Based solely on your comment, I’m looking forward to watching a scene where Christian Bale goes around Wall Street collecting mugs in The Big Short 2: Polymer Boogaloo.

Thank you. I did think about that also.

‘Volunteers’ did the counting, but surely they should have known or been informed that a quorum of votes equal to x% of the community are required for the vote to be valid. If the count doesn’t meet or exceed that value, discard the ballots.

Or even why was the vote permitted to take place in less than the required notification period? I presume the answer to these questions is either incompetence or bravado on the part of the board members taking their position for granted.

I find it unlikely that if the vote had went the other way, the board would have had the integrity to raise the same objections.

To play devil’s advocate for a moment, having a sufficient vote notification period is important.

Though if that were the board’s true concern, they surely would have announced intention to notify the community alongside their statement cancelling the vote for this reason, which hasn’t happened insofar as I can tell.

I think that if half of the community shows up with less than a day’s notice to make themselves heard, that’s probably representative enough for how the community feels about these board members.

I found an update about the vote to remove the three board members.

Homeowners voted 190 to 20 in favour of removal, however the board cancelled the vote claiming there wasn’t a 24 hour notice given to the community and subsequently that 210 votes might not qualify a quorum of more than a thousand homes.

Imagine the power of combining this tosser initiative with the revenue sharing aspect of New York’s vehicle idling program. Save the planet and get paid all at the same time.

I’m not sure the builder profits much more by using engineered timber given its expense compared to concrete. Given the environmental cost of building with concrete, it’s important to find alternative materials.

Even in your anecdote, it’s not as though the addition of a single floor was the cause of the fire, just like the material type wasn’t. It’s much easier for an incomplete building to go up in flames than a completed and occupied one.

Technology isn’t always a solution, but it’s not like pressurized stairwells, automatic hallway segmentation, or even sprinkler systems are things of science fiction. These are all pretty established techniques of fire control.

In terms of prevention, given the number one cause of fires in homes and buildings is in the kitchen, the easiest solution is opting out of the methane infrastructure in new projects. Though there’s a rather large industry that pushes for this practice to continue, so that’s a difficult thing to do.

Also, to bring it back to the topic relevant to this post, I’m not advocating to make escape harder in a burning building by eliminating stairwells. My point is precisely what’s in the content of the post - single stairwell buildings in other areas don’t have people on the upper floors dying hand over foot because they had to descend an extra flight or two.

If it was harder, I’m sure we would have heard about the trend of every building seven levels and up having dead bodies pile up in the stairwell after someone tried to flambé a quail.

While it isn’t clinical, I think the practice of building beyond a few levels with a single egress point in so many other countries is sufficient enough evidence to justify changing this building standard.

The multiple references to ‘fire safety organizations’ read to me like ‘fire departments’. Fire departments across North America already dictate what our roads (and therefore cities) look like. Seems like a logical leap they would also impose control over the corridors within buildings too.

I was only meaning that 1% chance bit in reference to someone that had chosen to donate their body to science.

I am for opt out instead of opt in, but making it mandatory would be a step too far. At the same time I find the two opinions of ‘my body my choice’ and ‘after death you cease to exist’ to be a bit counter posed.

I would instead suggest what already occurs in today’s reality: write your wishes down, and hope your wishes are followed by your descendants, or your family, or your executor, or your attorney.

Unfortunately for anyone’s wishes, that’s all they are - wishes. Unless one go to rather significant lengths to erect checks and balances to the following of your desires, whichever individual remains after our demise can simply do away with whatever they please and have an auction to the rich for extra parts while taking sponsorships from big oil.

I wish I could live in that timeline where all morgue attendants got a page when the world’s 1% needs a good looking kidney hahaha.

In fairness, pretty much any subject will have some negatives that could be pointed to and touted as an excuse for not doing something.

If there’s even a 1% chance of your body being properly useful to science in some way, and therefore humanity at large, it’s worth the odds.

Though I’d bet good money that the amount of mutilation and whatnot isn’t particularly common for science bound bodies. Much easier to steal some organs from the morgue bodies marked for non collection.

Yes, I’m rather disappointed in the ‘better of two options’ that was chosen. I just wish we could get away from first passed the post. Maybe one day.

I’m glad to hear this. Yet another reason to relocate.

Despite the name, it’s nice this isn’t a physical pass that some people will never hear about and still end up paying full pop at these places. Everyone that’s eligible will benefit. That’s great.

But won’t always be if we aren’t vigilant.

The study also shows a noticeable if difficult to measure reduction in number of entangled animals which is great.

When I was young, the grocers tossed the cardboard boxes from deliveries up by the registers for people to use. These days, I have to ask a worker for one as they’re restocking. This practice should return. It would reduce more waste than replacing single use bags with another plastic based bag alternative.

Too bad burgers outpaced inflation then. It’d be nice to have a $1.50 option commonly available.

I agree about everything in your first point. I hadn’t previously considered that the novelty of a new technology would necessarily increase have disproportionately high initial cost.

That said, I feel like any calculation of cost against how many hours played is entirely subjective. Your suggestion of $0.75 / entertainment hour is quite different than what I consider ideal. Games will vary genre to genre, person to person, platform to platform.

A person with limited time might exclusively play shorter titles, or maybe just multiplayer titles. A person with significant free time might spent hundreds of hours replaying an RPG.

To be incredibly broad, I would say that games shouldn’t cost more per entertainment hour than half of what any given person earns at their job - but even that is quite subjective and should be taken with salt.

Conversely, I’ve spent close to zero dollars total by employing the great trick of not maintaining my road bike at all for years, and now the entire drivetrain needs replacing.

I certainly should not have done this. I imagine it’ll be quite the price tag when I go to take care of it.

The Atari 2600 released for $190 in 1977. Or about $1000 today.

The best selling title, Pac-Man released for $28 in 1982. Or about $95 today.

Compared to so much else that has risen dramatically over time, vastly outpacing video games comparatively, I think it’s a bit hard to argue with the value proposition of modern titles.