I've noticed that there seems to be big inconsistencies from location to location, at least around me. One Best Buy never has anything on the shelves, doesn't have much of their higher-end stuff at all, and constantly looks like they just got robbed.
But 15 minutes away there's another Best Buy that has a dedicated PC hardware section that almost reminds me of going to Fry's back in the day. I was flabbergasted the first time I walked in there, I almost thought I'd been mistaken and entered a different store.
Yes, early cars had to be started with a crank handle that stuck out of the front of the grill, similar to how early propeller engines had to be hand-spun to get going. Apparently if you didn't crank it quite hard enough the handle could snap back at you rather violently, one of my great-grandmothers had her arm broken this way.
It also has a disadvantage in that it's extremely porous and allows water to seep through it, which expands and contracts with temperature changes and causes the limestone to crack. There's areas around town where roads have been cut through hills, and if you drive through these after a big rainfall you can literally see water pouring out the side of the rock face. Chunks of limestone breaking off and falling onto the side of the road is a pretty regular occurrence.
There's other issues, too, such as the lake that runs through the middle of the city, the underground rivers and cave networks in the area, and the unstable clay on the East side of town that expands and contracts with rain, causing all sorts of problems.
It might not be 'that hard' to excavate limestone, but an additional 21,000 dollars added to the cost along with 14x longer work time is not an insignificant difference.
East Austin doesn't have them because of the unstable clay that expands and contracts with rains, same reason the track surface at COTA has had so many issues. The ground doesn't stay put.
Couple those things with the frost line issue you mentioned, along with the likelihood of flooding, and it probably comes down to the fact that it's just too much work to be worth it.
There's also the fact that there's only about six inches of dirt here, dig any deeper than that and you hit solid limestone. That's why none of the houses here have basements.
That would make sense, IIRC our brains use something around 20% of our caloric intake just at “idle” so it’d make sense to me that they consume more energy when we push them harder.
But 15 minutes away there's another Best Buy that has a dedicated PC hardware section that almost reminds me of going to Fry's back in the day. I was flabbergasted the first time I walked in there, I almost thought I'd been mistaken and entered a different store.