Tag Archives: manhattan

The Trump Files: Donald Thinks Asbestos Would Have Saved the Twin Towers

by AleidaChiles Posted on August 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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Until the election, we’re bringing you “The Trump Files,” a daily dose of telling episodes, strange-but-true stories, or curious scenes from the life of GOP nominee Donald Trump.

The Donald is a big admirer of asbestos, the notorious carcinogen that he considers “the greatest fire-proofing material ever used.” He’s so convinced of its powers, in fact, that he thinks a lack of asbestos is the reason the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11.

“If we didn’t remove the incredibly powerful fire retardant asbestos & replace it with junk that doesn’t work, the World Trade Center would never have burned down,” Trump wrote in a tweet in October 2012. About 400 tons of asbestos reportedly went into the structures before the builders halted its use in 1971, anticipating that the government would soon ban the material.

Trump was repeating an argument he made in front of a subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in 2005, when he testified about how quickly and elegantly he could renovate the United Nations building in New York. “A lot of people could say that if the World Trade Center had asbestos it wouldn’t have burned down. It wouldn’t have melted, okay?” he told the senators. Comparing other materials to it, he argued, is “like a heavyweight champion against a lightweight from high school.”

“A lot of people” appears to be a small group of libertarian think-tankers who oppose health and environmental regulations, including the ones against asbestos. Meanwhile, clouds of pulverized asbestos and other carcinogens kicked up on 9/11 may be linked to huge numbers of cancer cases among first responders and Ground Zero workers.

Read the rest of “The Trump Files”:

Trump Files #1: The Time Andrew Dice Clay Thanked Donald for the Hookers
Trump Files #2: When Donald Tried to Stop Charlie Sheen’s Marriage to Brooke Mueller
Trump Files #3: The Brief Life of the “Trump Chateau for the Indigent”
Trump Files #4: Donald Thinks Asbestos Fears Are a Mob Conspiracy
Trump Files #5: Donald’s Nuclear Negotiating Fantasy
Trump Files #6: Donald Wants a Powerball for Spies
Trump Files #7: Donald Gets An Allowance
Trump Files #8: The Time He Went Bananas on a Water Cooler
Trump Files #9: The Great Geico Boycott
Trump Files #10: Donald Trump, Tax-Hike Crusader
Trump Files #11: Watch Donald Trump Say He Would Have Done Better as a Black Man
Trump Files #12: Donald Can’t Multiply 16 and 7
Trump Files #13: Watch Donald Sing the “Green Acres” Theme Song in Overalls
Trump Files #14: The Time Donald Trump Pulled Over His Limo to Stop a Beating
Trump Files #15: When Donald Wanted to Help the Clintons Buy Their House
Trump Files #16: He Once Forced a Small Business to Pay Him Royalties for Using the Word “Trump”
Trump Files #17: He Dumped Wine on an “Unattractive Reporter”
Trump Files #18: Behold the Hideous Statue He Wanted to Erect In Manhattan
Trump Files #19: When Donald Was “Principal for a Day” and Confronted by a Fifth-Grader
Trump Files #20: In 2012, Trump Begged GOP Presidential Candidates to Be Civil
Trump Files #21: When Donald Couldn’t Tell the Difference Between Gorbachev and an Impersonator
Trump Files #22: His Football Team Treated Its Cheerleaders “Like Hookers”
Trump Files #23: The Trump Files: Donald Tried to Shut Down a Bike Race Named “Rump”
Trump Files #24: When Donald Called Out Pat Buchanan for Bigotry
Trump Files #25: Donald’s Most Ridiculous Appearance on Howard Stern’s Show
Trump Files #26: How Donald Tricked New York Into Giving Him His First Huge Deal
Trump Files #27: Donald Told Congress the Reagan Tax Cuts Were Terrible
Trump Files #28: When Donald Destroyed Historic Art to Build Trump Tower
Trump Files #29: Donald Wanted to Build an Insane Castle on Madison Avenue
Trump Files #30: Donald’s Near-Death Experience (That He Invented)
Trump Files #31: When Donald Struck Oil on the Upper West Side
Trump Files #32: When Donald Demanded Other People Pay for His Overpriced Quarterback
Trump Files #33: The Time Donald Sued Someone Who Made Fun of Him for $500 Million
Trump Files #34: Donald Tried to Make His Ghostwriter Pay for His Book Party
Trump Files #35: Watch Donald Shave a Man’s Head on Television
Trump Files #36: How Donald Helped Make It Harder to Get Football Tickets
Trump Files #37: Donald Was Curious About His Baby Daughter’s Breasts
Trump Files #38: When Democrats Courted Donald
Trump Files #39: Donald’s Cologne Smelled of Jamba Juice and Strip Clubs
Trump Files #40: Donald Sued Other People Named Trump for Using Their Own Name

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The Trump Files: Donald Thinks Asbestos Would Have Saved the Twin Towers

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The Trump Files: Donald Told Congress the Reagan Tax Cuts Were Terrible

by FDXDiane4749 Posted on July 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Until the election, we’re bringing you “The Trump Files,” a daily dose of telling episodes, strange-but-true stories, or curious scenes from the life of presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.

Donald Trump loves to (falsely) complain at his rallies and speeches that America is “the highest-taxed country in the world.” His tax plan would slash income tax rates and deliver huge savings to the richest Americans. But he wasn’t always a fan of trickle-down, supply-side tax cuts.

In 1991, Trump told the House Budget Committee’s Subcommittee on Urgent Fiscal Matters that President Ronald Reagan had screwed up with his 1986 tax cuts, which cut the highest income tax rates nearly in half, from 50 percent to 28 percent.

“In the real estate business we’re in an absolute depression, and one of the reasons we’re there is what happened in 1986,” he said. “Something has to be done. It has to be brought back. It has to be reformed.”

Trump contended that the low income tax rates took away rich people’s reason to invest and that the economy as a whole suffered as a result. He recommended a return to much higher rates for the rich, arguing that they cause more people to invest in real estate. But he didn’t quite explain why that would happen. “The fact is that 25 percent for high-income people—for high-income people—it should be raised substantially,” he said. “I say leave the middle, leave the low—lower ’em. But people with money have to have the incentive.”

A tax rate of 25 percent (which Trump erroneously thought was the top income tax rate at the time) is now the maximum income tax rate that Trump calls for in his 2016 tax plan.

Read the rest of “The Trump Files”:

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The Trump Files: Donald Told Congress the Reagan Tax Cuts Were Terrible

Posted in ATTRA, bigo, Casio, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged bigo, budget, Casio, conspiracy, files, football, hookers, manhattan, trump, trump-files, venta | Comments Off

New York City hopes a 10-foot wall can save it from rising seas

by MathiasLopresti Posted on July 6, 2016

New York City hopes a 10-foot wall can save it from rising seas

By Katie Herzogon Jul 6, 2016Share

New York City is in trouble.

Location, population, and a massive underground infrastructure system: All this makes New York especially vulnerable to climate change. This was most starkly felt in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, when more than 88,000 buildings flooded, 250,000 vehicles were destroyed, and 44 people were killed. It’s cost $60 billion to rebuild damaged areas, much of which is being paid for by the federal government.

In an effort to stave off another Sandy, the city is prepared to wall off one of its wealthiest areas, Lower Manhattan, from massive storms and rising seas. Rolling Stone’s Jeff Goodell writes that New York will break ground later this year on the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project, a 10-foot-high reinforced wall that will run two miles along the East River.

The plan, called the Big U, is the brain child of Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group, which won a $930 million competition sponsored by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2014. Based on a video from the design firm, the $3 billion project looks more like a park than a wall. There is space for gardening, recreation, walking, and dining, and indoor and outdoor markets.

It is not, however, without critics. Urban planners told Goodell they doubt the final design will include any of the recreational spaces. It’s just too expensive. “When it’s done, it’s just going to be a big dumb wall,” one architect said. Plus, there is the wall’s location. While Wall Street might be safe from the storm, the wall could actually make flooding in neighboring Brooklyn worse.

Regardless, it will take more than a wall around Lower Manhattan to save New York residents and businesses. As Goodell notes, New York might prevent another Sandy, but not the worsening storms expected from climate change. The solution requires more than just a big wall; it requires comprehensive rethinking of government policy and infrastructure spending, and a new approach to combatting long-term threats.

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New York City hopes a 10-foot wall can save it from rising seas

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged article, climate & energy, department, development, group, lower, lower-manhattan, manhattan, news, sandy, sea level rise, urban | Comments Off

Republican Frontrunners All Favor Treating Muslims Like Drug Gangs

by RevaHendrick Posted on March 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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Ted Cruz took a lot of flak yesterday for his proposal to “patrol and secure” Muslim neighborhoods, so he decided to explain it further last night:

“It is standard law enforcement — it is good law enforcement to focus on where threats are emanating from, and anywhere where there is a locus of radicalization, where there is an expanding presence of radical Islamic terrorism,” Cruz told reporters on Tuesday evening in Manhattan. “We need law enforcement resources directed there, national security resources directed there.”

….Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), compared Cruz’s proposition to “the dark days of the 1930s” in Europe and “the interment of Japanese-Americans” in the 1940s, calling it “a very frightening image.”

Cruz repudiated the comparison at the press conference, saying: “I understand that there are those who seek political advantage and try to raise a scary specter.” He instead compared it to ridding neighborhoods of gang activity and law enforcement’s efforts “to take them off the street.”

And what did Donald Trump think of all this? He supports Cruz’s plan “100 percent.” Naturally.

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Republican Frontrunners All Favor Treating Muslims Like Drug Gangs

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Hillary Clinton’s Trust Gap Is Killing Her With Millennials

by MelissaEOLV Posted on March 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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Earlier today I was musing over a tweet from a guy who said that his daughter’s friends all loathed Hillary Clinton. Just really, really couldn’t stand her. This is obviously a fairly common sentiment. Bernie Sanders didn’t win 80 percent of the millennial vote in Michigan just because he’s an idealistic liberal. The only way you get to a number like that is against an opponent who’s pretty seriously disliked.

But why? The most obvious reason millennials dislike Hillary so strongly is that they think she’s too slippery. “I feel like Clinton lies a lot,” a college student told PBS a few weeks ago. “She changes her views for every group she speaks to. I can’t trust her.” Quotes like that litter the internet, and in tonight’s debate Karen Tumulty asked about it yet again. “Is there anything in your own actions and the decisions that you yourself have made that would foster this kind of mistrust?”

People of my age find all this a little peculiar. After all, we’re the ones who experienced the full storm of the 90s. There was a new Hillary “scandal” on practically a monthly basis back then, and even if you later learned there was virtually nothing to any of them, that kind of nonstop mudslinging leaves a mark. It’s hard to hear this stuff over and over and not think that maybe there’s something there. Smoke and fire, you know. But millennials went through none of that. So why do they distrust her?

Unfortunately, Hillary has fostered a lot of this mistrust herself. I’m going to be wildly unfair here and cherry pick a bunch of quotes from Hillary and Bernie Sanders. First up, here’s Bernie:

On whether he supports fracking: “My answer is a lot shorter. No, I do not support fracking.”
On reforming Wall Street: “If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist….Within one year, my administration will break these institutions up so that they no longer pose a grave threat to the economy.”
On whether there’s even a “single circumstance” in which abortion should be illegal: “That is a decision to be made by the woman, her physician and her family. That’s my view.”
On prison reform: “I promise at the end of my first term we won’t have more people in jail than in any other country.”

There’s no nuance here, no shading. Bernie has simple, crowd-pleasing answers to every question. He’s for X, full stop. He’s against Y, end of story.

At this point I should compare these answers to the more gray-shaded responses Hillary gives on policy questions. But I’m not being fair, so instead you get this:

On whether she lied to the Benghazi families (from tonight’s debate): “You know, look, I feel a great deal of sympathy for the families of the four brave Americans that we lost at Benghazi….”
On releasing transcripts of her speeches: “Let everybody who’s ever given a speech to any private group under any circumstances release them—we’ll all release them at the same time.”
On her private email server: “Everything I did was permitted. There was no law. There was no regulation. There was nothing that did not give me the full authority to decide how I was going to communicate.”
On getting money from big Wall Street donors: “I represented New York on 9/11 when we were attacked. Where were we attacked? We were attacked in downtown Manhattan where Wall Street is. I did spend a whole lot of time and effort helping them rebuild. That was good for New York. It was good for the economy and it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country.”
On her super PAC: “You’re referring to a super PAC that we don’t coordinate with….It’s not my PAC.”

These are terrible answers. Tonight, Jorge Ramos brought up allegations by the Benghazi families that Hillary had deceived them, and asked, “Secretary Clinton, did you lie to them?” The only answer to this question is “Of course not.” But Hillary started by expressing her sympathy for the Benghazi families and only then said of her accuser, “She’s wrong.” Maybe this seems like nitpicking, but it’s not. Unless the very first words out of her mouth are “Of course not,” she’s going to leave an immediate impression that she’s about to tap dance around the whole thing. I like Hillary, and even I sighed when she began delivering that answer.

The other quotes are similar. It doesn’t even matter if they’re the truth. They don’t sound like the truth. People my age might forgive Hillary a bit of this lawyerlyness because we remember the 90s and understand the damage that even a slightly misplaced word can cause. But millennials don’t. They just see another tired establishment pol who never gives a straight answer about anything.

Life isn’t fair. Politics isn’t fair. I think Hillary Clinton is careful, a little bit paranoid, and, ironically, congenitally honest on policy issues. She just can’t bring herself to give simple-minded answers when she knows perfectly well the truth is more complicated. But especially this year, when her competition is a guy like Bernie Sanders, this just makes her look evasive and insincere.

After 40 years in the public eye, I don’t know why Hillary is still so bad at this. But she is. For a long time, liberals mostly forgave her wary speaking style because they were keenly aware of the Republican smear campaign that birthed it. Now, for the first time, there’s a generation of liberals who don’t care about any of that. And an awful lot of them loathe her.

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Hillary Clinton’s Trust Gap Is Killing Her With Millennials

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Oster, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged benghazi, bernie, boxing, fighting, kevin drum, manhattan, Oster, politics, street, venta | Comments Off

How Big a Dick Is Ted Cruz? A Quiz.

by MargariZTV Posted on January 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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Against my better judgment sometimes, I have focused most of my campaign reporting energy on making the case against Donald Trump. But there are other candidates out there who are plenty loathsome in their own way, and when you say the word “loathsome” Ted Cruz comes immediately to mind.

Over at the mothership, Tim Murphy and David Corn make the case that Ted is really one of the all-time huge pricks. Take this quiz first to test your knowledge of Cruzology, and then go read it.

Did one of Ted’s former pastors say that “he pretty much memorized the Bible, but I think he did it mostly so that he could humiliate kids who got quotes wrong”?
Did a veteran of the 2000 George Bush campaign say that “the quickest way for a meeting to end would be for Ted to come in”?
Did Ted’s wife once admit that Ted “can be a bit of a jackass sometimes, but at least you know where he’s coming from”?
Did Bob Dole say that Ted “doesn’t have any friends in Congress”?
Did Mitch McConnell respond that “I’m pretty sure Dole is wrong, but I can’t figure out who his one friend is”?
Did a John McCain advisor say that his boss “fucking hates Cruz”?
Did President Obama once get overheard asking Joe Biden “what in God’s name is that asshole’s problem, anyway”?
Did Rep. Peter King say say about a possible Ted Cruz nomination, “I hope that day never comes; I will jump off that bridge when we come to it”?
Did John Boehner quip that Ted was “a great American resource; when we threatened to deport him back to Canada, they suddenly agreed to drop their softwood lumber subsidies”?
Did Lindsey Graham say the choice between Trump and Cruz was like having to choose between “death by being shot or poisoning”?
Did a former high school teacher just shake his head and close his door when a reporter knocked and asked what he remembered about Ted?
Did a former law school acquaintance say that when she agreed to carpool with Ted, “We hadn’t left Manhattan before he asked my IQ”?
Did Ted’s torts professor remark that “I don’t think there was a single question I asked the entire year where Ted didn’t instantly raise his hand and practically wet his pants pleading to be called on”?
Did his Princeton freshman roommate call Ted “a nightmare of a human being” and claim he would get invited to parties hosted by seniors because the upperclassmen pitied him?
Did a college girlfriend of Ted’s say “he was pretty smart, but sex with him once was enough—if you can call it sex”?
Is it true that in interviews with four of Ted’s college acquaintances, “four independently offered the word ‘creepy'”?

Answer: All statements whose ordinal number takes the integer form 2n+1 or 2n-1 have been invented. The rest are real

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How Big a Dick Is Ted Cruz? A Quiz.

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The New York Public Library Just Unleashed 180,000 Free Images. We Can’t Stop Looking at Them.

by LoisCraine Posted on January 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Blossom Restaurant, 103 Bowery, Manhattan Bernice Abbott/The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library.

The New York Public Library just digitized and made available more than 180,000 high resolution items, which the public can download for free.

The images come from pieces in the library’s collection that have fallen out of copyright or are otherwise in the public domain. This includes botanical illustrations, ancient texts, historical maps–including the incredible Green Book collection of travel guides for African American travelers in mid-1900s. They’ve also released more than 40,000 stereoscopes, Berenice Abbott’s amazing documentation of New York City in 1930s and Lewis Hines’ photos of Ellis Island immigrants, as well as the letters of Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, among other political figures.

One of the related projects they’ve created with this release is a cool visualization tool that lets you browse every item released.

It’s a true treasure trove and–warning!–a total time suck.

Say goodbye to your afternoon.

Original article –

The New York Public Library Just Unleashed 180,000 Free Images. We Can’t Stop Looking at Them.

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged abbott, Collection, green, hamilton, island, manhattan, photographs, photography, radius, travel | Comments Off

Here’s How to Get Rich or Die Podcasting

by FaustoKleeman29 Posted on December 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Christoph Hitz

Despite a successful career in public radio, Alex Blumberg says he never showed any “entrepreneurial spunk.” That changed when he left a comfortable post at NPR’s Planet Money and, together with Matt Lieber, began to court venture capitalists to help launch a podcast incubator. The resulting company, Gimlet, has attracted at least 4 million monthly listeners and $1.5 million from investors. Its portfolio of highly produced shows includes StartUp (the first season told the inside story of starting up Gimlet); Reply All, which takes on internet culture; and Mystery Show, in which host Starlee Kine solves seemingly trivial problems. Surprisingly Awesome, the newest show, sets out to make dull topics, like free throws or mold, interesting; it’s the brainchild of Adam Davidson, Blumberg’s former cohost at Planet Money, and filmmaker Adam McKay. Blumberg talked to Mother Jones about the biz.

Mother Jones: Why leave a comfortable job at Planet Money to go off on your own?

Alex Blumberg: I don’t know. Why do we do anything? laughs. I was 40-something years old. I hadn’t shown any entrepreneurial spunk up until that point. I thought that there should be a way of identifying talent and then helping that talent make shows and those shows find audiences. I kept on thinking, well, somebody should do it and waiting around and no one did.

MJ: What did Gimlet look like back when you launched StartUp with Matt Lieber?

AB: We didn’t really have an office. So we had these two business calls, I remember, where we were both walking around the streets of Manhattan on our cell phones like a block apart from each other. Every time a siren would go by, it was just awful. So we finally we paid for a place in an incubator. Two little chairs and a desk. StartUp launched and went pretty well, and that helped us raise the rest of the money.

MJ: You’ve describe Gimlet as “the HBO of podcasting.” What did you mean by that?

AB: Right now, there are lots of podcasts that are cheaper to produce, and many of them are great; I love a great “friends shooting the shit” show. But where there’s an opportunity is in the more highly produced way, where you are reporting and sifting stuff out and cutting, honing things. I come from that. I feel like those take more work and you’re polishing them a little bit longer, fussing with them a lot more. That’s sort of why I said HBO of podcasting: We’re not going to produce tons of it, but the content we produce, we’re going to try and make it stand out in some way.

MJ: Did you expect StartUp to do so well?

AB: I didn’t expect it to strike that kind of chord with the number of listeners that it did. Like, ‘Oh my God, you are describing the journey that I’ve been on making my productivity app,’ or whatever. There are tons of businesses that exist in the United States. An insane number of people who are in business for themselves. And then there are people on board feeling they’re at key early stages of companies. So I think there are a bunch of people who can sort of relate to the feelings of it, but hadn’t really heard those feelings brought out before.

Reply All: “The Man in the FBI Hat”

MJ: What do you learn about your own company’s journey by looking at Dating Ring’s journey, as you did in season two?

AB: We were able to raise money much more quickly than they were. It felt like it took forever at the time, but then talking to Dating Ring and talking to other start-ups—we were a little bit of an anomaly.

The other thing was that being old wasn’t such a bad thing. laughs. When I was 25, I felt all this pressure to succeed, and I’m keenly aware of who’s ahead of me and who was behind me—and it fucks you up! With me being in my 40s, I knew who I was.

MJ: Gimlet started at an interesting time, at this golden era of podcasting—46 million Americans listen to at least one podcast in a given month. Do you think it’s just a fad, or is it here to stay?

AB: Radio was supposed to die in 1945, when TV came along. It turns out that radio grew and grew, and it’s a bigger business today than it has ever been. People really like to listen to other people talk; sometimes listening is the only thing you can do. Audio is the only medium you can consume while you’re multitasking. Now that everybody has a smart phone and everybody’s car is going to be connected, it’s a brand new world.

MJ: What do you think people get from listening instead of reading or watching media?

AB: I think people want companionship. Radiolab is sort of like hanging out with the hosts. They’re like friends you want to have that are like teaching you stuff and they’re telling great stories.

MJ: Public radio has this reputation of having the predominantly white, male voice. How do you plan to tackle diversity at Gimlet?

AB: It’s something that I think about pretty much every day. How do we make it a non-homogenous place technically? Right now, it’s not. Podcasts should look like America. And I feel like, ideally, that’s what you’d want your company to look like. I think that’s right and makes sense from a business perspective.

MJ: How do you guys plan on doing that?

AB: You start to realize why companies in the beginning look the way they do: You’re drawing from your own personal connections when you’re starting something. You see it in small businesses all over. One ethnic group has a store franchise and then like the one that opens is a cousin. When you’re launching a business, you just really want to know somebody deeply to help in how you do it laughs. We recruit people. We’re trying to train people up. We’re reaching out to this interesting alternate world of the non-public radio podcasters who just come to podcasting because they like podcasting.

MJ: What about in terms of the content you produce at Gimlet?

AB: One of the things that I think audio is best at is creating empathy. I know that might sound a little crazy but I actually truly believe it. When you’re hearing somebody and you’re not seeing them, your brain naturally creates a version of them. Then you feel closer to them because you’ve created them. You’re not sitting back and judging them, saying they look different from me on a subconscious level. Some of the shows we’re planning in particular are going to be conversations between all kinds of different people that are a lot about trying to create empathy.

MJ: How did your newest show, Surprisingly Awesome, come about?

AB: I’d worked with Adam Davidson at Planet Money for many years and knew what an incredible talent he is. And also Adam McKay makes really funny movies, and I thought, the show they wanted to do will be in a nice sweet spot for podcasts in general. A lot of people listen to podcasts because they want to learn something and be entertained along the way, and I feel like this is perfectly in that zone.

First episode of Surprisingly Awesome

MJ: What’s a topic that the show would cover?

AB: Free throws. A free throw seems boring but then when you sort of dig into what’s going on and the history and psychology and the social anthropology around the free throw—it’s interesting.

Mystery Show: “Belt Buckle”

Link to original:

Here’s How to Get Rich or Die Podcasting

Posted in alo, Anchor, ATTRA, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged alo, attra, manhattan, media, Ona, people, planet-money, radio, right, Start, top stories, venta | Comments Off

An underground park in New York City? These guys are pushing to make it happen

by HuldaRivett Posted on November 12, 2015

An underground park in New York City? These guys are pushing to make it happen

By Suzanne Jacobson 11 Nov 2015comments Share

Once upon a time, an architect and a techie ventured into an abandoned trolly station under the Lower East Side of Manhattan and had a vision. They saw a lush green park spanning the entire one-acre space, flying in the face of everything they knew to be true about dank underground caverns — namely, that they’re not great for growing lush green parks.

Now, four years later, those crazy kids are bringing that vision to life. Or rather, they’re bringing a prototype of that vision to life in a 5,000 square-foot warehouse that’s not underground but is very dark.

In this video, the duo takes Wired through their so-called Lowline Lab to discuss how they plan to bring sunlight underground. Basically, it involves using mirrors to focus sunlight into 30 times its normal brightness, then directing that light underground through fiberoptic cables, and redistributing it through a ceiling made of aluminum panels. Easy peasy.

Source:

How New York’s ‘Lowline’ Underground Park Will Actually Work

, Wired.

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An underground park in New York City? These guys are pushing to make it happen

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, PUR, Radius, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged actually, business & technology, evolution, g & f, jacobson, lai, manhattan, Ona, share, these, video | Comments Off

New York’s natural gas pipelines are leakier than your grandpa

by GrettaRupert Posted on September 10, 2015

New York’s natural gas pipelines are leakier than your grandpa

By Suzanne Jacobson 10 Sep 2015comments Share

Just like us, natural gas pipelines get a little farty with old age. Unlike us, they fart loads of climate change-inducing methane all over our city streets like silent Earth assassins. (Technically, we also fart methane, but according to this scientist and self-proclaimed “connoisseur of fart articles,” we don’t fart enough of it to do much damage.)

In a new study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, researchers report that — surprise! — old pipes get leaky. And when those pipes are carrying natural gas, that means trouble. Here’s the scoop from Buzzfeed:

The new survey found 1,050 methane leaks in Manhattan, or about four leaks per mile. Two cities selected for comparison — Cincinnati, Ohio, and Durham, North Carolina — had about 90% fewer leaks per mile, the study found. Over the last decade, Cincinnati and Durham have replaced most of their old gas mains with new ones.

“Older iron pipes are corroded, they leak from the joints, they crack and they buckle,” Stanford University’s Robert Jackson, who led the street survey, told BuzzFeed News. “The good news is that some cities are already doing something and showing we can do something about these leaks.”

Fortunately, the New York utility company Con Edison has a $6.5 billion plan to replace 60 percent of its natural gas pipes by 2020, Buzzfeed reports, and is now doing 13 annual leak patrols, rather than one. Unfortunately, this problem isn’t unique to Manhattan. The researchers found that Boston and Washington, D.C., were also quite leaky. Twelve leaks in D.C. were so concentrated, in fact, that they posed explosion risks, according to Buzzfeed. Most of the other leaks just smelled like rotten eggs, which I guess is pretty good in comparison.

But if you don’t care about the smells, the mortal danger, or the fact that methane traps WAY more heat than CO2, then maybe this will get your attention:

“Everyone pays for these leaks. The utilities just jack up their rates to cover the losses so there is no incentive to fix them,” study co-author Robert Ackley of Gas Safety Inc. in Southborough, Massachusetts told BuzzFeed News. “They get away with a lot, in my opinion.”

Ackley, a libertarian, community-college drop-out from Boston, was the star of this 2013 article in Matter about the leaky pipe epidemic. It’s a fascinating read about a fascinating guy. Here’s a teaser:

Few people understand the streets of America’s cities the way Ackley does. He’s spent almost three decades documenting leaky gas pipelines and alerting utility companies to potential danger. Now he can read the street like a hunter reads animal tracks; some academics call him the “urban naturalist.”

As John Oliver pointed out so well earlier this year, infrastructure might be boring, but it’s insanely important to the health and wellbeing of this country. So perhaps we should treat it with the same care and respect that we treat our corroded and leaky elders — if not out of the goodness of our hearts, then because it’s the right thing to do, and if not because it’s the right thing to do, then because people will judge us if we don’t.

Source:

Experts Have Just Found Gas Leaking Out Of 1,000 Spots In New York City

, Buzzfeed.

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New York’s natural gas pipelines are leakier than your grandpa

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