My guess is that all their doing is learning that gentrification exists. I'm guessing that there is a huge gap between dramatically reducing income inequality in the city and dramatically reducing income inequality by raising the incomes of poor people instead of making them move somewhere else.
But also: stores aren't distributed equally. I could hit up a grocery store or a gas station in a poor neighborhood, but if it's not locally owned, does it really affect anyone's wages who works there? Am I missing something about the mechanism, or does this just not translate well from Spain to Central Texas?
I don't think you're really missing anything. The study seems to make some weird assumptions. Or rather, they weaken the ability to draw conclusions like the income inequality one. For instance, the assumption seems to be that transactions in the same business category are entirely fungible (subject to trip distance constraints). But you can't just move a EUR 2,000 coat purchase to a poorer part of town because poorer parts of town don't sell EUR 2,000 coats.
And, as you say, it seems to equate "average commercial income" with local personal income, which is bonkers.
To be fair, equate is the wrong word. They use a different proxy for personal income. But their focus is on reducing geographic disparities in business income.
They turned the site of Homestead Works into a big box retail center and some apartments. This moved a lot of the local retail from Pittsburgh into smaller, poor towns (the area is actually part of three different municipalities because why not?). I wouldn't say it has done nothing for those communities because the I suspect the property taxes keep the places solvent, but it's not like it has spurred a general revival of the area.
Well I'm blocked by the twitter account in the link in 2. I've never interacted with this person or expressed any kind of anti-trans, anti-queer, pro-TERF or similar views (as I have none) so I don't know what gives.
It might just be a geography thing.
7 But I'm using a VPN now set to the UK.
|| Some nut's shooting up Oxford Circus tube station apparently, which is interfering slightly with my journey home. At least I am not trapped in Top Shop.
|>
I see the news now. No reports of causalities so far.
They need to move amazon to a bad neighborhood, then boom, problem solved
Apparently, no evidence of gun shots and they are reopening everything. Hope you get home soonish.
Can we just acknowledge the greatness of Jordan, king of the teenagers. I was trying to figure out who he reminds me of, and then I got it -- he's a modern-day Psmith.
I'm at Macy's , buying cheap enameled cast iron.
Yeah it now seems to have been a massive fuss about nothing. No shots fired. Possibly fireworks...
14: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psmith
They turned the site of Homestead Works into a big box retail center and some apartments.
Did they at least erect a statue of Henry Clay Frick being stabbed?
No, but at $50 for enameled cast iron, who needs history.
My son keeps making me buy $6 artisanal hand-crafted jelly. And he picks horrible flavors like "pepper" and "apple butter".
SHUT UP, DAD! I'M EXPANDING YOUR CULINARY HORIZONS! NOW WHO'S CALLOW AND IMMATURE FOR NOT APPRECIATING ROBYN HITCHCOCK, DAD?!
OT: One's opinion of The Kids Today has suffered a mortal blow at the news, courtesy of the NYT, that they cannot, apparently, handle the devastating argumentative kung fu of a sophistic little twerp like B/en Sh/api/ro.
I am not competent to evaluate the methodology of the study, but it does seem a little absurd on the face of it. I would suspect that any benefits observed in big Spanish cities might not be repeatable in the US's sprawly, already super economically disparate urban areas.
I question the veracity of other link. Would 19 year old sister repeat back the brother's arguments so clearly and accurately?
24. Blocklist probably. I'm blocked by Arthur Chu!
I meant to reply to comment 6 of course.
How long do you have to listen to an 11 year old brag about winning Ticket to Ride before you can spend their college fund on a home grow room? Asking for a friend.
This is better than the time Dear Prudence told me l could steal change from a hobo if he was passed out.
I should add that I already bought this $13 dress from the same place for Christmas.
Why would you buy a dress with no elk when you can get as many dresses with elk as you want?
Are we talking whole elk or ready-butchered? Because I hear that can be time-consuming.
What's the maximum number of guys I'd need to carry weapons if the White Stripes were dueling Destiny's Child?
For some reason I'm now getting ads for lots of dresses.
2 and 3 are right. Further problems they acknowledge are that their model reduced inequality without increasing travel distance, but used straight-line distance between businesses, not road distance.
They also didn't disaggregate retail from everything else. The upshot of that is that the business income inequality map they generated appears basically to track population density. I lined up their fig.1, p.4 against the map of Barcelona. I could identify some of the blue, high-income areas: some were suburb (US style, detached with swimming pools), some industrial park, one the airport. The red, poorer areas I could spot were high-density residential, either old Mediterranean-style or newer tower blocks. Airport hotels will always turn over more than corner cafes, and their locations and services aren't interchangeable.
31 is pretty. Do you have an occasion to wear it?
36: Don't let you family drag you into political arguments over Thanksgiving.
Those multiple XLs for normal sizes are ridiculous / horrible. Men's clothing at 3XL etc. is much further along the bell curve.
40: I'm sorry, time's up. The answer I was looking for was "five second rule".
So, I've been told that I will need to find a new job in the next several months. I can't remember the animals, so I'll make my own that are easier to remember. They are listed in order of the outcomes I'd prefer:
African Civet, Asian Palm Civet, Banded Palm Civet, Coffee-Pooping Civet, Malabar large-spotted civet.
I have decided that it would be too idenifying to explain these. But I was wondering how you know if you can be a consultant working from home without going nuts from being alone with unstructured time like when you tried to write a dissertation? Because that option (Asian Palm Civet, of course) seems the most likely.
Mr President I have no idea, but best of luck and I like your style.
if you're going to be a consultant working from home then coffee-pooping civet seems like what you're going to drift into anyway due to all the coffee you will inevitably drink when left to your own devices near your own coffee devices.
Maybe he could buy a grinder so he doesn't have to drink the beans whole?
The coffee-pooping is a metaphor. For taking lower pay to achieve job security. Every option has me left to my own devices near my own coffee devices. I have my own coffee pot at work regardless.
Do you have unstructured time alone at work currently?
Also when you say "going nuts" do you mean procrastination and associated ills, or other kinds of nuts?
Oh sure. The majority of my time is unstructured, but I have to physically come into an office and I have to produce things (or parts of things) maybe two or three times a week.
The problem with Banded Palm Civet is too much structure in that I would not have vacation time in sufficient amounts to both have an actual vacation and meet my responsibilities in terms of child care and elder care.
Assuming you'd be consulting in the same field, could you not organize your schedule similarly, for many small deadlines? And maybe hotdesk at clients where possible, find a co-working space or library for some of the rest of the time?
In theory, but why couldn't I do that when I tried to write a dissertation.
Because you weren't getting paid? If you're doing okay in the current work environment maybe your self-discipline has improved. I think mine has, though the circumstances compare poorly.
Seconding 57. For me it was worse when I looked where my cohort was getting jobs. I was getting paid little for a chance at a job I no longer had an interest in. Getting rid of that stumbling block improved my discipline immeasurably.
maybe your self-discipline has improved
That seems unlikely.
Or organize some external discipline? Commit to intermediate deadlines with clients / Mrs. Ford / another commenter with relevant work experience? I really fucked up my thesis by not working out intermediate objectives with my supervisor. And the supervisor was himself a veteran procrastinator, so actually he would have empathized and worked it out if I'd asked. (Obviously the last bit would be a bad idea with clients.)
I'm happy to try help with that myself, but I don't have any experience in your field, and I think some other people here do.
I don't think it will work except coming from the people paying me.
Have you tried something similar in the past? Alternatively, there's no shame in taking the coffee-pooping position if security is what you need and your finances allow it. I've kind of done that myself with my new job.
I've been doing the same thing for 15 years, so I don't really know about other types of work and it means that taking the coffee-pooping job feels like scabbing.
I don't know. Sometimes you can't win, and sometimes the best you can do is look out for yourself. I can't say if this is one of those times, but it might be.
Nah. I've decided to try to be picky, except I can't move cities.
I should email a headhunter and go drinking, but Betty frowns on drinking during the day for some reason.
Or take the coffee-pooping job (or some of the others with some security) but try to experiment with consulting on the side? I've never done it myself, but two of the hotdeskers I worked with had had long-term jobs but moved to freelancing and apparently found ways to make it work. One of those was a psych graduate working in web development, which maybe parallels your experience.
Drink or no, send the emails. I might have had better options if I'd done that a little faster.
Also, I've no idea if this is relevant, but finally getting depression meds really made a difference, and I think helped tremendously when I needed to find a job recently.
I think getting old helped me with that.
Betty frowns on drinking during the day for some reason.
I don't see why. Unless she doesn't give a family discount at her centers.
One benefit of working from home is that you can be keep civets in your office.
That got cut off. What I meant was that you could obtain 40 or so civets and have a side business selling ultra-high end civet-pooped coffee while also doing your current job, thus substantially increasing your income. Apparently all you have to do is feed them coffee "cherries" and then collect the pooped grounds. The coffee then goes for $700/pound. AND you could let the civets roam free in your yard or maybe the office/basement too, thus making your coffee-creation method more humane than the Indonesian concerns that force-feed the civets. You can take breaks from work to feed the civets coffee cherries and pick up some pooped grounds, or have your kid do it for an hour or so after school. Honestly I feel bad giving away this obvious and easy trick to combining working at home and total financial victory. You can thank me from your chalet in Aspen someday.
Obviously I wouldn't recommend this to anyone but you clearly already have an interest in civets.
But you can't put the civets in cages. That's bad for your marketing. You need to plant some high-end coffee bushes in the backyard, plus some plants in pots in the basement/office, and then let the civets wander around unsupervised. This is a necessary part of your brand.
Also in 75 I meant pooped beans. The civets' digestive tracts take the beans out of the cherries; they don't act as a grinder.
The civets are just for the obvious metaphors.
I'm running the numbers and there may be some problems with this business model. It looks like it's about $1500/palm civet and they need to eat and then poop about 2000 coffee cherries to get you that pound of beans and the cherries need to be ripe and perfect to get the quality. Coffee plants only cost about $5 at Walmart, though.
Honestly, from a financial point of view, you should probably force-feed the civets.
I should probably not defend animal abuse using a presidential name.
$1500/palm civet
Maybe with some initial R&D you can find some sort of cheap off-brand civet.
83: Chipmunks? Squirrels? Possums? House cats?
A little reductionism, please- you don't need the whole civet, just the digestive tract.
39: Department Christmas party?
43: I really resent the sizing.
If someone here can make me an operational civet-free civet digestive tract for home use for a reasonable price, let's just say you have a willing buyer.
What if we put the civet digestive tract in a cat?
Richard Florida is a turd. His career is built on bogus "creative class" insights, and he's personally a creep as well.
I'm kind of sad that the civets aren't allowed to roam freely through the plantations grazing placidly upon coffee cherries, under the watchful eyes of grizzled catherds and their trusty catdogs.
93 - my research suggests that in some places they are, like this ridiculous company. "Our farms employ over a hundred farmers, scattered across some of the most remote villages of the Gayo highlands, who search for the civet's traces on their organic smallholdings. Each farm has been inspected, their locations precisely measured and logged by GPS, to ensure Gayo Kopi has every record necessary to maintain full accountability and traceability of its wild kopi luwak. Our farmers inspect their ranges each morning before their other work begins, searching for only the freshest kopi luwak before the sun's rays warm the canopy above, and the rich volcanic earth beneath them. They contact their local collector immediately upon finding this treasure, awaiting his arrival and inspection at the farm."
nb, the "treasure" of "kopi luwak" is civet poop
Catdogs herding cats or it doesn't count.
I don't mean to civetsplain, but civets aren't cats. They're closer to hyenas.
Take your filthy taxonomy off my punning.
Why would a bird be holding a leek?
Sometimes the worms just need that little extra something.
Going for the old "open the window and let the seagulls clean up Thanksgiving dinner." I see.
In which case, why would Moby have a leek on his table?
94
This shit is fucking hilarious:
If the wild kopi luwak meets our standards, it is processed as soon as possible. In many cases, the raw product can go from civet to climate-controlled storage in less than three hours. Beans that meet our swift collection demands are immediately brought to our collection facility and washed, with the water itself being preserved for analysis. This allows our inspectors to confirm the diet of the civet as being wild once they see what else was contained in the original sample. Speed is of the essence. Leaving the beans for longer causes them to denature through bacterial processes; our full-time dispatch network and local base means that we can protect the beans. Their true nature is priceless, and we treat them as such.
There must be multiple Third World standup careers built on this shit. Literally.
I need to drink a cup of this shit covered in about $1,000 worth of gold foil. No, wait, I need to open up a cafe where I'm serving cups of this shit covered in about $1,000 of gold foil for $2,000 a pop.
100% markup? Think bigger. You're in the Gulf.
True. They've got ATMs here that dispense gold bars.
Please please please tell me you're joking.
Google ATM gold bars.
I've seen them myself.
Ugh. Fuck this world, burn it all down.
94 is a wonderful description of the life of a features/lifestyle editor.
Our writers are free to roam the forest floor, eating any crap they can find, as well as coffee beans, spraying on social media, and yowling in the night. Before the sun rises, our interns are sent out to harvest the coffee the wild freelancers have consumed. It is washed to remove any trace of originality (which is saved for later analysis) and hurried into our processing machines. In many cases, a finished article can be produced within three hours of the ingestion of a coffee bean. But rest assured, we keep stocks and can ship our opinions in sealed, air-tight packaging anywhere in the world.
107. You're in the right place to make a go of that if anybody is.
Richard Florida is a turd.
Is he the Florida man who owns the world's biggest collection of Darwin awards?
If Wikipedia is to be believed it has a perfectly apt origin story as well.
During the era of Cultuurstelsel (1830-70), the Dutch prohibited the native farmers and plantation workers from picking coffee fruits for their own use. Still, the native farmers wanted to have a taste of the famed coffee beverage. Soon, the natives learned that certain species of musang or luwak (Asian palm civet) consumed the coffee fruits, yet they left the coffee seeds undigested in their droppings. The natives collected these luwaks' coffee seed droppings, then cleaned, roasted and ground them to make their own coffee beverage. The fame of aromatic civet coffee spread from locals to Dutch plantation owners and soon became their favourite, yet because of its rarity and unusual process, the civet coffee was expensive even during the colonial era.
I don't believe for a second that Dutch workforce surveillance was so effective that people would eat civet-poop rather than steal some fucking berries.
After the aliens take over, I bet they have the same kind of deal for corn and people.
If all we have to do is eat corn and shit it out it might actually be an improvement.
119: I'm sure the labourers could steal coffee berries. But it's less obvious that the surrounding villagers could, who were not part of the forced labour system.
And there must have been some reason why people were sifting through the civet poop in the first place rather than picking at berries. I don't know of any other human nutrition derived from civet shit. So it's unlikely to have been a custom that predated the Dutch introduction of coffee to Java.
O civet droppings T: Wow, Se/basti/an G/or/ka is a tosser among tossers, a wanker's wanker.
president ford, your metaphors were a little obscure, but I think we all sympathize with the procrastination problem. if you need a job that forces you to do things, no shame.
kopi luwak is actually good, but it's not worth the price. it's just really mellow, like the digestion takes the harshness off the coffee.
YOU GUYS FUCK EVERYTHING I STARTED HURTING MYSELF AGAIN. well, yesterday was ok. apparently tapering off SNRI's just fucks me right up, and I'm tapering down off pristiq now. my in-laws barricaded me in my room last night as I discovered at 3 when I got up to get some water (for real) with chairs covered with a variety of unevenly balanced, loud things such as metal bowls. it was creative and effective; I drank water from the sink. I never should have told them how irritated I was that I couldn't find any of the box cutters.
That sucks, al. Can you take your magic sleeping potion now?
What are the odds that, from a flavor perspective, the palm civet is the mustellid best suited for shitting coffee beans? They just happened to be on hand.
This is why I'm now offering a curated selection of wolverines delivered straight to your home. Experience den-to-table convenience: when our wolverines express their anal glands, you express yourself.
125: Can you ride it out ok? Fucking reuptake inhibitors suck on the comedown. Have you been through it before on this stuff?
Oh shit alameida I'm very sorry. Best wishes on a quick rebound back to normalcy.
127 is a great point. The highlight of my exclusive gold foil covered coffees must surely be a brew of coffea arabica shat out by an Arabian ratel.
125: That's extremely shitty. Best wishes.
125. Damn. Best wishes and fingers crossed.
Best wishes, al, on a quick ride through this particular burst of shit from the sky. May you find god's coffee beans scattered on your carpet.
the coffee beans of sanity! thanks guys. I have been able to stave off unpleasant urges with a desperate desire not to go to the actual psych ward and be on direct observation. even a luwak would probably find it hard to shit out a coffee berry with someone watching them. I also feel so bad for my in-laws that they have to try to monitor me all the time. I also feel so scared that I'm going to go back to narnia, wasteland of lack of mental health, and be screwed. but if my psych says he'll yank me off the meds in 4 days or something so long as I go under D.O. at the ward I'll do it. otherwise I'm going down by 12.5mg per week and am at 25mg. the magic sleeping potion is indeed my jam. loving the seroquel.
Yes. Take care and hope this awful situation ends.
Ugh, sorry to hear all this, Al.