wskent

In 1812, Japanese woodblock print artist Katsushika Hokusai, who would later become famous for his iconic Great Wave off Kanagawa prints, published a three-volume series called Quick Lessons in Simplified Drawing. All three volumes are available online: one, two, three. Even if you’re not in the market for drawing lessons, the pages are wonderful to flip through.

(via open culture)

Long before Avengers: Endgame mastered the art of the franchise-wide crossover, Jim Henson had attempted a similarly showdown. A Muppet Family Christmas aired in 1987, and was the first program to feature the Muppets alongside the Fraggles, the Sesame Street crew, and even the Muppet Babies (presented here as puppets!). — Read the rest

Since I’m probably not alone in wanting to hang onto the magic of the World Cup a little longer, here are the top 15 goals of the tournament, featuring the likes of Messi (twice!), Rashford, Mbappe, and of course Richarlison’s incredible effort against Serbia. See also this other take on the top goals.

FuboTV was down during the World Cup, preventing users from watching the entire semifinal between France and Morocco. According to FuboTV spokesperson Jennifer Press, the ongoing outage stems from a “cyber-related incident.”

Hours later, FuboTV’s status page indicated that the service was still down and had been experiencing issues since around 9:20AM ET, affecting both account creation and management as well as streaming. When I try to open the FuboTV app on my TV, the service displays an endless loading screen. In an update posted at 6PM ET, FuboTV says it’s “beginning to see some recovery to the ongoing issue.”

On Thursday, FuboTV issued a press release saying it did not have any bandwidth issues that affected its service, and that...

Continue reading…

Trials rider and mountain biker Danny MacAskill is one of my long-running obsessions here — I first posted about him all the way back in 2009 and if there’s ever a kottke.org konference, you’d better believe MacAskill will be performing at it. Anyway, MacAskill recently visited San Francisco with Red Bull and explored some of that beautiful city’s most iconic locations on his bike. Wow, the tennis net ride at 2:45 — BONKERS.

This video is actually a trailer of sorts for a 4-episode series that’s available on Red Bull’s site:

Watch as Danny lands a host of new tricks — some five years in the making — in spectacular spots around San Francisco. Then go behind the scenes and learn what this deeply personal edit means to him.

Super Rider (another trials rider) also did a behind-the-scenes video with MacAskill where they go in-depth on the tennis court setup.

I've spent the last 15 minutes touring the minutely detailed world of Floor796, a level in an imaginary space station of epic proportions, and there's is so much more to explore.

The goal of the project is to create as huge animation as possible, with many references to movies, games, anime and memes.

In this video, gospel singer Merry Clayton and Mick Jagger recount the evening in 1969 when the two recorded the vocals for "Gimme Shelter." Clayton said she was in bed, pregnant, and her hair in rollers when she got a call to come to the studio. — Read the rest

From the Internet Archive, here are samples from a delicious gallery of rotating food GIFs. And if that just whets your appetite, there are five (!) more rotating food galleries to satiate you.

_{front page thumbnail illustrative image: MarynaG/Shutterstock}

Twitter.com/pickleball_mag">

Pickleball is having a moment. Just yesterday, it was announced that Stephen Colbert would be hosting a celebrity pickleball tournament on CBS next month. Tom Brady is investing in the racket game. And it has a vocal proponent in country-pop star Maren Morris, who espoused her devotion to the sport on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night. “Pickleball is life,” she declared.

It’s not every day the US Supreme Court is graced with a brief from a party describing itself as “the single most powerful and influential organization in human history.” But that’s what the justices received Monday, with the docketing of an atypical friend-of-court brief from parody website The Onion.

The brief is laced with dramatic hyperbole, jabs at the self-seriousness of the legal profession, and outlandish, obviously false declarations of fact. Filing a parody brief was of course the point, the site’s lawyers explained, as they threw their support behind an Ohio man arrested for publishing a Facebook page making fun of his local police department.

“The Onion cannot stand idly by in the face of a ruling that threatens to disembowel a form of rhetoric that has existed for millennia, that is particularly potent in the realm of political debate, and that, purely incidentally, forms the basis of The Onion’s writers’ paychecks,” the site’s lawyer Stephen van Stempvoort wrote.

The case involves petitioner Anthony Novak, who faced criminal charges linked to the police department parody page he made on Facebook. He was briefly jailed after his arrest and went to trial, where he was acquitted.

Novak filed a civil suit against the arresting officers and the city of Parma, Ohio, arguing that his constitutional rights were violated. Novak and his lawyers petitioned the Supreme Court to step in after a federal appeals court ruled the officers were protected against being sued by a legal doctrine known as qualified immunity. Justices have yet to decide whether to hear the case.

4.3 Trillion Readers

The Onion routinely skewers the high court, and refused to take a more staid approach when directly addressing the justices. The filing mixes sarcasm, self-deprecation, and jokes with legal arguments and analysis more typical of a traditional Supreme Court brief.

The filing begins by mimicking the typical start of an amicus brief, in which a party explains its interest in the case and why the justices should consider its input. The Onion facetiously claimed to have “daily readership of 4.3 trillion” and told the court that it “owns and operates the majority of the world’s transoceanic shipping lanes, stands on the nation’s leading edge on matters of deforestation and strip mining, and proudly conducts tests on millions of animals daily.” 

It pokes fun at the US legal system’s use of Latin phrases, noting that The Onion’s own motto is “Tu stultus es,” which translates to, “You are dumb.” The “federal judiciary is staffed entirely by total Latin dorks,” van Stempvoort writes, suggesting judges “sweetly whisper ‘stare decisis’ into their spouses’ ear.” 

The brief even argues its writers “have garnered a sterling reputation for accurately forecasting future events,” citing a 2017 satire post that presaged the real federal investigation into former President Donald Trump’s handling of government records at his Mar-a-Lago home.

Can’t Take a Joke

The Onion brief also highlights what it contends are the not-so-funny stakes of a legal system that doesn’t protect people who take on the powerful via comedy.

“The Onion regularly pokes its finger in the eyes of repressive and authoritarian regimes, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea, and domestic presidential administrations,” van Stempvoort wrote. “So The Onion’s professional parodists were less than enthralled to be confronted with a legal ruling that fails to hold government actors accountable for jailing and prosecuting a would-be humorist simply for making fun of them.”

The site pushed back on the idea that humor needs advance warning, arguing that would “pop the balloon” of parody from the start and assume “ordinary readers are less sophisticated and humorless than they actually are.” The brief unpacks the machinations of this type of comedy, explaining that the idea is to first trick the reader into thinking the content is real “and then allowing them to laugh at their own gullibility.” 

Van Stempvoort referred a request for comment to a spokesperson for The Onion, which did not immediately respond. 

The Santa Clara Men's Cross Country team is a glorious sight to behold. The team's headshots have recently been circulating across social media, and the goofy photos — all featuring some sort of ridiculous mustache — are a huge hit. The East Bay Times explains:

The growing of mustaches for team photo day is a Bronco cross-country tradition that goes back at least a decade, meaning even the longest-tenured runners on the program remember what it was like discovering the array of portraits as a high schooler interested in the program.

This spectacular image is the spiral galaxy IC 5332 which is around 29 million light-years from Earth. Its about 1/3 smaller than our own Milky Way. Compare the above to the same view as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Far fucking out. — Read the rest

Janet Jackson’s 1989 hit “Rhythm Nation” was a pop game-changer — a cutting-edge smash that incorporated the militaristic clatter of industrial music and Public Enemy in the context of a towering, anthemic hit song. But “Rhythm Nation” apparently had other effects, which are just now becoming obvious to the general public. The “Rhythm Nation” video, it turns out, had the power to crash certain laptops.

Today, NASA unveiled the first full-color image taken by the agency’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope, a pivotal moment for the deep-space observatory that marks the beginning of its first year of transformational science. The incredibly detailed image — a deep field of some of the most distant galaxies seen from Earth — showcases the mighty power of the telescope and serves as a teaser for even more awe-inspiring images of the Universe that are still to come.

The picture is one of a handful of inaugural full-color images that NASA plans to release this week to celebrate the start of science operations for the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST. President Joe Biden and NASA administrator Bill Nelson unveiled the first picture this...

Continue reading…

Rudy Giuliani's favorite landscaping place next to a sex shop has contacted Boris Johnson to see if he needs a spot for his next presser. You never know!

Facebook and Instagram are removing posts from users that offer help accessing abortion pills, saying they violate a policy around pharmaceuticals.

Following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade on Friday, social media users have shared posts offering to mail abortion pills to people whose access to abortion has been stripped away or will be soon.

But users are finding their offers quickly removed or restricted, as reported by Motherboard and the Associated Press. A test Facebook post by an AP reporter offering to mail abortion pills was removed within one minute. A test by a Verge reporter yielded similar results, with a post offering abortion pills being flagged within two minutes.

The sale, gifting, and transfer of...

Continue reading…

At least two manhole covers in Boston's Financial District exploded and caught fire this morning, shattering a window, causing the evacuation of two buildings, and sending one person to the hospital. (See video below.)

The explosions were caused by "over pressurization underground." — Read the rest

In January we learned Daniel Radcliffe, one-time Harry Potter star and lifelong practitioner of verbal acrobatics, would be starring as accordion-wielding pop parodist Weird Al Yankovic in a new biopic Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. In February, we got our first glimpse of Radcliffe in costume.

"Content moderation clearly actually enables more free speech [because] when you have a totally freeform venue for free speech, it makes many people hold back and not join in." [techdirt.com]

It's tax season and this is your reminder that filing your taxes could be simple but H&R Block and the makers of TurboTax spend millions of dollars a year lobbying against it. [propublica.org]

I don't know John Siracusa (he's a friend of friends) but lots of what he has to say here, particularly about work/life balance and negotiating your "maximum capacity", resonated with me. Good luck going indie, @siracusa! [hypercritical.co]

Study: Highlighting COVID-19 racial disparities can reduce support for safety precautions among White U.S. residents. You saw this early on in the pandemic, esp in conservative circles: when we learned who was most at risk, concern evaporated. [sciencedirect.com]

---

Note: Quick Links are pushed to this RSS feed twice a day. For more immediate service, check out the front page of kottke.org, the Quick Links archive, or the @kottke Twitter feed.

Doctor Popular says, "I recently learned that Alvin and The Chipmunks albums sound great when played at 16 2/3 RPM. Basically, this is half speed, so the actors' voices sound like normal people, but the music sounds super sludgy and heavy. — Read the rest

Philadelphia's historic and abandoned "Boner Forever" building is on its way to becoming a Marriott Hotel. The 14-story N. Broad Street building is an icon in the city thanks to the work of artists "Boner" and "Forever" who emblazoned two sides of the tower with their graffiti names in 2008. — Read the rest

Russian oligarch, billionaire, and Putin-confidant Roman Abramovich announces that he will sell Chelsea FC. [chelseafc.com]

Street photographer Juri Nesterov's photos of everyday life in Ukraine from 2001 to 2021. [flashbak.com]

---

Note: Quick Links are pushed to this RSS feed twice a day. For more immediate service, check out the front page of kottke.org, the Quick Links archive, or the @kottke Twitter feed.

PUBLISHED FEB. 8, 2022, AT 4:02 PM

The Lasting Legacy Of RedliningWe looked at 138 formerly redlined cities and found most were still segregated — just like they were designed to be.

By Ryan Best and Elena Mejía

Get the data on GitHub

HOUSING DIVIDE is a partnership between ABC News and FiveThirtyEight examining racial inequities in housing, access to housing and the historical and present-day causes of those inequities. See more of our coverage on Nightline and ABC News.

In 1939, officials working with the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) went to Cleveland, Ohio, as part of the agency’s national effort to grade neighborhoods based on their perceived mortgage-lending risk.

One of the neighborhoods that officials visited — now known mostly as Fairfax — was 55 percent Black, and as such, they gave this area a “D” grade, meaning they thought Fairfax was “hazardous,” or at high risk for defaulting on mortgage loans. In their report, HOLC officials concluded that property prices were trending down due to a “strong colored infiltration” and that there was a “detrimental change of ownership occupancy from white to colored.” Fairfax, like most metropolitan neighborhoods where Black people lived in the early 1900s, was then marked with red ink in the HOLC’s maps — a practice referred to as redlining.

It’s been over 80 years since the lines were drawn in Fairfax and over 50 years since the use of redlining was legally banned, but the impact of redlining is still felt in cities like Cleveland, where redlined neighborhoods are some of the most starkly segregated in the country.

“BEST”“DESIRABLE”“DECLINING”“HAZARDOUS”THE HOME OWNERS’ LOAN CORPORATION’S MAP OF THE CLEVELAND METROPOLITAN DISTRICT AND CUYAHOGA COUNTY, COPYRIGHTED BY COMMERCIAL SURVEY COMPANY, 1937

The racial makeup of Cleveland’s formerly redlined zones, by rating

WHITEBLACKLATINOASIANOTHER“BEST”“DESIRABLE”“DECLINING”“HAZARDOUS”

But it’s not just Cleveland. In its 20 years of existence, the now-defunct HOLC drew hundreds of these maps across the country. In total, we analyzed the demographics of 138 metropolitan areas where HOLC drew maps, using data provided by the University of Richmond’s Mapping Inequality project and by the 2020 census. And we found that nearly all formerly redlined zones in the country are still disproportionately Black, Latino or Asian compared with their surrounding metropolitan area, while two-thirds of greenlined zones — neighborhoods that HOLC deemed “best” for mortgage lending — are still overwhelmingly white.

“The redlining maps are like the Rosetta stone of American cities,” said LaDale Winling, a professor of history at Virginia Tech and one of the researchers behind the Mapping Inequality project. Winling told us that these maps were used to codify and institutionalize practices that had already been ongoing at a more scattershot level within the real estate industry.

You can see the effects of that institutionalized segregation clearly in this national map of formerly greenlined and redlined zones:

Most formerly redlined zones are people of color; most greenlined zones are white

Estimated 2020 share of non-Hispanic white residents living within greenlined (“best”) and redlined (“hazardous”) boundaries drawn by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation between 1935-40, by metropolitan area

“HAZARDOUS”“BEST”

Includes only micro- and metropolitan areas with both A- (“best”) and D-rated (“hazardous”) zones in their redlining map — 138 of a total 143 metropolitan areas in the University of Richmond’s Mapping Inequality project. Circle sizes are based on total population in the surrounding area of that metro’s redlining map and positions are approximate, meaning they do not represent exact locations.

But despite formerly redlined zones sharing a purpose — to disproportionately deny loans to low-income Americans and, in particular, Black and minority Americans — the legacy of redlining differs from city to city and region to region.

Formerly redlined zones in the Northeast and Midwest are among the most segregated areas in the country. In those regions, a higher proportion of Black Americans live in redlined zones compared with those zones’ surrounding areas — and a higher proportion than can be found in other regions of the country. Meanwhile, in the South, formerly redlined zones aren’t as segregated. But less residential segregation doesn’t mean that the South is a more equitable region for Black and minority Americans, especially given its history of slavery and the Jim Crow era. Additionally, even though redlining was a housing policy that heavily targeted Black Americans, redlining has also affected immigrants and other minorities, in particular Latino Americans — something visible today in places like California. But at the same time, huge demographic shifts, suburbanization, urban renewal and gentrification have also changed the landscape of many of these cities. In some cities, formerly redlined zones are now whiter and more developed than they were in the 1940s. In other cities, there are more Black people than white people living in formerly greenlined areas, or areas that government officials once rated as “best.”

There is no one legacy when it comes to redlining. And its legacy is particularly devastating because, as we were told by Stephen Menendian, assistant director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, “Housing really is at the core of every expression of racial inequality in America.”

Jump to explore your cityThe myth of the northern “Promised Land”

The legacy of redlining is particularly pronounced in the Northeast and Midwest,1 where cities like Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Chicago are home to some of the most segregated formerly redlined zones in the country. This segregation is especially entrenched in redlined cities with large Black populations. Of the 19 such cities in these regions, 16 were still segregated, with over two-thirds as many Black people living in formerly redlined areas as in the surrounding area. White people, meanwhile, made up less than a third of the population of formerly redlined areas and were vastly overrepresented in formerly greenlined areas.2

One reason northern cities remain so segregated is because of what historians call the Great Migration and Second Great Migration. From the 1910s through the 1970s, millions of Black Americans fled the oppressive Jim Crow South in search of jobs in industrialized cities and a better life in the Northeast and Midwest. But Black Americans didn’t find refuge from systemic racism in these regions, especially when it came to housing policy.

In fact, scholars have found that the increase in Black Americans in these regions led to growing efforts like redlining in northern metro areas to keep Black Americans and other immigrants in specific areas and prevent them from moving into predominantly white neighborhoods. Consequently, Black families had little opportunity to build generational wealth.

Take Pittsburgh. It saw a massive uptick in its population in the early 1900s, but Black Americans moving in were limited to pre-war segregated areas like the Hill District, which in 1937 was officially redlined by HOLC officials because of what they described as an “infiltration” and “concentration of negro and undesirables.”

Today, the Hill District, like all neighborhoods encompassing formerly redlined zones in the Steel City, is still overwhelmingly segregated. Pittsburgh’s formerly redlined zones have, on average, close to three times as many Black people living in them as compared to their surrounding areas — making Pittsburgh the second most segregated redlined city in the country,3 just behind Cleveland.

Pittsburgh, PAWHITEBLACKLATINOASIANOTHER

PITTSBURGH’S“Best”“Desirable”“Declining”“Hazardous”ZONES:

WHITE53.1%BLACK34.8%

PITTSBURGH’S SURROUNDING AREA:

WHITE74.9%BLACK12.9%

One reason why an area like the Hill District is still so segregated is that redlining created a lack of investment in parts of Pittsburgh that persists today. Last year, a team of researchers released a report that looked at bank lending data and public investment documents in Pittsburgh from 2007 to 2019, finding that just 7 percent of home mortgage loans went to predominantly minority neighborhoods in that time period, despite the residents of these neighborhoods comprising almost 21 percent of the city’s population. And out of $11.8 billion in loans to borrowers, less than 4 percent went to Black people.

“[Redlining] biased where investment was made,” Bruce Mitchell, a senior analyst at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition told us, with “hazardous” areas like Hill District suffering from years of neglect. Mitchell said it’s this lack of investment in formerly redlined areas that is one of redlining’s most devastating consequences.

Like Pittsburgh, Chicago saw a huge surge in its Black population as part of the Great Migration. Many Black people moved to Chicago’s South Side, north of Washington Park — the area where many of Chicago’s redlines were ultimately drawn.

At the time government appraisers drew those lines, housing near parks, lakes and swimming pools was typically inhabited by white people, but in one zone surrounding Washington Park appraisers noted that it had been “almost completely monopolized by the colored race.” Appraisers concluded that Black Americans couldn’t be “closed in” and Washington Park was already “doomed,” so they drew a redline around the area in their map.

Today, there are over 90 percent more Black Chicagoans in redlined zones than in the surrounding area.

Chicago, ILWHITEBLACKLATINOASIANOTHER

CHICAGO’S“Best”“Desirable”“Declining”“Hazardous”ZONES:

BLACK31.8%LATINO31.6%WHITE26.8%

CHICAGO’S SURROUNDING AREA:

WHITE48.7%LATINO23.8%WHITE48.7%How an anti-Black past in the South shapes its present

In the South, most formerly redlined areas are also still starkly segregated — 28 of the 31 cities we analyzed.4 And while they aren’t as segregated as formerly redlined zones in the North, the formerly greenlined zones in the South are more segregated than in the North. On average, the South has almost twice as many white people living in greenlined zones compared with those zones’ surrounding areas — a much higher share than is seen in the North.

That’s important for understanding the legacy of redlining in the South because slavery and Jim Crow laws have played a much bigger role in the South’s unique form of segregation. Winling, who was one of the researchers behind the Mapping Inequality project, told us that Black Americans in the North began to move into greenlined areas after white populations started to flee because city neighborhoods were rapidly diversifying. But in some southern cities, he said, this didn’t happen to the same extent.

Take a city like Atlanta. Its neighborhood of Buckhead held the headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan from the early 1920s to the mid-1930s. Currently, Buckhead is the city’s whitest and wealthiest neighborhood, and it’s also where most of the “best” areas were drawn during in the late 1930s. And as can be seen on the map below, those “best” areas are 80 percent white.

Atlanta, GAWHITEBLACKLATINOASIANOTHER

ATLANTA’S“Best”“Desirable”“Declining”“Hazardous”ZONES:

WHITE80.2%BLACK5.9%

ATLANTA’S SURROUNDING AREA:

WHITE36.9%BLACK45.7%

Buckhead also remains very segregated from the rest of Atlanta. In fact, neighborhood residents are now backing an effort in the city’s legislature to create their own city and secede from Atlanta, a majority Black city. If this were to happen, it would be financially devastating for Atlanta since the city would lose an estimated 38 percent of its tax revenue.

According to Andre Perry, a senior fellow at Brookings Metro and author of “Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities,” it is these white enclaves in the South “where power is often exercised the most.”

Part of the way these areas amassed power was through the South’s long history of violent racism toward Black Americans, especially those moving to predominantly white neighborhoods. Consider Birmingham, Alabama, a city where bombings against Black residents were so rampant in the mid-1900s — there were more than 50 house bombings and burnings from the late 1940s until the mid-1960s — that Birmingham became known as “Bombingham.”

This ongoing violence, in addition to redlining, meant that much of Birmingham’s white population was confined to its greenlined zones. This pattern is still visible today, with the share of white people living in the city’s formerly greenlined zones being over twice as high as the share living in the surrounding area. In fact, per an ABC News analysis of mortgage-lending data, people of color are still less likely to have their loans approved in majority-white neighborhoods.

Birmingham, ALWHITEBLACKLATINOASIANOTHER

BIRMINGHAM’S“Best”“Desirable”“Declining”“Hazardous”ZONES:

WHITE11.1%BLACK79.5%

BIRMINGHAM’S SURROUNDING AREA:

WHITE43.5%BLACK46.4%

But parts of the South’s racial makeup are changing, albeit slowly. Since the 1990s, more and more Black Americans have moved to the South — a movement demographers are terming “The New Great Migration.” This has changed cities like Atlanta and Birmingham, which have also seen an influx of Asian Americans and other minorities, but according to Taylor, the Princeton professor, the South’s fixation on white exclusivity in places like Buckhead is still a big problem.

“People are returning to places that are just as segregated, just as excluded,” Taylor said.

“Anti-Black racism hurt everyone”

The harm redlining has caused Black Americans is extensive, but redlining has also affected other minorities in the U.S. — particularly the country’s growing Latino population. In some cities, government officials directly targeted Latinos with their redlining maps while in others, the continued lack of investment in formerly redlined areas has caused disproportionate harm to Latino communities.

Of 50 cities across the country with large Latino populations,5 we found that 72 percent have segregated Latino communities living in formerly redlined areas.

“That’s why I always say, anti-Black racism hurt everyone,” Perry said. “There’s lots of places where … anti-Black racism and hate against brown people and other groups really limited the amount of housing options for people of color, and the only places that they can generally go are formerly redlined or Black neighborhoods.”

Take San Diego. Its formerly redlined zones are the most segregated in the West, with 76 percent more Latinos living in these neighborhoods compared to the surrounding areas. Latinos were targeted by HOLC appraisers, too, as they wrote in their 1935 report that the area southeast of Fairmont Park had “many Mexicans with a definite trend of infiltration.”

San Diego, CAWHITEBLACKLATINOASIANOTHER

SAN DIEGO’S“Best”“Desirable”“Declining”“Hazardous”ZONES:

WHITE14.3%LATINO58.2%

SAN DIEGO’S SURROUNDING AREA:

WHITE40.9%LATINO33.1%

In other parts of California, appraisers used even harsher, more racist language. In 1939, San Gabriel, a city in Los Angeles County, was 90 percent Mexican American, and appraisers described them as “peon Mexicans” and as a “distinctly subversive racial influence.”

Up until 1930, the U.S. census classified Mexicans as white, but in the 1930 census, the government classified them as their own race. According to Jerry González, a historian at the University of Texas at San Antonio, this allowed the U.S. government to more easily target Mexican Americans as a racial threat.

This targeting was especially clear in redlining practices of the time. González told us that officials would specifically identify Mexicans living in places like Los Angeles, and then include language in their reports like, “do not sell this home to persons not fully of the Caucasian race.” González said that language gave housing officials the flexibility to more easily discriminate.

Los Angeles, CAWHITEBLACKLATINOASIANOTHER

LOS ANGELES’S“Best”“Desirable”“Declining”“Hazardous”ZONES:

WHITE14.8%LATINO63.9%

LOS ANGELES’S SURROUNDING AREA:

WHITE25.2%LATINO47.6%

It’s not just Latinos that HOLC officials targeted either. Appraisers described other areas derisively as a “melting pot … long been thoroughly blighted,” also classifying Asian Americans as “subversive racial elements” in California. Today, San Gabriel’s Asian and Latino communities are still segregated from the city’s white population.

Beyond the red lines

Of course, segregation in many cities doesn’t fit neatly inside formerly redlined zones. This doesn’t mean, however, that these cities avoided or overcame a racist housing system. On the contrary, housing segregation manifests in ways that go far beyond HOLC’s color lines on these maps.

“The refusal of federal agencies to issue mortgages to those neighborhoods in the 1930s and 40s — that’s one of many policies that were followed,” Richard Rothstein, author of “The Color of Law,” said. “But it doesn’t entirely determine today’s landscape, and there are many, many other policies that get ignored that are equally important.”

For instance, even though it is one of the most segregated cities in the country, Detroit’s segregation doesn’t match up with its formerly redlined zones. This is in large part because as Black southerners moved into Detroit during the Great Migration, white Detroiters responded by leaving the city in droves, mostly moving out to federally subsidized and racially homogenous suburbs — a migration that historians call “white flight.” White Detroiters went through great lengths to keep their wealthy suburbs exclusively white, too, with measures as extreme as building a half-mile-long concrete wall to physically separate themselves from Black families.

Detroit, MIWHITEBLACKLATINOASIANOTHER

DETROIT’S“Best”“Desirable”“Declining”“Hazardous”ZONES:

WHITE33.1%BLACK43.4%

DETROIT’S SURROUNDING AREA:

WHITE57.0%BLACK27.1%

According to Joe Darden, a professor of geography, environment and spatial sciences at Michigan State University, the Detroit metro area continues to experience white flight, too. As Black Detroiters move into predominantly white suburbs, many white Detroiters move away — further perpetuating residential segregation.

“The future of Black suburbanization is going to be looking at those places that used to be predominantly white, and turning them more and more to be predominantly Black,” Darden said. “As Blacks move in, whites, even to this day, still have a tendency to move further and further out.”

Meanwhile, Philadelphia is seeing the opposite happen: More white people are moving into its formerly redlined zones. And as this occurs, property values increase and lower-income people, many of whom are Black, can no longer afford to stay.

This gentrification has fundamentally shifted where Philadelphia’s varying demographics reside so that its present-day segregation doesn’t really match up against its formerly redlined zones. In 2019, a study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition found that seven cities account for almost half of all the gentrification in the U.S., and by their metrics, Philadelphia was one of the cities where gentrification was most rampant.

Philadelphia, PAWHITEBLACKLATINOASIANOTHER

PHILADELPHIA’S“Best”“Desirable”“Declining”“Hazardous”ZONES:

WHITE37.3%BLACK35.9%

PHILADELPHIA’S SURROUNDING AREA:

WHITE50.1%BLACK26.2%

In recent years, it’s become popular among some Democrats to tout proposals that will remedy segregation caused by redlining. But Taylor told us that these measures often fail to account for how the maps have changed over time. For instance, in Philadelphia, young white people have been able to move into historically Black neighborhoods and buy homes by using programs associated with the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which was intended to remedy the damage of redlining. In fact, per an ABC News analysis, it’s now easier for white people than people of color to buy homes in historically nonwhite neighborhoods. In 2019, 65 percent of the 347,000 white homebuyers who applied for mortgages in mostly nonwhite neighborhoods in the country’s largest metro areas were approved, compared with 56 percent of 715,000 nonwhite homebuyers who received a loan in those same neighborhoods.

What’s more, Taylor said, simply encouraging homeownership in neighborhoods like East Germantown, where the housing stock is old and dilapidated, could saddle Black Americans with debt. Without being able to fund repairs or escape long, predatory mortgages, these programs could exacerbate the housing crisis and push more Black people out of their neighborhoods.

“There’s no money to be made in affordable housing, and so all the building that is happening now are million-dollar condos, because that’s where the money is,” Taylor said.

Some 40 years after the first redlining map was drawn, redlining was banned under the Fair Housing Act of 1968. But in many ways, HOLC and the Federal Housing Administration had already written the textbook for racist real estate practices.

“[The Fair Housing Act of 1968] doesn’t roll back or undo or make amends for 50 years of housing discrimination that had gone on up to that point,” said Winling, the Virginia Tech historian involved in the Mapping Inequality project. “It’s going to take probably another 80 or 90 years of vigorous enforcement and vigorous remediation to undo that legacy.”

The legacy of redlining extends far beyond housing segregation, too. Its impact can be seen today in minority neighborhoods’ access to health care, poorer educational opportunties, and increased risk of climate change, as many of these areas are more prone to flooding and extreme heat. Without a serious confrontation of its lasting generational damage, the racial segregation caused by redlining isn’t going anywhere either.

“I look at it as: Redlining happened. It was an important part of American history,” Perry said. “And we must reckon with the behaviors and the outcomes in ways that never discount what redlining did. And again, it has different stories for different cities, but redlining is a part of that story. It just is.”

SEARCH CITIES WITH HOLC MAPS​​WHITEBLACKLATINOASIANOTHER

CLEVELAND’S“Best”“Desirable”“Declining”“Hazardous”ZONES:

WHITE22.8%BLACK59.5%

CLEVELAND’S SURROUNDING AREA:

WHITE63.9%BLACK22.0%ABOUT THIS ANALYSIS

Redlining maps used in this project were originally drawn by the now-defunct Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) from 1935-40 and downloaded from the Mapping Inequality project. Individual HOLC zones that fall within the same metropolitan area were grouped according to census micro- or metropolitan area definitions.6 A small number of HOLC zones fractionally overlapped in source map shapefiles; these overlaps were carved out of the geographically larger zone.7

Population and race/ethnicity data comes from the 2020 U.S. decennial census. Population counts were aggregated from census blocks, which are the smallest geographic census units and offer the most precision when matching census data to other geographic shapes. HOLC zones were matched to census data by first determining which census blocks geographically intersected with each zone. Data from all matching blocks was then weighted by the proportion of the block’s total area that intersects with that HOLC zone and summed to estimate the 2020 demographic makeup of each HOLC zone.

The surrounding area for each metropolitan area’s HOLC map was computed by adding a 10 percent buffer radius to the combined zones in that metropolitan area.8 Surrounding area population totals were then computed by summing census-block population data, weighted by the proportion of each block’s total area contained within the surrounding area’s border.

For each metropolitan area’s HOLC map, a location quotient (LQ) — a small-area measure of segregation that specifically compares one racial/ethnic group’s proportion in a granular geography to its proportion in a larger surrounding geography — was calculated for combined A-, B-, C- and D-rated zones for each racial/ethnic group. An LQ above 1 for a given racial group indicates overrepresentation in that HOLC zone compared with the broader surrounding area, and values below 1 indicate underrepresentation. A metropolitan area’s HOLC zones were defined as segregated for a minority racial/ethnic group if: (1) its LQ in D-rated zones was greater than 1 (suggesting this group was overrepresented in redlined areas); (2) its LQ in D-rated zones was greater than its LQ in A-rated zones (suggesting this group was more represented in redlined areas than in greenlined areas); and (3) its LQ in A-rated zones was smaller than the white population’s LQ in A-rated zones (suggesting this group was not more represented in greenlined areas than the white population).

Population density dots were generated for each racial/ethnic group within a census block, with each dot representing one person. Dots were placed randomly within a census block and do not represent exact locations but rather the total population of a given race/ethnicity in that block. White, Black and Asian data excludes those who indicated Hispanic or Latino ethnicity. Hispanic/Latino data includes all who indicated Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, regardless of race. Other race data includes all population counts that did not fall under white, Black, Asian or Latino. The Albers Equal-Area Conic projection, which guarantees areas on one map are equivalent to areas on another map, was used for all maps and spatial calculations.

This data-driven infographic shows the status of Webb on its journey to L2 orbit. The page constantly updates as Webb travels, deploys, and cools to operating temperature. If you have any issues with the page, hold the CTRL or CMD key and hit the F5 key which will reload the page and should clear any issues. (cntl/cmd shift R works too).

The MOST RECENTLY COMPLETED deployment step for Webb is displayed along a line that also indicates the major deployment phases. Note that the timing, duration and/or order of deployment phases and steps may change. This page shows the default/nominal timing and order. The phases mark the start and end of major groups of deployment steps. The most recently completed deployment step is shown as a spacecraft icon on the line and is detailed below with a larger image and links. Deployment phases are shown on the line in a light blue overlay on screens large enough to display this info, otherwise hidden.

Explore ALL Deployment Steps

You can EXPLORE past and upcoming deployments on the way to L2. The Deployment Explorer opens to the MOST RECENTLY COMPLETED deployment step, all deployment steps to the "left" (on the top thumbnail nav) are COMPLETED, all deployment steps to the "right" (on the top thumbnail nav) are FUTURE.

The graduated horizontal line tracks the progress of Webb on its journey to L2 orbit. It can be displayed in time view or as a percentage of the total distance travelled to reach L2 orbit. The display defaults to a TIME line. The units are days. We refer to deployment events in terms of launch + elapsed-time so this view is useful for tracking deployments and time progress. Webb enters its L2 orbit at approximately 29.5days on the timeline. In "distance" view, it shows the percentage of the total distance to Webb entering its L2 orbit. Note on smaller screens the labels are progressively simplified and/or removed.

Your last chosen view mode is stored in a temporary "session" (non-persistent) cookie. This cookie will last at most until you close your browser and then be deleted. NASA Privacy Policy.

The speed and distance numbers displayed track Webb's distance travelled from Earth to entry into its L2 orbit. The numbers are derived from precalculated flight dynamics data that models Webb's flight up to its entry into L2 orbit. The distance numbers displayed are the approximate distance travelled as opposed to altitude. All the speed and distance data is with respect to an Earth-centered coordinate system.

With much higher speeds early in the trip, Webb covers a large percentage of the distance to L2 orbit early in its trip. This can be seen by toggling the "time" vs "distance %" views on the "progress line". Webb's speed is at its peak while connected to the push of the launch vehicle. It begins to slow rapidly after separation as it coasts up hill climbing the gravity ridge from Earth to its orbit around L2. Note on the TIME view that Webb reaches the altitude of the moon in ~2.5 days (which is ~8% of the total trip time but ~25% of its trip distance). See the sections below on Distance to L2 and Arrival at L2 for more information on the distance travelled to L2.

Passing The Moon

As noted above, this page displays the "distance travelled" by Webb as opposed to its altitude from Earth. Webb launched on the sun-facing side of the Earth and travels on a slightly curved path so Webb's "distance travelled" is greater than its altitude. Webb passing the Moon's altitude is a good example of the difference, when Webb reached the altitude (a) of the Moon at a time of launch + ~2.5 days, Webb had already travelled a distance (d) greater than the moon's altitude.

Temperatures

This page displays 2 "hot side" and 2 "cold side" temperatures on each side of the sunshield to illustrate the incredible engineering and effectiveness of the sunshield. A set of bellwether instrument temperature observations are included that give a good indication of the temperature trends that drive commisioning activities.

Temperatures are updated once per day. In general, temperatures change slowly so this frequency is sufficient to give a snapshot of overall trends. Temperatures are rounded to the nearest whole number and displayed in the users choice of Farenheit or Celsius along with Kelvin in parentheses.

L2 is approximately 1 million miles from Earth (932056 miles/1.5M km to be exact). But Webb never actually arrives at L2, it is travelling to enter an orbit around L2. Webb's L2 orbit is very large in size and it enters its orbit before it reaches the linear distance between Earth and L2. Webb's orbit around L2 is known as a halo orbit which, rather than a single path, is an orbit that periodically varies through a series of paths around L2.

By design, the launch vehicle and Webb's trajectory put Webb on a path to an L2 orbit with only small inputs needed to refine it. As it separates from the upper stage of the launch vehicle, Webb is climbing the gravity ridge from Earth up into a halo orbit around L2. Once Webb is in its halo orbit it will be riding up and down and over and along the shallow saddle contour at L2. Read more about L2 in this blog entry.

To get the exact orbit needed, Webb's trajectory is fine tuned by a number of "burns" along the way. You can learn more about these Mid Course Correction (MCC) burns on the Deployment Explorer page. The final burn, MCC2, inserts Webb into the desired L2 halo orbit. The MCC2 burn is now planned for L+30 days. At the end of that burn we can say Webb is "In L2 Orbit" and so has "arrived at L2".

Therefore, this page, for purposes of calculations uses a distance to L2 orbit entry number ( and timing ) that is a sufficient distance and time after the MCC2 burn to say "Webb is in L2 Orbit". Once in L2 orbit, this page will no longer track distance, but will track temperatures. The spacecraft will continue to cool to operating temperatures and numerous tests and calibrations occur to ready it for operations and its first images over the months that follow.

By default the page loads and displays distances in miles, temperatures in Fahrenheit, ie English units (also known as Imperial or USCS system units). If you wish to have the page load and display in kilometers and temperatures in Celsius, ie metric system units use the urls below to select your preferred units. We do not use persistent cookies; so these urls 'store' your units preference. Once chosen, bookmark the urls with your preferred units and use it instead of the default website link. NOTE: the page units toggle button English<>Metric now reloads the page with these urls.

KILOMETERS/metric units | MILES/English units

As the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) explained:

This sea pig (Scotoplanes sp.) was spotted at 1,290 meters (4,230 feet) beneath the sea surface with a juvenile king crab (Neolithodes diomedeae) clinging to its body. Researchers speculate that this may help young crabs evade predators.