March 17, 2021

Karen of the week is surprised to find herself in handcuffs

March 17, 2021

biz owner that doesn't like employees to quit, final pay as 500 pounds of pennies dumped in driveway

Mound of pennies dumped in man's driveway; he blames feud over final paycheck


A Peachtree City man claims a bitter feud over a final paycheck ended with 500 pounds of pennies delivered to his driveway.

Andreas Flaten said when he submitted his two-week notice in writing last November, hell hath no fury like his frustrated boss.

"He froze and stared at me for like a straight minute...I remember this so clearly...he gets up, puts his hands on his head, walks out the door and disappears for like an hour,” said Flaten.

----------

Flaten stored the pennies in his garage inside a large wheel barrel.

"Brand spanking new wheel barrel that is full to the brim. The ... wheels are like busted out to the side, flat..." he said.

Flaten and his girlfriend said all of the pennies are covered in some type of oil, and cannot be cashed in until they are cleaned.

CBS46 is working to get the owner's side of the story. Several after hours calls to Walker Luxury Autoworks have not been returned.

https://www.cbs46.com/news/mound-of-pennies-dumped-in-mans-driveway-he-blames-feud-over-final-paycheck/article_1fd4f078-8666-11eb-bde5-97b82818dfa0.html?block_id=1040201

March 17, 2021

'No one focuses on the pain here': Inside Oakland's abandoned car epidemic

----

According to the community, these cars aren’t just concentrated near encampments. Oftentimes, they pile up in West Oakland and the "flatlands" of East Oakland, clogging up streets and sitting for months at a time.

While city officials agree that they tarnish Oakland’s image and create a hostile environment, residents in these areas, many of whom are spearheading local beautification campaigns, complain that the city is allowing these cars to build up in Black and brown communities — subsequently lowering property values and fueling the cycle of poverty.

Oakland’s ongoing battle with abandoned vehicles

In the city of Oakland, abandoned cars are legally considered public nuisances that “reduce the value of private property, promote blight and deterioration, invite plundering” and compromise “health, safety and general welfare.” In the past year alone, there have been nearly 1,000 reports of abandoned cars on OAK 311, the city’s maintenance request service. In response, the city council allotted $150,000 to Oakland’s Abandoned Auto Detail to tow inoperable vehicles.

-----

A complex environmental and economic issue
According to Henderson, aside from systemic racism, lack of code enforcement at local auto body shops also contributes to the abandoned car epidemic. “When you pass by them, there's 50, 60 cars inside the lot. You see people come in and get cars for cheap, not even for five grand.” She says that struggling families will sometimes buy cars at auction without registering them or getting insurance, and when they break down, they leave them on the street.

Sean confirms that when he was a homeless youth, he was forced to abandon a total of three cars for this very reason. He couldn’t afford to pay off accrued tickets or take in his cars to get fixed when they broke down, and was forced to leave them behind. “People don't have the money to do all the other steps,” Henderson says.


https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/oakland-abandoned-car-epidemic-16027155.php?IPID=SFGate-HP-CP-Spotlight

March 17, 2021

Houston police shoot a 1-year-old child in the head while pursuing a robbery suspect

Houston police shoot a 1-year-old child in the head while pursuing a robbery suspect

A 1-year-old boy is "fighting for his life" and struggling to breathe on his own after being shot in the head by Houston police, the baby's mother and attorneys representing her said Tuesday.

The shooting took place March 3 when Daisha Smalls was pumping gas and she saw police cars and heard sirens, she said in a news conference Tuesday. Her son, Legend, was in the back seat of the vehicle. Smalls said a man then got into her vehicle and told her to give him the car.


------------------

The man refused to drop the weapon, officers fired several shots at him and he died at the scene. The baby boy was also shot, Finner said.
"Fearing for the mother's safety, one of our officers discharged his duty weapon, fatally striking the suspect," Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said in a statement. "Sadly, baby Legend was also struck. Officers at the scene immediately rendered first aid to Legend."

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/16/us/houston-police-shoot-baby/index.html

March 16, 2021

The 2021 Pritzker Prize Winners Prove That Good Design Is Good for Everyone

Lacaton & Vassal designed this low-rise social housing project comprising 53 units.


https://www.dwell.com/article/2021-pritzker-architecture-prize-lacaton-vassal-6c019922

Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal—the 49th and 50th Pritzker Prize laureates—have contributed decades of sustainable and inclusive design.

Since establishing their firm, Lacaton & Vassal, in Paris in 1987, Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal have completed more than 30 projects throughout Europe and West Africa. Their body of work includes private and social housing, cultural and academic institutions, public spaces, and urban developments—all of which are designed to benefit individuals and society as a whole.

"Good architecture is open—open to life, open to enhance the freedom of anyone, where anyone can do what they need to do," says Lacaton. "It should not be demonstrative or imposing, but it must be something familiar, useful, and beautiful, with the ability to quietly support the life that will take place within it."

The duo worked alongside architect Frédéric Druot to sensitively transform an outdated 1960s city housing project in France called La Tour Bois le Prêtre. Instead of razing the structure to begin anew—Lacaton and Vassal have a "never demolish" policy—they stripped the original concrete facade and set about increasing the interior square footage of each unit. Living rooms now extend out to flexible terraces, and large windows provide residents with unrestricted views over the city.

March 16, 2021

USPS Shuts Down 132-Year-Old Post Office After Request for $600 a Month - 2 employees paid $8.33/hr

USPS Shuts Down 132-Year-Old Post Office After Request for $600 a Month
Its two employees were only paid $8.33 an hour



When Colleen Raftis bought a building in the tiny Washington town of Nahcotta last year, it came with a historic post office staffed by two elderly women who took turns working three hours a day for $8.33 an hour. She says that when she asked the US Postal Service for more money for wages and upkeep of the post office, somebody told her they would get back to her—and within days, she was informed that the post office was being shut down, the Seattle Times reports.

Raftis says that when she bought the building, the USPS had a contract to pay $4,000 for six months, which worked out to around $662 a month—barely enough to cover the low wages of Gretchen Goodson, 82, and Kathy Olson, 73. Raftis says the notice the contract was being terminated came as a complete surprise late last month and the two women only received one day's notice from the USPS.

https://www.newser.com/story/303762/usps-shuts-down-po-after-request-to-pay-workers-more-than-833-per-hour.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=uol&utm_campaign=rss_world_login

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/she-wanted-to-pay-the-post-office-employees-in-this-tiny-washington-town-more-than-8-33-an-hour-usps-shut-the-place-down/

It would have meant better money for Gretchen Goodson, 82, and Kathy Olson, 73, who alternated working six days a week, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. To save money, the office was only open three hours. They were earning $8.33 an hour.

“I was so stunned,” says Goodson about the closing.

Cate Gable lives in Nahcotta and writes a weekly column for the Chinook Observer. She’s spearheading an effort to save the post office. She says it’s about more than picking up mail:

“Our post office is a place to meet neighbors, to chat about the local news, the weather, to find out who’s sick and who’s better, who has an operation pending, or whose dog has died. It’s a place where funeral notices are posted on the windows, where a bulletin board announced all manner of events and services … board meeting minutes … lost pet flyers, yard sale announcements …”

March 16, 2021

Tina Turner says goodbye to fans with doc amid PTSD, stroke, cancer

Tina Turner bids a final farewell to her fans in a touching new film that shows how she has overcome her painful past and finally found happiness.

In the feature-length documentary, simply titled “Tina,” the singer looks back on camera for the first time at her younger years filled with struggle and pain, then the true love and global fame she found as a middle-aged woman.

Now 81 and plagued by ill health, including a stroke and cancer, the soul and rock music legend also suffered kidney failure which led to a transplant in 2017.

In the film she tells how she wants to enter the third and final chapter of her life out of the spotlight, and it is revealed that she has a form of post-traumatic stress disorder from the domestic abuse she suffered at the hands of her first husband and music partner, Ike Turner.

https://nypost.com/2021/03/16/tina-turner-says-goodbye-to-fans-with-doc-amid-ptsd-stroke-cancer/

March 16, 2021

The atmosphere is grim at Trump's deserted Washington DC hotel cuz MAGA crowd gone

The atmosphere is grim at Trump's deserted Washington DC hotel as the MAGA crowd skips town, says report

Trump's Washington hotel has suffered a loss of income and interest, a Guardian report says.
The hotel is bearing the brunt of the pandemic and the fallout of Trump's election defeat.
The former president once dubbed it "one of the great hotels of the world."


When the hotel, located between the White House and the US Capitol, opened its doors four years ago, it quickly became a major draw for diplomats, lobbyists, Trump loyalists, and family members. The hotel's steak restaurant was regularly fully booked, a former executive chef told CNN last month.

But since Trump left the White House and moved his base to the Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida, the atmosphere has been eerily quiet. One week after President Biden's inauguration, the lobby was left largely vacant and waiters and staff members outnumbered the customers, the New York Times reported.


Sally Quinn, a local journalist who has written about the hotel, told the Guardian she "can't imagine who goes there now."

"We don't even have tourists yet in Washington. I can't imagine most people staying there when they come. I don't know anybody who goes there or has gone there," Quinn said.

Hotel staff has also confirmed that the number of visitors has dropped visibly.

One staffer, who did not want to be named, told CNN: "Since the coronavirus, we weren't doing so bad until I'd say probably a month ago. It really, like, slowed down."

https://www.businessinsider.com/report-trumps-dc-hotel-left-deserted-after-loss-income-status-2021-3

March 15, 2021

The Met Opera's Musicians, Unpaid Since April, Are Struggling

The Met Opera’s Musicians, Unpaid Since April, Are Struggling
About 40 percent of the players have left the New York area, and a tenth have retired. Now the Met is seeking long-term pay cuts, and offering them partial pay if they come to the bargaining table.

As the months without a paycheck wore on, Joel Noyes, a 41-year-old cellist with the Metropolitan Opera, realized that in order to keep making his mortgage payments he would have to sell one of his most valuable possessions: his 19th-century Russian bow. He reluctantly switched back to the inferior one he had used as a child.

“It’s kind of like if you were a racecar driver and you drove Ferraris on the Formula One circuit,” Mr. Noyes said, “and suddenly you had to get on the track in a Toyota Camry.”


---------------

Benjamin Bowman, 41, is one of the orchestra’s two concertmasters — a leader of the first violin section who serves as a conduit between players and maestros. He and his family moved to Stuttgart, Germany, where he took a temporary job with the state orchestra. Daniel Khalikov, 37, a violinist, has been struggling to make the $2,600-a-month loan payments for his two fine violins. Angela Qianwen Shen, 30, a violinist who is not able to collect unemployment because she is in the United States on a visa, picked up some translation work to make ends meet.

And Evan Epifanio, 32, the orchestra’s principal bassoonist, put his belongings in storage in June and left the city for the Midwest, where he said he and his husband have been dividing their time between the homes of his parents and his in-laws.

“I’m living in my in-laws’ basement at the peak of my career,” Mr. Epifanio said. “I’m a one-trick pony, and now I can’t even do that.”

?quality=90&auto=webp
Joel Noyes, a cellist in the orchestra, reluctantly sold his treasured 19th-century bow so he could continue to make his mortgage payments. Credit...Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/15/arts/music/metropolitan-opera-pandemic.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

March 15, 2021

Florida bragging about newcomers.. Truth is - they move out within 5 years because of hurricanes!

Behind Florida's Real Estate Pitch, a More Sobering Stat
Roughly the same number of people are moving out of the state as moving in


A splashy narrative has emerged in Florida amid the pandemic from politicians and real estate developers, writes Candace Taylor in the Wall Street Journal. It states that Florida is the place to be for tech workers and uber-rich hedge fund execs looking to flee Silicon Valley and New York. And indeed, the state is seeing a surge in luxury sales of waterfront mansions and condos in recent months, including high-profile buyers such as Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Such purchases generate headlines and buzz, but Taylor points out a "far less discussed" aspect of Florida's demographics: About the same number of people move out of the state as move in, a trend that has held steady for several years. In fact, the state's population growth rate of 1.38% throughout the pandemic is the lowest since 2014.

“A lot of people go down there and realize that they don’t like hurricanes,” says demographer Hamilton Lombard. Taylor's story includes an interview with one New Jersey native who uprooted his family to Oregon for just that reason. “Staring at those tracker maps for weeks before a hurricane hits starts to create a stress level,” he says. A Miami real-estate consultant says many newcomers end up moving home after five years or so. One company in the position to track such things is Atlas Van Lines. The 50-50 split between those moving in and those moving out "kind of surprised me because when you hear some of the news stories about the number of people moving to Florida, I expected that the number [of incoming moves] was going to be greater," says COO Barry Schellenberg.

https://www.newser.com/story/303584/behind-floridas-real-estate-pitch-a-more-sobering-stat.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=uol&utm_campaign=rss_top

David Gewirtz never got used to the heat, even after 15 years in Florida.

Still, Mr. Gewirtz, who grew up in New Jersey, and his wife, Denise Amrich, liked their adopted hometown of Palm Bay, Fla., and probably would have stayed if it weren’t for the “brutal” hurricanes.

“Staring at those tracker maps for weeks before a hurricane hits starts to create a stress level,” said Mr. Gewirtz, a technology columnist in his early 50s. “It’s three weeks of wondering whether you’re going to have a house at the end.”

The couple evacuated their home in the path of 2017’s Hurricane Irma, kept driving until they got to Oregon and decided to stay. They listed their Palm Bay house for sale.

Florida, it turns out, isn’t for everyone. But you would never know it from the PR coming out of the state.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/people-moving-to-florida-during-covid-11615463911?mod=hp_lead_pos13