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Breath of Civilization

Breath of Civilization

Sources

Every figure and outside claim on these pages, with where it comes from. Where a figure is a place’s own claim about itself, the page that uses it says so. If one of these is wrong, write to me with the better source.

The film’s places and figures

  1. South Delridge Action Plan: About This ProjectCity of Seattle, 2023. www.seattle.gov/documents/departments/opcd/ongoinginitiatives/southdelridgeactionplan/southdelridge_four%20pager_2023_website_redu.pdfLife expectancy at birth: 78.2 years in the Delridge health reporting area (South Delridge, North Delridge and High Point) and 84.4 in the rest of West Seattle, from Public Health Seattle and King County. The 6.2-year gap is the difference between the two; the handout does not give the years the data cover.
  2. Vital signsCleveland Clinic. my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/vital-signsA normal adult resting breathing rate is 12 to 18 breaths a minute. At 16, 6.2 years is about 52 million breaths; across that range it is 39 to 59 million.
  3. The Direct Drive DC Microgrid: An Energy Future the Whole World Can AffordDebbie Piesen, Communities No. 206, 2025. livingenergyfarm.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Direct-Drive-DC-Microgrid-CmagNo206.pdfLiving Energy Farm was founded in 2010 by eight current or former members of Twin Oaks and Acorn. It uses 250 watts of solar panel and 200 watt-hours of battery per person (the farm’s own figures), wires its machines straight to the panels with no inverter, and stores energy mostly as heat, cold, water pressure and biogas.
  4. Gelephu Mindfulness CityGelephu Mindfulness City. gmc.bt/The city’s own site gives its area as over 4,046 km², 10% of Bhutan, and describes it as a Special Administrative Region with its own laws and courts.
  5. Report on the Royal Charter for Gelephu, granted at Losar 2024The Bhutanese, 2024. thebhutanese.bt/hrh-gyalsey-receives-blessings-for-royal-charter-for-gelephu-granted-on-losar/The Royal Charter for Gelephu Mindfulness City was granted in February 2024. The city was announced on 17 December 2023.
  6. The Impact of the Rights of Nature: Assessing the Implementation of the Los Cedros Ruling in EcuadorNYU TERRA Clinic and More Than Human Life Project, 2024. mothrights.org/implementing-the-rights-of-nature/los-cedros-report/Constitutional Court of Ecuador ruling 1149-19-JP/21 of 10 November 2021. Field visits in 2022 and 2024 found mining stopped and no mining infrastructure left, and nearly all of the forest’s management plan unimplemented.
  7. Report on the Los Cedros rulingInside Climate News, 2021. insideclimatenews.org/news/03122021/ecuador-rights-of-nature/The court announced the Los Cedros ruling on 1 December 2021, cancelling the mining permits under the rights of nature.
  8. Living Energy FarmLiving Energy Farm. www.livingenergyfarm.org/Living Energy Farm’s own site, linked where the pages name the farm.

Land and districts

  1. Dudley Neighbors Inc.Dudley Neighbors Inc.. www.dudleyneighborsinc.org/our-historyThe trust protects over 30 acres of community-controlled land; it was approved in 1988 after the city adopted the residents’ plan.
  2. Dudley Neighbors Inc.John Emmeus Davis, CLT Center, 2015. www.cltweb.org/?p=4052On 10 November 1989 the Boston Redevelopment Authority board voted unanimously to grant eminent domain to the residents’ initiative; publicly owned parcels became 225 permanently affordable homes.
  3. Shared Equity Homeownership Evaluation: Case Study of Champlain Housing TrustTemkin, Theodos and Price, Urban Institute, 2010. cltweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Shared-Equity-Homeownership-Evaluation-Case-Study-of-Champlain-Housing-Trust.pdfSellers keep 25% of the rise in appraised value; 683 families bought through 2009; sellers earned a median 30.8% annual return; affordability held from one sale to the next.
  4. Annual Report, fiscal year 2025Champlain Housing Trust. www.getahome.org/wp-content/uploads/CHT-Annual-Report-2025.pdfThe board is elected by members: one-third public, one-third general and one-third resident members.
  5. Stable Home Ownership in a Turbulent EconomyEmily Thaden, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2011. www.lincolninst.edu/publications/working-papers/stable-home-ownership-turbulent-economyEnd of 2010: 1.30% of land-trust homeowners’ loans seriously delinquent against 8.57% in the conventional market; land-trust borrowers were all lower-income, the comparison group all incomes.
  6. 2011 Model Ground Lease and CommentaryNational Community Land Trust Network. groundedsolutions.org/wp-content/uploads/2018-10/2011%20Model%20Ground%20Lease%20and%20Commentary.pdfThe model lease runs 99 years and the homeowner can renew it for another 99.
  7. Vauban in ZahlenCity of Freiburg, data for 2013. freiburg.de/pb/site/Freiburg/get/params_E975311539/647912/Infotafeln_Vauban_de.pdfAbout 5,500 residents in 2,472 households; 172 cars per 1,000 residents.
  8. Forum VaubanParticipedia. participedia.net/case/7909The city made Forum Vauban its agency for extended public participation; over 40 building-group projects were built; Forum Vauban went bankrupt in 2003 when EU LIFE funding ended.
  9. Will Limited-Equity Co-ops Make a Comeback?Lillian M. Ortiz, Shelterforce, 2017. shelterforce.org/2017/04/25/will-limited-equity-co-ops-make-comeback/Of 300,000 limited-equity units accounted for, only 160,000 were still limited equity; once regulations or mortgages end, a co-op can vote to drop the status.
  10. Annual Report 2018, section 3.15: Waterfront TorontoAuditor General of Ontario, 2018. www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/news/18_newsreleases/2018news_3.15.pdfWaterfront Toronto was given ownership and control of 1% of the land it was tasked to revitalize; Sidewalk Labs received more information before the call for partners than other respondents.
  11. Report on Ann Cavoukian’s resignation from Sidewalk LabsEngadget, 2018. engadget.com/2018/10/26/sidewalk-labs-ann-cavoukian-smart-cityAnn Cavoukian resigned as Sidewalk’s privacy adviser because its proposed data trust would not require personal data to be de-identified at source.
  12. Report on Waterfront Toronto’s October 2019 decision on QuaysideBetaKit, 2019. betakit.com/waterfront-toronto-agrees-to-press-forward-on-sidewalk-labs-quayside-projectOn 31 October 2019 the board held Sidewalk to the original 12 acres instead of 190 and dropped the Urban Data Trust.
  13. Waterfront Toronto and Quayside Impact confirm agreement to develop QuaysideWaterfront Toronto, 2022. www.waterfrontoronto.ca/news/waterfront-toronto-and-quayside-impact-confirm-agreement-to-develop-quaysideThe same 12 acres were re-tendered and signed in December 2022 for over 800 affordable homes. Sidewalk withdrew in May 2020.
  14. Report on Honduras repealing the charter-zone lawRest of World, 2022. restofworld.org/2022/crypto-libertarian-prospera-lost-legal-battle-honduras/Honduras’s Congress voted unanimously on 21 April 2022 to repeal the law that let charter zones have their own laws.
  15. Honduras Próspera Inc. and others v. Republic of Honduras, ARB/23/2ICSID, World Bank. icsid.worldbank.org/cases/case-database/case-detail?CaseNo=ARB/23/2The investors’ arbitration claim against Honduras, registered in 2023, is pending. The Supreme Court declared the charter-zone law unconstitutional on 20 September 2024.
  16. Report that NEOM halted work on The Line until after 2030Semafor, 2026. www.semafor.com/article/05/22/2026/saudis-neom-halts-work-on-the-line-until-after-2030The Line was planned as mirrored skyscrapers 170 km long; work delayed until at least after 2030; the 2030 population target cut to up to 100,000.
  17. Report on the company buying farmland near Travis Air Force BaseABC7, 2023. abc7.com/post/travis-air-force-base-mystery-company-flannery-associates-llc-afb-land-purchase-solano-county/13546303/Flannery Associates bought about 55,000 acres of farmland in Solano County from 2018 without saying who was behind it.
  18. Report on California Forever withdrawing its ballot measureKQED, 2024. www.kqed.org/news/11996747/california-forever-pulls-bid-to-build-new-city-from-this-years-ballotWithdrawn on 22 July 2024 after a county report found a possible fiscal deficit of $103.1 million at full build-out.

AI safety

  1. What failure looks likePaul Christiano, AI Alignment Forum, 2019. www.alignmentforum.org/posts/HBxe6wdjxK239zajf/what-failure-looks-likeMachine learning makes it easier to pursue goals that are easy to measure; proxies drift from what people care about and institutions optimise the proxies. Source of the quoted example about law enforcement.
  2. The retention of manual flying skills in the automated cockpitCasner, Geven, Recker and Schooler, Human Factors, 2014. doi.org/10.1177/0018720814535628Sixteen airline pilots in a 747-400 simulator: hand-flying skills mostly intact; cognitive skills such as tracking position without a map display showed more frequent and significant problems.
  3. International AI Safety Report 2026Bengio and others, 2026. internationalaisafetyreport.org/publication/2026-report-executive-summaryDefines societal resilience as the ability of societal systems to resist, absorb, recover from and adapt to shocks and harms, and finds current AI resilience efforts “uneven and largely untested”.
  4. Gradual Disempowerment: Systemic Existential Risks from Incremental AI DevelopmentKulveit, Douglas, Ammann, Turan, Krueger and Duvenaud, 2025. arxiv.org/abs/2501.16946As AI systems replace human participation in the economy, the state and culture, the forces that kept those institutions aligned with people weaken, through incremental steps rather than a sudden failure.
  5. Complacency and Bias in Human Use of Automation: An Attentional IntegrationParasuraman and Manzey, Human Factors, 2010. doi.org/10.1177/0018720810376055A review of empirical studies: complacency and automation bias appear in naive and expert participants alike, and automation bias cannot be prevented by training or instructions.
  6. Final report on the accident on 1 June 2009 to the Airbus A330-203, flight AF 447BEA, 2012. bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp090601.en/pdf/f-cp090601.en.pdfAfter the airspeed readings failed and the autopilot disconnected in cruise, the crew lost control; 228 people died. Among the contributing factors: the absence of any training at high altitude in flying by hand.
  7. SAFO 13002: Manual Flight OperationsFederal Aviation Administration, 2013. www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/other_visit/aviation_industry/airline_operators/airline_safety/SAFO13002.pdfThe FAA encouraged airlines to give pilots more opportunities to fly by hand, because continuous use of automation can erode manual flying skills.
  8. Checking AI: findingsBentley Moon’s lab, 2026. bentleymoon.com/research/checking-ai/findings/#referenceOne local checker, gemma4:12b: 1.000 when handed the correct value, 0.034 when it had to work the answer out (0.042 re-run after a serving fix), and 0.969 of wrong answers passed when told a false value was correct.
  9. Collective Constitutional AI: Aligning a Language Model with Public InputAnthropic and the Collective Intelligence Project, 2023. www.anthropic.com/research/collective-constitutional-ai-aligning-a-language-model-with-public-inputAbout 1,000 US adults wrote or voted on 1,127 statements (38,252 votes) in Polis; a constitution drawn from them was used to train a model. The authors describe the results as very preliminary.
  10. Energy and AIInternational Energy Agency, 2025. www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-aiData centres used about 415 TWh of electricity in 2024, about 1.5% of global use, projected to reach about 945 TWh by 2030.