Sara’s Weekly Update #8
Welcome to my newsletter! I write down my thoughts & opinions on the topics I read/watch in the last week. My topics of interests are wide, please feel free to skip to the topic you like.
California Mass Shooting (#us #gunlaws)
We had a couple of shootings incidents back to back in California in the past week. California has the most strict gun laws, yet we are here.
But neither man appears to have alarmed anyone enough to seek a court order to take away their weapons. Neighbors and acquaintances said they did not know they were armed, suicidal or dangerous.
All the red flag laws work only when someone reports them. It’s on the fellow citizens to report these to get them flagged.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/29/us/california-gun-laws-mass-shootings.html
Connecticut Parents Arrested for Letting Kids, Ages 7 and 9, Walk to Dunkin' Donuts (#general)
Connecticut is contemplating a "reasonable childhood independence" law that would establish a clearer bar for neglect: likely danger, rather than any danger an imaginative person might think of.
This seems like an overreaction from the police. Read a couple of stories like this before, where parents are arrested for making a kid walk half a block. Laws should be reasonable and clear and cannot let police interpret in their own ways. Making a kid walk a block or two in a safe neighborhood should be allowed.
https://reason.com/2023/01/30/dunkin-donuts-parents-arrested-kids-cops-freedom/
AI Generated TV show (#tech #ai)
I watched it for 10-15 min, not bad. It pretty much sounded like Seinfeld.
https://www.twitch.tv/watchmeforever
Adani FPO called off (#india #business)
Adani Enterprise called off the fully subscribed FPOs. Adani sounded like he’s doing it to earn the trust of shareholders, but I doubt the biggest investors asked for a refund as the stocks plunged the day after the FPO. Adani enterprises have lost more than $100 billion in a week.
Fed rate hike (#us #economy)
The Fed increased another 0.25% and the base rate is 4.5-4.75%. Also the unemployment rate came at 3.4%, so FED can increase the rate again without worrying about the unemployment. It's good news for the FED to fight inflation, they don't want to be in a situation where they have to fight both unemployment & inflation. So far things are looking good, and the inflation might drop by the end of this year.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/01/fed-rate-decision-february-2023-quarter-point-hike.html
Chinese Spy Balloon shot down (#us #china)
The Chinese claimed it was a civilian balloon and that it inadvertently flew over the United States. In any case, the US has full rights to do whatever is necessary to protect its air space. This balloon is adding more oil to the conflict between the US & China.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/04/us/politics/chinese-spy-balloon-shot-down.html
U-Haul Growth States of 2022
U-Haul publishes this trend every year.
Texas is the No. 1 growth state for the second consecutive year and the fifth time since 2016. Florida, which ranks second, has been a top-three growth state seven years in a row.
Happy to see Texas is top spot. We have to go there and explore why many wants to move there.
California and Illinois ranked 50th and 49th, respectively, on the U-Haul Growth Index for the third consecutive year, meaning those states saw the greatest net losses of one-way U-Haul trucks.
Looks like this is still a trend.
This Is Where You Belong (#books)
Read chapters 4 & 5 last week, below are some of the highlights from these chapters.
4. Say Hi to your Neighbors
Place attachment research shows that many of the good feelings we have about the cities where we live stem from the sense that we have relationships there.
No matter where you live (besides a remote rural acreage, and even then . . .), your neighbors provide your first intimate contact with your city. It’s where you make judgments about where you’ve landed and what people are like.
According to University of Washington sociologist Kyle Crowder, migration patterns show that blacks and whites rarely move to neighborhoods dominated by another race or ethnicity. We tend to want to live among people who are like us.
Walljasper points to a few design features that can promote interaction in neighborhoods, like wide sidewalks, front porches, local parks, and community gathering places. Walking is important, because it leads neighbors to spontaneously bump into each other, which can spur conversations and friendships.
I found this true, when we spent time in backyards we did not talk to many of our neighbors. Once we started spending time in the front yard, the casual talk & connections increased dramatically.
5. Do Something Fun
The truth is, there’s no precise metric to indicate how many museums, restaurants, monuments, hiking trails, amusement parks, shopping malls, and nature preserves make a town entertaining enough. Everyone’s personal boring-meters are differently calibrated, based on who we are and what we love to do.
I agree to this. Whenever I say I am moving to Dallas, the first comment I get is its flat & a boring city. If it’s so boring I do wonder why so many families are happily living there & want to move there :-). It all depends on the individuals preference & the way we see the things. After all we spent more than a decade in Minnesota and we had fun here, I am sure we can find fun things do in Texas with so many cities to explore & people to make friends.
“Edmund Wilson once wrote that no two people ever read the same book, and I’ve come to believe that no two people ever live in the same city,” notes the writer Emily St. John Mandel. Our experience of the place where we live depends entirely on who we are, how we interact with it, and how we interpret what’s happening around us. We create our places every day by the way we choose to view them.
Beauty lies in the beholders eye. It’s always up to us on what stories we tell to ourselves.
The three qualities with the strongest correlation to place satisfaction and place attachment were social offerings, aesthetics, and openness. When residents felt like their city offered a lot to do, looked nice, and welcomed all kinds of people, they felt most attached to it.
A town is what you think it is, and thinking that your town has plenty to do, even when that might not be objectively true, has a tangible effect on its economic success. It’s like our cities can tell that we love them.
Even if we’re not ready to be the ones making the fun stuff happen in our town, we can show up for the people who are. Go to the festival. Buy tickets for the play. Throw a buck in the busker’s guitar case. Notice the little things that make your town vibrant and support them. Like the right community brand, it can change your perception of where you live.
Family
We all recovered well from the strep throat and taking it easy.
Watched the original Black Panther & Wakanda Forever. Nila liked Shuri becoming the new Black Panther. Good to have a black woman lead as a superhero!