philly's the one i think about too
― denies the existence of dark matter (difficult listening hour), Thursday, 14 April 2016 01:19 (eight years ago) link
xxxp I'm an office drone, I'm not necessarily talking full bohemian here. Even in the past 10 years things have changed a lot, and they're changing in such a way that it's like, what's the point anymore. Nearly everyone I know who lived here through that time has left, mostly to start families, some because the places where they worked closed down and were replaced by I don't know, BMW dealership/art gallery hybrids with their own on-site artisan micro-brew. Maybe my own priorities have changed. I'm going to soak up the educational and career opportunities while I can, though.
Safety in NYC is definitely a bonus. I moved back to the suburbs in NJ for a while; a nice looking middle class place just outside of the city, but I got to taste some street violence here. 10 years living in NYC and I never once had a problem, and I get to the suburbs and it's like a totally different world, safety wise. Weird how things have shifted.
― larry appleton, Thursday, 14 April 2016 01:19 (eight years ago) link
aw yeah baby https://www.desmoinesmetro.com/en/dsm_metro_info/rankings/
― μpright mammal (mh), Thursday, 14 April 2016 01:20 (eight years ago) link
I feel like Milwaukee is filled with very cool young people who live well and don't really care whether Milwaukee is the next Portland. (Milwaukee is not the next Portland.)
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Thursday, 14 April 2016 01:51 (eight years ago) link
there are very nice neighborhoods just outside philadelphia in terms of safety + family friendliness and yr like a 10 minute drive into the city
― Mordy, Thursday, 14 April 2016 02:18 (eight years ago) link
NYC has a lot to offer, I just don't think I'm the kind of person for whom those things matter enough for it to make it worth my while. I mean we have the "best" in so many cultural and culinary type things. I like museums a lot, for example, and NYC is great for those. But I have two small kids and live out in Queens, which is the only place I can really afford a family-friendly life in (i.e. a reasonable-sized apartment, decent public schools), and it's such a schlep to go to the Manhattan museums as it is -- either drive and pay a lot for parking, or take two small kids on the subway and change trains. All the "high" performing arts stuff is great but expensive, especially with babysitter. I'd actually love to see classical music concerts more often, for example, I just can't realistically do it very often. Same thing with the good restaurants, and honestly I love food but I really don't give too much of a shit about high end restaurants with big deal chefs. I enjoy them, but I could go the rest of my life without eating in one. I find the faddy stuff that excitement gets manufactured about (cronuts) boring, I like nature, and I don't really like convenience culture. I also, weirdly, don't enjoy Central Park all that much when I get to it, I find it too crowded and overwhelming -- it feels more like a destination than a park, if that makes sense. In fact too many parts of the city are like that for me, always feeling surrounded by tourists and strangers.
I live in a nondescript red brick co-op in an area that is many square blocks of near-identical, non-descript red brick co-ops. I sometimes call them bourgeois housing projects. The commercial stuff in my neighborhood is pretty much indistinguishable from a suburb with a walkable downtown, and not an especially nice one (Gap, Banana Republic, Verizon Store, three Starbucks, mediocre overpriced restaurants, TGI Fridays), and I have this butt-ugly quasi-highway called Queens Boulevard in the center of my neighborhood. I have better QOL than a lot of people I know but it's still not great.
― human life won't become a cat (man alive), Thursday, 14 April 2016 02:30 (eight years ago) link
I kind of feel for you here, because it seems like you have a setup that's pretty similar to what most people around America have (you're used to it, it works, it's fine, in-laws nearby which is kinda huge when you have kids) but it's embedded in this cultural expectation that living in New York is supposed to be AMAZING and also AN IMPOSSIBLE CRISIS when for you it is neither and I feel like that would create some kind of internal dissonance
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Thursday, 14 April 2016 02:42 (eight years ago) link
Yeah, actually I think it's sort of the feeling that I have to work harder and have a better job than most people just to have an ordinary standard of living, not that there's actually anything wrong with the standard of living. I never actually aimed to live here for all the "AMAZING NYC" stuff, it just sort of worked out that we live here. But that stuff sometimes feels like this fantastical simulacra that exists just beyond the threshold of my actual life.
― human life won't become a cat (man alive), Thursday, 14 April 2016 02:45 (eight years ago) link
Like I have more stress for that same standard of living.
― human life won't become a cat (man alive), Thursday, 14 April 2016 02:46 (eight years ago) link
My own issue is maybe I'm getting older. When I first moved to NYC I was in my early 20s, and I was a wannabe hipster scumbag. New York was awesome for that. Now that I'm a little more mature, it's like, have a normal life in a more expensive, more stressful environment ... it's worth some thought.
― larry appleton, Thursday, 14 April 2016 02:52 (eight years ago) link
tbh most people, especially parents, tend to live that way -- commute to a job, spend the rest of your time in and around a neighborhood, with the exception of occasional excursions for shopping/entertainment or regular semi-commutes for kid activities (sports, dance class, music lessons)
Silicon Valley is kind of a weird one in that a lot of smaller companies are now in SF, but the larger employers remain in big suburban campuses. Apple, Google, etc have a number of people doing the reverse city-to-suburb commute, but a lot of people who are settled in those businesses live in the outlying suburbs closer to work
afaik Google is still working on a campus in Boulder, Colorado, which is relatively self-contained and would have a minimal commute, at least until housing dries up completely and people are driving from the next town over
― μpright mammal (mh), Thursday, 14 April 2016 12:25 (eight years ago) link
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cihoxn-UgAAlbU0.jpg
― mookieproof, Sunday, 15 May 2016 21:24 (eight years ago) link
apparently marc andreessen posted something about how india would be better off if it was still a colony
― μpright mammal (mh), Sunday, 15 May 2016 21:39 (eight years ago) link
He didn't quite say that - he said anti-colonialism had been disastrous for the Indian economy for decades. It was in the context of the country rejecting Facebook's 'free basics' model.
― On a Raqqa tip (ShariVari), Sunday, 15 May 2016 21:49 (eight years ago) link
sounds like a moldbugism xp
― Mordy, Sunday, 15 May 2016 22:02 (eight years ago) link
facebook's free basics thing is a poor fit for India and is pretty much the most neo-colonial capitalist endeavor
― μpright mammal (mh), Sunday, 15 May 2016 22:32 (eight years ago) link
Yep. There was a good Guardian article about it last week.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-free-basics-india-zuckerberg
― On a Raqqa tip (ShariVari), Sunday, 15 May 2016 22:35 (eight years ago) link
Senior people at Facebook, the executive said, had convinced themselves they had special pull with the prime minister. “They believed Modi would do it for them,” he said, recalling meetings where people discussed the similarities in “managing” India and Africa: “It worked in Burundi, so it should work in India.”
*reads up about the people of Burundi and its government*
ummm
― μpright mammal (mh), Monday, 16 May 2016 00:22 (eight years ago) link
Smartest guys in the room
― bothan zulu (El Tomboto), Monday, 16 May 2016 00:25 (eight years ago) link
andreessen framing it as some anti-western influence thing when it was actually indians having a public discussion about net neutrality and corporate influence
and people in silicon valley wonder why we're so skeptical of their techno-utopianism
― μpright mammal (mh), Monday, 16 May 2016 00:31 (eight years ago) link
Zuckerberg is apparently going to meet with Dana Perino and Glenn Beck after the pathetic WATB fallout from FB's insipid "lock j-school grads in a basement and make them do 3 line summaries of news" experiment. Maybe he can finally convince social conservatives like Curt Schilling to start using Facebook.
― bothan zulu (El Tomboto), Monday, 16 May 2016 00:49 (eight years ago) link
perhaps andrew schlafly will be inspired to start his own version of facebook
― mookieproof, Monday, 16 May 2016 02:26 (eight years ago) link
misread as andrew ridgely, was surprised
― 🐸a hairy howling toad torments a man whose wife is deathly ill (James Morrison), Monday, 16 May 2016 03:48 (eight years ago) link
fingers crossed xp
― μpright mammal (mh), Monday, 16 May 2016 03:48 (eight years ago) link
I miss the days when the super-rich would just start dumb ineffectual charities and not try to usurp the role of government.
― JWoww Gilberto (man alive), Monday, 16 May 2016 04:28 (eight years ago) link
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/plutocrats-at-work-how-big-philanthropy-undermines-democracy
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, 16 May 2016 12:43 (eight years ago) link
this "free basics" thing has very little to do with charity and a hell of a lot to do with getting more facebook users and expanding their advertising network
― μpright mammal (mh), Monday, 16 May 2016 14:24 (eight years ago) link
Caek that essay is terrific, thanks for that link.
― El Tomboto, Wednesday, 18 May 2016 00:27 (eight years ago) link
yup i enjoyed the opening rant i saved my highlights which were...
“One hundred years later, big philanthropy still aims to solve the world’s problems—with foundation trustees deciding what is a problem and how to fix it. They may act with good intentions, but they define “good.” The arrangement remains thoroughly plutocratic: it is the exercise of wealth-derived power in the public sphere with minimal democratic controls and civic obligations.”“The main rationale for both the tax exemption and the charitable contribution tax deduction (created in 1917) is to stimulate private giving. Yet this is a weak rationale when applied to the super-rich; a more effective way to stimulate their giving would be to raise the estate and capital gains taxes. It is a meaningless rationale for the 65 percent of American taxpayers who don’t itemize their deductions and therefore can’t use the charity tax break.”“Sycophancy is built into the structure of philanthropy: grantees shape their work to please their benefactors; they are perpetual supplicants for future funding. As a result, foundation executives and trustees almost never receive critical feedback. They are treated like royalty, which breeds hubris—the occupational disorder of philanthro-barons”“When the creator of a mega-foundation says, “I can do what I want because it’s my money,” he or she is wrong. A substantial portion of the wealth—35 percent or more, depending on tax rates—has been diverted from the public treasury, where voters would have determined its use.”
“The main rationale for both the tax exemption and the charitable contribution tax deduction (created in 1917) is to stimulate private giving. Yet this is a weak rationale when applied to the super-rich; a more effective way to stimulate their giving would be to raise the estate and capital gains taxes. It is a meaningless rationale for the 65 percent of American taxpayers who don’t itemize their deductions and therefore can’t use the charity tax break.”
“Sycophancy is built into the structure of philanthropy: grantees shape their work to please their benefactors; they are perpetual supplicants for future funding. As a result, foundation executives and trustees almost never receive critical feedback. They are treated like royalty, which breeds hubris—the occupational disorder of philanthro-barons”
“When the creator of a mega-foundation says, “I can do what I want because it’s my money,” he or she is wrong. A substantial portion of the wealth—35 percent or more, depending on tax rates—has been diverted from the public treasury, where voters would have determined its use.”
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Wednesday, 18 May 2016 01:48 (eight years ago) link
The fact that gigantic charitable foundations, such as the Ford Foundation or Rockefeller Foundation, are merely alternative methods for their boards of directors (often controlled by their founder or by their founder's heirs) to exercise power over society is an open secret. This was one of those compromises that were made at the time the income tax and estate taxes were being imposed on the plutocrats who arose in the last decades of the 19th century. It was always understood that this arrangement allowed wealthy people to continue to control their money as they saw fit, provided some sort of philanthropic fig leaf was applied to the transaction.
― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Wednesday, 18 May 2016 02:03 (eight years ago) link
i ended up looking into the alternatives in case i am a billionaire one day and it seems the options are either:
voluntarily pay down the national debt (lol this is dumb) https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm
and "gifts to the united states"
http://www.fms.treas.gov/faq/moretopics_gifts.htmlCitizens who wish to make a general donation to the U.S. government may send contributions to a specific account called "Gifts to the United States." This account was established in 1843 to accept gifts, such as bequests, from individuals wishing to express their patriotism to the United States. Money deposited into this account is for general use by the federal government and can be available for budget needs. These contributions are considered an unconditional gift to the government. Financial gifts can be made by check or money order payable to the United States Treasury and mailed to the address below.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Wednesday, 18 May 2016 02:17 (eight years ago) link
hmm we should have beers more often
your treat
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 18 May 2016 02:30 (eight years ago) link
tangentially reminds me of the savings bonds my grandma bought for me. not the most interest-bearing investment, but at the time they were something like 6% compounded annually. so $250 worth of bonds every year or two turned into a couple grand for me after 20 years
― μpright mammal (mh), Wednesday, 18 May 2016 02:36 (eight years ago) link
current bond rate is something like .1% for EE series :(
― μpright mammal (mh), Wednesday, 18 May 2016 02:37 (eight years ago) link
I have no money rn but I believe in the American Dream xxp
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Wednesday, 18 May 2016 04:15 (eight years ago) link
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CixMwpfXAAA5rvI.jpg
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 18 May 2016 21:34 (eight years ago) link
dude is disrupting the shit out of the status quo
― carthago delenda est (mayor jingleberries), Wednesday, 18 May 2016 21:36 (eight years ago) link
can we talk about thishttp://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/may/17/rentberry-sparks-fears-housing-crisis/
― ian, Wednesday, 18 May 2016 21:44 (eight years ago) link
jesus christ
― μpright mammal (mh), Wednesday, 18 May 2016 21:47 (eight years ago) link
gross
― marcos, Wednesday, 18 May 2016 21:50 (eight years ago) link
omg what how can that possibly be legal
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 18 May 2016 21:58 (eight years ago) link
Great. Something else for the leftists to whine about. "But I DESERVE that big, nice apartment in the chic area for what it would have gone for 25 years ago! I can't afford to pay more, but that's where I need to live!" Shaddap.Reply 0 ▲0 ▼
‒
Free market. No one complains about eBay. And Sf has rent control. Those entitled people just cry about everything. Move away from the city if you won't put in the effort to afford it.
― I look forward to hearing from you shortly, (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 18 May 2016 21:59 (eight years ago) link
I also wonder how it would work logistically -- Does rentberry meet you and check you out? Does it do a credit check? Does it hold your security deposit money for you and verify that you actually have the ability to pay the rent you bid?
― www.ramenclassaction.com (man alive), Wednesday, 18 May 2016 22:01 (eight years ago) link
If you don't pay, the landlord can just use GoonBerry.
― schwantz, Wednesday, 18 May 2016 22:58 (eight years ago) link
http://www.theonion.com/article/ayahuasca-shaman-dreading-another-week-guiding-tec-52941
― μpright mammal (mh), Thursday, 19 May 2016 21:30 (eight years ago) link
this is excellent https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/on-the-fringe/uncanny-valley/
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, 23 May 2016 14:22 (eight years ago) link
Good writing, but I wonder who all of these tech-obsessed techies are that spend every minute talking about tech and going to meetups and talking about funding at parties and everything. I've been in the valley for a long time, and this seems to be a particular breed of nerd that I haven't come across too often. The author makes it seem pervasive. Maybe she needs a new group of friends...
― schwantz, Monday, 23 May 2016 15:38 (eight years ago) link
cross-posted from the "buying a house" thread but figured it could go here too http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/05/the-rise-of-million-dollar-homes-in-san-francisco-and-the-bay-area/483485/
crazy
― marcos, Monday, 23 May 2016 17:33 (eight years ago) link
thanks for that caek, that was really good.
― I look forward to hearing from you shortly, (Karl Malone), Monday, 23 May 2016 18:23 (eight years ago) link
at least when she was talking about the office day, it was v redolent of my own experience in a medium sized pre-ipo startup
schwantz i agree that your social life is what you make of them to an extent, and it's very easy to avoid the tech scene in nyc. but this rang true
We care about one another. We even care about the executives who can make us feel like shit. We want good lives for them, just like we want good lives for ourselves. We care, for fuck’s sake, about the company culture.
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, 23 May 2016 18:38 (eight years ago) link