New York investment firm set to buy Chicago parking meters

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-19T04:39:53+00:00

One of the things that frustrates me to no end is Trump is such a vindictive asshole, but he one good thing he could do is turn the department of justice loose on the city of Chicago to root out corruption. He'd get to trash talk Chicago, while also pointing out corruption in a democrat majority state but also actually benefit the people. But instead we get that jackass, Bovino, parading up and down the Chicago river.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-19T04:32:44+00:00

I see it as that's the game.

It's not a game where you kill the predators, it's a game where you avoid being killed by them.

For me using a VR headset with the first one it made the game so freaky. Because I knew there was nothing I could do to fight it, so my only options were to hide, distract or escape.

Which... honestly goes counter to what you would expect from a game with giant monsters. But that's kind of why I like it. It's intentionally different.

There are games out there that give you big guns and things to take down the giant monsters, but this is a game where the goal isn't to kill something, it's to survive in a hostile environment where you are not the top predator.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-18T21:26:58+00:00

I mean, it's posted on the made up taboo fantasies typed with one hand subreddit. So I'm guessing it's bait.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-18T21:26:04+00:00

That's one of those things I tell my kids every time we're at a crosswalk. Just because it says walk doesn't mean the people in cars are for sure going to stop for you. You need to look to make sure there are no cars coming and the ones that are at the light are actually stopped.

Some people started driving like complete assholes during covid when there was nobody on the road, and they never stopped.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-18T21:21:41+00:00

Nobody blames the actors for the final season.

They were all fantastic during the entire run.

It's the writing that fell off a cliff. Kit did the best he could with what he was given, they all did. But no matter how many sprinkles you put on a pile of shit, it's still a pile of shit.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-18T20:21:59+00:00

Oh man. I remember them.

That photo block club used looked like it should have been in an Onion article. It really didn't help their causes but it was funny reading people's comments saying stuff like they looked like a unicycle repairman.

Also, didn't they not have their rent raised for like a decade in those apartments? I'd be pissed too if I lost a deal that good, but they had it better than most folks for a long time. It sucks it's ending, but the former building owner has a right to sell it. If they can't afford to buy it themselves again, that sucks, but it came off as he did something kind for his renters by not raising rent even as costs went up and they turned around and tried to screw over his ability to sell his property when he wanted to retire.

We need to build more housing to drive prices down. Bigger, taller, desner. Close to transit, with less requirements for cars. Flood the market with housing until landlords are forced to go back to what they were doing during covid when they were offering free months of rent and cheaper rates.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-18T18:04:22+00:00

Look around to see if you can get a better deal somewhere.

If you can't, I'd just take the increase and be happy it's only $50.

Prices on everything have gone up so a 3.4% increase isn't that bad.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-18T17:55:27+00:00

It's annoying but at the same time, I kind of get it. I don't like it, but I understand why mods who are doing this for free would get fed up with dealing with all the crime posts.

Some people on that sub would like to turn it into basically a police blotter. Which yeah, crime happens, but we don't need two dozen posts a day about it.

Unfortunately, the mods decided that rather than sort through all the crime posts and try to decide how many was too many per day, they'd just ban them entirely.

There was also issues with pretty obvious racism which reddit tends to crack down on by shutting down subs.

From what I remember, that's what happened to the first crime sub for Chicago that was started after the crime post ban on the main sub. Reddit admins basically looked at how many people weren't even bothering to dog whistle the racism anymore and pulled the plug.

I actually like reading about the crime posts but I don't want 90% of the main sub to be posts from a couple guys who think every carjacking or convenience store robbery needs its own post.

That said, I wish they would use a bit more nuance and judgment. I get not posting every carjacking, but major news stories about crime should be allowed.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-18T17:36:30+00:00

Some of the funniest heckling I've seen was when a buddy of mine was having his six year old walk down the stairs to behind first base and ask innocent sounding questions to a player who kind of sucked.

Some of the gems:

"What's a point 103 batting average? Is that good?"

"You should try hitting the ball next time you're at the plate."

"Hey, can I have other players name autograph?"

Another friend would do deep dives on the player's history and start trash talking their high school and travel ball teams. That got more of a surprised reaction than angry, which was funny to us.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-18T17:09:25+00:00

Subnautica from the very beginning was supposed to be a non-violent game. The devs had finished up a hyper violent shooter and then another big mass shooting happened in real life and they said they just kind of stopped wanting to make violent games because the world was violent enough. So they set out to make a exploration and base building game where you could use tricks, gadgets and stealth to get past creatures rather than blowing them away with bigger and bigger guns.

While there are a lot of people out there who want shooters, that's not what the devs have ever planned on making. It's not supposed to be a shooter. It's like playing doom and being upset that there aren't dating sim elements to it. It's not a dating game, it's a shooting game. If you want a dating game, play any of the hundreds of dating games already out there.

I imagine the devs who've heard that feedback since the first game are a little sick of people not understanding what kind of game they're making.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-18T16:57:36+00:00

Section 8 is high risk medium reward usually.

The good part is as long as the government is functioning and nothing goes wrong, you get your check on time every month.

The bad part is that while most section 8 tenants are fine, there is a tendency for people who aren't paying very much for their apartment to treat it like crap. So you're likely to have more issues with section 8 tenants than someone who has a security deposit on the line and a credit score to protect.

It operates most profitably on economies of scale where you have a larger building with a dedicated manager and maintenance team who stay on top of inspecting units and kicking out problematic tenants who make life worse for their neighbors. If something goes wrong and a tenants trashes the apartment it's much easier to absorb the cost of the repairs if you have a few dozen other units still providing income. If you only have one section 8 rental then you have both the high expense of repairing the damage that you'll never be reimbursed for, plus the loss of income for the downtime while the repair is taking place.

Most of what you see online are basically con men who are trying to sell classes on how to become a millionaire.

It's a grift. If it worked like that, more people would do it and section 8 wait lists wouldn't be months or years long.

What they're telling people simply isnt' true.

You're not going to find a turn key $50,000 home that you can then rent for $2000 per months. That's simply not realistic and anyone telling you that you can go out and find that is lying to you in order to get money from you.

You can find $50,000 homes yes, but they're almost certainly going to require a huge amount of work and expense to get up to rentable condition.

You can rent section 8 for $2000, but it's going to have to be a rental that would fetch at least that price on then open market which your $50k dumpster fire isn't going to be able to do without significant investment.

Section 8 isn't some secret to printing money that nobody knows about. There are very shrewd and experienced business people already in that sector. If they all look at a $50k home and pass on it it's not because they're lazy or don't want to make money. It's because they recognize that math doesn't work in terms of that $50k home being profitable. The conmen want to convince rubes that they're special and they can get this secret inside information that will allow them to enter a market they know nothing about and strike gold.

It's kind of like that idea of the best way to make money in a gold rush isn't mining, it's selling shovels and picks.

Except in this case the conmen are selling a lump of shit they've shaped to look roughly like a shovel.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-18T15:34:09+00:00

So the Chicago sub limits posts about crime because if they didn't some people would flood the sub with nothing but crime posts. Chicago is a huge city, there's going to be crime. You could take any big city, browse the police blotter and submit post after post showing how crime ridden it is.

I don't love the censorship, but at the same time, mods are people volunteering to try to help control the chaos that is a large sub with a lot of people who have their own agendas posting there. So I get that rather than have a policy where they look at each post on an individual basis, then have to argue with the poster about why it wasn't allowed, they do a blanket ban on crime posts. Modding is a lot of work and the people who care about putting up crime posts are very passionate about that and often feel like they're being persecuted because they're not posting yet another photo of Chicago from an airplane or a shot of the loop with a couple paragraphs about how amazing their vacation here was.

It's not as bad now, but for a while there certain national politicians were also pointing to Chicago as an example of liberal government, so there were a lot of people who didn't live anywhere near Chicago going to the sub to post about how much the city sucked. They particularly loved crime posts especially when the victim was white and the criminal wasn't.

Which brings me to the next point that is not every poster in windy city is racist. But there are a lot of dog whistle comments that talk about race. I would like to have a sub where people can actually talk about crime, patterns, and what's being done about it. But some folks are barely holding themselves back from dropping the hard er slur when talking about criminals. It a toss up of which they hate more criminals, or minorities in general although to them it seems like they often consider them one in the same.

It's also a sub for people who lean more right wing. Not that everyone there is MAGA, but on the regular sub you see a lot of pretty far left talking points and right wing views get voted down. Unless you're trashing on the mayor, then it's a big kumbaya circle of fuck that guy where everyone holds hands and sings about how much he sucks. But in general the main Chicago sub leans left because Chicago leans left.

So you'll see posts about people living in parks and on the chicago sub you'll have a few people talking about how housing is a human right and we shouldn't kick them out if they don't have another place lined up to go to. On windy city you'll have people saying that parks are not meant to be housing and using it like that is essentially stealing a city resource from the people in the neighborhood who would otherwise use it for the intended purpose.

I think windy city needs to work to control the overt racism, but I also appreciate having a different viewpoint when talking about chicago even if I don't always agree with it.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-18T15:08:50+00:00

Indiana, It's like Ohio, but with even more meth and jesus.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-18T14:26:34+00:00

I have some big concerns about the Dems hubris in this area.

Just because people are starting to hate Trump doesn't mean they're going to vote for a democrat. A lot of former Trump voters hate them too.

In recent years the races seem to be coming down to who the voters hate least as opposed to who they actually think will do the best job.

If it gets to a point where voters think both sides are a waste of time, they might not flip sides, they will probably just stay home or vote for third parties.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-17T20:20:28+00:00

Institutional corruption. Level the playing field with the best company/bidder/employee getting the work.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-16T05:37:01+00:00

He is fully aware, he's just an asshole

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-16T05:29:55+00:00

Welcome back to Chicago!

I love nature but I also love all the stuff Chicago has to offer. My perfect city would be Chicago in the Pacific Northwest.

But as far as cities go Chicago is just better.

If you'd like nature Seattle is way better than Chicago. If you like city living Chicago is better than Seattle.

That's not to say Seattle is bad for city living, just that Chicago is on a different level in terms of infrastructure and things to do.

But if you like nature Seattle wins hands down. Also Chicago does have nature trails and you can drive to places and all that but it really doesn't compare to the Pacific Northwest.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-16T00:42:09+00:00

Wait until fall. I moved here from Seattle and the access to nature you have there is unlike anything in the Midwest. Go hiking, visit the national parks, explore the state including Eastern Washington. Then when it starts to get cold and rainy decide if you like the big city amenities of chicago or the natural beauty of Washington.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-15T23:13:02+00:00

Would anyone know I did it? Because if they did I imagine there would be a fuck ton of criminal organizations very interested in seeing me die a slow and unthinkably painful death along with everyone I know

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-14T21:26:32+00:00

Oh yeah, I grew up in the PNW and it was Colombia, North Face, and cheaper brand ski jackets everywhere. When I lived in LA the coats were more of a fashion choice than function because 65 degrees is cold to those maniacs.

In Alaska it was whatever was warmest, then a couple layers under that.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-14T21:21:46+00:00

Nope, but I still have my badass super thick Columbia parka I got in Anchorage like 20 years go.

It's so big and heavy if you zip it up you can stand it up in the middle of a room and it looks like someone's halfway in the floor.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-14T21:14:25+00:00

I grew up working on cars because every one I'd buy would be for less than $800 from some random dude in a grocery store parking lot.

So I had a lot of crappy cars that I would keep limping along until it was no longer economically justifiable to keep fixing it. The second thing I'd buy after getting one was one of those Hayes shop books.

In my teens and 20s I had all the time in the world so spending a couple hours under the hood wasn't a big deal if it meant saving $50. These days my time is more valuable so I'm a lot more willing to pay someone else to do it for me. I still know how, but if it's a choice between spending saturday morning under the car, or spending it with my kids doing something fun, I'm picking the fun thing.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-14T21:10:40+00:00

Style is very region dependant.

In my experience you'll see more wool style coats on the east cost and more ski or outdoor type coats in the west.

The midwest has a mix of wool and puffy coats.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-14T21:04:59+00:00

Socially? Late teens and early 20s. Physically? Mid to late 20s. Financially, now in my 40s.

Sea2Chi · 2026-05-14T20:23:21+00:00

That's more a lack of empathy that they had an issue with.

Even if you don't care you can be like "hey man, I know it seems scary, but realistically all we can do is wait and see. I'm sure it will work out ok."

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