571–580 of 700 posts
But I hate the idea of "social and psychological experimentation" by some do-gooder billionaire.
I like the idea of experimenting with uncommon modes of provisioning housing resources.
But I hate the idea of skirting a competent review process by rubber-stamping a donor's designs.
Interesting collision of the idea with the covid era. During an outbreak you’d want students to have a private airspace to go to and the possibility of ventilation. Update: from another comment, Munger designed a similar building in Michigan. It has great reviews! But, one of the top ones was “great until pandemic”. Adding this to clarify that, contra other comments, I don’t necessarily think Munger was mistaken. But…
There were cholera epidemics in the 19th century, until we realized we shouldn't drink contaminated water. In cities such as London, this required major infrastructure investments. We're just realizing we shouldn't breathe contaminated air, and we're just realizing that we need to make infrastructure investments. CO2 is a good proxy for infectious disease transmission risk. We breathe out CO2 as we spread pathogens.…
This blows my mind too. I expect it's coming, though: the cables would be cheaper, and if there's one driver of change in construction, it's cost.
Another question is, would it be a straight improvement? I think transformers are typically very efficient, and I could imagine the losses from running a lower voltage through a long line might be greater.
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You are not a student at this school. Where I went to school we got lots of strong opinions from outsiders. But some of the "worst" dorms were the most popular for reasons that are not always obvious to outsiders. And yes, some students like to live close to others. UCSB may be doing double and triple bunking in rooms (my school did 4 to a room for a while, when the "crappy" new space opened it was first choice in th…
What does any of this have to do with gun safety?
Santa Barbara has strict anti-gun laws already. CA has a lot of anti-gun laws already. The UCSB system has anti gun laws already.
Santa Barbara issues something like 50 permits a DECADE for concealed carry. It's a "may" issue jurisdiction, and they don't issue.
And if metal detectors are implemented, I'm not sure students will care. They already exist for large sporting events and other areas of concern, so if there was a concern you'd want fewer main entrances so you could staff them.
Bigger issue is normally non-students in student housing, so security can be good in terms of setup. This means the newer buildings often do things like keycard access to suites only for suite holders, and some even do keycards for your room separate from suite, again, all logged and tracked. I visited a friend at a school where I had to sign in my car with a guard, had to be escorted to their room by a front desk staffer etc. That's extreme - no way UC is going that (this was a small elite place).
The major student issues in terms of safety are stranger access to dorms / bathrooms at night, theft issues (bikes / bags etc), and nuisance issues (noise, weed smoke, parties etc).
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But it is not. Not all rooms can be places along the exterior walls of the building.
Most code requirements in the US require a bedroom to have an egress window.
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The real thing isn't free. It costs an externally facing wall.
And I'm guessing pretty much any new dorm built today will have central air in any case. My initial reaction was pretty negative and not sure how I'd feel about the overall size and the lack of windows in rooms. On the other hand, in a lot of designs even if you have a window it's often facing a wall. However, I actually favor optimizing for the common space. I liked that kind of design. And the rooms being discussed…
Alternate plan: Raise taxes on the wealthy. Use that money to fund the University of California. Spend money on dorms that actually adhere to modern standards and are designed by actual experts and innovators in architecture. Frustrating that universities have to rely on the whims and quirks of wealthy individuals like this.
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Elon's vision is being the king of Mars, where the only law is his own. I'm not sold.
When did he say that? Even if that is his vision, it won't work. You can't be king of a frontier for very long unless your rule is very competent, minimal, and low-cost. The tighter your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
In general, people living in hostile environments develop higher levels of trust and social responsibility. When you live closely with people, where everyone's choices impact everyone else, when a single person intentionally screwing things up could doom the entire community, you get societies that are pretty much the polar opposite of the archetypal billionaire libertarian vision.
Hijacking the thread a bit, but I'm not sure people understand how predatory student housing is in aggregate. At many colleges you don't even have a choice to live in the dorms or not as an undergrad, living on campus for 1-2 years is tied to enrollment. On top of this lots of financing for college housing is wonky, because some colleges do not pay property tax. (So you can have the college hold the land and some thi…
> If UCSB put in one of these requirements students could be forced to take part in a social experiment Well nobody needs to go to UCSB. The US is fortunate that it's got such a huge and massively diverse range of options for university. I guess if the results are bad they'll suffer for recruitment and the problem will hopefully correct itself.
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Wow, some of the quotes here: "Good luck surviving seasonal depression or maintaining your slowly failing eyesight, especially during a pandemic and you should not be spending long periods in common spaces, when 95% of the rooms in Munger have NO WINDOW" "It can be a huge problem for people to live in because normally people would feel very uncomfortable living in a room without windows, and you don't even have a saf…
You're really misrepresenting the information from the link. Munger is the top-rated residence in the area. https://www.veryapt.com/Apartments-L7646-ann-arbor-central-c...
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You're really misrepresenting the information from the link. Munger is the top-rated residence in the area. https://www.veryapt.com/Apartments-L7646-ann-arbor-central-c...
Either several of those positive reviews are fake, or those MBA students are functionally illiterate.
Similarly, they can read whole books very quickly, but they do so by reading just the first sentence on every page. This is what gives them the superpower of reading large technical emails, and responding to them in seconds about a completely unrelated topic.