For cities, as well as their tax bases, empty commercial real estate presents a crisis still looming. The pandemic hit the ground floor first, knocking out smaller shops and restaurants. Trouble may not creep upstairs to the office floors until six to nine months later, according to Victor Calanog, head of commercial real estate analytics at Moody's Analytics REIS.
Because office tenants tend to hold longer leases, averaging around 10 years, Calanog says, they take the dramatic step of breaking a lease to cut costs only if a downturn is prolonged enough to justify it.
White supremacist groups have infiltrated US law enforcement agencies in every region of the country over the last two decades, according to a new report about the ties between police and far-right vigilante groups.
In a timely new analysis, Michael German, a former FBI special agent who has written extensively on the ways that US law enforcement have failed to respond to far-right domestic terror threats, concludes that US law enforcement officials have been tied to racist militant activities in more than a dozen states since 2000, and hundreds of police officers have been caught posting racist and bigoted social media content.
Rather than rejecting the concept of wokeness outright, today’s detractors often claim they are rejecting the word as a signifier of pretentiousness and “cultural elitism”. However, as Fox and others have shown, it is as much to do with the issues of racial and social justice. Criticising “woke culture” has become a way of claiming victim status for yourself rather than acknowledging that more deserving others hold that status. It has gone from a virtue signal to a dog whistle. The language has been successfully co-opted – but as long as the underlying injustices remain, new words will emerge to describe them.
I have my doubts that I will ever own an electric car. Battery technology has improved a lot as has solar generation but still electric cars are heavily dependent on the fossil fuel-based power grids, as it’s difficult to generate and store a lot of electricity in a limited space. Almost every off-grid household relies on fossil energy – be it diesel or gasoline for their cars and trucks – and propane for cooking and heating – with maybe the supplement of wood.
I do think there is a strong future for electric buses and intra-urban transportation. Many people may choose electric cars in the future, especially those who live in the city and want a second car, have solar panels and can plan appropriately. Electric vehicles are more efficient and cleaner, especially in high pollution, densely packed urban areas. Moreover, electric drive trains are simpler and potentially much more reliable and long-lasting. But they still consume an enormous amount of energy which is difficult to generate on site using renewables.
Which is to say that I don’t believe we will meet our ambitious climate change goals and is going to be serious impacts to our economy and planet as a whole. But some action is better than none and indeed reducing the carbon intensity of society and energy use more generally, limiting greenhouse gases is better than no action at all.
I have a bicycle at home but it’s been sitting along the wall for almost a decade now as I got tired of broken spokes. Ever since I got that bike it was in the shop for spoke repairs – I did some myself but some are quite hard to repair on that bike. A couple other parts and the derailer are broken now. It probably could be rebuilt for not that much money, but I can’t have it being junker that breaks down all of the time.
I should think about getting a bicycle now, especially if I am thinking about going without a car next year. I should see how practical it is to get around town on a bicycle, along with use of public transit. It would save so much money if I could go a few years without a car, and only rent one during vacations. It would improve my health, burn calories and let me learn more about my community. Not to mention really lower my carbon footprint!
I’ve started looking at Facebook at people selling bicycles. Used bicycles aren’t particularly expensive, although I am not sure what kind of bicycle I would want to get. Reliablity has to be top priority, and the ability to mount a basket on it for carrying supplies like groceries home from the store. I don’t mind doing maintenance on my bicycle, but it can’t be regularly breaking down when I’m 10 or 20 miles away from home — especially if it’s my primary way to get around town.
If I can’t get any use out of the old bicycle, I am thinking I could donate it to Troy Bicycle Rescue or some other group that restores bicycles for community use.