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The owner of my building has installed flood lights that are on all night and effectively remove any darkness from the outside. The main reason given was for safety, despite there never being a safety issue, and trying to convince them that the opposite is true has been difficult, to say the least.

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this is typical of a lot of urban property in the USA. Yet as a child I remember many kinds of bugs, crawling and flying. Now there are literally none when I look for them, on several occasions. Bird population is low, too.

Crickets. I miss the sound of crickets.

It could be that they experienced a lawsuit where not having sufficient lighting or having unlit areas where people can be expected to walk resulted in an injury, and they or the insurance company had to cough up some money.

When those kinds of lawsuits happen, everyone goes into cover your ass mode.

It's not law suit related because it's a really small building and we would know if another tenant had an issue of that scale. It could be insurance related, but I doubt it. The unfortunate reality is he's just an awful person. There are very easy and cheap ways to make it so the lights don't shine directly into people's windows he just doesn't care (we've asked).

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