With Jockstrap, you never know which way is up. On Wicked City, they’re cultivating a post-genre vibe, which at worst keeps it interesting, and at best throws you off your mental track. Nowhere is that jauntiness as forward as on “City Hell,” where delicate vocals get autotuned and distorted, then shoved aside by Queen-style walls of sound that tag out for frenetic lasers. I give this to you in hopes that it’s the most frenetic thing you experience today. On that note, with the run-up to inauguration feeling more like a meditation on a failed experiment, I’m taking the rest of this issue to surface some other “society” ideas that were, at least, worse. Pls enjoy <3

After last week’s issue on the 15-minute city, Nazli in Istanbul sent me the link to Cul De Sac, “the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US.” In the private Arizona development where “the barista always knows your name” (should I stop here?), “you can find fresh produce, locally roasted coffee, and a quick bite to eat within a 5-minute walk of your apartment.” Said apartment is situated near “outdoor living rooms” where you will commune with your neighbors, and in case five minutes on foot feels like too much, there are e-bikes, e-scooters, a light rail and ride shares to get you where you need to go.

Sounds good, right? Exactly, and that’s a little shifty. As Naz wrote me, Cul de Sac takes all the ideals of a good public space and turns them into private luxuries. Not to mention, they’ve named their utopia after the great beacon of American inequality. We can do better, right?

Further East, Mohammed bin Salman appears to have identified THE way to lay out a city, which is (why didn’t you think of this, you idiot) a thin, straight line. “The Line,” a car-free society and self-proclaimed “five-minute city,” would stretch across 105 miles of Saudi Arabia, which MBS also claims you could traverse end-to-end in 20 minutes* with some futuristic transit tech that’s yet to be invented. The whole idea is to eliminate commuting, which we know is the bane of every crown prince’s existence.

This is actually the least ambitious part of MBS’ Neom, an independent city-state built from scratch and slated to sit where Saudi Arabia meets Egypt and Jordan. The more you learn about it, the more it sounds like a vanity project for someone who’s been reading up on Elon Musk. After commissioning proposals from all the big consulting companies, MBS is envisioning an AI-powered municipality with amenities including “holographic schoolteachers, cloud seeding to create rain, flying taxis, glow-in-the-dark beaches, a giant NASA-built artificial moon, and lots of robots: maids, cage fighters, and dinosaurs.” Nothing like dinosaur robots to make you forget you ever read about The Line.

*20 is at least a multiple of five (…?)

I know you’re inspired now and digging deep for your own bright ideas. Consider powering through with a Verb Bar. These little guys come in 10 different flavors, have 65mg of caffeine from Green Tea, are made with natural, gluten-free ingredients, and are only 90 calories. I’ve convinced the Verb team to let you try 4 flavors for free. Do that here and keep me posted on any epiphanies that ensue.