"Just do this in a barn you own not a house I own."
Someday we'll wonder why we thought it was a good idea to make the need for shelter into an investment vehicle. Until then, I hope people use your properties as they see fit.
There are a lot of people that can afford to rent a house, but would not qualify for a mortgage to buy a house. If houses were not available to rent, there would be plenty of people unable to live in a house.
I'm in a fortunate situation where my landlord is not a slumlord. When things need looking into, it gets taken care of in a timely manner. I do not have any issue with someone choosing to have this as a business.
The GP's statement doesn't at all suggest that they're looking at this property as an investment vehicle; The house could be ROI-neutral and its owner would still not like to see it burn down from uninspected, unsafe electrical work.
That fact alone doesn't make it into an investment vehicle.
There's a set of circumstances that make it so. Low interest rates, being able to use leverage (borrow money, buy a house then rent it out), and higher-than-inflation price increase of houses.
Your rather carefully worked comment is being downvoted already. I agree with you, but I think that here, plenty of people have the dream of early retirement.
Don't get me wrong, I like that dream too. I just have my thoughts about the current housing market, which to me has aspects of an investment market.
there's nothing wrong with paying someone else to maintain your dwelling and dealing with capital costs. people don't have a problem with the market solutions to the basic right to food, for the most part.
The main problem comes with the unearned profit that comes from owning land that benefits from improvements made by others.
tldr: land value tax and less restrictive zoning yesterday
Not every day a personally relevant story shows up. I've done work in that valley and with Billy. He's a special person and that valley is a special place. For many reasons. RMBL and Billy together are a beacon showing that science-for-the-sake-of-science can have long echoing impacts.
I think my favorite part about that place is that there is a vague tradition for scientists to turn over monitoring gear/sensors to Billy. And his house has become a improvised monitoring station much more than the manual measurements he makes every day.
RMBL and Gothic should serve as a prototype for what I wish every ecosystem had. It's deeply integrated with education of students, it allows and educated visitors, and the observations there will continue to serve the scientific community. I wish there was a network of things.
You see, the thing is, it's deeply classist. It's also misplaced outrage. The poors have been doing this for millenia and we still have a society that progresses rapidly and much of the heavy lifting that moves us forward is done by folks you and others here are denigrating. If they believe the things you disparage it's because the governments and systems that the "smart" and wealthy have created have utterly failed at getting those people educated and involved.
Using your education to feel better than others doesn't serve us to advance as a society. I suggest that if you're as smart as you think you are then you find a way to frame the issue such that you're lifting up those people and not punching down.
> If they believe the things you disparage it's because the governments and systems that the "smart" and wealthy have created have utterly failed at getting those people educated and involved.
I think the issue is that there are two groups of smart & wealthy people.
There's a mid-level of people who are happy to have more than they need and don't have the Machiavellian drive to extract every last ounce of money and power.
And there's an upper-level who are fine exploiting anyone and everything.
There are of course altruistic people who are extremely wealthy. But sort of by definition, the middle-level is never going to have the drive & energy to fight that upper-level, who's willing to do anything.
I guess my point is that there are two groups of smart & wealthy people, and the ones complaining about the lower class being exploited are not the ones who are doing the exploiting. It's a classic setup where the upper class keeps the middle class happy enough to not make it worth the middle class joining the lower class in revolution. And they aim the ire of the lower class at the middle class while they exploit the lower class.
I'm pretty sure it was Mondays episode of the Daily Show that covered this pretty well in the intro. There are a lot of different groups out there, but the rich and greedy group does seem to lock up a huge amount of resources and propaganda.
yeah, the classism in the "poor/uneducated people are having too many kids!" always has this assumption that class and values are perfectly presevred across generations and ignores the social mobility and the fact that children are capable of making their own path and not just following in their footsteps.
children raised in big families by uneducated, closed-minded parents often rebel against their parents and espouse different views. just look at any subreddit that has youths are complaining about the backwards views of the parents/uncles/grand-parents -- i know it's not a representative sample, but children challenging their elders views is not an anomaly.
on the flipside, there's the trope of only children raised being raised by high-class, open-minded families turning into spoiled, selfish brats.
Of the big households I've personally experienced that most would consider closed-minded parents might have a few of their kids complaining about the backwards views, but not necessarily the majority of the kids. I'd be interested in seeing some actual statistics other than assuming the people ranting on reddit about their families are the majority of that population.
The kids who agree with their closed-minded parents probably aren't going online to rant about it.
But then you say "children raised in big families by uneducated, closed-minded parents often rebel against their parents and espouse different views". So non-zero proportion becomes often...
The idiocracy thesis supposes that children will mirror their parents behavior and beliefs. As a former teenager and a parent that is very much not the likeliest outcome. It’s also on the wider society to lift all the kids to roughly a level playing field
Why the poor? And is poor the correct label or is this just strongly correlated with the actual reason? In the past children were desirable as sources of additional income and for support at old age, is this still relevant? Otherwise it seems that you would want fewer children if you are poor because they obviously come with additional costs. Is it the cost of contraceptives or abortions instead of a deliberate choice? If it is not poverty directly but worse education because of poverty, how exactly would that work? How much education do you need to realize that additional children will cause additional costs? What other mechanisms are there? In the end it will probably be a mix of factors, but the phenomenon seems more complex than it looks like at first glance.
Beats being so poor you can't afford a car, or the only car you can afford is slowly rusting itself away or one no-longer-mass-produced part away from making a repair out of your financial reach. I'd take bad OTA updates anyday.
Seems like this batch of half baked cars receiving OTA updates are more likely to be the ones that are in repairable in the not so distant future, whereas parts for a 1990s toyota gmc or ford anything can be found cheaply and installed by any ambitious teenager.
GP is referencing the "having the being stolen from stolen".
Nevermind that the wealthy ain't fretting for one second over OTA updates. Imagine a personal vehicle budget where the Porsche is technically your daily driver, but you never drive it because you're driven everywhere.
Understandable concern, but this kind of fervor over this kind of problem feels a lot like the zealots who tear apart Firefox and it seems to be why open source community leadership suffers constantly. Is this good? Definitely not. But "stop using gitlab" and fleeing like rats into Microsoft's honey pot is like shooting off your face to spite your body.
I know, very clearly, that many HNetizens won't be using Github either. But piling on the hate train for these companies that at least try to support open source in earnest is doing strange things.
Huh. Here I thought I'd totally lost my mind because every time I open teams on my phone it takes down my cellular connection. As in I can't use teams on my phone because it instant disconnects me from the Visible network. I thought I was losing my mind until I found other people with the problem.
It's unnerving, especially for open source projects. The idea of open source extends beyond the license. It is as much about the community as it is the software. Discord is the worst possible place from an open-ness standpoint. I don't use software that uses it.
I mean, since this article is explicitly political and thoroughly interesting context I definitely have some criticism that I think should be stated here. I saw the film and it was very well made and enjoyable. A friend invited me and I didn't know anything about it before going in.
That said, there are clear problems with the political narrative in the film given it's supposed to be artwork. Making a film about redemption without in any way commenting on the evil atrocities you committed is extremely Japanese and morally dubious at best... downright propaganda at worst. Were the Japanese public and military rank and file the real victims of the war? Is it ok to pronounce the moral ambiguity of the top brass without commenting on the Holocaust-level crimes committed?
These things were glaring in the theater. And I know I'm going to get the standard "doesn't matter good film" responses for having an honest appraisal of the conceptual idea. But it's bad in that way. If we want to move into a brighter future we need both redemption and brutal honesty and this was only one of those things. Good popcorn film? Absolutely. Cultural artwork on a new level? Definitely not.
Japanese considering themselves victims in the war is something that has been present in Japanese cinema since the moment American-occupation censorship was lifted in the early 1950s. It’s present here and there in films by Kurosawa and Ozu that are now in the canon of world cinema. It seems a bit late to be offended by it.
> Making a film about redemption without in any way commenting on the evil atrocities you committed is extremely Japanese and morally dubious at best... downright propaganda at worst. Were the Japanese public and military rank and file the real victims of the war? Is it ok to pronounce the moral ambiguity of the top brass without commenting on the Holocaust-level crimes committed?
It's easy to cast them as bad guys because they were defeated. Victor's justice and everything. Be thankful for nukes else one day the shoe might be on the other foot and and history will be rewritten again.
> It's easy to cast them as bad guys because they were defeated.
Real interesting response to 'holocaust level crimes'
Historically the US absolutely treated our natives and African descendents to a similar level of horror, but we 1. Own that and 2. Weren't doing anything to that level en masse by the time WWII came around.
I love Japan and it's people but I will absolutely throw shade at their cowardice in ignoring the sins of their past (at the cultural/national level).
> It's easy to cast them as bad guys because they were defeated.
It's also easy because they were the aggressors. The attack on Pearl Harbor when we were at peace does not leave a lot of room for nuance. We were not their oppressors, we were just in the way of their conquests.
I think I can apply your last two paragraphs to pretty much any movie unintentionally celebrating the United States security apparatus, politics, public policy, or exploitative crony capitalism that that people lust over for whatever reason.
"That said, there are clear problems with the political narrative in the film Oppenheimer, given that it's supposed to be artwork. Making a film about a nuclear weapon without in any way extensively showcasing the result of it's use on a civilian population i.e. the consequences of the development of that weapon is extremely American and morally dubious at best...downright propaganda at worst. Were the American public and military rank and file the real victims of WW2 ()? Is it ok to pronounce the moral ambiguity of the top brass without commenting on the Holocaust-level crimes committed?
These things were glaring in the theater. And I know I'm going to get the standard 'MAGA move to a Commie country' for having an honest appraisal of the conceptual idea. But it's bad in that way. ..."
War is a complex issue and making a film about Japan's war crimes (the first installment of the Ip Man series was good with this) is something which has to be met with approval from its government who have their hands in film finance as well. Japan is not exactly a capitalist economy-- it is culturally a command economy and everyone listens to the government (this is actually one of the critiques of Shin Godzilla and even if this Godzilla movie).
There are not that many governments that are going to be thrilled about you making a movie shitting on their armed forces or speaking on their war crimes. In the United States, our first amendment protects give us tremendous leeway to do this, but there is a lot of other pressures which can be extorted to kill a film prior to release.
Scorcese recently released Killers of the Flower Moon, which is not about a Holocaust, but about a limited genocide, and people are already bitching about the length, and it is as long as a "rah rah America" Avengers movie. This kind of movie was hard to make in the United States. It would be impossible to make in Japan. People there have to use metaphors to talk about getting nuked (aside from Grave of the Fireflies showing the Tokyo Firebombing, which was worse). How are you supposed to use a metaphor for an Asian Holocaust? If they did it would it come off as insensitive to a Western viewer?
This is a political Godzilla movie. It's a movie about Japan dealing with post war recovery. Maybe next time, there will be a Godzilla who comes and frees all the slave labor in the Imphal India campaign (maybe involve the Indian film industry to reduce cost). Maybe you should pitch it to be developed here with US political assistance and pressure so that Japanese war crimes are addressed. It's certainly a good idea.
But I would hesitate from:
-- being a hypocrite.
-- critiquing simplistically without seeing the larger work of this director.
(Your comment is very good and insightful; I'm just pointing these things out anyway).
> People there have to use metaphors to talk about getting nuked
... Not really, it's presented pretty directly in Barefoot Gen or in this corner of the world.
In the USA, you can make a movie portraying the US military in a bad light, but not only would it be harder to find an audience, it would also be much more expensive to make the movie. The reason is the US military offers assistance, staff, and equipment to filmmakers for free, as long as they're portrayed as the good guys.
Sure, but look at the larger context-- those two pieces of media first and foremost are anime which are where more of Japan's risque takes occur. Barefoot Gen was made by Madhouse, which was an extremely new studio at the time. These aren't live action movies made by some conservative, pre War joint stock company like Toho. Cold War 198X also has nuclear war depicted in it accurately from a military perspective, but again, it's anime.
And yes, it's the same in the United States. There are plenty of films that criticize the US government or elements of it. In the 1950s, there were Westerns which did it. In the 70s and 80s, there were Vietnam war movies which did it. Post 9/11, you have Snowden-related movies, or even movies like Captain America 2.
However, yes the DoD offers many incentives for portraying US weapons systems as cool, or US forces in a positive light to "content" makers (I hesitate to call them films).
As Japan rearms to face China, and seeks to boost recruitment we will see more of this patriotic attitude. And maybe Godzilla will be China one day.
(It's hilarious, because in China's recent Korean War films, the United States is scarier than Godzilla to their troops who spend 80% of the movie running away and dying).
There are movies like Haqueeqat, made in India after their military defeat in 1962. It's a black and white, realistic war movie (no Bollywood dancing). The entire movie is a big fuck you to the Indian government (Nehru in particular) for trusting China, having a Communist defense minister, putting the Indian military in a situation in which they need to have some crazy 10-1 kill ratio in the mountains while retreating, and villagers with little to no military training have to make a militia because troops cannot be deployed in time.
More egregiously, a Little Red Book gets bayoneted, a woman in the militia gets overtly raped as a form of torture by the Chinese, and children scream among all the dead bodies in the mountains. Also the end of the movie shows people voluntarily giving up their gold so that the government can buy weapons, which is a big "fuck you". Not only did the country get fucked over, but now people are giving up their gold (like Ottoman Turkey in WW1) so that the government can buy armaments.
Ironically, this film was funded by the same government it was criticizing. However, it was not censored at all, because the government at the time was very idealistic and considered this critique patriotic.
I'm someone working in the field with weather modelers/forecasters but not a modeler myself. Reading this discussion has been an absolute treat ...
The most fascinating thing about the concept of error in models, including in ensembles, is you can only calculate and propagate error for contributors that you can quantify. There are many unquantifiable sources of error. Imagine a physical process that you are unaware of that propagates as a bias, for example ice nucleation via aerosols. Perhaps you don't even model aerosols. How do you account for error here? What does error even mean?
Ensembles only show you intramodel variability. Which is like error, sort of, but only really represents a combination of "real" variability in initial conditions and how that propagates through your physics/parameterizations.
"models" the HN commentators make for their businesses surely have parallel concepts, but I don't see anyone talking about them. Only discussion about the errors you know when the ugliest errors are the ones that no one knows.
Someday we'll wonder why we thought it was a good idea to make the need for shelter into an investment vehicle. Until then, I hope people use your properties as they see fit.