Yes, in that particular case the breeze form the air conditioner was blowing virus-laden droplets from one table to an immediately adjacent table. It wasn't a case of the virus going through the air conditioner and that study in particular tends to be frequently cited as evidence the virus doesn't travel very far.
It sounds like, where you live, the municipality doesn't have an incentive to not inform you of late or owed taxes. The issue is that the government in this case has every reason to not inform the property owner of late taxes owed.
I've been a ham radio operator in the US for a couple years now, and its a really interesting hobby that will put you on contact with very smart inviting people. Its a great way to learn more about electricity too.
To experiment in radio on certain frequencies (like the ones needed to talk to satellites, requires a license from your nation's government, as radio frequencies are a shared resource. Certain levels of licensing is for 'amateurs' and other licenses are for more industrial things, like TV and what is commonly referred to as FM or AM radio.
Communication with satellites in the US requires the highest level of amateur licensing called the Extra.
Actually, you can talk to satellites[1] using a technician license, because they use VHF/UHF. A general or extra is required for using certain HF bands.
I used to be so afraid of flying that I would cry and hold strangers hands on planes without any prompting. It was out of control. It started really slowly though. I was able to fly when I was younger, but nervousness started to take over and eventually, like you, a bout of turbulence made me even more anxious.
I told my doctor about my week long anxiety before flying and how I would cry on strangers randomly throughout a flight convinced they were the last person I would ever meet. He prescribed Xanax and suggested therapy. The drugs helped me keep to myself, but what helped the most was watching planes take off and land at SFO.
I was flying to SFO for work and staying at a hotel nearby, so I would sit and watch planes take off and land. Every time I heard the engines speed up for take off, I would get nervous (and feel myself getting nervous writing this), but after a while, it got to where I could distract myself from the fear when on the plane.
When I wasn't in SFO, I would listen to air traffic control (smooth calming pilot voices!) on my ham radio as prep for an upcoming flight.
Also therapy is amazing for helping me work through various other anxieties.
Good luck! Its not impossible and you are on the right track through looking into statistics and trying to give yourself something concrete and rational to think about.
Mind being more specific about where in Lower Manhattan you are referring? Lower Manhattan is quite a large space in regards to differing cultures, that further clarification would be helpful.
I'm not sure what exactly your question is, sorry. Can you clarify? My only point was that lower Manhattan 30-40 years ago was a vastly more affordable and artistically-inclined place. Just read the Greenwich Village Wikipedia page for an example:
In the 20th century, Greenwich Village was known as an artists' haven, the Bohemian capital, the cradle of the modern LGBT movement, and the East Coast birthplace of both the Beat and '60s counterculture movements.
Greenwich Village has undergone extensive gentrification and commercialization;[9] the four ZIP codes that constitute the Village – 10011, 10012, 10003, and 10014 – were all ranked among the ten most expensive in the United States by median housing price in 2014, according to Forbes.
While there still may be a lot of arts and culture going on in Lower Manhattan, it is unquestionably a pale shadow of its former self. Don't take my word for it:
I wonder how projects like Electron are figuring into the interest that Microsoft has in GitHub. How would Microsoft move forward with such a project if they bought GitHub? Would its continue to be based on Chromium? Would future versions of Office follow VSCode and be build as Electron apps?
I was in DevDiv at the time of the launch of VS Code (but on a different team): The pressure was on to ship a cross-platform editor ASAP to support the new cross-platform .NET infrastructure. This was very much an "IBM PC"-project with the Directors tasking a small team to get something done and to disregard the NIH culture. Atom was chosen as the platform because it was already close to what they needed with the right license. Heck, the rush to ship was so intense that they screwed up the name (I forget the story exactly, but "VS Code" was not the name the MSFT naming department came up with, but the name they initially chose turned out to be used elsewhere and they didn't have the time to come up with something trademarkable so they just sighed and shipped as "Visual Studio Code").
Anyway - I think the VS Code experience helped with Microsoft's institutional "fear" of pushing ahead with a JavaScript ecosystem elsewhere - I think the knock-on effects contributed towards the Office org's recent announcement to add JS as a first-class macro language in Excel, I just wish it was TypeScript instead.
With the lines at NYC museums, making a short one hour visit is almost impossible. To be able to make a donation less that $25 suggested fee, one has to stand in those lines. People that make the short visits tend to pay for a membership that allow them to bypass the line.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764_article
visual of transmission through air conditioning:
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764-f1