Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,530 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 38 of 153).

Bay Area housing: Sunnyvale home sells $800,000 above asking

This story caught my eye, when a modest, 2,000sf home in Sunnyvale, CA sold for $800,000 over asking price. True, there is a little real estate sleight-of-hand going on here with how it was priced but there’s no denying that this is an eye-popping sale.

This kind of outrageous housing market is what comes to mind when I think of what might happen if Amazon chooses to set up its second headquarters in the Triangle. I think of the stunning metamorphosis that’s taken place this year in the neighborhood surrounding East Raleigh’s Ligon Middle School, where affordable homes have been all but demolished in favor of fancy new homes, and I wonder how long it will be before no one here but stock-option millionaires can live where they work.

Be careful what you wish for, Raleigh. More on this in an upcoming blog post.

A house in Sunnyvale just sold for close to $800,000 over its listing price.

Your eyes do not deceive you: The four-bed, two-bath house — less than 2,000 square feet — listed for $1,688,000 and sold for $2,470,000.

“I think it’s the most anything has ever gone for over asking in Sunnyvale — a record for Sunnyvale,” said Dave Clark, the Keller Williams agent who represented the sellers in the deal. “We anticipated it would go for $2 million, or over $2 million. But we had no idea it would ever go for what it went for.

”This kind of over-bidding is known to happen farther north in cities including Palo Alto, Los Altos and Mountain View. But as those places have grown far too expensive for most buyers, future homeowners have migrated south to Sunnyvale, a once modest community that now finds itself among the Bay Area’s real estate hot spots.

Source: Bay Area housing: Sunnyvale home sells $800,000 above asking

I Shot a Hurricane Irma Photo That Went Viral, and I Wasn’t Paid a Dime

As an amateur lenslinger who’s had my photographs garner the attention of news media in the past, I take the moral to this story very seriously. I give away a lot of my photographs to Wikipedia but if a commercial news organization wants a shot I believe I will negotiate with them from now on.

Google told me today that a photo I randomly took in a restaurant in Spain has crossed the 300,000 views mark. Imagine if I had even a penny for every one of those views.

Virality is an odd thing. You don’t see it coming, but you can feel the momentum building while it’s happening. My phone notifications started going off like popcorn. One here, one there, then many more at once. People were tagging and sharing in an attempt to find someone to help these guys, while also hunkering down for the storm.

The first request for usage came from Fox News Desk. I froze. At this point, it was still very local, and I couldn’t see where it was going. Also, I was very distracted by the hurricane outside. I didn’t even know if I could ask for licensing because other photos were floating around (although not as good).The key part here is that I also didn’t know how. What did I ask for? How much should I ask for? Did they even care? Did I have to copyright or license it somehow?

So I told Fox they could use it as long as I was given credit. Unfortunately, this might have invalidated any other requests for compensation, but at the time I was clueless.

Source: I Shot a Hurricane Irma Photo That Went Viral, and I Wasn’t Paid a Dime

Back in 1982 I was dealing acid at Jim Morrison’s grave and that’s when I first met Vladimir Putin.

A surreal retelling of an early encounter with Vladimir Putin.

So anyway, it was something like my third day on the job and along with the Norwegians, Danes and Swedes there’s this quiet Russian dude with a guitar, Vladimir, who’s there to pay his respects like the rest of us.  Although he wasn’t interested in my product, when he found out I was from San Francisco he got really animated and wanted to hear everything I could tell him about it – the music especially. I guess like a lot of people he thought it was just 1967 forever by the bay with the Airplane and the Dead still playing in the park…  I told him about the handful of Dead shows I’d seen, and he got a far off look and said  “Just to see Jerry…Y’know? Just to be there and see his fingers and lips moving and hear the music at the same time… Man…” he sighed.  “Hey now,” I said, “it’ll happen.”  He just shook his head in that way people do when there’s just too much to explain. Vlad was like that a lot.

Source: Back in 1982 I was dealing acid at Jim Morrison’s grave and that’s when I first met Vladimir Putin.

Three Things You Should Know About Spaghetti Model Forecasts for Hurricanes, Tropical Storms and Developing Tropical Waves | The Weather Channel

The Weather Channel also produced a great primer on hurricane “spaghetti models” and what they show and (more importantly) leave out.

There’s a delicious-sounding term that’s about to make its way back into the weather forecasting lexicon as hurricane season ramps up, but it has nothing to do with food.Spaghetti weather models, also known as spaghetti plots, are a simplistic way of conveying a lot of tropical information quickly, but there can also be downfalls to relying on these plots.

1. Spaghetti Plots Do Not Portray Any Impacts

Although most models show possible impacts, to present many models succinctly on a single chart, meteorologists generally produce spaghetti plots that usually only show the “where” and a loose representation of “when” for tropical systems.

To get to this level of brevity, meteorologists must only focus on the center point of a tropical system, which may or may not be accurate. We’ll get to more on that limitation later, but for now, let’s focus on the lack of impacts.

Source: Three Things You Should Know About Spaghetti Model Forecasts for Hurricanes, Tropical Storms and Developing Tropical Waves | The Weather Channel

Why the Hurricane Irma Forecast for the U.S. Is Still Uncertain and Difficult | The Weather Channel

Here’s a good explanation for why one shouldn’t panic about a hurricane that’s a week away from approaching. Pay attention, yes, but there’s no need for panic.

Hurricane Irma will be a formidable hurricane for days to come in the Atlantic Basin, but its future impact in the U.S. remains unknown.Given the record-setting, catastrophic flooding, storm surge and wind damage from Hurricane Harvey, it’s understandable why Irma is making U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast residents unnerved.

You may wonder why we can’t yet nail down anything specific on Irma’s future potential impact in the U.S. Wouldn’t that help people prepare?

First, we’ll explore why that is. Then we’ll go over some atmospheric patterns typically in place that increase East Coast hurricane risk.

Source: Why the Hurricane Irma Forecast for the U.S. Is Still Uncertain and Difficult | The Weather Channel

Belarus at ‘war’ with imaginary country of Veyshnoria – BBC News

One of the reasons I love the Internet. Wags can give life to their own fake country!

A country invented as part of military exercises in Belarus has caught the imagination of locals, who have created a foreign ministry, flag, history and even its own Wikipedia page for the fictional nation.

Veyshnoria is one of three states made up for the Zapad 2017 military drills, which – according to the scenario – seek to invade Belarus and sow discord between Minsk and Moscow.

The map of the exercise, made public during the General Staff briefing on 29 August, shows Veyshnoria in the north-western regions of today’s Belarus, with Vesbaria and Lubenia lying in Lithuania and Poland, the Nasha Niva website reports.

Some commentators noted that the border between Belarus and Veyshnoria “strongly resembles” the border between the Soviet Union in Poland in 1920-39. “This means that under the Zapad 2017 scenario, Belarusians will have to attack the territory of Belarusians,” lifestyle website kyky.org said.

Political historian Pavel Usov, blurring reality and fiction on his Facebook page, said that “Veyshnoria is a peaceful democratic country which has never been aggressive towards its neighbours.

Source: Belarus at ‘war’ with imaginary country of Veyshnoria – BBC News

Houston Is Drowning—In Its Freedom From Regulations

Nice commentary on how Houston’s lack of regulations might, just might have played a role in it being swamped with historic flooding.

We do value our freedom here in Texas. As I write from soggy Central Texas, the cable news is showing people floating down Buffalo Bayou on their principles, proud residents of the largest city in these United States that did not grow in accordance with zoning ordinances.

The feeling there was that persons who own real estate should be free to develop it as they wish. Houston, also known as the Bayou City, is a great location because of its access to international shipping in the Gulf of Mexico. It is not a great location for building, though, because of all its impervious cover. If water could easily sink into the ground, there would be less of it ripping down Houston’s rivers that just a week ago were overcrowded streets.

Source: Houston Is Drowning—In Its Freedom From Regulations

How Waffle House opens so fast after a hurricane

The day after 1996’s Hurricane Fran devastated Raleigh, the only place in town one could get a cup of coffee was the Hillsborough Street Waffle House. Now I know why. Waffle House engineers its restaurants to weather storms.

One of the ways the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) measures hurricane damage is by the Waffle House Index. Waffle House, a popular 24-hour fast food chain in the Southeast, has a unique ability to operate solely on gas if necessary, so a closed Waffle House is often tantamount to disaster.

And while we won’t know yet how Hurricane Harvey will fare on the index, the attitude at Waffle Houses across Texas has been calm. The company’s staff has been preparing for months.

“We have our own special disaster teams and generators waiting to be shipped,” said one Waffle House employee in Galveston, Tex. “We’re open up until the city makes us close, probably later on tonight. As soon as it’s over we’ll be right back open.”

Source: How Waffle House opens so fast after a hurricane

N&O losing impactful, dogged investigative reporter in Neff – Raleigh & Company

R. L. Bynum at Raleigh & Company talks to departing N&O investigative reporter, Joe Neff. As I mentioned yesterday, Joe is leaving the N&O.

Joseph Neff projects his passion as an investigative reporter as his voice breaks up relating one of the highlights of his impressive career at The News & Observer.

Neff, who announced last week that he is leaving the newspaper he joined 25 years ago, was talking about the day in March 2016 that Howard Dudley — wrongly convicted of sexually assaulting his 9-year-old daughter — was freed. Eleven years earlier, Neff wrote a series called “Caught in a Lie” that documented the problems with the case.

Source: N&O losing impactful, dogged investigative reporter in Neff – Raleigh & Company

Current Affairs | Culture & Politics

Ouch.

It really does seem as if people do not quite appreciate just how evil Joe Arpaio truly is. If they did, this pardon would not just be ill-advised, it would be toxic. There would be no controversy. As it is, however, Arpaio remains “controversial”: some say he’s a bigot, some say he’s a righteous vigilante. But what people need to say is the truth, which is that Joe Arpaio is not only a bigot, but a vicious sadist who abused his power more than perhaps anyone else to hold public office in the United States during the 21st century.

Source: Current Affairs | Culture & Politics