POTD: Bucket List

From 2016 02 05 Agra

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Agra, India, where someone checked off a high-value item on her lifelong bucket list. The visit was every bit as delightful as she had hoped.

Straight Outta Compton (2015)

IMDB

Straight Outta Compton (2015): I still don't like gangster rap, but I love this movie. Back story of the music and of modern America. A-

Finally, Cracking Down on Payday Lending

Not the official campaign HQ of Rep. Pete Sessions

Payday lenders like CashAmerica and ACE Cash Express often make loans with annual percentage rates of 350 percent or more. They prey on the poor, trapping borrowers in debt they can never pay off. Sixty percent of borrowers are repeat borrowers who string together loan after loan, using the proceeds of the next loan to pay off the last.

But help is on the way. Finally.

POTD: Every Which Way

From 2016 02 05 Agra

Today's photo-of-the-day is from a street in Agra, India. The automobile hasn't taken over the streets in that country — yet. There's still room for auto-rickshaws, motorbikes, bicycles, pedestrians, even cows. I wouldn't recommend it as an urban planning ideal, but neither do I recommend, say, Central Expressway as an urban planning ideal.

Castle Ruins

The City of Dallas has a problem with rental homes.

"Several of the occupied properties do not have running water, at times there has been open sewage, much of the wood subflooring in the properties is rotten, and makeshift supports seem to be all that are preventing two houses from collapsing into each other," [Dallas's first assistant city attorney Chris] Bowers said via email.

Source: The Dallas Morning News.

There's so much about this Robert Wilonsky story that could and should be talked about. How individuals find themselves living like this. How a society as rich as ours ends up letting the poor live like this. Where, if we condemn and demolish these homes, the tenants are supposed to go. As one tenant who has been homeless before says, his house "is better than nothing." But, this being a Richardson blog and all, I'm drawn to talk about an issue that's been papered over here at home.