A phrase I heard from a tv writer on a podcast was "note behind the note".
The gist of the conversation was about TV execs giving all sorts of bonkers notes all the time that are usually terrible. This writer tried to think about what might have triggered the exec to make a note. Maybe the characters are not engrossing enough, or the plot is too complex, or the dialogue isn't snappy enough. If the exec had been engrossed in the story they wouldn't have made a note. This writer rarely implemented any note from an exec, but did make all sorts of changes in and around noted sections.
There is at least some truth to induced demand with new housing driving an influx of new residents, especially in cities with economic opportunity.
Just like transportation induced demand, the solution is different style of infrastructure. High capacity metros, bus lanes, and regional rail to get people out of cars and use limited transportation corridors more efficiently than single occupancy vehicles. One more lane bro doesn’t work, but adding new forms of more efficient transportation does.
New, denser housing with mid rise and high rise buildings and a mixture of unit sizes in walkable neighbourhoods with good transit access absorbs new residents and drives down housing costs for everyone. Single family sprawl doesn’t work, but density can.
We have under-built for decades, so it’s easy to misunderstand the signals. More housing gets built and prices still go up, and many people are concluding more housing just increases prices, leading to people with good intentions decrying “luxury housing”. There are plenty of nimby actors in the mix too, tossing in all sorts of misinformation and bad faith arguments, muddying the water.
The reality is areas with strong economic growth are all failing to add enough new housing and demand continues to outstrip supply, leading to higher prices. Many studies have shown even new high end housing helps manage prices, as someone rich enough upgrades, leaving their unit empty for someone else to upgrade into. That chain continues all the way down into the lower cost units, each time freeing up space someone else can afford. Large migration into a region can mess with how much prices can be affected, but studies still show even high priced new units do slow down growth in prices. Supply and demand does apply, we have just massively underestimated how far behind supply is for the demand and need to add so much more housing.
Taxing unrealized gains is a terrible idea, but I do think we need to expand the definition of realizing a gain.
0.1%ers borrowing against stocks and others assets and paying little more than minimum interest is a system-breaking loophole that has exploded the wealth gap. It needs to stop. Taxing unrealized gains isn't the fix. Leveraging an asset needs to be a realized gain.
People should be paying capital gains on the delta between book value vs the asset valuation at loan time. They are gaining from the asset appreciation to have access to more leverage and that gain should be taxable. This would re-set the book value so people don't pay capital gains multiple times on the same gain, but they shouldn't be able to defer the gain forever while using debt to avoid tax.
There should probably be a lifetime exemption of around $1 million to allow the middle class to leverage their home and other key assets in a way the richest have benefitted from for so long, but once you use up your exemption no more tax-free leverage.
Maybe in 1942. Modern tanks cannot be built on highly specialized production lines that build road vehicles without years-long re-tooling. M1 Abrams tanks don't even use piston engines, they have turbines.
A older, but well documented example how specialized modern automotive production has become is the Mercedes Benz 500e. In the 90s Mercedes wanted to build a more powerful, wider version of the E class. They added 56 mm to the front fenders and discovered it wouldn't fit through the production line properly. MB contracted for Porsche to handle the low-volume 500e on a different production line.
Another option is just stick to a smaller circuit.
80% of 15A x 120V = 1.4 kW
80% of 20A x 240V = 3.8 kW
Just going from a standard 15A outlet to a 20A/240V nearly triples the amount of power, and many homes that would need a new panel for a 50A charger have room for one more 20A circuit. Cars typically spend 8-16 hrs per day stationary in their own driveway, so 3.8 kW translates into tons of range.
While 40A or 50A is nice to have, it's far from necessary.
30K would be on the higher end for air source. My install this year was 25k CDN including a lot of duct work.
40K is also on the low end for geothermal. I'm guessing you were able to trench instead of drill?
If you can afford ground source it's by far the best option in cold climates. Steady ground heat means you get the same efficiency all year round. The install can be eye-watering though.
We're already there. Emmanuel Clase is under investigation for fixing pitches and can't play right now.
I don't love sports betting in general, but I really hate betting on short term events like specific pitches or a strikeout. There is way too much incentive to fix.
I'm a huge fan of the automatic balls and strikes challenge system baseball is going to adopt.
Awful calls need to be struck from the game and this should do that. Tonight my Blue Jays had a double taken away on a foul call and a ball 2 inches off the plate called a strike in the same at bat with the bases loaded. Between this and the horrible reviews last week it feels like the fix is by MLB to keep us from winning the division.
Unlike tennis where in and out have always been strictly defined and we just didn't have the technology to enforce it, baseball has always involved the human element to the strike zone and some umpire judgement on whether the pitcher hit the spot or just got lucky and what a given batter's zone is. I want some of that to stay, with catchers holding game-long discussions about the zone with umpires, and batters having their own sense of the zone.
I don't want full automatic balls and strikes, so I like the challenge. There is some new strategy on when to deploy it and who can be trusted to recognize a missed call. It leaves some room for a pitcher and catcher to work a corner over a few innings to expand little by little.
There is extensive long term refurbishment of the existing reactors that includes uprated capacity, but there isn't currently any plans to add new reactors at Bruce.
A different Ontario nuclear site (Darlington) does have work underway to build four BWRX-300 reactors, one of which will be the first in the world.
Single stair is one of the reforms I'd most like to see.
At the time 2 stair requirements were adopted it was vital, with devastating urban fires a common occurrence. We have so many new options for both preventing fire and keeping evacuation routes accessible for hours that it's no longer required.
The regulation has a huge impact on the layout and form it's possible to build, and I think it's a huge driver of the visceral reaction against apartment living in the US and Canada.
Being able to build 4-8 storey apartments on a single lot with a central stair where every unit has windows on at least 2 walls would be a game-changer for north american urban spaces and a pathway out of the housing crisis.
It costs a lot less to build transit infrastructure before or at the same time as everything else compared with adding it later, even if the line is underused as density is added.
The best alternative is a well-planned phased line with carefully protected right-of-way and a dedicated source of long term funding. Bonus points for it being a combination of value capture taxes and the transit agency being a property developer in their own right around stations. The early phase can be inside the boundary of current development so there are people to ride right away. Developers can build and market using the upcoming line, and prospective residents can be confident it will happen with funding secured.
Snowflake also made it hard to have good practices, giving them further culpability. There was no setting for customers to force their entire tenant to enforce MFA. Customers had to depend on each person with access to do the right thing, something that is unlikely to be universally true.
The problem with that plan is social engineering attacks. CSRs are often careless and will accept 'a bunch of random letters and numbers' as the answer rather than validating each character.
Better to randomly select a long dictionary word or hypenate a few together. Equally unguessable but easily verified, so it won't be weakened during a phone conversation.
I'm quite conflicted because I wanted to like it so much and the production is so beautiful, but the fact they have reversed so many Asimov themes is really disheartening.
The sets, costumes, lighting, cinematography and most of the acting is truly superb. I'd think it's safe to say to it's the most enveloping sci-fi universe ever captured in a tv show with all the money and details that have gone into the production.
And yet the writing has Salvor Hardin shoot someone in the neck in the very episode they quote the famous aphorism "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent". The day to day technology within the empire is so advanced what room for innovation does the Foundation have? They seem to have abandoned the religious aspect of the first Foundation expansion, which would have been fascinating to explore (though they could still potentially retrieve by skipping forward and making Seldin and his appearance from beyond the grave into the basis for a faith that grows up around the founding of the alliance).
Maybe it's true Foundation is unfilmable as written, but there was room for taking the themes of the ossification of institutions and the innovation borne of necessity and making something that matched much more closely to the spirit of Foundation. What we got feels like a cargo cult adaption where the words match the book but there isn't any meaning, understanding or depth behind them.
You can think what you want about their watches (and I certainly think their modern self congradulatory dials filled with a ridiculous amount of text are horrifying), but they are a excellent engineering company running a ruthlessly efficient operation.
One thing that really makes rolex stand out is their quality control. They make nearly 1 million watch movements per year and have an unbelievably low return rate for defects. The true number is a closely guarded secret, but it's tiny. When a watch leaves rolex it's perfect.
Everything that goes into a rolex is made by rolex. There is only 1 other watch company that can say that (seiko), and that only applies to particular lines they make. Rolex makes their own sapphire and hairsprings, 2 of the most complex things to manufacture in the world. The swiss watch world is a complex maze of subvendors and parts bin makers, but rolex does it all themselves, and does it extremly well.
The place rolex really sets itself apart is their bracelets. Put a rolex on and snap the clasp shut and it will just feel different from any watch you have ever worn. They are extremely heavy, but also amazingly comfortable. For the rolex price point no one can even come close to the wearing experience.
If you wanted a luxury steel watch and didn't want to research your options, going and buying whichever rolex you liked the look of would net you an extremly well made watch built to insane tolerances. You could do a lot worse.
Rolex goes a step beyond COSC with their Superlative Chronometer certification. While I hate they splash it all over the dial, 100% of the movements they make are certified to +2/-2 seconds per day. That even includes the new Air King, which historically hasn't been chronometer certified and why it was always the lowest cost Rolex.
Even the Tudor in house movements are being COSC certified now. Tudor has always used the highest grade ETA movements which can be COSC certified but never bothered to. Now the new movements they are making themselves are going in for testing.
Mechanical watches will never be as accurate as a good quartz watch, that is an indisputable fact. On the other hand, telling the time with nothing but springs and gears has an analogue magic that delights me every time I wear one of my mechanical watches. When I spend the day surrounded by integrated circuits and batteries it's really relaxing to have something nearby that is disconnected and simple.
8 grand is a stretch for a steel sub, but an 16610 (roughly 10 years old) would easily fetch close to 5 in a pinch. A pretty new 116610 lightly used you could turn into $7000 cash without too much trouble.
Precious metal rolexes don't hold their value nearly the same way as steel ones, since part of owning a gold rolex is the accomplishment of being able to buy it in the first place. They also come with a dizzying array of options, so if you want the right one you have to buy new. Sports rolexes have few options so they are interchangeable. Rolex has pulled off a neat trick of making them thought to be rare while selling nearly a million a year.
Tudor made a smaller version of their submariner that looks great on smaller wrists. I don't think they ever made a no date mini sub, but it's worth checking out. You should also look into the tudor black bay 36. 36 mm case, only downside is it doesn't have a dive bezel
Tudor is a Rolex sub brand that uses Rolex cases but swaps in more generic swiss movements. Less expensive servicing, especially since you don't need to send it to rolex, but all the Rolex quality on the outside.
The gist of the conversation was about TV execs giving all sorts of bonkers notes all the time that are usually terrible. This writer tried to think about what might have triggered the exec to make a note. Maybe the characters are not engrossing enough, or the plot is too complex, or the dialogue isn't snappy enough. If the exec had been engrossed in the story they wouldn't have made a note. This writer rarely implemented any note from an exec, but did make all sorts of changes in and around noted sections.