Senior Housing: Baby Boomers Choosing To Stay In Own Homes Threatens New Facilities

November 13, 2019 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

From a Wall Street Journal online article:

The rise of technologies that help the elderly stay in their homes threatens to upend one of commercial real estate’s biggest bets: Aging baby boomers will leave their residences in droves for senior housing.

Developers and senior-housing companies have spent billions of dollars over the past five years to build facilities that provide housing, food, medical care and assistance for the elderly.

While these properties have been filling up with people born during the Depression or World War II era, real-estate investors are eagerly eyeing the massive baby-boomer generation: 72 million people born between 1946 and 1964, or about one in five Americans. Their needs would require hundreds of thousands of new units, if previous demand patterns persist.

But this wager on elderly care is falling short of expectations, and there are concerns that it could become one of the biggest real-estate miscalculations in recent memory, some analysts suggest.

Arts & Literature, Music, Reviews

Animated Visual Essay: Songwriter “Leonard Cohen” Interview In Video By Joe Donaldson (2019)

Video November 13, 2019 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Direction, Design & Animation: Joe Donaldson

Original Music and Sound Design: Ambrose Yu
Executive Producer: Soo-Jeong Kang
Senior Producer: Yara Bishara
Senior Editor: Brian Redondo
Producer: Sara Joe Wolansky
Audio Engineer: Jill Du Boff

“I was recently commissioned by The New Yorker to direct, design, and animate a pilot series of three animated visual essays.

“I know there’s a spiritual aspect to everybody’s life, whether they want to cop to it or not,” he said at one point. “It’s there, you can feel it in people—there’s some recognition that there is a reality that they cannot penetrate but which influences their mood and activity. So that’s operating. . . . Sometimes it’s just, like, ‘You are losing too much weight, Leonard. You’re dying, but you don’t have to coöperate enthusiastically with the process.’ Force yourself to have a sandwich.”

Leonard Cohen (1934 – 2016)

The first film features the great Leonard Cohen as he reflects on death and preparing for the end. The initial interview, by David Remnick, was recorded at Cohen’s home in Los Angeles a month before he passed away.”

You can view the full article on The New Yorker here: newyorker.com/culture/video-dept/leonard-cohen-and-the-divine-voice

Home Design, Homes, Reviews

Future Of Housing: The “Escher” From New Frontier Tiny Homes

November 12, 2019 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Chef’s Kitchen

The Escher kitchen, built for an actual chef, merges functionality and luxury. With a casual open floor plan, you’ll find guests tend to congregate near and compliment this room.

King Size Master Bedroom

Sleeping in the cantilevered loft feels like floating in mid-air. The King bed downstairs comes with a hydraulic lift revealing cleverly designed storage space. The loft can be upgraded with skylights.

Custom tile shower and Walk-In Closet

First class elbow room comes standard in this 4’x4’ tile shower trimmed in glass. The adjacent walk-in closet provides a wardrobe area for two.

Culture, Health, Transportation

Trends In Healthy Living: Copenhagen, Denmark Is The “Global Exemplar Of Bicycle Culture”

November 12, 2019 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

From a New York Times online article:

Copenhagen’s legendary bicycle setup has been propelled by all of these aspirations, but the critical element is the simplest: People here eagerly use their bicycles — in any weather, carrying the young, the infirm, the elderly and the dead — because it is typically the easiest way to get around.

Copenhagen’s status as a global exemplar of bicycle culture owes to the accommodating flatness of the terrain and the lack of a Danish auto industry, which might have hijacked the policy levers. Trouble also played a role.

Nearly half of all journeys to school and work in Copenhagen take place on bicycles. And people like it that way.

The global oil shock of the 1970s lifted the price of gasoline, making driving exorbitantly costly. A dismal economy in the 1980s brought the city to the brink of bankruptcy, depriving it of finance to build roads, and making bicycle lanes an appealingly thrifty alternative.

Arts & Literature, Short Films

Short Film Showcase: “Concert Of The Fire” Directed By Mariia Konopatova (2019)

Video November 12, 2019 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Directed by: Mariia Konopatova

Composer: Yury Konstantinov

“This is a story of struggle between art and death. A violinist finds himself in the middle of a war and is ready to die. Will the music in his heart and a violin in his heands help him to resist Death itself?”

Website: https://vimeo.com/mariikono

News, Politics

Top Political Podcasts: Tamara Keith And Amy Walter On The Latest In Washington (PBS)

Audio November 12, 2019 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report join Judy Woodruff to discuss the latest political news, including whether open hearings could change Americans’ minds about impeachment, implications for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, the potential entry of Michael Bloomberg into the Democratic race, Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s comments about standards for female politicians and more.

Short Films, Travel

Consumer Surveys: Only 30% Of Baby Boomers Use Online Grocery Services

November 11, 2019 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

From a Chain Store Age online release:

According to a recent survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers from advertising platform Criteo, 48% of millennial and Gen Z respondents use online grocery delivery services, compared to 37% of Gen X respondents and only 30% of baby boomer respondents.

Baby boomers are much less likely than younger consumers to participate in a particular omnichannel grocery activity.

Results for browsing multiple sites to read product reviews are essentially the same across generations. But Gen X consumers are much more likely to browse multiple sites if a product they want is unavailable (37%) than Gen Z/millennial (28%) or baby boomer/silent generation consumers (22%). And more than half (51%) of baby boomer/silent generation consumers will browse multiple sites for none of these reasons, compared to 27% of Gen X and 15% of Gen Z/millennial consumers.

Design, Reviews, Technology, Transportation

Trends In Transportation: The BST-Hypertek Electric, Carbon Fiber Motorcycle Is “The New Standard”

November 11, 2019 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

From a New Atlas online review:

Well, with this extraordinary electric bike, I think I finally understand what Terblanche has been trying to get at all these years, and I absolutely love it. Designed and built in partnership with South African carbon wheel specialists BST, meet the all-electric Hypertek.

There could be no better name for this thing and its unabashed, triumphant futuristicism. Every component and detail seems stripped back, technical, modular, functional. It’s like a Confederate jumped in a teleportation machine without realizing there was already a Dyson vacuum in there.

The Hypertek is built around the reasonably unglamorous DHX Hawk water-cooled PMS electric motor, presumably chosen for its compact size and high torque output of 120 Nm (88.5 lb-ft). BST claims a peak power of 80 kW (107 hp), but we can’t find any motor on the DHX website capable of such peaks – the company’s largest advertised Hawk motor makes 120 Nm but peaks at 55.3 kW (74 hp) and offers a continuous power of 34.5 kW (46.3 hp). So perhaps it’s a custom build.