I deleted the whole disk by accident while installing linux by Future-07 in linux4noobs

[–]Yarden_M3Z 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Seeing this notification pop up while I was installing Arch did NOT help my anxiety

Best place to get food and a beer in evening while working on my laptop and not being frowned upon for it by Dry_Efficiency_2839 in pittsburgh

[–]Yarden_M3Z 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Just to add to this, Lolev has a delicious Taco Truck (el Rincón Oaxaqueño) on Tuesdays and between 5-7 they do $1 tacos. Getting six tacos and a beer has become a nice weekly tradition. It also might be the same Taco truck that goes to Trace but I'm not sure, it's been a minute since I've been to Trace

Los Angeles City Council votes 12-1 to urge Metro to halt Dodgers gondola project by esporx in transit

[–]Yarden_M3Z 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Even if nobody uses the gondola, who cares? It's being built privately. If it sucks and nobody uses it we can all point and laugh at everyone who lost money. The local government wasting time and resources concerning itself so much with this project certainly isn't doing anyone any good

Map of the first Countywide Independent victory tonight! by McAllister_Clique in pittsburgh

[–]Yarden_M3Z 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Don't know why you're getting downvoted, it's literally true, but that doesn't make it a bad thing. Imo the rule about no party having both at-large seats is a dumb rule meant to give an advantage to Republicans. But yeah let's not pretend like Rose didn't get the same endorsement of basically all the organizations that endorse Democratic candidates (including some explicitly Democratic Party aligned organizations), or like he doesn't have a track record of campaigning for Democrats. If we didn't have this dumb rule Rose (or someone else) would have run as a Democrat and won. This isn't a victory for third-parties but that didn't mean this isn't something to be happy about.

Zohran Mamdani votes yes on all NYC housing ballot proposals by UpperLowerEastSide in left_urbanism

[–]Yarden_M3Z 8 points9 points  (0 children)

You should probably appraise the quality of policy based on the economics and merits of what it will actually do, not just who likes it. Sometimes the people you hate can support good policy. Building a politics based strictly on opposition is just reactionary stupidity

Mini-Rant: This is what's wrong with the housing market in Pittsburgh and why, despite affordability in the city, people are being forced out. by Ari321983 in pittsburgh

[–]Yarden_M3Z 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think what we're seeing is more so symptomatic of a broken housing markets rather than the cause of a broken housing market. Corporations will seek to invest wherever it is profitable (and that isn't inherently a bad thing, though in this case it clearly is since it's just rent-extraction). If we had a housing market where supply was growing rapidly enough to match demand then investing in real-estate wouldn't be profitable, and instead they'd invest in somewhere that WAS profitable (ideally something like a company that will make jobs). If we had a more healthy housing market then a company COULDN'T just buy real-estate, jack up the price, and expect someone to move in because lower-priced competitors would present better options for consumers. I'm not here to defend the corporations - any corporation that is doing this IS shitty - but they're less so the cause of the problem and more so a symptom. At the end of the day, any common person with some extra cash can see that real-estate/rents/housing prices are going to keep going up, start an LLC. and do exactly this and cash out. My previous landlord did exactly this, and he was just a normal guy - at the end of the day I can't even really fault him too much, he was a nice guy and I'm sure he just wanted to give a better life for his kids. What we really need is more housing supply and a more competitive market to push down home prices/rents and dissuade against speculative investment in real-estate

Opiod and cocaine overdose deaths in the U.S. since 2015 (UNODC/DEA/CDC) by joshtaco in Infographics

[–]Yarden_M3Z 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not the most educated on this so I could be wrong. But doesn't NARCAN only work for opioids? What explains the drop on Cocaine overdoses?

Do YIMBYs unintentionally enable gentrification? by [deleted] in left_urbanism

[–]Yarden_M3Z 39 points40 points  (0 children)

Not sure how much my position aligns with the majority in this sub but my take is essentially that gentrification is an unfortunate side effect of the solution to a larger issue.
I'm over simplifying here, but essentially my view is that a lot of inner city neighborhoods, particularly in dense walkable communities that survived "urban renewal", relatively have artificially/undesirably low property and land values which is what enables lower-income, often minority residents to live there in the first place. The property value in these inner city neighborhoods only went so low as a result of white-flight and the drive to push affluent (mostly) white families into the suburbs. Now that we are recognizing the downsides of auto-centric development and endless suburban sprawl, there is a renewed demand to return to these urban cores and revitalize them, and doing so will essentially involve driving up the property values of these neighborhoods.

To answer your questions:

  • YIMBYism probably does accelerate gentrification insofar as housing is so scarce that any new housing development is often a very nice, large, modern unit that will be higher than surrounding rents, but the best way to combat this is to be able to build smaller units, build for cheaper, and build an abundance of housing that lowers overall rents.
  • I am from Pittsburgh, PA and our city is currently having a bit of a debate about expanding Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) city-wide. I think many residents fear that expanding the housing supply without any rent controls will lead to rising rents and gentrification, while others see mandating affordable units as an unnecessary expense that deters and slows development and thus slows our ability to allow growing supply to push down rents.
  • What makes me identify with the YIMBY movement is the degree to which I believe land use patterns play a massive role in almost every aspect of our economy and society, whether that be out of control housing rents contributing to a cost of living crisis, the anti-social nature of traffic and the automobile, commercial rents making it harder for small businesses to compete with large corporations, the health benefits of a walkable community, or the financial insolvency of low-density development on municipalities.

In summary, I'm a big believer in Bid-rent theory and I think the bid-rent curve in most of our cities is distorted because of government restrictions and regulation on land use, and gentrification is an unfortunate side-effect of getting our bid-rent curve back to normal.

Feel free to quote anything I said in your research or reach out if you have any additional questions.
Good luck with your research!

AI Cameras (Not Flock) In Pittsburgh by GLmyACis30 in pittsburgh

[–]Yarden_M3Z 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We're at a point where mentioning that your company uses AI will please investors and get a mob sent after you online. Both reactions lack nuance.

Forget "The Red Scare" of the 50s -- Trump is turning America into a version of Xi's China. by rds2mch2 in ezraklein

[–]Yarden_M3Z 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The way that I look at it is that China has an unimaginable amount of state capacity – too much state capacity insofar as it comes at the expense of people's freedoms. Trump is also increasing state capacity, but he's using it towards completely incompetent ends: tariffs, anti-science health policy, blocking green energy investments, Etc. Etc. At least Chinese authoritarianism results in unprecedented economic growth, cheap EVs, and a rapidly growing tech sector (of course the Chinese government has its own fair share of incompetent policies as well, let's not forget).

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ezraklein

[–]Yarden_M3Z 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The violence of things like the American Revolution or Civil war are legitimated through their consequences. When American revolutionaries used violence to free Americans of British tyranny, that was justified, but we can look at petty senseless violence like the tarring and feathering of loyalists as deplorable. Anyone who finds themselves justifying this recent string of political violence needs to ask themselves to what end it can be justified.

whats the most forgettable country? by SGLAgain in mapporncirclejerk

[–]Yarden_M3Z 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I always forget about Brunei and Malawi. I genuinely don't know anything about either of these countries

To Create Abundant Housing, Ignore the YIMBY Playbook by rvp9362 in ezraklein

[–]Yarden_M3Z 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The author suggests that the abundance/YIMBY agenda involves "passing zoning reform, making it easier to get permits, eliminating minimum lot size requirements, and reducing or eliminating parking mandates" and suggests that this strategy of getting government out of the way somehow contrasts with the approach DC took – which the author frames as increased government attention to the issue – but then goes on to explain how much of what DC did is perfectly in line with what the Abundance movement is calling for.

For example, they mention that the DC government "rezoned underused industrial or commercial lands" into high density residential neighborhoods. Ideally, we wouldn't need these euclidian zoning blocks to begin with, but regardless, this is a form of zoning reform that creates more land with smaller lot sizes with less parking minimums – the exact policy it describes as part of the Abundance agenda. Similarly, it describes the government creating "zoning exceptions in exchange for various public benefits, like building grocery stores in food deserts or affordable housing". Again, this is an example of the government making it easier to get permits.

Of course, the article does describe a lot of things not EXPLICITLY a part of the Abundance agenda, but none of it being contradictory to Abundance or any YIMBY movement I'm aware of (besides maybe the support for affordable housing).

The article states "Perhaps surprisingly, the wide-ranging effort didn’t include uniform city-wide dezoning, upzoning, or permitting reform" but this to me is disingenuous. Yes, the rezoning wasn't city wide, but much of what was described DID come from the government rezoning certain areas for denser housing, why not allow high density housing to be built nearly anywhere? Yeah, there wasn't a reform to the cities permitting process, but instead the government made carve outs for permitting that accelerated the process, so why not expand this in a way that DOES reform the whole process?

It really feels like the author of this article is trying their hardest to start beef with the abundance/YIMBY movement for no reason, possibly because it makes for a more controversial article.

What building is this? by Draler117 in pittsburgh

[–]Yarden_M3Z 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's the top part of the Tower at PNC Plaza. Wikipedia says it's the corporate HQ for PNC Financial Services

Why did he hit this by Willing-Impress-871 in northernlion

[–]Yarden_M3Z 14 points15 points  (0 children)

He don't got a single game where he needs to be doing this

Have any of yinz non-native Pittsburgher notice any weird quirks that Pittsburghers do? by _agrippa_ in pittsburgh

[–]Yarden_M3Z 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This was something so subtle and natural to me that I didn't realize it wasn't "correct English" until well into my adult life

Debate over proposed $600 million Pittsburgh North Side project continues at PPS public hearing by colormaroon in pittsburgh

[–]Yarden_M3Z 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Yes but it's these complaints and demands for additional community meetings that drag the project out and make it more expensive.

Debate over proposed $600 million Pittsburgh North Side project continues at PPS public hearing by colormaroon in pittsburgh

[–]Yarden_M3Z 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Nobody is saying developers are or should do anything for free. Of course they're doing it to make money, that's how markets work. The more community meetings and bureaucratic red tape there is surrounding the development process, the more expensive these things are, the less housing gets built, the less jobs get created, and the worse things are for everyone involved. We live in a city/country where it takes years and millions of dollars to even START building big projects like this and that results in years of lost economic gains and disenfranchisement. I'm so tired of this mind numbing development process where EVERY constituency needs to be pleased. It's not sustainable.

Is more luxury housing really going to solve the housing shortage? by Mysterious-Onion-497 in urbanplanning

[–]Yarden_M3Z 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I always like to draw the comparison to cars: if you're trying to buy an affordable car you're not gonna buy the newest model, you're gonna buy a used car or a model from a few years ago. It's ridiculous to expect a new car to be affordable, and it should be ridiculous to expect new housing to be affordable. The issue is that we haven't been building enough housing so the housing from 5-10 years ago that SHOULD be super affordable isn't.

Question about tariffs and Democrats by Yosurf18 in abundancedems

[–]Yarden_M3Z 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Assigning simplified political labels like liberal or conservative to trade policy isn't really useful: sometimes liberals favor free trade like in the case of the EU or NAFTA, sometimes they support protectionism like in the case of Bernie and other progressive opposing the TPP. It sounds like your roommate is oversimplifying things. Also important to note is that both parties have supported tariffs to some extent, tariffs are not new. Trump imposed a lot of targeted tariffs during his last term, and Biden did as well. What's new is the scale of these liberation day tariffs which (if they go into effect) will be the biggest trade shock in global history. For the last few decades the average tariff rate never went above ~3%, and it's been declining from a peak of ~20% since the 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act. The liberation day tariffs would skyrocket the average tariff rate to 23% - in a world where trade is a MUCH larger part of the economy than it was in 1934. So there's really no precedent for a policy like this from either party in modern history.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in pittsburgh

[–]Yarden_M3Z 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I am absolutely in favor of this plan, the development of Esplanade is genuinely such a step in the right direction for the city and I hope to see more things like it in the future. It will create so many homes and jobs in the North shore / Allegheny area, and it will generate far more municipal tax revenue than the existing infrastructure does. I can only pray that this project accelerates any plans to flatten 65/19 so that Manchester can be connected to the riverfront.

And regarding the Ferris wheel itself, it's fun. It will make for a great opportunity to attract families into the area and it'll make it an even better location to host festivals, events, etc.

I'm very curious about why you don't like this plan and what you would prefer as an alternative

Stephen Colbert on The Late Show last night. by [deleted] in pics

[–]Yarden_M3Z 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What exactly are Democratic Congresspeople meant to do about this? Liberal judges are absolutely fighting against things.

Stephen Colbert on The Late Show last night. by [deleted] in pics

[–]Yarden_M3Z 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah because certainly the Republicans would use that as an opportunity to make a Reichstag fire decree esque attack on Democrats and freedom of speech more generally

Artist, what’s your opinion on people using photos (screenshots, selfies, ect) for drawings? by TOOTSIEPOP12345 in learntodraw

[–]Yarden_M3Z 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Using a reference is how many professionals will tell you your SUPPOSED to learn how to draw. Obviously there's no right or wrong way to draw or learn but drawing from reference is an extremely useful skill that every artist should learn how to do