Browsed by
Tag: #Lockdowns

The Rise of the Rest?

The Rise of the Rest?

Comments 1 comment
Photo by Hans Isaacson on Unsplash

It’s mid-August and thoughts of back-to-school and returning to work are in high gear. Or at least amping up.

Especially since tech companies are tightening their rules on remote work.

“Zoom, once the poster child for remote work during the pandemic, is now forcing a significant number of its employees back to the office, joining the growing chorus of tech companies pivoting away from remote work. Despite its explosive growth and popularity as a virtual communication tool, Zoom seems to have caught the in-office fever. The company’s hybrid approach demands that employees within 50 miles of an office show up in person at least two days a week, supposedly to foster team interaction,” the New York Times reported. Read More...

1984: Blueprint for the New Normal

1984: Blueprint for the New Normal

Comments 2 comments
George Orwell. Photo from Gordon Johnson/Pixabay

This just in: Wall Street A-Listers Fled to Florida. Many Now Eye a Return, Bloomberg News reported. For the record, “USPS data shows few New Yorkers moved to Miami, Palm Beach; New Jersey, California and Connecticut were most popular moves.”

Looks like things are about to return to normal, right?

In case you missed it, Google will invest $250 million this year in building out New York City office presence, while Facebook Bets Big on Future of N.Y.C., and Offices, With New Lease, and note to self, “With the 730,000-square-foot lease, Facebook has acquired more than 2.2 million square feet of office space in the city for thousands of employees in less than a year, all of it on Manhattan’s West Side,” the New York Times reported. Meanwhile, we saw Amazon buying Lord & Taylor building for $1.15 billion, “While Facebook has been in talks to lease the 700,000-square-foot Farley Building, Apple last month inked a lease on 220,000 square feet at 11 Penn Plaza,” said the New York Post. Why Is Jeff Bezos Buying Up Apartments in the Coronavirus Capital?, Realtor.com queried during the height of the pandemic.

Why indeed and lest we forget, all of these companies already had a considerable footprint in NYC even prior to the pandemic. While many formerly NY-based companies, shops and restaurants pulled up stakes – or were driven out due to high rents and property damage – seems that the various members of the tech cabal didn’t bat an eyelash, and rather, waited for real estate prices to drop, even though it seems some will still pay top dollar. Read More...

The 2021 Then & Now List

The 2021 Then & Now List

Comments 0 Comment
Image by iXimus

2020 was a year that changed almost everything. Brick and mortars’ footprint got a lot smaller as we embraced online shopping. Not necessarily by choice: the former were shut down and/or driven out of business, especially SMBs.

The CDC admitted that deaths from seasonal flu, pneumonia and even heart attacks were included in the Covid numbers, thus inflating the actual deadliness of this flu, yet Big Media ignored these reports, which more or less made fear porn arguably the real superspreader – of click rates and note to self: according to the National Review, Stats Hold a Surprise: Lockdowns May Have Had Little Effect on COVID-19 Spread.

Working remotely became de rigueur, but with K-12 being ‘taught’ remotely, this definitely created problems in River City. On many levels, what with parents working from home, too – or attempting to. Can young children truly learn this way? There is a difference between ‘teaching’ and ‘learning.’ If remote education is going to be the so-called new normal, the basic tenets of effective remote learning need to be seriously re-examined, or the teacher is simply another talking head. Read More...

Fresh Eyes on the New Normal

Fresh Eyes on the New Normal

Comments 0 Comment
Image by Barbara Rosner from Pixabay

To hear the Wall Street Journal tell it, you’d think that the stay at home economy is here to stay.

Frankly, we’re not convinced that the votes are all in yet.

While amusement parks, movie theatres, gyms and many restaurants, et al have closed or have been permanently shuttered, are those verticals truly gone forever? Movie theatre sales had been down for quite some time, thanks streaming services, what to speak of the fact that many A list actors found it incumbent upon themselves to take political stances and lost a good part of their fanbase prior to this flu. The common folk expressed their opinions in box office receipts. Read More...