https://www.scrapehero.com/location-reports

Enter a franchise name, find out how many stores there are in the U.S.

While Biden did misstate China’s GDP growth rate, he is right that China’s economy faces serious challenge that is unseen in at least 20 years. The official youth unemployment rate is 21.3%, and the actual rate might be as high as 46.5%.

ProPublica is easily the best U.S. news source I’ve ever seen.

Death toll is at least 36 now

I grew up in Beijing but live in the U.S. now. This is not the worst flood in the city’s modern history (the one in 2012 killed ~80 people), but my impression is that this time (coupled with the rare heat wave several weeks ago) it’s really a wake-up call for Beijingers on climate change. I’ve heard people saying “scientists were warning about climate change as early as the 1990s, but this is the first time when the effect is right in front of our eyes.”

Non-paywalled version

An interesting read from 2017 about how wealthy Americans, especially tech bros on the west coast, scramble to prepare for societal breakdown by e.g. purchasing “survival condos”. It features Steve Hoffman, a.k.a. u/spez of Reddit, who was quoted as saying:

Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.

This must have something to do with how App Store calculates the score. I heard that if there are a huge number of 1 stars in a short period of time, they are not included. Not sure if that’s true though

Funny thing that another Westminster Mall (in Westminster, CA) is also not doing well and there are rumors that it will be closed soon.

It’s the (now closed) Lakeforest Mall in Maryland for me. In 2021 I was living in Northern Virginia and thought I should cross the river and see this mall. It seemed to be stuck in the COVID era while other malls in Greater DC (Tysons Corner Center etc.) had bounced back. Then I did some research and found out that Lakeforest was not doing well even before COVID.