geverett

Phil Levin and Kristen Berman bought and transformed an Oakland lot into a community compound where homes are private but childcare and meals are shared.

Author of the post here - fwiw all the houses I've lived in have had a good gender mix, though it's true none of the men wanted to join for the hip hop dance workout. In general though the men have been the better cooks!

I wanted to note that a lot of houses I've lived in have had couples. Two of our housemates in PR were a married couple who rented out the apartment they owned to come live with us. The husband was more extroverted than the wife and loved the company - and the wife loved that we kept him entertained and she got the room to herself more often :)

All this to say I simply think it's great to live with (good) roommates, whether you're male, female, single, coupled, or anything else.

So much this! Author of the post here - I've been noodling on writing one on the University of Chicago study 'Mistakenly Seeking Solitude' (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-28833-001) which I came across in the also-great Atlantic article on the Anti-Social Century (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/02/america...)

Basically: a team of researchers asked people if they'd be happier on their morning commute if they interacted with strangers or kept to themselves. Most said they'd be happier keeping to themselves. Then the researchers ran an experiment where a group were told to keep to themselves, a group was told to interact with a stranger for as long as possible, and a control group was supposed to do whatever came up. Those who were forced to interact with a stranger came away most happy, and those that kept to themselves were least happy.

We are social beings - it is how we have been able to survive as a species. And yet, given the choice, we often choose to isolate. I think people would be happier and healthier if we made more of an effort to combat that tendency.

Tbh this makes perfect sense. As someone who worked in airline revenue management for 11 years, it always seemed a little odd that the sales tactics people use everywhere else - group discounts, BOGO, etc - weren't being used by airlines (yes, group bookings could often get discounts, but usually for much larger groups).

What's remarkable here is that airlines waited this long to do it. Sad news for me as a usually solo traveler who prizes flexibility, but I understand airlines wanting to prioritize groups and more locked-in fares.

I've lived in community for 10 years in a variety of different houses/complexes (including ones where I've had my own apartment and there's been a communal kitchen). We've almost never had issues with cleanliness. It really depends on who you live with!

I'm reminded of this Atlantic article that says 'You can try to micromanage your child’s care—whether they eat sugar, whether they get screen time, whether someone insists that a child apologize after snatching another kid’s toy—or you can have reliable community help with child care. But you can’t have both.'

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/01/intensive...

Personally I'm ok with flexing my standards a bit for the sake of having a great community - I'm on the cleaner side but I don't mind doing a little extra tidying as long as it feels like a balance. I've lived with my friends and their kids and while we don't have the 100% the same parenting styles we all respect what the others bring to the table.

A coliving house in NYC started a 'university' that has taught thousands of students in the last two years.

I lived on a street in Cihangir for three years. In the walk to and from work I'd pass several shops and cafes, and got to know all of the owners and regulars.

I'm the editor of Supernuclear, not Patty who wrote the post. I don't think Patty wants her address shared but some other commenters have triangulated the general neighborhood if you feel like reading through!

good catch, fixed! thanks :)

I'm the co-author of Supernuclear and editor of this post. We've been writing the blog for almost five years now, you never know what will go viral!

I've spent my adult life living in Istanbul, New York, San Francisco, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. In Istanbul it sometimes felt like my neighbors knew too much about me - they would comment on who slept over (I had a lot of friends visit!) and once when I went out of town for a week my landlady said she nearly let herself into my home to make sure I hadn't died because no one had seen me in a few days. That being said, it was also comforting to know, 5000 miles from my home and my family, that people around me cared about my wellbeing and my whereabouts.

And this is the thing those of us who live in the US sometimes forget: knowing your neighbors isn't just about being able to borrow cup of sugar when you're out. It's about knowing someone will share their generator when a hurricane has knocked your power out. It's about someone noticing when something looks off and coming over to knock and make sure you're ok. We aren't just happier when we get to know our neighbors better, we're safer.

You 100% can do stoop whiskey! Or simply hanging outside with whatever beverage. My block in Brooklyn has a lot more stoop whiskey than coffee but also has a really strong neighborhood feel (and whatsapp chat). I feel lucky to have moved into an already vibrant community but also believe anyone can create this anywhere.

This reminds me of a tool my friends made calle Escher Sketch, which allows you to create tiles https://eschersket.ch/ ... I've lost days playing with the program (and generating some pretty intricate art).

Community living! I've lived in various communes for 8 years now. I don't use the term coliving space as I feel a lot of places that go under that moniker are commercially driven and not particularly community based. The houses I've lived in are very rooted in where they're based, host a lot of events, and (crucially I think) are not for profit - they're designed to sustain themselves rather than maximize $ for the landlord. This post has a bunch of resources to see if there are any community houses near you: https://supernuclear.substack.com/p/directory-of-coliving-di...

Jupe makes flat packed housing that is 30x cheaper to build and 15x cheaper to transport than the standard room.

Disclosure: I joined the team after being an advisor.

My partner is Costa Rican and thus we’ve discussed living there for some chunk of our future. The thing I haven’t been able to get over is the lack of emissions standards: if you’re stuck in traffic (common around San Jose, or en route to any of the well known beaches), expect to inhale a ton of exhaust. For an otherwise eco-friendly country, this really stood out to me, and led to a lot of headaches (literally - air quality so poor I ended up with migraines).

Beyond that: San Jose is great to work from, but I didn’t find reliable fast internet anywhere else.

Total quarantine in Puerto Rico as well since 9pm on March 15th.

My father hasn't had bypass surgery, but he's drank and smoked for 60+ years and has a number of health issues. He's stopped smoking (for my mother's comfort and health, not his own) but continues to drink, eat everything, and lead a mostly sedentary lifestyle. Everyone in my family has pleaded with him at various times to make some effort to get healthier so we'll have him around longer.

His reply: he's already lived longer than he expected to (he's in his late 70s) and is satisfied with what he's done. There's no doubt he loves us but he doesn't feel obligated to stick around for our sake. It's taken a long time for me to accept this as his right.

I wish I could change his mind and every day I try and think of ways to get him excited to stick around longer. I'd love for my (hypothetical future) kids to meet him. There's still so much I want to learn from him.

But I don't know what it's like to be as old as him, and I don't have a right to ask him to do more than he already has. Maybe when he's closer to the end I'll be mad at myself for not fighting harder for him. This piece - and your comment - have made me more determined to do so.

I'm in the process of trying to figure out where I'm going to be based next, leaning towards Puerto Rico (love the climate, friendly local population, easy/cheap/fast hop to family in New York, incredible tax incentives for people running businesses, sense of excitement/opportunity as the state rebuilds). 'Comparable opportunity' is relative - while an engineer here isn't as likely to earn a Bay Area salary, as a founder I think it's likely I could raise a decent round while based here (likely sourcing a lot of capital from Silicon Valley) while enjoying a comparably low cost of living and doing business. If I were trying to build the next Instagram I wouldn't do it here but there are so many businesses that need to be built here. I'm a firm believer you can find opportunity anywhere if you get creative. It's more fun to be a statistical outlier :)

I'm also in a position at the moment where I have relatively low overhead (no kids, good health) and realize that might not be the case for everyone, though I'd bet it's the case for many people who don't bother to take advantage of it.

As someone who started a company outside SV, then moved there for 3 years to grow the company, and has now moved away again - I would say it's well worth it to spend at least some time in the Valley to build a network and understand how deals get done in person.

The density of investors and other founders/early employees in Silicon Valley can't be beat, and I often found myself learning inadvertently - dinner table conversations would be about how people raised their round, the friend of a friend you meet while camping turns out to be a partner at a fund you're trying to pitch. In more cases than are logical or fair, people simply invest in their friends - which means if you make friends there you're increasing the chance you'll be able to raise money easily.

That being said, the cost of living is absurd and I would never hire an engineer in Silicon Valley unless I was building something at the outer limits of frontier tech (and even then I'd scour the globe for qualified engineers elsewhere). And I don't think you need to be there forever. If you build up a solid network you can move away and still reap a lot of the benefits from afar / through occasional visits.

We do the same, and the foreign employees take care of their own tax/benefits. We pay enough that this is worth it to them and makes the admin on the company side much more manageable.

Hey Matt, I've been a reader since the days of the Exile. Just digging into your new book on Substack thanks to this thread!

Chris and Hamish: do you plan to introduce a discovery option (like the App Store) for people to find who is on Substack, or are you expecting the writers to market their work independently?

Hi there, I'm the founder - open to any feedback/AMA!

I traveled to Gaza to mentor with Gaza Sky Geeks in December. While I was there Trump decided to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the leader of Hamas decided to respond by declaring a 'Day of Rage'. My writeup of that experience here: https://medium.com/@gillianim/what-its-like-in-gaza-on-a-day... The TL;DR is that the majority of Palestinians are trying to live normal lives and don't care much about international political chess. As a foreigner I felt completely safe. Many Jewish people have mentored at Gaza Sky Geeks and had no issue. I traveled through the Erez checkpoint and didn't have my passport stamped, though I'm pretty sure some malware got installed on my computer when they took it away for 'screening'. Logistically, I had to apply for permits about two months in advance, and you never know whether you'll get in or not; but all in all my experience at all checkpoints and entrance/exit to Israel was straightforward. It was an incredible experience all around and I was so impressed with the Palestinian people in Gaza that I met. Happy to answer any questions for people thinking of going!

In college I researched Abd Allah Ibn Buluggin, the last of the Zirid rulers of Granada (ruled 1073-1090). He wrote a snarky memoir in exile (1091-1095) that describes his travels, a bit, but mostly lists all the people who did him wrong during his rule. It feels like you're reading the diary of a teenage girl who has been kicked out of the cool club. This led me down a rabbit hole of reading all sorts of Islamic scholars/travelers' works, and the overriding feeling in all of it is that we're all, deep down, pretty much the same. (you can read the diary here: https://books.google.com/books?id=ltcUAAAAIAAJ )

'Tosi, who turns 50 next week, was focused more on cutting costs and pursuing businesses that were revenue-generating instead of world-changing, they said.'

For now, Airbnb has the luxury to make these kinds of decisions, but they can't exist in the world of paper valuations forever. A lot of the 'world-changing' things they've been working on seem a lot more targeted at the luxury market than transforming the industry as a whole (luxury retreats, premium business products, experiences that cost $200+). Will be interesting to see how this plays out..

Hitlist (hitlistapp.com) is also designed specifically with flexibility in mind - we don't have every single route on every day, but we let you set an alert with whatever criteria you have in mind - from 'SFO to London on these days +/- 3 days' to 'a beach in southern Europe for 7-10 days between January 8th and 31st' - and can ping you when fares that match come up.

Google works with a few airlines that don't pay them anything. However, Southwest (probably rightly) thinks that if people get used to finding Southwest fares on Google, they'll visit Southwest.com less frequently, increasing Southwest's reliance on Google in the long term. I'm nearly certain Southwest has sent a specific cease and desist to Google to NOT include its fares in results.

We built Hitlist (hitlistapp.com) to make this accessible to laypeople - I used to do the same thing you mention, scraping specific routes I knew I was going to fly. It's far from perfect but makes it easier to browse lots of date/destination options at a time.

This is a really well put analysis from a friend of a friend, Alp Eren Topal, a researcher at one of Turkey's most prestigious universities:

'For the last couple of weeks there were rumors to the effect that a large group of ranked officers in Turkish Armed Forces would be forced to retire by the end of summer. My guess is that last night's move was an organized attempt by this group of officers. The quite obvious lack of organization and inefficiency observed in the attempted coup can also be explained without resorting to conspiracy theories or theatricality of a staged ploy: The junta prepares for, or at least entertains the idea of a coup but somehow the news of the attempt is leaked and rumor gets around. Government learns about this. The disappearance of Erdoğan for the last week and the excitement of several foreign embassies in the last few days can also be attributed to these rumors. It is also quite possible that the government, with the comfort of being forewarned and realizing the limits of the junta, may have planned to turn this into an advantage and instrumentalize a potential coup for its own benefit. They may have also planned to catch all the junta in the act thus making it a more open and shut case.

Obviously the junta would know that its cover had been blown and in return they may have acted prematurely as a last resort, to save their asses and made the last night's gamble. I think, this is the most logical explanation of why the coup seemed like a farce.

As to the the aftermath, I think Erdoğan is most right when he frames this as a providence from God. This coup attempt could not have come at a better time. The u-turn in foreign policy, the admittance of failure in Syria, the great purge within the party, the issue of Syrian refugees all had brought the party esprit-de-corps to an all time low and alienated Erdoğan to his base. And as such, it provided Erdoğan a decisive victory in domestic politics. Now he is a victorious leader once again, a veteran. The people flooding the streets were also united in their leader's defense and this turned into an opportunity to overcome the alienation. Erdoğan will once again acquire the status of rightly-guided leader who is led and provided by by God. And of course there is no doubt that he will use this credit to utmost limits.

Kind of like the Auspicious Affair (Vaka-yı Hayriye) of 1826 whereby the Janissary corps were abolished once and for-all, this failed coup has a facet of auspiciousness. Yet, imagining the aftermath we can also predict that it will have several facets which will prove quite oppressive and burdensome for Turkish citizens.'