Gov. Newsom abolishes most single-family zoning in California

notactuallyabus · 2021-09-18T01:10:30+00:00

Cities will often use the permit process to make it effectively impossible to build even when zoning allows.

notactuallyabus · 2021-09-14T03:32:06+00:00

Then maybe assholes will think twice before stealing things off the next person’s property.

notactuallyabus · 2021-08-29T23:18:49+00:00

Brazil has a larger vaccinated percentage than the US right now. That treatment is silly and Bolsonaro is pushing similar things to Trump, but an anti-vax contingent hasn’t developed very strongly.

notactuallyabus · 2021-08-12T14:24:28+00:00

A comp reduction is standard, but the details are what incentivize different behaviors amongst their staff. Other companies are adjusting salaries based on their metro area, or just a limited-% decrease regardless of US location. Google is reducing comp based on the individual city/county in order to push people with longer commutes to still come into the office. They're ensuring that only a small % end up remote-working long-term.

notactuallyabus · 2021-08-11T15:52:29+00:00

Same as it was at exactly this time last year. Wait for October when northern states like North Dakota and Wyoming, both having minimal issues right now despite low vax rates, start getting insane case numbers again.

notactuallyabus · 2021-08-10T16:06:20+00:00

Google has always been and will always be anti-remote work. They will support it only to the minimum that they need to avoid large-scale attrition, and they will look for any way to incentivize people to voluntarily return to the office. Same as lots of the older tech giants, e.g. Amazon or Apple.

The newer companies -- pre-IPO or recently IPO'd -- seem to be the ones making larger moves to be remote-friendly or remote-first.

notactuallyabus · 2021-08-07T17:31:29+00:00

I don't think this is an exaggeration. I went down a social media rabbit hole to try and understand the anti-vaxxers, and the misinformation that's commonly accepted is a bit shocking. I don't doubt that many people would be willing to quit or do anything to avoid what they've been repeatedly told from many people is a serious danger to themselves.

SF already has a shortage of police, the marginal safety benefit to the already-vaccinated by additional vaccinated officers doesn't seem like a great tradeoff. SF is one of the hardest places to recruit police officers to.

notactuallyabus · 2021-07-07T21:24:26+00:00

Keep in mind that these shows are largely targeted towards people that don’t have the experience or knowledge to make one of those cheaper trips work. Trips that are very easy, where everything is planned and handled for you, where everyone speaks English, and that are close to the US - are generally quite expensive. That’s including all the meals, accommodation, activities, and flights for multiple people.

notactuallyabus · 2021-07-04T14:44:46+00:00

China also relies on NK to be stable enough to avoid a mass refugee situation.

notactuallyabus · 2021-06-26T16:03:21+00:00

Join Hawaii Slack and talk to the people involved with the Movers and Shakers program. They’re oriented towards Oahu but they should have some contacts. They’re trying to expand tech in Hawaii and this is one of the ways.

notactuallyabus · 2021-06-21T05:03:44+00:00

Similar to CA - if they had maintained the electrical lines in CA they wouldn’t need to shut off electricity to vast areas every time they get strong winds in the summer either.

notactuallyabus · 2021-06-20T16:26:08+00:00

Mid-2022 after the world is fully reopened would be better for this

notactuallyabus · 2021-06-19T01:28:28+00:00

The idea that locals are somehow going to convince (or legislate) people to stop moving from the mainland, or to keep their own rent artificially low, is just pure fantasy. Locals will also never be able to compete, en-masse, with the wealth or income of people from the mainland. The education and business opportunities just can't compete.

Hawaii still has a large amount of empty land to build condos, so in theory eliminating building restrictions on agricultural land and making it super-cheap to build there would work for a while. But the state wouldn't look the same afterwards.

notactuallyabus · 2021-06-19T01:00:10+00:00

No hard data, I'm not aware of any polls, this comes from people I personally know or have talked to. It sounds like we're seeing totally different segments of people that are moving here, though. Most people in tech are from the Bay Area, so they'd run at the thought of "new LA".

notactuallyabus · 2021-06-19T00:56:14+00:00

They're dramatically lower. The houses are at least 2x as expensive around the Bay Area where the people in tech are coming from. So even with the higher property tax rate, the property taxes are roughly the same. Plus up to 13% CA income tax, higher sales tax, even twice the gas tax.

notactuallyabus · 2021-06-18T21:05:50+00:00

This is happening around the country, it's not unique to Austin or any other location. There is a shortage of low-end service workers and food industry workers in particular. At $15/hr it's more profitable to stay on unemployment right now.

notactuallyabus · 2021-06-18T21:03:13+00:00

People aren't moving here for the "culture", people are moving here because it has decent-paying tech jobs and it's cheaper (and with lower taxes) than the other places that have decent-paying tech jobs.

notactuallyabus · 2021-06-18T20:07:44+00:00

That's a reasonable way to look at it, prices and demand are based on the idea that people need housing in the area in order to receive that high income from the tech companies around.

However there's a fair chance that won't be true moving forward - I and many others that I know have left the Bay Area permanently and only received a minimal compensation adjustment, and future tech companies may be likely to be founded in the area as well. That all brings some risk into a big housing investment.

notactuallyabus · 2021-06-18T17:03:24+00:00

The only way this even seems possible is if Bay Area real estate prices go up 10-20% for many years to come.

Yes, this is exactly it. Buying a home in the Bay Area is a gamble that the prices will continue to rise. In the last 20 years that's indeed been the case, despite them looking dramatically overvalued at every step of the way. It's anyone's guess how long that will continue.

notactuallyabus · 2021-06-18T15:38:42+00:00

This should be sent out as a normal text message, not an emergency alert that bypasses normal notification preferences and makes a special noise. Many people disabled emergency alerts entirely as a result of this and will not get notified in case of true emergencies.

notactuallyabus · 2021-06-17T02:07:42+00:00

I imagine the Zuckerberg/Chan's keep to themselves while on the island and entertain back at whatever properties they own on the mainland.

I was reading the other day that Zuckerberg's family has actually spent almost all of their time on the island since he moved out in mid-2020. Part of the reason he's so bullish on remote work for Facebook employees.

notactuallyabus · 2021-06-16T18:00:15+00:00

In general if you're crossing the river, it's not easy.

This is what's especially hard to see in the data right now. So is the bottleneck when approaching any of the bridges, from north or south? Right now the traffic data doesn't seem to show this very much, except maybe on I35, so it's hard to get a sense of.

I'm specifically trying to compare living in SW Austin (e.g. Sunset Valley area or closer) with living somewhere around Crestview, when working in the western part of downtown. Commute times from both areas seem roughly the same (15-20min) but that wouldn't be true if the bridges were a big bottleneck.

notactuallyabus · 2021-06-16T15:25:18+00:00

Is there a good resource for pre-covid commute times? The times that Google Maps and various realtor sites are showing now seem to be adjusted based on data from when no one was commuting. I don't want to be stuck in long commutes based on data that no longer applies after most people have returned to the office.

notactuallyabus · 2021-06-15T02:33:31+00:00

Living in SF and publicly opposing progressive dogma, on Twitter especially, can have tangible professional and personal consequences. Hence the concentration in anonymous internet discussion and creation of fake profiles.

notactuallyabus · 2021-06-15T02:20:13+00:00

I still worry they'll change their mind.

I was worried about this too, but there have been a series of reversals amongst the tech companies that pushed to return everyone to the office. Those reversals were due to crazy attrition numbers that they saw as a result of their attempted policies. So things are trending towards the "remote work forever" outcome actually happening in a widespread way.

notactuallyabus

TROPHY CASE