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New York Times (March 14)

2024/ 03/ 16 by jd in Global News

Some now fear an “urban doom loop.” Cities are encountering budget crunches brought on by “steep discounts” in office and commercial real estate “as the pandemic trends of hybrid and remote work have persisted.” Cities are “starting to bear the brunt.” Budgets once reliant “on taxes associated with valuable commercial property are now facing shortfalls and contemplating cutbacks as lower assessments of property values reduce tax bills.” Cutting services or raising taxes could make cities less attractive, inducing urban flight and further exacerbating city budgets.

 

New York Times (August 28)

2022/ 08/ 29 by jd in Global News

“Each pandemic fall has brought with it employers’ hopes of a broad-scale return to the office.” Delta scrapped last year’s plans, “but this time, business leaders are adamant that they won’t change course.” Over a third of the workforce is adamant about staying remote, “It’s either the end of the era of flexibility around where work takes place — or the beginning of outright rebellion.”

 

Boston Globe (June 19)

2022/ 06/ 20 by jd in Global News

“Many firms are implementing hybrid plans that call for two or three days a week in-office, though few enforce them. And fully remote situations remain common.” Things will never return to fully in-office, but offices are likely to grow more enticing. Companies that signed big leases, “with years of big rent checks ahead of them,” are left trying to rethink “the role — and look — of the office in a post-COVID world.” They are “trying to design an office worth coming back to.”

 

San Francisco Chronicle (January 10)

2022/ 01/ 11 by jd in Global News

“As the omicron variant once again scrambles well-laid plans, possibly killing the return-to-office date altogether,” millions of workers hope they will “never have to work in an office full time again.” The initial response to COVID may have appeared confined to “a niche, tech-world revolution,” but this has “spread to nearly every sort of job where remote work is possible,” close to 50% of the U.S. workforce.

 

The Oregonian (October 8)

2020/ 10/ 10 by jd in Global News

“Students in Oregon’s largest school district will not see the inside of a classroom until 2021. Portland Public Schools this week announced its students, with little exception, will be learning remotely via district-issued Chromebooks until Jan. 28, the end of the second academic quarter.”

 

Financial Times (May 9)

2020/ 05/ 11 by jd in Global News

“The grim picture of the US labour market in the midst of a lockdown that has choked economic activity will increase concerns that any rebound from the sudden deep recession could take longer than was expected just a few weeks ago.” With unemployment at 14.7%, “its highest level since the second world war,” any chances of a V-shaped recovery now look remote.

 

Wired (August 26)

2018/ 08/ 28 by jd in Global News

In a remote location, China built the Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), the world’s largest. To reduce radio-frequency interference (RFI), China “forcibly relocated thousands of villagers who lived nearby, so their modern trappings wouldn’t interfere with the new prized instrument.” Once FAST was completed, the government then built up a tourist mecca “just a few miles from the displaced villagers’ demolished houses” and now “plans to increase the permanent population by hundreds of thousands…. potentially undercutting its own science in an attempt to promote it.”

 

CNN (December 1)

2016/ 12/ 04 by jd in Global News

“Nearly every piece of plastic ever made still exists today. More than five trillion pieces of plastic are already in the oceans, and by 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish, by weight… Some 8 million tons of plastic trash leak into the ocean annually, and it’s getting worse every year. Americans are said to use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.” The potentially catastrophic impact largely lies beyond our gaze in remote places, like Midway Atoll, where birds are dying from plastic consumption. There is now also “growing evidence that fish may prefer eating plastic to food,” and that the nano-plastics and styrene that make their way into the food chain could have profoundly negative consequences for humankind.

 

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