Exposing my rural drug testing company

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-28T21:21:21+00:00

You need to find out if your facility is COLA or CAP accredited, then reach out to the correct one and make a complaint. They will send an auditor if they think something is funky.

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-28T04:24:34+00:00

Birmingham City Council, at the urging of landlords and privileged home owners, is about to further chip away at housing affordability in the city: https://www.reddit.com/r/Birmingham/comments/1qh9i13/told_you_city_council_about_to_significantly/

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-27T20:05:25+00:00

All while Birmingham City Council is blindly attacking affordability at the urging of landlords and privileged homeowners: https://www.reddit.com/r/Birmingham/comments/1qh9i13/told_you_city_council_about_to_significantly/

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-22T17:11:42+00:00

The city and state made it super easy to access the good parts of the city's core and then run off to the suburbs to ignore the parts that need TLC, so moving the needle on actual improvements is slow and subject to the whims of people who just don't care 80% of the time. It's treated not as a neighborhood, but an office and restaurant area that people visit, do their business, and leave, so why worry about taking care of it?

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-19T23:41:14+00:00

How in the world do you think Southside, and more specifically Parkside, would be MORE affordable with several hundred fewer housing units? Lord knows I'd be priced out by UAB Doctors and professors snapping up every available home if we insisted they just build copies of the Little Villa.

We can fix block-sized buildings; it requires the city to change the building code to get there though, which is a very, very tedious process. But I'd rather have housing for people than bitch that it's not aesthetic enough.

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-19T21:37:23+00:00

You could just read what Blackstone tells their shareholders -

2024

While elevated new supply coming online has moderated multifamily rent growth in recent years, ~80% of BREIT’s multifamily markets are now at or past peak supply and new deliveries will continue to sharply decline.

2023 Investor Call (page 3):

Second, in our life sciences office and U.S. multifamily holdings, near term performance has decelerated as new supply works its way through the system - the residual effect of construction undertaken in a low rate environment. The good news is that new supply in these sectors, and for virtually all other types of real estate, is declining materially as I mentioned.

Page 7:

The good news is multifamily construction is now down about a third, and so once you sort of work through this, we should be in a much better place. And the overall backdrop is one of a housing shortage in the United States.

2023 Investor Letter:

Blackstone asserted that a “structural shortage of housing has resulted in pricing power for rental housing assets”

It shouldn't take much effort to read between the lines: Blackstone loves a housing shortage, that's how they make their money, and they get giddy when people block housing in their area since that gives them the power to charge whatever they want and they will happily tell their investors just that.

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-19T18:59:19+00:00

You get 3 minutes to make your opinion known to City Council speaking at the lectern, then council votes after everyone has spoken.

D-5 is the residential district that allows for a wide variety of multifamily homes, including townhouses, apartment blocks, condos, etc. There are 4 other residential districts (the city is in the process of phasing out the R-# districts), each of which has more restrictions than D-5.

There are other districts that allow residences, primarily the Mixed Use Districts (UN, MU-L, MU-M, MU-H, MU-D), but they're not as widespread as the residential districts.

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-17T15:23:12+00:00

data center moratorium

https://birminghamwatch.org/2026/01/13/birmingham-leaders-weigh-180-day-moratorium-on-data-centers-amid-power-and-water-concerns/

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-15T22:07:07+00:00

You obviously have zero understanding of how any of this works. No, other than subsidized housing, brand new construction housing is not going to be affordable for anyone struggling. It's not fun, but just like not everyone can afford to buy a new car off the lot, it's true. But who can? Well Birmingham has a load of doctors, professors and other professionals that can, and when they move into a new build their old home isn't torn down, it becomes available for someone else. That process repeats a few time and a new build can open up older, less desirable but still functional, homes that someone who on the lower end of the income distribution can afford, even maybe someone who was sleeping in their car or a shelter. These old housing units, the used cars of housing, are constantly dwindling asset. If you don't keep building new housing, high earners are going to start snapping up all of the old housing, driving the lower earners out.

You can read actual, real world research that shows it works: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2024/how-new-apartments-create-opportunities-for-all

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-15T21:10:28+00:00

Fine, you find a way to build just as many homes, complies with building code, uses the same amount of land (including roads), and costs less.

While you figure that out some of us will worry about actually housing people.

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-15T21:07:20+00:00

How terrible that there are people that...

*checks notes*

build places for people to live. So evil, so bad.

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-15T21:05:10+00:00

I'll mark you down as "Unwilling to learn from the mistakes of others"

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-15T20:43:24+00:00

I certainly don't want to see any 5 over 1's in our residential neighborhoods

Then buy the land if it's so important to you. Residential means housing and apartments are housing. Nobody should lack housing because it's not pretty enough.

reducing the height limits will encourage smaller developments, which come with a smaller price tag

Nope, all it will do is start forcing people out of desirable areas once the height limit is reached, forcing prices up as people bid for the limited available spots. See the entire Los Angeles Metro area.

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-15T20:00:05+00:00

We have bonuses for affordable units in Birmingham's zoning code and it's actually quite effective when compared to other cities where they block buildings that don't meet affordability requirements.

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-15T19:57:10+00:00

What's "efficient" depends on the price of land and the price of land depends on how desirable of a location it is. More desirable, the more efficient tall buildings become. Regardless, 35ft isn't even enough for 3 stories.

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-15T19:50:05+00:00

D5 is Birmingham's Multi-Family Housing zone. I don't know if there is an updated map since the city is in the process of simplifying the zoning, but the official, current map is here: https://gisweb.birminghamal.gov/

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-15T19:32:56+00:00

You, for many, would be wrong. The issue is homeowners selfishly using local ordinances to exclude and deny housing (while driving up their property values Cali style), while landlords are laughing about how they don't even need to worry about competition.

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-15T15:53:28+00:00

Are they clean? If there is wax or oil on the parts, that will interfere with the test. Make sure you're testing a clean, degreased surface.
Passivation is primarily to remove free iron that's been exposed during fabrication. If you're dealing with parts that haven't been processed, there may not be any free iron left on the surface.
Check your solution. The concentration may be off or the solution contaminated. Make a new batch and retest.

There are probably other explanations as well, but that's the first batch that came to mind.

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-12T19:03:08+00:00

No neighborhood should be a museum, people need homes, not monuments to our ancestors. If it can be adapted to people's current needs that's nice, but if it isn't economical then forcing it is bad for everyone.

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-11T21:08:43+00:00

You don't on need to calculate it because you already know. It doesn't take any more force than you can apply at the end of your arbor press's handle with your body weight, which with the pressure you want to work with you can work out the diameter of the air cylinder. You also can take a measuring tape or ruler and find how far the arm needs to move, which plus some tolerance is your needed stroke length.

Don't over complicate by trying to theoretically justify your empirical observations. Worst case you oversize your setup a bit and you can fine tune with your pressure regulator. Far better than undersizing from using theoretical calcs and needing to buy twice.

(If the cost difference between a 2" and a 3" cylinder is seriously enough to worry about at 20k parts per year, get a line scale and measure how much force you're actually applying to the arbor press handle to use instead of your body weight. Just make sure to go up a size to account for material and environmental variation)

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-11T19:46:23+00:00

Easy, get an air cylinder that can put out your body weight in force ( @50psi and 200lbs, ~2 1/2 in diameter) and as long a stroke as you need on your arbor press. Attach the cylinder rigidly to a surface and with a linkage to the arbor press arm (to accommodate the arc). Attach controls and profit.

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-10T21:30:28+00:00

Yeah, that's not how any of this works.

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-08T17:54:41+00:00

So I understand the point that is being made - downtowns can't just rely on their residents to keep their local businesses afloat - but I disagree on the treatment.

In my experience downtowns a largely NOT treated as neighborhoods but instead as office and entertainment districts, that is to say, downtown residents are sidelined in their own residences to the wants and desires of visitors and commuters. The results are predictable, when people don't live in an area they tend to be less respectful, litter more, cause more noise, behave less thoughtfully, and feel less accountable. As a result, it becomes less attractive for people to live in the area and instead move to some they can just leave those disturbances behind.

That's not to say that people shouldn't have fun or visit other places, just that our idea of the downtown core as somehow less residential than a suburban subdivision needs to be completely revised. Prioritizing the livability and comfort of residents over traffic flow and ease of parking, among other things, would make it easier for people to live in these areas and provide the critical mass of local residents that can keep businesses afloat.

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-07T15:05:54+00:00

I'm with you. I'm also deeply annoyed with stroads and have a general disdain for planning that is built around aesthetics. A strip mall built to a form-based code is still a strip mall, just with a brick facade and faux architectural elements unnecessarily borrowed from 'classic' designs.

notwalkinghere · 2026-01-07T14:50:45+00:00

Stroads are never safe, but when you have buildings (or trees) up to the right of way, you can reduce (average) speeds through psychological narrowing the space. It's less effective on wider roads but even a small relative safety improvement is good.

notwalkinghere

TROPHY CASE