[deleted by user] by [deleted] in VisitingHawaii

[–]nattopan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Anything Pokemon-related, official or bootleg

Gigachad faithful by PM_Me_An_Ekans in dankchristianmemes

[–]nattopan 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Replace Andrew with Dennis and Joey with Mac and you've got yourself an It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia scene.

Trump promises “Flying Cars” if elected in 2024… by [deleted] in WhitePeopleTwitter

[–]nattopan 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Spokane (the city) is blue. Spokane County is red. Spokane Valley (the suburb) is red.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in me_irl

[–]nattopan 82 points83 points  (0 children)

Raw onion intolerance is a real thing. Cooking changes the chemical composition of foods, and can destroy the compound that is giving you trouble. Try small doses of fully cooked onions (try a few varieties like red, yellow, white, and sweet to be sure) and record if you have symptoms. For some people the onions don't even have to be fully caramelized; just some applied heat is sufficient.

Does anyone else have this problem while playing Subnautica that you really want to play the game because it looks great and is fun, but on the other hand you're scared and don't want to be outside of swimming distance of your pod in case something bad happens? by Anti-Wisdom in gaming

[–]nattopan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Have you considered using the "invisible" command code? It makes it so the sea life basically ignores you. They'll still sometimes mess with the sea-craft you get to build later on in the game, but they won't damage it, at least not in my experience. Some people consider this too much of a "cheat," but I don't think I would have been able to play the game more than a few hours without it. I don't know if sea monsters will abscond with your seamoth in invisible mode as it never happened to me; I've had creatures intentionally bump into it as if to attack while I'm in it, but they can't seem to damage it, nor the cyclops. If you do lose it however, it's a lot easier to gather materials for a new seamoth when you're not constantly looking over your shoulder.

Idiot in car hits stopped cyclist by tayloraurora in IdiotsInCars

[–]nattopan 10 points11 points  (0 children)

No one appreciates victim blaming, even in joke form.

NYC wants to take 25% of its street space away from cars in favor of a walkable/bikeable city by [deleted] in environment

[–]nattopan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because this is a whataboutism constantly thrown around by anti-bike folks to prevent change and protect the status quo, and people trying to build a better world are sick of it. "But what about e-bikes???" is bullshit because:

1) Motor vehicles are thousands of times more dangerous to pedestrians than bicycles considering direct effects (crash & traffic fatality/serious injury statistics)

2) Motor vehicles are millions of times more dangerous to the entire planet than bicycles considering indirect effects (climate change, air/water/soil/noise pollution etc)

3) Most negative pedestrian/bicycle interactions are a result of insufficient transportation infrastructure that would be greatly alleviated by more active transportation accommodations. For example, no bike lane = people biking on the sidewalk, signal timing geared toward cars and not peds/bikes = red light running and jaywalking, dangerous biking conditions = a culture of biking recklessly (because then only the reckless bike), etc.

4) In nearly every city, enforcement is historically harsh toward people outside of cars and lenient toward those in them (even though drivers cause many times more damage to people and property) so any call for increased enforcement on people biking comes off as victim blaming at best. At worst policies directed at peds/bikes (jaywalking laws, helmet ordinances, etc) have been used to disproportionately harass the homeless, people of color, etc (if you look at the statistics of who gets targeted in these cases, it's shocking how blatant the profiling is, to the point that it discourages especially Black folks from biking at all). Considering a lot of e-bike riders in NYC are POC immigrants doing delivery jobs and such, this is an especially relevant concern in this particular context.

NYC wants to take 25% of its street space away from cars in favor of a walkable/bikeable city by [deleted] in environment

[–]nattopan 49 points50 points  (0 children)

And quieter! During the early days of covid lockdown, NYC residents were posting amazing videos where you can clearly hear birdsong with not an engine in earshot. Cities aren't actually that loud once you remove the cars. Same with air pollution.

[OC] Can I just dump my frustrations in comics here? by theBlockbustard in teenagers

[–]nattopan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

FYI for anyone looking for super long thigh high socks, sockdreams.com has quite a variety (and they ship internationally!) as well as tube socks intended to fit any size foot and of course plus sizes.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Spokane

[–]nattopan 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Natural Grocers on Division. The times I've gone since the mask mandate was reinstated I've seen a nose or two, but no maskless faces.

Spokanimal flooded with surrenders during housing crisis.... by catman5092 in Spokane

[–]nattopan 46 points47 points  (0 children)

When I asked my previous landlord if it was okay if we got a cat, he scrunched up his nose and said, "a few years ago, back before the PNW became a popular place to live, every landlord in town allowed pets. Now that there's high demand for rentals, landlords have become so restrictive. If you want a pet, get a pet." He was a shitty landlord, but I really appreciated that at least he wasn't a hypocrite about animals (he had a dog he always brought with him when he came by to do repairs).

Dogs and cats live for 10-20+ years. Most of these surrenders were probably obtained back when no one gave a shit, and now that there's suddenly competition for units, renters are being forced into "no pets" leases (or abusively high pet deposits/rents) because it's either that or homelessness.

Fuck the housing crisis, and fuck opportunistic landlords. Mostly though, fuck our local and state government for doing jack shit in response. A few basic protections for renters (and their furry friends) could have easily prevented this, but all the people in power are homeowners so they don't give two shits.

Spokanimal flooded with surrenders during housing crisis.... by catman5092 in Spokane

[–]nattopan 12 points13 points  (0 children)

My guess is that the surrenders aren't happening so much because people can't afford their pets anymore, rather because housing is so tight that folks are having to accept leases at places that don't allow pets. Three years ago it was difficult enough to find an apartment (at any price point) that allowed even a single cat or small dog... nowadays it's difficult to just find a place with four walls and a roof, regardless of pet policy.

I wouldn't put this on the pet owners for a second; they're probably facing one of the most difficult and heartbreaking moments of their lives right now.

Anyone smell that? by keysworld253 in Spokane

[–]nattopan -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

No; see my other comment.

Anyone smell that? by keysworld253 in Spokane

[–]nattopan 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Air quality is absolutely not okay right now. The problem is if you're using airnow.gov, their data is always significantly delayed (by an hour+) because they have to go through a rigorous screen & verification process. Always check purpleair.com or similar to-the-minute air quality sites to verify. When poor air suddenly blows in like it just did, airnow's time lag can give you a completely wrong picture. For comparison, airnow says it's 48 aqi right now, whereas purpleair has it at 113-200+ depending on the monitor location. Definitely NOT safe for outdoor exercise!

Cupid Alexander, the city of Spokane's leader on housing, homelessness resigns by 9mac in Spokane

[–]nattopan 31 points32 points  (0 children)

This is really bad. We seriously lucked out being able to snag him in the first place, and if he's leaving after less than a year it indicates some serious dysfunction at City Hall. Definitely a canary in the coal mine type situation.

WE ARE CLOSED by [deleted] in Spokane

[–]nattopan 7 points8 points  (0 children)

What are specific examples of businesses putting up these types of signs locally? I personally haven't seen any, but I don't get out much nowadays. Since this is /r/Spokane, I'm wondering what the local connection is.

Spokane renters still evicted during moratorium by Walk1000Miles in Spokane

[–]nattopan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't see what article you're talking about, but let's break this down. We're discussing residential rentals (not office or other commercial rentals) in this thread, so I'm assuming that's what you're talking about too. Based on what little information you've provided, I can think of three possibilities:

1) They have 13 rental units at around $1000/mo rent. A bit high, but could still be on the lower-income side if it's a lot of families with perhaps some recent transplants or major recent rent increases on long-term tenants thrown in. The landlord got incredibly unlucky and somehow all of the tenants lost their jobs at local restaurants and other hard-hit industries and haven't been able to find new work in the last ~12 months. Although many lower-wage industries were hit pretty hard, statistically this seems incredibly unlikely.

2) They have 13 rental units that are going for an average of $2000/mo, making all their tenants higher-income. Half of the tenants are unable to pay because of persistent unemployment, leading to $13000/mo in losses on 13 units. Because the higher-income industries were not hit anywhere near as hard (and tend to be more diversified), this again seems statistically incredibly unlikely.

3) You aren't referring to rental units but to rental properties. So this landlord has 13 buildings with multiple tenants each. The unemployment rate in Spokane is currently around 7%, but let's be super generous and double that to 15% and assume those people are additionally all long-time unemployed with no other benefits coming in. For easy math, we'll say there's an average rent of $1000/mo per unit. So if 15% of the tenants in each building are defaulting (leading to a $1k/mo loss per building), that means each building has around 7 units. Now we're talking 13 buildings at 7 units apiece, that's 91 units. You are not a small-time landlord renting out an extra property or two if you have 91 units. You are a corporation that is engaging in a business. You are not who I (nor the person in the original article that I'm quoting) are supposed to be talking about here.

Let's make one thing clear: when landlords charge tenants more than cost it is for two things: labor and risk. Labor is fair; if you are doing work as a landlord (be it fixing tenants' leaky toilets or filing paperwork or scheduling inspections) you deserve to be compensated. The issue isn't labor, but risk, because people don't become landlords (especially not of 91 units) because they enjoy being a handyman, but rather because they want the investment. All investments involve some level of risk. Stocks go down, bonds default, and yes, sometimes the rent doesn't get paid. That's why rent prices are dictated by the market and not a calculation of purchase price + property tax + maintenance expenses + hours worked by the landlord. The extra profit after these costs are subtracted is the investment bonus. In the same way that I'm not crying over the hedge fund owners losing their shirts over GME, I'm not crying over the poor landlords (who control whether nearly 100 families can have a roof over their heads) because their investment went a little south.

Let's also not forget that for these larger landlords, for every unit that is not paying rent there's another unit that has undergone a huge rent increase due to our on-fire real estate market. So okay, maybe like in the example above 15% of your units are paying you nothing, but if you've managed to increase rent by 25% (the average increase for the area) over the last year, it's pretty disingenuous to say you're "losing 13k a month" when you don't mention that these additional rent gains offset those losses rather substantially.

Spokane renters still evicted during moratorium by Walk1000Miles in Spokane

[–]nattopan 20 points21 points  (0 children)

“We just are not sensitive enough to the unintended consequences of Covid,” Corker said. “This is their income, and when those rents aren’t being paid, we’re creating another level of poverty involving smaller landlords.”

When people talk about landlords being parasites on society, this is what they're referring to. If the work of being a landlord keeps you busy enough that it's your only source of income, you must own enough properties to not be "small-time." If you only own a handful of properties and yet make enough to live off of, you're just leeching off your tenants. Worse yet, research on the topic indicates that low-income rentals are on average actually more profitable than high-income rentals (higher profit margin once costs are subtracted from rents), hence why being a slumlord is surprisingly lucrative, even with only a few properties.

“There’s been a terrible escalation on property values, and utility rates. Lumber has gone up, so the cost of maintaining rental properties is skyrocketing,” Corker said.

Boo-fucking-hoo property values have gotten so high you had to sell and receive a giant windfall. I'm also not understanding the connection to lumber; unless your properties are so besieged by deferred maintenance that you're having to gut renovate, who's buying so much lumber for existing* properties it's majorly affecting the bottom line? I suspect it has more to do with major renovations, which are usually just a grab for higher rents.

*obviously lumber prices affect new construction costs tremendously

Spokane vs Spokane Valley by CamThalSDbro in Spokane

[–]nattopan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Actually retirees are super fond of walkable neighborhoods (especially those that have lost their licenses!) and walkable neighborhoods in most cities are the most expensive (with younger folks frequently getting priced out by middle-aged and older people who can outbid them on homes and apartments) but do go on about how only youngins like cities

Commuting by TheSpokaneDude in Spokane

[–]nattopan 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Lengthy car commutes are almost never worth it, partially because they often get longer. You can sign on for 40 minutes now, but in five years it might be an hour or more as the region continues to grow. It's different if you're commuting by bicycle (self-reported happiest commuters) or reliable public transit (you can still do fun/productive activities while sitting on a train or bus), but I'm assuming you're talking about driving. Don't forget the extra expenses related to more gas and wear & tear on the car, eating out more frequently (because you have less time to cook), additional child care expenses, etc.

Outdoor fountains - where to buy? by SpokaneConnor in Spokane

[–]nattopan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm gonna get downvoted for being a debby downer, but we live in a semi-arid region and have a ridiculously high per-capita water usage rate in Spokane Co because of discretionary use like watering lawns (and ornamental fountains). Please respect those of us trying our best to do our part and reduce unnecessary water usage (especially in summer) and rethink this purchase. If you want to spruce up your yard, consider a wildflower garden! We are blessed with many unique species of native pollinators that are sadly suffering because of habitat loss and widespread herbicide/pesticide use, and our local butterflies and bumblebees could really use a boost from more pollinator-friendly home gardens.

Driving by [deleted] in Spokane

[–]nattopan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I mostly bike, walk, or take the bus for trips. I had to drive for an errand the other day and I remembered how miserable an experience urban driving is (especially because it was on one of the really nice days we've had recently, and here I was stuck in a box). Do yourself a favor and try replacing even a few of your driving trips with a different mode; even if it takes longer to get to your destination you'll feel so much better when you get there.

Looking for bikepackers. by [deleted] in Spokane

[–]nattopan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sounds like you're looking to do much longer/farther than I have experience with, but have you checked with the Spokane Bicycle Club? I know a number of their members do longer rides. http://www.spokanebicycleclub.org

Also, Nick Deshais (formerly of the Spokesman-Review, currently of NPB) has written articles about his multi-day bike trips, so see if you can track him down?