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PaperclipPerfector  19hr ago (text post)   724 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 20, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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ICC (the International Code Council), in collaboration with THIA (the Tiny Home Industry Association), is in the process of developing a new standard for "small residential units and tiny houses", ICC/THIA 1215.

  • The IRC (International Residential Code) already defines "tiny house" as 400 ft2 (37 m2) or smaller.

  • The latest draft of this new standard (available through the "documents" link on this page) additionally defines "small residential unit" as 1200 ft2 (111 m2) or smaller.

The name of the committee is "Standard for Off-Site Construction Tiny Houses", and this collaboration with THIA is building on a previous collaboration with MBI (the Modular Building Institute). However, this new standard will apply, not just to newfangled off-site (wheeled, modular, and panelized) construction, but also to traditional on-site (stick-built) construction.

For ease of visualization, here are examples of "tiny" and "small" floor plans. (I still am waiting for you to post the plan of your dream house (1 2)—or your dream neighborhood.)

(Can we extend this progression? "Normal" ≤ 3600 ft2 (334 m2), "large" ≤ 10800 ft2 (1003 m2), and "mansion" > 10,800 ft2 (1003 m2)? ;-) Generally, for apartment buildings (occupancy R-2) made of wood with no special fire rating (construction type V), the IBC prescribes limits of 7000 ft2 without sprinklers (no longer allowed in new buildings), 21,000 ft2 with spinklers and multiple stories, and 28,000 ft2 with sprinklers and one story. But no such restrictions apply to houses (occupancy R-3).)

This interesting article covers how ICC was caught flat-footed by data centers' sudden rise in popularity. In what occupancy do they belong?

  • Business, like electronic data entry?

  • Moderate-hazard factory/industrial, like lithium-ion-battery assembly and usage?

  • Moderate-hazard storage, like lithium-ion-battery storage?

This has important ramifications for code requirements.

In the end (technically not finalized at the time of this article's publication), the responsible committee decided to put it in moderate-hazard factory/industrial. (See the committee's response to proposal G38-25, contained in the "report of committee action to CAH 1" document on this page.)

ICC is in the very early stages of developing a guideline on data centers. Nothing but a tentative outline has been published so far (in the "documents" on the linked page).

Following your dream neighborhood link and a few other I found this post by @Southkraut from 1 year ago:

My wife... WORKED AS A KINDERGARDENER (emphasis hers) FOR LESS THAN HALF A YEAR

I just wanted to highlight that to the German brain "kindergardener" is literally someone who "gardens children" and is the teacher of the class, but to my American brain a "kindergardener" is someone who is enrolled in kindergarten and is the student.

I have 3 thoughts about this:

  • I'm going to have kids in kindergarten for the next 3 years. They and their "gardeners" are going to suffer through so many dad jokes along these lines.
  • I'm curious when this semantic shift happened. I assume it happened during the time of mandatory public schooling in the early 1900s, but don't know how to prove it. Google ngrams doesn't give me any meaningful insights here. (If anyone knows of any tools for studying this semantic shift, I would love to hear about them! I'm familiar with using word2vec to study semantic shifts, but I suspect this shift is too subtle for word2vec to pick up, and I don't know of any easy-to-use website for doing this analysis.)
    • Somewhat relatedly, take a look at the google ngrams of "kindergarten teacher" vs "Kindergarten Teacher". There are two clear spikes when kindergarten teacher was almost always capitalized as Kindergarten Teacher:
      • in the early 1900s (this is probably because it came from german and germans capitalize all nouns, not just proper nouns.
      • in the year 2000; this is very curious to me. I hypothesize that this capitalization is due to wanting to emphasize the importance of the Kindergarten Teacher role, but it's not 100% clear to me why. I can create all sorts of just-so stories about the rise of feminism/helicopter parenting/credentialism/etc.
  • It's curious to me that a German wrote the eggcorn "kindergarden" based on the American pronunciation of the word, when in both German and English the correct version is kindergarten (with a t instead of a d).

It's curious to me that a German wrote the eggcorn "kindergarden" based on the American pronunciation of the word, when in both German and English the correct version is kindergarten (with a t instead of a d).

Look, I'm only a grammar/spelling Nazi when other people make mistakes, OK?

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