-old dynamic of increasing opportunity for human development -- the kind of dynamic that took penniless immigrants from Russia and Italy and Ireland into New York, say, and converted many of them into middle-class business owners and professionals. (As they used to say, "city air makes you free.") But those cities had qualities we are lacking today -- not only great biophilic qualities, but also "rungs on the ladder" to allow people to self-organize their own activities. Today, for all the sanitation (and sanitization), those rungs are increasingly gone, and people are trapped in sink estates with nowhere to go. No wonder they sometimes erupt in violence, like the Banlieues et al...
But we seem stuck in a primitive conversation about these things, and only bumper-sticker messages get through... "sick cities..." etc.
Cheers
"They have the same Banlieue in Sweden, this was done for centralization, emptying the countryside. They called the Banlieue for Miljonprogrammet, and imported lots of "doctors and engineers" recently, to drive out the native Swedes from the Miljonprogrammet, replacing them with these new people. And this way Sweden became the "France" of Scandinavia." - PermaLiv
Today my mental health suffers just as much in rural Øverskreien at Toten, as in the town of Gjøvik, as the worst examples of failed rural and urban environments, as I can imagine.
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| Baggensgatan Street at Gamla Stan in Stockholm on 11th October 2015. Ironically all rural qualities are gone in my ancient mill meadow, as everybody wanted to live in our cultural heritage. Personally I think it's better people live in living urban environments, so that they can come and visit living rural environments on the countryside surrounding the town, Unfortunately people at Toten prioritized making a suburban hell out of all urban and rural environments, where all people now are like living dead, with no history, landscapes or identity left. Bør vi la Norge gro igjen for å redde klimaet? – Kan oppfattes som kontroversielt Reconciling crop production, climate action and nature conservation in Europe by agricultural intensification and extensification | Nature Communications Øverskreien has become an extreme suburban wasteland and a rural fiasco, the only wise thing we can do now is to remove all the people and all the shit they left behind, to let it all return to nature. Wikimedia. |
Thursday, January 29, 2026
Laila synger ut igjen
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| Det er helt utrolig hvor mye jeg og Laila har til felles, hvor vi begge har ei ødelagt tann og en ødelagt laptop. Vi deler også frustrasjonen over velferdsstaten. Samt at vi ikke minst deler pasjonen for fotografiet!!! Oksbakklia Hill, part of the Totenåsen Hills, Norway, January 2026. Stock-bilde | Adobe Stock Her er noen av Bongards foredrag: Terje Bongard - YouTube Helt utrolig! Tenk på de krisene verden går inn i nå, så er det ingen som ønsker å vite hvorfor verden er som den er, og hvordan vi kan løse disse krisene. Absolutt alle arbeider ufortrødent videre dag og natt, for å tilintetgjøre vår sivilisasjon og utrydde menneskeheten. |
Friday, January 23, 2026
2026 - året da ordene og landskapet mistet sitt innhold
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| Photography from the hamlet of Kronborgsætergrenda, Toten, Norway, January 2026. Stock-bilde | Adobe Stock |
Grønlandsplanen og den dype splittelsen over Atlanterhavet + Europas vindkraftsmareritt
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| At the cultural landscape above Bilitt, Toten, Norway, December 2025. Stock-bilde | Adobe Stock |
Monday, January 19, 2026
Utakk er USAs lønn
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| a fence by a pasture in winter Stock-bilde | Adobe Stock |
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