Anecdotal, but I grew up in the heyday of malls and my local mall was one of the largest, and is now one of the most famous dead malls. The mall was in decline when Amazon was still in its infancy, mostly still selling books. Buying clothes online was considered lunacy at the time because there was no fitting rooms to try things on. Still, vacancy was on the rise in the mall and once a few violent crimes started happening inside that was all she wrote. "Big Box" stores like Walmart became more of a draw than driving all the way to the mall.
I think the reasons for the death of the mall are more complex, just like the death of the department store. There were lots of weird tax incentives, both for developers, and for (mostly white) residents fleeing the urban core during the 90s. Those were not sustainable. Malls themselves were a bit of a private equity shell game which couldn't last. The story of dead malls is more about capitalism and land use policy than just Amazon.
I'll never forget Forest Fair Mall in those first years though. It's 1.5 MILLION square feet, and it was absolutely packed, especially during Christmas. Humongous fountains, sand sculptures, live music... every single spot of its airfield-like parking lot was full. The only thing today that I think comes close, if younger people want the experience, is the main concourse of a top ten airport.
That sucks to hear, at one point I was really hoping it would become a viable yt alternative. Not that I ever expected their cryptocurrency to "moon" but it was at least an interesting idea to compensate people for seeding video.
I guess I can go to Rural King but honestly I doubt they're better, but least-harm I suppose. When you live where I do you pretty much can't avoid patronizing businesses like this, unless you can hear through the grapevine about some guy who's selling whatever and is a fan of John Brown. We're out here but we're outnumbered and underground.
When I was a child in the 90s I somehow scored a voice role in a hotdog commercial for the radio. I was paid a king's ransom for this, half of which my parents made me put in savings (wise), and half of which I spent on a brand new Sega CD (not wise).
The magic of postage stamp-sized full motion video took about three days to wear off, at which point all that was left was basically pure shit. They jacked me. At least I learned that lesson early.
The article doesn't really do Tim justice. He's a bodger who is basically a genius for what I can only describe as Goblin technology. His projects are as much about fun and experimenting as having a result. In the first windmill video he acknowledged that he could just buy a small electric windmill, but that's not the point.
I mean, this is the dude who made a narrow gauge railroad and a compressed air locomotive to transport wood to his terrifying biochar chopper and crucible.
Yep, old shirts came out of the wash looking like a fucking Calabi-Yau manifold, even casual wear.
Every time I've gone to a beautiful place, (Kauai/Virgin Islands/Moab etc) I've run into former insurance salesman types who just said fuck it, and stayed, and now live in an old school bus and fix outboards or whatever. Often it was precipitated by a big life event like a divorce or a child leaving the nest but sometimes they just bounced. I get it.
It'll be a common law marriage when it comes to sharing debt and calculating income for denying SNAP, single when it comes to hospital visitation rights and bereavement.
Thank you. It's a new construction and the builder seems to generally pick really good subs, and I'm pretty sure whoever installed it did the entire house, so they should be familiar with it. I'll give them a call.
Can I pester you with a question? Feel free to tell me to get bent because I know your time is worth money and this is just the internet. We have a new Trane system that was flawless when it was first put in, but over the past five months the blower has started making louder and louder vibration noises. Almost like it's slightly off balance. If it was an older system I wouldn't think twice, but it was dead quiet at first, just the sound of moving air pretty much.
Part of me wants to open up the cabinet and just see if there's some sort of vibration pad that's gotten loose, but I also don't want to to void a warranty, or something. It seems so trivial a thing. We live in the boonies and a service call is pretty onerous for a tech. I thought maybe there could be balancing weights, like a car wheel or a lawnmower blade, but your comment about motors being sealed is making me think twice.
I paint. I sold through a gallery for awhile but it just wasn't worth it when I could make ten times more for far less work doing my original job, so now it's back to just for fun. Also I hate painting portraits of rich people but if you don't do that it's really hard to make money. I also hated the mandatory social media removed. Engaging in that ecosystem disgusts me.
Same thing happened with "VitaminWater", a product in the category of "enhanced water" (a term reminiscent of "enhanced interrogation technique"). Coca-Cola argued that, despite the name, no reasonable person would believe it's actually healthy. They settled.
I think some people want to find morels so bad they get a sort of "buck fever" and convince themselves they've found one. That's all I can imagine because to my eyes they would be hard to mix up. Same with chanterelle and false chanterelle. Like... sure, I guess if you are profoundly incautious.
Condolences for your dad. 42 here, my dad is showing his age majorly now.
Looking back I know I lived every single hour but huge leaps of time are just gone. Like, entire jobs I worked for years I have maybe a half dozen memories. On top of that our work product is gone, the company is gone, the building is gone, the entire industry is changed... it's like it was all a dream. I definitely understand the old man looking at a city and saying, "this was all orchards". I used to think it was a wistful phrase, but it's also an expression of disbelief. When we were embedded it all seemed so important. But it all shuffled off with zero fanfare. It really changes how you experience life, and that's how I "feel old".
You're right. I used to be "no mow" when I lived in the city and the burbs, but now that I have a rural acreage, I've realized that you have to use every trick in the book to even have a chance against invasives.
Tomorrow I'm renting a brush mower to take out an acre of 8 foot tall Himalayan blackberry that's completely choked out a meadow. It's flowered, but hasn't set fruit, so I need to get it now. I'll have to follow that up with herbicide application in late summer because it has vigorous root energy storage. That'll be year one of at least three years of restoration. This is on top of wineberry, tree of heaven, stilt grass, japanese honeysuckle, and autumn olive. It physically blocks animals, consumes all the sunlight, and none of this shit supports native lepidoptera so it totally fucks up the food chain.
I wish I could just let it be and it would be fine, but that ship sailed a hundred years ago. The upside is in areas where there's been active remediation the forest looks fucking fantastic.
It's from the days when records were a lot harder to track down and someone could just die or disappear. After a certain amount of time the state just has to just call it or else the land's ownership is locked up forever. That's why the term of adverse possession is generally lower in the Western "frontier" states than the Eastern states, it was a lot more perilous to stake a claim there and there was a lot of turnover, with poor records. People have successfully adversely possessed abandoned houses in places like Vegas though, and more power to them.
It should be noted that trashing a house, setting fires, shitting in the corner, and inviting 30 of your friends to join you isn't the way this is done. You have to "openly and notoriously" occupy the property, which basically means presenting yourself as the owner. So you live there, keep the place up, and most importantly pay the property taxes. Basically present yourself in such a way that everyone thinks you are the owner.
I have a similar experience but I was driving a cargo van around delivering boxes of office paper. Didn't even have a cellphone in those days, just a big list of deliveries and a map. I delivered to all kinds of cool places and learned a ton about the city.
I imagine that job is totally fucked up now. Twice as many deliveries on half the time, eye tracking cameras, and the driver is responsible for paying for gas and maintenance. But man, for that one summer in 2001 it was glorious.
I really like misr wat. If you can find the berbere spice mix and red lentils I highly recommend it.
Between deer pressure and Lymantria dispar I'm worried my woods will never see a mature oak again after the current over story dies out.