At least this hype cycle seems to be accelerating. Its always darkest before the light. So hopefully the day after every single front page link is something AI related, there won't be any. But that might be because the earth has exploded and not because the bubble finally burst.
I have this theory that one easy way to curry favor with Trump is tell him about some previously esoteric/unused power the executive has. So much of what he does seems to just be because he can do it, and not because it actually has a real goal or purpose. Like a kid playing with toys. I realize he says that tariffs are meant to bring in revenue or increase domestic manufacturing or [pick random reason]. Or that he's doing this due to DC apparently turning into Fallujah but looking back over his first term and now this one, its the same pattern.
That’s an interesting observation. I’ve wondered how he can be so “creative” if you can call it that, but I guess if you have lots of assistants who can read all of the “well, technically you can do XYZ” sections buried deep in odd legal texts, and you enjoy doing stuff just to get more limelight, these actions are inherently attention grabbing because they are so novel.
I think it is not only limelight. He is a conman/hustler type of personality based on all the things he has done in the past so he probably likes loopholes and shortcuts that can be exploited. Doing things fairly and correctly are slow and for losers in his book.
Yes. The really dangerous people are Miller, Vought, and their Project 2025 allies. I’m quite sure they’re constantly workshopping new and exciting ways to expand dictatorial power.
I choose to believe that trump's whole campaign is motivated out of spite for getting ribbed after the birther movement. Everything he does, he does it to flabbergast the democrats "because he can"
They need to fully test their boundaries before midterms. It probably helps that SCOTUS is overturning injunctions now while things are kind of mellow.
The main motivation is narcissistic supply. He knows people will be angry. He sops up the attention.
For him at least I don’t think there’s anything deeper other than he found this way to get people to either adore him or hate him. In either case he’s the center of attention.
Once the toy he stops generating attention, he will get bored and he will find a new toy.
It tracks that if you're going to give an accreditation you want to make sure its being upheld. Pizza shops can cut a lot of corners that a normal patron might not notice or care about.
I didn't like having to fire up some NVR software just to get the camera live stream, and you're locked into whatever options that software might have. With ffmpeg you can do some cool stuff with filters.
Bingo. We did these buckets, were very diligent about it. They appeared to work (at least in terms of attracting Mosquitos, which they're meant to do) but had no real effect generally. House next door is a rental, with a rotating cast of 20-somethings that do not keep up the yard and its filled with nice little habitats for Mosquitos.
One thing that an HOA might actually be good for - I would love to see what happens if our entire neighborhood did this.
I would love to live in a neighborhood full of meadow style gardens, where native plants are allowed to flower and feed bees, with bug habitats instead of neatly cut astroturf looking golf green lawns chock full of pesticides.
I can't understand the people that think the artificial look holds any beauty whatsoever.
The artificial look visibly demands a large amount of ongoing maintenance and thus acts as a convenient display of excess spending power. It's like the peacock's tail for capitalists.
This is true for a highly attractive wild lawn as well. When things grow truly wild, they're all competing and none do fantastically. If you've got a beautiful yard full of happy native plants, you've likely done some serious work, even if you're just out-competing the invasive plants.
That being said, a yard of native plants can still do more good than a yard of grass. Grasses are cool and come in many other forms though, and can be extremely resistant to drought. Native grasses often have much deeper roots, or even taproots sometimes.
I let thistles, ragwort, clovers, and other flowering native "weeds" grow tall and flower fully, let the grass seed at knee height before cutting it each year, keep some deadfall around, and pile sticks along the fence line. Its still perfectly navigable. The grass is flattened under foot.
When cutting i use a scythe and sheers to minimise the amount of caterpillars etc. getting killed.
For my protected potted/bedded plants i use a variety of natural methods to keep aphids and snails at bay, and they work brilliantly. Bait plants (some weeds fill this purpose too), Neem oil treatment, nematodes, and more.
The amount of life, happy bugs, birds, bees, etc. i find thriving, and the variety, fills me with far more joy than the equivalent of giving my garden a bowl cut.
You might have some success with talking to them, or even dropping a leaflet or a print out in their mailbox explaining the problem and encouraging them to check their yard for breeding grounds. A lot of folks (especially young ones) just don't think about that kind of thing, but very few people actually like mosquitos, so a polite reminder every couple years or when someone new moves in might do some good.
I had a neighbor with a bunch of trash in his backyard that collected water causing mosquito breeding. It was impossible to be outside for more than a few minutes. Despite being friendly with him, he took offense when I pointed out his problem and even offered to help lug the trash to the curb with him. Some people are just too proud.
> One thing that an HOA might actually be good for
I've gotten nothing but benefits from living in neighborhoods with HOAs. Basic stuff like funding for landscapers to keep up the shared grassy areas along the streets, to plowing the access roads in winter time. But the main benefit has always been that it provides a legal mechanism to force everyone to maintain their yards and property. No need to drop passive-aggressive notes in a mailbox about people parking their cars on their lawns.
10/10 highly recommend
edit: apparently you guys don't like HOAs haha. Well I love them. Keeps the neighborhood from looking like a dump.
Some people like living in communities that look nice. It seems fair that you can opt-in to those rules by buying in an HOA, and if you do want to park on your lawn, buy elsewhere.
(And I am not a fan of HOAs personally, so I do in fact live elsewhere, but my neighbors house is also an eyesore)
Over maintained yards are a leading reason for having no biodiversity around your home. First you lose the bugs, then the birds and over time this extends to everything.
Without knowing where you are exactly, I can only give a vague and general response such as "in much of the USA, the mere existence of a lawn is 'over maintained'", see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeriscaping
Oh I don't live in Nevada or Arizona, if that's what you were implying. Also, this thread is about the utility of HOAs, so in the example you're giving, then HOA can actually be more beneficial since they often include bylaws to restrict or prevent landscaping and watering during periods of water conservation. It goes both ways.
What I'm implying is: HOAs can mandate bad things, including in various cases lawns, because an absence of good reasoning when mimicking others isn't the preserve of individuals.
My suburban neighborhood has an HOA and it's fine. Most of what they do is take care of the community swimming pools, sports fields, dog park, tennis courts, and landscaping and signage along the roads.
I question the motivation of people choosing to live in a place where they are constantly at odds with the agreed-upon standards of the community. They should leave if it is really that stressful and onerous.
Such is the problem with living in a "town" -- or anywhere with a city/community council. People are allowed to move to an adjacent neighborhood, or county, or anywhere, if they don't like the standards and governance.
they can, but in my experience rule changes are approximately zero. All of the HOAs I've lived in have been very reasonable. When I was on the receiving end of notices - they were well-deserved as much as they were embarrassing.
> difficult to sell their home because the existence of an HOA scares off buyers
It can be a concern. But I actually found the opposite to be true in my case. During my house-hunt I was far more turned-off by the appearance and disrepair of several houses and properties near the places that I was looking at. So it can definitely be a consideration from both perspectives.
You seem to not understand what a Homeowner Association is. You have to agree to the rules in order to live in the community. However, you can choose not to agree to the rules if you don't like them. In which case, you can move somewhere else in order to avoid homelessness.
You can’t have a property under an HOA that you didn’t agree to. Either you were the owner when the original HOA was entered into, or you were aware of it when you purchased the property.
You could also inherit or be given the property. The HOA and related things, such as requirements to maintain an existing easement or private roadway that crosses the property, would normally be part of the deed/plat and come with the property without you ever having to formally agree to them.
The thing that really makes me wonder are some of the horror stories where new homeowners were surprised by the HOA existence, or at least some of the enforcement actions. It also seems like an easy thing to fake for the clicks, who knows.
Not sure how redlining comes into this. Everyone in my neighborhood provided no fewer than 3 signatures in a contract agreeing to abide by the well-documented community standards for use and upkeep of their property.
I’m sure those community standards don’t suggest in any way that they might impinge on the freedom of expression of any minorities who might consider moving to the neighbourhood…
I think the next house I move to, I will look for an HOA that prohibits combustion-powered yard tools, and hires an all-electric crew for common maintenance, cost be damned.
Even worse is, say you have 20 neighbors on the block each scheduling yard maintenance separately, then it's like the balls in bins problem, and you pretty much end up with these abominations making noise at least once a day (and weekends included because that's when Dad has time to do the weekend warrior thing and it takes him 3x as long as a professional crew). Sigh.
Exactly! An incremental improvement would be that yard stuff should all be done on the same day of the week. And then it would just be super loud but for a short period of time.
From what I can tell, HOA experiences - like politics - are highly dependent on the folks who would make good decision-makers actually being interested in, and attaining, the level of power in the association to make those decisions.
I've seen both - folks who are good stewards of the community's money and add to its energy, and folks who can't manage money and exhaust the community's energy on trivialities.
These don't work because suburbs are a ponzi scheme that is collapsing.
People are grudgingly willing to pay to put in a brand new sewer once. No one wants to fund maintenance or pay millions to replace it in 60 years and cities are literally going bankrupt because the population density isn't enough to maintain the infrastructure.
Cities realized this decades ago which is why many are reluctant to add more unsustainable public roads/sewers/etc. and insist new development owns and funds them privately....which tends to require a HOA to fund maintenance from communal contributions/reserves.
My back yard neighbors live on a private street with an HOA. When the city water pressure went high for a brief period of time, they were one of the few places to have water lines burst. Their private supply lines were not of the same rating as the city lines that supply similar neighborhoods. Since this was private, this HOA was on the hook for ripping up the street, repairing water lines, and fixing their street. Being a customer that doesn’t normally need such services, the fix was done a couple months after the water lines break. They had a week or so with no water and many weeks of water being fed to their homes via hoses connecting a fire hydrant and the spigots they would normally use to get water outside.
They were so lucky this happened in the summer. In the winter, the hoses would have frozen solid.
These folks were very sad the city’s water utility couldn’t do the work. They fix water main breaks within a couple days, usually the same day.
HOAs can be good. Like many things, HOAs are not inherently bad or good. It’s the people who run them.
I lived in a four unit condo buildings before and the HOA was fine, because all residents were on the board.
I now live in a more typical suburban HOA development and the HOA is very unobtrusive and only comes down on the actual problem properties (overgrown, uninhabited houses) and doesn’t do much other than handle common area upkeep. Dues are only $150 per year.
I have a friend whose parents built a 48' sailboat in their yard over about a dozen years. "built" as in cast the lead keel, laid the fiberglass hull, etc. etc. This was in a traditional suburban neighborhood, but no HOA. So they had to be pretty good friends with their neighbors.
To each their own. I much prefer to live in the neighbourhood where each neighbour does what they feel like with their property, within reason. It ought not be any business of yours what I do with my yard, front or back, as long as it doesn't adversely affect your enjoyment of your own property - and this last part is key - as a reasonable person would interpret it. In other words, smells and health hazards - sure. Unexplainable hatred for wildflowers, uncut grass and the laughter of children - go ahead and send a passive aggressive note straight to /dev/null for all I care.
Heh in my neighborhood (oakcliff in Dallas TX) if you’re white and have a garage sale without a permit it’s like committing a felony. If you’re not white, code enforcement will come help you set up and tear down no permit required.
It's hard enough to get the cops to come out to a robbery - I know of nowhere in America where they're bored enough to come look at someone with poor landscaping.
Unless you're a decamillionaire (or a cop), the cops in America don't care about you.
My former city has code enforcement officers that drive around the neighborhoods and issue warnings and citations for insufficient weed control (got one of those), unsightly (dead) vegetation (got that one, too) and minimum pool maintenance (next door neighbor got that one).
FWIW, I'd love to know how they're monitoring everyone's pools.
If you're feeling like an asshole and you complain to the city about your neighbors overgrown yard most places will start fining your neighbor daily if it's actually a problem. It's not really a police matter though.
This I will take a nuanced position on. If your kids are playing in the backyard, and it doesn't impact me at all ... perfect please enjoy life.
But I can often hear people outside, especially children screeching and yelling, over my television with all of my doors and windows shut and the air conditioner on full blast.
In those scenarios, the laughter IS adversely affecting the ability of other people to enjoy their own property.
Sometimes I hear dogs barking and loud cars on the street. Or just the constant drone of weed whackers and leaf blowers from about april to october. I have triple glazed windows and eight inch thick walls so I don't hear any of it when I go inside.
children screeching and yelling, provided that it isn't going on for hours at a time or in the middle of night, is just a normal consequence of living in a community.
I do feel for people who move in next to schools or public pools/playgrounds but considering how much time kids spend indoors these days I'd guess that people today have it much easier than people did in the past.
I'd much rather have to occasionally be reminded that kids are somewhere playing and having a good time than deal with a lot of the other noises that can disrupt a person's day like loud cars/motorcycles, drunk people fighting, landscapers or sirens.
If you move next to a playground you should know what you're doing. My parents live next to a school on purpose and we all enjoy the sounds of children when we're out in the yard. Recess isn't even that long and always happens in the middle of a weekday.
> children screeching and yelling, provided that it isn't going on for hours at a time
But it does often go on for hours at a time. And I'm not talking about a school zone or a park. As another person pointed out, if you move next to a school or a park you know what you are signing up for. But in a quiet suburb, if the issue is new neighbours that weren't there when you bought the house.. or who just started a family recently. That's something that's being imposed on you that didn't exist before.
And we don't tolerate this when it is barking dogs or loud music. Most cities have noise ordinances and I even read mine because of problematic neighbours. Not because of children, mind you. The man was an alcoholic who would get drunk early in the morning and go into his backyard where he would have loud screaming matches with hallucinations which terrified our small daughters so I wanted to know if the noise ordinance covered it. Answer is, technically yes but the police don't enforce yelling and hollering despite it being spelled out in the letter of the bylaw.
Why is it acceptable to expect people to keep their pets quiet, their music at a reasonable volume, their power tools and machinery at bay and to not have extremely loud parties where people are screaming and blasting noise ... but the second it's loud children we're talking about oh no ... you just need to learn to "live in a community"?
You can make the same argument about anything. Living with neighbours who have tall grass is part of "living in a community." Some people don't care about well trimmed lawns. Motorcycles with extremely loud engines, just part of "living in a community." Barking dogs. Honking car horns etc. etc. etc. We have noise ordinances for a reason; noise directly affects other people.
And I say all of this as a parent who raised two daughters to adulthood. I don't understand this weird standard. We (their mother and I) always expected our children to be respectful of our neighbours.
Submit interesting unique links and post more substantive comments (maybe add a paragraph or two your previous comment) and you will be able to downvote soon enough. But I don't understand the appeal, when I do it is usually accidental (really easy to do on a tablet)...
I usually downvote comments that are derailing the thread or are so lazy as to feel like a waste of my time to have read.
I'll often upvote comments with opinions that are counter to my own, especially if they are presented in a clear, coherent, or novel way that causes me to think a bit.
It helps prevent brigading and ensures that users have a moment to adjust to the community and its general expectations before being able to participate in community moderation.
If a user cannot reach that low bar after a while, they probably aren't a particularly active or positive member of the community.
I agree, its funny to see the trope from someone advocating GrapheneOS. Like its pretty typical to see from regular internet users who seemingly stopped caring a long time ago that FAANG has essentially their entire life in various databases. We all have private lives, or at least we should, that's just a normal part of being a human.
As someone that used Tailwind for years at this point, you're right about why its so popular. To me it was just a better version of Bootstrap. Its defaults look nice, its color choices are nice. I would also mention that their docs are top notch and Tailwind UI makes it really to just copy and paste some decent looking basic components.
As someone that spends most of their time on backend, I just don't really care that much about CSS. I think that's something that's lost with all the bikeshedding about it to me its similar to higher level language vs something closer to the metal. So when people say "just use CSS" its like someone telling me I should write in C rather than Ruby. No thanks, I don't have to - why should I?
Setting up the tooling around tailwind is more a pita than vanilla CSS imo. If you are using tailwind just for the nice default styles there are already myriad simpler solutions for that. Comparing the use of vanilla CSS to.. writing in C, I don't get it.
I dropped out of college after a semester. I also didn't see the value in it. Because I was a stupid kid. Twenty years later its one of my biggest regrets. We don't need more self righteous "founders", convinced they know everything.
