51–60 of 66 posts
It's amazing how over-spec'ed (in some categories) for housing plane is: air-tight, heavy thermal and noise insulation, built to withstand winds of hundreds of miles-per-hour. It's a shame we can't build something like the iPhone or Tesla of housing.
I've been to this guys place. Nicest guy. But he is absolutely surrounded by "Trump Nation" people (their flags are everywhere out there) who hate him. Every time he leaves home his place is vandalized. Just before I visited someone had waited till he was gone and then dumped truck loads of some kind of poison all over his grounds. He was going through and sifting it out of the soil by hand. It is incredible how chee…
I live in Portland but spend most weekends at my gf's house in the country, near Chehalem, about a 15 minute drive from where the airplane is. It's a weird mix out there, because it's also wine country, so you have a lot of very wealthy landowners - some of whom aren't quite "locals" and are more socially liberal. The locals can really get into your business, though. Among other things, in our situation, some of the…
"Manageable" in the sense that you avert the aggressivity of the lunatics in daily logistics.
But respect is clearly not an outcome being achieved either at the local or the national level. You cannot respect a lunatic, and a wilful, broken mind will not respect reality.
With an old airplane, one thing I'd be worried about is Kapton wiring[1]. A lot of these older planes were wired with a type of orange insulator that breaks down very easily over time and under mechanical stresses. A handful of planes went down because of it; Bruce would still need to think about the fire risk and should consider replacing the wiring if he hasn't already. [1]: https://www.interconnect-wiring.com/blog…
Also in Oregon was Bomber Gas. I always went out of my way to fill up there! https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2968#:~:text=Bomber%20... .
I've been to this guys place. Nicest guy. But he is absolutely surrounded by "Trump Nation" people (their flags are everywhere out there) who hate him. Every time he leaves home his place is vandalized. Just before I visited someone had waited till he was gone and then dumped truck loads of some kind of poison all over his grounds. He was going through and sifting it out of the soil by hand. It is incredible how chee…
Why do they hate him?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I tried going to an accountant out there and when I walked into her office for the first meeting, she was wearing a large gold swastika necklace. > It's manageable as long as you never get into conversations about politics and treat everyone with respect. I mean, I'm going to have a hard time treating a person wearing a swastika necklace with respect - I'm going to let them know that I will not be using their servi…
We went to Pacific City a few months ago and ended up in a bar that had some huge "thin blue line" flags hanging inside. Got into a conversation with a guy who seemed to be a nice old pot-smoking hippie who'd moved out there to grow weed. Until about halfway through the conversation he started asserting that the "storm" was coming and Trump was the real president, and Biden was probably already in jail, and we'd just…
For the curious:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_use_of_the_swastika_in...
It's amazing how over-spec'ed (in some categories) for housing plane is: air-tight, heavy thermal and noise insulation, built to withstand winds of hundreds of miles-per-hour. It's a shame we can't build something like the iPhone or Tesla of housing.
They are not significantly thermally insulated and are full of toxic materials. In no way is it a good idea.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in Portland but spend most weekends at my gf's house in the country, near Chehalem, about a 15 minute drive from where the airplane is. It's a weird mix out there, because it's also wine country, so you have a lot of very wealthy landowners - some of whom aren't quite "locals" and are more socially liberal. The locals can really get into your business, though. Among other things, in our situation, some of the…
> It's manageable as long as you never get into conversations about politics and treat everyone with respect. "Manageable" in the sense that you avert the aggressivity of the lunatics in daily logistics. But respect is clearly not an outcome being achieved either at the local or the national level. You cannot respect a lunatic, and a wilful, broken mind will not respect reality.
This is true in the large picture, and certainly any respect or trust you might build is being undermined daily by both the tone and content of what people see online. But on a personal level - not just tactically or logistically - I do think there's a chance of finding common ground if you talk to each person you encounter as an individual worthy of respect. The range of what I consider lunatic beliefs in this country runs the full gamut, and people who can't make sense of the stew of (mis)information end up treating it like a buffet. But individual crazy beliefs can be gently corrected.
For instance, when the woman told me that child abuse had just been legalized in California, I said "that doesn't sound right." She insisted. So then she, her husband and I all googled it on our phones until we found the source of the rumor she had heard, and read through the actual law it was referring to. It's a new law which gives judges more latitude as to whether someone convicted of a sex offense has to be put on a life-long sex offender registry. I suggested it probably has to do with "Romeo and Juliet" situations in which it's unfair to put an 18 year old on a sex offender registry for having consensual sex with a 17 year old. Suddenly a light went on over this woman's head. Turns out, they have a son who just turned 18, whose girlfriend is 17, and they've been "real worried about it". Well, now this law doesn't seem so bad, and just maybe Gavin Newsom isn't drinking the blood of babies. Maybe she'll even tell her facebook friends that's not what it's about. But how would that happen if I'd just told her she was an idiot?
My Dad had this rule in the house that if he ever used a word we didn't know - which happened frequently - we had to take out the dictionary and look it up together. Once or twice, he even had to acknowledge that he had used something imprecisely. The pattern was: Admit if you don't know something; looking it up; acknowledge if your assumptions were incorrect; always seek out reliable sources to back your argument. This was so ingrained in me, and I took it so much for granted that others knew how to do that, that I often feel like a stranger in a strange land now. It took me a long time to realize that people just never had that experience. No one ever showed them that, so they could never get past the first part, admitting they don't know something. It's not that people are too dumb to do it, they just don't have access to that part of their intellect or the emotional capacity for self-doubt. Often because they grew up surrounded by people for whom acknowledging a lack of knowledge or admitting a mistake was seen as being weak.
This is why the people I'm talking about use phrases like "I did my own research" by which we know they mean something diametrically opposite to actual research. And why the dark patterns in social media that amplify echo chambers have such a stunningly asymmetrical effect in propagating lies over facts. "Confirmation bias" only exists when you're right and someone else is wrong - an in-group only exists when there's an out-group. So I think that showing the way past that first admission of possibly being wrong, and going straight to sources, whilst treating people with respect and not as a member of some other "group" just because they say foolish things, is how each of us can have the most impact in beating back the crazy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are not significantly thermally insulated and are full of toxic materials. In no way is it a good idea.
Can you elaborate on the toxic materials? I'm curious to know more. I am aware of Skydrol hydralic fluid and perhaps some other oils/lubricants. Is there anything else that might be toxic?
It's amazing how over-spec'ed (in some categories) for housing plane is: air-tight, heavy thermal and noise insulation, built to withstand winds of hundreds of miles-per-hour. It's a shame we can't build something like the iPhone or Tesla of housing.