It’s More than Dr. King Day!!

👋🏾It’s EDB, that’s Erik DeSean Barrett, and here is what is on my mind for this Day 18, of 2023. I am back to business. Fresh off the confusion that is Dr. MLK Day. That one time of year, that everyone believes we should do something, but can’t agree on what that something is.. I hope your week thus far has been awesomesauce..

But that was two sleep filled days ago, And this is

1. 336 St Mark elected Catholic Pope
2. 1733 1st polar bear exhibited in America in Boston
3. 1777 San Jose in California founded
4. 1896 First college basketball game with 5 players on each side is conducted by the University of Iowa; invites student athletes from University of Chicago for an experimental game; Chicago beats Iowa 15-12
5. 1947 Detroit Tigers sell Hank Greenberg to Pirates (for $25-35k)
6. 1964 The Beatles make their first appearance on US Billboard Chart with single "I Want to Hold Your Hand" at #45
7. 1971 Ivan Koloff beats Bruno Sammartino in New York, to become WWWF champ
8. 1980 Pink Floyd's album "The Wall" hits #1;
9. 2008 The United Nations announce George Clooney as a UN messenger of peace
10. 2015 NFC Championship, CenturyLink Field, Seattle: Seattle Seahawks beat Green Bay Packers, 28-22 (OT)

Speaking of Sports. We are, well the fans of at least 24 teams in the league, are at this point, sitting at the house, wishing for next year to be more awesomesauce then this was. My buddy Matt, is not one of those, as ‘HIS COWBOYS’ is still fighting to be the 2023 NFL Champions. All I need is ol George Kittle, who is still reeling from a 2019 chat with ‘The Rock’..

Since I was already snooping around kittleland, I had to make a simple request of mr SanFran..

Which makes me think.. Matt and I, should travel to Miami next season to watch our teams play. I think that would be awesomesauce..

The only problem is- Will there be a problem with parking when we get there?

Starting in January, though, California will become the first of these states to enact a ban on parking minimums, halting their use in areas with public transport.

Governor Gavin Newsom called a “win-win” for reducing planet-heating emissions from cars, as well as helping alleviate the lack of affordable housing in a state that has lagged in building new dwellings.

Several cities across the country are now rushing doing the same, with Anchorage, Alaska; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Nashville, Tennessee, all recently loosening or scrapping requirements for developers to build new parking lots. Cities such as Buffalo, New York; and Fayetteville, Arkansas, scaled back parking minimums a few years ago and have reported a surge in activity to transform previously derelict buildings into shops, apartments, and restaurants. Don’t forget Nashville, who is among a new wave of cities hoping to do the same.

Angie Henderson, a member of the Nashville Metropolitan Council, who proposed the parking change for the city’s core area. Stated…

It’s about the climate, it’s about walkability, it’s reducing traffic and the need for everyone to have a car. Nashville is very much auto-orientated, and making that shift is challenging. We aren’t doing away with cars. This isn’t some sort of parking armageddon, but it will start to shift the market.

Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School who accused political leaders of making downtowns beleives the following

These parking minimums have helped kill cities. Look like bombs hit them by filling them with parking lots. Getting rid of parking minimums is an amazing step. It’s a piece in the puzzle of climate policy. There’s a major rethink going on now, which is good for cities and for families. So much good work on climate is being done in cities, which is exciting. There’s real momentum around parking policy now.”

Speaking of Cities Making Chances. I wanna talk about Edward Tian.

He went left while many Americancs spent New Year's Day nursing hangovers, and worst, trying to remember what their names are.

But this homie, was working feverishly on on a new app to combat misuse of a powerful, new artificial intelligence tool called ChatGPT.

I think we're absolutely at an inflection point. This technology is incredible. I do believe it's the future. But, at the same time, it's like we're opening Pandora's Box. And we need safeguards to adopt it responsibly.

Edward, a senior at Princeton University, where at one point getting a piece of paper, from a board saying he was awesomesause at computer science, journalism, along with a chat with his dentist was all that mattered; but now Now he's fielding calls from venture capital firms, education leaders, and global media outlets;

WHICH I GUESS MEANS, I DON’T HAVE A CHACE FOR A CHAT..

Teachers from all over the world are worried about this. We're losing that individuality if we stop teaching writing at schools. Human writing can be so beautiful, and there are aspects of it that computers should never co-opt. And it feels like that might be at risk if everybody is using ChatGPT to write. "It doesn't make sense that we go into that future blindly. Instead, you need to build the safeguards to enter that future.

If you have a moment. Feel free to checkout todays meditation podcast. It was amazing to me, how simlar ancient acts are to the present struggles we deal with..

Finally Today, Let‘s park ourselves in the bottom center of these states united. Since we’re talking today about climate change, -or- just the advancement of Humans..

Jackson’s already-frail water system suffered a dayslong outage over the summer, in a crisis that sparked national outrage and called attention to the decades of water struggles in the city of 150,000 residents, nearly 83% of them Black. Now, some five months later, organizers say there aren’t many resources to go around to residents still in need.

Gino Womack,  program director of the community organization Operation Good, said the following..

The outpouring of help that took place in August, it’s way different now. I guess people burned out. There are so many mixed messages about who’s to blame, what to blame, but at the end of the day, it’s the people who suffer. There’s still a fight to give people this basic necessity.”

Jackson has one of the oldest water systems in the country, with authorities routinely directing residents to boil their water for safety, and residents often reporting brown water, leaking sewage and low water pressure. At one point over the summer, Operation Good was giving out 700 cases of water to long lines of Jackson residents in a single day.

Mississippi was set to receive $429 million from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to fix its water and wastewater systems over the next five years, mostly in loans and grants provided through the Environmental Protection Agency. But, in October, the EPA announced it would investigate whether Jackson had handled federal funds in a way that discriminated against its residents. The investigation came in response to a federal complaint the NAACP

Jackson’s majority-Black population has been repeatedly ignored, spurned, or ridiculed, resulting in the most recent water access inequity and crisis,”

The Bottom line is PEOPLE NEED HELP, everyday, not just on Monday number three in January.

EDBEATS:

That said, I feel uptodate— So Until Next Time LATTERZ -edb