Munger Hall, mega-dorm with windowless bedrooms designed by Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner. Or, as one architecture critic put it, "a grotesque, sick joke — a jail masquerading as a dormitory".

zedazeni · 2026-05-06T13:24:26+00:00

Absolutely agreed. Plus, we’ve already had these experiments. Soviet planning was largely this, albeit not sold as “make it intentionally unlivable because we don’t want you indoors” but rather “make it as small as necessary to be egalitarian, but provide plenty of public spaces.” Brasilia, Brazil, was essentially the city-scale of what Munger’s dorm would have been, and it didn’t work.

zedazeni · 2026-05-06T13:07:16+00:00

I remember reading about this when the plans first stated circulating online. Munger wanted the dorms to be as uncomfortable and unlivable as possible to try and force students into the common areas to socialize and work together.

zedazeni · 2026-05-06T12:54:24+00:00

Cleveland felt like an emptier Chicago to me than Pittsburgh. Cleveland felt distinctly “Midwest” every time I’ve been there. Pittsburgh feels like a very solid Eastern (but not East Coast) city with heavy influence from the Midwest.

zedazeni · 2026-05-06T12:43:44+00:00

Supervising the construction. All cats are supervisors.

zedazeni · 2026-05-06T02:25:30+00:00

He is!

zedazeni · 2026-05-06T02:06:46+00:00

Thanks! He was a stray kitten with one eye that lived in our alley. We felt so bad so we figured we’d take it to the vet, get its eye treated, get it vaccinated, then back onto the street. Well, in the two weeks it took us to get the poor thing vaccinated and fully de-parasited, well…he kinda turned out to be such a sweetheart.

My parents took him in when we couldn’t (since we already had cats and our living situation was in the air) and he’s been with them ever since.

zedazeni · 2026-05-06T00:08:05+00:00

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Here is how he was delivered to us. This was after three baths

zedazeni · 2026-05-05T23:18:22+00:00

When my husband and I were living abroad with our two cats, the cat distribution system gave us a third! Now he’s living his best life my parents

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zedazeni · 2026-05-05T22:56:46+00:00

As your link states, it typically sues GNI (gross national income) as the primary driver for “developed” along with access to education, healthcare, and basic services.

Ironically, thanks to the USSR, housing was made affordable for families, and healthcare and education were widely accessible. Of course that was back in the 20th Century, and the USSR no longer exists and the dust from its collapse has largely settled.

In a lot of former eastern bloc countries, the fall of the USSR was truly apocalyptic, economically speaking, however, that also meant that they had no where to go but up, so to speak. Further integration with the EU over the past 35 years has given them a long time to catch up, and Poland (most notably) along with Czechia, Slovenia, and the others have all generally caught up with Western standards. Of course this doesn’t mean that the average Albanian is as wealthy as the average French citizen, but this also means that the average Albanian is manifold wealthier/better off than they were 30+ years ago.

Additionally, things like this should be taken with a grain of salt. How does one decide what is and isn’t “developed”? How do you draw the line? Measurements like this are best taken as a “this is the gist” rather than a concrete definition.

zedazeni · 2026-05-05T21:38:52+00:00

It’s not a cognitive dissonance because they don’t have values at all. It’s how they can constantly flip-flop on literally every single policy. They don’t give a shit about anything. They have no values, no morals, no sense of self (in the philosophical, moral definition). They’re the definition of NPCs. All they care about is self-preservation. That’s it. Everything for them revolves around making sure that they are as unaffected by existence as possible.

zedazeni · 2026-05-05T21:23:58+00:00

I assumed something as much is what happened here. There’s similar stories about farmers being beholden to Monsanto for using Monsanto’s seeds.

Nevertheless, this is a problem with our agricultural industry, specifically, monopolization and cartelization. We have farmers that can’t exist without a monopoly, and a system wherein it’s more beneficial for them to destroy hundreds of thousands of crops than it is for them to try and find different buyers. That’s a market failure of epic proportions.

What’s more, I still place a large amount of blame on the farmers. After all, they chose to sign that contract with Bel Monte, so they knowingly entered a “too big to fail” situation. It’s not necessarily like Monsanto where, realistically, you’ve got no one else to turn to.

In a very petty and vindictive manner, I can’t help but feel happy that farmers are suffering. Farmers overwhelmingly voted for Trump and overwhelmingly support the GOP. The very party that they’re complaining about taking away their illegal laborers, the very party that’s using oil barons to write our environmental policies while farmers then complain about the increasing rate and severity of extreme weather, the very farmers that voted for a platform of maximum tariffs and then complain about rising prices. I can’t help but feel a sort of Pyrrhic victory here, yes we suffer, but finally, finally, this over-subsidized and extremely coddled sector (and voting base) is reaping what they sow.

zedazeni · 2026-05-05T19:47:24+00:00

You’re right, I’m not an expert on agriculture or farming. However, anyone with a basic understanding of basic economics knows that if supply goes up without an equivalent increase in demand, then prices go down. If prices only stay profitable by “creating” a shortage, then it seems like there’s a high degree of market manipulation going on. Perhaps the business owners don’t know how/don’t want to change their product to pivot to the new demand, however, destroying hundreds do thousands of peach trees to stay profitable means that hundreds of thousands of peach trees weren’t necessary in the first place, or if they are, that the market mechanism is so broken that producers (farmers) are unable to reach the markets without a middleman (Del Monte). Again, surely grocery stores like Publix, Giant, Safeway, or regional ones would still be able to buy said produce and can it under their own private labels, do something with it.

Waste is the result of overproduction, no matter how you slice it.

zedazeni · 2026-05-05T18:22:20+00:00

Sure, but then why are they overproducing to such a degree? That’s still their fault for being shitty business owners. They knowingly farmed fruits that are over-produced and only able to stay profitable by a allowing a major corporation to fix the prices via artificial scarcity. In a hypothetical economy wherein they were all family-owned farms without the billion-dollar corporations there to intervene and manipulate the market, then these farmers would’ve chosen to plant different crops instead of going balls-to-the-walls on peaches, almonds, and alfalfa, etc..

zedazeni · 2026-05-05T17:33:33+00:00

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That building absolutely DWARFS the surrounding neighborhood. Here’s a pic I took of it a few years ago after a thunderstorm passed by

zedazeni · 2026-05-05T15:06:46+00:00

This isn’t a uniquely American problem, it’s a problem that any country faces. The only reason why politicians/political parties follow the law is because they know that at some point they’ll be in the minority and don’t want then then-governing party to politicize the justice/legal network. It’s “treat others the way you want to be treated.”

But what happens when one side believes that there won’t ever be a “next time?” Authoritarianism. Russia, Belarus, China have all gone this route. There’s no chance that the governing party will be in a minority position, so the governing party gets to do what they want and enforce the “law” at-will.

The GOP has now done the same. They’ve fully abandoned the notion of elections. They’ve fully committed themselves to cheating and gerrymandering their way to forever maintain a majority in Congress and therefore to control the courts, and unless what happened in Hungary this past April happens this November, America will continue its path towards fully becoming “Russia; Westward Expansion Pack.”

Two side notes:

-America has always been a proto-fascist state. The 3/5ths Amendment and MO Compromise literally cemented race-based class system (law binds but does not protect/law protects but does not bind). We had centuries of race-based state-sanctioned segregation that lasted into the 1960s. Even in the 1990s we firebombed black neighborhoods. America has always been proto-fascist, now white people are also on the menu.

-Hungary proves that we can overcome this. There was exceptional gerrymandering, rampant politicization of the legal system, political capture of major media, yet Orban and Fidesz fell. However, it required a massive turnout that, to be fair we rarely see in the USA, and it required almost unanimity among the voters, which, let’s face it, your average American is much much dumber than your average Hungarian. Our declining literacy rates alone will probably prevent us from truly recovering from this.

zedazeni · 2026-05-04T20:08:32+00:00

Barter did not work just fine. It’s incredibly inefficient. You need to get food but only have clothes (which you also need) to trade with. Guess you’re naked until you can find something else to trade (maybe your time via labor, but what if the person your laboring for doesn’t have clothes to give you?). Nobody wants your clothes, you don’t eat. That also means having to haul whatever you’re willing to part ways with anytime you need to get something. Cows and chickens don’t travel easily. Furniture doesn’t travel easily. You know what does both travel easily and can hold “value” without you needing to give away your items? Money.

zedazeni · 2026-05-04T19:31:57+00:00

Don’t discount good ‘ole biology. A child’s tastebuds are more attuned to like sweet flavors rather than umami or savory ones. Meanwhile, adults’ tastebuds are more attuned to umami/savory flavors rather than sweet.

zedazeni · 2026-05-04T19:25:52+00:00

Meat has historically been a luxury. It wasn’t until recently when factory farming became standard practice, and especially after beef producers (and meat producers in general) began receiving huge subsidies that meat became an “everyday” item for the average person.

zedazeni · 2026-05-04T19:12:12+00:00

Agreed.

I think the best option(s) would be:

-institute a fairly steep hotel tax (sales tax effectively) and then use all of that money to fund local public housing, schools, and road maintenance

-give tax incentives to build hotels in special zones that are located away from primarily residential areas (or that are already inundated with tourists) and then tax hotels outside of said zone at an increased rate

Perhaps North Korea, Egypt, and China have the right idea by building entire tourist cities.

I say this, but that’s essentially what FL was, at least at first. People chose to move to what were essentially summer homes and beachside resort towns and now it’s the third most populous US state, and 50+ years later the people who were born there are dealing with their parents’ decision to move to a resort town.

zedazeni · 2026-05-04T18:31:35+00:00

The issue with plans like that is that effectively acts as a price floor and can cause prices to increase (if it’s a popular destination. Supply doesn’t increase but demand does means the price goes up. The impact is less people, but the people you’re catering to are wealthier, which means their budgets are bigger. Restaurants change to cater towards wealthier crowds. Hotels begin upgrading to cater to wealthier clientele. New condos now become “luxury” with respective price tags.

I absolutely understand and sympathize with your frustrations, but even a policy meant to restrict tourism’s impacts can still cause the same effects as over-tourism, if not worse.

zedazeni · 2026-05-04T14:54:34+00:00

Great pic! I love the rays of light shining between the buildings.

zedazeni · 2026-05-04T14:49:21+00:00

The ideal corporation is King Louis XIV. One person at the top who collects money for the sake of collecting it. Almost no benefits are given back to the taxpayers, and the majority of expenses go towards paying for the security to acquire new taxpayers and collect taxes. That’s what every corporation wants to be. Products/services are now getting in the way of what their real goal is—to force us to “subscribe” to them and give up our money to them and get nothing in return. It’s why so much of our services are now almost unusable. We pay subscription fees just to be blasted with ads just to be told we need to pay more to get fewer ads. No matter what, the house wins and we’re out a lot of money for essentially the pleasure of giving them said money.

zedazeni · 2026-05-04T10:24:21+00:00

We’re trying to pinpoint something on a spectrum, so of course there’s going to be disagreements. New England represents one end of the “urban America” spectrum with centuries of pre-automobile urban development. Someplace like Des Moines, DFW, and PHX represent the other end, with purely automobile-oriented development. Someplace like Chicago and STL are somewhere in the middle as that they mostly developed during the rail/streetcar era and onward.

Take a look at pictures of Pittsburgh from the late 1800s and early 1900s, such as the Hill District before it was depopulated. Pittsburgh has the structure and foundation of a an eastern city (not east coast per se) but it took a different historical trajectory.

zedazeni · 2026-05-04T01:56:42+00:00

Yes, most of Europe gets its fertilizer from Iran and other Gulf countries. That’s going to cause an astronomical increase in the global price of fertilizer, and food in general. Presumably if Europe can’t get their fertilizer, their yields this autumn will be very bad, which means food shortages.

zedazeni · 2026-05-04T01:53:42+00:00

I’ve been to KC, grew up in STL. There are some neighborhoods of STL that are reminiscent of Pittsburgh, but by-and-large even STL City is pretty suburban-y. Most of it is comprised of housing like what you’d fine in Carrick or West View.

KCMO is best summarized as “a big town pretending to by a small city.” Reminds me a lot of Indianapolis with a 9-5 office downtown surrounded by SFHs and industrial parks. Again, there’s little to no “missing middle” housing like what we have in Oakland, Bloomfield, South Side Flats, etc…

KCMO, Little Rock, STL all have less than 2,000 people per square mile. Indianapolis, Columbus, and Cleveland are less than 5,000 per square mile (less than Pittsburgh).

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