Visits (business) were down significantly for ERs. People just weren't coming in with the silly stuff they did pre-covid. Now you might say that's a good thing overall but that doesn't pay the bills...
Pretty incredible exchange you are having with people right now where you are just straight up ignoring valid points or sweeping them aside as idealism...
NYC and DC don't really project to other metros. Travel to and from Penn Station vs the airports is a non-trivial consideration to passengers. It is expensive or time consuming or a PITA to travel to JFK/LGA/EWR on public transit with a bag. I lived in Brooklyn and made the NYC/DC commute 15 or so times a year for many years and that was a significant issue for me, it just wasn't cost or time effective to fly in _NYC_.
I now live in Maine and wouldn't consider for a second taking the train to NYC. I'll fly out of PWM or, if I want flexibility, drive there. There is a non-stop bus that I'd prefer, too.
I was a big Apple Notes user, but I've read horror stories about losing notes in upgrades, which bothers me. Exporting notes for backup is tedious, too. I've switched to Notion for notes and it's been excellent minus one thing: it's slow to start. Otherwise I haven't really missed Apple Notes.
The other day I was listening to a podcast with Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, two people that annoy me to no end, but I'm a glutton for punishment. In the podcast they made the point that if a man were to pursue his true biological imperative in modern society, he would just get paid to donate sperm all day at a sperm bank. That was a joke obviously but it speaks to a kind of simple, outcome-oriented way of looking at who we are. But the truth is we did not evolve to procreate, we evolved to have sex. The distinction is subtle, but it's there. We are amazing creatures but our DNA doesn't encode the big picture, it only encodes enough for us to make another link in the chain.
I think it's ok to step back and admire the big picture, but I don't think we are equipped to live in a way where we find agreement with the big picture.
I feel like this is where ActiveRecord shines, as the initial development is thought of as objects and their relations to each other and it's very easy to alter data definitions. And in the end you get a reasonably normalized database underneath everything. The reality is most of your models aren't going to be undergoing wild schema changes and if they are or you need traversable unstructured data you can defer to json columns for those scenarios.
It's condescending if your feedback is just bike shedding. Like if you think this module should be broken out into it's own namespace it's on you to explain why as opposed to "Have you considered putting this in a namespace?" -- most likely I did, and I didn't think it was important and now you are asking me to write up why I preferred 6 of one over half a dozen of the other and in non-violent communication forms on top of it. If there is a good reason, then just say it, otherwise it's super frustrating and time consuming.
BUT, if you are going to do that, please do it in your first pass in review, don't do it in your subsequent pass after I've already responded to your feedback. This is just inconsiderate of my time.
There's plenty of excess that can be removed or revised for simplicity and understanding in Empacts writing style that would would help in clarifying and simplifying their point...
I grew up in rural Texas and when I visit back home I've noticed the farm stands are considerably worse than what I remember them being growing up. On the other hand I live in rural New England now and the farm stands here are excellent, albeit strictly seasonal.
On top of that if your startup has any meaningful operations or customer service headcount, you will save so much money outside of SF/LA/NYC -- not just because of wages, but because of rent, as well.
I mean tons of the last 7/10 of a mile is done by old beat up delivery trucks, with much less capacity than 18 wheelers, that idle in traffic or idle double parked in the turning lane. I'm not going to argue that cities aren't more efficient but the picture that city-dwellers (self-satisfied New Yorkers in particular) paint about their environmental and ecological impact tend to be a very narrow window of the overall impact of their choice to live there.