Author Archives: Jon Lowder

Read/Listen/Watch List for Week of January 31, 2026

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The double-pocket button-up test (Longleaf Politics)

Why Book Retreats Are the Next Big Thing in Travel (Daily Passport)

$ AE Amer plans W. Gate City Boulevard apartments to be built in 60 days using modular construction (Triad Business Journal)

$ Dame’s Chicken & Waffles owner explains decision to close downtown Greensboro restaurant (Triad Business Journal)

NAA Launches Interactive Dollar of Rent Tool (National Apartment Association)

7 American Foods Banned in Other Countries (Daily Passport)

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Quotes

“ The management of growth is far easier and less expensive than the management of decline. ” – Craig Lewis, LinkedIn post

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Read/Listen/Watch List for Week of January 24, 2026

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10 of the World’s Oldest Restaurants You Can Still Dine At (Daily Passport)

Simple Tool Storage Idea Using Plywood and a Garbage Can (Hometalk.com)

America’s Healthiest States Ranked (Visual Capitalist)

Jamestown Planning Board recommends denial of Burkley Communities’ ‘mansion-style apartments (Triad Business Journal)

Townhome plan tests housing priorities in fast-growing North Carolina community (Triangle Business Journal)

Text is King (Experimental-History.com)

Trump Moves to Curb Institutional Ownership of Single-Family Rentals (Multi-Housing News)

Quotes

“ The early internet felt like sipping an IPA with friends; the late internet feels like taking furtive shots of Southern Comfort to keep the shakes at bay. ” – Adam Mastroianni, Experimental-History.com

I’ve fallen in love or imagine that I have; went to a party and lost my head. Bought a horse which I don’t need at all.” – Leo Tolstoy, journal entry, January 25, 1851

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Read/Listen/Watch List for Week of January 17, 2026

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New lawsuit escalates battle over Chatham Park’s 5,000-acre ‘small-area plan’ (News & Observer)

10 Extraordinary Sports Around the World (Atlas Obscura)

Flora-Bama Mullet Toss (Atlas Obscura)

5 Destinations That Experience 24-Hour Darkness in Winter (Daily Passport)

Quotes

“You have to know the past to understand the present.” – Carl Sagan

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Read/Listen/Watch List for Week of January 10, 2026

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Why Coffee Is Not As Dangerous For Your Heart As You Think (Arnold’s Pump Club)

A surge of new townhouses is outpacing buyer demand, leaving a surplus of listings and suppressing sales prices (Charlotte Ledger)

North Carolina promised a ‘battery belt.’ Where are the factories now? (News & Observer)

16 Highly Unusual Cities Built In Unlikely Locations (Daily Passport)

The cultural works becoming public domain in 2026, from Betty Boop to Nancy Drew (NPR)

Public Domain Day 2026 (Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain)

The One Hour Studio (Austin Kleon)

Investors, analysts react to Trump’s single-family home buying ban (Multifamily Dive)

The Last Days of the Southern Drawl (The Atlantic)

Quotes

“My dad has always had a southern accent: His words fall out of his mouth the way molasses would sound if it could speak, thick and slow.” – Annie Joy Williams, The Atlantic

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Read/Listen/Watch List for Week of January 3, 2026

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Housing affordability, availability top the news in 2025 (NC Newsline)

Rent Concessions Flash Warning Sign as Multifamily Supply Wave Hits Margins (GlobeSt.com)

The Reason Airplane Windows Have Tiny Holes in Them (DailyPassport)

Where Have You Gone, Billie Jean King? (JoePosnanski)

NC lawmakers are looking at property tax law. What that means for you (News & Observer)

NC teachers to run in GOP primary for state legislature. Will it have an impact? (News & Observer)

A growing American crisis is affecting more than 1 million students (USA Today)

Bourbon Waves a White Flag (The Resistance)

Quotes

“And there was almost no human being so unlike other human beings that it did not know what a kiss was.” – Patricia Lockwood, No One Is Talking About This

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Read/Listen/Watch List for Week of December 27, 2025

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Housing affordability, availability top the news in 2025 (NC Newsline)

Unreliable Jobs Data Undermines Fed’s Grip on the Economy (GlobeSt.)

20 NC legislators are running unopposed, and they’re all Democrats (WFDD)

Charlotte apartment development slows dramatically while market absorbs 11,500 units (Charlotte Business Journal)

Inside the North Carolina GOP’s decade-long push to seize power from state’s Democratic governors (Salon)

How many is 96,000? Key housing number cited by Moore is hard to explain (Newsfromthestates.com)

Rising seas are destroying North Carolina homes. This 9th grader designed a solution (FastCompany)

Trump Says ‘Housing First’ Failed the Homeless. Here’s What the Evidence Says. (New York Times)

4 compelling races to watch in North Carolina’s state legislative primaries | Opinion (News & Observer)

The Slow Death of Epic Systems (Julio La Torre)

No, North Carolina didn’t just ban cellphone use in cars, despite AI aggregators saying it did (PolitiFact)

Shifting water infrastructure decisions to local governments could accelerate housing, advocates say (Smartcitiesdive)

This town was founded for one reason only: To shoot dogs (NC Rabbit Hole)

Quotes

“For a little dog, he has a big butthole.” – My Better 3/4

“For me, ice cream is like pizza…it is never wrong or bad, just degrees of great.” – Jay Bilas

Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75.” – Ben Franklin

“No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.” – Ernest Hemingway

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Read/Listen/Watch List for Week of December 20, 2025

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The Specific Thing That Left-Wing Populists Don’t Get (The Atlantic)

Housing markets where power is shifting the most toward buyers heading into 2026 (Fast Company)

What is Heather Cox Richardsonism? (Silver Bulletin)

The Checks That Saved 75 Christmases (Now I Know)

See What Others Missed: The ProfG Storytelling Playbook (Mia Silverio)

Quotes

“To do populism effectively, politicians must not only focus on problems that the public cares about; by and large, they must also accept the public’s framing of those problems. This creates a dilemma for the left, because that framing, in a complex modern society, will usually be incorrect. As a result, left-wing politicians struggle to find issues on which they can be authentically populist. Many of the problems that they hope to resolve, such as climate change, housing scarcity, and surging health-care costs, are complicated. This means that the policies needed to fix them are also complicated, and cannot be explained without ascending to the realm of abstraction. Slogans that resonate with the public seldom translate literally into successful policy.” – Joseph Heath, The Atlantic

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Read/Listen/Watch List for Week of December 13, 2025

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Understanding Carriage (Seth Godin)

FTC Sends Warning Letters to 13 Property Management Software Providers Nationwide (FTC)

In L.A., $750 a Month to Live in a Backyard Storage Unit (New York Times)

CoStar: multifamily property prices higher in October (YieldPro)

Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class. (New York Times)

Buc-ee’s, Koury projects in Mebane brought into dispute between Alamance County neighbors (Triad Business Journal)

HHHunt to start work on $43M luxury apartments near Greensboro Topgolf (Triad Business Journal)

NC’s ‘build-to-rent’ housing boom expands to Wendell. What’s coming next? (News & Observer)

We Stopped Saving for a House (Family Money)

Quotes

I’ve become invisible at 67.
Waitstaff look through me. Colleagues talk over me. Shop assistants forget I exist.
At first it stung. Then I discovered its strange power. I notice everything. I speak rarely. When I finally do, the surprise ensures everyone listens.
Aging isn’t decline. It’s stealth mode.The Old Grey Thinker

“If you have two guys on a stage and one guy says, ‘I have a solution to the Middle East problem,’ and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?” – Roger Ailes quoted in Letters from an American

“Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity. It is an act of justice.” Nelson Mandela

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Read/Listen/Watch List for Week of December 6, 2025

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Fifty Years After History’s Most Brutal Boxing Match (The Atlantic)

How Paul Newby Made North Carolina a Blueprint for Conservative Courts (ProPublica)

Taking Senior Housing to a New Level (Triangle Business Journal)

I Protest His Protest Song, or Why Jesse Welles Is Bad—And Bad for Us (Out + Back)

How Originalism Killed the Constitution (The Atlantic)

Rising Age of First-Time Homebuyers Drives Multifamily Demand (GlobeSt.)

Quotes

“Power usually whispers because it can..” – Alexis Coe, Study Marry Kill

“If you want to change what people believe, change how they act.”Seth Godin

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