Locator: 48807ARCHIVES.
If you came here for the Bakken, scroll down, scroll. up, or scroll to the sidebar at the right, but for heaven's sake, click through this page. Move on. Nothing to see here.
450% rent hike in NYC. Link here. This is the craziest way of doing business. What could possibly go wrong? Well, it just went wrong.
Like thousands of co-op owners across New York City, the residents of Carnegie House own their apartments, but not the land beneath. This type of arrangement, known as a long-term ground lease, originated in the 1950s to make homeownership accessible to middle-class New Yorkers. Now, ground leases have turned treacherous for many residents as wealthy landowners hike the rent they charge co-ops, looking to capitalize on increasingly valuable land.
“When we signed the ground lease years ago, the land value and the neighborhood were entirely different,” said David Jordan, an 83-year-old retired engineer and builder who has owned a unit at Carnegie House for about 20 years. “None of us, even the professionals who were advising us, could have foreseen the kind of explosive land inflation that’s happened.”
On July 18, an independent arbitration panel announced a ruling that would increase the annual rent at Carnegie House 450%, from $4.36 million to roughly $24 million, following an arbitration process triggered by failed negotiations between the landowner and the co-op. For Hirsch and Strauss, the ruling means their monthly costs could spike from around $5,000 to roughly $13,000, Hirsch said.
The ruling is based on the value of the land and still has to be confirmed by a court. If enacted, the increase could push many residents to the brink and force the building into default, causing the owners to lose all their equity in their homes, according to the co-op board.
Harvard University: is now advertising for students during CNBC and other shows. Our younger daughter says Harvard has also relaxed its SAT / GPA standards. Needs to be fact-checked. President Trump has been president for six months.
Scottie Scheffler: the new Tiger Woods. Link here to The Wall Street Journal.
Scheffler is better at golf than anyone on the planet, but he was wrestling with the meaning—or meaninglessness—of it all.
“Why do I want to win the Open Championship so badly?” Scheffler asked the assembled press, channeling Socrates. “I don’t know, because, if I win, it’s going to be awesome for two minutes.”
At another point, he said: “This isn’t a fulfilling life.”
“It’s fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment,” Scheffler elaborated. “But it’s not fulfilling from a sense of the deepest places in your heart.”
By now you know what happened next. Scheffler went out and won the Open at Royal Portrush in a romp.
It was another display of the talent that has made Scheffler a generational player—and a brilliant example of how a champion compartmentalizes inner doubts.
Scottie Scheffler’s not sure why he chases this.
"Smart" restrooms: Buc-ee's figured it out and didn't need AI to do it. Link here to The WSJ.
Never quit reading: put down the phone and pull out a book. An op-ed. I was curious which book(s) would be mentioned. To my surprise, the book that is my "fun" book right now, Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, was mentioned first. Whoo-hoo!
College English majors are losing the ability to interpret metaphorical language, as evidenced by the recent disclosure that only 5% of English majors at two midwestern schools could make sense of paragraphs from “Bleak House” by Charles Dickens. High school students taking the SAT are no longer expected to understand passages longer than 150 words. Activist schoolteachers for a decade have sidelined classic works of literature deliberately to rob them of readers and relevance. Young parents increasingly can’t be bothered to read aloud to their children.
Comment: this is really, really interesting. I started an ambitious reading program in 2004 (or thereabouts) and haven't looked back. Initially I had trouble reading some of the great classics (including Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway and James Joyce's Ulysses) but I found that reading and reading and reading became easier and easier and easier but it took a lot of reading and lot of transcribing.
From the linked article: Mrs. Gurdon, a Journal contributor, is author of “The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction.” Our 11-year-old Sophia really, really enjoys reading out loud to her grandmother and her grandmother loves reading out loud to Sophia. They share the joy daily. Well, not always; some days just get too busy.
Ozzy Osbourne dies. He was never on my radar scope. Posted for the archives.
