As a frequent walker to the 7-11 in my "soul-crushing suburban district", I decided to look up the 7-11 landscape in Williamsburg, Virginia using the satellite view in Google Maps. Every single one of them is walkable from residential property.
My guess is the author lives in a densely populated urban area, and doesn't understand how "soul-crushing suburban districts" really work.
I've been walking to my 7-11 for over 30 years, and have gotten to know many attendants over the years.
It's certainly walkable from the hotels, and the houses/apartments to the north, but not the ones to the south as there's a stream in the way (see OpenStreetMap) but no footbridges.
The author has some valid points (i.e. people criticise business decisions made to appease shareholders without realising they may be the shareholders in a roundabout way) but chose some rather odd examples as proof.
Way to miss the entire point of the article. It’s not anti 7-11, it’s against underinvestment in local properties and lack of reasonable planning, driven by distant ownership.
I can also walk to a convenience store, in fact I’m fairly lucky with the amenities available in my neighborhood, but many places I’ve been (and previously lived) are disorganized and lack the livability of communities where the buildings have primarily local owners.
You seem really stuck on 7-11. The article is not about 7-11. That’s just the example the author used, and honestly the author could have picked a better one. Just imagine that they picked vape shops or something instead.
I have lived in places where you can’t walk anywhere useful because the absentee owners didn’t want to invest in finding good tenants. The buildings were fine, but partially empty, and there was even a shortage of local office space, so they could have rented at a premium with just a little bit of investment.
I feel like you didn’t read the article at all, or couldn’t understand it, or you’re being deliberately obtuse and avoiding real discussion.
The point is that much of America is like this, and the problem is only getting worse. We’re not yet at the level of blight that we saw in some areas after the post-1970s industrial collapse, but concentration of ownership is gradually leading us there again. Poor maintenance, poor tenant selection, and underinvestment eventually hollows out neighborhoods when businesses move away or close.
Where are you going to move when most places have the same problem? The few areas not like this are getting swarmed, which creates its own problems (like traffic, parking, overcrowding, and absurd property values).
Just take a drive through random cities, neighborhoods, and towns if you don’t see it where you live.
> In the past 20 years I've noticed a trend of companies making it harder and harder for me to give them my money.
They want your money, they are just getting stricter on how they will accept it in order to limit liability and meet compliance, and also maximize profitability.
Much, much better tools these days to address both of those than there were 20 years ago.
>Zelenskyy famously stopped wearing civilian suits, and is always wearing military-style clothes in public appearances to symbolise how he's defending his nation in a time of war. It's a reminder to other leaders that it's not just another trade deal, that this is a real shooting war and people are dying.
>Trump hates this, and thinks it's disrespectful that Zelenskyy doesn't wear a suit when he comes to the US on official visits.
That's why they invited dress uniforms...the ones with the jackets and ties.
The Falklands conflict was almost half a century ago. It is doubtful that the UK could respond today like they did in 1982.
The video "The Navy With More Admirals Than Warships"[1] addresses that exact scenario, and talks about the current woeful state of the British Navy today.
I think that’s somewhat unclear. In principle, the new carriers with F-35s should have a much bigger advantage over the Argentinian navy and air force than the tiny carriers we sent to the Falkland’s with Harrier jump jets. But of course it is impossible to know until such a thing actually happens. (Even in the case of a far more antecedently plausible conflict such as Russia/Ukraine, expert predictions were all over the place, and mostly wrong.)
I mean...c'mon..they could have at least picked a "worst song of all time" that wasn't a Billboard Top 100 #1 hit. Ditto for "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now"...
My guess is the author lives in a densely populated urban area, and doesn't understand how "soul-crushing suburban districts" really work.
I've been walking to my 7-11 for over 30 years, and have gotten to know many attendants over the years.