Why Manhattan’s Skyscrapers Are Empty (The Atlantic)

Approximately half of the luxury-condo units that have come onto the market in the past five years are still unsold.

... the typical new American single-family home has become surprisingly luxurious, if not quite so swank as Manhattan’s glassy spires. Newly built houses in the U.S. are among the largest in the world, and their size-per-resident has nearly doubled in the past 50 years. And the bathrooms have multiplied. In the early ’70s, 40 percent of new single-family houses had 1.5 bathrooms or fewer; today, just 4 percent do. The mansions of the ’70s would be the typical new homes of the 2020s.

... Across the country, the supply of housing hasn’t kept up with population growth. Single-family-home sales are stuck at 1996 levels, even though the United States has added 60 million people—or two Texases—since the mid-’90s. The undersupply of housing has become one of the most important stories in economics in the past decade. It explains why Americans are less likely to move, why social mobility has declined, why regional inequality has increased, why entrepreneurship continues to fall, why wealth inequality has skyrocketed, and why certain neighborhoods have higher poverty and worse health.

What makes a hero?

Consider Robert O'Donnell, who rose to fame as the man who struggled down a narrow well to rescue Baby Jessica as a captivated nation watched, and who killed himself just days after seeing footage of rescue workers at the site of the Oklahoma City Bombing. He told his mother When those rescuers are through, they're going to need lots of help. I don't mean for a couple of days or weeks, but for years. Four days later he shot himself in the head, leaving a suicide note that read, I'm sorry to check out this way. But life sucks.
'Diary' is a highly personal and experimental film that expresses the subjective experience of [Tim Hetherington's] work, and was made as an attempt to locate [himself] after ten years of reporting. It's a kaleidoscope of images that link our western reality to the seemingly distant worlds we see in the media.

Diary (2010) from Tim Hetherington on Vimeo.

I'm not a boomer, I'm Gen X. But it seems not to matter. "Ok, boomer" is an ageist phrase that gets lobbed at anyone born before 1981. Just like the "snowflake" and avocado toast memes, this one needs to stop

Like much of online culture, “OK Boomer” tells us something about the cultural dominance of upper-middle-class youth. These young people are surrounded by baby boomers who’ve “hoarded all the wealth” and polluted the planet in the process. They haven’t had to witness – or deal with the ramifications of – old age and precarity for millions of working people in that generational cohort. Instead, they get to revel without self-reflection in oedipal angst about their elders – many of whom were kind enough to pass them their ill-gotten privileges.
Far from sitting atop riches, many [Boomers] never saw their household wealth recover after the Great Recession. They were victims of corporate raiders, neoliberal deregulation and predatory loans – and the situation is even more dire for those of them who are black and brown.

With this in mind, let’s retranslate the meme Lorenz is championing.

Boomer: “I can’t afford to live on social security. My promised pension disappeared. I might need to get out of retirement and start working part time again. I worry about the future.”

“OK Boomer.”?

City, Ariel VIew
Heaven or High Water (Popula)

“Sunny day flooding” is flooding where water comes right up from the ground, hence the name, and yes, it can certainly rain during sunny day flooding, and yes, that makes it worse. Sunny day flooding happens in many parts of Miami, but it is especially bad in Sunset Harbour, the low-lying area on Miami Beach’s west side.

The sea level in Miami has risen ten inches since 1900; in the 2000 years prior, it did not really change. The consensus among informed observers is that the sea will rise in Miami Beach somewhere between 13 and 34 inches by 2050. By 2100, it is extremely likely to be closer to six feet, which means, unless you own a yacht and a helicopter, sayonara. Sunset Harbour is expected to fare slightly worse, and to do so more quickly.

livingroom, chairs, wooden floor, windows

The Changing Seasons Monthly Photo Challenge is a blogging challenge by Cardinal Guzman. Each month I will post a photo that I think represents the month.

I shot twice as many photos in February than I did in January but very few of them were outdoors. For me, February has no meaning. It's what I would call the forgettable month. We had more snowstorms than in January but the snow mostly fell during the week and melted by the weekend. I didn't get to shoot any snow scenes.

My weekends were packed with activities. Either I was taking a course or there was a birthday to celebrate or a high school play. This past weekend I helped a friend by shooting interior and exterior photographs of her home. She's downsizing and she and her husband are selling their home and moving to another town nearby. One cool thing about this area of New Jersey is you have many choices of historic towns each with a unique character.

In the third weekend of February, my wife's best friend returned from India with the flu and we were all exposed. My wife was the first to succumb. I took her to the urgent care but as you can expect, the waiting area was full of sick people. So of course despite my normally strong immune system, I am home sick with the flu for the last two days.

So here is my jumbled gallery of photos for February.