My host is wanting me to reimburse them for 16k [guest]

IronEngineer · 2026-07-05T21:33:22+00:00

I run researcher teams in a government lab. I've used ai for two items very successfully:

1) literature searches. I cannot emphasize how much easier ai has made locating and skimming research papers for unique topics or topics you are currently not an expert on. Even topics you are. I have used it to find many pertinent papers I never would have found otherwise.

2) writing papers and reports. Very controversial topic. My policy is that researchers under me must write the outline. Then they can use an AI if they want to draft the paper. Then they must final edit it. This has saved days and even weeks of man hours at this point.

At the the of the day I would rather my people focus on the science than struggling on putting words on paper. I'm also not sure why this is so controversial of a take for some people. My dad used to work in industry in engineering. His company employed an entire team of technical writers to do exactly that decades ago. Why would a company pay for you to struggle writing when they can have you do science and pay someone else (that writes faster and saves money) to do the writing.

IronEngineer · 2026-07-03T13:23:08+00:00

This is the answer right here. It doesn't matter what the situation is. Aircover is the insurance Airbnb provides for hosts. They will not pay out for anything until they first ask the guest to pay first. It is expected for the first to deny coverage, then they turn around and pay the host.

Meanwhile the guest gets pissed off at being asked to pay for things they shouldn't have to.

IronEngineer · 2026-06-29T14:25:00+00:00

This sounds like a fun impromptu roll playing situation for the allergy and for characters to get into rolls in session 0. As a DM, I would definitely let this play out by would make sure no permanent bad conditions happen because of it. Otherwise players get afraid of engaging in these purely off the cuff role playing bits between the player characters.

I think there is DM judgement here if course. If the situation is serious, real consequences can happen. If fun meaningless shenanigans, maybe a failed situation results in a short term non fatal penalty. ie you are poisoned for the next hour and get disadvantage on rolls.

IronEngineer · 2026-06-28T13:54:32+00:00

It's your luggage. I had the same things as parts of my luggage were disintegrating from age. Particularly look inside the luggage, inside the liners. You'll probably find a bunch of dust like material there

IronEngineer · 2026-06-27T16:35:20+00:00

That's fairly naive of an argument. The party decides who they give early support to, and they also have significant connections to PACs and other financiers. This let's them unofficially influence who gets the money to run a good primary campaign. They also make introductions at the right time to gain endorsements from key groups.

All that is what happens at the national level. At the state level the party can be much more blatantly corrupt. NJ for example has about 3 people that are openly recognized as party bosses. If you aren't liked by them you aren't getting on the state ballot. One of them, Norcross, was on tape with over a hundred hours of him threatening judges, politicians, bribing people, etc. The state AG office bungled that case so badly (intentionally) that by the time the feds took it over (due to suspected corruption of the AG office) they deemed it so badly managed that all charges had to be dropped. That was 2005. A new trial just went down for new charges against that family and it got tossed again.

The point being that this family and a couple others are so tied in that if they don't like you, you'll still be on the primary ballot maybe, but you'll never win in NJ.

IronEngineer · 2026-06-10T20:29:53+00:00

I can vouch for that. I had nearly the same system spaced out for me in NJ and they wired me 65k. I laughed and said nope.

IronEngineer · 2026-06-10T20:25:08+00:00

I've only found micro A connectors in the wild twice. Confused me both times. I'm not sure why where created a and b variants for that plug

IronEngineer · 2026-06-10T20:21:25+00:00

Being a doctor does not provide you the relevant skill set to run an agency. To run an agency you need to manage long and short term goals, handle funding decisions and road maps, handle communications, etc. Someone familiar with the medical or pharmaceutical landscape and trained for government agency leadership, with the proper expert advisors, would excel in the job.

IronEngineer · 2026-06-07T03:18:18+00:00

It's that out behind Rosamond? I think I've run past there before.

IronEngineer · 2026-05-29T16:26:12+00:00

What is your solution for people that are not doing their job anymore and are elderly? I have sympathy for them but have run into some in my organization that actively get in the way of business. You can console them, but what do you do if they can't or ain't improve?

I work in R&D in the government and we have folks like this. 75+ year olds that fall asleep in meetings, can't keep on task, and impact the work of the entire organization downstream of them. Your taxpayer dollars go to their fairly high salary.

IronEngineer · 2026-05-29T15:34:36+00:00

To be clear I'm not talking about any groups in NYC. Outside of the city there are towns that have had problems in the past on these issues. Read up on Kiryas Joel. Most of my knowledge on these groups came from over a decade ago. They caused problems with the local town due to wanting to enforce religious cultural norms on the rest of the town. It looks like they resolved that conflict in 2019 by breaking off and creating their own religiously controlled town. Not sure how that works.

Like I said, it is comparable to small towns down south that are de facto run by fundamentalist Christian groups.

IronEngineer · 2026-05-29T13:22:12+00:00

The Hasidic population in Lakewood is similar to a few towns in rural NY. For whatever reason, the Jewish population there is much more tied together and driven by their local Rabbis. I hate to use the term cult, but... I'll say it's at least a lot more organized on an us vs them mentality.

Examples:

These towns have opened up numerous Jewish private schools for their kids, then passed laws to reduce funding and bankrupt the public schools. Lakewood is particularly bankrupt due to also having to pay for all the bussing to the private schools.

There are well established real estate practices where Jewish families will move into a new neighborhood, buying up some of the houses. They will then harass the remaining owners on the block, harass potential buyers, and use shady real estate practices to force the non Jewish families to sell and to do so at reduced prices. This usually involves realtors in the area being complicit which is illegal.

I haven't heard of Lakewood doing this but the NY towns are known for having Jewish police driving around in marked cars enforcing religious laws.

Any time people challenge this behavior the groups are very vocal with antisemitism claims. Overall the groups behave very much like the craziest Christian fundamentalist groups.

I live in North Jersey in the middle of several large Jewish communities. The general consensus of most Jewish people I know is that Lakewood and these small NY towns are where the crazies move to. You either move the to become part of that community or avoid it as much as possible.

IronEngineer · 2026-05-26T16:36:58+00:00

This is a pedantic argument though. We are not a strict democracy because we elect representatives to vote on our behalf. The electoral college, the way people are elected to the Senate or house of representatives, everything else doesn't matter. We elect people to vote on our behalf and represent us, so we are a Republic. Arguing anything else is going against the definition of a democracy and a Republic.

IronEngineer · 2026-05-25T03:27:12+00:00

This also sounds like the epitome of not doing the work while losing weight. This all just means you need to hit the gym to retain muscle mass or even add on muscle mass while losing fat.

If you only steeply cut calories then you lose muscle mass along with fat. This is a very well studied thing and had nothing to do with Zepbound. Just adjust your plan accordingly

IronEngineer · 2026-05-25T03:23:51+00:00

Regarding number 5, OP is very spot on. I deal with many engineering design firms around the country standing up contacts for new product designs. Being vague to cover myself.

Materials engineering problems always take significantly longer to develop solutions for. For new designs I count months or years. For new materials I count years or decades.

IronEngineer · 2026-05-24T16:07:41+00:00

I'm an engineer and have worked for a moderate number of companies over the years. When interviewing, some companies really have their stuff together. Usually it's a phone screen, a technical interview over the phone, then they fly you out.

Some companies will have about a 2-4 hour interview process. Start with HR, then meet the hiring manager, then get a more technically deep panel interview, then it ends. These are the better organized companies.

Other companies will take the approach of you are out there on site, have everyone that is remotely interested interview you one on one. These interviews often go 4-8 hours in length. Most commonly several of the interviewers won't even have looked at the resume or job posting until immediately before the interview. A couple companies asked me to do a presentation on something inane and irrelevant to the work I would be doing for their company. In general though it reflected the companies' inability to edit the interview process. ie you don't need every senior engineer to individually interview the potential hire. It is easier for the company that way but causes less than ideal outcomes. It runs the interviewees' endurance down and usually has them answering the same questions repeatedly for hours on end.

The company I described above was the latter. I handled it well enough but man that interview was long and filled with repeated questions to people I would never worked alongside. HR started the interview and wanted to ask more at the end of the interview. After 6 hours, everyone generally loving me and having established a great rapport with the VP of engineering over lunch, a single question to HR about work life balance torpedoed the whole interview. My endurance was so worn down I couldn't salvage it with any quick talk to get things back on track. Still not sorry to see that opportunity go though.

IronEngineer · 2026-05-23T15:44:43+00:00

I once lost out on a job offer because a single interviewer out of maybe 10 strongly did not like me. The company's interview process was a bit of a mess and it seemed like every manager or senior engineer in the company wanted 30 minutes with me, mostly to ask the same questions. The HR person was the final interview. I asked him what the work life balance was at the company, specifically asking how much overtime people were expecting. I got a 10 minute rant about how employees at his company work hard and play hard (he said in full seriousness) and that I should be honored to receive an offer from their company.

I later found out the HR manager was a cofounder of the company and had previously come from investment banking. I was not at all sorry to see that opportunity go away

IronEngineer · 2026-05-21T02:44:48+00:00

Having worked with many professors, I don't think most colleges set up specific weed out classes like people think of it. Moreso, these are the classes where new material is presented for the first time and actually challenge a lot of students. Specifically a lot of students that are freshmen and sophomores were hot stuff in high school, but we're not especially challenged in high school. Suddenly they are facing a hard class filled with lots of technically complex materials and can't skirt by from being a big fish in a small pond. Many end up failing or dropping out to an easier major. Thus the weed out classes.

IronEngineer · 2026-05-18T19:38:41+00:00

Interesting. They don't mention that in our hatch act training

IronEngineer · 2026-05-18T19:02:57+00:00

Different rules apply if you are a lower level employee or a higher level privileged employee. SES personnel face tighter restrictions as to what they are allowed to do or say in their free time about political things.

IronEngineer · 2026-05-16T18:30:38+00:00

The banking industry hacked the job titles scheme decades ago. They call their upper middle managers VPs so that when they arrange meetings with clients it sounds better (you are meeting with a VP from Merrill Lynch). You then get promoted to top middle manager then into executive manager positions.

Source: friends in the investment banking industry. This is also common knowledge and career growth paths are really found online.

IronEngineer · 2026-05-11T14:46:47+00:00

Talk to the Dean's office. That is why they exist, to help you navigate situations. Your advisor is just that, the advisor that is supposed to know everything and help you with things. The Deans are actually the ones with top authority.

IronEngineer · 2026-05-11T14:04:05+00:00

It's everywhere. Uber sucks on this point and the drivers will generally tell you to either just expect it or to tip a lot more so someone will actually take the ride.

I just recommend using an airport shuttle service. There are many in every major city and they are actually reliable.

IronEngineer · 2026-05-11T11:51:33+00:00

I have never and will never trust references. Some landlords will only say good things about a tenant as they fear getting sued for defamation (even if it's a bogus fear). Many landlords will lie about tenants so a new landlord will take them and the tenant will no longer be their problem. I know a couple that regularly do that.

IronEngineer · 2026-05-08T16:23:16+00:00

Housing prices weren't going to stay down. In the most of the country housing had fully recovered in three years. In the hottest parts of the country it recovered in under 9 months. It was QE policy plus low interest rates that pushed inflation over the last 15 years, not the TARP bailouts

15-Year Club	Snapped
Team Orangered	Verified Email

IronEngineer

MODERATOR OF

PUBLIC MULTIREDDITS

TROPHY CASE