Rov_Scam
2mo ago
It's mostly left-wingers who left Twitter after Musk enshittified it my ramming his preferred content down everyone's throats. They don't want a monoculture so much as they don't want to be forced to look at posts by Ted Cruz. The fact that they were getting a reputation as you described is probably a big part of the reason they are so flippant currently. If the woke scolds who are the face of the company but a small percentage of total users want to leave, let them leave. I went on Bluesky today without an account and I didn't see anything relating to politics, mostly sports and scenic photos. I can't say the same about my Twitter account, which shows me a bunch of right-wing political posts even though I'm almost exclusively following sports journalists.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
Imagine you're planning a vacation. Your dream vacation is Hawaii; your second choice is Myrtle Beach, but that would only be about half as fun. So you call a travel agent, and find out that you unfortunately don't have enough money for a flight to Hawaii. On the other hand, you could drive to Myrtle Beach, which wouldn't be nearly as expensive. Now suppose the travel agent calls you back and offers you the following proposition: "You can't afford to fly to Hawaii, but I've found a reduced rate ticket that will get you 95% of the way there for only 20% of the full price. Granted, it doesn't quite get you to Hawaii, but isn't getting 95% of your dream vacation better than settling for Myrtle Beach, which is only worth half?"
This is obviously nuts, because getting 95% of the way to Hawaii puts you somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's pretty obvious that if you can't get all the way to Hawaii then you're better off going somewhere else entirely. 80%, or 90%, or whatever of a marketable product is no product at all. 80% autonomous cars are regular cars with fancy cruise control (which is itself only used a small percentage of the time), and 80% of whatever AI is aiming for is fancy, expensive, inefficient Google. And saying you're 80% of the way there is more or less meaningless when it comes to technology investment. It's a vague term that has no bearing on actual numbers; it certainly doesn't mean that you're 80% of the way there time-wise or that you've spent 80% of what's necessary to get to 100%, just as the last 5% of the way to Hawaii costs four times as much as the first 95%.
In 2020, The Information estimated that the AV industry had spent $16 billion on research through 2019. Their conclusion was that the whole enterprise was a money pit and that they'd never be able to climb out of. Car and Driver put this in perspective by noting that they could have given every licensed driver in America two brand new Ford-F150s and still have cash to spare. OpenAI's recent projections for 2025 predict $7.8 billion in operating losses and a $13.5 billion net loss. One company in one year manages to spend half the money that the entire AV industry spent in a decade. And incidentally, the amount of money spent on AV research has actually gone up since then, yet you admit yourself that the improvements haven't exactly been dramatic.
AI companies want to spend another trillion or so in the next five years. Will it get them to that magic 100% mark where they can actually sell something for a profit? Nobody knows, but if it can't, I'm willing to guess that the industry's proposed solution will be to spend more money. The point I'm trying to make is that the amount of money they want to spend simply does not exist, and even if it did spending it is not justifiable to someone who eventually expects to turn a profit. If the amount being spent were on par with AVs I'd be more optimistic, but it's exponentially larger. There's going to be a point where the funding isn't going to be there, VC firms are going to have to eat their losses, and there will be a bear market in tech investment where AI is practically a dirty word. This isn't like AVs where the amount of money involved is small enough that companies can quietly make small gains that take years rather than months; it's significantly worse.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
You're ignoring the fact that, according to Neilsen, about 20% of people in the US rely on OTA TV to receive local stations, myself included, and that number is in excess of 30% in some markets. This is up from 2008, when only 15% of households relied on antenna broadcasts. In 2008 on-demand and internet-based video services didn't really exist, and cable-television was bigger. Also in 2008, we were freeing up a part of the spectrum by making TV stations switch to digital transmission. This theoretically affected even fewer households, as nothing needed to be done unless your TV was several years old, but the changeover was delayed by six months, and the change was only accomplished by the government handing out coupons for free converter boxes. Telling 20% of the country that they have to pay for television or give it up is a nonstarter.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
They're slower than most traffic because they always do the speed limit and don't roll stop signs. They also tend to reroute to avoid more difficult left turns, though this isn't as much of an issue as it was a few years ago. I'm not saying these are necessarily bad things (there are good reasons for strictly adhering to the law), but it's still going to be somewhat slower than a human driver.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
I think its an effort thing. Dem mayors instruct their police to not even try to stop rampant arson and not to bother investigating afterwards, and on the off chance they do then the Dem DA doesn't prosecute it.
But is it? The idea that the 2020 riot crimes were under-prosecuted is an article of faith on the right, but I haven't seen any real evidence that this is the case. The Major Cities Chiefs Association compiled a comprehensive report about the law enforcement response to civil unrest in 68 major cities between May 25 and July 31, 2020. During that time period, they recorded 2,385 looting incidents, 624 arsons, 97 burned police cars, and 2,037 police officers injured. They also recorded 2,735 felony arrests. The report isn't detailed enough to break down the number of individual felonies reported, but the 5,143 incidents named above is as good a guide as any (it goes without saying that looting incidents could have had more than one perpetrator, but this is balanced by the fact that the same people may have been involved in multiple incidents, and that some of the police injuries weren't due to assault by protestors). With that caveat, we get a rough estimate of a 53% clearance rate for riot-related felonies.
To put that in the proper context, nationwide in 2019 arson had a clearance rate of 23.9%, and burglary had a clearance rate of 14.1%. Even if my estimate is inflated, and I admit that it probably is, it's still a long ways away from suggesting that these crimes were significantly under-investigated; if that were the case, I would expect the totals to be substantially lower than the averages. Again, I admit that this data isn't ideal but... do you have any other data? With how much this has been repeated I'd expect something, at some point, coming out to back this up, but there's nothing. No studies, no disgruntled chiefs of police saying they were hamstrung by liberal prosecutors, no pardons from governors, nothing. On the other hand, it doesn't take long to find contemporaneous quotes from mayors affirming the right to peaceful protest while reminding people that lawbreakers will be prosecuted, or imposing curfews that they didn't have to impose, or bulletins from local police asking for the public's help in identifying rioters.
The source of this myth seems to come from media reports showing that 90% of the protestors were arrested had the charges dismissed. But this is accepted as a blanket fact without any context: These dismissals weren't for felonies or serious misdemeanors, but for summary offenses like disorderly conduct, loitering, and failure to disperse. The arrests themselves weren't made in response to any investigation, but as crowd-control techniques for when they felt things were getting a bit too rowdy. But crimes have elements that prosecutors must meet, and when police aren't making arrests with an eye towards prosecution, their cases aren't prosecutable. If you haven't personally witnessed a protest like this, the process generally goes as follows: The police declare a gathering illegal. A dispersal order is given. Whoever doesn't disperse is arrested by officers on the scene and loaded into paddy wagons. The officers who made the arrest stay behind, and the arrestees are booked by yet another officer. They're charged and released.
If you want to actually prosecute a case like this, you run into problems at the preliminary hearing. There's no police report. You can't produce the arresting officer as a witness; hell, you probably can't even identify the arresting officer for a given defendant. People arrested in different locations might be comingled at the precinct, so you can't even say where the guy was arrested. And even if by some grace of God you do have this, while the case gets easier, it doesn't get easier by much. First you have to establish that the protest was illegal, which may be the case if a road is being blocked, but is a tough row to hoe if it was a permitted protest that the police got uneasy about and hadn't yet seen any violence. Then you have to prove that a dispersal order was given in a manner such that the individual defendant would have heard it, which is tougher than it seems in a loud area with people moving around. But the real problem comes when you have to show that the defendant was given a reasonable opportunity to leave. The typical tactic used to facilitate mass arrests was to form police cordons around the perimeter to prevent the crowd from fanning out, then closing in to make arrests. A lawful protestor is thus presented with the dilemma of being told to disperse by police while simultaneously being prevented from leaving the area. And that's if you're lucky enough to have a real crime to charge. Most of these arrests were for charges like disorderly conduct and loitering whose elements are vague and are dependent on detailed police testimony showing that the defendant actually met some reasonable definition of disorderly and wasn't just arrested because the cop didn't like him.
But it rarely ever gets that far, because the cases have almost zero evidence, the prosecutors know this, and they dismiss the cases before they ever get in front of a judge. The one exception was Detroit, where the mayor, a former prosecutor, decided to charge all of the minor offenses that amounted to being in the wrong place. The poor assistant sent to present the cases to the judge had to suffer the humiliation of having dozens of them dismissed immediately after he admitted that he couldn't produce any evidence whatsoever. The DA's office dropped the remaining cases shortly thereafter.
Compare that to the Capitol riot, where everyone who merely entered that building and wasn't on a short list of people was guilty of unauthorized entry of a government facility, a misdemeanor carrying a penalty of up to a year in jail. There were thousands of hours of video posted to the internet within the next few days, enough in total that investigators could more or less track everyone's entire route through the building. People were bragging about their crimes on social media, posting selfies of themselves inside. And there was no shortage of people calling in to provide identification of people they recognized. Prosecutors had more evidence than they could dream of, and there was broad bipartisan consensus that the perpetrators should be prosecuted. Remember, this investigation started immediately after the incident, while Trump was still president, and it wasn't until months later until Republicans gradually came to the conclusion that it wasn't a big deal. Trump had weeks to issue pardons to anyone involved but he didn't. Was Biden supposed to call of his dogs in the middle of the investigation because Republicans suddenly decided it was better politics to let the people off?
One final thing—when people try to compare cases and show that person x got so much time for a felony while person y got so much time for "just entering a building" with the implication that the two sentences are disproportionate, they often don't take an important factor into account: Plea bargains. The people in the Capitol riot who merely entered and did nothing but walk around generally were able to enter pleas that avoided jail, and the ones facing felony obstruction charges got away with minimal jail time. But the Capitol riot had a disproportionate number of defendants who refused to take plea deals when the evidence against them was overwhelming, and went on to put forth horrible defenses that did nothing but piss off the judge. The argument can be made that this is unfair, and there shouldn't be a penalty for making the state prove their case. I can agree to a certain extent, but this misframes what is going on. They aren't getting penalized for going to trial, they're getting a light sentence for not going to trial. The alternative is that no one would be offered a reduced sentence.
Furthermore, the law grants a degree of lenience to people who appear to be remorseful for their crimes and take responsibility for their actions. Is this something we want to encourage or discourage? Should a first-time offender who admits he made a mistake, apologizes to the victim, and appears to have a genuine desire for self-improvement get a similar sentence to a defendant who continues to insist he did nothing wrong even after the jury says otherwise? These are things we can disagree about, or discuss, but wherever you land, that's the system that we have now. It doesn't matter whether you're in a Democratic area or a Republican area, people who take deals and show remorse will get lighter sentences than those who don't.
What irritates me the most about these arguments regarding January 6 is that they're almost without exception put forth by the kind of people who don't think that the criminal justice system is harsh enough. They talk about how police are hamstrung by liberal city governments, about how liberal prosecutors aren't aggressive enough, about how bleeding heart prison reformers don't understand that jail isn't supposed to be fun. But the minute they're on the receiving end of the system as it normally operates, injustice is everywhere. Marjorie Taylor-Greene is suddenly concerned about prison conditions. The minutia of overcharging becomes an issue. They seem to forget that in these liberal cities police make arrests every day and courts hand down sentences every day and that prosecutors don't just let minorities off the hook because they feel sorry for black people. One would have thought that when their own side fucked up it would have maybe given them some perspective. But no, they make excuses for why they shouldn't be punished before going back to whinging about how the cops aren't harsh enough.
A decade ago everyone was saying more or less the same thing about autonomous vehicles, yet a true AV seems further away now than it did then. Sure, progress has been made, but the most we have to show for it is incredibly slow robotaxis operating in geofenced areas within a few select cities that don't have weather, which taxis are under constant monitoring from central command. As far as consumer products are concerned, the best we have is the Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot, which allows you to take your hands off the wheel and eyes off the road while traveling on mapped highways during daylight when there is no rain or snow in traffic 40 mph or below. In other words, nowhere outside of urban freeways during rush hour. I'm not trying to knock technological advances, but there's no realistic timeline on when I'll be able to buy a car that will take me practically anywhere my current car will and allow me to zone out on the way, or be drunk.
And that's for a technology that has paying customers, an obvious use case, and has spent significantly less money in the past 15 years than the AI industry has spent in the last 5. A half trillion dollars later and a rep from the largest (or at least most prominent) AI company can't even tell customers what they're supposed to be using the product for, just that they need to be using it more. They can't provide any technical assistance, other than that they should be doing it better, and the next update will totally solve the problem, whatever that is (something tells me that they would have said the same thing before the last update). And this is for one of the few companies that's actually paying for it. I used to subscribe to specialized, expensive legal software for my firm ($1,000/year), and the sales rep was an expert. She (and her competitors) offered an in-depth demo at which they were able to answer all of my questions, and after I bought in I could call at any time and get help. How long do you think it will be before @dukeleto's boss realized that all this is doing is costing the company money and cancels the subscription?
But that's neither here nor there; if this were normal technology like AVs I'd be more optimistic about the industry plodding along gradually. The bigger problem is that we're talking about an industry that's spent 500 billion on a product that doesn't sell, and I've read various places that the amount of planned spending the next few years is in the trillions. By comparison, the year with the highest AV investment was 2021, with somewhere around 13 billion. OpenAI alone plans to spend more than that on training next year, after spending 9 billion this year.
The point I'm making is that the amount of money necessary to keep this train going simply doesn't exist, or at least doesn't exist without them convincing people to actually pay for their product. ChatGTP has about a 3% conversion rate. "Well," the optimists say, the real money is in enterprise sales and software integration. Well, Microsoft has a similar 3% conversion rate for its Copilot add-on. This is Microsoft we're talking about, a company so good at selling its products that they're the industry standard in both business and home use, present in hundreds of millions of computers worldwide. And Spotify had a conversion rate 8 times higher its first year in the US.
So what happens after the bubble pops? I don't want to speculate on how it will unfold because I can imagine any number of scenarios, but I'm pretty sure about a couple things. First is that free access to LLMs will either go away entirely or be severely limited. Whoever is left in the business isn't going to be able to afford to lose money on every query. More dramatically, though, I don't think R&D can plod along gradually like it did with AVs; it's just too expensive. When training a new model costs billions, it's not something you can throw money at from the R&D budget. And in the wake of the bubble bursting, even the idea of it might turn people off. I may be wrong insofar as there may be a future for it similar to AVs, but even then, it's a far cry from what we were promised.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
I don't know what gives you the idea that an open door would not qualify. The statute makes no mention of doors, and only requires that you know that you're not supposed to be in there. If I walk down the street and see a house with an open door and I just walk in I'd be guilty of criminal trespass. If I opened a closed door a breaking would have occurred and the offense would be upgraded. The statute is specifically written to cover cases involving open doors.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
Margaret Aislinn Channon, a 26-year-old Tacoma resident was sentenced to five years in prison in March 2022. She was charged with five counts of arson after setting five Seattle police cars on fire during a protest on May 30, 2020. Upon her sentencing, then U.S. Attorney Nick Brown said that the right to protest and call out injustice is one of the dearest and most important rights we enjoy in the United States: "But Ms. Channon’s conduct was itself an attack on democracy. She used the cover of lawful protests to carry out dangerous and destructive acts, risking the safety of everyone around her and undermining the important messages voiced by others.”
Devinare Antwan Parker, 31, was sentenced to two years in prison in June 2023 for bringing a homemade firearm to a protest in Seattle on May 31, 2020. The charge was “unlawful possession of a destructive device.” Parker threatened to kill police at the time, and was arrested after he threw a can of beer at a police officer's face.
Isaiah Thomas Willoughby was arrested for attempting to set fire to a wall of the East Precinct in June 2020. Willoughby reportedly piled up debris next to the police station, soaked it in gasoline, and set it on fire. People nearby put it out. Willoughby was sentenced to two years in prison.
The last defendant facing federal charges for crimes committed during the racial justice protests of 2020 in Seattle was sentenced on Wednesday to just over three years in prison. Justin Moore, 35 of Renton, previously pleaded guilty to possessing destructive devices. On Sept. 7, 2020, Moore brought 12 Molotov cocktails made from beer bottles and gasoline to the Seattle Police Officers Guild headquarters during a protest. Surveillance video shows a hooded and masked Moore lugging the explosives outside the headquarters, which was the target of numerous attacks during the 2020 protests.
Jacob Greenburg, 19, the stepson of former Kirkland State Rep. Laura Ruderman, was sentenced to five years in prison, in line with what prosecutors recommended. Greenburg was charged with first-degree assault, first-degree attempted arson and first-degree reckless burning.
A federal judge on Friday sentenced Samuel Elliott Frey, 20, of Brooklyn Park, Minn., to more than two years in federal prison for setting fire to a health food store during the riots that followed the May 25, 2020, murder of George Floyd by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
A Minneapolis man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for starting a fire inside Target headquarters during a riot in August 2020, U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger announced Wednesday. Leroy Lemonte Perry Williams, 37, was convicted on one count of arson for the incident in October last year.
Just this month, a man was sentenced to four years behind bars and ordered to pay what his attorney said is likely to exceed $1.5 million in restitution after pleading guilty to inciting a riot last spring in Champaign, Illinois. Shamar Betts, who was 19 at the time, posted a flyer on Facebook on May 31, 2020, that said “RIOT @ MarketPlace Mall” at 3 p.m. and instructed people to bring “friends & family, posters, bricks, bookbags etc.” He participated in the looting, went live on Facebook during the riot and bragged about starting it, authorities said. More than 70 stores were looted, and the riot caused $1.8 million in damage, prosecutors said.
Victor Devon Edwards, 32, was given his sentence of over eight years in prison followed by two years of supervised release by U.S. District Judge Patrick Schlitz, after Edwards was convicted by a jury in August on one count each of rioting and arson.
I can keep going if you really want me to—there were over 100 felony convictions in Minneapolis alone—but I think you get the point. Hell, Los Angeles had a special task force set up to identify people who committed crimes in the riots.
J6ers got felonies simply for walking through an open door.
You make it sound like this is some unusual gross injustice. But if you look at the Pennsylvania laws for Criminal Trespass:
(a) Buildings and occupied structures.--
(1) A person commits an offense if, knowing that he is not licensed or privileged to do so, he:
(i) enters, gains entry by subterfuge or surreptitiously remains in any building or occupied structure or separately secured or occupied portion thereof; or
(ii) breaks into any building or occupied structure or separately secured or occupied portion thereof.
(2) An offense under paragraph (1)(i) is a felony of the third degree, and an offense under paragraph (1)(ii) is a felony of the second degree.
Of course, DC is not Pennsylvania, and their comparable statute is only a misdemeanor, but that's what the people who merely entered were charged with. The ones who were charged with felony Obstructing counts had some kind of aggravating circumstances going against them, like remaining in the building after specifically being told to leave or engaging in behavior that delayed the police attempts to get everyone out. And even then, I don't see how it's relevant to the point that it justifies pardons, since those convictions were overturned by the Supreme Court. And I still don't see how that justifies pardoning people who committed more serious crimes. If this is really just a tit for tat response to partisan pressures, then Trump should also pardon those I listed above who were convicted of Federal crimes, no?
re-arrest every single one of them on new charges and throw the book at them. Get a warrant and crawl through every device and account they they have, and search all their belongings for any antifa-related items.
And charge them with what, exactly? Having antifa-related items? In the case of Jan 6, entering an open door in that case was clearly a crime, and the people charged clearly committed it. The perpetrators were arrested on the basis of actual evidence, and the investigators were willing to present that evidence in court They had them dead to rights, and the smart ones took pleas. A lot of them were incredibly stupid, though, making inane arguments that they seriously thought the building was open to the public, or sovereign citizen bullshit. The George Floyd protestors who were arrested and charged with misdemeanor or summary disorderly conduct, failure to disperse, loitering, or similar offenses were arrested in public areas where it isn't illegal to be. Prosecutors would have to show, for instance, that the assembly was illegal (which requires them to prove a risk of unlawful conduct), that a dispersal order was issued, that the person charged would have heard the dispersal order, and that the person was given a reasonable opportunity to leave.
The problem with the 2020 arrests was that most of them weren't made in strict accordance with the law, but were mass arrests used as a crowd control tactic. If you've never been involved in a protest and seen this before, and officer or officers will make the arrests and load everyone into a paddy wagon, staying behind to continue to work crowd control. Once everyone arrives at the station they are all charged with some low-level misdemeanor and released after a few hours. Police generally didn't prosecute these cases because they weren't prosecutable. The once exception was Detroit, whose mayor, Mike Duggan, was a former prosecutor dedicated to making an example (though it should be noted that the rioting in Detroit was limited to a couple broken windows on police cruisers and some objects being thrown). I pity the poor ADA who had to tell the judge that he couldn't produce bodycam footage, or a police report, or even the name of the arresting officer. He had to endure this humiliation dozens of times in a row and watch the cases get dismissed for lack of evidence until the DA got the point and dismissed the remaining cases.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
You are aware that the DNC chair is a white man and 5 of the 11 board seats are also men, 7 of 13 if you include the ranking House and Senate leaders who serve on the board? You are also aware that local Democratic committees are composed of 1 man and 1 woman per precinct by rule? And I don't expect you to be aware of this, but in Allegheny County at least, the local board is mostly straight, white men. Are you also aware that these positions are elected and there are usually plenty of vacancies due to lack of interest and unwillingness to actually put the work in, and that it's not that hard to get on the ballot? Do you really think that men are turning away from the Democratic Party because they can't get work with them?
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
Alright, which specific people would you arrest. I'm serious. The crucial mistake of the J6 protestors is that they were all incredibly stupid. The BLM rioters at least had the sense to operate primarily at night, conceal their identities, and choose locations that weren't guaranteed to be under God-level surveillance. Not that it mattered since they took videos of themselves and posted them to social media. The reason there weren't as many arrests during 2020 as you think there should have been is because Priority #1 is ending the riot, not investigating and making arrests for individual crimes. The same priorities prevailed on January 6, with very few people being arrested at the scene and the vast majority being identified and arrested later. Unless the evidence exists that allows you to identify criminals, you can't arrest them. You act as though there are tens of thousands of people out there who the police know committed crimes but who aren't being arrested for political reasons.
I will grant that a lot of people who were arrested for more minor crimes like failure to disperse had the charges dropped without incident. However, you have to consider the context of what was going on in 2020: The courts were operating under severe restrictions due to COVID. The normal criminal dockets were backed up; it wasn't feasible to prosecute hundreds of people on charges that would result in small fines when they were already having trouble moving felonies through. But the people who caused damage and were caught generally were prosecuted.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
How much research did you do? On Saturday he makes his famous "many sides" comment. On Monday he releases the prepared statement you linked to. On Tuesday he doubles down on what he said Saturday:
What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right? Do they have any semblance of guilt?
You had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists; the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.
You also had some very fine people on both sides
Many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. This week, it is Robert E. Lee. And I notice that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you have to ask yourself, where does it stop?
As @Rosencrantz2 points out, you can cherry pick a few sentences out of each incident to make it sound like he's offering nothing but condemnation, but I specifically said that he can't help using these events as opportunities to dunk on his opponents. His Tuesday remarks made it sound like the white supremacists and neo-Nazis were a small minority of people who just happened to be at the protest and not the organizing force behind it. He says the left is just as bad, if not worse. And then he goes on to put Confederate generals in the same league as the founding fathers, just so you know whose side he's really on.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
There's a saying, more of a cliche, about being the change you want to see. Given that Donald Trump basically is the Republican Party at this point, and has been for some time, I don't see any evidence of anyone desiring any change or even indicating that they want a change, provided it isn't just that the other side has to do the changing. Name one instance where someone on the right engaged in violence or violent rhetoric and Trump offered nothing but a full-throated, unequivocal condemnation. Name one. I'm not interested in which side has more total incidents or who started it or any of that, because it honestly doesn't matter at this point. We can go all the way back to Trump's entry into politics in 2015 and see nothing but excuses, equivocation, or using tragic events as an opportunity to dunk on his political opponents. Let's take a look at some of the biggies that have transpired in that time:
-
Dylann Roof: Trump wasn't really in a position where he'd be required to say anything at the time of the incident, as it preceded his entry into politics, but he later criticized the media for not blaming Obama for the shooting. The context of that remark was somewhat complicated, but it's nonetheless impossible to believe any context where Obama could have credibly been blamed for the Roof incident.
-
Cesar Sayok: See above. A pro-Trump militant mails pipe bombs to various Democratic leaders. Trump's immediate concern is that the media is unfairly blaming him for inspiring the incident. Whether or not that was fair, there didn't seem to be much concern from Trump or any other Republican that somebody was mailing pipe bombs for political reasons.
-
The Whitmer Kidnapping Plot: Immediately following the arrests, Trump's response was to suggest that she should be in jail anyway due to her COVID policies. In the course of the prosecution it would later come to light that the perpetrators had an entrapment defense that wasn't entirely ridiculous, though it was ultimately unsuccessful, and various people on the right latched on to this to make them look like political prisoners. This ignores the fact that Trump made his comments long before anyone knew all the details.
-
Paul Pelosi Attack: Trump wasn't in office then, but his response was to make jokes about it on the campaign trail. Then a completely baseless theory developed among conservatives who were sure that the guy was a male prostitute in a relationship with Pelosi. Charlie Kirk said that a true patriot needed to come along and bail the guy out. Even the Republicans who offered support to the Pelosis did nothing to attempt to diffuse the rumors.
-
Charlottesville: The most famous of Trump's equivocations, endlessly defended among his supporters. The point wasn't whether he was technically correct when he implied that all sides engage in political violence. It was that unequivocally condemning a white supremacist who committed murder should be the easiest thing a president does. Had he simply disavowed white supremacy and violence that would have been the end of it, but he had to use the tragedy as an opportunity to take a dig at his political opponents.
-
Minnesota Lawmaker Shootings: This is probably the most he ever did in that his office issued a written statement condemning the attacks. But when he actually got in front of a microphone he couldn't resist the opportunity to dunk on Tim Walz.
-
Shapiro Arson: Probably his best response so far, in that he was completely silent about it, except for a private call with Shapiro several days after the incident.
-
January 6: The Biggie. This topic has been litigated to death on here and I'm not about to relitigate it. Hundreds of people break into the Capitol building, threatening the vice president and various other politicians, in order to overturn the results of a presidential election. Even while they're still in the building, Trump can't address the nation without telling them he loves them. Initial Republican condemnation turns to justification and excuse making: Most of them just trespassed, they weren't carrying guns, the Democrats didn't do a good job of stopping the 2020 protests (never mind Trump was president), Clinton pardoned Puerto Rican nationalists 30-years later, the election really was stolen and they were all patriots, etc.
If that's where things ended then I could just lump this in with the above, but it went further. As the years past the plight of the poor insurrectionists became a cause celebre on the right, culminating in the pardons of everyone involve. Doesn't matter if they actually caused property damage. Doesn't matter if they assaulted cops. Doesn't matter if they planned things in advance. It was all a big liberal hoax to take political prisoners. It was at this point that the GOP completely abandoned any pretext of being a law and order party insofar as the law applies equally to everyone. Instead they used the perceived bad behavior of their political opponents as a license to condone violence that supports their own political ends.
All of the above is why I find it hard to take the crocodile tears and phony-baloney moralizing following the Kirk shooting seriously. Even when Fox News tried to give Trump an opportunity to turn down the temperature, he rebuked them, insinuating that the ends justified the means; right-wing extremists were okay because they at least wanted the same things he did, while it's the left that's the real problem. When asked about mending the political divide he said he wasn't interested. He said at Kirk's funeral that he disagreed with Kirk in that he hated his opponents and wanted them destroyed.
So when someone says that Jay Jones's private text messages from three years ago should be politically disqualifying I can agree in an abstract sense that they probably should be. But how many things has Trump said that would have traditionally disqualified a presidential candidate? I'm not even going to list them, because on the one hand it would take forever, but more importantly, I'm sure I'd get a bunch of people arguing how it really isn't that bad. Hell, two thirds of Trump's appeal is that he "tells it like it is" without any regard for political correctness. Let's be honest, if text messages had come out wherein Trump said something similar about a Democratic politician in the weeks preceding the election, approximately five people nationwide would change their votes to Harris on that basis. I don't believe for a second that this is some kind of red line that you simply won't allow any politician to cross.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
The thing no one seems to be talking about with respect to AI is how the underlying economics of it all are so mind-numbingly bad that a crash is inevitable. I have no idea when this crash is going to happen, but if I had to fathom a guess it will be some time within the next five years. We're talking about a technology that has already burned at least half a trillion dollars and has plans to burn another half trillion with no model for profitability in sight. There's only so long that the flow of venture capital will keep coming before the investors start expecting some kind of return. Add in the fact that Nvidia currently represents about 8% of the total value of the S&P 500 based on sales of graphics cards to a single, unprofitable company, and the economic picture looks even more dire.
I think that the underlying problem is that they're trying to run an enshittification model on an industry where the path has typically been the exact opposite. Look at computers themselves. When computers were first invented, they were limited to institutional uses by governments and large universities, and were subsidized through R&D budgets that weren't relying on profitability, i.e. as a present expense rather than a credit against future earnings. Then large corporations started using them. When personal computers were developed in the late 1970s, they were mostly used by businesses, and in the consumer market they were expensive machines for the tech-horny. As costs came down, more and more households began using them, and by the time they became ubiquitous at the end of the 20th century it had been 50 years since their invention, and they still weren't exactly cheap.
Now imagine an alternate timeline where IBM decides in the 1950s to build several large computers in cities all across the country, enough that they can let every Tom, Dick, and Harry run whatever programs they want for free, all the way down to middle schoolers doing their math homework, with minimal wait time. And of course they're offering on-site programmers so that you don't actually need to know anything about computers to be able to take advantage of them, and they're convinced that after doing this for years people will be so enamored that they'll eventually start paying for the privilege. You'd have been laughed out of the board room for making such a suggestion, yet this is roughly the state of the AI business model.
AI cheerleaders will point to other tech companies that lost tons of money in their early years, only to later become behemoths. Uber is often cited as an example, as they spent more than a decade losing money before becoming profitable. But there are two big differences with Uber. The first is that they were actually responding to a market need. Outside of a select few cities like New York and Las Vegas, taxi service in America was at best, inconvenient, and at worst, nonexistent. They successfully discovered an unmet demand and developed a service to fill that demand. No one was ever speculating on what Uber would be used for they way they are with AI, and from their launch they provided the exact service people expected that they would provide. The second, more important reason, is that Uber never gave away their service for free. Okay, maybe there were some promotions here and there, but by and large, if you wanted to get an Uber, you expected to pay for it. There was never any ecosystem where Uber was providing free transportation for everyone who wanted to get from Point A to Point B with the expectation that people would ditch their cars and get charged through the nose later.
Even companies like Spotify that started with free models and were unprofitable for a long time didn't have quite the same issues as OpenAI has. In 2016, the earliest year for which we have financials, Spotify's loss was about 20% of revenue. By 2018, the first year it was public, that had dropped to 1%, and stayed in that neighborhood until the company became profitable. OpenAI's loss last year was in excess of 100% of revenue, and is on pace to be nearly 70% this year, and that's after record revenue growth. And next year they're going to be on the hook for the first round of the 5-year, 300 billion deal with Oracle. Spotify has also had about a 25% conversion rate from free to paying customers throughout most of its history, though that's recently jumped to over 40%. ChatGTP currently has a conversion rate of around 3%. And Spotify at least ran ads on its free platform whereas free ChatGTP is pretty much all loss for OpenAI, and even the paid version lose money on every query.
So what we ultimately have then, is a company that loses a lot of money, is available for free, has a poor conversion rate for paid versions, and is selling itself as a product you didn't know you needed rather than filling an obvious demand. the leading company has already committed to spending several times more than the company has raised in its entire existence within the next five years, and they need their revenue to dectuple in the next four years to break even. They're also involved in a weird money-go-round situation with Nvidia and Oracle that's 100% reliant on them finding investors willing to lend them the GDP of Finland. And now they want to add video, a notoriously difficult thing to process even when you don't have to make the entire composition from scratch. Color me skeptical that this will be around in five years in anything approaching what it looks like today.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
Progressives were never demanding that the poor get increased access to credit cards; banks have never had a problem marketing high-interest, low limit credit cards to the poor. The argument was that it was stupid for banks to deny mortgages to people with jobs who were currently paying more in rent than what the mortgage payment would be if they bought, on the grounds that they were too high a risk. It's also an argument that no one has made in the 20 years since banks went further than the progressives asked them to and started writing mortgages to people who couldn't pay them off if they lived to be a million, then repackaged them as AAA securities.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
As an avid outdoorsman, my personal recommendation is something small and compact, like a .22 pistol. That way, when the bear is on top of you, it's a lot easier to get the barrel into your mouth...
All kidding aside, concerns about attacks by wildlife are usually the mark of a greenhorn, and rabies is a particularly odd thing to be concerned about. Your scenario about deer isn't really plausible, since deer fight by butting with their antlers and kicking, not by biting. They do get rabies, but not in numbers large enough to report outside of "other wildlife", and deer attacks on humans are rare to begin with, especially considering how often we encounter suburban deer that have lost their fear of humans. And if you're hiking in the deep dark woods, you aren't likely to see many deer to begin with, since they prefer forest edge ecosystems where there's more to browse.
If you somehow were attacked by a rabid buck, stabbing at it with a knife would be about the worst possible thing you could do, and shooting it wouldn't be much better. Rabies is usually transmitted through saliva, but it can be transmitted through blood as well, so drawing blood probably isn't a good idea. Rabies is usually transmitted through raccoons on in the East, skunks in the Midwest, and foxes in the Southwest, and bats can transmit it anywhere. Trying to defend against these small mammals while they are attacking you and unlikely to do any permanent damage seems like just increasing the risk of shooting or slicing yourself and making a bad situation worse. And if you do get attacked and are exposed to rabies, it's not like it's a death sentence. Rabies has an incubation period of several weeks, plenty of time to get to a doctor for prophylactic treatment, which is almost 100% effective. It's even more effective if you wash the wound thoroughly immediately after getting bitten.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
I-9 only requires proof of identity and proof of eligibility to work in the US. Most people use a driver's license for the former and a Social Security card for the latter, neither of which requires citizenship. And the law only requires that the employer inspect the documents for their authenticity, not conduct an investigation to determine if the person is actually, at this moment, eligible to work in the US. He could have easily gotten a Social Security card when he was here legally on a student visa, and used that for all his I-9s.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
Well, that's a problem, because there are some, but they are utterly drowned out by so-called "bardcore" or "neo-medieval" music that has very little to do with what actual medieval music sounded like other than that is has a thin veneer of what modern audiences think it sounded like. The funniest part is that, in addition to medieval, it's tagged as modal and Gregorian Chant, when it's neither of those things. We have a pretty good idea of what actual medieval music sounded like by virtue of it having been written down, and we know what the theory behind it was and what the performance practices were. Almost everything in that example is anachronistic. Actual medieval folk music would have been monophonic in texture (every voice and instrument is playing the same melody line; modern concepts of accompaniment didn't exist yet) and modal in harmony (tonality i.e. chords had yet to be invented). The prodromes of modern harmony were present beginning with organum around 1200 (where the vocal lines would occasionally sing different complementary notes), but that would have been Latin church music, not any king and queen larping. You'd get polyphony in the 14th century but again, it would take folk music a long time to catch up to what composers were writing for the church. It wasn't until the 16th century that what we would call modern harmony and performance practice was fully developed and widespread in Europe. Before then, music would have sounded more like this, especially in England, which was far away from the locus of culture at the time.
The fact that authentic music is all but drowned out by bastardized modern versions is only further proof of the limitations of AI training—garbage in; garbage out. What you posted has more in common with a Taylor Swift song than with actual medieval music.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
The thing that I think you're hung up on here is that you're assuming that a lease interest operates the same as an ownership interest, and that simply isn't the case as far as the law is concerned. A lessee may be entitled to compensation in a condemnation proceeding, especially if, as in this case, there is a long-term lease in operation at below market rates, but this isn't always the case; someone on an annual lease at market rent probably doesn't have a recognizable interest, no matter how inconvenient moving may be. The onus is thus on the lessee to prove to the government that they are entitled to compensation.
The short answer to why ACME wasn't compensated here is that they didn't intervene in the proceeding, didn't pay an expert to find out what their lease interest was worth, and neither the arbitration panel nor the court was in a position to make a determination of their interest. But that doesn't really answer your question; I suspect that had they intervened they wouldn't have gotten anything. The reason, I suspect, would be because eminent domain statutes generally only contemplate owners. Since a lessee would have to show extraordinary circumstances to be entitled to compensation, the what-if game doesn't apply to them. They broke the lease in 1999, could have only extended it to 2012 at the latest, and the building was demolished in 2015. They can't credibly argue that their interests are somehow prejudiced. The owner, obviously, can't either, but there's a statute that applies specifically to them and has to be followed. If the property had been taken in 1994, the grocery store would have had an argument and probably would have intervened in the condemnation suit.
If you're worried about the government being unjustly enriched, this isn't really the case to raise that concern. Their argument was to use the 2018 market value, and by that point the ACME store was razed and the rest of the plaza was dilapidated and vacant. This is what the township wanted to do, as it would have resulted in a much lower price.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
I don't think you understand what a fishing expedition is. The questions you cited are directly related to either why you got pulled over or some related traffic offense. If he starts asking questions about illegal gambling or a string of burglaries apropos of nothing, that would be a fishing expedition. In any event, in nearly 25 years of driving I've never once been asked if I knew how fast I was going or why I had been pulled over. Traffic offenses are strict liability, and if they have enough to ticket me an admission isn't going to help much. I have been asked if I was drinking, though. And you know how often I was drinking? 100% of the time; the reason I was asked is because the officer already smelled alcohol. But I've never been asked that when I hadn't been drinking, and there have been plenty of times when I was drinking that I wasn't asked that, including on St. Patrick's Day at 11 pm.
Anyway, in these instances, refusing to answer questions doesn't get you anything that a simple "no" doesn't, other than irritating the officer. Telling a cop you didn't see the stop sign isn't going to be used in court later to nail your ass to the wall. Trying to maintain a cordial atmosphere is more important in some circumstances than asserting every single right you have.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
The only time I'd recommend asking that question is in a situation where the encounter has already gone on way longer than a normal traffic stop and the officer is doing something indicating he's fishing for something more than a traffic ticket, like asking a lot of unnecessary questions or asking to search the vehicle. But I see bodycam videos of people asking a few minutes into a routine stop, or refusing to answer normal questions, and I wonder why they feel the need to unnecessarily piss the guy off.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
With a 12-year-old used hybrid, unless I had information to the contrary, I'd assume that the previous owner rode it a moderate amount, that it still has the original chain and cassette, and that the chain wasn't regularly cleaned or lubricated. I know from personal experience that with moderate to heavy riding a cassette-chain combo will last about 5 years before being completely trashed. The caveat there is that this is mountain biking, which is inherently dirtier, and a 1x12 setup, which is inherently more fragile, but that's balanced by the higher-end components involved. I'd guess that a Trek hybrid from 2012 is running an 8-speed Shimano Altus cassette or whatever the SRAM equivalent is, which will only run you about 20 bucks online, and the chain can probably be had for about that, too, and for those prices I'd be inclined to just replace both now rather than wait.
The upshot is that it's probably due for one. It's not something I'd lose sleep over or anything, but for comparison the cassette on my Cannondale hybrid lasted about 8 years with one new chain in after around four. The reason I prefer just replacing it is that if you wait the early symptoms can resemble any number of other things that are harder for you do fix if you don't have a ton of experience. The chain and the cassette wear each other out, and this initially results in the chain having trouble engaging with the sprockets during shifts. Eventually it will slip when riding and jump to different gears, and may drop entirely. And a worn chain is more likely to just snap under load and inevitably leave you walking your bike back at the point in the ride that takes you farthest from your car. But assuming the chain and cassette are good, most people assume the derailleur is out of alignment, and start dicking around with set screws to try to adjust it so it shifts smoothly. In most cases, this makes sense, since it's really easy for a derailleur to go out of alignment. The problem is that if you're not a pro who does this every day (and especially if you're a beginner at this), it's really easy to throw a perfectly good derailleur out of adjustment while trying to fix a problem that's elsewhere. So if you do decide to let it ride, replace them first thing if you start having shifting problems and don't touch the derailleur unless that doesn't fix the problem.
As for cables, again, nothing I'd lose sleep over, but after a dozen years they've probably had it. Check the cables and housings for obvious damage and replace them if anything doesn't look right. I wouldn't touch the shifter cables unless there's a problem, though, since swapping them out involves adjusting the derailleur.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention to your posts, but I got the impression you were looking to buy new for that price, since most people buying used don't have much option wrt features or brands, especially at the lower end of the used market. Maybe things are better where you are, but most of what I see on FB marketplace/CL is junk, and the specialist bike sites are more along the lines of "This year-old $6500 bike is a steal at $3000". It's for that reason that I usually steer inexperienced (i.e. if you have to ask) buyers away from used models, because they simply don't know what they're looking at or if they're getting a good deal. The one exception would be buying use from a bike shop, where they often have fairly-priced trade-ins that are guaranteed to be in good mechanical condition.
That last point is something to consider and take into account. Any 10–20 year-old used bike is going to need a chain, probably a rear cassette, probably tires, probably new cables. The parts aren't expensive and you can do the repairs yourself if you're willing to learn, but there can be specialized tools involved (that are cheap to come by), and if it's your first time doing this work you simply aren't going to get it dialed in the way it should be. there's also the issue that if you don't know what you're looking at, it's going to be difficult to even know what parts you have to order. It's usually along the lines of if you can find out what the bike originally came with you'll find out that they don't make that part anymore. They make a close-enough equivalent (actually several) that will be compatible provided that you make some minor adjustments. These are the kinds of things bike shops will do without even telling you but that can give you fits if you try to do it yourself. At that point, it's almost easier to just take it to a shop and have them do it, which will cost approximately what you paid for the bike, which is why I tend to recommend buying used bikes from a shop that paid a lot less for the bike itself than you would have and with parts, labor, and profit can sell it for approximately the same price as if you had bought it yourself and had the work done, which may sound like a wash but at least means you can take your bike home and ride it on Day One without any surprises. I'm not trying to say this to discourage you from buying used, because I generally think it's a great idea, especially for what you're looking for, but it's something to be aware of.
Now that I have a better idea where you're coming from, I can give you some detailed advice. Most people here have said that anything from a reputable brand will be good, and they're right, but it's useless information if you don't know what a reputable brand is, and there are a few caveats. The issue is making sure you get a "bike shop bike" and not a "department store bike", which is generally easy to do if you buy at a shop but harder on the used market due to a variety of factors. First, anything by the following brands, from any era, can be recommended without hesitation: Trek, Specialized, Giant, Cannondale, Scott, Norco (unless you're buying it in Canada), Co-Op (REI's house brand), and Kona. GT and Diamondback must be approached with caution, as they make both higher-end models and models that are sold at places like Dick's. I wouldn't recommend one unless you really know what you're looking at. Schwinn and Mongoose are in a similar boat as they used to be good brands until they got sold and deprecated by their new owners. The goodwill has been gone long enough that few people would even be fooled these days, and require some convincing that one from the 90s is actually a good purchase, but unless you're looking at something really old they're best to be avoided. Raleigh, Jamis, Fuji, and Nishiki seem to have had various identity crises over the years where they can't decide whether they want to be a legitimate brand or a budget brand; a used model could be a find or could be crap, and there's no way of knowing unless you already know. Brands like Huffy, Next, Murray, Roadmaster, or anything with the name of a pickup truck is department store crap and should be avoided at all cost, as is anything that weighs about a thousand pounds. Someone mentioned Motobecane and Gravity's ID bikes earlier. They're basically cobbled together from spare parts, and can be great value for money, though buying one used is asking for an adventure. People also mentioned other internet direct brands, and there are innumerable boutique brands that also make excellent bikes. While I obviously wouldn't want to discourage you from taking advantage of a deal on these, most of them specialize in Serious Mountain Bikes or Serious Road Bikes, not what you're looking for, and in any event you aren't likely to find one for cheap at a bike flea market.
As for what you are looking for, I'd recommend a hybrid. They kind of get a bad rap in the bike community because they aren't particularly great at anything, but for someone who wants to do relatively short rides on the road or easy trails they can't be beat. There's a reason why manufacturers sell more of these than anything else. To explain why you should get one, it's easier to explain why you shouldn't get something else. The road bike may feel better on the road, but there are two big caveats. The first is that the riding position is going to be more aggressive than what you're probably used to, and while that's a good thing for the long haul, if you're talking about ten miles max at this point then I don't know if it's worth it to get used to it. More importantly, they aren't made for riding off-road, period. I know you said you plan on riding on roads, but crushed limestone rail trails can present a challenge, and gravel is pretty much off limits. If I only have one bike in the quiver, I want something that will be able to handle a dirt road in a county park that small children can ride without hesitation.
For similar reasons I would recommend against hardtail mountain bikes—if most of your riding is going to be on the road, and you don't have any intention of doing serious off-roading, a mountain bike isn't the best choice. The wide, knobby tires they're equipped with don't perform well on pavement and if you don't change them immediately you will soon enough, since asphalt wears them down quickly. Of more serious concern, though, is that these will probably have some kind of front suspension that will require its own maintenance and is another thing prone to breaking, except the bike is unrideable with blown out suspension forks and replacements are really expensive. Some hybrids will come with suspension forks to make things seem sportier; avoid these as well, for similar reasons. It's actually more imperative to avoid hybrids and low-end hardtails with front suspension because the cost of the forks takes up a significant proportion of the total cost of the bike, and requires sacrifices elsewhere. The forks are usually of low quality and will be the first thing to break, especially after 10 years. If you are considering a bike with suspension at all, only buy RockShox or Fox products and run from anything Suntour. A fully rigid mountain bike might be worth looking at, with the caveat that you'll want road-appropriate tires.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention gravel bikes, since others have. While this would be a good option, combining road bike geometry with a stouter frame and wider tires to handle the off-road better, they are a relatively recent development and have only become popular in the past ten years, and only within the last five or so at consumer-friendly price points. For full disclosure, these are great and this is what I use for all my road riding, rail-trail cruising, touring, and light gravel riding. The isue for your purposes is that there isn't likely to be anything available at the price you're looking to pay. A bike that sold for $2,000 in 2019 isn't going to lose 90% of its value in 6 years. If by some miracle you can find one, go for it.
Since you're likely getting a hybrid, a word of caution about what kind of hybrid you want. I've seen the term used for everything from old-lady comfort bikes to wannabe mountain bikes. I'd recommend something on the sportier side, with the cautions about suspension. These used to occasionally be marketed as "fitness" or "sport" bikes. You want to make sure that the riding position is similar to a mountain bike with you leaning fairly far forward and a fairly low rise to the handlebars. Some hybrids have handlebars with a lot of rise, favoring a mre upright riding position, but this puts too much pressure on your asshole. I'd also add that bike fit is more important than the bike itself.
I really don't get what I get other than "new" for more money than that. Enthusiasts try to explain it to me and I don't get it, it feels like they're telling me I have to buy a new Mercedes and a Camry just won't do.
I bought a brand new gravel bike last year. Before that I was riding a 1999 Cannondale hybrid that had seen thousands of miles and one partial rebuild. I was looking at parts for rebuild number two and was beginning to doubt the wisdom of sinking money into something that should be hanging on a wall by now, but it worked for what I needed it for and I didn't want to spend the money one a new one, or a new to me one. Then I was looking at my REI dividend statement that had been ballooning for years and now stood at $750 or so, and I had been using it to make minor purchases like chain lube because I hadn't had any major equipment needs in five years. Then I saw an ad that a $1200 gravel bike was on sale for $999, which meant that I could get a brand new bike for only about $300 out of pocket. Though I admit that's not a typical reason.
Certain enthusiasts need to have the newest and baddest shit that will be a failed, forgotten experiment in five years, though I guess that's not typical, either. The real reason is that buying new is just easier for the kind of money involved. Spend $200–$300 on a used bike and another $200 on parts and labor to get it up to spec and you aren't too far off how much you could get a comparable new bike for. The process involves a lot less friction than buying used, because you can just go to stores and test ride bikes and talk to a knowledgeable salesman about what would be best for you and go from there. When you're ready to buy, the bike is going to be there, and you pay with a credit card. Buying used means you need a certain amount of knowledge to know what you're looking for, can mean driving around and testing one bike at a time at a guy's house, which guy probably can't be of much help to you. You have to know what you're looking for in terms of mechanical issues. If you don't make a decision right away, the bike might not be there when you call again. You're going to need to give a stranger cash and be stuck with the purchase. No warranties will carry over to you. If it's a dud you could be out a lot of money. I bought the most expensive bike I own used, but for the casual rider looking at a first purchase, it's not something I'd recommend.
I'm not sure how to tell you this, and I'm not an architect, but I don't see how the layout you're under contract for makes sense. My admittedly amateur eye sees several problems that suggest to me that there's a reason you don't see house layouts like this:
Starting with the front door, it's path is in conflict with the door to the utility room, since the utility room door swings outwards.
The reason it swings outwards is because the layout of the utility room doesn't make sense. There isn't enough depth to store the washer and dryer without them sticking out into the entry path from the door. And assuming you're putting the water heater, furnace, and panel box in here, plus possibly a stationary tub, the room isn't long enough to put them far enough back to keep them out of the immediate ingress path.
The living room-as-central-hall concept will reduce the usable space by half. My house was built in 1945 and the upstairs hallway is 36" wide, and it's narrow; newer homes have 48" hallways. I'd say three feet is the minimum clearance you'll need around the doors to have adequate movement without it being cramped. Since you have doors on both sides of the room, nearly half of the total width needs to be kept clear for ingress and egress through the area.
The upshot of the above is that there will be very little room for furniture. The couch will have to be practically in the middle of the room. I think I see how you have a plan to mount the TV on the wall between two doors. With this TV location, you'll have to get a very small "apartment sofa" dead center in the room, and you might have room for a small end table or another chair on the wall next to the door. And that's it. That also means that the highest traffic area of the house will be directly between the couch and the television.
Another issue with having a central hall is that the private areas of the house are exposed to the living area. If you're entertaining people will be looking in bedrooms, and will be going to the bathroom with nothing but an inch and a half of birch between them and the party.
Why the double doors in the bathrooms? They have conflicting swing paths and seem unnecessary. Make the master bath en suite and the spare open up to the house.
What do you need two bathrooms for? And two large bathrooms at that; a typical size for a full bath in a small house is 8' × 5'. I don't know why you'd build a house with an 800 ft² footprint and waste space on two bathrooms.
Why no basement? I know they're more expensive, but if I understand correctly you're in the Philly/NJ area, which isn't exactly the South. Here in Pittsburgh the frost line is at 36" and while I imagine it's less over there, it couldn't be that much less. Building on a slab means sinking a footer at 36" and then building up frost walls, which is still ultimately less expensive but doesn't usually make sense considering that a basement gives you a lot of extra space. Slabs are also more difficult to heat. The only time people build on slabs around here is if there's some special consideration like they're building on an old industrial site, there are mine subsidence issues, or they're in the mountains where there's shallow bedrock. The only house I saw that was build on a slab for no reason had a lot of other puzzling decisions made by the guy who built it, who I knew and was surprised he'd build a house like that.
Not as big a deal, but the lack of a rear door seems concerning.
If you want to look at efficient houses, look at a typical ranch or split-entry layout. They're all practically mirror images but when they were building tract houses in the '50s and 60's the builders wanted to maximize usable space while still making the house livable.
More options
Context Copy link