BLUE CITY BLUES: What Comes Next for the Most Empty Downtown in America.

Yelp and Mixt had little more than proximity in common, which at that time was enough. Yelp was an idea that became billions of dollars in value on the internet. Mixt was a booming business serving lunchtime salads to the workers who traveled on electrified trains and skateboards to their jobs in downtown cubicles.

Their virtuous cycle of nearness, of new ideas becoming new companies, feeding other ideas that become other companies, was the template for urban growth. Businesses like Yelp took root in the high-energy, high-density city; chains like Mixt flourished alongside them as their workers ventured out for lunch. As downtowns have emptied out, their once-symbiotic relationship is coming undone.

“This area was always packed with people,” recalled Maria Cerros-Mercado, a Mixt manager who built her career in food service downtown. “People would get off the BART, buy coffee, buy this, buy that. There was always just so much walking.”

Today San Francisco has what is perhaps the most deserted major downtown in America. On any given week, office buildings are at about 40 percent of their prepandemic occupancy, while the vacancy rate has jumped to 24 percent from 5 percent since 2019. Occupancy of the city’s offices is roughly 7 percentage points below that of those in the average major American city, according to Kastle, the building security firm.

Plus: “The city’s chief economist, Ted Egan, has warned about a looming loss of tax revenue as vacancies pile up.”

You don’t say.

FREE CHRISTMAS SHORT STORY:   On Christmas Day In The Morning.

HE STILL HAS A LOT OF CLEANING UP TO DO: Think Elon Musk Will Actually Step Down as Twitter CEO? Guess Again.

READER FAVORITE: Wrangler Authentics Men’s Classic 5-Pocket Regular Fit Cotton Jeans.

CDR SALAMANDER: Japan Rising. “As the USA struggles to increase her forces to meet the challenge west of Wake, we rightfully look to our close ally in the region that has an impressive combo of GDP and population – Japan.”

AT AMAZON, Deals on Devices. #CommissionEarned.

HMM: U.S. faces shortage of doctors specializing in infectious diseases.

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Why You Need to Stop Worrying and Love Trump Again.

THE INTERNET OF THINGS SUCKS: Swatters used Ring cameras to livestream attacks, taunt police, prosecutors say. “Kya Christian Nelson, 21, of Racine, Wisconsin, and James Thomas Andrew McCarty, 20, of Charlotte, North Carolina, gained access to 12 Ring cameras after compromising the Yahoo Mail accounts of each owner, prosecutors alleged in an indictment filed Friday in the Central District of California. In a single week starting on November 7, 2020, prosecutors said, the men placed hoax emergency calls to the local police departments of each owner that were intended to draw an armed response, a crime known as swatting.”

CHANGE: Kristi Noem’s Health Department Fires Transgender Group Ahead of ‘Gender Summit.’

MICROBIOME NEWS: Microbiome: Scientists highlight role of harmful gut bacteria in fever afflicting cancer patients.

NOT A PARODY: J&B Whisky Goes Trans. “As it turns out, the grandpa in the commercial was studying the art of makeup so he could apply it to his trans grandson. Wisdom passing from one generation to another. And a Merry Christmas was had by all.”

WEAPONIZING TAX RETURNS: “Many norms have been broken in American politics in recent years, and one of them is the use of private tax returns as a political weapon. The trend is destructive, as a pair of events this week illustrate.”

Our ruling class is increasingly feckless.

THE ILLUSTRATION IS OF A CUTE LITTLE GIRL, BUT THE STUDY COVERS “CHILDREN UP TO AGE 19.” Two studies, one finding: Guns injure, kill rising number of children in U.S.

Sorry, but I don’t consider a shot-up 19-year-old gang-banger a “pediatric firearms injury,” and acting otherwise is bad faith, if not actual scientific fraud. By this standard, many of the dead at Normandy were “pediatric firearms injuries.”

LOCKDOWN FALLOUT: CDC admits lockdowns, mask mandates and school closures may be fueling Strep A outbreak in the US.

READER FAVORITE: Shark IZ483H Vertex Cordless Stick Vacuum. #CommissionEarned

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: ABC Journo Tries to Blame ‘Open Border’ on GOP and I Can’t Stop Laughing.

Plus:

• Blue aquatic CGI cat creatures are people of color, too.
• Joe Biden announces, you know, the thing that he won’t be announcing.
• The joke is on TV comedy’s diversity hires.

So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. “The story that free markets are soulless and materialistic is one of the most damaging of our culture’s narratives.”

COLORADO: Locals in Summit County questioning wolf reintroduction after plan made public.

Right now, there’s some concern from locals in Summit County about the wolf reintroduction plan that was made public just last week. The plan is available for review on the Colorado Parks and Wildlife website.

The proposed areas for reintroduction include two oval-shaped areas, picked for their potential to best support the reintroduction with the least amount of disturbance to the population.

Those areas include large mountain municipalities like Vail, Breckenridge, Gunnison, Montrose, Glenwood Springs, and even things as far east as Frisco.

“I don’t think that would be ideal, personally,” Tammy Rienstra said about the proposed locations Sunday.

She’s a Frisco local who voted for the measure back in 2020 but said she’s not sure how she feels about the spots they picked.

“I thought it would be further out,” Rienstra said. She was walking her pug puppy down Main Street.

Translation: “I never thought my feel-good vote would affect me personally.”

MEGAN FOX: Keep Calm and Sue Everyone: Wauwatosa School Board Is About to Find Out What Free Speech Is All About.

You all probably remember this hilarious exchange where I scolded the Wauwatosa School Board in Wisconsin for violating people’s right to speak and petition their government back in October. If you missed it, watch it. It’s hilarious. The board cut me off before my time was up, claiming that my comments were not in “alignment with the dignity of the board.”

At the end of the video, I comment that I could sue them for this. Indeed. I can. And so I spent the next few months pestering Robert Barnes of Barnes Law to take the case since he is a practicing lawyer in Wisconsin. Then on December 10, he wrote me back with one sentence that said, “Yes. I will take it.”

What a fighter — read the whole thing.

SHRINKAGE: China’s shrinking working-age population to send ripples through global economy.

China’s working-age population, defined as those aged between 15 and 64, declined from the peak of 997 million in 2014 to 986 million last year. According to projections released by the United Nations in July, it will start declining rapidly in the 2030s and shrink by more than 60 per cent to 378 million by the end of the century.

As a result of low fertility rates and increased longevity, populations in many developed countries are both ageing and declining, and China is not alone in experiencing these profound demographic trends.

However, as the world’s population reached 8 billion on, last month some countries were better positioned demographically. India is projected to overtake China as the world’s most populous country next year and age at a much slower pace for the rest of the century.

Good news for the Anglosphere, if we can ever get an administration serious about getting India on board for the duration.

NOWADAYS I START OUT ASSUMING A HOAX UNTIL PROVEN OTHERWISE: Here are 14 times campus hate crimes turned out to be hoaxes in 2022.

WELL, THEY WANT IT FOR SOMETHING: The White House Wants $3.4 Billion for Border Security.

I’M SURE IT’LL BE OKAY TO OBSERVE RAMADAN, THOUGH, BECAUSE IT’S A DIVERSE HOLIDAY OR SOMETHING: UMaine bans Christmas decorations in the name of diversity.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Due to close in May 2023 after 199 years in operation, Cazenovia College was my first academic employer and also the school located in my Upstate New York hometown.