YouLam No. 3 – Combat Midwinter Malaise With Good Journalism!
After a long stretch of tepid gloom, winter has hit like the gabbagool. It’s the latest YouLam. Here’s the news:
DETROIT
A Detroit nonprofit is working on a net zero conversion of its headquarters, a little-known 1958 Minoru Yamasaki building that is all concrete– since it was, surprise, built as the headquarters of the American Concrete Institute (they would, am I right?).
GREAT LAKES
The proposed Trump budget does not include any funds for preventing Asian carp from invading the Great Lakes. Because who cares about the three and a half blue states that border the Great Lakes, am I right? Chicago is moving forward with a megaproject in the South Loop that will enjoy $1.1 billion in public subsidies. Ontario teachers continue to strike.
US & WORLD
Coronavirus continues to spread in China, especially on cruise ships, although its spread has been limited in the United States thus far. Trump’s rollback of Obama’s energy waste reduction efforts have been a minor disaster. Canada– or some of it- celebrated Family Day, whatever that is. Jeff Bezos bought a house for a cool $165 million, equivalent to building 1,146 DPC-standard affordable housing units. Lloyd Blankfein is an idiot. Tesla feeds at the trough of corporate welfare, this time in Germany. Los Angeles has an ambitious new building standard focusing on fossil fuel-free architecture and embodied carbon, but it still can’t figure out that whole housing thing. The Trump Administration desecrates sacred native grounds to build its wall. Its proposal to mandate classical style as the only style for federal architecture (a la Albert Speer) has been appropriately ridiculed:
GOINGS-ON
I’m in LA this week for StartingBloc and to drink Hennessy with Morrissey. The Climate Leadership Conference is taking place in Detroit in March. We’ll be there with our pals from the American Society of Adaptation Professionals, hosting a happy hour soirée on Wednesday the 4th, whose location has yet to be disclosed. (The event will not be open bar, but mention this article and I might buy you a drink!). Pingree Detroit, products handmade by veterans, celebrates its fifth anniversary this week.
