Prepare for Change

  https://getpocket.com/explore/item/parking-has-eaten-american-cities?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us    "Scharnhorst finds that there are more than 2 million parking spaces in Philadelphia, 1.85 million in New York, 1.6 million each in Seattle and Des Moines, and just over 100,000 in tiny Jackson, which has a population of about 10,000. Parking takes up a huge amount of space: Jackson has more than 50 parking spaces per acre, 25 times its residential density of just two households per acre. Jackson has a whopping 27 parking spaces for each of its households." * * * * * There were 284 million vehicles registered in the US in 2024.  They require roads, bridges, parking spaces, fuel stations, repair stations, plants to build them, plants to tear them down when they get old. etc.  Public transportation could go a long way to changing this so people are more important than vehicles.  City planning could emphasize bicycling, which not only takes up less ...

 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/07/two-thirds-of-global-heating-caused-by-richest-study-suggests   "The world’s wealthiest 10% are responsible for two-thirds of global heating since 1990, driving droughts and heatwaves in the poorest parts of the world, according to a study. While researchers have previously shown that higher income groups emit disproportionately large amounts of greenhouse gases, the latest survey is the first to try to pin down how that inequality translates into responsibility for climate breakdown. It offers a powerful argument for climate finance and wealth taxes by attempting to give an evidential basis for how many people in the developed world – including more than 50% of full-time employees in the UK – bear a heightened responsibility for the climate disasters affecting people who can least afford it."   * * * * * Can you believe the people who have personal jets, houses the size of small cities, and take vacations by ...

  Donald Trump is no longer even doing his job as president. He spends 20% of his time golfing. He holds fundraisers for himself, using his official position to reward acolytes. He skips most of the daily intelligence briefings to keep him informed [https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/09/trump-intelligence-briefing-frequency-00338946]. When asked questions about what his administration is doing he either says he doesn't know, or refers the questioner to another official. For instance, when asked whether he planned to send migrants to Libya, he responded “I don't know. You'll have to ask the Department of Homeland Security.” Even when asked about the most important aspect of being president, “[D]on’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?” Once again, Trump answered, “I don’t know.” [https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/-dont-know-problem-trump-leaning-new-favorite-phrase-rcna205546]  Trump generally skips the daily i...

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/30/starbucks-says-cutting-shop-staff-in-favour-of-automation-has-failed “Over the last couple of years, we’ve actually been removing labour from the stores, I think with the hope that equipment could offset the removal of the labour,” Niccol said. “What we’re finding is that wasn’t an accurate assumption with what played out.” * * * * *  Starbucks at least thinks the human touch is needed.  And besides, who is behind the rush to AI and robots?  Maybe people who will make $ off of AI and robots?  Does society really need this change?

 “Make America Great Again” has been a Trump motto even during his first run for the presidency in 2015. It's not new (Reagan used it, for instance), but it does bring up a question: when was America great, according to Trump? Where does his backward look land in history? If you ask MAGA believers, you get many different answers and views on this. Trump himself has helpfully answered this at least to a degree. Trump told the New York Times when asked when America's power was greatest: "No if you really look at it, it was the turn of the century, that’s when we were a great, when we were really starting to go robust . But if you look back, it really was, there was a period of time when we were developing at the turn of the century which was a pretty wild time for this country and pretty wild in terms of building that machine, that machine was really based on entrepreneurship etc, etc.” At a rally in Phoenix, Trump said “President McKinley made our country very rich...

  Can you stop the grifter-in-Chief?    Trump has tipped off his rich executive friends about impending political moves he would make so they could make money off insider knowledge ( https://newrepublic.com/.../trump-wall-street-executives... ).   Trump is selling his office to the highest bidders by rewarding people who invest in his meme coins with access to the president ( https://www.cnn.com/.../meme-coin-trump-dinner/index.html ).   Trump has given a free comercial for Tesla right in front of the White House ( https://youtube.com/shorts/8Czbc-jvMnQ?si=5LUKhx6__Ojw0CFN ).    Do you believe this is what any president should be doing? Isn't this using our country's resources and good name to make money for the president and his friends? Is this what a president should be doing? Is this legal? Should it be legal? Does Trump get a free pass from Congress for some reason? Or has our presidency just become another job for grifters?

 https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/17/trump-tariffs-warren-bessent-lutnick-democrats.html   The Trump administration’s tumultuous rollout of a spate of new tariffs is “rife with opportunities to unduly influence President Trump and other administration officials,” the Democrats wrote in a letter shared first with CNBC on Thursday. The letter, signed by 47 House and Senate members, asks Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick , Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to detail the administration’s “plans to prevent the misuse of tariffs for self-dealing.”  * * * * * Tariffs are very flexible things, as Trump has shown by constantly changing dates, percentages, and what is covered.  If someone who has Trump's ear can convince him to drop a certain product, say, lumber, from a country's tariff, the person that did the convincing might be rewarded handsomely by, say, a big lumber company.   This of course is only one small area of the...