111–120 of 274 posts
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Yes, but “pretty fashionable/wealthy” would also describe most users on this forum.
Wealthy? Sure. Fashionable? LOL.
I don't think it's fashionable to actually dress well anymore.
Really interesting twitter thread by @SarahTaber_bww breaking this down from yesterday: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1443225915073437698.html
Marie Antoinette and her friends would dress up as young shepherdess or milkmaids and wander around the hamlet pretending to be peasants, while still surrounded by the comforts of a royal lifestyle. A team of real farmers appointed by the Queen looked after the farm and the animals, and produced fruits and vegetables consumed at the royal table. https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/11/hameau-de-la-reine-mar...
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Having just bought a cottage, here are some things that have changed recently. 1. P2P wireless means you can cheaply get a 50/10 internet connection in remote areas. This is plenty for most users. Also starlink is apparently pretty good. 2. Just pay someone to pump your septic. You don’t have to pay city taxes covering sewers so you probably come out ahead. 3. Plumbing and electrical is usually exposed, making it ver…
What's a good resource to learn about septic? I'm interested in moving somewhere more rural at some point in the future but have no idea how septic works. I admit a slight squeamishness at the thought of our waste accumulating in a tank, but the part that I'm more concerned about is not knowing what the risks or processes involved are.
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One of the worst things we did in the past century is paint the idea of an apartment high rise full of decent sized family apartments overlooking a green shady courtyard as some communist evil, to be actively outlawed. We haven't gotten past that sentiment towards apartment living to this day. Even what we do build in terms of apartments is only really studios or 1 or 2 bedroom units. If you want to have a family, th…
>One of the worst things we did in the past century is paint the idea of an apartment high rise full of decent sized family apartments overlooking a green shady courtyard as some communist evil, to be actively outlawed. How many large apartment blocs have you lived in? It's not a very enjoyable way to live, particularly with a family. People want houses, garages, yards, and cars. Don't try to paint the selfish realit…
I grew up in a farming area, and my family had a 30'x30' garden. Farming is a lot of work. It's a job, not a hobby. Even the garden was a fair amount of work, but more importantly, it's a lot of veggies to eat after harvest. I had tomato sandwiches daily for months. Plus insects to control. Doable, but not glamorous like the "cottagecore" photos. If I did a serious garden again, I'd focus on becoming a skilled grower…
My focus is on "lazy gardening" -- or how much can I get nature to automate things. How much can I use waste biomass as a resource. Etc. I end up with a lot of failures, but the successes are really satisfying. The main challenge is that the feedback loop is ~1yr which means that it's not a hobby for the impatient. :)
Cabbage doesn't do well without a fight here. Potatoes? Grow themselves! Carrots? Very finicky to get to grow at all here but if they do they are just so much better than store bought and hands off too. Cherries are awesome once I wasn't lazy enough to skip the netting. Not that much work in the end.
This is, in reality, probably less 'green' than living in a city. Multi-family homes tend to require less energy to heat and cool, because you share walls. You can also walk to many things, bike, or take transit. My bet is that most of the people living in these rural places aren't so into the 'rural lifestyle' that they don't own a couple of cars that they use for ... pretty much everything in life.
Absolute GHG emissions and impact are higher for higher incomes. GHG emissions are a function of wealth not geography. Urban areas have much higher concentraions of wealth. They also outsource much of their GHG creation to rural areas but are still the cause/consumer of it (concrete, energy, minerals, construction materials).
Also the perceived reduction in GHG emissions for urban areas is only true of late stage developed nations. Developing nations, those building out new cities, do not share the per capita efficiencies of full developed nations. The reason for this is that perceived per capita GHG reductions in developed nations were paid for by high GHG emissions of their past. New data on urban sprawl (sub-urbanization) sheds doubt on the idea that even developed nations cities per capita GHG emissions are lower than rural areas.
Ultimately, urbanization is a bulk consumer of Earth's natural resources and not a producer of those inputs.
Put simply: Cities are eating the Earth.
EDIT: Added point about sub-urban development negating efficiencies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the worst things we did in the past century is paint the idea of an apartment high rise full of decent sized family apartments overlooking a green shady courtyard as some communist evil, to be actively outlawed. We haven't gotten past that sentiment towards apartment living to this day. Even what we do build in terms of apartments is only really studios or 1 or 2 bedroom units. If you want to have a family, th…
>One of the worst things we did in the past century is paint the idea of an apartment high rise full of decent sized family apartments overlooking a green shady courtyard as some communist evil, to be actively outlawed. How many large apartment blocs have you lived in? It's not a very enjoyable way to live, particularly with a family. People want houses, garages, yards, and cars. Don't try to paint the selfish realit…
The reality is that land in desirable areas is scarce, so people ought to be free to choose the tradeoffs they prefer.
In Italy, my family and I actually did live in a home in a 6 unit building and it was just fine. 3 bedroom, 2 bath. Rather than the yard, the kids would go over to the local park, where they'd actually find other kids to play with, which is way more important to kids than the big yard in the house we rent here in the US.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the worst things we did in the past century is paint the idea of an apartment high rise full of decent sized family apartments overlooking a green shady courtyard as some communist evil, to be actively outlawed. We haven't gotten past that sentiment towards apartment living to this day. Even what we do build in terms of apartments is only really studios or 1 or 2 bedroom units. If you want to have a family, th…
>One of the worst things we did in the past century is paint the idea of an apartment high rise full of decent sized family apartments overlooking a green shady courtyard as some communist evil, to be actively outlawed. How many large apartment blocs have you lived in? It's not a very enjoyable way to live, particularly with a family. People want houses, garages, yards, and cars. Don't try to paint the selfish realit…
None were decent sized family apartments overlooking a green shady courtyard.
They were all cramped 2-bedroom units overlooking shopping malls, designed for people who didn't want to buy a house in the suburban sprawl around my Midwestern city. The courtyards were decrepit and unmaintained, the only nice green spaces had 'keep off the grass' signs. Obviously no one wants that, it worked as a college student and a newlywed but when we started a family I did, indeed, buy a house. But not because I actually wanted a house, because I wanted something other than the crappy apartments that were in my local market.
My parents recently bought a condo - it's in a green, forested neighborhood in some quiet residential streets, they have a two-car garage, they have four bedrooms - theirs, spare upstairs, office, one downstairs for visiting grandkids, storage space downstairs, upstairs they have a living room, dining room, and large kitchen. Theirs is a duplex, a few of the units in the neighborhood are larger quad-unit townhomes.
As relatively wealthy seniors, they were able to buy that outright. But nothing like that (except regular homes) is available to rent within several hundred miles, as far as I know. Nice apartments are just not a thing that we build, in part because culturally, "nice apartments" is an oxymoron.