171–180 of 274 posts
I dream of quitting my job and living on some land. My wife refuses to "live in the middle of nowhere, where there's nothing to do". I guess I shall continue to work a job I hate in order to live in this expensive area.
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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…
Lots of recent TV paints living in a large apartment building as a completely normal thing to do.
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I feel the same way about woodwork, sure there's gimmicky creators but the reality of the hobby is nobody is getting rich or famous, selling pieces will barely cover material costs and having the fanciest gear won't necessarily give you a better finished piece. Although epoxy river tables make me cringe everytime I see one...
> Although epoxy river tables make me cringe everytime I see one... More-so even than walnut-stained construction-grade plywood gaming tables? ;-) Hey, I shouldn't poke fun, you got to start somewhere.
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Or maybe you're losing your edge to better-looking people with better ideas and more talent who are actually really really nice.
Does anyone want nice people? Or do they want real people? Give me a chubby 35 year old nerd who knows tons of stuff over a nice attractive couple who take good pictures to sell advertising.
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Although there is a lot of data to suggest that per capita green house gas (GHG) emissions from urban residents are less than rural counterparts this is not the entire story. 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 st…
Sounds like you're throwing a bunch of arguments at the wall and hoping some of them stick rather than trying to figure out what's true. Wealth is presumably fixed at first-order, so comparing equally wealthy rural or urban residents seems fairest (unless you're trying to argue that cities are bad because they increase economic growth?); if the argument is something like "emissions are only higher in rural areas beca…
There are two primary forms of measuring GHG:
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A. Territorial GHG emission accounting
B. (Absolute) GHG footprint accounting
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A. Measures GHG released with in the territorial borders.
B. Measures upstream GHG released outside the territory but consumed within.
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Moving a coal plant across state lines doesn't reduce the GHG impact of a state, it merely removes the accounting from the states balance sheet.
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You can read more in the Reducing Urban Greenhouse Gas Footprints [1] paper below.
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I think this is not a lot different than Bezos types visiting Burning Man on a VIP package.
Aren't most of the people at burning man pretty fashionable/wealthy? Peasants compared to Bezos sure, but not the population at large. More like the king among the minor nobility.
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.
Making large life decisions based on your own personal GHG emissions is living as though you are already dead. I moved out to the country. Bought a big diesel. Started a farm. My GHGs went way up. And yet, my lifestyle change has zero impact on climate change. It's like voting--if you know game theory at all, you know it's a waste of time, just like it's a waste of a life to spend your time calculating and optimizing…
I think the voting analogy is good, but I take a different lesson from it. Not that voting is pointless. Individual actions matter a great deal in their cumulative effect.
Just another manifestation of people realising their life of metropolitan decadence is wrong, lacks meaning and is damaging to the human spirit.
New band name!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although there is a lot of data to suggest that per capita green house gas (GHG) emissions from urban residents are less than rural counterparts this is not the entire story. 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 st…
Sounds like you're throwing a bunch of arguments at the wall and hoping some of them stick rather than trying to figure out what's true. Wealth is presumably fixed at first-order, so comparing equally wealthy rural or urban residents seems fairest (unless you're trying to argue that cities are bad because they increase economic growth?); if the argument is something like "emissions are only higher in rural areas beca…
I can't find the paper at the moment. I will try to get it posted here tomorrow.
The gist is that suburban grow is an overflow of city growth onto the surrounding area. When a suburban areas GHG accounting is taken into consideration it further removes any "apparent" per capita efficiency of the city.
It is really all just another case of Goodharts Law [1] with the addition that the measure was never comprehensive in the first place.