My building is covered by a body of law preventing the landlord from increasing the rent by more than 5% per year (among other restrictions). It's very common in New York, especially in newer buildings. It's not like the old "Rent Control" system, and is, in my opinion, a wonderful initiative that is vital to the health of the city.
I see, I wasn't sure if that was a yah or nah in favor of rent control. We don't have rent control of any kind in VA. I don't mind the rent going up, but they wanted more for absolutely no reason. I already pay a lot and my apartment is 20 years old with 20 year old appliances. They're gonna try and hike it again on me in a few months, and I'm gonna see if they're will to renovate things.
They're gonna try and hike it again on me in a few months, and I'm gonna see if they're will to renovate things.
If my landlord wants to raise the rent, he has to bring tangible value-adding renovations to the building. Even then, his options for raising the rent are limited.
Also, I should note that rent control is an opt-in thing for most buildings. The landlord accepts the restrictions, but in return gets substantial tax benefits. It's basically subsidized rent, to prevent a Monaco situation from arising.
What exactly do you mean by Monaco situations, I've heard you use this term before.
As rent rises due to the effectively infinite value of the land in a dense city, the poor are pushed to the fringes. This is already happening all over America as the rich are returning to the cities and the poor are filling the suburbs.
If it continues unabated, eventually the middle classes are pushed out of the city into the suburbs, and the poor are pushed effectively out of the economic sphere. You now have no working class within a reasonable commute of the city service jobs. The long-term result is basically a glittering city of only the rich, with distant shantytowns of low-wage workers commuting in under poor conditions.
Game Theory can explain it fairly well. Basically, the land is valuable independent of the costs associated with extremely high rent, and so without control, there is no cap on said rent. The economic effects of this are basically imperceptible by the people who are rich enough to afford the high rent, and so there is no market correction (no one with the power to do so has the will to control the rent, and the land will never be more plentiful).
Ah, Family. The people you wouldn't associate with in the slightest, if you hadn't been squirted out of the same vagina, or from the same womb untimely ripp'd, or they possessed said womb, at the time of the squirting/ripp'd-ing, or share their genetic materiel.
I know it's kinda horrible, but these people are seriously making me reconsider my view that "Family is Family."
I mean, seriously - a good half of everything I have made of myself, done, and my personality as it stands, can be traced back to that I just don't want to be like these people. They are nothing but tiny, angry balls of ignorance, ego, arrogance and wants.
I need to get the fuck away from these people. I'm starting to remember part of my reason for being so keen to fuck off to europe, and why I didn't come back when I should have.
I need to get the fuck away from these people. I'm starting to remember part of my reason for being so keen to fuck off to europe, and why I didn't come back when I should have.
...And why you're moving here.
A bad UPS battery has been restarting servers for weeks now, and one of the server's configuration has finally bought the farm as a result of this.
Apparently, some chap on Facebook who always ends up spamming my news feed with insane climate change/socialist/environmentalist stuff that is too far-fetched even for my fairly-liberal self posted this article, which seems more than a little alarmist and suspect. The fail, though, is what one of his friends responded to the article with:
The military has been using a weapon like this for years. The fuel-air bomb quickly creates a fine, inflammable mist then ignites, sucking all the oxygen out of the target area with implosive force. This could be a granddaddy-sized version of that.
Gentlemen, the man with the degree in creative writing and anthropology has MADE A SCIENCE. Because if the atomic bomb didn't light the atmosphere on fire, underwater methane might.
I fucking hate these people. I'm going to be an optimist, eat locally, bike wherever possible, and allow for my sport car vice; they can keep raising their dander over fucking impossibilities.
Note: Yeah, I did my reading on methane release. But, it should be noted that we have no idea how fast this methane is being released, how fast it degrades to CO2 in the atmosphere (by all estimates, fairly readily, making it more of a long-term risk that should be worked to avoid), and the clathrate gun hypothesis is consider to work over a millenium--small potatoes for earth, massive for most humans. So we should fix this shit, but we won't blow out the sky.
I get called for a job interview. (This is win, unless you consider a *mart job fail. Stay in school, kids.) No problem, but my car's acting up, so I borrow my roommate's. They schedule a second interview today, so I borrow my roommate's car. I have a final interview tomorrow, and I have reason to suspect that, if hired, I start training immediately. I say enough is enough, and see if I can't get my car to a gas station (it's nearly out of fuel, independent of being broken). I can't even get to the end of the block without having to fight the engine for every inch. The nearest place I can go to work on it is about 9 miles away, and there's a nonzero chance that my intended fix (new fuel filter) will not actually fix the problem. My potential employer is about 8 miles away from my apartment, I can't afford to take the bus for more than a week or two, and even if I find the time to fix my car around my new employment, the other potential causes of my car's problems are out of my price range to replace, assuming I can even find the parts because my car is old enough to vote. (If I think this is bad, I ain't seen nothing until I have to replace the clutch. I shall look back and laugh at my naive ignorance.)
Oh, and when my car started losing engine power, from the outside it appeared indistinguishable from a student driver who hasn't mastered manual transmissions yet. So now some random strangers think that I can't drive stick. Sadly, I consider this to be more Fail than that entire first paragraph.
I get called for a job interview. (This is win, unless you consider a *mart job fail. Stay in school, kids.) No problem, but my car's acting up, so I borrow my roommate's. They schedule a second interview today, so I borrow my roommate's car. I have a final interview tomorrow, and I have reason to suspect that, if hired, I start training immediately. I say enough is enough, and see if I can't get my car to a gas station (it's nearly out of fuel, independent of being broken). I can't even get to the end of the block without having to fight the engine for every inch. The nearest place I can go to work on it is about 9 miles away, and there's a nonzero chance that my intended fix (new fuel filter) will not actually fix the problem. My potential employer is about 8 miles away from my apartment, I can't afford to take the bus for more than a week or two, and even if I find the time to fix my car around my new employment, the other potential causes of my car's problems are out of my price range to replace, assuming I can even find the parts because my car is old enough to vote. (If I think this is bad, I ain't seen nothing until I have to replace the clutch. I shall look back and laugh at my naive ignorance.)
8 Miles, looks like you need a bike to hold you over.
I have an intense dislike for that show, it really shows everything that is wrong with the Gundam series nowadays.
Nooo, you suck. That was a huge part of my teenage anime fandom. I thought there were definitely good parts to Wing, and it got me to watch other Gundam series, like 0084 and 8th OS team. Granted, that was the show where I found out what a fanfiction was, and was terribly intrigued by 1 x 2.
I have an intense dislike for that show, it really shows everything that is wrong with the Gundam series nowadays.
Nooo, you suck. That was a huge part of my teenage anime fandom. I thought there were definitely good parts to Wing, and it got me to watch other Gundam series, like 0084 and 8th OS team. Granted, that was the show where I found out what a fanfiction was, and was terribly intrigued by 1 x 2.
I remember watching it everyday on Toonami way back when. Also, the series has some kickass music.
I have an intense dislike for that show, it really shows everything that is wrong with the Gundam series nowadays.
Nooo, you suck. That was a huge part of my teenage anime fandom. I thought there were definitely good parts to Wing, and it got me to watch other Gundam series, like 0084 and 8th OS team. Granted, that was the show where I found out what a fanfiction was, and was terribly intrigued by 1 x 2.
Presentism aside Gomi, how well you do you think it holds up to the other Gundams?
How well you do you think it holds up to the other Gundams?
Well, I think it stands on it's own as a good show, but it is a different show than many of the other Gundam series. One thing that bothered me about Wing was that they used the mobile dolls to show scenes of massive collateral damage without any human loss of life. Many of the other Gundam shows (like Seed and the older UT series) tend to cut to the pilots of the enemy mobile suits as they were destroyed, reminding you that every one of those machines were piloted by a human. The "war is hell" message is a lot stronger in some of the other ones, but I think Wing is primarily a character driven show and focuses a lot more on the "child soldier" idea and how the pilots bear their psychological scars. The weird thing is that I saw the show in a pre-9-11 America, and watching it now makes me kind of boggle at the fact that they put it on kid's television. The show essentially glorifies a young suicidal terrorist mindset, the extreme devotion to a cause that turns a young person into a murderer with little regard for their own life. Truth be told, when I was 15, I thought Heero's death wish actions were cool and brave, but watching it now, he seems like a screwed-up, pathological jerk. It's a pretty adventurous show, and as a young teen I enjoyed watching kids my own age having idealized battlefield heroics. The characters are almost all larger than life, tough and strong. That's what I like about the show. (For example, I like the scene where Duo gets captured and Heero busts in and saves him. To be honest, I think that is the appeal of the large amount of BL slash surrounding the fandom, too: The image of an idealized relationship, two equally strong, independent people fighting together, and looking out for one another. Comrades in Arms if you will.)
I can identify more than half of these by, at least, art style and that makes me worry.
I missed 7 out of 101. Wow.
Same, and either they were really really generic looking or really old. I suddenly remember where that huge chunk of my life was used up on. Hell, I was singing along to most of the video...owo
Many of the other Gundam shows (like Seed and the older UT series) tend to cut to the pilots of the enemy mobile suits as they were destroyed, reminding you that every one of those machines were piloted by a human.
That's one of those things that another Tomino show, Ideon, does really well. Granted, he was seriously off his meds when he made it (Seriously. I believe just after this, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder or something similar), but one of the big things of the show is that every single death, even the most inconsequential one, has a face on it.
Also, the second movie has a 5 year old girl getting decapitated by a laser. So....
Comments
Also, I should note that rent control is an opt-in thing for most buildings. The landlord accepts the restrictions, but in return gets substantial tax benefits. It's basically subsidized rent, to prevent a Monaco situation from arising.
If it continues unabated, eventually the middle classes are pushed out of the city into the suburbs, and the poor are pushed effectively out of the economic sphere. You now have no working class within a reasonable commute of the city service jobs. The long-term result is basically a glittering city of only the rich, with distant shantytowns of low-wage workers commuting in under poor conditions.
Game Theory can explain it fairly well. Basically, the land is valuable independent of the costs associated with extremely high rent, and so without control, there is no cap on said rent. The economic effects of this are basically imperceptible by the people who are rich enough to afford the high rent, and so there is no market correction (no one with the power to do so has the will to control the rent, and the land will never be more plentiful).
I know it's kinda horrible, but these people are seriously making me reconsider my view that "Family is Family."
I mean, seriously - a good half of everything I have made of myself, done, and my personality as it stands, can be traced back to that I just don't want to be like these people. They are nothing but tiny, angry balls of ignorance, ego, arrogance and wants.
I need to get the fuck away from these people. I'm starting to remember part of my reason for being so keen to fuck off to europe, and why I didn't come back when I should have.
I fucking hate these people. I'm going to be an optimist, eat locally, bike wherever possible, and allow for my sport car vice; they can keep raising their dander over fucking impossibilities.
Note: Yeah, I did my reading on methane release. But, it should be noted that we have no idea how fast this methane is being released, how fast it degrades to CO2 in the atmosphere (by all estimates, fairly readily, making it more of a long-term risk that should be worked to avoid), and the clathrate gun hypothesis is consider to work over a millenium--small potatoes for earth, massive for most humans. So we should fix this shit, but we won't blow out the sky.
Ear bleach:
The harmonies tie it together.
Oh, and when my car started losing engine power, from the outside it appeared indistinguishable from a student driver who hasn't mastered manual transmissions yet. So now some random strangers think that I can't drive stick. Sadly, I consider this to be more Fail than that entire first paragraph.
Also, the second movie has a 5 year old girl getting decapitated by a laser. So....
Thank goodness.