Empty

It’s not much — a bed with a mattress, a small nightstand, a dresser, a closet and some assorted appliances in a 160-square-foot room.Some of those rooms have bathrooms, but most don’t. Several floors of the 14-floor building were sweltering over the summer, as residents waited for the AC to turn on. The kitchen is all the way on the bottom floor.Still, the Cecil Hotel represents an opportunity for its formerly homeless inhabitants to have a room of one’s own — one that comes with 24-hour security and the freedom to come…

Hello, it’s Tuesday, Dec. 13, and here are the stories you shouldn’t miss today:TOP STORIES The Cecil Hotel rooms for L.A. unhoused are still mostly emptyThe historic Cecil Hotel, with its haunted reputation and 600 rooms, reopened in December 2021 as a privately funded permanent supportive housing project. It’s open to any of the thousands of unhoused Los Angelenos with a government-funded voucher. Many viewed the project as a promising new model in L.A. because of its size and flexibility.And yet, a year later,…

Samanta Schweblin is one of a generation of South American female writers whose willingness to experiment with language, content and form has made them some of the most interesting and necessarily provocative voices in literature today (other names include Fernanda Melchor, Maria Gainza, Ariana Harwicz and Pola Oloixarac). While their predominantly male forebears staked out the territory of magic realism, these newer writers have arguably shown themselves to be even more innovative, utilising elements of autofiction,…

Over the last century, Southern California has seen its rich, jagged landscape jam-packed with houses wherever they can fit.Homes hang from the sides of canyons with cantilevered pools suspended midair. Bungalows squeeze onto beaches within inches of their neighbors. ADUs pop up in front yards and backyards, built on-site or dropped in by cranes.So why are some of the region’s most prime properties — oceanfront lots on Malibu’s best beaches, mountaintop acres overlooking the city — left completely empty?Spoiler alert:…

Robot vacuum cleaners aren't quite as attractive a proposition as they once were. The slow crawl back to normalcy has seen many of us go back to the traditional ways of keeping our homes clean. However, there's no denying the impact of the product segment, and indeed the utility of having a secondary cleaning tool at your disposal. Among the many brands in the segment is Ecovacs, which is a specialist in the space and focuses on robotic cleaning devices across various price segments.A recent launch by Ecovacs, the Deebot…

The collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire has been chaotic, fast and full of unknowns. The world should soon get some answers via a Delaware federal court. The collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire has been chaotic, fast and full of unknowns. The world should soon get some answers via a Delaware federal court. FTX is what's known in the industry as a “free fall” bankruptcy. More than 130 related companies sought court protection at the end of last week without filing any of the usual court motions or…

Argentinian writer Samanta Schweblin is perhaps best known for her novel Fever Dream, adapted for Netflix in 2021, but her short stories are equally celebrated. Her latest collection (published in Spanish in 2015 and meticulously translated by Megan McDowell) focuses on the domestic in disarray.The most striking of the seven tales, Breath from the Depths, is also the longest. Lola is sick and her memory is failing: “she wanted to die, but every morning, inevitably, she woke up again”. Her ordered existence – facilitated…

British cartoonist and illustrator Rachael Smith has announced new autobio comic Glass Half Empty from Icon Books – coming January 5, 2023. Following on from her acclaimed autobio books Wired Up Wrong, Stand In Your Power, and Quarantine Comix; Glass Half Empty will see Rachael dig even deeper in perhaps her most personal book yet – and in her own inimitable style.   The synopsis: “At age ten, Rachael Smith was going to group meetings to help her handle her dad’s alcoholism. After his death, trying to manage her grief,…

Image: Getty ImagesNearly a third of key software roles are going unfilled as a result of hiring pressures and market shortages, according to a workforce study of more than 3,400 senior technology professionals.A survey conducted by coding platforms CoderPad and CodinGame found that 30% of companies struggled to hire software engineers, data scientists and DevOps professionals in Q3.Despite this, nearly half (49%) of respondents said their company hired several people on to their tech teams during the period. This…

Horizon World’s user base has steadily declined since spring making it Meta’s empty metaverse Horizon Worlds, Meta’s empty metaverse/social universe set in virtual reality (VR), is reportedly struggling to gain and keep users. According to The Wall Street Journal, Meta’s flagship Metaverse app Horizon Worlds has been struggling to gain new users. The company initially set a goal of reaching 500,000 active monthly users for the app by the end of the year, but has failed so far. Internal documents reveal that Meta has…