Off to vote in the town elections. A couple of spendy warrant articles on the ballot, one optional, a community center and the other fairly pressing, rebuilding a sea wall that is in imminent danger of collapsing. There are 3 option for that and I predict that the cheapest in the short run will pass. Nothing like kicking the can down the road a decade or so.
@Sleeping Dog: Stay safe. Our town elections have been postponed for two weeks. I think I’m relieved, there are a number of Free Staters on the ballot for local offices and the low turnout we would have had today probably would have worked in their favor.
@CSK: Yep, snow here. There’s already about 5″ of accumulation and it’s coming down hard. I just took the pup for her morning constitutional and she was not. pleased. I’m not sure about SD, as I’m not as close to the coast as he is.
@CSK: When we decided to move to this rural town, I insisted on a standby generator, and I’m glad I did. We lose power for hours at least once a year, and since December I think we’ve had it run for >24 hours at least 3 times. I’m guessing today will be a 4th; this is heavy, wet snow.
The term “atmospheric river” is beginning to cause me inordinate amounts of stress. We don’t need anymore snow!
We had to hire someone to bring out a big grader with three blades to clear out our calving pasture, even that monster machine cannot get through some of the snow up there. It’s not looking like it’s going to warm up enough to melt much of it off, either, in fact, we go back below zero later next week. š
Ah the joys of the town form of government. The ballot, 9 ‘cards,’ all but one double sided. Does anyone really care who the trusties of the cemetery are? I recognize that folks get partisan over the library board but why aren’t such positions appointed by the Select Board (town council)? Why place on the ballot off budget expenditures under 6 figures, sometimes even under 5.
Actually the expensive budget items were more extensive than I thought, forgetting that a cool half mil was being requested by the police for body cams, another lieutenant and a couple of squads. Plus a cool $2.8M for a pumping station and piping to relieve street flooding in a neighborhood adjacent to a salt marsh. That area likely has several inches of standing water this morning. Unfortunately that money won’t solve the problem for long. By 2050 global warming will have about a 1/3 of the properties covered with water at each high tide.
Rain so far here in Hampster, interspersed with the occasional snowflake (and I’m not referring to trump supporters).
I recognize that folks get partisan over the library board but why arenāt such positions appointed by the Select Board (town council)
New Hampshire has some of the strongest library protection laws I’ve ever encountered. One of the principles in their formation appears to have been radical independence. I would never, ever want the library trustees to be appointed by the Select Board–it would introduce politics right into the library. It’s dicey enough that the board appoints interim members when someone resigns.
When I say that libraries are independent in NH, it’s not an understatement. We have different statutory responsibilities, the standards for dismissal of library employees are insanely high, and even the budgeting is protected (towns that have libraries are required, by law, to raise and appropriate funds that provide “adequate” library funding).
After watching the problems of appointed library boards in other states, I am incredibly grateful our state has the systems it does.
Well, Donald Trump has found a new scapegoat for the violence that occurred on January 6, 2021. He blames it all on…Mike Pence.
By the way, doesn’t this acknowledgement of mayhem undercut the notion that the rioters were merely peaceful patriots strolling through the Capitol? Oh, right. The bad guys were Antifa and BLM cleverly disguised as Trumpkins. Silly me.
Well, that’s only because Pence said something mean about Benito the other day. You know, that history would hold El Cheeto accountable for that infamous day’s violence.
Oh, absolutely. Trump has to get revenge. It’s his prime motivator, even more than greed and pussy. That’s why I believe that if he doesn’t get the nomination, he’ll run third party, or urge his base to write him in on the ballot. He cares slightly less about winning than he does about every other Republican losing. Plus he’ll have the added satisfaction of saying “See? If I’d been the nominee, I’d have won.
So my twitter feed lately has been drowning in Trek tweets, specifically about Picard. The newest kerfuffle is apparently about swearing as some F-bombs were dropped and *gasp* now Trek’s been ruined by filth! Not having actually seen Picard but have seen pretty much everything else, I pointed out several cases where swearing was previously used beyond just “damn”. I really didn’t get however just how much the fandom has become toxic and I got jumped for “liking NuTrek (??) ” and “not appreciating 50 years of good writing a la Shakespeare is now gutter trash”.
I honestly don’t know where the pearl clutching is coming from. Acting like swearing in the various series and movies is new is deceptive at best and outright historical denial at its worst. Maybe they didn’t use the big one but there’s been plenty of profanity, both crass, highbrow and in other languages. Picard himself swears in English and French in TNG along with the rest of the crew. There’s a running theme going on in the complaints that OG gravitas is being lost somehow and great art is sliding towards common pabulum; a lot of the tweets have more then a whiffle of elitism by asserting swearing is “common” and “below” the enlighted Federation.
Hah! If anything, Starfleet crews would have new and creative swears to sling around while they run from dangerous situation to world-ending crisis. They’re essentially a navy and sailors traditionally are foul-mouthed. So what if it’s 400+ years in the future – you try dealing with a negative space wedgie that can vent you and see if you don’t let lose some language. In fact, I’d bet serious money that in-universe the Universal Translator has a “politeness filter” so that you don’t accidently or causally offend someone from another race or culture by…. well, by what we’re seeing on screen. If O’Brien isn’t swearing a blue streak when he’s fixing everything that gets essentially left out of his rants or reduced to “bloody”, I’m disappointed in the world building. It seems like something Starfleet would do to smooth out some edges in interplanetary contact and would mean people essentially run their mouths trusting the computer will cover for them. Bonus for the writers is that the viewer will hear the UT translation so of course there’s limited swearing in the past – it wasn’t network censorship, it was the UT being overly cautious!
Cheryl Rofer, occasional commenter here and front pager at LGM, has engaged Kevin Drum in a cross-blog conversation about AI. I’m linking to Drum’s post mostly for the picture of Cheryl’s entirely lovable cats.
There were several “F-bombs” in season 1 of the show. One by a high-ranking, female, Starfleet f*cking admiral. And that was directed at Picard himself.
I wonder if I could sell bootleg Starfleet Fainting Couches. Maybe along with Spock’s Clutching Pearls.
@Kathy:
If I’m understanding it, Picard’s the one dropping the F-bomb they’re worried about?? They didn’t seem happy about previous swearing but seemed to write it off as character specific and then were dumping on the character. Now that Picard’s getting in on it however, the snobbishness about proper language and eloquence vs lazy writing is coming out. Like he’s never said merde on air…..
I recall Jean-Luc using the F word this season. I forget exactly when.
Like heās never said merde on airā¦..
Ah, but everything in French sounds classy. š Think Poulet Cordon Rouge a la Merde. No problem picturing that on a fancy 3 Michelin Star restaurant, yes?
@Kathy: Isn’t merde considered slightly milder than the English shit, even though it’s usually translated that way?
When Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me came out, the title was considered problematic in England and some other countries but was generally not censored in US marketing. Americans just weren’t very familiar with the term shag (except the carpet, of course), and in context I think they tended to assume it was closer to screw than fuck, obscenity-wise.
I recall Jean-Luc using the F word this season. I forget exactly when.
I want to say that it was when he banged his shin on something on the bridge and shouted āmother f-bomb! Here we are in the f-bombing future and no one invented the f-bombing light bulb?ā
Thatās not what happened, but I want to say it anyway.
The show doesnāt need naughty words, and it comes off a bit juvenile to add them after 50 years of Star Trek eliding them. Itās like saying ālook, weāre mature, for mature audiences!ā It fits in the scenes, itās less than normal people use, but itās also a break from the utopian future.
Iād rather they didnāt.
But itās a trivial complaint compared to whatever the Soong family plot was last season being there, and Elnor not being there (he was fun).
I am fairly certain we’re closing in on around 18″ of snowfall today. And it’s still snowing.
Note: this is not a complaint. We’ve had several years of drought that have depleted groundwater, and as we are on a well, I am relieved to see that we’ll have some replenishment this year.
American sportscasters who go to Australia are reminded not to ask anyone “Who are you rooting for?” Means something entirely different there. Or should I say “down under”? Perhaps not….
By building a sufficient amount and kind in roughly areas where people want to live. That way prices can remain stable-ish and people can move up and down in housing as their needs change.
Location, location, location, as real estate agents always say. Downsize and build a small house on a small piece of land in a desirable neighborhood, and it will still be expensive.
@CSK: Two small houses on small lots in a desirable location, where there used to be one large house on a large lot will likely have a higher value together than the large house, but house more people and cost those people less.
Still likely quite expensive, but less expensive. Scale this up, and you are going to end up with affordable housing *somewhere* ā a less desirable neighborhood, a little out of the way but reachable. And you still have increasing value for the homeowner.
Plus, the homeowner locked in housing costs years ago, so their mortgage is less than rent, and then the mortgage goes away and then they are really packing away money, so even if their house price remained flat, they would still be doing well.
@Gustopher: As it turns out, many desirable neighborhoods have either zoning or entailments that enforce a minimum lot size, because such things maintain the value of the property – for those who don’t want to subdivide. Significant subdivision, and hence lower prices for each dwelling, will place a greater burden on civic services, and likely increase taxes as well.
We once occupied a vast country. In fact, we still do, but most of us don’t want to live in most of it any more. But we still want the big spread and the lawn and so on.
@CSK: I think the storm must have edged north and some of the totals were off. We were expected to get about 8-10″, and have far more (tough to really estimate because we are on a hill and there are a LOT of drifts that are quite deep). A friend of mine in the Keene, NH area has about 30″ (official) snowfall total. They were expected to get 12-18″. It’s a lot of snow! š
Not me. I like my postage stamp sized backyard and my inconvenient parkway. My neighbors were all aghast when I ripped out most of the cement and asphalt and replaced it with grass and a couple of trees. Half the time I think I have too much house. I don’t think I could mentally handle much more.
@Jen: Looked like that heavy, wet snow, too, from what they were showing on the Weather Channel! That’ll help your drought situation. I would send you some of mine, if I could! š
@Jay L Gischer: yes, we would need to change zoning.
I would love to put a zoning surcharge onto property tax so the fine folks who want their massive minimum lot size single family neighborhood can have itā¦ at a price. Surcharge can go into funding affordable housing elsewhere, or other school districts, or really anything that doesnāt help those particular home owners.
(This appeals to me more than simply forcing zoning changes on themā¦ make them choose between two things they love, let them scream at each other with rage at town council meetingsā¦ keep jacking up the surcharge until almost exactly 50% would rather loosen zoning than pay, to maximize the suffering!)
Seattle and/or Washington state may be refining all single family home zones to allow N-places for some value of N. Iāve not been following it closely, because itās not enough suffering.
@Kathy: Paying wages that keep pace with normal levels of inflation is a place to start. That slows down the rate at which surplus capital increases, though, so I can understand why it isn’t a favored solution. Working class wages have been hit particularly hard on this measure. People in the industry I left in 1986 are making wages that are about 40% of what I made when adjusted for inflation last time I checked.
@Beth: This is another part of the puzzle, but it may be more challenging than we realize because according to an article I read in The Atlantic (I think) housing supplies (both for ownership and rental) in many metropolitan areas are hundreds of thousands of units under demand levels. Some areas were short on the level of a million or so units, IIRC. It might not be possible to build 2 or 3 hundred thousand units in King County (Greater Seattle) for example. And certainly not quickly enough to level demand curves. But yeah, stupid is a good starting point all the same, at least in my LTCHO.
@Jay L Gischer: This was one of the issues the article in The Atlantic brought up, as I recall. Another similar one was that “acceptable size” for both ownership houses and rental units has scaled larger by a significant level. And that issue has been with us for a long time. When my Aunt and Uncle visited me at the townhouse I bought in 1979, she declared it (at 1500 square feet) as an “acceptable starter home.” To which my uncle replied “[expletive, deleted] Maxine, this is larger than the first two homes we owned.” For the record, I was single at the time and had moved from a 400 sq.ft. one bedroom apartment. (And now live in an ~400 sq.ft studio.)
Wage stagnation is a widespread problem lots of politicians, especially on the right, are trying very, very hard to ignore.
I wonder, too, at the penchant for single-family, stand-alone homes on relatively large tracts of land. Wouldn’t apartment buildings be a better idea to ease housing shortages?
@Kathy: The problem being that people have a penchant for acquiring animals, and most rental properties (probably rightly so, as far as damage) don’t allow pets of any sort.
That’s the main problem I see around here as far as low-income housing, or even decently priced housing at all. No pets. Some don’t even allow children. š
@gVOR08: So, I went and read Cheryl’s comment and Kevin’s reply, and…
I lost a lot of respect for Kevin Drum.
He said:
The real usefulness of current machine learning software is that it’s a (necessary) step along the way to AGIāartificial general intelligence. AGI will be able to do pretty much anything humans can do, and shortly after that it will be able to do more than humans can do.
…which is basically a religious belief, not anything founded on technical reality. And apparently he realizes that, because then he said:
Now, if you don’t believe that we’ll ever be able to produce AGI, or that it’s hundreds of years away, then there’s nothing to talk about.
Right! If you don’t agree that Cthulhu is our Natural Lord, then there’s nothing to talk about. La la la I can’t hear you.
I am reasonably conversant (for a layman) with how ChatGPT works, and it’s clear that it isn’t anywhere remotely related to hypothetical AGI. It’s a bullshitting engine powered by the ability to summarize what zillions of people have said in the past, statistically speaking, while mostly preserving decent grammar and syntax. To extrapolate from there to AGI is pretty much like extrapolating from Eliza to Data. From Google to HAL. Which is a perfectly reasonable topic of debate, unless you stifle the debate by preemptively saying “If you don’t accept my religious belief as fact, we can’t converse.”
@Beth: Ha. That’s the standard problem where I live: what used to be nice small houses proportioned to the size of the lot having multiple additions added over the years so they’re now hulking overbuilt monsters with maybe 5 feet of clear space between the walls and the property lot limit.
Makes me wonder if at any point we’ll start seeing the reverse sort of construction, where the additions are torn out so that the house can go back to the original appropriate footprint.
(How’s the recovery from surgery going, by the way? I assume everything is fine?)
@DrDaveT: That seems like an awfully uncharitable reading. His very next sentence is, “We’ll just have to wait a decade or two and see what happens.” He’s not shutting down the argument, simply acknowledging that competing predictions of the future are inherently unfalsifiable right now.
And he follows that by saying that, if he’s right, then all manner of benefits will flow. I haven’t the foggiest whether he’s right, but I’m skeptical. And I’ve read and seen enough sci-fi to be pretty sure that all manner of bad stuff will follow along with the good if it does come to pass. (Not to mention the sheer devastation of the knowledge economy, which requires no sci-fi to predict.)
That seems like an awfully uncharitable reading. His very next sentence is, āWeāll just have to wait a decade or two and see what happens.ā
I’m trying to find the connection between those two sentences, and I can’t.
It’s certainly true that AGI would have sweeping implications. It’s also true that the discovery of Hogwarts-style magic and/or cold fusion would have sweeping implications. Musing about those implications, taking as given that one or the other will happen, is a fun thought experiment for an undergrad bull session, not journalism. Especially not if followed by “We’ll just have to wait a decade or two to find out.”
@DrDaveT: If I say, “Just wait and see—the Dallas Cowboys will finally win another Super Bowl this year!” it’s perfectly reasonable to reply with statistics about how 30-year-old quarterbacks who have never taken a team to a conference title game have never gone on to win a Super Bowl and the like. That doesn’t mean my prediction can’t come true!
In this case, Drum’s purpose isn’t to argue with readers whether his prediction is right but to answer Cheryl Rofer’s question about why people like him are so excited about the possibilities.
Off to vote in the town elections. A couple of spendy warrant articles on the ballot, one optional, a community center and the other fairly pressing, rebuilding a sea wall that is in imminent danger of collapsing. There are 3 option for that and I predict that the cheapest in the short run will pass. Nothing like kicking the can down the road a decade or so.
@Sleeping Dog: Stay safe. Our town elections have been postponed for two weeks. I think I’m relieved, there are a number of Free Staters on the ballot for local offices and the low turnout we would have had today probably would have worked in their favor.
@Jen:
Is it snowing where you and SD are in NH? We here in NE Mass. were supposed to get buried, and so far it’s only rain.
@CSK: Yep, snow here. There’s already about 5″ of accumulation and it’s coming down hard. I just took the pup for her morning constitutional and she was not. pleased. I’m not sure about SD, as I’m not as close to the coast as he is.
Well, here’s hoping that you all stay warm and don’t lose power. I just checked and the rain here is supposed to switch over to snow by 9 a.m.
I have coffee, vodka, food, toilet paper, and much to read, so I’m good. š
@CSK: When we decided to move to this rural town, I insisted on a standby generator, and I’m glad I did. We lose power for hours at least once a year, and since December I think we’ve had it run for >24 hours at least 3 times. I’m guessing today will be a 4th; this is heavy, wet snow.
You people are reminding me why we pay so much to live in San Diego.
Stay warm and safe!
The term “atmospheric river” is beginning to cause me inordinate amounts of stress. We don’t need anymore snow!
We had to hire someone to bring out a big grader with three blades to clear out our calving pasture, even that monster machine cannot get through some of the snow up there. It’s not looking like it’s going to warm up enough to melt much of it off, either, in fact, we go back below zero later next week. š
Ah the joys of the town form of government. The ballot, 9 ‘cards,’ all but one double sided. Does anyone really care who the trusties of the cemetery are? I recognize that folks get partisan over the library board but why aren’t such positions appointed by the Select Board (town council)? Why place on the ballot off budget expenditures under 6 figures, sometimes even under 5.
Actually the expensive budget items were more extensive than I thought, forgetting that a cool half mil was being requested by the police for body cams, another lieutenant and a couple of squads. Plus a cool $2.8M for a pumping station and piping to relieve street flooding in a neighborhood adjacent to a salt marsh. That area likely has several inches of standing water this morning. Unfortunately that money won’t solve the problem for long. By 2050 global warming will have about a 1/3 of the properties covered with water at each high tide.
Rain so far here in Hampster, interspersed with the occasional snowflake (and I’m not referring to trump supporters).
@Sleeping Dog:
New Hampshire has some of the strongest library protection laws I’ve ever encountered. One of the principles in their formation appears to have been radical independence. I would never, ever want the library trustees to be appointed by the Select Board–it would introduce politics right into the library. It’s dicey enough that the board appoints interim members when someone resigns.
When I say that libraries are independent in NH, it’s not an understatement. We have different statutory responsibilities, the standards for dismissal of library employees are insanely high, and even the budgeting is protected (towns that have libraries are required, by law, to raise and appropriate funds that provide “adequate” library funding).
After watching the problems of appointed library boards in other states, I am incredibly grateful our state has the systems it does.
Well, Donald Trump has found a new scapegoat for the violence that occurred on January 6, 2021. He blames it all on…Mike Pence.
By the way, doesn’t this acknowledgement of mayhem undercut the notion that the rioters were merely peaceful patriots strolling through the Capitol? Oh, right. The bad guys were Antifa and BLM cleverly disguised as Trumpkins. Silly me.
@CSK:
Well, that’s only because Pence said something mean about Benito the other day. You know, that history would hold El Cheeto accountable for that infamous day’s violence.
The pathology is quite clear.
@Kathy:
Oh, absolutely. Trump has to get revenge. It’s his prime motivator, even more than greed and pussy. That’s why I believe that if he doesn’t get the nomination, he’ll run third party, or urge his base to write him in on the ballot. He cares slightly less about winning than he does about every other Republican losing. Plus he’ll have the added satisfaction of saying “See? If I’d been the nominee, I’d have won.
So my twitter feed lately has been drowning in Trek tweets, specifically about Picard. The newest kerfuffle is apparently about swearing as some F-bombs were dropped and *gasp* now Trek’s been ruined by filth! Not having actually seen Picard but have seen pretty much everything else, I pointed out several cases where swearing was previously used beyond just “damn”. I really didn’t get however just how much the fandom has become toxic and I got jumped for “liking NuTrek (??) ” and “not appreciating 50 years of good writing a la Shakespeare is now gutter trash”.
I honestly don’t know where the pearl clutching is coming from. Acting like swearing in the various series and movies is new is deceptive at best and outright historical denial at its worst. Maybe they didn’t use the big one but there’s been plenty of profanity, both crass, highbrow and in other languages. Picard himself swears in English and French in TNG along with the rest of the crew. There’s a running theme going on in the complaints that OG gravitas is being lost somehow and great art is sliding towards common pabulum; a lot of the tweets have more then a whiffle of elitism by asserting swearing is “common” and “below” the enlighted Federation.
Hah! If anything, Starfleet crews would have new and creative swears to sling around while they run from dangerous situation to world-ending crisis. They’re essentially a navy and sailors traditionally are foul-mouthed. So what if it’s 400+ years in the future – you try dealing with a negative space wedgie that can vent you and see if you don’t let lose some language. In fact, I’d bet serious money that in-universe the Universal Translator has a “politeness filter” so that you don’t accidently or causally offend someone from another race or culture by…. well, by what we’re seeing on screen. If O’Brien isn’t swearing a blue streak when he’s fixing everything that gets essentially left out of his rants or reduced to “bloody”, I’m disappointed in the world building. It seems like something Starfleet would do to smooth out some edges in interplanetary contact and would mean people essentially run their mouths trusting the computer will cover for them. Bonus for the writers is that the viewer will hear the UT translation so of course there’s limited swearing in the past – it wasn’t network censorship, it was the UT being overly cautious!
Cheryl Rofer, occasional commenter here and front pager at LGM, has engaged Kevin Drum in a cross-blog conversation about AI. I’m linking to Drum’s post mostly for the picture of Cheryl’s entirely lovable cats.
@KM:
Now?
There were several “F-bombs” in season 1 of the show. One by a high-ranking, female, Starfleet f*cking admiral. And that was directed at Picard himself.
I wonder if I could sell bootleg Starfleet Fainting Couches. Maybe along with Spock’s Clutching Pearls.
@KM: Well, to be fair, they did look to be pretty screwed in Season 3 ep. 3. I think I’d be dropping f-bombs too.
@Kathy:
If I’m understanding it, Picard’s the one dropping the F-bomb they’re worried about?? They didn’t seem happy about previous swearing but seemed to write it off as character specific and then were dumping on the character. Now that Picard’s getting in on it however, the snobbishness about proper language and eloquence vs lazy writing is coming out. Like he’s never said merde on air…..
@KM:
I recall Jean-Luc using the F word this season. I forget exactly when.
Ah, but everything in French sounds classy. š Think Poulet Cordon Rouge a la Merde. No problem picturing that on a fancy 3 Michelin Star restaurant, yes?
@Kathy: Isn’t merde considered slightly milder than the English shit, even though it’s usually translated that way?
When Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me came out, the title was considered problematic in England and some other countries but was generally not censored in US marketing. Americans just weren’t very familiar with the term shag (except the carpet, of course), and in context I think they tended to assume it was closer to screw than fuck, obscenity-wise.
@Kathy:
I want to say that it was when he banged his shin on something on the bridge and shouted āmother f-bomb! Here we are in the f-bombing future and no one invented the f-bombing light bulb?ā
Thatās not what happened, but I want to say it anyway.
The show doesnāt need naughty words, and it comes off a bit juvenile to add them after 50 years of Star Trek eliding them. Itās like saying ālook, weāre mature, for mature audiences!ā It fits in the scenes, itās less than normal people use, but itās also a break from the utopian future.
Iād rather they didnāt.
But itās a trivial complaint compared to whatever the Soong family plot was last season being there, and Elnor not being there (he was fun).
@Kathy:
Another example.
I love the way these open forums meander. We go from snow to Trump to feces.
Some might say that is a logical progression.
@CSK:
Bahahaha. True facts.
@Kylopod:
@Gustopher:
@dazedandconfused:
When it comes to cursing, I’m more discomfited by references to bodily functions than to reproductive matters.
Having read a lot of Tom Clancy in the 90s, I kind of got used to it.
gVOR08- My Siamese are much more adorable.
Steve
I am fairly certain we’re closing in on around 18″ of snowfall today. And it’s still snowing.
Note: this is not a complaint. We’ve had several years of drought that have depleted groundwater, and as we are on a well, I am relieved to see that we’ll have some replenishment this year.
@Kylopod:
American sportscasters who go to Australia are reminded not to ask anyone “Who are you rooting for?” Means something entirely different there. Or should I say “down under”? Perhaps not….
@Jen:
Wow. We ended up with about 5 inches, not the 10-13 predicted. It’s good, though, about the groundwater.
The current banking issues and the inevitable association to the 2008 banking meltdown, got me thinking about housing.
The principle involved in owning one’s home is to build equity. Fair enough, most things one buys depreciate in value. Homes appreciate.
But then how can we have homes that constantly increase in value and provide affordable housing for all, at the same time?
@Kathy:
By building a sufficient amount and kind in roughly areas where people want to live. That way prices can remain stable-ish and people can move up and down in housing as their needs change.
We canāt do that in the US cause we are stupid.
@Kathy: @Beth:
Location, location, location, as real estate agents always say. Downsize and build a small house on a small piece of land in a desirable neighborhood, and it will still be expensive.
@CSK: Two small houses on small lots in a desirable location, where there used to be one large house on a large lot will likely have a higher value together than the large house, but house more people and cost those people less.
Still likely quite expensive, but less expensive. Scale this up, and you are going to end up with affordable housing *somewhere* ā a less desirable neighborhood, a little out of the way but reachable. And you still have increasing value for the homeowner.
Plus, the homeowner locked in housing costs years ago, so their mortgage is less than rent, and then the mortgage goes away and then they are really packing away money, so even if their house price remained flat, they would still be doing well.
@Kathy: I donāt think f-bombs have much to do with reproductive matters, anymore than āmore than I can bearā has to do with big furry animals.
Itās effectively a homophone in most usage.
@Gustopher: As it turns out, many desirable neighborhoods have either zoning or entailments that enforce a minimum lot size, because such things maintain the value of the property – for those who don’t want to subdivide. Significant subdivision, and hence lower prices for each dwelling, will place a greater burden on civic services, and likely increase taxes as well.
We once occupied a vast country. In fact, we still do, but most of us don’t want to live in most of it any more. But we still want the big spread and the lawn and so on.
@CSK: I think the storm must have edged north and some of the totals were off. We were expected to get about 8-10″, and have far more (tough to really estimate because we are on a hill and there are a LOT of drifts that are quite deep). A friend of mine in the Keene, NH area has about 30″ (official) snowfall total. They were expected to get 12-18″. It’s a lot of snow! š
Around 5pm I did the driveway, it was about 3″ of slush, that probably would have an official measurement of about 6″ as it fell.
@Jay L Gischer:
Not me. I like my postage stamp sized backyard and my inconvenient parkway. My neighbors were all aghast when I ripped out most of the cement and asphalt and replaced it with grass and a couple of trees. Half the time I think I have too much house. I don’t think I could mentally handle much more.
@Jen: Looked like that heavy, wet snow, too, from what they were showing on the Weather Channel! That’ll help your drought situation. I would send you some of mine, if I could! š
@Sleeping Dog:
That sounds really unpleasant.
@Jay L Gischer: yes, we would need to change zoning.
I would love to put a zoning surcharge onto property tax so the fine folks who want their massive minimum lot size single family neighborhood can have itā¦ at a price. Surcharge can go into funding affordable housing elsewhere, or other school districts, or really anything that doesnāt help those particular home owners.
(This appeals to me more than simply forcing zoning changes on themā¦ make them choose between two things they love, let them scream at each other with rage at town council meetingsā¦ keep jacking up the surcharge until almost exactly 50% would rather loosen zoning than pay, to maximize the suffering!)
Seattle and/or Washington state may be refining all single family home zones to allow N-places for some value of N. Iāve not been following it closely, because itās not enough suffering.
@Kathy: Paying wages that keep pace with normal levels of inflation is a place to start. That slows down the rate at which surplus capital increases, though, so I can understand why it isn’t a favored solution. Working class wages have been hit particularly hard on this measure. People in the industry I left in 1986 are making wages that are about 40% of what I made when adjusted for inflation last time I checked.
@Beth: This is another part of the puzzle, but it may be more challenging than we realize because according to an article I read in The Atlantic (I think) housing supplies (both for ownership and rental) in many metropolitan areas are hundreds of thousands of units under demand levels. Some areas were short on the level of a million or so units, IIRC. It might not be possible to build 2 or 3 hundred thousand units in King County (Greater Seattle) for example. And certainly not quickly enough to level demand curves. But yeah, stupid is a good starting point all the same, at least in my LTCHO.
@Jay L Gischer: This was one of the issues the article in The Atlantic brought up, as I recall. Another similar one was that “acceptable size” for both ownership houses and rental units has scaled larger by a significant level. And that issue has been with us for a long time. When my Aunt and Uncle visited me at the townhouse I bought in 1979, she declared it (at 1500 square feet) as an “acceptable starter home.” To which my uncle replied “[expletive, deleted] Maxine, this is larger than the first two homes we owned.” For the record, I was single at the time and had moved from a 400 sq.ft. one bedroom apartment. (And now live in an ~400 sq.ft studio.)
@./: I don’t know why autofill changed “Just nutha ignint cracker” to “./” just now, but I blame poor motor skills.
And I’ll just throw this little school lunch menu bomb into the conversation to take us in yet another direction. Ally’all can decide for yourselves whether this is an idea whose time has come or not.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Wage stagnation is a widespread problem lots of politicians, especially on the right, are trying very, very hard to ignore.
I wonder, too, at the penchant for single-family, stand-alone homes on relatively large tracts of land. Wouldn’t apartment buildings be a better idea to ease housing shortages?
@Kathy: The problem being that people have a penchant for acquiring animals, and most rental properties (probably rightly so, as far as damage) don’t allow pets of any sort.
That’s the main problem I see around here as far as low-income housing, or even decently priced housing at all. No pets. Some don’t even allow children. š
@gVOR08: So, I went and read Cheryl’s comment and Kevin’s reply, and…
I lost a lot of respect for Kevin Drum.
He said:
…which is basically a religious belief, not anything founded on technical reality. And apparently he realizes that, because then he said:
Right! If you don’t agree that Cthulhu is our Natural Lord, then there’s nothing to talk about. La la la I can’t hear you.
I am reasonably conversant (for a layman) with how ChatGPT works, and it’s clear that it isn’t anywhere remotely related to hypothetical AGI. It’s a bullshitting engine powered by the ability to summarize what zillions of people have said in the past, statistically speaking, while mostly preserving decent grammar and syntax. To extrapolate from there to AGI is pretty much like extrapolating from Eliza to Data. From Google to HAL. Which is a perfectly reasonable topic of debate, unless you stifle the debate by preemptively saying “If you don’t accept my religious belief as fact, we can’t converse.”
@Beth: Ha. That’s the standard problem where I live: what used to be nice small houses proportioned to the size of the lot having multiple additions added over the years so they’re now hulking overbuilt monsters with maybe 5 feet of clear space between the walls and the property lot limit.
Makes me wonder if at any point we’ll start seeing the reverse sort of construction, where the additions are torn out so that the house can go back to the original appropriate footprint.
(How’s the recovery from surgery going, by the way? I assume everything is fine?)
@DrDaveT: That seems like an awfully uncharitable reading. His very next sentence is, “We’ll just have to wait a decade or two and see what happens.” He’s not shutting down the argument, simply acknowledging that competing predictions of the future are inherently unfalsifiable right now.
And he follows that by saying that, if he’s right, then all manner of benefits will flow. I haven’t the foggiest whether he’s right, but I’m skeptical. And I’ve read and seen enough sci-fi to be pretty sure that all manner of bad stuff will follow along with the good if it does come to pass. (Not to mention the sheer devastation of the knowledge economy, which requires no sci-fi to predict.)
@James Joyner:
I’m trying to find the connection between those two sentences, and I can’t.
It’s certainly true that AGI would have sweeping implications. It’s also true that the discovery of Hogwarts-style magic and/or cold fusion would have sweeping implications. Musing about those implications, taking as given that one or the other will happen, is a fun thought experiment for an undergrad bull session, not journalism. Especially not if followed by “We’ll just have to wait a decade or two to find out.”
@DrDaveT: If I say, “Just wait and see—the Dallas Cowboys will finally win another Super Bowl this year!” it’s perfectly reasonable to reply with statistics about how 30-year-old quarterbacks who have never taken a team to a conference title game have never gone on to win a Super Bowl and the like. That doesn’t mean my prediction can’t come true!
In this case, Drum’s purpose isn’t to argue with readers whether his prediction is right but to answer Cheryl Rofer’s question about why people like him are so excited about the possibilities.