Holy crap. The links from these couple posts incline me to believe the guy's fallen into "safe to ignore for the rest of his life" territory, whatever decent work he may have done earlier.
I don't get what's with folks getting stuff related to covid very wrong—which is fine! Practically everyone was wrong about it at one point or another!—but then doubling down on their position when it's crystal clear they were wrong, instead of owning up to it and moving on. They do it to the point of completely wrecking their reputations and making having-been-wrong-about-covid-but-being-in-denial their entire public persona, as in this case. Why? Why do that?
The bit where he was insulting the appearance of a grad student, at length, in a goddamn peer reviewed paper—I mean, damn dude, how do you not realize you're fucking up when you start heading down that path? What must be going wrong with someone for them to look back at that writing and go, "yep, nailed it, time to submit, this is definitely gonna convince people"?
Yeah it's all good intentions and PR talk until you see how the lawyers respond after an incident. IMHO Uber incident shows that it is extremely unlikely for any human to face criminal charges after a deadly incident with self driving car.
Uber was still reachable by authorities, and did show up in court.
All I am saying is that self-driving companies aren't going to pull off a hit-and-run and dodge the fact that an accident did happen. So one doesn't really need to worry about how a self-driving car deals with the note-on-windshield part. More than likely their HQ would be aware of the accident remotely and have legal responsibility to call 911 immediately if necessary. And in the event that a car's algorithm pulled off a hit-and-run on minor property damage, the company would still be easily reachable by authorities and respond to a court summons.
That's kinda unfair though. She was jaywalking in the dark far from any crosswalk on a main street. On average 16 pedestrians are killed every day in the United States. While the car could have done better, it's not really clear that she would have survived if the car was driven by a human.
> Further, the report says that as long as Vasquez met the minimum visual acuity for a driver's license under Arizona law, and with the lighting conditions at the scene, she "could have seen and recognized that a person was walking across the road from a distance of 1700 feet away with or without the Volvo’s headlights."
As long as we're correcting this story, note also that "far from any crosswalk" is also completely bogus. The place where the woman was trying to cross is where a paved path leads from a beach, and then just suddenly ends at this road. The only reason it was illegal to cross the road here is because they put up a sign. In the absence of the sign, every architectural feature of this landscape would lead a reasonable person to believe they could be here.
Arizona has quite a few of these no pedestrian crossing signs, combined with the extreme length between intersections/legal crosswalks, it is very hostile to humans.
It's pretty abhorrent that jaywalking is even considered a factor in the eyes of the law. What if you were senile or a child or blind or mentally unwell or intoxicated or running on little sleep, and just took a stumble onto the road? Suddenly your slaughter doesn't matter because you weren't walking on some white paint at the time? I think this needs to be changed.
Air conditioning is not as common in New England (where the author is located) as it is in the rest of the country. I would say about a third of projects I worked on in the Northeast did not have air conditioning, and I was working on pretty expensive houses.
Insulation/air-sealing can get you pretty comfortable in New Hampshire.
Yes, first time I visited somebody who constructed a well-insulated, air-sealed house with high quality windows, I noticed the owner routinely slid the window open partially in the winter to allow excess heat to escape temporarily. I think this is common in well-constructed New England homes.
There's a once-a-summer, or really more of a once-every-few-summers level heat wave rolling through the northeast right now...not something I'd necessarily take into account when buying a house. I grew up in very old unairconditioned house in inland New England, where I don't believe I knew anybody in the 90s/early 2000s who had central a/c, even in a fairly affluent area. From what I've read the models don't expect the region to face major summer heat effects from climate change.
When it's in the high 50s/low 60s evey night, and you have some thoughtful design so the house can be ventilated well with just the windows, the cool night air sticks around well into the next day, a cold shower or a little portable a/c unit can get you through the handful of hot nights each summer.
I live in NYC now, where a/c is necessary most nights in July and August, and find it kind of funny to see New Yorkers buying summer houses in my hometown and immediately spending thousands retrofitting central air. For me one of the great pleasures of going home to visit my family is sleeping with the windows open to the chilly night air!
It doesn't have to be a lot of work, just paying attention to what you like and dislike in your current home, friend's homes, etc. is most of the battle.
Like, if I asked you what restaurants you like to go to and what some of your favorite meals are you would probably have an answer. If I gave you the choice between two drinks, you could probably pick one over the other (or neither, or both) with some confidence.
In the same way, try to develop opinions about where and how you live.
Ya, you won't find it in commodity construction, but just in case anyone is looking for real linoleum a currently available brand is 'Marmoleum'. It's nice stuff, I've used it on two projects but it's not every client's favorite. By the time a client is looking at sheet flooring it's usually due to cost pressure, and the client ends up going with a vinyl product.
I thought I had notes on a second brand that was more commercially oriented (maybe started with an 'R'?) but I can't remember the name at the moment.
As someone who works in residential construction, this is one of the better looks at what a 'good' process looks like from the homeowner side of the equation. The only places where my advice would differ:
- They finished the floors instead of having a subcontractor do it. Everyone's comfort for various home improvements tasks differs, but this is one that I typically see farmed out. The people who do it everyday are very fast and competent - as a first timer it's hard to avoid making mistakes. I also advise people to avoid floor stains. One advantage to a real wood floor is it's easy to repair and refinish in the future, but this gets a lot harder when you start needing to stain match. Floor stain also kind of violates the tenants of 'honest materials' that the author discusses.
- To build on their point about veneer plaster walls, cost really comes down to subcontractor comfort with that detail. It's only 'slightly more expensive' if you have a contractor that does it all the time. If you live in an area with a lot of plaster homes, you'll have more luck finding someone who can do this work affordably. For example, I once had an architect specify a particular plaster finish ('venetian plaster') where we could not find someone comfortable doing the work within a two hour drive.
- They discuss the slow drying of the floor finish they used as a negative (true). A good place to use slow-drying finishing techniques is the exterior, as you can leave it alone for a lot longer as compared to a floor you want to walk on immediately. For example, pine tar exterior finishing materials take weeks to dry, but you don't NEED to touch the siding during that period.
- In the second part they show a north and south elevation of the finished home. The north elevation really doesn't reflect the historic character they succeeded so hard to emulate and/or build from in other aspects of their home. Comparing these two elevations is very instructive.
I hope their next published section addresses energy efficiency and adjacent topics (like window selection). It's a huge part of building a modern home that doesn't always get the attention it should. I did appreciate the time spent discussing air flow in part 2.
Building on their reading list, if you like older/vernacular homes start with:
"House" by Tracy Kidder
"A Field Guide to American Houses" by Virginia Savage McAlester
"American Shelter" by Lester Walker
"The American House" by Mary Mix Foley
And maybe move on to:
"A Concise History of American Architecture" by Leland Roth
"American Vernacular: Buildings and Interiors, 1870-1960" by Herbert Gottfried
"Norwegian Wood: The Thoughtful Architecture of Wenche Selmer" by Elisabeth Tostrup
"Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn" by Thomas Hubka
And then maybe:
"The Well-Built House" by Jim Locke
"The colonial House Then and Now" by Francis Underwood
In addition to reading books, I would recommend buying a laser distance sensor (I like the first generation Zamo) to explore dimensions in spaces around you, and reading other people's construction and design documentation, generally available through your local government. This shows what details are typically used in your local area, where they are used, and also provides architects comments as to what purpose they serve with respect to the local environment and seasons.
Yes, good choice. I didn't include it mostly because I find that Norm's compromises on a few design elements/material selections may guide someone in the 'wrong' direction - but that's a huge value judgement on a book that is a quarter century old.
Another book he was involved with is "This Old House" (technically by Bob Vila I think) which is also good, but suffers again from the march of time. There are just certain things they show that wouldn't be done the same way today.
That is a good point about subcontractors, many times they end up being cheaper in the long run because they do it right (hopefully). When we were renovating my home I oftentimed worked with the contractors and asked questions. Hopefully it didn't annoy them too much, but it is a great way to learn from a professional!
If you're handy, working with contractors can also be a good way to ensure you get the result you want. It avoids the need to either be very detailed up front, which could easily come across as condescending, or having them re-do any work that wasn't as desired.
I've hired out a few jobs on my house, and in all cases felt like "helping out" was the right move. For example we had a fireplace installed; if I hadn't been there during the process it would've been much harder to clean our chimney. Have also gotten jobs done more quickly, made connections with recommended trades people, learned about local suppliers, etc.
Pre-existing requirements for the seasonal storage of manure on dairy farms (primarily because you aren't supposed to spread manure in the winter) means that many dairy farms already have large manure storage lagoons/tanks. These are adapted into digestate storage tanks when the system is installed, although the additional food waste volume can result in additional storage volumes being required. What is nice about some of the manure storage tanks is that you can sometimes just add a 'ring' onto them to increase storage volume.
the digestate is then spread on farm fields using similar methods/equipment used to previously spread manure.
I worked for an entity that eventually got rolled into the subject of the NPR article.
We looked into compression/cleaning for biogas, but both the capital requirement and ongoing operational cost was too high for the gas volume produced by the farm.
I linked to the response sections instead of the paper because the paper is boring.