Of course not, it's still a lot of theory at this point. But, we should be testing it to see if it's true.
Nothing is free. Everyone talks about nuclear waste, but no one talks about the waste from solar panels. They have to be replaced every 15 to 20 years or so and are full of toxic heavy metals. What are we going to do with them? There are no easy answers.
I'm sure we'll find a place with brown people to dump them own when we replace them too. Out of sight out of mind.
That’s bad luck. Every time you do that oil appears under them, so then they just flat out have to go. Shell-style.
https://www.politico.com/newsletter...-spinning-night-in-republican-politics-491632 "Many Republicans now plan to give Greene a chance. She received a standing ovation at the conference meeting after she disavowed many of her previous beliefs. She told a story about a dark point in her life when she apparently turned to QAnon, according to a person in the room. She said that was a mistake, walked back suggestions that 9/11 and school shootings were a hoax and apologized for how her past statements were affecting them all." So, apparently in a closed-door meeting, she recants all her whack-a-doo shit, but in public...crickets? I 100% agree that the majority shouldn't influence who sits on what committee, and I dislike the idea that the Democrats can have this bitch removed, especially after the assault on the elections we've just had. "There are still questions whether Greene’s words were sincere, and her past controversial statements were still emerging Wednesday night. She has also refused to disavow her old beliefs publicly or to apologize to Democrats for endorsing violence against them. On Wednesday, she started fundraising off the Democrats’ move against her." Ah. There it is.
We tossed out the cult leader but we kept the cultists. We need to clean House, literally. https://twitter.com/RzstProgramming/status/1357387722873311235
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/01/success/new-york-california-exodus-2020-pandemic/index.html One of the things that keep sticking out to me is how many folks are leaving the cities because of high rent and relocating to the suburbs or moving back to where their families are from. In DC, it's causing rent to drop and the price of single bedroom apartments/condos to drop. Sure, some organizations may pull people back, but assuming the trend towards remote work continues, you'll have de-facto decentralization: I can live somewhere pleasant, and work there, with infrequent travel to the office. Places like Florida and Texas will boom because no income tax. The interesting thing about this to me is how it makes a few states legitimately purple. Think of all those folks in Houston that can now go work anywhere: lots of local Texas politics just got a little less red. Florida's been purple for a while, but...this influx is usually young talent that skews blue. I don't think we've hit a tipping point for most places yet, but it's legitimately going to throw a few places in the "up for grabs" category. I also don't see how the parts of CA and NY flip red. As we approach the year mark for this, it gets harder and harder to go back to "normal" and fewer folks want to, especially when that normal means more time away from their kids, stuck in traffic or on a train. I think we've mistakenly mixed politics and public health during this crisis (something we should absolutely never do again), and I think the politics will be impacted in some very weird ways moving forward. The influx of blue folks into some very red areas is going to be one of them.
Honestly, why would any company seek a return to "normality"? They now know how much work can get done without having people commute. The savings in overhead alone should make that worth it.
It is quite interesting because it’s created a shortage of affordable single family homes in Houston. I’m getting daily phone calls of people wanting to buy my house without even seeing it. The thing that makes Texas attractive to a lot of people are the lower taxes. But if people keep moving to this red state because of that, it will slowly turn into a place with blue state taxes. The housing market is Austin was already an absolute nightmare. You get absolute garbage for your money there and the homeless problem is something out of a walking dead episode. Austin is a cool town but we have better food in Houston. Austin has cuter girls(college town) but the overall cost of what you get and the absolute insufferable intolerance of anything outside the mainstream liberalism is met with scorn. I consider myself to be pretty left leaning, and I didn’t know that they have the no reusable grocery bags rule and you would have thought I kicked a puppy when I asked them for plastic bags.
I’ll never understand this level of cognitive dissonance. Why go through the trouble of escaping shitty political environments and shitty economic policies to turn around and implement them somewhere else?
Because when someone from New York or California asks me where I’m from, I say Texas. They ask me where, I say Houston. They respond with “I hear Austin is really cool.” They don’t give a shit because even by California and New York standards, Austin is still cheap. Which is why the Austin market is jacked the fuck up. You have some small shitbox in the Bay Area that sells for a million dollars, and they bring whatever of that sale is leftover to Austin, you can still get something there that’s way better but way above what it should actually cost. So the prices keep rising.
I get it. The real estate market here is bananas too. You can’t even get some dilapidated shitbox in the worst neighborhoods in Boston for less than 750K, and that doesn’t count the cost of actually renovating and making it habitable.
There's been a nationwide shortage of housing, affordable or not, going back 15 or 20 years. For disasters, it's our #1 problem: most places don't have enough houses to begin with, much less when some of them get damaged. One of my colleagues is a senior leader at HUD, and good God DAMN hearing her stories hurts my soul.