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• A mysterious cylindrical object was found on the seabed by the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
• Denmark has invited Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, to inspect it.
• It might provide clues as to who was behind the bombings that struck the pipelines.

Denmark has invited the Russian-controlled operator of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to help recover a mysterious object found next to it, six months after sabotage attacks struck parts of the pipelines.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said experts believe the object could be a signal antenna used to trigger an explosive in that section of the pipeline, AFP reported.

The Danish energy agency said it is “possible” that the object is a maritime smoke buoy and that it “does not pose an immediate safety risk,” the outlet said.

A photo of the cylindrical object was released on Thursday, which authorities discovered on the seabed during an inspection of the last remaining intact Nord Stream pipeline, Reuters reported.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that it was a positive sign that Denmark had invited Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, to help identify the object.

“It’s certainly positive news when the owner of the pipeline is invited to take part in very important phases of the investigation,” Peskov said, per Reuters.

“It is critically important to determine what kind of object it is, whether it is related to this terrorist act – apparently it is – and to continue this investigation. And this investigation must be transparent,” he said.

Russia has previously been critical of not being allowed to take part in the investigation.

The Danish agency said that it could not begin the recovery operation until it got a response from the pipelines’ owners, AFP reported. Russian energy giant Gazprom has a majority stake and German, Dutch, and French companies own the rest.

International authorities have been investigating after a series of underwater bombings struck the gas pipelines in September last year.

It is still unknown who was responsible for the sabotage, and Russia has at times blamed the United States and Britain, without any evidence.

Reports suggested that a pro-Ukrainian group was responsible, based on Western intelligence, but Kremlin spokesman Peskov dismissed the reports at the time and said they were a diversion by “the authors of the attack.”

The Ukrainian government has denied any involvement in the attack.

The Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, which transported natural gas from Russia to Germany, were not operational at the time of the attack due to disputes between Russia and the European Union.

• Housing advocates are debating whether windowless bedrooms are the solution to the housing crisis.
• A severe housing shortage and empty office buildings has prompted some to call for loosening regulations. 
• But many others argue bedrooms without natural light are inhumane. 

Things have gotten heated between housing advocates who disagree on the importance of indoor natural light.

The debate over whether bedrooms should be legally required to have windows has gained steam as cities across the country grapple with the “office apocalypse,” or the emptying of downtowns as a result of the explosion of remote work since the pandemic.

Many agree that cities need to rapidly convert office space into homes to stem the bleeding in urban cores. But many office buildings are too deep to allow for windows in the rooms that would be closest to the center of the building. Enter windowless bedrooms. 

Journalist Matt Yglesias argued last year that windowless bedrooms would “save downtowns” by facilitating the mass retrofitting of office buildings into apartments. 

New York City Mayor Eric Adams recently weighed in on the debate. 

“Why can’t we do a real examination of the rules that state every bedroom must have a window?” he asked during an interview on WNYC this month. “You don’t need no window where you’re sleeping, it should be dark!”

Supporters argue that building apartments with windowless bedrooms could both help alleviate the severe housing shortage and affordability crisis and repopulate urban business districts. 

Critics say that lowering the floor on living standards is exploitative, unhealthy for inhabitants, and risks a slippery slope in which the basic elements of humane housing — in this case, sunlight — are increasingly treated as luxuries. They argue it would disproportionately impact the most vulnerable.

The debate has turned fans of housing density — also known as YIMBYs, which stands for “Yes In My Backyard” — against each other. Advocates on both sides allege the other is neglecting the interests of low-income tenants, including those experiencing homelessness, who’d be most likely to live in a windowless room.

From tenements to college dorms

Local governments have long regulated window requirements in housing. New York City banned windowless bedrooms in 1867 with its Tenement House Act, which mandated windows in every habitable room in order to reduce disease and fire-related deaths in cramped, crowded housing. 

But in recent years, windowless bedrooms have become somewhat normalized on college campuses. 

Students at the University of Texas, Austin and the University of Michigan are currently renting dorm bedrooms without windows. 

Charles Munger, a billionaire investor and right-hand to Warren Buffett, was behind the Michigan dorm and made waves when he donated $200 million to the University of California, Santa Barbara in exchange for the opportunity to build an 11-story dormitory complex with nearly 4,500 windowless, single-occupancy bedrooms. The controversial Munger Hall project has faced a barrage of criticism from architects, students, and community members and described as having a “prison-like design” in a 200-page independent review of the proposal. 

An architect consulted on the Santa Barbara project quit in protest in October 2021, calling it a “social and psychological experiment with an unknown impact on the lives and personal development of the undergraduates the university serves.”

Kate Wagner, an architecture critic and author of the popular McMansion Hell blog, recently condemned the idea of windowless bedrooms in The Nation, calling it “rent-seeking on the backs of the urban desperate.” She decried “the commodification of sunlight as an amenity” like “marble countertops or a walk-in closet.”

“Fundamentally, what reneging on certain restrictions means is not some kind of new era of abundance but a libertarian step backward into the days of the tenement,” she wrote. “The idea that we need to do away with such basic human necessities as light is based on an inherently Darwinian view of the city and who gets to inhabit it.”

Wagner took aim at Yglesias, who shot back at her in a tweet suggesting that those who oppose windowless bedrooms aren’t concerned enough with housing for people experiencing homelessness. 

—fernet glenn branca (@mcmansionhell) March 22, 2023

• Robert Kiyosaki expects stocks, bonds, and real estate to crash as higher interest rates bite.
• The “Rich Dad Poor Dad” author slammed the Fed for choking growth and eroding the US dollar’s value.
• Kiyosaki warned of bank runs before SVB failed, and spotted trouble at Credit Suisse.

Asset prices will collapse under the pressure of soaring interest rates, Robert Kiyosaki has warned.

“Raising interest rates will crash stocks, bonds, real estate, & US dollar,” the personal-finance guru and “Rich Dad Poor Dad” author tweeted on Thursday, adding that he expects the vast derivatives market to tank as well.

The Federal Reserve lifted its benchmark rate by 25 basis points to upwards of 4.75% on Wednesday, compared with nearly 0% a year ago. The US central’s goal is to cool inflation, as higher rates encourage saving over spending and raise borrowing costs. Yet they also reduce demand, which pulls down asset prices and increases the risk of a recession.

Kiyosaki has slammed the Fed for both lifting rates and flooding the economy with money in an effort to stave off a crash. He’s advised investors to buy precious metals and cryptocurrency, as hedges against prices soaring and the US dollar weakening.

“Saving money & investing in a well diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds, mutual funds & ETFs is risky advice,” he tweeted in February. “I still believe gold, silver, bitcoin best for unstable times, although prices will go up and down.”

The founder of The Rich Dad Company has been sounding the alarm on an epic market crash and massive recession for more than 18 months. While those predictions are yet to come true, a couple of his recent comments have been undeniably prophetic.

“Runs on banks next?” he tweeted on February 28 — more than a week before a wave of withdrawals overwhelmed Silicon Valley Bank, and the federal government took control of the lender.

“I called Lehman Brothers years ago and I think the next bank to go is Credit Suisse,” he said on “Cavuto: Coast to Coast” on March 13. The Swiss government brokered a deal for UBS to acquire its scandal-hit rival last weekend.

• The Anti-Defamation League counted 59 incidents in which antisemites cited the rapper formerly known as Kanye West.
• In an interview last year, Ye denied the Holocaust and praised Adolf Hitler.
• Overall, ADL researchers found there was a 59% increase in antisemitic incidents last year.

Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, did more than just derail his own career when he began last year to publicly proclaim his love for the leader of Nazi Germany and hatred of Jews that he claimed had wronged him — he appeared to inspire dozens of antisemitic incidents across the United States, according to a report released Thursday, including a physical attack by a perpetrator who yelled, “Kanye 2024!”

Beginning last October, Ye gave a string of interviews in which he espoused rank bigotry, including an appearance with far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in which he declared: “I like Hitler.” He also sparked outrage when he brought white nationalist provocateur Nick Fuentes with him to a dinner at Mar-a-Lago with former President Donald Trump — a meeting that came roughly a month after he was dropped by Adidas over his “unacceptable, hateful, and dangerous” comments.

The celebrity endorsement of antisemitism was followed by a spree of hate by emboldened bigots, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which counted no fewer than 59 incidents in the last three months of 2022 in which bigots directly referenced Ye, including two assaults. At least 10 incidents of harassment or antisemitic vandalism occurred in schools across the country that referenced Ye’s remarks; in Los Angeles, neo-Nazis dropped a banner on a highway overpass declaring, “Kanye was right about the jews”; and at a Jewish cemetery in Illinois, gravestones were desecrated with swastikas and the words, “Kanye was rite.”

The incidents have continued through this year, with white supremacists setting up booths on college campuses in Florida and Alabama with a banner that read: “Ye is right, change my mind.”

Attorneys representing Kanye West did not immediately return Insider’s requests for comment.

Overall, ADL researchers found there was a 36% spike in antisemitic incidents in 2022 compared to the year before, with the ADL tracking just under 3,700 cases across the country, the highest on record. That number includes more 111 assaults on Jews and people perceived to be Jewish, up 26% from 2021; just under 1,300 acts of vandalism, including the drawing of swastikas on or near synagogues, up 51%; and nearly 2,300 incidents of harassment, up 29%.

“We’re deeply disturbed by this dramatic and completely unacceptable surge in antisemitic incidents,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “While we can’t point to any single factor or ideology driving this increase, the surges in organized white supremacist propaganda activity, brazen attacks on Orthodox Jews, a rapid escalation of bomb threats toward Jewish institutions, and significant increases of incidents in schools and on college campuses all contributed to the unusually high number.”

The ADL said there was an especially large increase in organizing by avowed white supremacists, with the organization counting more than 850 incidents of racist extremists distributing antisemitic propaganda, double the year before.

The ADL report comes after the FBI last year said that white supremacists “pose the primary threat” of domestic terrorism. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, which tracks far-right activity, also found a dramatic increase last year in extremist organizing, with white supremacist groups increasingly targeting those perceived to be members of the LGBTQ community.

Have a news tip? Email this reporter: cdavis@insider.com