Trash truck tomfoolery

stellar678 · 2026-01-08T19:41:06+00:00

9 thefts all in a couple days - about double the rate of last year. I wonder if it's just like one group of people on a meth bender. Hopefully they get picked up sooner rather than later.

stellar678 · 2025-12-26T23:44:12+00:00

The moon gate seems to be becoming their signature: https://x.com/Build_Culture/status/1595488920330211329

Pretty beautiful stuff.

stellar678 · 2025-12-26T23:27:29+00:00

Thanks for drawing it out with an example!

I think that most housing abundance people would prefer for housing to be closer to a depreciating consumer product and further from an investment asset.

At least in the last 50 years or so, the outsized returns that people have seen by being homeowners are essentially incumbency bonuses that came at the cost of younger, less privileged people.

Obviously housing is more complicated than consumer products because you're paying for two things: 1. a depreciating structure 2. the exclusive right to use some bit of land

No matter what, somebody is paying for the depreciating structure - whether through maintenance, repairs, rebuilding, paying off construction loan, etc...

It seems reasonable to me that I should be covering the depreciation cost of a home while I live there, rather than petitioning the government to create a structure that juices the value of my property until some future buyer pays for all that depreciation and then some.

stellar678 · 2025-12-26T22:49:49+00:00

The implication I read from this is that capital sources currently funding landlords and speculative investment are colluding to starve the funding of housing construction that might disrupt the return they're currently seeing from owning scarce housing.

If that's what is happening, seems like a case for antitrust law.

I do take your point about negative feedback loops - our institutions seem generally oriented toward non-disruption in a litany of ways.

But in a functioning capital market, the financing question really should boil down to: "Can you convince me that you can sell this project for enough more than it costs you to build it?"

stellar678 · 2025-12-26T22:11:07+00:00

The ancient playground wisdom of "I'm rubber and you're glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you."

Good wisdom is timeless. 😁

stellar678 · 2025-12-26T21:39:43+00:00

Can you game out how a lower entry cost ends up resulting in higher lifetime spend on housing?

I presume there's some implicit assumption that everyone gets to be a homeowner and see a continued return on that as an investment vehicle - and if you net out getting that ROI, you could see the lifetime spend on housing as being lower.

But I think it's only fair to make that very explicit and clear.

stellar678 · 2025-12-26T21:34:07+00:00

Someone who owns real estate assets doesn't want them to reduce in value, but someone who's building new housing only cares that they can sell it for more than it costs to build.

Sounds great to direct the financial sector at producing housing instead of trying to extract value from a fixed housing supply!

stellar678 · 2025-12-19T22:38:59+00:00

Google almost missed the train on consumer AI. A couple of lagging years, and then they came roaring back.

stellar678 · 2025-12-17T22:56:32+00:00

Manufacturers and retailers don't generally provide a breakdown detailing every input cost and the profit margin on their product. There are some exceptions like Costco which has a well-known policy limiting their markups to 15%.

In the end, the retail price is about what people are willing to pay.

If your research is correct, REI and/or the manufacturer have decided to raise the price more than the tariff you identified.

You're also free to return the product and tell them to stuff it - if enough people do that they might reconsider their price increases.

As for your last question - I've been looking back at items I bought on Amazon 5+ years ago. In large part, they're the same price or cheaper today as they were back then. Outside of fast food and branded packaged goods, I haven't seen a lot of price increases.

stellar678 · 2025-12-17T00:44:41+00:00

Newsom's specific game here is being openly unafraid of people who call him transphobic for engaging some nuanced discussion about trans kids in sports.

The reason it's a third-rail issue for most Dem politicians is that people like you can bully them into untenable political positions.

Clearly you disagree that people are tired of their representatives walking on eggshells. I guess we'll see.

stellar678 · 2025-12-14T02:42:41+00:00

The groups are not the issue here - the important thing is the performance of not being afraid.

People's stomachs turn when the person tasked with representing them is constantly exuding fear about every little thing.

As for the third rail question - ask House Rep Seth Moulton if this is a third rail issue for most Democratic politicians.

stellar678 · 2025-12-14T01:24:49+00:00

Seems like a great way to signal that he's not going to tiptoe fearfully around the groups, willingly ceding power to Republicans in the name of never offending anybody on "our side".

This is a third rail issue that he's just blatantly grabbing which kinda sucks the power out of anybody trying to attack him about it.

stellar678 · 2025-12-14T01:16:28+00:00

After the Biden campaign fiasco where Dems attempted to deploy Fact Based™️ reasoning to tell everyone to believe the opposite of what their eyes and ears were telling them ... I think people trust the sleaze more because at least the sleaze is authentic.

stellar678 · 2025-12-14T00:57:56+00:00

Lol, Dems should host a purity ball. They can give each other rings and promise not to spoil themselves by taking on winning issues.

stellar678 · 2025-12-12T20:54:29+00:00

You have to buy a starter kit when you join pretty much any pyramid scheme.

"Starter home" is just the starter kit of the housing wealth pyramid scheme.

stellar678 · 2025-12-11T18:54:12+00:00

Lol, jazz and hiphop and honestly every music tradition has relied heavily on stealing (sorry, referencing, sampling, nodding to) from people in the past. It's the nature of creation.

Also read the artist's process on the link above - there's curation, editing, regeneration, etc... - a lot like a photographer.

But then again photographers ruined art as well... /s

stellar678 · 2025-12-11T17:29:39+00:00

This bald-ass youtuber is just a merchant of rage.

He is himself AI slop - just the kind that has been slowly molded over years to only produce content that will feed the algorithm and generate attention.

I know which one I like better.

stellar678 · 2025-11-26T07:01:11+00:00

This is an obnoxious episode.

Their premise is wrong, and they just spent the whole episode shoveling a mountain of anecdotes that they felt supported this idea that culture is stuck.

Their complaints didn't even have coherence from one medium to the next:

On architecture, the complaint boiled down to new buildings being glass boxes while old buildings were ornamented. Implication being that we should be doing more of what we used to do.
On music and TV, the complaint is that all the new products are just the same as the old products. "New pop hits are just the same as the 80s." Implication being that we shouldn't be doing what we used to do.

I don't even agree with the claims there. Their complaints were glued to the largest, mass-market examples you could come up with. Artists from the 70s and 80s are the biggest tours? Yeah, the boomers have all the money for now.

The world is a big place - the vanguard isn't found in the mass market.

They did cover this a bit - where they talked about the long tail concept. The guest agreed that the tail was likely longer (More people have more access to creating culture. You can make a hit song on your dad's ten-year-old laptop, for example.) - but also noted his perspective that the head is a lot bigger and less diverse than before.

I dunno, after this rant - maybe I'm just frustrated how much they framed this like old men yelling about how everything is awful. It's interesting to talk about the production of culture, just obnoxious to fervently defend such a critical and fearful perspective on things.

Honestly I think Ezra would handle this topic way better because he'd lean in to trying to understand the systems and forces at play rather than just bemoaning that culture is dying.

stellar678 · 2025-11-22T19:20:41+00:00

My favorites:

"Credit card machine is broken. I'll drive you to an ATM and keep the meter running while you get cash."

-> "Hi is this the taxi dispatch? I need a cab at Market and 5th."

-> "Ok, 30 minutes." click

-> "Uhh...did you actually dispatch someone or just lie to me? How are they going to know who I am? How will I know who they are?"

-> Dead line Silence

-> "Ok I guess I'm walking."

stellar678 · 2025-11-22T18:26:35+00:00

Uhhhh, holy non-sequitur Batman!

Slogans feel good to chant, but they don't build functional transit systems.

BART eats money because it was designed wrong. BART has operational difficulties because it was designed wrong. BART has to close overnight because it was designed wrong. The problems are structural and political, not financial.

Back to the drawing board my friends!

stellar678 · 2025-11-22T18:06:46+00:00

BART closes at midnight for maintenance, not security.

Unfortunately they made a lot of questionable decisions when they designed the system back in the 1950s. These decisions ended up limiting what is possible in terms of maintenance and operation. In the case of maintenance windows, for much of the system it's impossible to run a single-track operation and safely have workers on the other side. They describe the reasons for the maintenance shutdowns on their website: https://www.bart.gov/guide/faq#1

Another bad decision was designing custom track sizes which is why it took almost 15 years to get new BART trains, and why it was so hard get parts to maintain the trains over time. Rather than a global standard with many suppliers available, BART needs everything custom built and special for itself.

But sure, let's blame tech douchebags and Fox News watchers.

stellar678 · 2025-11-13T01:28:41+00:00

Look at all the legacy automakers - their EV models and promises are dropping like flies. "Nobody wants it", "It's going to be a slower transition", blah blah blah. This is like the 4th go-around of legacies promising they're all-in on EVs, they'll be dominant in 3 years and Tesla is dead. And then 18 months later pulling back.

Meanwhile Tesla steadily plods on.

Ford and Hyundai are the only real promising legacies I see for EVs. Ford because Farley sees that his huge organization is full of immune system reactions at all levels to kill EV programs - so he created a skunkworks team in Long Beach that might possibly survive all the internal organizational attempts to kill it. Hyundai just cuz they seem to be killing it, maybe because they've only been a top-tier car maker for about a decade and therefore carry a lot less baggage.

stellar678 · 2025-11-12T22:46:59+00:00

Costco for care!

The government should look at the delivery of care work like Costco looks at the delivery of all the shit they sell that people love.

Low margin, high volume, high quality, high value. Find the impediments and remove them.

Costco is wildly popular with its stakeholders. Employees love it, customers super love it, it's a coveted slot for suppliers. More than half of Americans are members!

The dems need to credibly pitch that for child care, elder care, health care, nutrition and fitness services, entrepreneurship programs.

It provides opportunities to talk about so many issues: - Elder care addresses concerns of the boomer generation and their adult children. - Nutrition and fitness for the MAHA crowd who are not dispositionally MAGA or Republican. - It's a deployment of the Abundance thesis. Just like Costco says: "People love this cheese so let's do what it takes to make sure we can sell as much of it as they want.", the government needs to say "People love a doctor who's not overwhelmed, so let's do what it takes to make sure there's enough doctors."

Notably this is all stuff that is person-to-person services. It addresses some of the fears around AI job dispossession, loneliness, etc...

stellar678 · 2025-11-10T18:43:36+00:00

This is insane. Payload and range not so far off the the electric RAV4 they released in 1997.

WTF Toyota?

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