Six Seattle residents were arrested and charged with stealing $3.3 million of Covid relief funds by pretending to be landlords and submitting fake leases and eviction notices to the Small Business Administration (see story here). Scammers pretending to be the Everett Animal Shelter are trolling R[...]
Archive for the ‘Misc.’ Category
June 7th, 2023 - 2:30 am § in Environment, Misc.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Smoke
What the Statue of Liberty looked like on June 6, 2023, because of Canadian wildfires. Return to The-Ave.US Home Page[...]
PHOTOGRAPHY: Rubber ducks
Yes, they’re art, created by a sculptor. The scene is Hong Kong harbor. Read story here. Update: Hot weather deflated a duck, see story here. Return to The-Ave.US Home Page[...]
The commercial real estate crisis
The commercial real estate sector is in trouble for two big reasons: High vacancy rates, and falling property values. Nationally, about 18% of America’s office space lacks tenants. There may have been some overbuilding, but this is primarily due to the switch to working from home. The pandemic[...]
June 4th, 2023 - 8:00 pm § in Misc.
Who paid for this highway?
Not the people who live here. As of 2021, building a rural two-lane highway like this one in eastern Washington probably costs about 1½ to 2 million dollars per mile (source here). The locals can’t possibly pay enough taxes to cover that cost. The gas taxes that built it were paid by Seattle [...]
June 2nd, 2023 - 2:29 am § in Misc.
Yellowstone isn’t a petting zoo
How stupid can people be? A downside of phone cameras and social media is people trying to get eye-catching videos. In the process, they’re falling off cliffs and getting gored by wild animals. The “Yellowstone” series captured this idiocy in a scene here which, while fiction, is r[...]
Step on the scale, ma’am
By government edict, Air New Zealand is weighing passengers before they board airplanes. The country’s civil aviation agency is collecting data on average passenger weights (see story here). It will be used to figure out “weight load and distribution for planes.” “We weigh everyt[...]
May 28th, 2023 - 1:33 am § in Misc.
Aircraft carrier (video)
Who says a pickup truck can’t be an aircraft carrier? Return to The-Ave.US Home Page[...]
May 27th, 2023 - 1:20 am § in Misc.
How much runway does an airplane need? (video)
Depends on the airplane. Return to The-Ave.US Home Page[...]
May 24th, 2023 - 7:01 pm § in Misc.
4½ years for Pelosi office invader
The Capitol rioter who invaded then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office on Jan. 6, 2021, and later sold autographed phots of his feet on her desk, was sentenced to 54 months in prison by a federal judge on Wednesday, May 24, 2023 (read story here). Richard Barnett, 63, of Fayetteville, Arkansas, who[...]