domain:dynomight.net
grendel-khan
i'm sorry, but it's more complicated than that
1d ago
That's interesting. I thought it had a lot to say about how shame can fester and turn into something worse, about how you don't really accept someone if you try and cover up the unsavory parts of them, about how when you lie to your friends because you're afraid of what they might think, the LIE is much more important than what you originally were afraid of them judging you for.
Maybe these seem really straightforward or trite, but it's a kids movie, and those are pretty good kids movie morals.
LazyLongposter
1d ago
Sounds like Los Angeles to me. I grew up in the Los Angeles area during the best time to grow up there (I might make a top level post about this some time) and it is essentially unrecognizable. I'm no stranger to city living, but whenever I go back, it's almost an anxiety attack as every street, every home, every parking spot is filled beyond its natural capacity in every sense of the word. Small streets are covered in towering luxury apartments that replaced the more meager (and more charming) buildings that preceded them. Single family homes are filled with people, leaving 3-5 cars to somehow fill out the driveways and street parking to the point that visiting is almost impossible unless you coordinate in advance with the people that you are visiting. Shopping centers, as you mention, are plopped down in areas that cannot support them, and the traffic (and light pollution, which is never something I thought I'd care about) make the entire area unpleasant. I know Los Angeles hate has been low hanging fruit for decades, but the city is in such an unlivable state these days I can hardly believe it.
Celestial-body-NOS
We are all human beans. Together, we will rice.
1d ago
I suspect that there would be less envy in the world if people got the impression that those above them were trying to pull everyone else up to their level rather than trying to keep them down.
If you try to productively use an empty spot of remote land, they'll suddenly recall it is sacred.
https://www.civilbeat.org/2015/12/peter-apo-let-there-be-light-on-the-tmt/
The unsupported assertions that it has always been sacred will be credulously repeated by journalists and bootstrap a legally protected "sacred" spot that cannot be mined or have a telescope on it. Major news publications will assert that the spot is sacred since ancient times. The lack belief of sacredness predating the attempt to build something on the remote empty spot doesn't concern journalists or activists.
Celestial-body-NOS
We are all human beans. Together, we will rice.
1d ago
At least the nobility had the decency to look impressive....
grendel-khan
i'm sorry, but it's more complicated than that
1d ago
First they took my em-dashes, and now this‽
This is indeed me attempting to be more consciously agreeable. I have a history of being aggressively negative and downright disagreeable in my comments, and I'm trying to go in the opposite direction. It's also influenced by seeing people who supposedly agree with me being incredibly unpleasant on the internet, and wanting to do the opposite of that.
Which is, I think, similar to what's happening with LLMs, in that they are designed to be extremely agreeable so people continue to engage with them.
Which is to say, that's a really great point, and you are a special and insightful person for making it! It's not just an insight—it's a whole new perspective that you've uncovered!
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1d ago
You, @sarker and @TitaniumButterfly have all made that point and I will admit it's persuasive. So I will amend my statement: it is possible for one person to produce infinitely more value than another, but only in the degenerate case where one of the people is doing nothing or is a net negative to productivity. I don't think it's possible for that to occur in a normal case (where both people are actually producing value), however.
Personally, I don't believe it's possible for one person to produce 1000x the value of another.
I have numerous coworkers that produce negative net value, so it's possible to have one person produce infinitely (or undefined, or NaN, or whatever) more value than another.
But someone like Jim Keller absolutely provides 1000x more revenue to his employers than, say, an offshore code monkey in Mumbai writing JavaScript.
The front door's path is in conflict with the door to the utility room, since the utility room door swings outwards.
I fail to see how that is a problem. I do not expect that people will be using both doors simultaneously very often.
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 washer and dryer are all the way on the left side, facing toward the door. There is no furnace, since heating and cooling are provided by a ductless heat-pump system (one of the versions that still works at low temperatures). See this image, drawn by the contractor's drafter before I remembered to have the direction of the laundry/utility room's door reversed.
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.
I agree that 48 inches is a good width for a corridor. (My (mother's) current house has a 30-inch corridor, and it's quite annoying.) In corridor-based designs, I use 48-inch corridors. However, this is a dining/living room, not a corridor. There are two different 36-inch paths around the central tables for people to use.
The television mount is intended to be a mount that can pivot to face any direction.
Also, I never use the dining/living room in my (mother's) current house, so I don't care much about it.
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.
All four of the doors between the dining/living room and the bedroom+bathroom suites will be steel "exterior" doors with weather stripping, not flimsy "interior" doors that easily transmit noise and smell.
Also, I don't expect to be entertaining many people.
Why the double doors in the bathrooms?
The intent is to make either one of the bedroom+bathroom suites a suitable master suite, rather than locking in only one of them as the master.
What do you need two bathrooms for?
In my (mother's) current house, I generally have been slightly annoyed at having to share a bathroom with her. Also, having two bathrooms makes renting out one bedroom easier if it becomes necessary for financial reasons.
And two large bathrooms at that; a typical size for a full bath in a small house is 8′ × 5′.
ICC A117.1 prescribes several different levels of accessibility. Generally, under an "aging in place" perspective, I am seeking to make this house compliant with "type B"—not so extreme as "accessible" or "type A", but not so minimal as "type C". I have determined that 10′×5′ (or a little less than 10′, depending on how close the doors are to the perpendicular walls) is the minimum size of a bathroom compliant with ICC A117.1 "type B" (able to accommodate a 30″×48″ wheelchair clearance, but not including the extravagant 5-foot-diameter circular turning space required under "accessible" and "type A").
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.
Prior to hiring the contractor, I hired an architect for initial feasibility checking. According to him, adding a basement would increase the cost of one of my designs by 40 percent (for a 988-ft2 design, from 133 k$ to 188 k$, not including the contractor's overhead and profit). I don't think that's a reasonable use of my limited funds. (This was long before I became aware of the 2019 RSMeans book. Now that I have the RSMeans book, which estimates a cost differential of only 10 percent for an unfinished basement or 24 percent for a finished basement, I feel a bit more skeptical of the architect's calculation. Still, he's the expert. I haven't asked the contractor about it, and I don't see much reason to now that I've signed a contract for a no-basement build.)
The slab will have R-10 foam-board insulation underneath it. (I argued to the contractor that the IRC mandates R-20 insulation under a slab floor in zone 5A (cool humid). But the contractor disagrees with my interpretation and thinks that R-20 under-slab insulation would be prone to compression over time.)
The lack of a rear door seems concerning.
The IRC mandates that in every bedroom at least one window be big enough and low enough that a person can clamber through it easily, so I don't see much need for a back door.
Shrike
1d ago
Ah yes this makes sense - and yes, I do think it's correct that the Russians don't have the capability to generate aircraft in numbers approaching that of the US or China.
I do seem to recall when last I checked that their 40 or so losses of Su-34s had probably set them back about a year's worth of production, which I really don't think is all that bad, particularly considering how small the Su-34 fleet is. Whether or not they can afford to purchase them, though, I don't know - and losses of aircraft that aren't still in production (IIRC: Su-25s, Su-24s, Tu-95s and Tu-22Ms) will obviously hurt quite a bit more.
BurdensomeCount
Unable to escape TheMotte's cycle of Samsara...
1d ago
I don't understand why these people don't want to let developers just make money? It's not like developers are even particularly bourgeoisie, hedge fund types and associated financial wizards are able to make bank much more freely in California.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Yeah, I know. My original question was about the grounds for the negative to reaction to such laws, if we assume the statement in your comment was true.
2D3D
1d ago
I agree in concept since thats just an obvious operational reality like how china got H100s through alternative sources, but ultimately it still means its a critical bottleneck that was neither defended against nor avoided in advance.
I think its fair to say that this forum accepts the disadvantages of immigration as prima facie but the cultural overhang of the 2010s is casting a shadow too long and comprehensive to be avoided. I sincerely think the Chinese century will be worse for the world, mainly because the global efficiency subsidy of the pax americana has benefitted many smaller nations that would have fought unnecessary kinetic conflicts without uncle sams threat Implication. China is more likely to revert to a neo-Ming semi tributary system to focus on its internal population and if the rest of the world burns in unnecessary conflict what impact could it have on the heavenly kingdom.
remzem
1d ago
I have a family member that lives in SoCal and they've recently built higher density housing along the freeway and metrolink stop there. The result has been a massive spike in local traffic, the shopping centers nearby are so crowded that they no longer even bother going to them and generally avoid businesses near the freeway, opting to drive to grocery stores and shopping further away. Lights back up to the point that they routinely get stuck stopped at green lights waiting for the intersection in front of them to empty near these areas.
Doesn't really seem like it'd take a genius to figure this out, but it turns out that just because you live next to a metrolink or freeway or other "quality public transit" doesn't mean you will hop on one or hop on the freeway and drive 30 minutes every time you want to leave your house for basic things. Maybe some people use it to commute, but the local area is still negatively effected. Whatever small shopping centers they might build into these higher density housing can't compete with all the amenities offered by the preexisting suburban sprawl. So you basically just end up plopping a bunch more people in an area with roads and parking lots not equipped for it. Also, the rent on these places wasn't any lower and rent has continued to rise precipitously in the area.
No_one
1d ago
By 'mastodon' I mean the federated network, not 'mastodon.social' .
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
1d ago
The simplest explanation is that yes, corporations can gain such scale and power that paying the CEO 100 million dollars makes sense in a free market economy. Corporate officers are merely the highest-paid employees in a corporate structure and their salaries are not fixed by a mysterious cabal. If a board of directors could pay them less, they would and could. The ability and talent to grow a firm is rare: you can't hire Steve Jobs and Elon Musks off the street, and even if you can, you have to pay them for the opportunity cost of them not going off and pursuing their own ventures.
quiet_NaN
1d ago
I mean, what country can you point to where lots of citizens choose public transportation over automobiles for non-economic reasons?
Personally, costs aside, there are a lot of European cities where I would rather travel by public transport than driving a car. Driving a car in a big city is not my idea of a great time even if I do not get stuck in a traffic jam. Then there is always the problem of finding a parking spot, which can quickly eat up any time savings from being able to take the most direct route with the car.
Currently, I commute by car because my commute is 10min by car, 20min by bike, or 30min by public transport. If public transport was 15min instead, I would prefer that -- 5 minutes of being at home is not worth 15 minutes of watching videos while on public transport to me.
For people who go to the city for a drink, taking a car is not a great option, obviously.
I will grant you that once cars are fully autonomous, a lot of the downsides will disappear, as the car can keep you entertained en route and then dropping you off before searching for a parking spot. Still, the amount of people you can transport with a metro if you have a train every two minutes is rather impressive, and I do not see cars with one passenger per vehicle replacing that.
MiddleAgedMan
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
1d ago
I believe the larger bills were discontinued largely to inhibit illegal activities, making it more difficult to store and move large quantities of cash without tracking. As with many goverment regulations, it had the unfortunate knock-on effect of making life more difficult for law-abiding citizens.
I can remember having a $500 bill in the late eighties, having colored up a summer's worth of high school job savings. I ended up dropping that in the church collection plate as one of my last acts as a believer.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Skeletor
1d ago
I have lots of room for food in my large house. I don't even go to the store and pick it up off the shelves myself, I order it from Wal-Mart and have them stuff it in the trunk for me. I will absolutely sell out to transgender wokies, or Sharia law types, or literal fascists before I carry home my one little bag of groceries with like a stalk of celery and a baguette sticking out the top like someone living in some Old World city originally designed for donkey carts.
It's just corporate management speech in text form. It existed well before LLMs and is where their speech patterns come from and are aimed at.
It isn't artificial as much as it is a bit soulless, which I suppose might be fitting for the output of a literal machine.
erwgv3g34
1d ago
We need cars so that we can live in suburbs, and we need suburbs because all the urban cores were taken over by the black underclass after the end of segregation.
Repeal the Civil Rights Act and then we can talk about walkable cities.
Thoroughlygruntled
1d ago
I have the same reaction, but I see it less as a left/right thing than as a "videogame turned politics streamer" thing. I just think that niche tends to run more right-wing in general. It's the product of a generation of commentators raised on 4chan shitposting rather than Walter Cronkite. Content aside, this guy gives me the same sense of revulsion I get from Hasan Piker.
BurdensomeCount
Unable to escape TheMotte's cycle of Samsara...
1d ago
If your grocery store is 2 minutes down the road going to it multiple times a week is not an issue. In fact it's preferable because you can get stuff when you want it and not have it clogging up space in your home.
I don't wanna go to a tiny ass overpriced bodega. I want Walmart. Unfortunately due to physical limitations it's impossible to have everyone live 2 minutes from a decent sized store.
10-15 minute walk is doable depending on the urban layout but that's pushing the distance where you start considering driving.
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