Housing construction slowed because we made it illegal to build houses where people want to live. A hundred years ago developers had carte blanche to run an elevated subway line into empty fields in Brooklyn and throw up a few hundred row houses around each train stop. In current year most of the commute-distance land around any city center is locked into single family zoning. This is all just words on a page about how people 50-75 years ago thought neighborhoods should be organized and we could overturn it without changing an iota of infrastructure or life safety requirements.

As a nerd but not a weather nerd, I've been using wunderground since the first I ever knew of it (~2000). I did not think the redesign was a step backwards, but then I'm sure there are things that are of interest to wx foamers that I wasn't seeing.

Wunderground still absolutely thrashes the other major weather websites. I haven't ventured there in a couple years but I know the last time I visited weather.com it was so fugly, clickbaity, ad-riddled and just generally awful that I would rather navigate warez filesharing/download sites.

FWIW Stormpulse's website appears that it wouldn't show me any information until I "Signed in with LinkedIn" - I understand running a business and selling data, but, fuck that noise always and forever.

"No chance of escape" is a bit much, but so is "USA builds prison walls around cities" as a response. Moving is expensive and hard. You can't run a society on the premise that everybody is capable of doing expensive and hard things always and without error.

I sure hope that other countries view certain TLAs' love of polygraphs with the same incredulity that we look at fan death in South Korea or at homeopathy's acceptance in the UK. Talk about a national embarrassment.

Hey everybody, I found Jay Leno's /. account!

Sanders and most other serious socialists are more fiscally responsible than the average Republican because they actually care about the condition that the government is in after they're through with it.

>"everybody gets a trophy" generation

This gets on my nerves. I stayed shut up about it when I heard a presenter go entirely off-topic and bring it up yesterday.

This concept is a straw man. I'm 25, was heavily involved in extracurriculars in public schools in the US, and have never _seen_ a participation trophy. On the contrary, something that greatly bothered me when I got into the working world is just how much back-patting and praise goes on - across all age groups, but my work is primarily with those 40+ - just for people doing their damn jobs.

Next time you're about to drop this conventional wisdom turd on a discussion, either hold it in, or try to talk about something related that's at least evidence-based instead.

> Chris Christie is still using Hotmail, and last week he had the entire service shut down for four days...

The reason this is dissimilar from the George Washington Bridge: Nobody noticed.

If you are both politically conservative (American style) and an AGW denier (*) it's a very common device to distract with accounts of nature-generated climate change, as if the existence of the natural phenomenon implies that the manmade phenomenon could not also exist. I wouldn't have broadened this discussion in the way Required Snark did but if you're familiar at all with the way these topics go you'll understand why he did.

* I tried to word this in the most accurate fashion possible. Not all conservatives are AGW deniers, not all AGW deniers are conservatives; even if you do live in the intersection, you don't necessarily use the sloppy rhetoric that I laid out.

We delve into the realm of personal preference. If I'm sitting and not moving I prefer around 70F. If I'm moving around it's 60F. Not fat, one layer of clothes (on top of underwear naturally).

Not everybody who works in an office is wearing a suit. The steady flow of delivery men, maintenance, security guards, server jockeys, etc must greatly appreciate it being at 68F instead of 75F.

>when there's 30 degrees outside.

The typical English language construction is to refer to the temperature as a singular characteristic of the weather, that is, "it's thirty degrees outside." Anyone would understand what you mean however. :)

I know this conversation is ancient at this point, but at 24.87 years old with several close friends also in the college grad job market, I've never heard _anyone_ say they're uncomfortable working around older people. Most of the people I work with day-to-day are near or over fifty years old, doesn't bother me one bit. This assertion runs contrary to all of my experiences and I would challenge it anywhere it comes up until you can supply some evidence.

Caveats:
(1) Teenagers are uncomfortable working around older coworkers but I think this is natural since the 18-22 age range is the last 4-year range in someone's life with such a huge rate of change in experience.
(2) Many older coworkers have had no filter at all when it comes to letting you know what they think about minorities. That can make things uncomfortable.

Something you may not realize if you're not a frequent flyer is that FF miles cost the airline almost nothing since they don't open up additional rewards inventory to match. That is, United could give Bennett a million miles (equivalent to about 40 domestic cheap roundtrips, or several international business or first class trips) by merely changing numbers in their database. They don't actually incur any significant expense because they open the same amount of rewards inventory (seats that can be purchased by miles) as they always would, and then instead of somebody else miles-ing that one seat, Bennett gets it.

Sure, there are knock-on effects that a real FF misses out on the reward, they become disgruntled with the program, people have to sit next to Bennett, whatever. But airlines are generally very free-wheeling with giving out miles (try it yourself - you can usually get ~1/8 of the way to a domestic RT for something as minor as your video screen not working if you write in to complain) because they know it doesn't really truly cost them that much.

Is this a common feature of other markets? I've generally only been in places 1-3 years in Tulsa OK but I would only expect a landlord to change your rate once every few years. Reliable renters who pay on time every month and don't trash the place or get noise complaints are rare and valuable all on our own. I would think it counterintuitive to risk driving us out for no other reason than to try to keep up with inflation.