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'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

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Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#271

Post by Frondo »

noir_lord wrote: post #132
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is that I grew up in London, then lived in Cambridge, Heidelberg, Seattle and Philadelphia - 55+ years of thoroughly urban living. 18 months ago I moved to a place where your opening sentence applies broadly. Yet somehow, I still learned how to do most of the things you list in your second paragraph before I got here. And I have neighbors here who are completely clueless about most of those things. Th…

Pretty much the same, I can re-wire a house (factory actually though it's been a long time since I trained as an industrial sparks), plaster, do basic joinery, plumbing, tiling, engine/motorcycle maintenance (I do my motorcycle and rebuilt scramblers when I was a kid), weld (not done it for a long time but it'd come back), sheet metal work etc all to a reasonable or better standard. I've never lived out in the countr…

That Heinlein quote is nice, but also a little absurd.

I can change a wall outlet or a light switch, but if I'm rewiring my house, I'm calling my brother-in-law, the electrician, just like he calls me when he wants a trumpet player. (And if he wants a guitar player, he calls my brother, not me.)

Specialization is for people in communities, which we all are whether we want to admit it or not.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#272

Post by dkn775 »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #128
sandworm101 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 30 minutes from the nearest EMS In even the most developed inner cities of the US, a 30-minute response time is not unusual. A car crash with injuries, blood on the street, would certainly be top of the 911 priority list other factors like traffic often mean delays. "In July 2019, it took the NYPD more than 20 minutes on average to respond to all of its 911 calls. This July, it was about 18 minutes." https://www.n…

That's a bit misleading: FDNY's average end-to-end response time for something like a vehicle accident is just about nine minutes based on recent data. That's from the moment you finish dialing 911 until the point where the fire truck/ambulance arrives, and includes the time that you spend talking to the 911 operator etc.

There are several “times” in a 911 call FYI, it’s not always clear what ones are being used for response time, which is better reported as a median as well.

1. Call time - at 9am Joe calls 911 and reports their cat has fell out of a tree.

2. Dispatch Queue Time - ideally, at 905am or quickly after the call to 911 time, Dispatcher puts this call into the stack for the police officer that works on Joes beat (let’s say normally that is Officer111). This is accompanied by a call out over the radio to Officer111 to see what he’s doing.

3. Officer acknowledge time - usually along with the radio call-out from dispatch, 905am, the event record for Joe and his cat appear on the screen for all the officers in the district. Let’s say Officer111 is at a car crash, and cannot respond. The event record is still on all Officer screens, and Dispatch asks one of the district officers to go help Joe and his fallen cat. Nearby Officer112 “accepts” the call (via radio and on their laptop). It is 906am when Officer112 accepts the task. He is are now enroute (at 906am)

4. Arrival time - it takes Officer112 14 minutes to get to the scene because it is not his beat and he was in traffic. He pulls up at 920am.

5. Clear time - at 930am, the cat is taken off in an ambulance, and Officer112 tells dispatch over the radio to clear him off the fallen cat call.

Dispatch delay - diff between call recieved and being put into the queue

Response time - time from Officer acknowledgement in the queue to arrival time. In some cases it will be recorded with a timestamp when Officer says enroute.

Cleared time - arrival to clear.

My point is the response time is often tricker than it seems. May be straightforward in this case, but mainly wanted to point it out for other readers.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#273

Post by ryandrake »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #256
01100011 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I genuinely don't understand people who aren't willing to learn this stuff even if they pay someone else to do it As a rich guy I knew used to say, do what you do best, and give away all the rest. I spent my 30s doing all the things you mentioned and more. There was some joy in it, I will admit, but I am vastly less wealthy than if I had focused on my consulting business and learned how to negotiate and supervise t…

> I know a lot of 'do it yourself' types and none of them are wealthy. You have to do the math on this carefully though. A lot of people think like this. I get paid $200 an hour, my electrician gets paid $100 an hour, therefore I should pay my electrician $100 and use the time I saved to make $200. But plenty of those jobs don't actually take an hour, even though that's the minimum billing time. So when they take ten…

> A lot of people think like this. I get paid $200 an hour, my electrician gets paid $100 an hour, therefore I should pay my electrician $100 and use the time I saved to make $200.

The flaw of course is that $200 is not opportunity cost. Your time is only worth money if you’d otherwise be working. So when I get home from my 9-5 job where I make a fixed salary, and fix my faucet, that job just got done for free. There was no opportunity cost because I don’t get paid hourly and was already done with work for the day.

I’m a rather extreme DIYer, and I can confidently say I would not live the lifestyle I do if I paid people to repair my car, build my furniture, cook my food, mow my lawn, do all my home improvements, plumbing, electrical work, fix my electronics. All that labor adds up, especially in the expensive Bay Area. If you take what you’d otherwise spend on all that, starting say age 20, and instead put it into your retirement account you could probably retire 5-10 years early.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#274

Post by imtringued »

war1025 wrote: post #189
cycloptic wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are conflating things. The idea I see behind most self-reliance is that it significantly reduces the amount of wealth needed to accomplish everyday tasks. Following that, you wouldn't see much of a need for those do-it-yourself types to accumulate wealth just for the sake of doing so.

> you wouldn't see much of a need for those do-it-yourself types to accumulate wealth just for the sake of doing so. Exactly this. Money is a way to get other people to do things for you. If you are happier doing the things yourself, the money doesn't have much use. At a certain point, gaining more wealth just doesn't matter.

Yeah I noticed this. There are lots of kids or people who feel redundant and empty because whatever they want to do they can just buy it or hire someone else to do it for them. No need to do anything yourself but it also means nobody needs you which means people don't see anything in you other than your money.

The only way you can liberate yourself from this is by getting your hands dirty yourself.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#275

Post by imtringued »

01100011 wrote: post #201
Vrondi wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I didn't do it myself, it wouldn't be done. Not everyone has the option of hiring everything done.

If you have nothing better to do with your time then go ahead! It can be a fine choice in many situations. For many HN types whose time is far more valuable than many tradespeople, it is a financially reckless choice.

I haven't seen skilled tradespeople that charge less than me. Sure you can hire people with zero qualifications for less than your salary but they will usually do a worse job.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#276

Post by imtringued »

lmm wrote: post #255
noir_lord wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much the same, I can re-wire a house (factory actually though it's been a long time since I trained as an industrial sparks), plaster, do basic joinery, plumbing, tiling, engine/motorcycle maintenance (I do my motorcycle and rebuilt scramblers when I was a kid), weld (not done it for a long time but it'd come back), sheet metal work etc all to a reasonable or better standard. I've never lived out in the countr…

> I genuinely don't understand people who aren't willing to learn this stuff even if they pay someone else to do it down the line (which makes sense sometimes). Eh, I've only got so many hours on the planet, I've got a lot more spare money than spare time. I'd really rather just pay someone to fix it and spend my time doing something more fun.

I don't know. Just buying something is usually boring and makes you feel powerless.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#277

Post by ramchip »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #233
ramchip wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know people my age who can't rewire a plug which is frankly embarrassing. I’m sure there’s a country / culture factor there, but that’s rather condescending. I’m in my thirties, and there isn’t a single place I’ve lived in as an adult where it would have been OK for me to mess with the electricity, plumbing, or even paint the walls.

Putting a new plug on your kettle is allowed in all 50 states and most if not all of western Europe.

I misunderstood then - I interpreted the parent as being about the wall socket, because I wasn't aware that rewiring the actual plug was a thing you could do (or that these things ever failed, in fact).

I guess I'm a double embarrassment then!

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#278

Post by hoot »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #260
AngryData wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most wood stove fires aren't directly because of the stove, but people who have gone years and years without ever cleaning their chimney or try to slow burn lots of shit wood like pine. And when the chimney builds up with tons of creosote it can then catch on fire and burn inside the chimney, seriously overheating it and causing a fire.

Speaking of pine, it's harder and harder to find decent firewood that isn't mixed with pine. We mostly cut our own from felled trees on the lot, of which there is no shortage, but sometimes it's handy to buy the odd cord and boy has the quality gone downhill.

Yep, I live in the Rockies and it's all we have here. Everybody in the mountains are burning pine. Just season it the best you can. Burning wood is also the main way to go because gas is too cost prohibitive up here.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#279

Post by growlist »

Hard times make strong men: and they seriously needed to perform an academic study to prove this? Nice work if you can get the grant money...

And I await the counter-study, i.e. on the detachment from the realities of life of the average urban Cambridge University psychology researcher.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#280

Post by doukdouk »

growlist wrote: post #279

Hard times make strong men: and they seriously needed to perform an academic study to prove this? Nice work if you can get the grant money... And I await the counter-study, i.e. on the detachment from the realities of life of the average urban Cambridge University psychology researcher.

Some thoughts on whether hard times make strong men: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...
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