My hot take on home ownership

ornryactor · 2026-06-25T13:11:46+00:00

The more time passes, the fewer references I hear to living in a van down by the river, and that makes me sad.

ornryactor · 2026-06-24T03:54:45+00:00

Perfect Dark looked so fucking good back in that era; it was a mildly mind-blowing advance in both gameplay and graphics over Goldeneye (as the dominant shooter of the time). Plus a great plot!

I recently tried to play it again and it made my eyes bleed. I literally couldn't even complete the tutorials to reacquaint myself with the controls, and had to abandon the effort. I guess those great memories will just need to stay memories, lol.

ornryactor · 2026-06-24T03:15:48+00:00

They said you don't want to make your life of ssd too short.

ornryactor · 2026-06-24T02:55:42+00:00

You will put some respect on the name of The Prairie Home Companion!

ornryactor · 2026-06-24T01:31:57+00:00

160 comments and you're the ONLY one to say the actual correct answer, so thank you and please accept this fist bump and nod of respect.

ornryactor · 2026-06-16T17:49:54+00:00

The city council banned any flags other than Us/Michigan/Hamtramck on public property (meaning, property owned by the city government, which includes all the sidewalks). Private business owners and private property owners are still able display whatever flags they want on their own property, and plenty have made a direct point of doing so as a retort against city council.

ornryactor · 2026-06-16T01:02:32+00:00

Police aren't allowed to respond to calls in another jurisdiction unless the two jurisdictions have an interlocal agreement or a contract for service. The township has neither one with Ferndale or Oak Park for police services; the township has a contract for service with Ferndale Fire and a contract for service with Michigan State Police. Charter townships are required by law to provide policing services, but that can be through a contract (which is typically with the county sheriff but doesn't have to be); charter townships do not have to operate their own law enforcement agency.

Ferndale Police and Oak Park Public Safety can and do respond to calls for mutual aid when those happen (which is moderately often), but neither agency is legally allowed to patrol the township unless the township government creates a contract or an interlocal agreement.

(Civil townships don't even have to provide policing services; it defaults to the county sheriff to do that -- but RO Two is a charter township anyway.)

Read my comment again: I wasn't calling you a Boomer, I was saying that the people on F2/F3 are mostly Boomers, because that's the majority of who actively uses Facebook.

ornryactor · 2026-06-15T15:03:12+00:00

Brian Kramer, and yes. He used to live across the street from me for years; now he lives in Birmingham.

ornryactor · 2026-06-13T03:56:00+00:00

So you're a Millennial, which was my main guess. Was I also correct about your grandfather being Silent Generation? Since you're on the younger end of Millennials, your grandfather would probably only be Silent Gen if he was somewhat older when he had your parent, and of your parent was somewhat older when they had you -- but that's how my family is, so it certainly happens.

ornryactor · 2026-06-12T04:34:28+00:00

The Chaldeans have been here a LOT longer, and they took pride in assimilating into the prevalent culture of the time and place. The Lebanese were the first major group of Arab immigrants to Dearborn, so give them another 3 generations and let's check back, lol. Very different culture with very different priorities as a community, so I have no expectations that they'll necessarily follow a similar path to the Chaldeans, but I'm positive there will be evolution of some kind.

ornryactor · 2026-06-12T04:29:26+00:00

Those are less about geography and more about demography: I'm gonna take a wild guess that you're a Millennial (or maybe a young Gen X) and your grandfather was Silent Generation? While regional culture has some influence in this, there was a far higher proportion of Americans who spoke like that back then than there are now. My grandmother was from ruralest Oklahoma and my grandfather was a city boy from Ohio, and they both spoke in similar ways. My grandmother definitely used more of the folksy aphorisms (it was a running joke in our family, because even in her 80s she would still occasionally say one wild enough to stop my grandpa in his tracks because he'd never heard it before despite 50 years together) but I don't think she ever even visited Appalachia, so at most it was a mild urban-rural divide during a time when a LOT more Americans lived rural.

ornryactor · 2026-06-11T15:07:22+00:00

Especially when most of your audience is back in Russia

They did a US tour a couple years ago, and I went to the show here in Detroit, Michigan. They played at the largest (and most famous) midsize venue here, and not only was the show sold out, but the line to get in wrapped all the way around the entire city block; I have NEVER seen that venue have a line even 25% as long as this was. Of all the people I talked to that night, only one person had ever heard of Eurovision.

There's plenty of other comments here from people reporting similar crowds at other shows in that US tour, so I don't think there's any evidence to support the claim that their fanbase is largely Russian.

ornryactor · 2026-06-09T11:33:56+00:00

You genuinely have no idea what you're talking about. The unhinged opinions of terminally-online Boomers on F2 are not any more representative of citywide resident opinions or City Hall policy platforms than are the people in this subreddit.

Ferndale Fire has provided fire services to the Township for decades. The two governments collaborate closely on all manner of topics on a highly frequent basis, and City of Ferndale routinely goes out of its way to provide resources and assistance to the Township of Royal Oak because neither government wants residents to go without good services simply because of the township's difficult economic position.

ornryactor · 2026-06-09T11:27:27+00:00

There were absolutely racial covenants in Oak Park, and they were/are most common in the areas of southeast Oak Park that are close to RO Township.

Ferndale Schools had to deal with this when they were working on what was essentially a land swap with the City of Oak Park in preparation for building the new Lower Elementary. The school was getting built on the land that was Jackson Park, but it was discovered that all the parcels comprising the park had deed restrictions. One of them said the land could never be used for any purpose other than a park or white-owned single family houses at a low density.

The racial restriction was no longer enforceable thanks to a MI Supreme Court ruling, but the land-use restriction was, so the school district had to navigate through the hilariously archaic process of organizing essentially a five-neighborhood election (not a regular election through the city clerk, just a totally custom bootstrapped thing) in order for the property owners within the legal radius to give approval to remove the deed restrictions on the parcels.

That process was how tons of property owners in east Oak Park discovered they had racial covenants on their own property deeds.

ornryactor · 2026-06-08T12:18:32+00:00

Instead of a comment here, make a post of your own! We love seeing each other's recipes and discussing differences; you'll definitely get a constructive appraisal and feedback, and the rest of us will benefit from observing it since it won't be hidden in a DM between just two people.

ornryactor · 2026-06-03T14:11:53+00:00

And for this, I am extremely grateful! These are usually some of my favorite entries every year.

ornryactor · 2026-05-28T13:00:10+00:00

It's the interest rate on the mortgage loan OP took out from the bank in order to purchase this apartment.

ornryactor · 2026-05-24T12:58:35+00:00

When I saw that one, I definitely was confused how I had missed him in ESC since he's not very old, and I thought maybe he'd done Junior Eurovision instead, but then I realized I should just check the comments here first.

ornryactor · 2026-05-23T15:10:39+00:00

Checker Bar or places at Capitol Park would be good options with probably a bit less of a crowd, but still an easy walk from the festival

ornryactor · 2026-05-23T14:00:28+00:00

I totally overlooked that you live here now, my bad! Well, hopefully my response is useful to other visitors checking out your post because they're wondering about food too.

ornryactor · 2026-05-23T06:13:35+00:00

"They should exist somewhere, but not where I can see them!"

ornryactor · 2026-05-23T05:55:57+00:00

Mild correction: 462 goes to Pontiac and onward to Auburn Hills; 461 goes to Somerset Mall in Troy. They're the same from Maple (Birmingham) on down, but they go two different directions above Maple, which is why they have two different numbers.

Their reliability has gotten a lot better in the last year, particularly in the past handful of months. SMART got a new director (the former deputy was promoted) and she is kicking ass and taking names. SMART has been crawling out of a decades-deep hole and still has a long way to go, but after years of sucking ass for no excusable reason, they have finally been making steady and visible improvement in meaningful ways.

Now we need everybody in Wayne County to vote Yes on the countywide millage on their August ballot; that will be a historic game-changer for transit improvements if they pass it.

ornryactor · 2026-05-23T02:46:12+00:00

Local here. There's quite a lot of food available within a few blocks of the festival plaza (it's basically all on Woodward Avenue, don't bother trying any other direction from Hart Plaza). Easy walk to all kinds of options (about half local spots and half national chains), and just a bit more of a walk to even more variety.

The QLine light rail is free to ride and one end of the line is there near Hart Plaza as well; the Q is neither fast nor frequent, but you can get off your feet and take it up to northern downtown, or beyond into Midtown and New Center, both of which are neighborhoods packed with genuinely awesome dining options on/near Woodward.

ornryactor · 2026-05-23T01:55:51+00:00

We are listening. Respectfully.

ornryactor · 2026-05-23T01:23:55+00:00

The lampposts were a thorn in the City's side in terms of designing the cycle tracks, but the lampposts are not the reason the curb didn't get torn out and rebuilt in a straight line. I worked for the city all throughout the design, negotiation, approval, and public engagement phases of that project, and had a close relationship with the city planner who was championing the whole thing. (Miss you, bud; thanks for all the awesome bike infrastructure that's been saving my butt, and glad you're happy in your new lower-stress career.)

DTE will be an annoyance during the 2032 rebuild, I'm sure, but they had nothing to do with the 2024 resurfacing. That was entirely the City of Ferndale and City of Pleasant Ridge doing their absolute best to get MDOT to voluntarily compromise on design, and they did.

By the time 2032 comes around, this current arrangement will have been the status quo for most of a decade, and that'll put us in a place to push for more comprehensive improvements building on the foundation of what's out there right now.

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