The Atlantic

Sep 23, 2015 ∞

The Government Is Selling Thousands of Homes to Hedge Funds Without Their Owners' Knowledge

Jared Bennett reports at The Atlantic:

It was a great deal for Oaktree. The fund bought the pool of mortgages for about two-thirds of the $105.7 million HUD estimated the homes were worth. [Julius] Uwansc, who now faces foreclosure through the new servicer of the loan, Selene Finance, was unaware that any of this had transpired.
“Whatever deal that went on between Bank of America, Selene and HUD is not known to me,” he says. Uwansc maintains he has complied with the terms of his modification and has filed lawsuits against both Bank of America and Selene.

I worked at the Philadelphia Housing Authority for almost seven years. Many of the programs run by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development are poorly understood, even by the executives who are tasked with making use of them in their own cities. But many of those programs are also beneficial to the community, when properly utilized, and when the agencies involved take the time to explain the benefits to all of the stakeholders involved, from potential residents to the mayor.

Read the article at The Atlantic for full context, but it sounds to me like the program tdhis article covers, the Distressed Asset Stabilization Program, or DASP, is not being sufficiently overseen and participating investors are taking advantage of “flipping” strategies and rental demand, especially in cities full of once-again-rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, like Philadelphia. The demolition of high-rise public housing buildings colloquially (and, I would suggest, derogatorily) known as “projects” and construction of row-home style mixed-income residential developments, had decreased crime, outstanding rent, utility costs and other “key performance metrics” even before I left in 2013.

Stop taking multivitamins. Seriously.

I’ll be the first to admit I took multivitamins on and off for years, always assuming vitamins could only be good for you. But the overwhelming majority of scientific studies on the subject not only debunks the myth that they help, but strongly suggests that they may be harming us.

The article I link to above is longer than most I share here, but it’s also more important that you read the whole thing. It could (and, to be honest, should) change your mind on including multivitamins as a part of your daily diet, at least without your doctor’s advice.

May 2, 2013 ∞

The Perfect Empty Vessel

This is a good piece on how hard Facebook tries to keep the social juices flowing. Alexis Madrigal, commenting on Facebook’s designer-hiring spree:

As all these designers vanish into the bowels of the company, so, too, does their work. Facebook wants to create design that both allows and guides behavior without calling attention to itself. And what works in the Deep South must also work in southern India and South America. It must work for 16-year-olds and 86-year-olds.

I think this is the primary reason Facebook makes me uncomfortable: it’s too generic. Sometimes I want a service to be just a little in my way. I realize that you can’t generalize my preferences to hundreds of millions of people, but that just means I’ll never really feel awesome about using Facebook.

It feels like it’s been crafted as simply the most efficient way for me to send targeting data to advertisers…

…because it has.

Apr 12, 2013 ∞

Dr. Kermit Gosnell: Philadelphia's "Abortion" Monster

Dr. Kermit Gosnell: Philadelphia’s “Abortion” Monster

The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf quoting the grand jury report (PDF) on Philadelphia “abortion” monster Kermit Gosnell:

The Department of State, through its Board of Medicine, licenses and oversees individual physicians… Almost a decade ago, a former employee of Gosnell presented the Board of Medicine with a complaint that laid out the whole scope of his operation: the unclean, unsterile conditions; the unlicensed workers; the unsupervised sedation; the underage abortion patients; even the over-prescribing of tramadol pain pills with high resale value on the street. The department assigned an investigator, whose investigation consisted primarily of an offsite interview with Gosnell. The investigator never inspected the facility, questioned other employees, or reviewed any records. Department attorneys chose to accept this incomplete investigation, and dismissed the complaint as unconfirmed.

Truly horrifying.

While it’s a loaded topic that deserves more space than I have time these days to give it, suffice it to say that I am against any outright ban on abortion. Note that I placed the word abortion in quotes because the late-term procedures Gosnell did were not what legally can be considered abotions under any current law or jurisprudence: they were murders.

Aug 18, 2012 ∞

Fareed Zakaria Apologizes for ‘Lapse’; Faces Time and CNN Suspensions

I would be honored to work for Time, CNN, The Atlantic, or The New Yorker. While I may require some on-the-job journalism training, I will absolutely do my own work 100% percent of the time.