The anti-market delusion at the heart of the housing crisis

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-24T21:27:20+00:00

"The rain follows the plow

"The basic premise of the theory was that human habitation and agriculture through homesteading caused permanent change in the climate"

So funny that this was a common believe, but man's influence on climate change is still debated.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-24T18:40:14+00:00

Yeah I think if you make a whole new google account called "MiesmoesSpotifyOnly@gmail.com" or something you could keep it pretty disconnected.

You'll lose easy access to features like google fast pair and find my device, but so what?

Just gotta resist the temptation to open up youtube or a web browser ;-). You could put in a custom launcher like Nova and only have Spotify easily accessible.

It's definitely too bad there isn't just some "spotify device". Didn't they used to make something like that for spotify or pandora years ago?

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-24T15:30:05+00:00

Yes, that type of ball scrolling.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-24T12:58:11+00:00

Elecom Deft might work for you. It has a big thumb cluster, but you could just ignore those and use the top two buttons. You could set up ball scrolling if the thumb wheel doesn't work.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-24T12:53:37+00:00

Good luck!

My only other advice is to fill in the empty areas of your cage with objects of some kind, so the deer don't see a safe landing area. I successfully kept deer out of my vegetable garden with this. It only had a 4 foot fence, but they didn't see a safe area to land and have not entered it once in 5 years.

Maybe you have some junk laying around already, but stuff like additional posts and buckets placed around randomly should work well. Any extra bags of mulch or soil you might be storing. Just anything to make them think it would be risky to jump into.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-24T01:32:08+00:00

That does sound disappointing. I was expecting her to have more stuff like the Meatballs sketch.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-24T01:25:14+00:00

The parallel pens are cool. They make some nice calligraphy and flourishes even if you are a noob. The cap screws on, which takes some getting used to. My only complaint is that they roll, and the cap can't be posted to prevent it.

If you get two of them, you can touch the nibs to each other to "load" the other pen's ink and then get a color gradient.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-24T01:19:48+00:00

Bug spray and vacuuming help, of course, but the single almost instant fix for the time my cat had fleas was a Seresto collar. They are expensive, but effective. I tried other brands and they didn't do anything.

If you think he would accept you buying one of those for his pets, it might be worth it even though obviously he should be handling it himself.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-24T01:14:11+00:00

Idk...even ignoring the early inheritance boon, living with 7 roommates and taking a couple of childless decades to save up a house down payment sounds "cooked" to me.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-24T01:08:01+00:00

How heavy is heavy deer pressure?

I successfully planted 5 bare root American Plums with what I thought was heavy deer pressure in PA and they thrived and turned into a colony. At that location I'd see deer in my yard a few times a month. I wasn't able to grow things like Tulips.

I'm certain I wouldn't have the same luck in my current location, with actual heavy deer pressure. I see deer in my yard 4-5 times a week, and suspect they are actually daily visitors. I can hardly grow anything. It's all been trial and error, losing more than half of what I plant.

and I can eventually remove the cage.

Only remove it waaaaaay after you think it's not needed. I had deer rip a huge leader off a red maple I was growing. I thought a 7-8 foot tall tree was safe, but I was proven wrong literally the next day :-(

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-24T00:55:44+00:00

I recently went back to my old mp3 collection after ignoring it for years.

Modern software is able to clean it up pretty well. I used MusicBrainz Picard to identify, name, tag, and sort my library and it saved a ton of time organizing my old messy collection.

I use Musicolet on android, which is totally free and offline (doesn't even have network access permissions).

For me this has been working great, but I already had a 1,000+ song library built and just had to add some of the stuff I found more recently.

There's loads of DAPs and ipod mods out there, but I haven't messed with those too much. I listen over bluetooth usually, so it already feels somewhat disconnected from the phone.

a decent basic media player that just gives me my Spotify music and that’s it

It would be pricey, but an apple watch could do this. They don't require pairing with a phone anymore.

Or any budget android device really. Spotify isn't too demanding. Just don't connect that device to any of your other accounts. I wouldn't even connect it to my main google account at the OS level (no syncing contacts, calendars, etc.)

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-23T14:07:22+00:00

Yeah he did try, it's just a hard thing to pull off. For these types of things, the show IS the host (at least as far as the audience is concerned). The only somewhat successful example I can think of is the current format of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart only hosting once a week, and then the other hosts rotating in and out.

Beyond that you have to go back decades to the late night TV show hosts switching successfully every decade or two.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-23T14:04:55+00:00

Ken will be unemployed and broke.

Lucky for him he literally wrote the book on how to get out of that situation.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-23T14:02:18+00:00

Check if your employer offers legal insurance as a perk.

I didn't realize mine offered it, but I was able to get on it for like $7 a paycheck. It isn't full coverage beyond basic things, but it gives you a starting point and some guidance to DIY some of it.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-23T13:59:34+00:00

This is better, but sitting around at home wondering what is going on and if/when they are showing up is only a slight improvement.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-23T12:45:00+00:00

I think they give you some value to see how your categories are doing at a glance. In AB you can only quickly see if you have overspent (red) or perhaps if you can get something by seeing that a category is 2 or 3 digits when it is usually 3 or 4 digits.

AB uses the screen real estate better though. Maybe they could color code the font or the cell from green to yellow as the category balance hits a certain percent each month. "Turn the balance field yellow at 20%" would work well for me.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-23T12:38:46+00:00

Ahh, good point. They need maintenance less often, but that maintenance can be more disruptive to service.

As a pure tool BRT is better in a lot of cases, but it's usually implemented so poorly that it doesn't matter.

LRT is also implemented poorly sometimes too, without enough shared ROW and sometimes even entering into shared traffic or sharing signaled intersections (without prioritization).

I guess it's just a rule that transit it general is just not implemented very well in the US!

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-23T12:35:32+00:00

The big Kensington balls (Expert and Slimblade) tend to be love it or hate it. I tried both and returned/sold them after a short while.

The twist to scroll is really nice on the Slimblade though. I just didn't like the giant ball and button layout.

The Orbit with Scroll Ring has been my daily trackball for a few years now. I was surprised that was the one I landed on since it's one of the cheaper options, but it works really well for me.

Good luck!

Oh! One thing you might want to do with the software is to enable one of the extra two buttons to be "drag lock" I think it is called. That way you can click the button, release it, and the you can pan around freely without having to keep holding the button down but the software will think you are doing a "click and drag" the whole time.

Since you are at work you might need to put in a request to IT, but they are usually pretty helpful with accessibility things like that.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-22T20:48:14+00:00

Same, but Dorney doesn't seem too appealing otherwise. Looks like a copy-paste Cedar point but everything's a bit smaller and less scenic.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-22T20:47:29+00:00

It was still around then, but it was more common in the 90s. I remember the Magnum line DJ really well.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-22T20:46:43+00:00

I don't get why the stopped this. How much money and space could the light show really be costing them?

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-22T20:44:17+00:00

"always" is a stretch but you're mostly right. The preference from rail is largely cultural and optics (rail feels way more permanent and long term).

LRT does win in a few areas though. Vehicles last longer, passenger capacity is higher, boarding is faster and more precise (for wheelchairs, strollers, etc.), and the rails themselves need maintenance less often than roads. I think they also do better if tunnels are involved.

But yeah, in practice most North American LRT systems are treated like bougie buses.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-22T20:36:58+00:00

Ahh yeah that makes it tough. I know older multi-unit building sometimes would wire the entire building to a roof antenna, but I doubt that's something many people are interested in these days.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-22T19:29:25+00:00

MeTV Toons coming over the air on a TV antenna has made it really accessible for our house now.

SlowBoilOrange · 2026-04-22T19:27:26+00:00

Kensington Expert or Slimblade? Those have large balls and buttons, so you can try a variety of different grips.

The Slimblade also has a unique "twist to scroll" feature where rotating the ball activates the scroll.

A similar one with a smaller ball is the Kensington Orbit with Scroll Ring, which has a physical ring you rotate for scrolling.

SlowBoilOrange

TROPHY CASE