The Upside of a Blackout? People Take Care of Themselves and Each Other

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What happens when you’ve got a power outage on top of a pandemic on top of public demonstrations, a crazy election, and a boiling August when everyone seems ready to jump out of their skin—and down your throat? A kind of Good Samaritan—even libertarian—joy.

When Tropical Storm Isaias toppled trees across the Northeast last week, plunging 1.7 million people (including yours truly) into a blackout, the chaos provided a surprising balm for the soul. Sharing candles, flashlights, and hurry-before-the-meat-goes-bad barbecues gave us all an excuse to work together and make things better. It’s a feeling we’d been longing for.

“It reminded me of medical school in the Dominican Republic,” says Joe Chiarella, a doctor in Queens, New York, referring to all the extension cords he strung between his home and his neighbors’ place. He had a working generator and was more than willing to share power.

As for the giant tree limb that fell, blocking their quiet, suburban street? “All the men on the block—like six of us—pushed and pulled,” says Chiarella. (And then they figured out to use rope and a pickup truck.) Result? Street cleared.

And when neighbors needed to buy food because the stuff in the fridge smelled funny? Chiarella gave them rides to the grocery.

Unlike COVID-19, an implacable foe that just keeps on going, here was a natural disaster we could do something about, and no one was stopping us.

For Michelle Lobb Horoho, a preschool teacher and mom of four outside of Philly, the blackout was a time of connecting. She and her husband invited their new neighbors over for a patio supper—people they hadn’t gotten to know yet—and “we had this wonderful night with this new couple,” she says.

In Bergen County, New Jersey, camp administrator Peter Goldberg and his daughter, 21, were without power for four days. But his daughter invited friends over to sit in the back yard, socially distancing, to play games and shoot the breeze. “It was nice to see them connecting with each other,” says Goldberg.

But beyond just the joy of being social again, the blackout gave us something else. “Everybody just feels so helpless right now,” says Horoho. “To be able to help each other out was like satisfying that need. Anyone who could do anything to help was offering to do it.”

This is exactly the kind of responsibility revolution Phillip Howard has been arguing for, especially in his latest book, Try Common Sense: Replacing the Failed Policies of Right and Left. To innovate, to work hard, to feel good about ourselves and our country, “We need to believe that we can make a difference,” says Howard.

But that feeling has been slipping away since the 1960s, he says, when bureaucracy began growing like sourdough left to rise. The theory was that if government officials meticulously detailed the procedures for doing anything and everything, no underling would ever make a bad call or dumb mistake. Perfection would be the result.

Instead, the result was thousand-page rule books, frustration, and stagnation, all of which were on display when the coronavirus first hit America.

Scientists eager to start testing in Seattle were stymied for weeks as they awaited government approval, says Howard. Then there was the case of a researcher “who spent day and night writing an emergency authorization to do research on the virus, submitted it to the FDA, and was told, “‘Sorry, it’s not valid because you didn’t submit it in a hard copy,'” says Howard.

That’s how innovation, efficiency and compassion can be derailed by onerous rules. Rules can’t possibly cover every situation—like an emergency. The only antidote is to assert authority and take responsibility for doing the right thing.

With the power outage, we all got a chance to do that. My husband went and bought ice for the family next door. Other neighbors with a generator placed power strips outside their home so that anyone could come by and charge their electronics. I saw folks sharing hotdogs, and inviting kids over for an impromptu slip ‘n’ slide, and running errands for each other.

“I’m a a real believer in humanity,” says the pre-k teacher, Horoho. Being plunged into darkness allowed that humanity to shine.

 

 

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Greg Gutfeld: ‘Impulse Control or Lack Thereof Is a Huge Deal Right Now’

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For years, Greg Gutfeld has entertained and edified audiences by hosting Fox News shows such as Red Eye, The Five, and The Greg Gutfeld Show and by authoring best-sellers such as How To Be Right: The Art of Being Persuasively Correct, Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You, and The Joy of Hate: How to Triumph over Whiners in the Age of Phony Outrage.  

Now the 55-year-old punk-rock obsessive has published The Plus: Self-Help for People Who Hate Self-Help, a funny yet serious book about becoming a better person. In a wide-ranging conversation with Reason‘s Nick Gillespie, Gutfeld explains why he thinks Americans have so many problems controlling our worst impulses, how we will eventually emerge better off from the COVID-19 lockdowns, and why we will reelect President Donald Trump in November.

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Once Again, Kamala Harris’ Record as a Prosecutor Was Less Than Progressive

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Joe Biden announced Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) will be his nominee for vice president, and so it appears we are once again litigating Harris’ record as a prosecutor.

Harris’s law enforcement career—first a line prosecutor, then San Francisco District Attorney, and finally California Attorney General—became a sore spot for her in the Democratic primary. The party had moved left on criminal justice, which took the sheen off her law enforcement bona fides. 

In response to that shift, Harris has attempted to paint herself as a progressive prosecutor. Nevertheless, the pejorative refrain from the left flank of the Democratic Party has been “Kamala is a cop.” In the wake of Biden’s announcement, Democrats and pundits are now trying to help her buff out the rough spots:

In a piece headlined “Kamala Harris Did What She Had To,” The Atlantic‘s Peter Beinart wrote that Harris’ deference to police and prosecutors was necessary for her political survival, which is not exactly a sterling endorsement of Harris, law enforcement, or politics.

More convincingly, former San Francisco public defender Niki Solis writes in USA Today that Harris was indeed a progressive district attorney, citing Harris’ practice of not charging low-level marijuana cases, her creation of a diversion program for juvenile offenders, and her refusal to pursue the death penalty, even in the case of a murdered police officer.

“Simply put, Harris was the most progressive prosecutor in the state,” Solis writes. “This is not an anecdotal opinion. It is based on facts.”

It is true that Harris pursued diversion programs and other progressive issues as San Francisco D.A. (It’s also true that the San Francisco D.A. is probably the most progressive in the state as a general rule. Harris actually ran as a law-and-order candidate in 2003 against the incumbent lefty D.A.)

Solis didn’t mention what happened after that death penalty case, though. The backlash nearly cost Harris her shot at becoming the California Attorney General in 2011 after police unions didn’t endorse her. After Harris squeaked into office by one percentage point, she tacked toward the center and never lost the police unions again. As attorney general, she defended the California death penalty and opposed efforts to increase oversight of fatal police shootings.

As Beinart wrote, Harris did what she had to do to survive politically. It would be one thing if Harris said that working within the system required her to moderate herself, or that her views have shifted since her days as A.G., but instead, she insists her career in law enforcement was progressive. Whenever Harris is pressed about specific instances where she was decidedly unprogressive, she dodges, misleads, or glosses over the facts. 

In her memoir, The Truths We Hold, Harris explicitly acknowledged the immense power of prosecutors in the criminal justice system.

“America has a deep and dark history of people using the power of the prosecutor as an instrument of injustice,” Harris wrote in the book. “I know this history well—of innocent men framed, of charges brought against people of color without sufficient evidence, of prosecutors hiding information that would exonerate defendants, of the disproportionate application of the law.”

Yet Harris avoids addressing why her office did things like defend egregious prosecutorial misconduct, fight exonerations, oppose civil asset forfeiture reforms, or appeal the removal of the entire Orange County district attorney’s office from a high-profile death penalty case after a bombshell report revealed an unconstitutional jailhouse snitch program.

Harris office’ launched an investigation into the Orange County D.A. scandal in 2015. The investigation ended four years later, after she had moved on to the U.S. Senate, with no charges against the sheriff’s deputies involved, despite a California Superior Court judge ruling that two deputies “intentionally lied or willfully withheld material evidence.” The Los Angeles Times reported in January that the California Attorney General’s office only interviewed a handful of sheriff’s deputies, none of whom were the ones at issue, and that the investigation had been moribund since 2017.

In 2010, while Harris was still San Francisco D.A., a California superior court judge slammed her office for failing to notify defense lawyers of known misconduct by a drug lab technician that later led the San Francisco police to shut down an entire section of the lab. The judge noted “a level of indifference” from prosecutors, who were aware “at the highest levels of the district attorney’s office” of the problems.

In fairness, Harris may have been unaware of some of the cases her office was involved in—the California Attorney General’s Office employs more than 1,100 attorneys—and state attorneys general most often reflexively defend prosecutors and the state’s position. But if that’s the case, it still doesn’t sound like an official who was terribly concerned about the dark history of prosecutorial misconduct and wrongful convictions.

Harris has a solid record to tout in the Senate, where she is notably progressive and one of the most vocal advocates for criminal justice reform. But there is no need to excuse or whitewash Harris’ law enforcement career just because it has outlived its usefulness for her political ambitions.

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Is Your Master Bedroom Racist?

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Master bedroom is going the way of Negro and Oriental. The real estate industry is increasingly replacing the term with primary bedroom or owner’s suite, to avoid using a term that can be taken as summoning the memory of masters owning slaves.

This will not be the only way that our national reckoning changes how we use language in America. Some calls will be easy. The obscure word niggardly serves little purpose when it sounds so uncomfortably like the n-word; stingy is fine as an alternate. Kaffir is a slur for a person of color in South Africa and thus we need not call the interesting fruit a kaffir lime. For Rhode Island to disavow its original name as the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations will confuse no one, since the name is all but unknown to most anyway.

But in many cases, there are two lessons to keep in mind: One is linguistic, about how metaphor works. The other is sociohistorical, about whether our present-day consciousness can plausibly encompass the entire progression of past stages that preceded it—despite William Faulkner’s counsel, sometimes the past really is past.

On metaphor, master is a useful example. The basic concept of the master as a leader or person of authority has extended into a great many metaphorical usages. One of them was its use as a title on plantations worked by slaves.

That makes sensible the elimination of certain other uses of the word, which parallel and summon the slavery one. When I went to a Quaker school in the 1970s, such schools had just begun a call to stop having male teachers called “master” and female teachers called “teacher,” in favor of having all instructors called simply “teacher” (i.e. “Teacher Bill” and “Teacher Lisa”). This meant that young subordinates had been calling white men in positions of authority “master,” after all—including, by the 1970s, more than a few black students. And today’s call to stop referring to technology parts as “master” versus “slave” attachments follows in the same vein, as it directly channels what was so offensive about the slavery usage.

However, other extensions of the word master do not meaningfully resemble the plantation one, and only a kind of obsession could explain spraying for them now. Are we to consider it racist to refer simply to mastering a skill? To master tape as opposed to dupes? One could even question eliminating the bedroom term. No one thinks of the children’s bedrooms and guest rooms as “subservient” or as existing in some unsavory relationship to the master bedroom. The plantation meaning of master was one tributary of a delta of extensions of the word; it should go, but we need not fill in the entire delta. You might not like bagpipes, but you wouldn’t as a result hold your ears upon hearing other wind instruments like clarinets and flutes. To be human is to make distinctions.

Things are the same with the word black. Its application to a group of people was, again, one of countless extensions of an original word. What worries many is that not only the racial meaning but so many other meanings of black have negative associations. However, this was true long before Africans were yoked into slavery. Worldwide, the color is often associated with negative concepts, because of the connection with nighttime and thus obscurity, mystery and even misdeeds, while white is often associated with positive ones. Hence look black, black market, blacklist, black magic, black humor, and so on.

Some may suppose that even if the racial meaning developed later, these days the other uses of black carry a racially loaded meaning by association. There are three problems here.

One is plausibility: Upon what evidence can we say that the word blacklist has a racial association, when what comes most readily to most of our minds is the witch hunt against Communists after World War II?

Another is that many of the black terms are simply neutral: To be in the black is a good thing. Or, one current call suggests banning “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” because, well, you know. But no one knows why the sheep is black, and in the nursery rhyme no one considers it a problem.

Finally, with black there are simply so very many extensions—dozens by conservative count. To ban all uses of black beyond the fundamental reference to color would result in most people constantly slipping up, with endless opportunities to call people out for the tort—a nice recapitulation of today’s problems with the likes of irregardless and between you and I except with an added tinge of supposed racism. The word and its metaphors are simply too big to fail, as it were.

There is also the question of whether to discontinue a word because of historical origins previously known to few. Here, the actual purpose beyond virtue signaling is unclear. An example is the tune “Turkey in the Straw,” which is played by some ice cream trucks. It emerged almost 200 years ago, sung by white minstrels made up as black people, with different lyrics referring to dancing. One call has suggested that we always reflect on the tune’s unsavory origins, and in today’s climate there is a short step from that to it being piously discontinued in public usage.

However, at this point, almost no living person has seen a minstrel show. More to the point, while minstrel shows existed, pretty much all popular music OF THE ERA was played in them. How much music will we let go on the basis of being connected with a phenomenon so antique that it is directly recalled by essentially no one, and is largely known through a few photos and some animated cartoon sequences themselves now long censored for public consumption? A version of “Turkey in the Straw” has also been unearthed with the title “Nigger Love A Watermelon, Ha! Ha! Ha!”—but this was not only over 100 years ago itself, but was one of many parody lyrics on this tune, forgotten almost as soon as it was published. There is room for allowing, a century later, the tune to just be a catchy tune.

Stephen Foster’s songs were minstrel staples as well. But to render them “problematic”—as the directive on “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” also suggests—would mean no more “Camptown Races” and “Oh, Susanna.” It is one thing for us to know the context these things emerged in, and even to know that such songs often had racist alternate verses now forgotten. But to treat them in their current state as outright contraband for origins no longer even known to anyone but scholars and now vast eons behind us is more about gesture than anything else, and for unclear purpose.

Such songs, in their current state, foster no thoughts or assumptions about racial hierarchy. They are neither hurting nor mentally polluting children (or anyone else). The same goes for the Massachusetts Appeals Court’s ban of the use of grandfather clause in its documents because the expression emerged as a strategy to deny black people the vote. If no one but a few historians knew this, no purpose is served by proscribing a now faceless expression. Language history, as a part of social history, is messy. Signals fade over time; material is eternally repurposed in the same way that the bones in our inner ear started out as jaw bones in reptiles and moved gradually inward. What a language was once like is always vastly different from what it is like now.

Certainly it should be promulgated, then, that “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe/Catch a tigger by the toe” originally included a distinctly unpleasant word for which tigger was a rhyming euphemism. However, should our racial reckoning reanimate claims that the rhyme be considered an insult to black people as in cases such as this and this, or placed on a list of things we should keep from our children, as has actually been proposed?

Looking at ourselves from a distance sheds some light. People of another culture might learn of the original word and consider simply changing it to be the solution. They might wonder why we would consider primly eliminating the verse as a kind of middle finger turned up to the way things were in a time now vastly past. The past can’t see us. It’s okay to look back as long as you don’t stare.

The impulse will remain for (white) America to look inward and consider its participation in racism, which will include lexical matters. But engaging in some understandable housecleaning is different than reclassifying dozens of innocent-seeming words, expressions, and songs on the tips of our tongues as slurs, so that anyone who mentions black humor or grandfathering is taken aside or reported on Twitter, day care teachers get reprimanded for teaching their charges “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” and parents of a certain demographic muse over whether it’s “problematic” that they just saw their kids using “Eeny, meeny” to decide who gets to go first in a game.

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Real Estate Collapse: In Q2, A Record 44 NYC Neighborhoods Closed Fewer Than Five Deals

Real Estate Collapse: In Q2, A Record 44 NYC Neighborhoods Closed Fewer Than Five Deals

Tyler Durden

Wed, 08/12/2020 – 15:30

By Eliza Theiss of Property Shark

Marked by strict lockdowns, the halt of economic activity and the loss and suffering brought on by COVID-19, New York City’s real estate market was bound to present a decidedly different picture in the second quarter both year-over-year (Y-o-Y) and quarter-over-quarter (Q-o-Q).

First, it’s important to note that, during the last quarter, a record 44 NYC neighborhoods closed fewer than five deals — a metric we consider to be the lowest minimum threshold for calculating a neighborhood’s median sale price. As a result, these neighborhoods are not represented in our findings. In total, we analyzed the second quarter’s median sale price and sales activity changes in 157 NYC neighborhoods.

Next, the most notable change was brought on by Brooklyn, which — for the first time ever — had more neighborhoods among the city’s most expensive than Manhattan. Specifically, of the 52 neighborhoods that were ranked as the city’s 50 most expensive (due to two ties), Brooklyn claimed 23 entries versus Manhattan’s 21 neighborhoods, while Queens was represented by eight areas.

Pandemic-Depressed Market Slashes Manhattan Sales in Half, Brooklyn Sales Only by a Third

Overall, the median sale price for the four boroughs contracted 2% Y-o-Y in Q2 and gained 4% Q-o-Q, stabilizing at $675,178. But, while the overall median of the four boroughs remained largely unchanged, sales activity plummeted — down 36% Q-o-Q and down 43% Y-o-Y. In particular, Manhattan was hit the hardest of the four boroughs. Its sales activity was halved, and the median sale price dropped 22% Y-o-Y from $1.27 million to $990,000.

That significant drop was brought on by two major factors: a change in the ratio of property types sold and sale prices sliding under the influence of the new economic and public health crisis. And, while condo units represented half of all sales in Q2 2019, that share dropped to 44% in Q2 2020. Moreover, the median sale price of condo units traded in Q2 contracted 7% Y-o-Y from $1.745 million in 2019 to $1.625 million in 2020.

At the same time, the number of co-ops traded dropped at a less dramatic rate and, as a result, co-ops made up a larger share of Manhattan residential sales: 55% this year compared to 49% last year. However, the median sale price of co-ops contracted at a sharper rate than condos, dropping 10% Y-o-Y — from $830,000 in Q2 2019 to $750,000 in Q2 2020.

Brooklyn led in terms of sales activity, with the number of transactions recorded here in Q2 dropping only 32%, while its median sale price slid 2% to $702,000. Although sales activity decreased across all asset types — down 29% Y-o-Y for co-ops, 30% for condos and 41% for single-family homes — the median sale price presented conflicting trends across different property types. As a result, Brooklyn’s Q2 2020 residential market presented a fractured image.

Condo and co-op sales took up a larger share of Brooklyn’s residential sales in Q2 2020 compared to Q2 2019 — to the detriment of single-family home sales. In particular, houses represented 22% of all second-quarter sales in 2020, as opposed to 25% in 2019. Meanwhile, co-op units represented 28% compared to 27% a year ago, and condo unit sales increased from 48% to 50% of all sales.

Notably, the median sale price of single-family homes increased 7% Y-o-Y to $773,000 and the co-op median gained 9% Y-o-Y to reach $462,000. However, the drop in the median sale price of Brooklyn condos paired with their increased share of total sales deflated the entire borough’s Q2 median this year. Specifically, Brooklyn condos registered a 4% Y-o-Y drop, going from last year’s $863,000 to $825,000 in Q2 2020.

Bronx Single-Family Sales Surge, While Queens Condos Heat Up Borough Pricing

The Bronx and Queens showed similar trends, both in terms of pricing and sales activity evolution across all residential property types. Queens fared well in terms of price growth, with its median rising 12.3% Y-o-Y from $463,000 to $520,000, although transactional activity shrank 42% Y-o-Y. Meanwhile, Bronx prices actually rose at a slightly sharper rate of 12.5% Y-o-Y, but sales activity plunged 46% here.

In particular, price growth in the Bronx was fueled by the significant increase in the share of sales of single-family homes. While condos made up 23% of all second-quarter sales in 2019 and single-family homes 34%, in 2020, the share of condo sales dropped to 18% of the borough’s total residential sales, while single-family homes made up 40%.

And, because the median sale price of single-family homes ($525,000 in Q2 2020) is significantly higher than that of condos ($225,000 in Q2 2020), the Bronx’s overall median sale price grew, as well, going from $289,000 a year ago to $325,000 in Q2 of this year.

Queens, a borough dominated by single-family homes, saw its sales activity drop at the sharpest rate for this property type. At the same time, condos outperformed every other residential property type, both in terms of pricing and number of sales.

More precisely, Queens condo sales declined a mere 4% Y-o-Y, while their median sale price rose 13% Y-o-Y to reach $644,000 in Q2 2020. Likewise, condos also constituted a larger share of all sales in 2020, representing 22% of all Q2 transactions this year, as opposed to 13% in 2019.

However, as condos still madk up a relatively small percentage of all Queens sales, the borough’s second-quarter sales activity dropped 42% Y-o-Y, fueled by the 47% decline in co-op sales and 48% decrease in single-family home sales. As a result, co-ops represented 37% of all Q2 sales in Queens and single-family homes made up 41%, down from last year’s 40% and 47%, respectively.

Although sales activity decreased across the board, the borough’s 13% price increase was sustained by a 7% Y-o-Y increase in the median sale price of both co-ops ($320,000 in Q2 2020) and single-family homes ($644,000), and boosted by the 13% Y-o-Y hike for condos.

Kingsbridge Median Surges 147% Y-o-Y, Gowanus Sales Activity Heats Up 230%

At the neighborhood level, the Bronx’s Kingsbridge led in terms of pricing gains with its 147% Y-o-Y surge. Specifically, it went from $230,000 in Q2 2019 to $568,000 in Q2 2020 due to the change in types of properties sold. For instance, while the seven sales recorded in Q2 2019 were all co-ops, Q2 2020 saw six sales — three of which were single-family homes.

Kingsbridge’s pricing surge was followed by Williamsbridge’s 100% Y-o-Y boom, which brought the Bronx neighborhood’s median sale price up to $478,000. That jump was also the result of an increase in the number of single-family homes sold. While single-family homes made up half of Williamsbridge sales in Q2 2019 and had a median sale price of $462,000, in Q2 2020, single-family homes represented 67% of the neighborhood’s sales at a noticeably higher median sale price of $512,000.

At the other end of the spectrum stood Prospect Park South, which experienced the sharpest decline — down 54% Y-o-Y. It went from a median sale price of $1.23 million a year ago to $568,000 in Q2 2020. Once again, that change was brought on by a change in the mix of property types sold and their lower price points.

Specifically, in Q2 2019, Prospect Park South’s residential sales were comprised of 57% co-op units and 43% single-family homes. However, this year, single-family homes represented just 17% of sales, while co-ops took 33% and condos made up 50%. That was a significant change, as Q2’s condo sales had a median sale price of $560,000.

Nearby, the median sale price of Hunter’s Point co-ops decreased 23% Y-o-Y from $778,000 to $592,000. Additionally, while the three single-family homes sold in Q2 2019 had a median of $2.215 million, only two homes were sold in Q2 2020, and those averaged $959,000.

In terms of sales activity, Brooklyn’s Gowanus witnessed the sharpest growth rate at a whopping 230% Y-o-Y. However, it must be noted that, in terms of actual transactions, that figure represents an increase from 10 deals registered in Q2 2019 to 33 transactions registered in Q2 2020. That surge was fueled by sales in new developments in the neighborhood, such as Luna at 229 9th Street., which originated 12 condo sales in Q2 2020 and none in Q2 2019.

Meanwhile, Brooklyn neighborhood Greenwood Heights and Queens’ Hunters Point experienced the next-sharpest gains in transactional activity, both recording 123% more sales than in Q2 2019. All in all, only 15 of the 157 NYC neighborhoods included in this report registered year-over-year increases in transactional activity.

On the opposite end of the spectrum was Brooklyn’s Greenpoint. Its 83% Y-o-Y drop was the sharpest rate of decrease in sales activity among all neighborhoods that had at least five sales. In particular, only 14 deals closed in Greenpoint in Q2 2020, as opposed to the 80 that were registered here in the same timeframe last year, fueled by the sale of 48 luxury condos at the then-new mixed-use development The Greenpoint. As a result, the neighborhood’s median sale price also contracted, dropping 22% Y-o-Y from $1.36 million in Q2 2019 to $1.06 million in Q2 2020.

Brooklyn Overtakes Manhattan for First Time, Lands More Neighborhoods in Top 50 Priciest

Among the neighborhoods omitted from our analysis due to insufficient sales activity were high-profile names like Hudson Yards, Malba and the Columbia Street Waterfront District, which ranked as the #1, #7 and #9 most expensive NYC neighborhoods in Q1 2020. Consequently, TriBeCa reclaimed the title of #1 most expensive neighborhood in NYC, despite a 14% Y-o-Y price drop that brought its median sale price down to $3.73 million. At the same time, sales activity plummeted 52% Y-o-Y.

The city’s #2 most expensive neighborhood was Little Italy at $2.75 million. Its median sale price registered a mild 3% Y-o-Y uptick, paired with a 4% gain Q-o-Q. But, its sales activity dropped 22% Y-o-Y, closing only seven deals in Q2 2020.

Similarly, SoHo’s $2.425 million median sale price earned it the title of NYC’s #3 most expensive neighborhood, despite its 8% median sale price contraction. However, its drop in transactional activity was more dramatic — down 67% — closing only 15 sales compared to 46 registered in Q2 2019.

Overall, Manhattan supplied six of the city’s 10 most expensive neighborhoods and Brooklyn four. However, when looking at the 50 most expensive neighborhoods, Brooklyn had a heavier presence than Manhattan — a historic first. Specifically, of the 52 neighborhoods that had the 50 highest median sale prices of Q2, 23 were in Brooklyn versus Manhattan’s 21 neighborhoods. Queens was represented by eight.

Manhattan Snapshot: TriBeCa Retakes Top Spot, Inwood Has Lowest Median at $405K

As is most often the case, Manhattan’s three most expensive neighborhoods were also NYC’s three priciest: TriBeCa, Little Italy and SoHo. But, its competitively priced neighborhoods are often what incite the most interest here in what is, historically, the city’s priciest borough.

With a median sale price of $405,000, Inwood was Manhattan’s #1 most affordable neighborhood, following a 5% Y-o-Y drop. However, Inwood’s sales activity was halved, as was Tudor City’s, Manhattan’s #2 most affordable area. The latter posted a median sale price of $455,000 following a 10% Y-o-Y hike, which was the only year-over-year pricing gain among Manhattan’s five lowest-priced neighborhoods.

At the same time, Washington Heights underwent an 18% Y-o-Y price crunch that cemented its $468,000 median as the borough’s #3 lowest.

Brooklyn Snapshot: Sales Activity Drops Only 32% Y-o-Y, DUMBO Becomes #4 Priciest NYC Neighborhood

Three of Brooklyn’s priciest neighborhoods were among the city’s top 10 most expensive. Brooklyn’s median sale price leader, DUMBO, landed at #4 with a $2.075 million median. That came as a result of a noticeable 38% Y-o-Y increase spurred by the sale of three units at 100 Jay Street with a median of $2.45 million. At the same time, DUMBO’s sales activity was halved.

Carroll Gardens was right on DUMBO’s heels as Brooklyn’s #2 most expensive neighborhood and the city’s #5 priciest. Its median was on the rise, as well, gaining 42% Y-o-Y. However, sales activity in Carroll Gardens dropped at an even sharper rate than in DUMBO, coming in at 65% below Q2 2019.

Hitting a median sale price of $1.46 million following a 38% Y-o-Y drop, Cobble Hill was Brooklyn’s #3 priciest neighborhood in Q2 20201 and #8 city-wide. This was after a somewhat artificially inflated median in Q2 2019, elevated by the 17 sales registered at The Cobble Hill House, where the median sale price was $2.32 million.

On the other end of the borough’s pricing spectrum stood Gerritsen Beach, Coney Island and Midwood, which logged the lowest median sale prices. In particular, Gerritsen Beach was Brooklyn’s #1 most affordable neighborhood at $402,000, following a 7% Y-o-Y slide. Sales activity here dropped a mere 5% Y-o-Y, while Coney Island dropped 39% Y-o-Y.

However, Coney Island’s median gained 6% to become Brooklyn’s #2 lowest median. Meanwhile, Midwood’s 32% Y-o-Y drop pulled its median sale price down from last year’s $650,000 to $441,000 in Q2 2020, and transactional activity was slashed by 43% Y-o-Y.

All in all, the borough’s median sale price dipped 2% Y-o-Y, closing Q2 at $702,000. Notably, Brooklyn’s sales activity dropped only 32%, representing the lowest decline in transactional activity among the four boroughs.

Queens Snapshot: 34% Y-o-Y Drop Makes Briarwood Borough’s Lowest-Priced Neighborhood

In Queens, eight neighborhoods were among the city’s 50 most expensive. Nonetheless, the borough navigated a tumultuous second quarter with sales activity dropping 42% Y-o-Y. It registered only 1,365 sales, as opposed to 2,340 in Q2 2019. Queens’ median sale price, however, rose 12.3% Y-o-Y, reaching $520,000 in Q2 2020.

Fresh Meadows was its #1 most expensive neighborhood at a median sale price of $930,000, following a 9% Y-o-Y uptick. While that growth rate was lower than the borough’s 12.3% Y-o-Y gain, Fresh Meadows’s median was upheld by the type of properties that changed hands. In fact, in Q2 2020, only single-family homes were sold here, all of which sold for more than $800,000. As a result, Fresh Meadows’ $930,000 median also made it the #27 most expensive neighborhood in NYC.

Queensboro Hill was Queens’ #2 priciest neighborhood with an $893,000 median sale price. That number tied it with Manhattan’s Gramercy Park to secure the city’s #32 priciest neighborhood. While Queensboro Hill’s sales activity plummeted 60% Y-o-Y, Hunters Point saw sales surge 123%. The borough’s #3 priciest neighborhood at $890,000, Hunters Point tied Brooklyn’s Greenwood Heights for the NYC neighborhood with the second-highest gain in transactional activity.  

Queens’ #1 lowest-priced neighborhood was Briarwood at $213,000, following a 34% Y-o-Y reduction in its median sale price. Both here and in the borough’s #2 most affordable neighborhood of Corona, sales activity was halved.

Likewise, Corona’s median was also on the downswing, dropping 32% Y-o-Y to $260,000. In the meantime, Lindenwood — Queens’ #3 best-priced neighborhood — bucked the trend with a 7% Y-o-Y increase to reach $270,000 in Q2.

Bronx Snapshot: Up 13% Y-o-Y, Spencer Estates Becomes Most Expensive Neighborhood in the Bronx

As usual, the Bronx didn’t manage to make its way among the city’s 50 priciest neighborhoods.  However, it did register the sharpest pricing gain among the four boroughs, climbing 12.5% to a median sale price of $325,000, although sales activity fell 46% Y-o-Y. Its #1 most expensive neighborhood was Spencer Estates, which logged a $619,000 median after a 26% Y-o-Y price expansion. As such, it ranked as the #67 priciest NYC neighborhood.

NYC’s #74 priciest neighborhood and the Bronx’s #2 highest, Morris Park just made the cut with five sales at a $585,000 median sale price. And, with an 8% Y-o-Y pricing gain, Pelham Gardens was the #3 priciest Bronx neighborhood at $572,500, while its sales activity dipped 8%.

Tied at a median sale price of $162,500, High Bridge and Fordham became the lowest-priced neighborhoods in the Bronx. Specifically, High Bridge’s median ticked up 3% Y-o-Y with transactional activity unchanged, while Fordham’s sales were halved, and its median dropped 34% Y-o-Y.

Meanwhile, following a 16% Y-o-Y appreciation, Kingsbridge Heights became the #2 most affordable Bronx neighborhood at $185,000, while Parkchester’s 8% Y-o-Y bump gave it the #3 lowest median sale price in the Bronx at $188,750.

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S&P Surges Above Record Closing High

S&P Surges Above Record Closing High

Tyler Durden

Wed, 08/12/2020 – 15:15

The S&P 500 has pushed above its previous record closing high (3386.15 on 2/19/20) this afternoon (6th time was the charm)…

…because fun-durr-mentals…

Just Kidding – here’s why!

Hold your nose and buy the record high? Or is the bounce over?

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Weighing-Up DeFi Products Amid The Token Price Craze

Weighing-Up DeFi Products Amid The Token Price Craze

Tyler Durden

Wed, 08/12/2020 – 15:05

Authored by Shiraz Jagati via CoinTelegraph.com,

Has the meteoric rise of DeFi tech been brewing behind the scenes for quite some time now, or is it just a fluke?

image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

It’s no secret that 2020 has been the year of decentralized finance when it comes to the crypto world. In this regard, a number of DeFi tokens have enjoyed value surges recently, leading many experts to believe that the future looks bright for this niche sector. Global DeFi markets are continuing to scale up to all-time highs in terms of total value locked, reaching a peak of $4.75 billion on August 11.

As a result of these aforementioned developments, mainstream tech players are looking to help financial institutions capitalize on the ongoing DeFi hype. For example, Nitin Gaur, director of IBM financial services and digital assets previously told Cointelegraph that it is of utmost importance that traditional banks start to recognize and embrace the value propositions put forth by DeFi tech, otherwise, their existing business models could soon become outdated. 

DeFi’s mainstream rise

According to Jack Tao, CEO of crypto exchange Phemex, a host of factors have contributed to the recent mainstream attention that the DeFi space has been attracting. He told Cointelegraph that with each passing day, an increasing number of DeFi tokens are being supported by prominent exchanges all over the globe. Not only that, this nascent technology has also been able to capture the imagination of masses due to its ability to deliver new applications, implementations and decentralized projects in a real, tangible fashion. 

Tao also pointed out that a large chunk of investors all over the globe have also helped usher DeFi into the mainstream because of their efforts to cash in on the ongoing hype — albeit primarily in an effort to maximize their profits within the shortest time frame possible.

Similarly, Charles Read, an angel investor previously involved with the development of projects such as DIA Data and the Orion Protocol, believes three key drivers have spurred the DeFi narrative in recent months: yield farming, liquidity mining and synthetic assets. In his view, a combination of one or more of the aforementioned elements can allow developers to build new systems that are not only novel but also have mainstream deployment potential:

“There are now aggregator exchanges like ParaSwap and 1inch that allow you to access liquidity from all of the DEX [decentralized exchange] markets through just your web wallet. What this means is that the more crypto savvy crowd is opting to use DEXs more than ever before.”

Read also pointed out that owing to rising DEX volumes, the crypto market will continue to witness various centralized exchanges scramble to retain their existing trade volumes. As a result, an increasing number of traditional exchanges will continue to back other DeFi projects, thereby leading older projects to pivot toward the domain of decentralized finance. He added: “It’s more of a marketing game than a product game.”

A somewhat similar outlook is also shared by Sandeep Nailwal, chief operating officer and co-founder of a blockchain scalability platform Matic, who believes that projects like Compound have set a precedent of success for the governance token model, which is now being replicated by every DeFi project. He added:

“The use of Yield Farming, a way to incentivize users in Protocol Tokens for participating in the protocol is becoming increasingly popular. Right now, most of these tokens are banking on one central utility, Governance of the protocol. It remains to be seen whether the high valuations these tokens are commanding currently in the market are actually worth it.”

Do DeFi platforms merit their financial ascent?

A pertinent question worth exploring in relation to this ongoing DeFi boom is: Are the popular tokens actually backed up by platforms offering products that merit a rise in demand for the coins? Providing his insights on the subject, ‎Kosala Hemachandra, founder of MyEtherWallet, told Cointelegraph that he believes it to be the case:

“Unlike the 2017 ICO craze, the rise in demand around DeFi is actually backed by users, along with tools and services that facilitate growth and help us take decentralized finance to the next level. For the first time, we can now exchange, borrow and lend without involving a single centralized entity.”

Also, it’s worth noting that even before the recent DeFi mania kicked in, some projects like Synethix, Thorchain and Kyber network had been quietly accruing value all throughout 2020, showcasing a natural uptrend that was supported by trading volumes. In this regard, Read opined that the actual worth of many tokens may become highly distorted due to high volatility. Additionally, he does believe that oracle platforms deserve every bit of their meteoric rise since accurate price feeds are essential when it comes to offering safe DeFi instruments like borrowing/lending to the masses:

“If you do not have accurate price feeds, or you aren’t pulling prices from multiple sources, it is easy to cause liquidations. […] This means less risk and more accuracy when using financial tools… and allowing the community to vote on the quality of data with a governance token is very useful.”

However, Nailwal is skeptical of the aforementioned assertions and believes that as things stand, markets and revenues are too small to justify high valuations, alluding to the fact that the ongoing boom could be, in large part, due to incessant market speculation and fear of missing out.

Is the DeFi token distribution scenario a worry?

As per an all-new analytical study released by Simone Conti, co-founder of DeFi Italy and vice president at Eidoo, the overall token supply (99%) for most DeFi projects are being held by the top 500 addresses operating within the space. Not only that, it’s clear that the top five addresses for the vast majority of DeFi projects hold over 40% of total supplies, Bancor being the only anomaly. 

The problem with concentration in DeFi tech is that governance tokens are designed to hold voting power, and if the top owners are in possession of large volumes of tokens, they basically hold an overwhelming majority of voting power. When it comes to platforms like Compound, users are paid tokens over a certain period of time for using the platform. Thus, given the fact that the platform is a newcomer, most of the initial supply is held by venture investors and therefore it might take some time before these projects reach a certain level of balance. 

Grant Fondo, co-chair of Goodwin Procter’s Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology law firm, told Cointelegrap that the United States Securities and Exchange Commision, alongside other financial regulators, tend to get concerned when a few entities control a particular platform or its associated network: 

“The project’s assertions otherwise will not impact the regulators’ independent assessment. This concern will be heightened if any of those holders are responsible for significant price swings or the project’s direction, or if there is any fraud associated with the network.” 

Lastly, Tao opined that the aforementioned issue is a common one that afflicts most cryptocurrencies, further emphasizing that instead of simply fretting about the problem, other questions should be asked: “Who holds the majority of these tokens? Do they have the ability to easily manipulate prices? Would a more even distribution of DeFi tokens be more beneficial to the project as a whole?”

This DeFi boom isn’t the 2017 ICO bubble?

Even though it’s easy to compare the ongoing DeFi boom to the ICO craze of 2017, individuals like Ryan Watkins, lead researcher for Messari, noted that such comparisons are unfair and do not do DeFi tech any justice. He pointed out that back in 2017, a number of initial coin offerings were able to draw in billions in investments without delivering a working product. However, when it comes to DeFi, most projects already have live products.

Also, Watkins is of the firm belief that despite the ongoing boom, the DeFi space is still relatively small and still has significant room to expand. Not only that, he also argued the growth of this space will most likely continue thanks to a reallocation of capital from various “useless first-gen cryptocurrencies, ghost-town ‘ETH killers’ and dead projects.”

 

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Watch Live: Trump Unveils Administration’s Back-To-School Plan

Watch Live: Trump Unveils Administration’s Back-To-School Plan

Tyler Durden

Wed, 08/12/2020 – 14:55

President Trump is planning to unveil the administration’s plan for getting kids back in school safely, an announcement that comes as New York alone among the country’s largest schools districts has said it plans to return to some form of in-person learning. The administration has been pressing for states to tap unused FEMA money (accessed via national emergency declarations that were rolled out back in the spring), but many are still wary of returning to school at a time when cases in the worst-hit states have only just started to decline from their peaks.

Recently, the administration suffered an embarrassing setback when students at a private elementary school in North Carolina were forced to quarantine a week after Vice President Mike Pence and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos visited a nearby sister campus when an asymptomatic student tested positive.

Watch live:

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Budget Deficit Hits Record As U.S. Spends 100% More Than It Collects YTD

Budget Deficit Hits Record As U.S. Spends 100% More Than It Collects YTD

Tyler Durden

Wed, 08/12/2020 – 14:39

Those who have been following the record surge in US public debt (excluding the roughly $100 trillion in off-balance sheet obligations), which exploded by $3 trillion in the three months following the covid shutdowns and which hit an all time high $26.547 recently, will be all too aware that the US budget deficit this year – and every year after – will be staggering.

Sure enough, in the latest just released deficit report, the Treasury announced that in July the US burned through another $63BN, which however was a major “improvement” after the record $862 billion deficit recorded in June, as government receipts soared thanks to the July 15 tax date even as spending remained in the stratosphere.

Specifically according to the Treasury, in July, government outlays were $626.5 billion, an increase of 68.8% Y/Y from the $371 billion spent last July if 43% below the record June outlays of $1.1 trillion…

… while receipts jumped to the highest on record, surging 124.2% Y/Y to $563.5BN, up 132% from the $242.8BN in June receipts, which however was a one-time surge thanks to the July 15 tax filing deadline, and will promptly fade in the coming months.

The chart below shows the July 2020 breakdown between various receipts and outlays.

On a YTD basis, 10 months into the 2020 fiscal year, the US has spent $5.631 trillion and collected just $2.824 trillion, which means that YTD outlays are a record 100% higher than receipts, which also includes the $8.3BN received last month and $63.4BN YTD in deposits of earnings by the Fed.

And since outlays equal receipts plus the deficit, it will come as no surprise to anyone that in the first 10 months of fiscal, the US budget deficit is a record $2.807 trillion (compared to “just” $866.8 billion in 2019), higher than at any other time in US history and unfortunately due to “helicopter money” it is unlikely that the exploding deficit will ever shrink again until the monetary system is overhauled… or collapses.

At some point the market will realize that this insanity is simply unsustainable. And, in fact, looking at the soaring price of gold recent very temporary downdraft notwithstanding, that realization may not take too long.

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Is Your Master Bedroom Racist?

Bedroom

Master bedroom is going the way of Negro and Oriental. The real estate industry is increasingly replacing the term with primary bedroom or owner’s suite, to avoid using a term that can be taken as summoning the memory of masters owning slaves.

This will not be the only way that our national reckoning changes how we use language in America. Some calls will be easy. The obscure word niggardly serves little purpose when it sounds so uncomfortably like the n-word; stingy is fine as an alternate. Kaffir is a slur for a person of color in South Africa and thus we need not call the interesting fruit a kaffir lime. For Rhode Island to disavow its original name as the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations will confuse no one, since the name is all but unknown to most anyway.

But in many cases, there are two lessons to keep in mind: One is linguistic, about how metaphor works. The other is sociohistorical, about whether our present-day consciousness can plausibly encompass the entire progression of past stages that preceded it—despite William Faulkner’s counsel, sometimes the past really is past.

On metaphor, master is a useful example. The basic concept of the master as a leader or person of authority has extended into a great many metaphorical usages. One of them was its use as a title on plantations worked by slaves.

That makes sensible the elimination of certain other uses of the word, which parallel and summon the slavery one. When I went to a Quaker school in the 1970s, such schools had just begun a call to stop having male teachers called “master” and female teachers called “teacher,” in favor of having all instructors called simply “teacher” (i.e. “Teacher Bill” and “Teacher Lisa”). This meant that young subordinates had been calling white men in positions of authority “master,” after all—including, by the 1970s, more than a few black students. And today’s call to stop referring to technology parts as “master” versus “slave” attachments follows in the same vein, as it directly channels what was so offensive about the slavery usage.

However, other extensions of the word master do not meaningfully resemble the plantation one, and only a kind of obsession could explain spraying for them now. Are we to consider it racist to refer simply to mastering a skill? To master tape as opposed to dupes? One could even question eliminating the bedroom term. No one thinks of the children’s bedrooms and guest rooms as “subservient” or as existing in some unsavory relationship to the master bedroom. The plantation meaning of master was one tributary of a delta of extensions of the word; it should go, but we need not fill in the entire delta. You might not like bagpipes, but you wouldn’t as a result hold your ears upon hearing other wind instruments like clarinets and flutes. To be human is to make distinctions.

Things are the same with the word black. Its application to a group of people was, again, one of countless extensions of an original word. What worries many is that not only the racial meaning but so many other meanings of black have negative associations. However, this was true long before Africans were yoked into slavery. Worldwide, the color is often associated with negative concepts, because of the connection with nighttime and thus obscurity, mystery and even misdeeds, while white is often associated with positive ones. Hence look black, black market, blacklist, black magic, black humor, and so on.

Some may suppose that even if the racial meaning developed later, these days the other uses of black carry a racially loaded meaning by association. There are three problems here.

One is plausibility: Upon what evidence can we say that the word blacklist has a racial association, when what comes most readily to most of our minds is the witch hunt against Communists after World War II?

Another is that many of the black terms are simply neutral: To be in the black is a good thing. Or, one current call suggests banning “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” because, well, you know. But no one knows why the sheep is black, and in the nursery rhyme no one considers it a problem.

Finally, with black there are simply so very many extensions—dozens by conservative count. To ban all uses of black beyond the fundamental reference to color would result in most people constantly slipping up, with endless opportunities to call people out for the tort—a nice recapitulation of today’s problems with the likes of irregardless and between you and I except with an added tinge of supposed racism. The word and its metaphors are simply too big to fail, as it were.

There is also the question of whether to discontinue a word because of historical origins previously known to few. Here, the actual purpose beyond virtue signaling is unclear. An example is the tune “Turkey in the Straw,” which is played by some ice cream trucks. It emerged almost 200 years ago, sung by white minstrels made up as black people, with different lyrics referring to dancing. One call has suggested that we always reflect on the tune’s unsavory origins, and in today’s climate there is a short step from that to it being piously discontinued in public usage.

However, at this point, almost no living person has seen a minstrel show. More to the point, while minstrel shows existed, pretty much all popular music OF THE ERA was played in them. How much music will we let go on the basis of being connected with a phenomenon so antique that it is directly recalled by essentially no one, and is largely known through a few photos and some animated cartoon sequences themselves now long censored for public consumption? A version of “Turkey in the Straw” has also been unearthed with the title “Nigger Love A Watermelon, Ha! Ha! Ha!”—but this was not only over 100 years ago itself, but was one of many parody lyrics on this tune, forgotten almost as soon as it was published. There is room for allowing, a century later, the tune to just be a catchy tune.

Stephen Foster’s songs were minstrel staples as well. But to render them “problematic”—as the directive on “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” also suggests—would mean no more “Camptown Races” and “Oh, Susanna.” It is one thing for us to know the context these things emerged in, and even to know that such songs often had racist alternate verses now forgotten. But to treat them in their current state as outright contraband for origins no longer even known to anyone but scholars and now vast eons behind us is more about gesture than anything else, and for unclear purpose.

Such songs, in their current state, foster no thoughts or assumptions about racial hierarchy. They are neither hurting nor mentally polluting children (or anyone else). The same goes for the Massachusetts Appeals Court’s ban of the use of grandfather clause in its documents because the expression emerged as a strategy to deny black people the vote. If no one but a few historians knew this, no purpose is served by proscribing a now faceless expression. Language history, as a part of social history, is messy. Signals fade over time; material is eternally repurposed in the same way that the bones in our inner ear started out as jaw bones in reptiles and moved gradually inward. What a language was once like is always vastly different from what it is like now.

Certainly it should be promulgated, then, that “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe/Catch a tigger by the toe” originally included a distinctly unpleasant word for which tigger was a rhyming euphemism. However, should our racial reckoning reanimate claims that the rhyme be considered an insult to black people as in cases such as this and this, or placed on a list of things we should keep from our children, as has actually been proposed?

Looking at ourselves from a distance sheds some light. People of another culture might learn of the original word and consider simply changing it to be the solution. They might wonder why we would consider primly eliminating the verse as a kind of middle finger turned up to the way things were in a time now vastly past. The past can’t see us. It’s okay to look back as long as you don’t stare.

The impulse will remain for (white) America to look inward and consider its participation in racism, which will include lexical matters. But engaging in some understandable housecleaning is different than reclassifying dozens of innocent-seeming words, expressions, and songs on the tips of our tongues as slurs, so that anyone who mentions black humor or grandfathering is taken aside or reported on Twitter, day care teachers get reprimanded for teaching their charges “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” and parents of a certain demographic muse over whether it’s “problematic” that they just saw their kids using “Eeny, meeny” to decide who gets to go first in a game.

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