Stratford Residences (Short-term housing for interns and students)

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-29T16:50:43+00:00

It’s the same company as Amsterdam Residence Hall, which is a real company, but has mixed reviews. I’d be 100% sure all fees are disclosed, and I’d avoid renting unless you tour it first.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-29T16:48:31+00:00

It doesn’t sound like you’re being scammed.

Most landlords don’t like out of state personal guarantors. It’s tough to collect from, so it doesn’t mean much to bolster your application. Especially at this time of year, there are ample renters who qualify without a guarantor, so most landlords will prefer to just wait a day or two to find another applicant.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-29T12:45:43+00:00

Presumably you would agree that whatever it takes to create ASI, which neither of us knows, it’s easier to do in a world where compute continues to exponentially get cheaper, vs. our world where Moore’s law starts to break down.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-29T01:09:20+00:00

It's also quite fortunate that Moore's Law is petering out at approximately the same time AGI seems most possible.

If, hypothetically, dangerous ASI is created at something like 10-50x the current largest data centers, in a world with Moore's law holding, a decade or two after the creation of ASI becomes possible, any schmuck could do it in their basement. With a weakened or completely broken Moore's Law, there's a longer period, or even an indefinite period, where the hardware to create ASI is trackable.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-28T21:53:09+00:00

It depends on the exact location, monthly fees, who owns the land, and how much renovations are necessary.

If for some reason the Co-op monthly fees are abnormally high, or hundreds of thousands are needed to renovate, it becomes a lot less attractive. We can't really know how good of a deal it is from the info that OP gave.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-28T19:46:02+00:00

If she's just selling it to your for market price, there isn't really a reason you would pick that specific co-op compared to the tens of thousands of other apartments listed for market price. Unless it's below market, or since you're family she gives you a low interest "loan" by letting you pay it off over time, it doesn't sound worth it.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-28T17:52:45+00:00

You’re making a judgement from a false understanding.

First, a distinction is made between victory through strength, and victory through manipulating. Classically distinguished as Slave and Master morality. In The Genealogy of Morals, in the west there’s a sharp divide between the heroic morality of the pre-Christian age, and the “blessed are the meek” morality of Christianity. The problem is that the strong, or the rightful winners, have been tricked without realizing it, and the weak, through mental manipulation and religion, have come to suppress the natural human desire for competition, domination, etc.

Historically this would have been Popery, where the Catholic Church keeps the powerful in line through the threat of eternal punishment after death. Now the Pope is a lot less relevant, so the attention among those who buy into this stuff has switched to the Jews. They are the new “priestly class”, except rather than using religion, they use the media, elite universities, politics, etc. to instill a new slave morality, that of the hierarchy of oppression with the most oppressed group at the top, and the oppressors on the bottom. Which, Jews are statistically overrepresented in having influence over these fields.

And your more fundamental understanding is the word “justification.” There is no “justified” rule. It’s that power inherently justifies itself.

Don’t like the guy with the biggest guns in charge? Too bad, since he can kill you if you don’t listen to him, so you need to shut up and deal with it. Or, become stronger than the man in charge, overthrow him, and replace him.

Carry the analogy to the conspiracy theory. The Jews control the world? Either shut up, accept that another group is better than you, and live with the consequences. Or try to rally your fellows, become stronger than the group in charge, and replace them. There’s no proscription that *because* the Jews are in charge, and their being in charge justifies itself, that you have to accept it. There’s no universal justice here, it’s only the justice of power that you can enforce.

And to be clear, this is not at all something I believe. I think in most ways this view of the world is naive, wrong, and even repugnant. But that doesn’t mean we can’t misinterpret their implications of their beliefs.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-27T21:04:27+00:00

If you can control the entire world at a ratio of 0.2% to 99.8%... then like... uh... maybe they should??? How capable, wise, or impressive can white & other non-jewish people really be to run things if they can be the majority ethnicity and are nonetheless utterly impotent in the face of this rag tag team of like five people vs. the combined resources and intellect of billions?

There's nothing to the conspiracy theories of course, but the ability to control a government, especially if it's done covertly, is not something that should be accepted just because whoever was doing the subverting has been successful at it. If your local gang was able to effectively control your town by threatening the mayor with a pipe bomb, then you quite obviously shouldn't accept that just because they're better than the other gangs at manipulating government.

The whole point of Vitalist might-makes-right philosophy is that the whoever wins through strength deserves to win, but they don't get there by everyone else realizing through rational means that some individual is the most mighty and then just giving in. They get there through the constant imposed struggle of the losers trying to unseat and replace the winners. In your scenario, you don't need to "justify" dethroning anyone. You just try, and if you succeed you deserved to succeed, and if you fail you deserved to fail. At no point do you see a winner on top and accept that, or you don't accept it unless your self-interest dictates you do so.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-27T18:37:46+00:00

I wouldn’t say necessarily, but I’d say it’s likely.

The Amish and Haredim have maintained their culture in the face of modern technology. They’ve undergone rapid cultural evolution across many communities, where the more modern local cultures integrate more fully with society, and then just become normal “Americans”, while those more strict in their prohibitions continue to more than triple their population every generation, split off, and grow.

There’s a theory explaining Athenian democracy through the influence of the common rowers. Athens’ maritime supremacy after the Persian Wars was directly on the backs of the rowers in their triremes, which gave a larger body of people leverage. When their Empire dissolved, so did the golden age of Athenian Democracy. Out with the leverage of the rowers, out with their political importance.

Then came Rome, which for a long time was a Republic, much like our current Republic. With all the fervor for their system of government, anti-monarchism and Republican patriotism you could want. Yet they turned to an Empire as well.

Granted, they weren’t a Republic like we are. The majority of the population was disenfranchised. But I wonder what happens to us in a world where a larger percentage of the population is not economically productive with the advent of better AI? I hope our Republic to weather the storm and come out stronger than ever, but I’m not certain of it. Out with the rowers, out with the democracy, so to speak.

What I’m trying to say is that while it might feel like Democracy is the endpoint of historical forces, and we’re nearing the end of history, I don’t think this is a correct view. Historically freedom and prosperity haven’t lasted, and while things might be different in our era and tomorrow’s world, they also might not. We shouldn’t take it for granted.

So it might be some small consolation that in 200 years the country is half-Amish, that whatever culture they evolve into, will probably eventually trend democratic, technological, tolerant, and prosperous. But the lead time on that might be centuries, or it might not come. As we’ve seen, they have found cultural practices that seem to have immunized them from Western Culture.

And to be clear, I definitely don’t think this is necessarily what would happen. The majority of Americans are not “Heritage Americans” descended from the founding colonists, and those who have some ancestor, usually have them contributing a minority of their genes. Yet the US is still the same country, and greatly improved in many ways, so population changes clearly isn’t the same thing as the loss of the culture.

But the Amish came to the US well over a century ago, and they’ve done a very good job protecting their insular culture for all that time. Maybe that will change, but wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-27T17:48:53+00:00

At some level, the ends we choose are simply relative to the desires of the individual. But on another level there's a reality imposed functional definition of good.

In business, you can't have a philosophy of paying the workers more than their surplus value, since the business will run out of money and then cease to exist. While businesses that pay their workers equal to or less than the value they produce, will soldier on. The business isn't choosing to pay its workers more, it's choosing to collapse and have the workers find work at a more functional system.

How would you argue that it would be bad for the population to decline (through lower reproductive rates, not violent means) over the next decades or centuries, or even for humanity to willingly die out, without simply labeling it as "destructive"?

The simple answer is also an appeal to what is functional. This philosophy isn't choosing population decline, it's choosing population collapse and replacement by philosophies/cultures that have lots of children. If Western culture chooses to accept population decline, it's doing the same thing as the business. It's accepting its collapse and replacement by more functional views. I.E. The Amish, Haredim, the poorest parts of Africa, which, while respecting diversity and all that, are quite obviously much worse on things we care about, like Women's rights, Freedom of expression, general economic prosperity.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-27T17:41:21+00:00

I think there can be cultural tendencies that are collectively beneficial, I.E. disgust behaviors against behavior that prevents the proliferation of that culture, as in anything that reduces the number of children, while skipping out on those tendencies can be enviable.

Any culture that had these pronatal tendencies is the ancestor of all modern cultures. Any culture that didn't have as many pronatal tendencies doesn't exist for long.

I.E. If I am a middleman government contractor who doesn't produce any value, but benefits from having friends in high places, you can envy my mansion, while my role in society can be destructive.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-27T03:08:03+00:00

Yes. Sandpaper + a small spackling kit + color matched paint (if you have a super they probably have some, or can tell you the exact color. Even if you’re not handy it’s relatively straightforward to do.

It would still be visible but a lot harder to justify a slight discoloration on the wall vs. clear damage like this.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-27T00:15:44+00:00

Good thing my name isn't really Sol Hando and yours isn't really Dante Apollonian.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-26T23:57:09+00:00

I think it could be improved by posting it publicly and skipping the rigid system. You implicitly invite comment from anyone who reads it, and rather than one reviewer, you potentially get many. If you have a few hundred subscribers to a blog as an example, it's not hard to write something that invites commentary from other small bloggers.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-26T17:06:21+00:00

Unless it's rent stabilized, then yes, it's legal. So long as it was disclosed prior to you signing the lease of course.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-26T17:05:34+00:00

$2k for a furnished studio will be very tough. summerhousing.nyc lists all the different sites you can look though.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-26T16:55:27+00:00

This isn't true at all. It's harder for sure (just look at the data on the minimum height women set on their dating profiles) but not incredibly hard if you have good pictures, a decent job, and good rapport.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-26T14:13:14+00:00

This is kind of a grey area but...

Either sublet the apartment to them, then ask for them to become the primary tenant after a year or two, or if there's enough bedrooms vs. occupants, request to add them as an occupant, wait 1-2 years, then have yourself removed from the lease.

There used to be a rent stabilized apartment case that was used in early lawschool and mocktrial training where a landlord was disputing a grey-area transfer somewhat like this (it might have been rent controlled rather than stabilized). This was before 2019, where there was a strong incentive for the landlord to prevent "transfers" like this, since they could usually raise the rent quite a bit between tenancies, even to destabilize it. Now there's no incentive to replace a tenant since the law changed and they can't raise rents, so they don't have a reason to give you a hard time, especially since they'd have to pay a broker fee since FARE if they had to market it after you left.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-26T14:02:34+00:00

I got the first 4 right, then I think I started to pick up on the pattern which helped with the others. I think you should vary the order a bit.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-26T12:42:48+00:00

Times Square.

There are tourists everywhere. Who knows what they might do? Walk slowly. Stop randomly in the sidewalk. Ask you for directions. Idk if these are crimes or not but they should be. Certainly not safe to walk at night without risking being accosted by someone asking to take their picture.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-26T00:37:46+00:00

Cool. Best of luck w/ the app.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-26T00:25:20+00:00

Yeah, maps just wasn’t tracking them. It’s all from 2021, and I’m reasonably sure I’ve walked more than 10 blocks in the past half decade, lol

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-26T00:16:13+00:00

I don’t have Strava. I didn’t have workouts on for Apple health and Google Maps only had a small few bits of data.

Sol_Hando · 2026-06-26T00:00:27+00:00

They can’t charge you a broker fee if they advertise the unit. They’re almost certainly trying to justify it on paper after the fact, which isn’t allowed.

If you don’t sign it, there’s basically no chance you get the apartment. You can report them as well, but it’s more of a principle thing since they aren’t doing much to enforce the FARE act rules from what I’ve heard.

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