And there go the last jobs for liberal arts majors

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You want cream and sugar with that?

You want cream and sugar with that?

In the food industry, it seems, the robot revolution is well underway, with machines mastering skilled tasks that have always been performed by people.

In Boston, robots have replaced chefs and are creating complex bowls of food for customers. In Prague, machines are displacing bartenders and servers using an app. In Denver, they're taking orders at a fast food drive through.

Robots are even making the perfect loaf of bread these days, taking charge of an art that has remained in human hands for thousands of years.

Now comes Briggo, a company that has created a fully automated, robotic brewing machine that that can push out 100 cups of coffee in a single hour -- equaling the output of three to four baristas, according to the company.

Using a blend of Latin American beans, the machine -- known as a "coffee haus" -- creates customized cups of gourmet coffee that can be ordered via an app, giving customers control over ingredients, espresso shots, flavorings and temperature without any human interaction. The company says no other business in the world has applied as much technology to "specialty coffee."

Well at least we don't live in Westport

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WTF?

WTF?

Westport police looking for woman who’s been repeatedly delivering a headless chicken to resident

Westport police are asking the public for help in identifying a person who keeps leaving a box containing a headless chicken in the yard of an area home.

According to Westport Police Lt. Jullian Cabana, it's happened a couple of times and the residents have no idea why someone would leave a headless chicken in their Franklin Street yard.

So what's the matter with Pecksland?

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138 pecksland.jpg

Another Pecksland Road listing takes a hit, this time 138, dropping its price to $4.995 million, down a cool million from its October opening bid of $5.995. Owners paid $4.675 for it in 2012 and have obviously sunk a ton of money into it since. I think they’ll regret that.

All of which mystifies me, sort of. Pecksland’s a decent road, not too far from town, with large, expensive homes, and this particular house, to me, has huge appeal, but prices have been dropping here for the past decade, as buyers’ tastes turn elsewhere.

Too big to fail?

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conyers.jpg

FWIW’s Norwich corespondent sends along this link to a WSJ article on the declining attraction of large homes.

Large, high-end homes across the Sunbelt are sitting on the market, enduring deep price cuts to sell.

That is a far different picture than 15 years ago, when retirees were rushing to build elaborate, five or six-bedroom houses in warm climates, fueled in part by the easy credit of the real estate boom. Many baby boomers poured millions into these spacious homes, planning to live out their golden years in houses with all the bells and whistles.

Now, many boomers are discovering that these large, high-maintenance houses no longer fit their needs as they grow older, but younger people aren’t buying them. 

Tastes—and access to credit—have shifted dramatically since the early 2000s. These days, buyers of all ages eschew the large, ornate houses built in those years in favor of smaller, more-modern looking alternatives, and prefer walkable areas to living miles from retail.

It’s not just happening in retirement communities.

Because we've created a target rich environment by refusing to lock our cars

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Take me, I’m yours

Take me, I’m yours

Car thefts decline in our cities as the punks move to easier turf, like Greenwich.

The suburbs of central Connecticut are now the “hot spot” for car thefts, while authorities in nearly every major city are seeing fewer vehicles stolen, according to a preliminary report released Thursday to the Juvenile Justice Policy and Oversight Committee.

Committee members including Rep. Toni Walker, D-New Haven, called for an examination of car thefts and juvenile car theft arrests a few weeks ago after a lengthy public hearing on HB 7332, which would allow courts to automatically transfer juveniles charged with committing a car theft to adult court based on their criminal history.

The issue has pitted juvenile justice advocates against police, who say their towns are being whacked with an increasing wave of car thefts that they believe have escalated since the state raised the age for youth to be classified as “juveniles” to 17 in 2012.

Since then, suburbs have been increasingly plagued with car thefts, especially unlocked vehicles with key fobs left inside the car.

Car theft decreased in Bridgeport, Hartford, New Britain, and New Haven by more than 38 percent from 2008 to 2017, according to the report drafted by Ken Barone, project manager at the Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy at Central Connecticut State University.

At the same time, car thefts are up by close to 21 percent in the state’s suburbs with populations up to 25,000. The highest concentration of car thefts has moved from the New Haven area to the Interstate 91 and 84 corridors in the central Connecticut suburbs, Barone said.

About 55 percent of the people arrested for car theft in Glastonbury are under the age of 18, said Glastonbury Police Chief Marshall Porter, who is on the committee. “We have a small group of juveniles committing 90 percent of the crimes.”

Barone wants to cull information on where the cars are ending up after the vehicles are stolen. But several committee members wanted to collect data on what was happening in a kid’s life when he opts to steal the vehicle.

“Locking them up is not the answer,” said Rep. Robyn Porter, D-New Haven. “Let’s find out why they are choosing to do bad things.”

LOL