Trump-humping pillow magnate Mike Lindell is auctioning off industrial equipment and office furniture because MyPillow sales dropped when Lindell redirected his pillow-peddling energies toward spreading egregiously dumb lies and infamous slander about the 2020 election. (Strib)
Major retailers such as Walmart, Bed Bath & Beyond and Slumberland Furniture all said they will no longer sell MyPillow products as Lindell continues to falsely claim that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.
“It was a massive, massive cancellation,” Lindell said in a phone interview Monday. “We lost $100 million from attacks by the box stores, the shopping networks, the shopping channels, all of them did cancel culture on us.”
Doesn’t look like there will be a soft landing. Lindell is also facing a $1.3B defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems. Calling it now: Lindell will end up flat broke again before this shit-show is over — a rags to riches to rags story of a weak-minded, blithering idiot who kicked a crack addiction only to latch onto the stupidest, most self-destructive cult since Heaven’s Gate.
It’s not just Lindell. Trump has ruined a lot of people’s lives. I have no pity for cultists like Lindell who pour vast sums of money down conspiracy theory rabbit-holes. I don’t feel sorry for opportunistic dickweeds like Rudy Giuliani or Sidney Powell or John Eastman either. But the scale of the reputational and financial wreckage Trump is leaving in his wake — among his own followers — is staggering.
Open thread.
oldster
“But the scale of the reputational and financial wreckage Trump is leaving in his wake — among his own followers — is
staggeringdelightful.”rikyrah
Whine whine whine
They have FREEDOM OF SPEECH.
What he wants, and so many right-wingers want..
IF FREEDOM FROM THE CONSEQUENCES OF SAID SPEECH.
They wanna party like it’s 1923, when whatever a White Man said was THE LAW.
Jerry
Yes, Crack Pipe Mike, it’s all everyone else’s fault. None of the blame is on you
Mike’s theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h9ja28J_DU
Suzanne
@oldster: I mean, FAFO.
Blows my mind that some people need to learn lessons by experience, but I suppose that’s where our best literature comes from. Please proceed, assholes.
Parfigliano
Fuck em all.
rikyrah
NEVER EVER forget what our own Kay said in early 2017, about Dolt45 voters:
They showed THEIR lack of character with their vote for Dolt45. He never hid who he was. He didn’t lie to them about his core. He told them EXACTLY who he was..
and, they voted for him ANYWAY…which shows THEIR lack of character.
Doug R
Sidney Powell’s own defense in court: No reasonable person would believe her.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/sidney-powell-s-legal-defense-reasonable-people-wouldn-t-believe-n1261809
khead
Lindell has segued to the find out phase.
moops
Soft-brained former addict ends up in a cult.
Some people just can’t live normal lives. If he is lucky someone in his extended family is a fellow MAGA cultist and can take him in when he loses everything.
MattF
See, the idea that Trump always wins every time means that everyone else always loses every time. It’s a bit mysterious why the cultists find that so hard to grasp. Maybe a future PoliSci PhD dissertation topic.
rikyrah
And, I don’t feel bad for the RUBES who send Dolt45 their $$$$.
People have told you. His entire life of cheating people in business has told you.
You give him $$$…oh well.
SiubhanDuinne
Invisible hand of the market, my dude. Invisible hand of the market.
. . .
(Cancel culture, my pasty white unpillowed ass.)
Kay
Ha! I can’t help enjoying it. I am still mad they refused to admit he lost and robbed us of the normal victory sequence where we celebrate and Donald Trump and his gross, griftery family sheepishly exit. Instead we got them shrieking for months and demanding he be installed.
Department stores have good sales on high quality pilllows and they’re not insurrectionists. You can get one for less than the cost of a My Pillow. Macys online.
zhena gogolia
Yeah, I’m reserving my sympathy for the INNOCENT lives ruined by Putin.
Snarki, child of Loki
On the plus side, there will be lots of surplus, inexpensive pillows available for smothering those MAGAts.
Baud
I’m pleased when bad people FO, but I’m with you — what a staggering waste of resources and humanity … for nothing at all.
J.
And still they continue to follow him — and give him money, even though he’s supposedly a billionaire. That’s one of the things I never understood. If the guy’s a billionaire, why is he constantly asking you for money — and why do you give it to him? And if the election was “stolen,” how do you explain all of the Republicans who won on the same ballot? The pretzels his followers twist themselves into to try to rationalize their beliefs would make a yogi proud.
Omnes Omnibus
I am not a vindictive person by any means, but, the thing is, I simply can’t bring myself to care about his problems. No one made him fuck around. Finding out is on him.
Baud
Also, I would like to nominate “We do cancel culture” as a rotating tag.
Kay
@Baud:
I absolutely do.
Baud
Bed, Bath, and Beyond isn’t purchasing much of anything these days.
NotMax
Time for a round of tiniest violin sonata.
bbleh
“Everything Trump touches dies.”
geg6
OT, but if you are a fan of Top Chef and are wondering who will be the new Padma? Wonder no more! It’s Kristen Kish (Season 10 winner, restaurateur and Travel Channel host) and it will be in Wisconsin. Specifically, Milwaukee and Madison.
https://www.salon.com/2023/07/11/top-chef-alum-kristen-kish-takes-over-as-the-shows-new-host–starting-in-this-city-next-season/
Baud
@Kay:
I like to do it Melville style.
trollhattan
Walmart is the big surprise here. Lindell’s too much for frickin’ Walmart.
Release the tiny violins!
Frankensteinbeck
@J.:
Assume that they are the good guys, everyone who disagrees with them are evil, and their champions are the champions of good, and it all falls into place quite well. There can be no hypocrisy, because they are the good guys, no matter what they do. Any answer to any question, no matter how nonsensical or obviously a lie, must be true if it gives the answer they want, because they are the good guys and we are evil. If Trump asks for money, as long as he is the champion you give him money, because you trust him, because he must be trustworthy, because he is the champion of good.
Quicksand
@Baud: They stopped selling those pillows and LOOK WHAT HAPPENED!
Martin
@Baud: I got a chuckle out of Overstock buying the BB&B name. These fascist dipshits are all business geniuses I tell you. Waiting for Musk to buy OceanGate Expeditions next.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve heard his pillows suck. I suspect he benefited from the on-line shopping wave, especially during Covid, and got few repeat purchases. His dorky-neighbor persona, before he went full MAGAt in public, probably helped with his marketing
Literal LOL
Baud
@NotMax:
@trollhattan:
🎻🎻🎻
Kay
So my youngest is staying at what was a vacation house but is soon to be my primary residence at a Lake Michigan resort town. He’s working and saving to go to Spain. He told me he wanted to stay and work there in May, which is too late to tell me, because I lend the house to people I like. This week is my assistant and her family. So I gave him the dates he had to find somewhere else to stay and he told me fine- he would camp. He has done much more primitive camping than I have so I thought he would be fine but told him he has to rent a lot in the state park. But just like he didn’t tell me until May he waited to reserve a spot and there are none. So he “found” a spot to pitch his tent and park his (beater) car. But it’s a resort town and the police are not a PITA but they do know they are paid to keep this tidy little town free of long hairs sleeping in tents beside a rusted out Buick LeSabre. So they stopped by his “spot” and talked to him. He said “I explained the situation and they were fine with it”. But they weren’t fine with it because they went to the house to tell my assistant he can’t camp w/out a permit or permission, which is how I found out about it. So she texted him and he’s staying with them- they have an extra bed because one of their own college age kids did not come. He thinks this is an example of how horrible the country is- that he has a job and a car and is still treated like a “undesirable”
Martin
Fulton County is choosing their grand jury today.
Odie Hugh Manatee
“… the scale of the reputational and financial wreckage Trump is leaving in his wake — among his own followers — is staggering.”
After the hell that he, his party and his followers have brought down on our nation, I’m loving every single fucking minute of it. This fucker got half of the country to openly and actively hate the other half. He brought the Republican party out of the Kloset and he has them waving their white man freak flags, loud and proud.
I hope every single person who has sucked his dick has their lives ruined. Fuck’em.
The Moar You Know
FREE MARKET MOTHERFUCKER.
narya
@geg6: That is a great choice! I was secretly rooting for Marcus Samuelsson, but didn’t think there was much chance of that happening. And Milwaukee/Madison is interestingly heartlandy. Brat challenge, beer challenge, dairy challenges (cheese curds, anyone?), maybe a venison challenge (be still my heart). I should see if there are any events I can try to get into!
Ken
@trollhattan: It cries out for a re-write of that scene in The Dark Knight where Lucius Fox is warning off the would-be blackmailer.
Let me get this straight, you think that Walmart, one of the wealthiest and most powerful corporations in the world, is secretly a woke vigilante who cancelled you, and your plan is to fight them?
Jay
@Kay:
here it used to be common in the summer, to throw up a tent in the back yard, for “yard camping” with the kids, sleep overs, out of town guests. And of course, you would throw it up as soon as the good weather hit, and take it down just before the frost. The only damage was a 10 X 12 patch of dead grass.
Now you do it and a neighbor calls the cops out of fear you have the unhoused living there.
Steeplejack
@geg6:
I like Kristen Kish! Saw her on an episode of Simply Ming with Ming Tsai and was struck by her presence.
Sister Golden Bear
@rikyrah: Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.
Aside from Lindell himself, white supremacy is also a group form of toxic narcissism.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
A choice quote from MAGA Dick.
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: Nominated!
The Moar You Know
@Kay: What…what did he think was going to happen? I’m genuinely curious.
Kay
@Jay:
I think the difference in perception is funny. How he thought he “explained” and it was “fine” – one of his aunts refers to him as the “much loved youngest child” (a little sarcastically) and he does always think people will like him and it will be “fine”.
He’s like a Golden Retriever, but with glasses. Friendly. Maybe they didn’t have the heart to tell him to beat it :)
Betty Cracker
@Martin: It’s embarrassing how petty, unimaginative and incompetent our oligarchs are.
FelonyGovt
@rikyrah: Exactly. Trump left so many contractors and other small business people holding the bag for so much money in his prior “career”. THEM I feel sorry for. Not the idiots who saw exactly who he was, and what he believed, and his complete lack of loyalty or ethics, and followed him blindly anyway.
Dangerman
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The fill of his pillows was something like sawdust. I tested it at BBB and said no way.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: What a hassle for him. Kudos to you for doing your Great Lakes thing though! 😊
FelonyGovt
@Baud: We do cancel culture on your ass!
Ruckus
But the scale of the reputational and financial wreckage Trump is leaving in his wake — among his own followers — is staggering.
When you follow shit you get shit all over you.
Unless you were also shit to begin with. Mikie was shit to start with, which is likely why he supported shit.
SFB has the gift of making anyone who supports him or even thinks he’s minimally OK as useless and shitty as he is. Which is 100% useless. And 100% shitty. Such an amazing Shit For Brains…..
Subsole
I do not understand these people.
They could have been anything, and chose to be nothing but a waste of everyone’s time.
Ruckus
@bbleh:
“Everything Trump touches dies.”
There is a process to it
“Everything Trump touches turns to shit. And then dies.”
Subsole
Sick of the whining. Even more sick of the folks acting like I am obliged to indulge that whining.
I mean, guys. You tried to close the book on 250 years of American democracy because you couldn’t bear the thought of living in a world where you can’t look down on us. And you thought folks weren’t gonna bow up on you for that???
What moon of Neptune did they scoop you mutants off of?
hueyplong
The Invisible Hand garroting Mr Pillow is what Reagan used to call the Miracle of the Marketplace.
So it’s all good.
Kent
Trump is the most perfect “mirror-mirror on the wall” that this country ever invented.
All you have to do is hold Trump up to anyone. And what is reflected back is who they REALLY are. And anyone who votes for him in 2024 tells us MUCH more about who THEY are than who he is.
Ruckus
@Martin:
Bet he’s on hold…..
Of course there is no one to answer….
Dangerman
I wonder how many Dixie Chicks albums this asshole has and how many Bud Lights he has in his fridge. Zero? Mike, I have your cancel culture right here (insert grossly inappropriate hand gestures here).
Kent
@Kay: Does “youngest” mean age 18 or age 30?
My own daughter did that same stunt after college while working at ski resorts. She technically didn’t have to, but she fell in with the other ski bum crowd and followed along more for the adventure and community until she very quickly got bored of living in her car in winter.
This scene: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/07/travel/vanlife-skiing-oregon.html
les
@Suzanne:
“There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves. ” Will Rogers
Dorothy A. Winsor
I feel about as sorry for people who send money to Trump as I do for the ones who send money to Nigerian princes.
Subsole
@Dangerman:
Dozens, I’m sure. Right next to his collection of 2 Live Crew albums.
These people have been doing this shit since at least the 80s.
Kayla Rudbek
So I’ve handed in my computer equipment and more contact with the employment law firm (which I think is a reasonably good sign that I have a case if they are starting to chase the ambulance).
I don’t know what to do with the reams of blank printer paper, notepads, and office supplies that were from my ex-employer. Part of me wants to take them over to GreenDrop and then recite the Catholic rites of exorcism in my home office. Part of me is worried that since I haven’t been to Mass since before the pandemic started, that I would be the one on the receiving end of the lightning strike, so to speak.
My right wing dad surprised me by suggesting that I start selling my knitting and taking a break as I’ve been working for a sweatshop for over a decade now. Personally I think that selling my weaving would be more time efficient, but I need more practice to make items that I would be willing to charge money for. Jewelry might be faster too. And of course I’ll be applying like crazy (Lord, give me the confidence of a mediocre white man).
I should go for another walk and then go file with the state for unemployment.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
People who send money to Nigerian princes aren’t motivated by hate.
Delk
But hey, he got to ride on Air Force One.
Kent
I feel more sorry for the victims of the Nigeria scams.
No one by now has any excuse for not knowing who Trump is.
prostratedragon
The social waste really does get to me sometimes. It did not have to be like this.
Soul Rebels Brass Band
JPL
@Kayla Rudbek: Thinking good thoughts about the journey you have ahead of you. Take a walk and please keep us posted.
NotMax
Obligatory?
:)
Kayla Rudbek
@Kay: this is the difference between what Mr. Rudbek and I refer to as “guy planning” for a trip and proper planning for a trip. I have various books by cycling authors where the planning process is “let’s look at the Rand McNally maps” and just going (across the USA, Siberia, Alaska down to South America, Norway, etc). Funny reading but not funny to actually experience.
Jay
https://techpolicy.press/how-musks-twitter-is-jeopardizing-war-crimes-investigations/
HumboldtBlue
@rikyrah:
Yup.
billcinsd
@Dangerman: I have none of either, have I been cancelled?
japa21
@Kay: Interesting story. Still at that point in life where personal responsibility is assumed but isn’t always there.
My favorite town on Lake Michigan is Pentwater. Is this near there?
JoyceH
Okay, here’s a question for the hive mind. My insurance company is flacking pet insurance. Okay, something I’ve been thinking about. But! “Make sure Jazzy, Abby and Liam are covered”. Uh… how does my insurance company know my pets’ names?
Baud
@JoyceH:
Have you put their names online, like on Facebook?
Does your vet sell your info?
Martin
@Kent: I think we underestimate how desperately a lot of young people (my kids included, one of my friends kids) do not want to participate in this capitalist system. They don’t necessarily know where or how to fight it, but they feel compelled to fight it.
I think there is an important lesson for the Democratic Party to activate these voters, and one thing Democrats are still struggling with is pushing back even in the gentlest ways to capitalism. Mean, the simplest way to do that would be for Democrats to openly push for non-market housing, and turn it into the kind of big lift that they did for the IRA. This would directly open up affordable housing and put downward pressure on market housing. The only serious economic problem we’re currently facing is the unaffordabilty of housing due principally to a cartel-like rent-seeking system on top of market scarcity – and housing is a highly inelastic market.
Martin
@Baud: The vets sell the info.
smith
At social media site that has become a fascist front, it may not be so unintended. Hasn’t Elmo also been rigging things so it’s harder to find pro-Ukrainian accounts?
sab
@JoyceH: I’d give a side eye at your vet. Pets don’t have HIPA protection.
Ruckus
@Doug R:
No reasonable person would believe her.
She’s right.
No reasonable person does.
geg6
@narya:
I was a big fan of hers during her season. Watched her Travel Channel show a few times and liked it but haven’t had time to catch up on all the episodes. She’s great and I’m happy. That show is one of my absolute favorites.
Suzanne
@Kay:
So many people are just so optimistic. I don’t get it. Blows my mind.
It’s the project manager in me….. leave time/resources/mental energy for things to not go as planned!
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
My father used to take Forbes magazine. A very long time ago, like in the neighborhood of 45-50 yrs or so they did a story about SFB and how much he was following in his father’s footsteps. They were spot on about who and what he was then and has been every day since. He’s been the same racist POS who acts like he’s a rather wealthy self made man, while the truth is that he has been a piece of shit his entire life.
Ruckus
@bbleh:
Everything trump touches is murdered.
Seems a bit more appropriate.
bbleh
@Ruckus: “Everything Trump touches turns to shit. And then dies.”
“Everything Trump touches turns to shit and makes everyone around sick. And then it dies.”
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
I might even considering shopping at wally world after that.
OK it’s not likely. But still it’s a step forward.
MobiusKlein
@Kayla Rudbek:
Keep the office supplies. If it’s less than $100 of stuff, it’s not worth anybody’s effort to take it back. They have no clue how much paper you actually used.
Jay
@smith:
Hasn’t Elmo also been rigging things so it’s harder to find pro-Ukrainian accounts?
Elmo has, but bot’s have as well.
The bot’s play in a weakness of the algorithms, where if you suddenly lose 1,000 followers, your account becomes “downgraded” in searches and feeds.
So the bots swarm in for a day and “follow”, then a day or two later, unfollow.
NAFO has been dealing with this for quite a while, thus their “Find a Fella, Follow a Fella”, “Follow Back” and mass “Follow Days”.
Depending on user status, you can have up to 5,000 followers, no more., so if your account has 5,000 Fella followers, you are immune to Bot downgrading, where for a new Fella, it’s important to get “boosts”.
Bill Arnold
@smith:
If he has, it’s not obvious. The main effect currently is that Paid bluechecks[1] are seriously boosted, and dominate the algorithmic feed and more inescapably, the replies to tweets with a large number of replies. However, the mechanisms are in place to arbitrarily boost, or the reverse, shadowban, entire classes of accounts. I expect that Musk was planning to put such measures in place several weeks prior to the 2024 election, with AI classification of the political leanings of accounts, maybe even selling this as a service to other political entities including wealthy individual political actors, parties and entire authoritarian countries. Or not; Musk’s whims rule Twitter.
Twitters self-inflicted serious damage is welcome insofar as it neuters increasingly Fascist twitter as a future political tool.
[1] (i use the “8 dollars” browser plugin to tell between verified and simple paid.
ETtheLibrarian
Mike – they cancelled orders because they needed to find an alternative supplier of pillows (except BB&B which went bankrupt) and couldn’t be sure you would still be in business.
Shana
I am not a good person in this regard. Like Larry Nasser getting cut up in prison. My thoughts on both these issues is “fine.”
WaterGirl
@JoyceH: If your insurance company is doing pet insurance as an add-on, I don’t think I would go with them. Look for a company that does pet insurance
edit: Is your vet some sort of national chain?
smith
@Jay: There’s an interesting, if politically impossible, proposal put forward by Hunter at Daily Kos — He argues that social media has become an essential service now that pretty much all information is best accessed online at central sites such as Twitter, especially considering the necessary information people require from government agencies. Therefore, it should be treated as a public utility, like the post office, and either run by, or heavily regulated by, government itself. Otherwise, by leaving it to the whims of whichever crackpot billionaire owns the dominant social media service(s) at the moment, it pretty much guarantees that it will deteriorate to the point of obstruction and uselessness. I would love to see the howls from the mobster-oligarchs if that ever came to pass.
Baud
@smith:
That’s the same theory Texas used to try to prevent social media from enforcing content moderation.
Kay
@Suzanne:
Right. This didn’t work out because I was trying to show him he has to plan and now we bailed him out, well. my assistant did. She now has the Golden Retriever along on her family vaca knocking things over with his wagging tail :)
It’s kind of nice though- she told me more about what police said- they were concerned about him. They thought he was kicked out or was depressed or something – the choosing the tent just didn’t seem credible to them. It’s a tiny little town. They once came to the door because my older son was too far out on the lake ice. They recognized him. Another optimist. He was like on the very edge of booming, cracking ice. I can’t believe people survive teenage to young adulthood. It’s a miracle.
Jay
@smith:
Maybe the USPS can buy Twitter for cheap when Apartheid Clyde is done.
Elizabelle
I am up for any news you jackals find on stories abou this.
Just warn us if we should not have coffee or other beverages in our mouths when we click the link.
smith
@Baud: Yes, you could easily see how it could cut both ways. Given how much ratfucking the TFG administration was able to do to the post office, imagine if they’d been able to control the content of the mails.
Martin
A lot of them don’t. They aren’t around to weigh in the comments section.
Feathers
@Martin: This. Best proposal I’ve heard is taking the shut down malls close in to cities and turn them into Vienna style 6-8 story apartments with daycare, doctors offices, etc on the ground floors. 100% affordable housing needs to be the new motto.
i don’t think the administration realizes what a shitshow it’s going to be if student loan payments start back up without some relief.
geg6
@Shana:
Come sit by me.
gene108
@Kay:
Happens to homeless people all the time. Find a comfy spot, people complain, and they’re forced to move. Jobs or no jobs, it doesn’t matter.
smith
@gene108: And of course, many people without homes do have jobs.
Warblewarble
Question, did tfg tell his cultist cops at LAX “to stand back and stand by”? I am far more concerned that this behaviour by large sections of law enforcement is being normalised without any pushback.
Ohio Mom
@Kayla Rudbek: I’m glad you have an attorney. You deserve to be advocated for.
About everything Trump touches dying: It was back when Trump’s casino went belly-up so I am guessing late 1980s, very early 1990s? My uncle, who owned a small neon sign business in Brooklyn was lamenting all the small guys (like him) who were about to be screwed, and predicted Trump would walk away unscathed, because “that’s how it always works.”
I was still relatively young and while I was vaguely aware of Trump, he hadn’t really registered with me. But my uncle felt so strongly, that made an impression on me.
My uncle died long before Trump took up politics, I think we missed a lot of choice words on that topic.
Alison Rose
@geg6: Ooh, that’s awesome! I don’t have cable or streaming but I used to love that show (even though I wouldn’t eat about 95% of the food they made) and Kristen was my favorite winner.
Brachiator
It is equally crazy that Trump still attracts loyalists. This kind of thing is why Napoleon got exiled to an island far away from any place where he could rally support.
Martin
@Feathers: Oh, that’s happening around me quite a bit – construction under way. Cities are mandated to build housing, and they lack the land to do so.
You need about 275 square feet for a parking space (and the access to it). There is an estimated 6 parking spaces per car in the US. So, one car is taking up about 1650 square feet of land – spread out wherever.
These mixed density developments are 50 units per acre or thereabouts which is about 871 square feet per unit. So, there’s an unavoidable calculation that cities are making here – rip out a bunch of parking (in some cases we’re keeping the mall) that generates no tax revenue and replace it with housing that will generate tax revenue and requires virtually no added services – malls already have significant road access, fire and police coverage, etc. I’m engaged with my city’s planning efforts and their future housing plans involve ripping out a lot of existing low density commercial, moving them to higher density commercial or where appropriate occupying the ground floor of a new mixed-use neighborhood.
I think for most of suburban California, this is the only real path. After that they’ll start permitting multifamily construction on single family lots.
Bex
@japa21: I’ve spent some time in Pentwater and always liked the town. Does Sarah Paretsky still have a place there?
Nukular Biskits
I feel real sorry for Lindell … BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Ohio Mom
@Feathers: There’s a dead mall in a Cincinnati suburb that is being torn down to make way for a mixed use development, which i think means more of those ersatz luxury apartments and chain restaurants.
It won’t have any of the things people need in a neighborhood, like a grocery store, post office, dry cleaners, a place to get your car’s oil changed, and the like — the places you run errands to.
But it will have all big box stores that were built up around the mall, a Lowe’s, Target, Dave and Busters… The residents will have to drive to them though, or risk their lives crossing multiple lanes of traffic.
Brachiator
@Steeplejack:
Very droll!
Maga Dick, or the Great White Failure.
Kay
@gene108:
Oh, yeah. It would not be a welcoming place for homeless.
There’s a very nice state park there with camping- a water view. It’s mostly giant RV’s but they have small wooded sites with platforms for tents that are pretty. I think he would have enjoyed that but he did not reserve so of course they’re full. He knows all this. He has gone there every winter to ski and every summer his whole life.
Tim Curtin
You may have to experience shame to suffer reputational damage.
Brachiator
@smith:
I was going to say that this is ridiculous, for all kinds of reasons. But then I thought, doesn’t the Chinese government run or control one or more of the social media services?
CaseyL
@Feathers: I think Suzanne has weighed in on this, explaining why the idea isn’t as viable as it sounds.
There needs to be massive retrofitting of, among other systems, the plumbing.
Sewage: Mall restrooms tend to be clustered by the food courts, so all the supporting plumbing is there and there only.
Ditto water lines: they likely only go to the food court and restroom area. Maybe there are a few fountains scattered around the mall, but that’s not nearly enough plumbing to support a high-rise apartment building.
HVAC systems would have to be redone, since they’re designed to ventilate large-ish to enormous stores, not dwellings with multiple small rooms.
So, add up all the costs, and it might be better to just tear down the malls and build housing where they stood.
japa21
@Bex: I believe she does. One of my cousins has a home on Lake Michigan and we will go visit occasionally. My grandparents had a house on the lake on the north side, up on a hill. Long walk up and down 107 stairs. They sold it in the middle 60’s. Heartbreak for a lot of us.
smith
@Brachiator: Yes, but I’m sure one of their main motivations is controlling information to limit any that might be damaging to the government. I could see the utility of a limited government-run information clearinghouse that any unit of government anywhere in the country could use to post vital information. We have just seen one of the dangers of leaving this kind of service to the private sector, with many people who are unwilling to sign up for Twitter now unable to access timely information from their local governments.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
His fault for choosing My Pillow.
Ruckus
@Subsole:
It wasn’t a moon of Neptune.
It was a sceptic tank in east nowhere where they gathered and discussed building a world like the wonderful place they lived but with sun.
Martin
@Ohio Mom: I can’t speak for what’s being built there, but the ones here do have those things. One thing my city is also gently looking at is de-zoning those big box stores to shift retailer closer to neighborhoods. My city has one of the urban Targets – it’s considerably smaller than a regular target, but fill the role of a bodega/drug store/CPG store. You aren’t going to get a TV there, but you can get socks and milk and Advil, and so on. There’s minimal parking – it’s almost exclusively a store for walking traffic.
Right now Target is focusing on universities, because those are walkable communities of large enough size to support a Target, but they have some just in medium density neighborhoods.
The problem my city is trying to address is that the large stores undermine the ability to ratchet up density like they know they need to do – because they have to allocate so much space for parking and roads, and it drives traffic, so more roads, and so on. The city has been increasing density of new construction but is now hitting the parking wall – they can’t provide adequate parking in the space they have available, so they’re trying to eliminate the need for it. The challenge is that it’s hard to do it incrementally because you wind up breaking one part of the city while you try to fix another part.
Here the apartments aren’t luxury, they’re starters. They have amenities, but they can afford that because of everything they’ve gotten rid of. Because land value here is so high, putting a 2BR on 500 sq ft of land and charging similar rent to what you used to build on 2000 sq ft of land gives you a lot of margin to work with. And things like gyms that used to be amenities in the housing is now handled by contracting with a gym set up on the first floor. If you look carefully you can see the city reshaping the landscape – my barbershop moved to the ground floor of one of these. The ramen place, an ice cream place, an indy coffee shop, etc.
The shift is that cities can’t really be hands-off doing this kind of stuff. You can’t just delegate everything to everyones personal car to solve. The city needs to do it, and a lot of cities don’t have that culture, at least yet. Mine always did – it was a planned community from the get-go so this is just a different type of planning. Bigger cities are more accustomed to this, and working it down to smaller cities is happening but slowly.
Martin
@CaseyL: Here we’re tearing the mall down completely but the site has good service, so that gets reworked and a new community built on top of it.
SF is exploring redeveloping some of their downtown commercial space into housing and it has similar problems – it requires a lot of infrastructure changes internal to the building. Basically you’re gutting it and redoing it and only holding onto the structural elements.
Ruckus
@Martin:
Not sure that it’s capitalism but abuse of capitalism that is the problem.
In my mind we really do not have actual. proper capitalism in this country. I could be wrong.
What do you suggest?
Kayla Rudbek
@MobiusKlein: it’s more to a) make space in my office b) get rid of bad vibes from ex-employer that I would give this stuff away entirely.
WaterGirl
@Kayla Rudbek: So did you end up resigning as they instructed you to do, or did you force them to fire you?
VOR
Rick Wilson called it – ETTD: Everything Trump Touches Dies.
Bex
@japa21: When we went there we stayed with friends who had a house on the lake north of town. They still have it AFAIK, although a large tree fell on the house in a storm a couple of years ago and the damage was pretty serious. I heard that they were considering selling. The kids were trying to figure out a way to keep it. I never met Ms. Paretsky, but I remember she mentioned Pentwater in one of her books.
Burnspbesq
@Omnes Omnibus:
it doesn’t take much for Dildo of Consequences to be repurposed as a strap-on.
Martin
@Ruckus: Yeah, but capitalism is self-destroying. Its incentive structure leads it to monopoly and the destruction of markets and abuse of labor. That’s why Liberalism was such an important idea – it shackled capitalism to democracy so that the people could through government regulate in the excesses of capitalism and keep it useful to the public. The problem is that democracy isn’t equipped for the task at some point. As capitalism succeeds, it’s better able to buy their way into the democratic process, they can move faster than a democratic government can so efforts to rein them in work more and more poorly because they can just pivot off of the regulation, or fuck it, do it anyway and earn money faster than you can fine them.
This isn’t a new problem – it’s always been in tension, it’s supposed to be in tension – but it does seem that we’ve really hit a point where the attacks on democracy and lack of investment in getting government to move with the kind of agility that corporations can and I personally believe we’ve hit a point that it can no longer be reined in. I mean, we’re right on the cusp of Supreme Court Justice Clarence ‘Taco Bell’ ‘AT&T’ Thomas here. And we really have no answers for that
My suggestion is like I said – non-market rate housing, more employee owned businesses. Not necessarily tear down markets, but put a lot more force behind public owned or employee owned operations.
MattF
@Martin: The urban area I live in, Bethesda MD, has a small-format Target in a nearby mini-mall and it’s quite convenient. There’s an in-store CVS pharmacy where I got most of my COVID shots, lots of household goods, and there’s a Trader Joe’s in the same mini-mall. One of the peculiar things about Bethesda is that there have never been any department stores in the Bethesda urban district, so a small-format Target is ideal.
Jay
Vancouver and the Burb’s are a fairly good example, except for the sky high rents.
All along the Skytrain routes, malls and single family homes are going down and condo’s and towers are going in. All with in walking distance of a station, and each station is a bus loop.
I havn’t driven anywhere in over 2 years.
The 25 story, 260 apartment tower I live in is a mix of owner occupied and rentals, it’s one of two towers and a Safeway, occupying the space a Chevron station and a Safeway used to occupy. We have underground secured parking, storage lockers, two bike rooms, a full gym, a garden with a picnic area, and two social halls, and there is free wifi in the lobby.
There are 7finished tower with in easy walking distance, the older ones are all accomodation, the newer ones all have straeet level up to 2nd floor mixed use. The one kitty corner to us, is 50 stories, and there are 17 more going up in the neighborhood.
Burquitlam Mall, an old single story, semi detached building with massive parking will be going down in the next two or three years, with a mixed use base, 4 towers, above ground parking for people picking up or dropping off at Skytrain, and a public park/rest area.
Where 8 single family homes were, is now a YMCA, a mixed 25 story tower of low income and owner occupied, a mixed use 10 story condo that is being finished, and a 14 story building with still a few floors to go.
Bobby Thomson
One of our furry friends (the one with feline dementia) appears to have gotten out of the house somehow. I hope someone scooped her up, because she won’t make it otherwise.
Baud
@Bobby Thomson:
🤞
Suzanne
@Feathers:
Adaptive reuse of a large shopping mall into residential is not profitable the vast majority of the time. Too much interior square footage, not enough perimeter. The land is valuable, but the building isn’t. Scrape and start over.
WaterGirl
@Bobby Thomson: Oh, no
Maybe she’s hiding somewhere, or sleeping in a closet?
Suzanne
@Jay:
So I’m now allowed to say what I’ve been working on for two years: redevelopment of the Landmark mall site in Alexandria, VA. I’m on the hospital design and planning team. The mall building is going down, whole site being redeveloped. Also working on the sister hospital in Springfield.
zhena gogolia
@Bobby Thomson: Oh, I hope you find her soon!
zhena gogolia
Twitter used to be so much fun.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Was that before they banned Trump?
...now I try to be amused
@Martin:
On another message board I raised the question: What is an economy for? Some posters did the Internet equivalent of looking at me like I had two heads. They took it for granted that the economy was an end in itself, not a means to an end.
If We the People decide something needs to be done and the private sector can’t or won’t do it, we don’t have to just live without it; we can have the government do it. But too many Americans don’t think that way, and the GOP is busy trying to destroy that philosophy of government.
Ruckus
@Martin:
I live in northeastern San Gabriel Valley and there are quite a number of condo complexes where the condos are vertical. 3 stories/3 bedrooms with a garage or a 1 bedroom 2 story flat.
$430K-$630K
The company is building a project across the street from me, and just north of that is a block long 4 row deep project that I believe is sold out. 3 blocks away there is a huge project that is I think 6 or 7 rows of homes, with the likely hood of a bunch more on the back of the property. I think they sell rather quickly. Here’s a link to another project a few blocks away. https://www.trulia.com/builder-community-plan/Flats-Towns-At-Zest-Plan-6-2058999070
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
Gonna start tomoorrow…
Jay
@Suzanne:
Here it’s all built around the Skytrain stations or desired neighborhoods like Austin or Mallardville.
When somebody on Skytrain asks for example, where Metrotown is, you just point to the cluster of towers. I can see Surrey Central from here, and that’s 30km away.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: You know, really, yeah!
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
He’s the life of the party!
Ohio Mom
@Martin: You know what Mark Twain supposedly said about my my town: “If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes there ten years later.”
There are supposedly some affordable new apartments slated to be part of some upcoming downtown development.
Everywhere else, there are tons of new apartment buildings where the rent is calculated at one-third of the area median income, divided by twelve. It doesn’t take a mathematician to see that immediately makes the apartments too expensive for half of the population; the top half has many more options, including ownership. I don’t understand this math but then again, I’m not a developer.
Cincinnati does have an urban Target, just where you predicted, across the street from the University of Cincinnati. With its narrow aisles, it feels like the neighborhood stores of my NYC childhood.
Baud
Via Mastodon, for BC
Suzanne
@Jay: This development is going vertical, too. The hospital is ten floors and much of the site is being turned into residential and office towers. Similar development patterns can be seen in much of the country.
I just hear a lot of comments about converting different kinds of buildings into housing, and that’s just not feasible or desirable much of the time. But the land can often be reused effectively.
Maxim
@Bobby Thomson: I hope you find her.
SFBayAreaGal
@rikyrah: BINGO
The Moar You Know
@Kay: and yet almost all of them do. It does seem like childhood diseases are the real problem there, although looking back at my boyhood and adolescence I simply have to conclude “wouldn’t have bet money that idiot would make it to fifty” and yet, here I am. As are most of my age cohort, who weren’t any smarter.
Suzanne
@Ohio Mom:
If they were to build in this manner but in sufficient quantity, rent of the existing apartment stock would lower in price and serve the less wealthy half of the population. This used to work, but we haven’t been building enough for a long time and now the market is all fucked.
twbrandt
@zhena gogolia: yes it was, 10 or so years ago.
CaseyL
@Bobby Thomson: Oh, no! I hope she comes home, or someone finds her and brings her home.
Jeffro
hey, they can’t say they weren’t warned, by everyone from the email lady on down to the lowliest of the dirty hippies: #ETTD
Jay
@Ruckus:
here, everything is presold. The developer sets up a sales center with mock ups of what will be built. The “owner” puts down a small deposit, ($15 to $35K) which is held in a trust, earning interest until it’s ready for occupancy, which can take depending on the build, up to 7 years.
Once the occupancy permit has been issued, the “owner” has 30 days to complete the sale.
It’s actually a problem here. For a small chunk of money in deposit, one can lock up a $450k apartment, that based on current increases, is worth $750k on the market when it’s ready for move in.
If you can list and get a sale inside of the 30 day time frame, (and you can) that’s $300k profit plus your deposit plus interest.
Kay
@lowtechcyclist:
No, he has to go – it’s study abroad and he’s registered in Spain and not Michigan. He leaves on 9/26. But he will either be broke in Spain or not so broke – up to him :)
His gf is going to Scotland
MomSense
I was just watching the Judge’s instructions to the Fulton County Grand Jury. I really want Fani Willis to nail the mandarin menace.
Ohio Mom
@Suzanne: Here is a question for you. All of the older hospitals here have been added on to, and added on to, there are so many wings and navigating them is often a nightmare for the average person who is just looking for the lab or wherever else they have an order to go to, or they are just stopping by for a few days in a row to visit their family member the patient.
Do you design new hospitals with an eye for all the inevitable wings that will added in the future?
Suzanne
@Ohio Mom:
Yes, always. Every large project I have worked on has at least some design work done on subsequent phases.
Many existing hospitals, especially in urban areas, are somewhere around a hundred years old. There are many, many reasons that expansions get difficult and confusing, when you are working with building stock of that age.
My former firm was one of the partners on the “new” Parkland county hospital in Dallas (in quotes because it’s been open for a few years now). They got to build a whole new hospital on the site across the street from the existing hospital and then demo most of the old one. We don’t get to do that too often.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:I am not sure exactly where he is or what he is doing but, there are ways. #1 is don’t stay in one place for more than one night. Maybe 2. Anything more than one night costs money. Or a night in jail. And an impound fee.
smith
In other justice (or “justice”) news, DOJ has finally decided that TFG was not acting within his presidential duties when he defamed E. Jean Carroll while president.
lowtechcyclist
@Kayla Rudbek:
Ha! In my marriage, I’m the one with trip-packing lists on my computer for all our recurring destinations and setting aside items a week ahead of time, while my wife’s the one throwing things together the night before.
Right now, I’m starting to plan my first serious bike trip in years – I’m going to do DC to Pittsburgh via the C&O Towpath and the Great Allegheny Passage trail. In 2025.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
That’s the uphill direction, right? That’ll be strenuous.
Mai Naem mobileI
I am guessing Lindell is trying to declare bankruptcy to get out of what will probably be a loss in the Dominion lawsuit. He’s probably going to then try to pull an Alex Jones and have the same results.
Ruckus
@Martin:
That’s what I thought you meant. And I agree. Capitalism is OK but like most everything else in humanity there need to be some controls or some humans will take massive advantage. Which is of course what we have going on in this country.
Subsole
@Ruckus: Funny enough, I was thinking of this on the drive home from clinic today.
I have only ever known capitalism. I cannot advocate a different system because I frankly cannot wrap my head around how it would work and…well. Let us say the real-world implementation record has been a touch mixed.
On the other hand, what we have now is so thoroughly divorced from my conception of good business that I cannot in faith call it business.
This paradigm where some glibertarian Great Value Gordon Gekko comes in, takes a perfectly viable business, breaks it, then strips it for parts, gets paid enough money to not need to work again, then breezes on to the next business without any consequence is not business. These people are not executives, they are vandals. The product is garbage. The culture is garbage. And it is rotting everything it touches.
I cannot imagine getting rid of capitalism, but I am certainly fed up enough with these heaving little shits and the blithely self-satisfied havoc they wreak that I am willing to entertain some fairly drastic correctives.
And I ain’t young anymore.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
Oh, he’s at the house now. Michelle is a really good person and she has three boys – she likes boys. She fed him too. She was also my assistant when I was pregnant w/him so she has known him his whole life. Her husband is a cop though and a Right winger and my son is a Lefty so that should be an interesting mix. He’s working a lot the next 6 days so hopefully he can steer clear of touchy subjects, like how police should be defunded :)
Subsole
@Bobby Thomson:
Crap. Hope she comes back safe.
JWR
A few weeks ago I mentioned that I’d just seen a MeinPillow ad, (on CBS @5:45PM), and that one ad was the last. I guess he’d already budgeted for it, but since he’s been known for chasing rabbits down holes with his $$$, who knows?
Ohio Mom
@Subsole: A turning point was when we threw out the idea that a business has a range of groups of stakeholders to which it is responsible, to which it needs to do good by — its customers, surrounding community, suppliers, workers, management and owners — and declared its only obligation was to the shareholders’ financial gain. Looking at you, Milton Friedman.
Subsole
@Suzanne:
I really love that building. It looks like skyscrapers stacked atop one another. Very interesting design. And a very nice interior. Y’all did good work.
Gin & Tonic
@lowtechcyclist:
Isn’t it better (i.e. downhill) to go the other way?
Eric S.
@Baud: I am visiting LA and staying on Hollywood Blvd. There are dozens – hundreds – of unhoused people that could use a pillow.
Subsole
@Ohio Mom:
Yes! I mean, good God, can we just expand the concept of fiduciary responsibility to cover the people who are making the product, the people selling the product, and the people buying the product??
This current system is just abject lunacy. It feels like an economy made entirely and exclusively of sundry slimebags running pyramid-hustles on each other because they literally do not know how to contribute anything else.
And it is everywhere. Look at Andrew Tate, since he’s been in the news. Thirty years ago, when I was coming up, nobody’s listening to that guy, because he’d be dead or in jail before he hit 30. He’s a jerkoff. But now? He’s a twisted sort of super-successful life coach selling laziness and excuses and wish-fulfillment to desperate kids. It’s all of a piece with conservatism today: people wanting all the privilege and none of the duties.
I can’t agree with the kids Martin is talking about who want to ditch capitalism, for various reasons, but God I do see where they get tempted. These people keep jabbering about the free market. But markets have rules. This is just getting lectured by pious frauds who want us to thank them for picking our pockets. Nobody got time for that.
Brachiator
@smith:
Government agencies regularly post information online. Twitter threads often include links to these sites.
Twitter is not universal, exclusive or unique. Millions of people get news from other sources.
Suzanne
@Subsole: Thank you! I have no part of the exterior, other than to figure out the interior and then tell the exterior team to move their walls to fit. ;) Those renders are old…. there are newer, better ones that I don’t think are public yet. Both projects will be very nice.
Here’s more about the whole mall redevelopment. The hospital is just a part of the whole project. There will be residential on the site, but it will be high-end, not affordable.
Edmund dantes
@FelonyGovt: one of them contractor ones was quoted as being ripped off by Trump but still voting for him. Lol
Jay
@Brachiator:
here, other than the Federal disaster warning alerts, everything from a Code Adam to police Shelter In Place orders currently goes out on Twitter, and everybody from Transit to the RCMP are scrambling.
Given what the Melon Husk has done, it’s probably going to all migrate to the Federal System sort of.
Tony G
@J.: A lot of members of the Trump cult are Evangelical Christians. Giving money to obvious liars and grifters are their culture and their theology.
Edmund dantes
@Suzanne: oh god. Biggest difference between my wife and I. She always wants to leave at a time where if everything went perfectly we’d still be flirting with disaster to get to places on time. Particularly for things like the airport during holiday travel season.
Edmund dantes
@Kay: survivorship bias. We only see the ones that do survive.
Subsole
@Suzanne: Thanks for the link! It’s fascinating. So much of what we are discussing here in this thread kind of reminds me of old Roman insulae. Apartment buildings, essentially, with a shaded ground floor dedicated to business plus 8 or so floors of residences. (And the desperately poor living in the attic…).
This project really looks interesting.
Kayla Rudbek
@WaterGirl: I made them fire me, which weirdly enough I think will work out better for me in the long run.
Mike in NC
@Suzanne: We loved the old Landmark Mall and shopped there all the time. Lived about 5 miles away until 2007. We bought a pair of Honda CR-Vs at Landmark Honda in 2004 and my wife kept hers until just last year.
Gvg
@JoyceH: why don’t you ask them directly and see what they say?
Could be informative.
Ruckus
@Jay:
I don’t drive other than to go to the grocery store or Target for stuff they sell cheaper. And that is almost not enough cheaper to bother, what with gas at $4.50 minimum and up to $5.20/gal. We have an all electric transit train system here in LA county and they just finished building 3 new stations and thereby tying the 2 longest lines together at 4 stations. I travel most of the way across LA county semi regularly and now I make one train change by getting off one train and waiting for 5 minutes on the platform and getting on the next train. Easy peasy. Takes at least 20 minutes out of the prior trip where I had to ride the subway in between trains.
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: You are so right.
BellyCat
I only feel sorry for the solitary FTFNYT subscriber/Trump supporter who wanted to see their name in print after being interviewed in an Ohio diner by a FTFNYT reporter.
The rest of the Trump voters and current supporters can go fuck themselves (including one of my previous best friends).
raven
@WaterGirl: We use Embrace and have for years. If you are a USAA member you get a discount
Here’s a site that does reviews, we did one and they were very careful to check that we were legit.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Anyone crazy enough to support SFB is not going to all of a sudden wise up or even wake up. Because it’s so dark and skank where they have parked what passes for their brains that if they feel that’s a good enough place, they aren’t all going to all of a sudden change their tiny minds. I’d bet there just isn’t enough oxygen up there to allow even those tiny minds to function.
Miss Bianca
@Kent: So, if I recoil howling with horror from the Trump in the Mirror…?
Martin
@Ruckus: I’m curious when we’re going to start seeing groundbreaking for all of these housing plans that our cities have had to get approved. New starts isn’t exactly on fire right now, but I did think it was hopeful that CA has more multifamily starts than single family. The 16,000 units we’re building next are all multifamily.
Suzanne
@Mike in NC: I’m sorry that the mall is gone! Apparently they filmed a scene in “Wonder Woman” there. I have not seen it, but I am told.
I’m not working on any of the non-healthcare projects on the site, but I hope you’ll like the whole new development when it is complete. In like seven years.
Martin
@Ruckus: Well, *markets* are okay, but capitalism isn’t a necessary component of having a market. You build employee owned, democratically managed businesses and you effectively get the benefits of unions baked in, and the profits go back to the workers to decide what to do with.
Now, that doesn’t necessarily eliminate the motive toward monopoly, but it does eliminate the ‘shareholders demand you lay off 6% of workers so we can take more profit’ even though you might need those workers for the long term expansion of the business. There are other systems to raise capital.
Ruckus
@Subsole:
As I somewhat stated above your comment, it is control of capitalism that is the major problem. Unfettered capitalism is the problem. Humans need controls or a segment of us will always take advantage of any system. We need laws for the same reason, like speeding. It doesn’t work if some are trying to go 100mph and some are trying to go 55mph, the difference is too much. People having too much money while others have not nearly enough will always be a problem but the edges can be controlled which will help the majority far more than it will “hurt” the overly wealthy.
Martin
@Suzanne: We’ve got a new 800K square foot hospital going up in my city. When we moved here 25 years ago there was one hospital that was a bit outdated, built when the city first went in 50 years ago. We’ve added/started 3 major hospitals in the last 10 years, plus the purchase and renovation of the old one.
The city is expecting to add another 100K residents so I guess this is all warranted. Feels pretty famine to feast.
BellyCat
@Ohio Mom: An architect friend worked on the Trump NJ casino project. Told tales of dozens of contractors stiffed by Trump, having to settle in court for pennies on the dollar IF they could afford to fight back. Have seen no evidence since which contradicts his well-known behavior from the early 90’s.
Ruckus
@Martin:
As I say in comment 196, the real problem with most systems is that someone will be able to “work” the system to their advantage and in doing so screw a significant part of the whole, if controls and limits are not in place. Capitalism is one of those. In this country those controls are at best not working very well. Or at all.
Martin
@Ohio Mom: St Joseph Hospital here in OC is like that. It’s this non-euclidean space that must fold back on itself. You can see where they’ve been tacking onto it over and over but it’s utterly unnavigable. There’s probably a transdimensional portal in there to your hospital.
Suzanne
@Martin: A firm I worked for did a few of those hospitals you’re talking about. :)
Most hospitals start as small community hospitals and then get expanded over time as the community grows and the hospital specializes….a new patient tower here, a new surgery building there. Total ground-up new builds are super-fun to work on, but I probably won’t get to do too many.
catclub
@smith:
 
Ummmm, isn’t that what government websites are for?
catclub
@Martin:
Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, NC
Martin
@Subsole: The simplest change is to focus on the primary element of capitalism – where the company is owned by outside investors who more or less tell the company what to do. You simply swap that part out and keep everything else. Instead of shareholders you have public or private financing (like you might with a non-profit or a private corporation) and instead of the shareholders calling the shots the workers do – under any of a number of approaches. But you keep everything else – you keep markets, and brands, and franchises, and you wouldn’t know the difference. Quite a few US businesses already operate this way. Publix is employee owned. My son’s company is employee owned. All law firms are like this. The relationship between workers and management can be all over the place – as dystopian as anything you see now (law firms can be like this), or something fairly democratic. My son’s company is pretty small and workers have a decent say in matters.
Republicans would have you think anything not capitalist is a central planning state capitalistic Soviet economy. No. You can make some changes that are generally invisible to the public and get some pretty good progress, particularly on the income inequality sense. Most of my money that allowed me to retire came as being a shareholder. Made more money basically doing nothing toward what the company was doing as a shareholder than I did as an 8-5 employee for 27 years. That’s fucked up.
catclub
@Edmund dantes: While you want to leave an hour early in case there might be a problem, and then are ready another 45 minutes before that, so you leave an hour and 40 minutes early.
And there is a problem once every hundred times. or less.
My experience is: vote for your wife’s approach.
Martin
@Suzanne: Yeah, the student center at the uni where I worked first went in when I was about 10 (remember visiting when it was under construction). That was phase 1. Phase 4 was completed about 5 years before I retired, mostly based on the plans laid down in the 70s, with some non-trivial structural changes due to new earthquake codes. I was impressed with how well considered the whole effort was by the original architects that 40 years later the 4th iteration of the building was largely recognizable from the original plans.
Martin
@Suzanne: My former employer just put up a brand new hospital and is now building another – both clean slate. They one already done is really nice. The new one looks like it will be as well.
One notable thing about my city is there are VERY few old people. Like 8% of the city is 65 or older – it’s kind of weird. I have to imagine that influences the design of these hospitals because the kind of patients wouldn’t be the typical mix you’d expect in a hospital. It’s maternity, NICU, elective surgery, etc.
Suzanne
@Martin: Is it Kaiser? My former firm did a ton of work for Kaiser over decades.
Yes, demographics matters a lot. Women’s and newborns, oncology, cardiac, neuro, trauma level one, ortho….. all of those departments need specific populations within the catchment area. They attract doctors with money, but also amenities and cool equipment. All of which take money.
BellyCat
You ARE serious about planning! ;-P
Ohio Mom
@BellyCat: To which my uncle would say, There but by the grace of God, go I. I am sure he had his share of deadbeat customers but not on the scale Trump presents.
When Trump first announced his candidacy, there was an effort to publicize the small guys who got ripped off by Trump. I remember one of them sold pianos and apparently there were lots of pianos in various spots in the casino. He thought this sale was going to set him up for the rest of his life, instead he was forced into bankruptcy.
But that effort didn’t go anywhere, it did not resonate with enough people.
Kayla Rudbek
@lowtechcyclist: we have done the Pittsburgh-Cumberland once (before the trail was entirely complete) and the C&O a few times, but always from Cumberland back to DC, so going downhill most of the way. We did this on a tandem bicycle on a gravel/dirt surface (and the C&O eats tires up like crazy).
One time we were doing it as a camping trip, could not get any sort of hotel room in Shepardstowne, WV, and so that was how I wound up at my in-laws’ house with ticks on my head from all the primitive camping.
Ironcity
@Mike in NC: Landmark Honda is Rosenthal by another name and I wouldn’t but rollerskates from them. But you got a Honda that they couldn’t mess up except by ripping you off for service. The old Oakwood apartments across Duke seems to have gone condo? My first DC residence, then Hamlets that is now being plowed under and redeveloped. Hang around long enough and see what happens, Virginia even does away with “Lee Jackson King Day”
Chris T.
@MattF:
I think you were expected to go to Montgomery Mall (which is what we did back in the early 1970s).
Martin
@Suzanne: There is a new Kaiser facility near me. It’s a bit of a standard design as there’s another new Kaiser facility a bit away with very similar design with these triangular wings. My daughter got appendicitis and was transferred from my local Kaiser hospital to this other one that had a pediatric unit, and the buildings seemed practically identical.
louc
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Olivia Nuzzi, political reporter for New York Magazine, did an absolutely hilarious review of My Pillow.
No One You Know
@Martin: Mush buying Oceangate. I snorted coffee through my nose. Then thought about his mythical submarine. Now I’m wondering who I have six degrees to, to push this along… which likely makes me a bad person. 🤔