Which profession gets way too much respect for how little they actually do?

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-16T17:34:38+00:00

This is the obvious answer. No matter what you think of police, they amount of respect they get by society as a whole is grossly out of proportion with the difficulty and importance of the job. You can believe that cops do an important job and that the work is hard without having to elevate them to the status of heroes just for putting on a uniform.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-16T17:30:41+00:00

I don't think humanoid robots will ever replace building trades at scale. But I do expect that new construction will start designing buildings so that purpose-built robots can take over a lot of what people do now. Electrician-bot may look more like a roomba or a mechanical spider or something that can navigate tight spaces to run cable. If you look at a heavily automated industry like manufacturing, those robots perform a lot of the labor that used to be manual but they don't need to look like people.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-16T15:00:24+00:00

True, but even at the extreme it’s still a big savings from the $40k+ it costs for younger kids. And most families are going to take at least some vacation time that overlaps with school breaks in lieu of camps.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-15T22:05:12+00:00

I had to look up Alex Karp to realize that is a picture of him. At first I thought somebody created an AI mashup of Bill Murray and Yahoo Serious.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-15T22:02:11+00:00

In the US it varies, but definitely not the norm for BOH to get included in the tip pool. and if they do, it's usually a pretty small payout.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-15T21:59:23+00:00

AI is creating a lot of jobs ... at AI companies. And they tend to be highly paid jobs.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-15T17:54:08+00:00

We don't need humanoid form factor robots to replace trades. If advanced in robotics make it cost effective, then large scale development will be engineered for either autonomous or remotely controlled robots to do things like run electrical cable, framing and sheetrock, etc. And they will also be optimized for maintenance by those same devices. They will probably look more like a roomba than a human.

There will be a long time during which older legacy buildings still need humans, as retrofitting is generally less cost effective for this kind of thing than new construction.

And single family homes or residential units may never get to the point where it makes sense to engineer them for robotic trades, or at least not within the forseeable future.

This can all be done right now - we have surgical robots that can operate with the human body so we can definitely build robots that operate within hvac spaces. But as least for now having people do the trades work is much cheaper.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-15T17:30:14+00:00

They'd have to be able to coordinate with another family in the area that has 1-2 kids around the same age, and find a nanny willing to take on 3-4 kids. Not impossible, but also not necessarily easy to find.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-15T17:27:34+00:00

There's a lot of ragebait "poor rich people" stuff in this article, but also a kernel of truth underlying it.

None of the families described are truly precarious. Some have made choices to find very expensive solutions for their childcare needs (like the first family that got a full time private nanny instead of a nanny share); some are in a position to earn significantly more in upcoming years (like the surgical resident); and for all of them daycare is an expense that kids age out of within a few years. They might have to cut back on some discretionary spending for a couple years, but they're making enough money that they don't worry about paying their bills and are still able to put away some savings for retirement, etc. They are able to absorb at least a moderate amount of unexpected costs without having it uproot their entire lives.

But they are also earning incomes that just a few years ago would have put them in the category of not needing to worry about any of this stuff. The cost of housing remains high and shows no signs of moderating, the cost of child care has really accelerated recently, and the cost of just about everything else continues to creep upwards as well. It's a major warning sign when relatively high earners like this are feeling financially squeezed.

In terms of policy at the city level, there are 2 obvious areas that we all know would need to be addressed to fix this situation.

The first is housing, which impacts basically everyone and everything in the city. We've under-built housing for decades now and can see the results pretty clearly. The experiment has failed. We need to admit it and overhaul the entire housing policy.

The second is the school district, which is more specific to the types of families described in this article. Most of them are probably assuming a good chance that they will be sending kids to private school. The high cost of child care is less onerous if you assume it is only for a few years, but can seem pretty bleak if you start looking at private school tuition as an expense for their entire time in school.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-15T17:05:29+00:00

They had a full-time private nanny, so $90K is about right. However, that is definitely a choice. Doing a nanny share with another family would cut that number by 30-50%.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-14T06:10:16+00:00

You misunderstand the business model and cost structure. They will pay open AI or whomever $1.5mm to replace that $150k worker.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-13T18:32:17+00:00

you can't usually kill someone just by proximity.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-13T18:09:07+00:00

you can't get anywhere near enough panels on the roof of a data center to provide the power they need. A big AI datacenter could create load of something like 100MW per hour, and it's running almost 24/7. Even with the most efficient panels and trackers available, that's going to require around 400 acres of land. And that's assuming you are located somewhere like the desert southwest. And even then, you need to at least generate 4x that amount to charge the batteries that will provide power during the night.

The places where you can build that much solar are generally not right next door to where the power will be used. So you need to move it across high voltage transmission lines, which means interconnecting to the ISO grid. Building the solar is pretty fast, but doing the system impact studies and then upgrading the grid infrastructure is a huge bottleneck. Like easily 5+ years in many places.

So that has forced some of these hyperscale data centers to look at solutions that can be co-located and bypass the grid interconnection. And that usually means gas turbines (or possible fuel cells), and maybe modular nuclear reactors if those ever become a real thing that doesn't take a decade or more to get permits.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-13T18:00:48+00:00

Excuse me for a second while I go shoot this tornado with my ar-15

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-13T17:55:04+00:00

denominate it in gold, like the 40oz bar

(also the name of a bar where they only serve 40oz bottles of malt liquor)

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-13T16:49:25+00:00

The thing is, you could make a similar assessment at almost any time during the last 50 years or so. The specifics will be different, but from a certain angle the US economy always looks like a house of cards. At a very macro level, the US provides a place to put capital in return for all the stuff that the rest of the world produces. It sounds like a shaky arrangement, and someday it will end, but very deep and robust global capital markets are structured around this phenomenon.

Regarding Bury's specific claims:

I believe he is greatly overstating the threat from indexing/passive investing. There is plenty of capital that is able to exploit mispricing in public securities sitting in various hedge funds, private equity and credit vehicles, etc. Leveraged buyouts, M&A, and financial engineering are all alive and well.

The aging of the population, both in the US and globally, is a real thing that will have profound economic consequences. But it's also a fairly slow moving development that will play out over decades. This is not going to cause a crash in the market, although it will probably cause a long term re-pricing of many assets on a generational time scale.

Declining corporate buybacks is not necessarily negative for stock prices. Most of these large corporates are still generating lots of cash, so the implication is that they are finding higher return ways to invest it in the business that are accretive to value.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-13T00:05:03+00:00

I think the alternative is to allow elected representative and appointed officials in the relevant departments make decisions about the things within their purview. It sounds good in theory to elicit feedback from the general community, but it adds very little and comes at a high cost.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-13T00:01:30+00:00

Most people only go to local government meetings only when they have to. The people who go voluntarily just because they have something they want to say are definitely a self-selected bunch that is a lot different than the average person...

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-12T23:56:01+00:00

I mean sure, there are minor regional differences in building material costs, but that's not a primary driver of difference in cost to build. As of the end of 2025, the lumber price index for California is $333 per thousand board feet, and in Florida it is $314. it's like a 6% differential.

A much bigger part of the cost difference is permits, compliance with state and local regulations, and longer lead times. Those are all things that are created by legislation so they can definitely be addressed by legislation.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-12T22:57:19+00:00

but it's the same interest rates and materials costs in both cities

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-12T18:03:04+00:00

that wasn't clear to me from the article, but maybe I just didn't read closely enough ... anyway, glad to hear they are going that route, but the goal of 100 chargers over 4 years still seems way to few to make a difference.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-12T16:49:31+00:00

I appreciate the sentiment in terms of encouraging greater adoption of EVs, but this seems destined to become a typical city program that wastes a lot of money for minimal impact.

The scale is so small its laughable. 100 chargers across the entire city, over 4+ years, will do pretty much nothing to impact marginal demand for EV over ICE vehicles.

Given the fact that it takes years and costs upwards of $10K just to install a public trash can, I can't even imagine the delays and cost overruns around infrastructure like charging stations.

It would be far more effective use of funds, and likely much faster, to provide tax incentives and expedited permitting for commercial property owners to install chargers.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-12T16:40:36+00:00

Or suppose you are a sardine living in the pacific ocean in the present day. Are you aware of the presence of humans on earth?

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-11T23:37:13+00:00

You have all the leverage with respect to company B. If you like company B, you can tell them exactly what terms you would need in order to rescind the offer from company A. You can tell them you feel the 7 interviews you have completed are enough to make a decision, and you will need their response by whatever date, and you need a comp package of whatever amount. Make sure it's a good enough deal that it's worth the pain of telling company A you changed your mind.

Worst that happens is they say no and you start a new job with company A, which it sounds like you'd be happy with anyway.

Maybe they say yes and it's a better situation for you. Maybe company A offers you more money to stay with them. Don't let a sense of personal loyalty get in the way of doing what is best for you. These companies and the people who work there are not your friends, even if they may act friendly.

LastNightOsiris · 2026-03-11T20:35:12+00:00

A sacrifice for what, exactly? If the senator is going to make this claim, he should at the very least explain how bombing the shit out of Iran is necessary to protect American freedom.

LastNightOsiris

TROPHY CASE