Mary J. Blige 30 Years Later
This album just turned 30 so I had to listen to it start to finish, and it is just as great as the day it was released.
The Corner Store is Back
Corner Stores Mount a Comeback in Residential Neighborhoods - Bloomberg
From Seattle to Baltimore, rebuilding this lost retail network has become a goal of many zoning reformers. It’s a core tenet of the buzzy “15-minute city” concept, which aims to give residents access to all their needs within a brief walk. And it fits into a post-Covid retail trend toward smaller-footprint brick-and-mortar stores.
But undoing decades of planning orthodoxy that strictly separates businesses from residences stands to be a slow and incremental process, and it comes with its own concerns about gentrification and conflicts with homeowners, as well as challenges tied to making neighborhood stores succeed in an age of Amazon and Walmart.
This is more than just the corner store. This is about your local pharmacy. It’s about your local grocery store. It’s about your local restaurant. As people start losing a real contact with the people who work and own these establishments they lose contact with community.
What I’m Reading on Nov. 15, 2024
Opinion | This Is the Dark, Unspoken Promise of Trump’s Return - The New York Times
For those bewildered by why so many Americans apparently voted against the values of liberal democracy, Balint Magyar has a useful formulation. “Liberal democracy,” he says, “offers moral constraints without problem-solving” — a lot of rules, not a lot of change — while “populism offers problem-solving without moral constraints.” Magyar, a scholar of autocracy, isn’t interested in calling Donald Trump a fascist. He sees the president-elect’s appeal in terms of something more primal: “Trump promises that you don’t have to think about other people.”
The NAR Settlement May Push Dilettantes Out of Real Estate
Where Does $9 Congestion Pricing Get Us?
And now, five months in, she’s hitting the giant erase button. It was just a dream; Bobby Ewing wasn’t actually dead. Except this isn’t a prime-time soap opera trying to write its way out of a jam. This all actually happened, and no one is going to forget it.
This Nails the Current Landscape
Why wouldn’t people crave change? Why wouldn’t people be angry? Living in the current world can be absolutely fucking miserable, bereft of industry and filthy with manipulation, an undignified existence, a disrespectful existence that must be crushed if we want to escape the depressing world we’ve found ourselves in. Our media institutions are fully fucking capable of dealing with these problems, but it starts with actually evaluating them and aggressively interrogating them without fearing accusations of bias that will happen either way.
The truth is that the media is more afraid of bias than they are of misleading their readers. And while that seems like a slippery slope, and may very well be one, there must be room to inject the writer’s voice back into their work, and a willingness to call out bad actors as such, no matter how rich they are, no matter how big their products are, and no matter how willing they are to bark and scream that things are unfair as they accumulate more power.
If you’re in the tech industry and reading this and saying that “the media is too critical” of tech, you are flat fucking wrong. Everything we’re seeing happening right now is a direct result of a society that let technology and the ultra-rich run rampant, free of both the governmental guardrails that might have stopped them and the media ecosystem that might have held them accountable.
I don’t give a shit if these people have “raised a lot of money,” unless you use that as proof that something is fundamentally wrong with the tech industry. Meta making billions of dollars of profit is a sign of something wrong with society, not proof that it’s a “good company”
Ed has a very “special” way of communicating, and it is needed, refreshing, and right. Podcast network owner and host Leo Laporte called him an old British muckraker which is the perfect description of him.
How to Survive and Stay Sane in a News Heavy Post Social World
Curate Your Notifications
While the abundance of news apps offers great variety, allowing all of them to send notifications can quickly become overwhelming. Instead:
- Select a few trusted sources
- Enable only breaking news notifications
- Consider The New York Times - despite varying opinions on their political coverage, they maintain high standards for what constitutes breaking news
Embrace RSS Feeds
RSS remains one of the most efficient ways to manage news consumption. If you’re new to RSS, you can learn more about how it works through this tutorial. For iOS and Mac users, Reeder offers an excellent experience for following your preferred sites. The app provides feed syncing capabilities, though numerous other syncing services are also available. For content suggestions, you can explore my curated list of recommended sites.
Consider Apple News+ (iOS Users)
For iOS users, Apple News+ subscription can be a valuable investment:
- Access to numerous newspapers without individual subscriptions
- Includes magazine content for broader reading
- Customizable notification settings While this suggestion might be controversial, the service offers significant value for news enthusiasts.
Rethink Social Media
Social media platforms can facilitate discussion but often fail as reliable news sources. A specific note regarding X (formerly Twitter): consider departing from the platform. Its post-Elon transformation has shifted it away from being a neutral information source, and continuing to engage might inadvertently support concerning trends in social media discourse.
Remember: The goal is to stay informed without becoming overwhelmed. Carefully selecting your news sources and managing how you receive updates can help achieve this balance.
