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mothballed

2,359 karma · joined August 16, 2025

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mothballed··on 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support
Do everything yourself and it never touches commercial regulations on licensing, inspection, and and building plans. I recorded a sworn affidavit with the county I was building it myself on my own property for purely personal residential use and then they issued me a permit explicitly stating I did not need to submit building plans or inspections.

Since the house was built without any compensation and not used for any commercial purpose, it bypasses "commerce" which was the auspice under which housing was regulated. When I was done I literally just sent the county a picture of a house and they closed the permit and that was that.

mothballed··on 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support
Yes

edit: as a comment, there are a lot of people in places like big island hawaii for instance, that do something like this under burner LLCs with shipping containers, then just move them when caught and do the same thing over again.

mothballed··on 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support
Last I checked 5 or so years ago a lot big enough to drop a yurt on in San Francisco was only like 100k. Legally unbuildable, but perfectly usable and sanitary with an incinerator toilet, solar, and hauled water. Maybe 200k all in, in roughly the most expensive place in the US.
mothballed··on 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support
I was working 60 hours a week, plus raising small children, plus had zero construction experience, plus buying literal pieces of lumber and block paycheck to paycheck as money allowed. If you start at 18 and finish in 20 years, you are still ahead of age of median new home buyer by 2 years.

Some people have valid excuses, but most do not.

mothballed··on 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support
This is exactly it. I built a house for 60k a few years ago in a HCOL area by finding a legal loophole to permitting/planning that bypassed civil engineers, code inspections, and almost all planning. The house next to me, quite similar and 50 years old, is selling for 5x that.

In the old days it was common to build your own house. And it usually allows a house for half or less the market price. But this is effectively illegal/impractical in most the US. Some simple changes to legislation would halve the average cost of a house overnight!

mothballed··on SpaceX stock erases all its gains and slides below IPO price in intraday trading
IDK what the calculation is for rich people, but for middle class who had that many children by that many women I don't think the state would leave them anything to survive on other than maybe prior savings.
mothballed··on SpaceX stock erases all its gains and slides below IPO price in intraday trading
No this was anomalous for an IPO. People were limited to something like 10 shares that they had to pre-order like they were special order trading cards with an order cap as direct recipients of the initial shares.

Usually the public starts buying IPOs in open market operations on the secondary market, which removes some of the shiny and "limited" factor.

mothballed··on SpaceX stock erases all its gains and slides below IPO price in intraday trading
People cared after the IPO but initially in far less informed circles I constantly heard from lower sophisticated investors bragging about how they'd been allocated X shares like they were Pokemon trading cards they managed to snag. They weren't very sensitive to the price, only to brag to their friends they had snagged them. After the shiny wore off and no one cared about how cool they were, they sold them.
mothballed··on SpaceX stock erases all its gains and slides below IPO price in intraday trading
If the IPO can't find institutional buyers at the price and has to resort transferring the initial shares directly to the public, safe to assume they've hyped the public into being the bag holder. What SpaceX did is rare for a reason.
mothballed··on DEA to Temporarily Schedule 7-Oh and Related Substances to Protect Public Safety
But the prison sentence once caught is much shorter in Canada.
mothballed··on DEA to Temporarily Schedule 7-Oh and Related Substances to Protect Public Safety
FDA approval and regulation is how you end up with a legally dispensed controlled substance of a prescription. If you manage to get the controlled substances from a non-FDA approved source what you have is a pile of illegal controlled substances.

They are not going to give a shit about most experimental cancer drugs because they're not controlled substances.

mothballed··on DEA to Temporarily Schedule 7-Oh and Related Substances to Protect Public Safety
The DEA enforces FDA regulations though through criminal and civil prosecution of those using otherwise DEA-legal and properly prescribed substances that are not FDA approved. Except for medical marijuana which had specific executive order to place state-licensed cannabis exempted from FDA regulation, a legally prescribed controlled substance becomes a DEA enforceable illegal substance when it is dispensed without FDA approval of the material.
mothballed··on DEA to Temporarily Schedule 7-Oh and Related Substances to Protect Public Safety
You cannot prescribe a schedule 1 substance (which is what the temporary schedule has placed into), and even if you could, you need FDA approval of the substance unless it is medical marijuana which recently had a specific carveout making it federally legal to non-FDA approved dispense through state licensed facilities.
mothballed··on DEA to Temporarily Schedule 7-Oh and Related Substances to Protect Public Safety
Kids can still order wine and cigars from the internet without ID. When I was a child I did it. The law doesn't require signature on delivery, and the deliveryman has no idea what's inside and thus will accept signature from anyone including me when I was a child.

The regulations on selling tobacco in person AFAIK are only for cigarette and cigeratte labeled type rolling tobacco. You can still order perfectly cigarette smokable "pipe" tobacco online straight from an internet "vending machine" and probably a real one. Very few people know this though because it turns out to not actually be a much of a problem.

mothballed··on Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity
I can tell you you're absolutely wrong about the average person. I live in a place with no public infrastructure (I'm talking about, not even public roads, and not some rich HOA, a ~poor unorganized community without any infrastructure association) which has allowed me to view how average people react when there is no taxation based infrastructure. When it breaks, the neighbors help. I help maintain the roads for my poor neighbor. My other neighbor helped fix my water line when it broke. Sometimes I take my heavy equipment and donate labor to prepare for storms, etc. The infrastructure is literally donation based. We get it done for a tiny fraction of what the tax based system cost and everyone is far better off, even if the amount donated is less than what the taxes would be and some people "cheat" the system.

It's actually quite rare to find someone who says I will help the poor, but only if my neighbor also pays, otherwise they can get fucked. This is very bizarre thinking. The people in my basically ancap-dystopia neighborhood don't even behave in this sadistic way. It honestly sounds more like a manufactured "gotcha" to win an argument than a way someone would think.

In reality the fraction people that would vote to tax themselves, are more than willing to donate in the case they don't get the tax, your sadistic MAD view where you punish the poor just because some other guy didn't help too is relatively rare and not indicative of the mindset of most people who are voting to help the poor. I honestly think that most anyone who would vote for the tax, does not act that way when dropped in a neighborhood like mine, and you probably would not either.

mothballed··on Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity
No, I'm not talking about picking and choosing for a voted tax. I'm saying it can't be true most people don't want to help fund the poor if the majority are voting to tax themselves to fund the poor. Clearly under anything remotely resembling the Australian representation of what they claim their representative democracy is, the majority of people already decided they individually are incentivized to help the poor develop infrastructure.

It can't simultaneously be true that most don't want to help the poor at their own cost while also the tax has been legitimized by the majority wanting to help the poor at their own cost. Only individuals or representatives elected by individuals can vote and if their incentive was to not help the poor then they'd vote not to and that would be that.

mothballed··on Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity
If there's hardly any individual desire, as you say, to fund the development of the poor then taxes in that pursuit are illegitimate under a theory taxation happens by the assent of the people (even if only roughly a majority or their representatives).

Given that most taxation done with the the advertised goal of helping the poor in Australia does happen with popular assent of individuals, I would theorize your position is false and that people do have some individual incentives to develop services offered to the poor -- for profit, humanitarian / charitable reasons, and a variety of other considerations.

mothballed··on Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity
To be clear, this doesn't change the price floor for ROI calculations. A non "approved" contractor or DIY job non-subsidized is well cheaper than a piddly few percent interest rate arbitrage to a pre-approved list. This does nothing beyond let some rich contractors regressively allocate money from taxpayers to themselves by artificially appearing a bit less of a premium to the alternatives.

It looks more like to me some installers saw their industry was becoming commoditized and the government got together with them to figure out how to grift taxpayers into making the more connected ones command a premium while simultaneously being better positioned to eat the lunch of the small middle class "guy and a truck" who does cash jobs for cheap but has no resources to become "accredited" on a subsidization list.

mothballed··on Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity
... for purchases from "approved" "accredited" suppliers[]. AKA the interest differential is regressive tax to funnel money to favored suppliers. Notice there's no option for the poor to simply install it themselves, which would save them more money than an interest free loan, but wouldn't funnel money to rich government approved install contractors.

And there's your grift. As soon as the home owner wants to allocate the "profit" of install to themselves, it is a swift kick in the ass but that will go to our buddies, and thank you very much for your taxes.

[] https://www.energy.nsw.gov.au/households/grants-rebates/home...

mothballed··on Mawlynnong, India, transformed by tourism, bans visitors on Sundays
India doesn't give a shit about that. They have restricted civil areas that require visitor clearance even for citizens.
mothballed··on DOGE is done. What happened to its records?
If you seriously make a go at it you Americans be accepted for asylum in Mexico. There is a guy (Gavin I think? Real lanky nerdy guy) from Washington who was constantly criticizing government officials (and even Mexican ones) that was granted asylum.

I also of a guy who showed in in Paraguay, renounced his citizenship to become stateless, and then they just offered him citizenship because they didn't know what to do with him.

mothballed··on DOGE is done. What happened to its records?
I'm referring to things like the DOI rescinding the 2024 Conservation and Landscape Health Rule that allowed private ecologically minded conservation groups to restore and preserve land through leases -- something exploitive resource extracting private entities were already able to do.

Instead the DOI declared their "lean" and "constrained" force would revoke letting private entities lease for conservation. Something at odds with lean employees trying to maximize conservation ROI. Why would they be begging to rip away conservation from private hands into unavailable public hands if they didn't already have the manpower, unless they're playing a political fuck-fuck game?

That reveals the true fuck-fuck game. DOI employees claim they are lean, out of employees, etc while actively pursuing actions that are counter to how those acting in such circumstances are in the interest of acting. But actually their management are rescinding rules that help offload conservation to private actors happy to do it, instead diluting the ability of the DOI to preserve resources by instead tossing additional tasks on already overloaded employees at which point they'll have their spouses on forums complaining and stirring up the voters to try and bring more employees under their grasp. Presuming they're successful, they will then again swamp said employees, and the cycle starts anew.

Which brings me back to my assertion:

>. Thus you have the interesting situation that they always have razor-thin budgets for employees in order to maximize the employee count under them and they spend a huge portion of time doing inefficient processes.

If they were actually trying to unload tasks from employees they'd be happy that environmental groups were trying to take the load off DOI employees and paying them leasing fees to do it, but that's not in the interest of management, as that could reduce their headcount and ability to beg for more money. Thus you can witness from actual acts of the DOI, it doesn't matter how many resources and people they get, their management are acting in ways it will appear to employees like they're broke and thin on people because they're run on ragged edges (something not unique, seen in many other areas of government, that will keep expanding task for current employees to the point they always seem broke and stretched out and then those associated with the organization will beg for more to start the cycle over again).

mothballed··on DOGE is done. What happened to its records?
Depends on the company, but there is another possibility, to produce more profit rather than more reports.
mothballed··on DOGE is done. What happened to its records?
Yes, I went out of my way to live in a place with no public roads, no public utilites, no fire, and no police and in a house built with no government inspections. Whenever there is a way to avoid interacting with public services I do everything I can to avoid them.
mothballed··on DOGE is done. What happened to its records?
The level of unprovoked violence used to enforce social security I find unjustifiable just to satisfy my material requirements.
mothballed··on DOGE is done. What happened to its records?
Government doesn't turn a profit, so the main way for middle management to gain influence and seniority is to have more employees. Thus you have the interesting situation that they always have razor-thin budgets for employees in order to maximize the employee count under them and they spend a huge portion of time doing inefficient processes.
mothballed··on How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI
99.99% of the people consuming that content are law abiding (relatively), "normal" citizens, including probably half of 13 year old boys. I'm sure the feds have access to the "list", but it is virtually useless until after the fact when they can tell the jury "and you see here, they looked it up!"
mothballed··on How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI
> The presence of a video on YouTube is, quite simply, not evidence of the behavior in it being legal.

It is evidence of looser temporal relationship to the timing of the NOLA bombing, leaning more towards it released as general education rather than prepared for the NOLA bomber. Hence, supporting but not direct evidence of the behavior not violating the law regarding intentional instruction of terrorists. Therefore I assert it is relevant to the legality.

It's only when you maliciously quote it out of context that you can misrepresent my argument to be the sole fact that it was on youtube for years means it is legal. The fact it's not sole direct evidence of being legal doesn't mean it's not useful accompanying information.

>I quoted one part that was just deeply goofy logic.

It was only deeply goofy logic when you isolated and then straw manned what I'd claimed.

If you feel the need to save face, then sure. Simply saying "it was on youtube for years" does not mean something is legal. Though I don't think that was ever in contention.

mothballed··on How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI
You didn't read what I said. Try reading the law instead, or even the charge. It's for being in the business of manufacturing explosives without a license. A license isn't needed to manufacture explosives. One is needed to manufacture them as a business venture. They are claiming since he got a little money from Youtube or viewers he was in the business and that was illegal.

This failed when they tried it with FPSRussia.

====== re: below due to throttling ======

>I think "I make explosives for YouTube revenue" falls squarely within the business territory.

Different than what you said initially which was merely making them, which is why I clarified.

>> Licensed manufacturer. A manufacturer licensed under this part to engage in the business of manufacturing explosive materials for purposes of sale or distribution or for his own use.

engaging in business of your own use is not same as non-business of your own use. It's not uncommon for a business to use explosives for their own use as course of operations. It is also not uncommon for people to synthesize and use tannerite recreationally without a license, legally, for non-business use.

>I did read what you said; that's why I quoted part of it.

If you read it then you know you maliciously selectively quoted it then. If that were the end of it and that made it legal, I would have stopped there, but you cut it off there because it was more convenient to your rebuttal to ignore the rest. I only thought you had not read it, because I was being charitable to try and assume good faith.

mothballed··on How the terrorist group Boko Haram uses frontier AI
His videos of making them were on YouTube for years, publicly. It's legal to synthesize the explosives he made. What they did was charge him for the first amendment protected activity that a terrorist then found, and then they claimed that because he made some money because a few people donated a small amount to him for making the videos, and thus he needed a commercial license for being in the business of making explosives.

By the way this is the same thing they tried to charge FPSRussia (the first time, before they convicted him for weed) for and failed.

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