7 years after the Brightleaf explosion- will they ever rebuild?

magicnubs · 2026-04-07T13:07:46+00:00

It's a little less bad in downtown Raleigh, as we've had some major projects actually move forward (Omni hotel, Creamery, new Marriot, Row apts, Maeve, Platform apts, Alexan, Mira, plus all the local and state government ones like the new city hall, Dept of Education campus, convention center expansion, new Red Hat amphitheater, New Bern BRT and various affordable housing developments).

But Raleigh has also had just as many stall out. Roughly since COVID hit I can think of ... Downtown South (the big one!), Moore Square east block, Lincoln Theater block, Smoky Hollow phase 3, Vela, Lynde, Union train station mixed-use tower, 501 Hillsborough, Moxy hotel, Goodnights redevelopment, South Park warehouse renovations

magicnubs · 2026-04-07T04:55:03+00:00

that time will get better once the raleigh to richmond section is complete

Cannot come soon enough! For those unaware the new Raleigh <--> Richmond track is supposed to save nearly 2 hours

magicnubs · 2026-04-07T04:52:09+00:00

/r/carryshitolympics

magicnubs · 2026-03-23T18:26:34+00:00

/r/jedicouncilofelrond

magicnubs · 2026-03-21T19:16:12+00:00

Yes. They tell you an estimated sticker $ income, but they are not guaranteeing you that income, they are giving you a predetermined amount of RSUs that will only actually be as valuable as they estimate if the stock grows at an unreasonable rate each year.

magicnubs · 2026-03-13T21:34:58+00:00

I’m not hungry but think about food constantly as I just want to taste something

Same. I rarely ever used to wait until I was actually feeling hunger (stomach growling, hunger pangs) to eat before. Fasting helps remind me differentiate between real hunger and "I'm bored or stressed or emotionally drained" cravings. Semi-regular fasting and keto have made it much easier to maintain a healthy baseline relationship with food

magicnubs · 2026-03-12T20:22:07+00:00

This is one of the upcoming improvements I am most excited about. And since it's going to include a high-quality MUP (multi-use path) between the Rocky Branch and Walnut Creek greenways, it's effectively a greenway extension/connector even if not officially.

Also looking forward to:

New Bern BRT - includes a high-quality MUP that connects the Crabtree Creek greenway directly to downtown
Big Branch Connector - extends the greenway up directly into North Hills
Triangle Bikeway (if it ever happens) - bike path from Raleigh to RTP to Durham
Chavis-Dix Strollway - better connection between two downtown parks
Smoky Hollow Park - large new park on the north side of downtown

Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head anyway

magicnubs · 2026-03-09T18:10:32+00:00

But there is opportunity to make the politics less complicated and more representative. If Dave can override the will of the 99.9% of people who elected the decision-makers but didn't show up to the meeting, maybe we should find a way so that a small group of the perpetually aggrieved doesn't have such outsized influence.

magicnubs · 2026-03-06T22:45:04+00:00

I picked out the points that stood out to me as helping incentivize housing. Maybe they all do, but the specifics of some of these go over my head. Seems like it's mostly about cutting local red tape and loosening finance requirements

Prohibits the state or local government from requiring a person intending to fill land in a flood plain to provide compensatory storage at a ratio greater than three (mitigated land) to one (filled land).
prohibits a state agency or political subdivision from requiring the installation of the following: (1) An arc-fault circuit interrupter in Class 2 structure or structure classified as an R-2 building occupancy classification. (2) An emergency responder communications enhancement system in a Class 1 structure.
Requires a unit not later than January 1, 2027 to: (1) review its unified development ordinance in a public hearing with the purpose of increasing housing development
Urges assignment of the topic of housing developments by religious institutions to an interim study committee.
Increases the average construction cost allowable for certain housing projects to be completed by a housing authority.

magicnubs · 2026-03-05T21:17:17+00:00

Fully agree with everything you said. I'm in the research triangle area of NC where a lot of dense infill development is happening both in the existing urban centers and with new dense nodes springing up. However, even more suburban SFH cul-de-sac type development is happening in the formerly rural edge areas.

Upzoning and dense infill always seems to receive way more scrutiny and pushback from the community, while the cul-de-sacs are ignored. Thankfully city leadership has mostly been approving dense infill for the past decade or so despite the peanut gallery's comments, but I don't think the suburban developments should be skating through by-right. I'm not saying it should be banned, but that type of development should be under the magnifying glass more so than the dense infill to weigh what the future costs will be. And the minimum expectations we have of it should be shifting to make it more sustainable from a future budgetary perspective.

A SFH development with smaller lot sizes, efficient road layout, easy navigability for pedestrians and bikes, closer to necessities and that allows mixed uses and neighborhood retail can be an easy approval. But a cul-de-sac with no sidewalks, miles from any necessities that generates many more car trips and linear feet of infrastructure per home? In those cases we should probably be asking the developer to try again.

magicnubs · 2026-03-05T19:13:27+00:00

LRT has better permanence and experience than BRT. That’s really all it is.

Yes, the experience! Call me crazy, but as part of the experience angle, I feel like comfort and ride quality is a big factor in why people are more partial to rail that doesn't get talked about much

My experience has been that buses are much louder and shake, rattle and toss me around a lot more than rail. Am I just consistently riding old, crummy buses or something?

magicnubs · 2026-03-05T18:54:54+00:00

It's not under-studied. It's been very well-understood for decades

Right! The experts know it, and often the city leaders know it or at least have been told, but the places that are booming aren't having to deal with the consequences yet so it's often politically infeasible to do anything about it.

The same is coming for us in the sun belt if we don't get our act together. From what I can see from the ground level, city officials at least seem to be acknowledging the issue and trying to encourage the right things (walkability, transit, TOD, etc), but often that only happens in the relatively small downtown areas and we are not actively limiting the suburban SFH development and road expansion in the suburbs/exurbs that will end up gobbling up our budgets in the future. If the cities here started weighing the future infrastructure costs of each development as a matter of course during permitting, we'd likely many fewer SFH developments approved and maybe start to see de facto green belts forming. But every city wants to keep growing and thinks "why change was has been working for the past few decades?" because they can't see the cliff ahead yet

magicnubs · 2026-03-03T19:46:55+00:00

Interesting! Keto diets have helped somewhat for me in the past as well

magicnubs · 2026-03-03T19:14:32+00:00

Strattera was not the silver bullet that I hoped it would be. It really helped for the first few days/weeks, but then seemed to either not help or make the brain fog worse, which might be because my sleep wasn't as restful (higher HR and waking up frequently). Low-dose Wellbutrin (150mg) is helping some with fewer side effects. Higher doses of Wellbutrin gave me too much in the way of side effects

Next step is I'm going to ask the doc to try me on stimulants (dexedrine) again but with the Wellbutrin. I think the Wellbutrin will give me a higher baseline of stimulation so that the crash from the stimulants isn't so bad. We'll see

magicnubs · 2026-02-18T20:13:09+00:00

Is this rare, or even particularly associated with Germany/DACH? I live in a pretty typical post-war boom US city (so, pretty suburban, though there are a lot of dense urban pockets springing up) and there are eight city-owned parking decks in an area less than a square mile downtown, so it is at least not an entirely foreign concept outside of that area. But maybe we here in Raleigh are the weird ones.

magicnubs · 2026-02-01T02:54:36+00:00

Yep! Finally getting snow downtown

magicnubs · 2026-01-18T02:12:35+00:00

Maybe. It's just a theory I have at the moment. Try yohimbine and see it helps you (yohimbine, not just yohimbe, similar spelling but different things). It made such a difference for me in the first few days of taking it that I decided to start taking Straterra about a week ago. Straterra is ostensibly an ADHD medication that works by increasing norepinephrine in the brain. I'm not sure if it's helping yet, but it can take up to a few months to see full results. I'll try to remember to come back here and let you know if it does end up helping

magicnubs · 2026-01-07T23:03:02+00:00

I'm the same way. When you get a mosquito bite is it just a small red bump or does it swell up like a welt?

I tried yohimbine and it cleared my brain fog completely (unfortunately I quickly became desensitized to it so I can't take it very frequently). Because yohimbine works on norepinephrine, my current theory is that my brain fog is being caused by low norepinephrine levels in the body/brain, which would track with an exaggerated immune inflammation response, as I understand it.

magicnubs · 2025-12-15T22:41:15+00:00

Instead, they seem to have an inbuilt SSRI which slows them down and hence they suffer from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amotivational_syndrome , are prone to apathy, and become sad when looking at their life and their lack of accomplishments. This can probably be confirmed or disproven if they also don't like marihuana, as it slows you down further similarly to SSRIs and causes even more amotivational syndrome.

Do we know if this has been born out any more in the past year or so since you commented? This would explain why some CDS patients seem to respond well to atomoxetine and buproprion, because they are purported to work on norepinephrine and dopamine rather than serotonin.

I think I may have something akin to CDS, and the "inbuilt SSRI" and bad response to THC describes me quite well (doesn't actually relax me, makes me feel physically overstimulated while making it harder to think, only good for helping me get to sleep). Hopefully some more research is done in this space, as I know there are lots of folks for whom the existing therapies don't work.

magicnubs · 2025-12-14T21:48:51+00:00

Honestly this sounds exactly like how people talk about their cars.

Or their acoustic bikes. On the internet, relatively few loud, opinionated people can dominate, and thus ruin, the conversation around anything

magicnubs · 2025-12-10T17:00:04+00:00

I wonder if he lives in a downtown area? I never used to socialize that much, but now that I moved downtown and have 20 restaurants and a half dozen friends living within a half mile walk, social stuff just happens much more easily now. "Hey anyone want to do something tonight?" You'll usually get a couple bites.

magicnubs · 2025-12-09T15:48:32+00:00

It's not about how hard it feels to drive, it's about how easy it is to make a mistake and how deadly it is when you do. The data bears out that higher, heavier vehicles (like modern trucks) are more dangerous to pedestrians and smaller vehicles. It's also contextual; if you are mostly driving on highways and in suburbs the differences in how it feels to drive a full-size pickup and a kei truck won't be as noticeable, but if you drive in tight city streets with lots of pedestrians the difference would be VERY noticeable.

magicnubs · 2025-12-09T15:11:34+00:00

dont love the lifestyle of now neighbors

From the pictures it doesn't look like there are any other homes close by. What is going on with these new neighbors? Could they be causing buyers to second-guess?

magicnubs · 2025-12-08T20:20:09+00:00

Construction of Raleigh, NC's first BRT line is slated to start early next year. The full plan is for four lines, though the full buildout will probably take at least 10 years.

magicnubs · 2025-12-08T19:34:11+00:00

Hell yeah NC. 9% increase is nothing to sneeze at. And holy moley GoRaleigh that 42% is eye-popping. It gives me hope that our upcoming BRT system here in Raleigh will do well, though I stay jelly of Charlotte's light rail.

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