Rov_Scam
8hr ago
A house the size of a small apartment, with a living room about the size of my office at work.
Anyway, I know I've been critical of your house, and I apologize if I've been a little hard on you, but about a decade ago I went through a crash course on all of this where I thought I knew what I was doing and ended up having my eyes opened after I decided to hire professionals. I lived in my last house from the beginning of 2014 to the end of 2023, so almost ten years. When I bought it it was 20 years old and was at just about the point where it needed remodeled, though it was technically in move-in condition. When I got to the kitchen (it was finished in May of 2015, though I can't remember when I started looking into the process), I went to a locally-owned cabinet place and took photos and sketches I had made and looked at samples with a guy who gave me some options, told me they could do what I wanted, quoted prices, and tried to sell me on all the current trends. I felt like the guy knew what he was talking about, and he gave me some printouts with the designs that we had looked at.
A few weeks later my parents told me about an Amish guy who had made furniture for them a couple years prior for a ridiculously low price and had just done a kitchen for friends of theirs for a ridiculously low price, and I should write him. It was a complicated process but I had to write him and give him my phone number, then he'd call me. I had to drive 90 minutes one way to pick him up, take him to my house to measure, then drive him back, because obviously he doesn't have a car. When I got back to his shop he quoted me a price we looked at samples and the hand-built, maple cabinets I ended up choosing cost the same as the cheapest particle board option at the cabinet place, and if I wanted them installed it would be $400 extra. Obviously this deal was too good to pass up, but the guy was no kitchen designer. He could build anything you showed him a picture of, and he kept catalogs in his shop if you needed ideas, but he didn't speak the lingo of the cabinet shop guy, and had no idea about workflow or anything. He said to just tell him what I wanted and he's build it. Not wanting to wing it, I could now afford to hire an architect to design the kitchen.
He basically told me to ignore everything the cabinet guy told me (which was a lot of things, but never a "no"). For example, I had an eat-in area that I never used since I always ate in the dining room. The only time it ever got used was when I was entertaining, and as a junk collector. I wanted to replace it with something else, so I thought I'd put cabinets on the wall for storage of seldom-used items and below that I'd have a bench that could be used as a buffet if I was entertaining, or maybe more cabinets and a counter, or maybe a desk (it was kind of a muddled idea). He told me that based on how much stuff I had I could keep the overhead cabinets but anything else was too far away from the work area to be used and bound to become a junk collector without the advantage of having people be able to sit at it during parties. That saved a couple thousand right there. This was also the time open shelving was starting to become a thing, and the cabinet guy had mentioned that. He told me that if I wanted a display shelf that was fine, but that if I wasn't already a perfectly organized person, being forced to put all my crap on public display wouldn't make me one. This guy told me tons of shit like that that I never would have thought of. He went through my stuff and asked how often I used each item, so that he could design the cabinets in such a way that the more frequently used items would be easiest to access.
So when I and someone else pointed out all the door conflicts and you said you'd just keep the doors closed all the time I reflexively thought "Does everyone in your household reflexively close doors immediately after use?" Because if the answer is no, then neither you nor anyone else is going to start doing it just because of conflicts. Habit is going to take over and will only change after dealing with the endless frustration of banging doors into each other. I love architecture, but I am not an architect, and I wouldn't try to design my own house. There are some things that you can DIY, but for some things you want to call in the pros, and with how much money is on the line and how often you use it, I wouldn't want to risk a bad house design. Nonetheless, I wish you the best of luck and hope everything works out for you.
Rov_Scam
10hr ago
The building code is meant as a strict minimum to protect health and safety. OP is an engineer whose idea of efficiency is that the ideal dwelling adheres as close to these minimums as possible. Comfort and aesthetics are of no concern here, only that the occupants aren't put at any physical risk. He's currently building a house with a living room the size of a small apartment, with a living room about the size of my office at work, and he thinks that he'll be able to rent out the second bedroom to two people because the square footage is within ICC guidelines for four adults.
Rov_Scam
11hr ago
It wasn't civil asset forfeiture. It was an evidentiary seizure pursuant to a lawfully issued warrant.
Rov_Scam
11hr ago
It wasn't frivolous, in the sense that I understand why the judge agreed to let a jury hear the case, but it was always going to be a high bar to clear. As you say:
Afroman made very specific, defamatory claims using the clear real names and likenesses of the parties he targetted. He did so intending, very specifically, to cause them reputational harm. If they were true claims, then he's very much in the clear. But surely some of those claims were just blatantly false.
True, but these claims were made in the context of, as you put it, a goofy music video. The real question was whether a normal person listening to the lyrics would treat them as statements of fact. Officer Lisa may have to deal with ridicule about her supposed love for cunnilingus, but I doubt anyone making those jokes seriously believes that she licked every pussy in town. It's the Falwell case all over again. It didn't help when the defense called family members of the officers to the stand and asked them if they took similar claims made in other rap songs seriously.
Rov_Scam
12hr ago
What you're suggesting gives kids coming out of high school two options:
-
Go to a normal college. If you don't know what you want to major in you can just take core classes the first couple years, since that's mostly what you'll be taking anyway. If you decide on a program that's too difficult or that you don't like, you can change your major at little to no additional cost, depending on when you do it and what your credit situation looks like.
-
Go to medical school where you'll immediately lock yourself into a career path. It will be more difficult and more expensive than going to a regular college, and if you can't cut it or decide you don't like it, you'll have to drop out and effectively start your education over having wasted a lot of time and money. There may also be even more of a time delay because medical schools operate on an entirely different academic calendar than the rest of the college. We also have to have duplicative faculty here, since US medical schools don't currently teach core courses.
I'm not saying that literally nobody will select option 2. What I'm saying is that it's not particularly attractive to a graduating senior, at least not enough that I think it would significantly increase the number of people going to med school. Deciding to take the plunge at age 22, after you already have a college degree and have experience with taking college-level courses is a lot different than getting thrown into the fire when you don't know what to expect.
Rov_Scam
13hr ago
I don't think the tiny house thing is ever going to take off. I don't want to say it's dead, but several years ago, when they were becoming a fad, some group tried to build one in Pittsburgh as a proof of concept that they could be used as inexpensive housing for the homeless. The house they built cost double what they expected. The conclusion they came to in the postmortem was that the fixed costs of doing anything at all aren't increased that much by expanding the square footage, so making things smaller didn't save much money. One of the big unexpected expenses they talked about that caused the price to balloon was excavation costs. Essentially, building on a city lot in a distressed area is a bit of a crapshoot in that you don't know what you're going to find. Foundations of prior structures, rubbish, old utility tie-ins, etc. They also spent a lot of money on legal fees, despite the fact that city government was pushing the project; the zoning board didn't really know how to treat it.
A bigger part of the problem, though, was economic. It only makes sense to build that kind of house if you can get the land for cheap. But in areas where land is cheap, there isn't demand for anything that modest, and the cost of construction swamps what the house can be sold for. Shortly before the tiny house debacle, the local community development corporation built a regular house on a vacant lot in the same neighborhood for $237,000 but were only able to sell it for $143,000. I'm sympathetic to arguments for subsidizing construction to alleviate a housing shortage, but it makes more sense to do renovations or build normal houses.
Rov_Scam
23hr ago
I mean, it's not something I actually look out for, but the last time I inadvertently interacted with a suspected tranny was at a suburban Burger King drive thru last year, and I saw the same person on the T last Fourth of July and I'm pretty sure there were anime pins on his/her backpack. I know that the owner of a flower shop near me employs a trans delivery driver, but that's because I know the owner and she mentioned that during a conversation in a bar. I'm sure I have seen one in the interim, and maybe even noticed, but it wasn't enough to register permanently.
I do have a second cousin who decided he was trans a couple years ago at the age of 30, but he sent an angry letter blaming them for "everything" and he hasn't appeared anywhere since, and it's been at least 15 years since I've seen him. His sister is getting married this summer and we're wondering if he will show up at the wedding. I know I'm one of the more liberal posters here but I have no special affinity for trans people, and my liberal family thinks this kid is nuts (we found out he's also a furry a few years back, because of course he is), and he is always dead named when he comes up in conversation, which isn't often.
As for Anthrocon, I haven't been downtown during the convention. I see them on the news, but that's about it. I occasionally see weirdos working at gas stations but I'm honestly not paying enough attention to speculate about their personal lives.
Was it crass? Yes. Disgusting, outrageous? Yes. Did it result in those involve being subject to ridicule and harassment? Seems like it. You can find what Afroman did as offensive as you want, but making fun of people isn't necessarily defamatory. Even in your example, the only scenario under which you'd be found liable for defamation is if the jury concluded that a reasonable person would believe that, based on the video, you had, in fact, had sex with the barista, and that this would damage her reputation. Lying about who you slept with isn't necessarily defamation, even if the lie is told in a more serious context than a rap video. What Afroman did may be intentional infliction of emotional distress, but that wasn't part of the suit.
From your other comment:
You then go on to describe all the elements of the video. Except the argument you're making is exactly the one the court rejected in Falwell. Mr. Falwell argued that the parody in question was so outrageous as to take it out of First Amendment protection, and the court ruled that that isn't a thing. All your argument boils down to is that Afroman's conduct was worse because it was more outrageous than what Hustler did. I don't see how anyone can argue with a straight face how anyone viewing that video could reasonably conclude that Afroman knew about the sexual proclivities of a police officer who was present when his home was raided, and also had video of her licking pussy with him standing in the background. The idea that anyone would be misled by that is absurd.
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