Vanderleuen has a series of The Japanese: Nuked too much, or not nuked enough? This should be an entry.
I imagine that Japanese cats would have a field day scampering around those tiny apartments and seeing how well they can squeeze into the oddly shaped corners and crevices: “If it fits, they sits.”
Between the two architecture students, I’d hire the girl. She made the floor useful and I could imagine living in her space (except the bath, but at least she made it is own room). The key thing to me was listening to how they actually live. She just sits on the floor and watches out the window. He just sits in the tub and watches movie and tv. I can not imagine any romance in a place like that.
I would actually be onboard with any of those units. Whatever the word for the opposite of hoarding is… I have that affliction. I am very much a minimalist.
However, living spaces and design are much more important to my wife, so I typically go along with what she likes, but in time she has changed towards my tastes as far as reducing material possessions, owning fewer things and living in smaller spaces.
When asked what one would do if one won a significant amount of money in a lottery most everyone describes huge mansions, a garage full of exotic cars… My dream would be to live in a hotel in Manhattan. If I want to go somewhere, public transportation or ask the concierge to hail me a cab. Every few months pack up and live in a hotel in a foreign city for six to eight weeks…
I enjoy going to boat shows and touring living spaces on yachts. Like the female architecture student in the video, I’m fascinated by clever ways ship builders use the minimal space available for a life at sea. I would love to build a small, super practical home using fixtures, appliances, furniture and cabinets from boats.
Having spent a bit of time on sail boats in the past, from 22′ to 38′ , living and doing the life stuff in small spaces, compared to living on a boat these places are not too bad. Interesting the way they adapt but being students these places don’t appear to be used for a lifetime. Both the young man and woman appear to be great people but the woman is gorgeous and witty, this is a most interesting video of people making do with what they have.
OldTexan,
I also appreciated the young woman’s sense of humor.
I heard an interview with a realtor who said many in the 20 – 30 year age range have no interest in large homes. The smaller the better. They want low maintenance. Of my children, only one seems interested in owning a lot of land with some property on it. The others prefer a much smaller footprint than the houses my wife and I raised them in.
OldTexan:
What was it like living on a sailboat?
That’s a fantasy of mine I’ll probably never get to. But I like to hear the stories.
Fox has an article that claims that Rhode Island is now telling hospitals they can let Covid positive health care workers with symptoms come to work if they are short of workers. …. fired the unvaccinated but let sick vaccinated come to work….
When I was in my late 30’s I had dreams about cashing selling everything and cruising around the world, most of my experience had been short trips and racing my 22′ boat. A bit of an extended time in the Gulf of Mexico with my wife, now ex convinced me that there was no boat large enough for us to do actual long distance sailing. My experience over decades of sailing was never spending too much time without coming ashore and stuff gets damp, moldy and needs a lot of upkeep along with the fact that stuff breaks, all of the jokes about boats being holes you throw money in were true for me however sailing and racing was a hell of a lot of fun and it was even better when I learned how to rent a boat for a few days or weeks and turn it back in to the marina. In my older years with a few problems with shoulders and back my boating has been relegated to a Jon boat for fishing on a small lake, it has been almost 20 years since I was sailing a 38′ boat in high wind on Lake Texhoma having a great time.
Japan’s population has been declining since 2009. In 2009, the population was 128.56 million and is expected to be 126.48 million by the end of 2020. The population is expected to fall below 100 million by 2058.
The main cause of Japan’s population decline is the rapidly decreasing number of births, which is currently at the lowest it has been since data started being collected in 1899. In 2019, only 864,000 babies were born in Japan – 54,000 less than the number from 2018. The fertility rate in Japan is 1.4 births per woman – far below the population replacement of 2.1.
Japan's efforts to increase its birth rate have been unsuccessful and the country's population is slowly declining…
…Slowing population growth and an aging population are creating more than a headache for the island nation, as this problem is shrinking its pool of taxable citizens, causing the social welfare costs to skyrocket, and has led to Japan becoming the most indebted industrial nation with public debt that is double its economy…
…The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research estimates that Japan’s population will decrease to 100 million people by 2049 from where it is now at 127 million and will continue to decrease to just above 50 million by 2100. Japan’s population decline has several social and economic repercussions, such as one-third of the population being elderly by 2036 and a lack of working-age people to help keep the economy growing.
The difference between rising death rates and lower birth rates is also clearly a factor with low fertility rates among women shouldering part of the blame. Experts attribute Japan’s low growth to the high cost of raising children in the country, the growing number of women who choose to work longer and have a career rather than have children, and Japan’s reluctance to accept immigrants.
Another statistic that doesn’t help the population decline is the alarming number of suicides in young people.
Interesting. And a contrast as we are now in the process of building a custom home. Our previous house in CT was on 3.5 acres and was 3000 sq ft. We are used to having some land and thus a bit of isolation attached and privacy. We almost despaired of finding such, along with my wife’s idea of being near some water, but we found a community originally designed for equestrian use so all the lots are minimum 2 acres. We bought a lot in May, and have been moving along on the house since we arrived in September. Final plans almost done. 2700 sq ft, open concept, lanai with attached pool on 3 acres with a pond in back…yeah I know gators, but neighbors say not a problem so far.
I guess many of you would call it excessive, but we are really looking forward to moving in at some point later this year.
The AGW discussion set me to rereading John McCarthy’s archive. Some great stuff in there. Here’s his response to reader who advocated to world government to prevent nuclear war:
______________________________________
You say the only alternative to nuclear war is world government. There is only one possibility worse than nuclear war for the survival of modern civilization, and that is world government. Civilization might recover from the damage of a nuclear war, but judging by past static empires in Egypt and China, it might never recover from world government, there being no chance of external intervention. As it is, present governments are only prevented from becoming dominated by crazy ideas that will suppress all opposition by the existence of other governments. The only way a people can be sure that their government is substandard is that it does worse than those of other countries.
Physics guy: we live on a pond with gators. They don’t give us any trouble. We don’t feed them or otherwise entice them, and they seem to have enough to eat out there.
Now I’ve watched the video, I have to say that while I find most hotel rooms and apartments, and even homes, incredibly depressing, those spaces are attractive despite their extreme tininess.
My sister lived in Tokyo in an apartment about the size of these places but it didn’t have a bathroom, which she told me was fairly common. There was a bathroom down the hall and a public bath down the street. It’s a little surprising to see so much of the space in these apartments devoted to a tub or shower. I grew up in an old Victorian house but If I was alone I think I could live in one of these places without too much of a problem.
physicsguy,
Congratulations on the property! Looks like a beautiful development and, even though there will be heartaches and headaches along the way, you and your wife will ultimately enjoy the process of designing and building your own home.
I used to live full time in Orlando (and now have a small home about 60 miles southeast of you, in Saint Augustine). Natural and artificial retention ponds and lakes are everywhere. As Wendy wrote, alligators won’t typically bother you if you don’t bother them. I like to kayak and the local outfitters advised me that, unless I accidentally run over a nesting mother, I was unlikely to have any gator go near me.
However, it’s very common for folks to lose a dog to alligators in those neighborhood ponds. Even small ponds that aren’t big enough for an alligator to survive can hold a big alligator. During mating season males will often travel miles in search of mates and their own turf. We had big males show up in a small pond near our home several times. A call to the local authorities and a team comes out and captures the alligator and releases it in a larger lake.
Gregory Harper,
I stayed at a few places in old buildings in Europe like that. I don’t mind having to walk down a hallway for a bathroom. I’d prefer being in a small space in the heart of a location I enjoy over being in a large space a long commute from a location I enjoy.
I lived for a year in a space about twice the size as those featured in the video (minus the lofts), in Dallas, Texas. It was in an old part of town, near White Rock Lake. I used the park and trails around the lake often. Rode public transportation to work. Spent many hours in the Dallas Public Library. Reading in local parks. Many cities have great, public amenities available to residents.
I was also officially homeless while attending graduate school in Chicago. I had a 3rd shift job, so I was inside and safe most nights. It’s easy and safe to sleep during the day on a College campus. If the weather is nice lay a blanket down on the quad. If it’s bad just lean against a wall outside the computer lab, pretending to wait for a printout (which I often was!). I could use the sports facilities to exercise and shower. I knew of several apartment buildings in town that had clandestine, public access to the rooftop and would sleep there on nights I wasn’t working when the weather was good. It’s very safe on a rooftop at night.
Rufus, thanks. We got lucky. We spent 3 days driving around looking and were getting quite down as 99.999% of everything here is 1/4 acre lots where there’s like 6 feet between houses. We stumbled upon JRC by having the luck that the gate was open, so we drove in and discovered what a place it was. Then it was just finding the right lot that was for sale. We got lucky there also, as it’s on the end of a cul-de-sac at the edge of the whole development with a ranch to the east and state forest to the south.
We built our previous house in CT, so are familiar with the process, and our current builder seems very good.
We have 3 dogs (another reason for a bigger lot) and will be careful with them. Our next door neighbor, who got us hooked up with a builder, has a Jack Russell, so they also have been careful to look for gators.
I don’t know if the dogs or the gators are the instigators, but it seems those two species don’t mix well.
My biggest fear moving there was kids drowning. It seemed like once a week there was a story on the news about a local child drowning. Not only is water everywhere in nature, almost every home has a pool. Since we had very little kids, with very little friends, we had a removable security fence built in our pool enclosure. My wife found a “swimming survival school” for our youngest and it worked incredibly well! He was one year old and barely talking, yet they taught him how to save himself if he fell into a pool.
I soon learned that most Florida kids are fish! Very comfortable in and around water. Shortly after moving some new neighbors had a birthday for their four year old and invited my wife and I and our four year old. It seemed like there were two dozen small kids in the pool, running around the pool, in and out of the pool. All the adults were chatting calmly, socializing, drinking. I spent the whole afternoon with my head on a swivel, repeatedly counting heads! After the party my wife and I talked about how much more comfortable Florida kids were around water. In Chicago I was 8 before I learned to swim (but then again there’s only a few weeks when the ice is melted enough to learn 🙂 )!
I was also surprised by how much of Florida is agricultural and rural. Horses, cattle, farms… I’m sure you and your wife will make a lot of equine-minded friends! (And hopefully your neighborhood isn’t where all the annoying folks from New York and New Jersey are moving! 😉 )
Our place is in the Davis Shores neighborhood of Saint Augustine and I can sympathize with your difficulty finding a property. My wife and I had a heckuva time finding anything that wasn’t instantly scooped up, over asking price. But, seemingly like you, we lucked into something also and are very happy where we are.
The building looks as if it is still under construction.
The first unit he showed approximates my conception of what a prison cell should look like – single occupancy with a toilet, basin, chair, table, and bed. Meal delivery 3x a day, towel and linen delivery weekly. The windows should have bars, of course, and the door secure.
They’re not appropriate for people unless you have satisfactory public spaces to spend your time, e.g. parks and libraries. Just for sleeping and simple meals.
The young woman was adorable. My sister visiting Japan reported that the place has a twee quality.
The juxtaposition of the young man and the young woman each living alone in a cell is a signifier of what’s happened to Japan. The men may well be the most diligent earners of any affluent population in the world. The woman may be the most handsome and agreeable. And they’ve lost interest in each other. And they’ve lost interest in reproducing. It’s a society in a state of slow motion suicide.
When I first saw the still from the video, my first thought was “Those crazy Japanese!” But now that I’ve watched the video, I realize that my initial context was wrong. These are not houses or apartments like someone my age would live in. They are essentially dorm rooms, and for that purpose, they’re entirely fine. OK, the layouts are kind of crazy, but not the size.
Thinking back to my college days, I shared a 10 x 13 foot room with another student, so I might have jumped at the chance to have a space like this all my own, however small it is.
It wouldn’t be so terrible if there was freedom to come and go as you please and do what you want. But is Tokyo one of the nightmare cities that has ridiculously restricting Covid quarantine laws? If so it would be a beyond unacceptable.
I wandered into an Ikea some years ago and was mightily impressed with the demo apartments they had there with labels on them such as: “Living comfortably in 750 sq feet”.
For all I know they still have such designs up on the Web. But touring them was what I found impressive.
But then I began thinking, “Where do you keep your tool chests, your power tools, your different guns, your ammunition, and your hunting gear and clothes? Where does the work bench and vise go? What does one do with a couple thousand books?” Not to mention your fitness equipment.
A minimalist place in town like that could be a lot of fun … As in maybe one of three dwellings you own. But I don’t see how a fully grown adult who had daily responsibilites to others – even at a remove – and had to earn a free market income, could live in one.
A college age kid? Well, yeah a dorm room or its equivalent apparently more than suffices for many, given that they don’t so much live, as merely sleep and rest, there.
A nice place to visit for a bit: sort of like a comfortable couch in a tidy room on a sunny Sunday afternoon in the winter. But you don’t want to live there. You cannot, long term. Not really.
Even industrial working class families in the early 1950s had more space than we tend to imagine. That 1005 square foot ranch had a full basement. And the bathrooms and closets were not calculated as footage, or maybe it was counted as ‘rooms”, back then. The two or even one car garage alongside or behind the house, probably had floor space for a work bench, wall space and rafter headspace for tools, and likely was wired for electricity.
Even that modest “two bedroom” story and a half city bungalow had an entire semi-finished second level above, as well as a basement below. And a lawn always. And a garage too most of the time.
As Deco points out, only a subset of the members of a shriveling culture, can live in those tiny spaces more than temporarily.
I see that Kent said “dorm rooms” before I mentioned college kids.
Yes, basically a kind of dorm room for post grads.
Huxley…re John McCarthy comment on world government is very interesting. (For those who don’t know of him McCarthy was one of the early researchers in artificial intelligence, and also played a big role in the emergence of the computer time-sharing concept)
DNW,
To give my daughter-in-law a break I sometimes take my grandchildren to IKEA and they easily will spend two hours running in and out of and playing in those demo spaces you describe.
A friend divorced in his mid-50s and in the flux found himself homeless and autoless. He worked in the heart of a crowded city and so he rented a tiny apartment near his office. There was a place nearby where he could rent tools and workbench space by the hour. He would rent a car to get to places when public transportation or his bike weren’t feasible. I remember him having to ride with boards lashed to his bike from Home Depot to the tool rental place to build some shelves. He then rode a bus back to his apartment carrying the shelving unit and his bike.
My takeaway from his wacky, urban adventure was: don’t get divorced! 🙂
DNW; et al:
I could live comfortably in 750 square feet. Then again, I don’t have power tools. And a thousand square feet would be even better.
But the apartments in the video give me the creeps. They are, by my estimate, far less than 750 square feet, and the long thin shape of most of them feels awful even to look at.
A boat is quite different, although I’ve never lived on one. You are enclosed in the cabin, but on the deck everything is open to the wide world.
neo,
In perhaps, a similar way, I think I would go nuts submerged on a submarine but would be fine on the International Space Station. If there is the smallest breach in either container you are toast, either way, but something about knowing there is an infinite expanse of space overhead as opposed to a mile of sea water would, I think, put me at ease.
OT, do you think the problem might be that Democratic members of Congress hire people who are head cases?
Further context — Hotel style pioneered in Japan
_________________________
Capsule Hotel
The guest room is a chamber roughly the length and width of a single bed, with sufficient height for a hotel guest to crawl in and sit up on the bed. The chamber walls may be made of wood, metal or any rigid material, but are often fibreglass or plastic. Amenities within the room generally include a small television, air conditioning, an electronic console, and power sockets. The capsules are stacked side-by-side, two units high, with steps or ladders providing access to the second level rooms, similar to bunk beds. The open end of the capsule can be closed with a curtain or a solid door for privacy, but can be locked from the inside only
Sorry, but there seems to be many aspects of Japanese culture that is just. Ph*cking. Weird. Add this to the list of other weird stuff…
My college dorm room was small, but not that small. A quick search says it was 17′ x 10′, which was plenty of room for two people, bunk bed, two desks, sink area. Toilet and Showers were shared down the hall. 750 square feet would be very roomy. Those Japanese rooms were much smaller than 750 square feet.
I’m learning that 4,500 sq ft is too much space, but if we don’t get rid of Fauci and people like him, then I rather have the extra space for my sanity. I understand Rufus dream of having a small space and going out in public to live life. The problem are the people so willing to make the public inaccessible by fiat.
BTW Rufus, I’ve seen the private rooms for ISS. It is comparable to a submarine bunk, and of course, the toilet and bathing area is shared. If a breach occurs (and they have), you have a much better chance on ISS than on a submarine. Even better chance if your return vehicle is a SpaceX dragon rather than a Soyuz.
” They are, by my estimate, far less than 750 square feet, and the long thin shape of most of them feels awful even to look at.”
I doubt any of them meet, much less are, in excess of, 150-180 sq ft.
After all, 200 sq ft is a 10×20 space.
Think of that 12×12 bedroom you had as a teenager, with its – probably bi-fold doors – closet.
No doubt it was substantially the same size or larger than the 5×15 plus 5×7 ft rectangles that seems to make up one of these tiny units.
Your Dad’s garage would have been palatial – spacewise at least – in comparison.
Apparently only about 25% or fewer of the apartments in Tokyo are as small as a 2 car garage.
And only a minuscule percentage are as small as the “apartments” featured in that video. Officially, anyway.
I read about the capsule hotels and wanted to stay in one on a planned trip to Japan. But then my sister divorced her Japanese husband and I canceled my trip. I’d still like to visit but not during the time of the Covid travel rules.
When I stay in hotels I very rarely use any of the furniture besides the bed so a capsule would be fine with me.
Both of these were built for the 1964 Olympics and have some wonderful old stylistic cues… not all of which have been remodeled.
Seems I’ve become the ` on Formerly Known as Zaphod. Bizarre much!
Zaphod:
The KEF speakers arrived today, though not the amp, so I hooked them up to my old Sony receiver.
Very nice. Immaculate even. I’m not sure I could hear the difference between them and a better pair.
They passed my Terry Riley test. The track below (improvs over looped organ, electric piano, sax et al. ) starts buzzing/crackling fifteen seconds in on my old Bose speakers and cheap desktop speakers. The KEFs don’t.
Great. It’s one of my favorite Riley pieces — after “Rainbow in Curved Air” of course. (I assume someone with the Z handle knows “Rainbow.”) Now I don’t have to listen to “Journey” just on headphones.
I’m about to listen to the two tracks you mentioned courtesy of Tidal. And I know neither. Make of that what you will :).
I’ve got a recommendation for you which I learned about while doing some YouTube audio research over the Christmas Break:
The Art of the Balkan Bass by Nenad Vasilic.
Now I don’t know squat about Balkan Bass, but I like what I hear.
Zaphod:
If you listened to the original radio version of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” you know “Rainbow.”
I’ll check the Balkan Bass.
The architect for these tiny apartments must have cut his/her teeth on naval architecture. These tiny places resemble, except for the private bathing/toileting feature, the space a sailor, even young officers inhabit while on shipboard tours.
Add that none of the shipboard quarters have windows. And people wonder why sailors tend to get rowdy when they go ashore after a month at sea. 🙂
The first two years of my Navy life was spent in tiny quarters with congregant showers and toilets. So tiny living quarters were what we got. (The price was a Basic Allowance for Quarters.) Getting married changed that.
Our first apartment was about 700 square feet. One bedroom, one bath, a kitchen, and small living/dining area. We thought it was grand! The rent was twice my BAQ, – at that time $100. 🙁 Lo, these many years later we are living in a family compound (our daughter lives with us) of 2500 square feet and it feels cramped. Our circumstances change and so do our feelings about those circumstances.
@Huxley:
Watched the TV series in the Eighties and read the books. Only song I recall happened around about the “It Ain’t Easy Being a Cop” scene. If there’s a radio version I’d best be onto it then!
Re: Journey From the Death of a Friend
Half way through. Do you code to this? Or Meditate? Levitate?
Quite satisfyingly hypnotic. I’m tempted to try it out on Om.
Have a listen, Om!
@Huxley:
I don’t normally listen to this kind of music. But strikes that for much of this track, there is a very broad distribution of spectral energy — which can result in some speakers cracking up from trying to juggle too many balls at once. Your old Bose speakers (doubtless the age played a part) might be OK to play a loudish high frequency tone and then a loudish low tone but not both at once.
Well that’s bizarre. Tidal’s AI has convolved Huxley’s track with my usual classical and Jazz tastes and decided that the next thing I really want to discover is Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Studie 1.
If you haven’t heard the “Hitchhikers” radio version, you’ve got a treat. It’s great for long drives. The TV version was close and the same actors on radio played Arthur Dent, Zaphod and the Voice of the Book for the TV.
“Journey From the Death of a Friend” is special. I often use it for coding and debugging. In fact I was listening to it in the early 80s while teaching myself to progam on a TRS-80, then an Apple II, in my Kenmore Square apartment.
@Huxley:
Rainbow just finishing up now. Doesn’t ring a sonic bell at all, so kind of confirms that I’ve never heard the radio version and forgotten it.
I’ll be downloading or otherwise pirating the radio version stat.
“I often use it for coding and debugging.”
Figured as much. I do something similar with contrapuntal music.
OK… so Rainbow finished and next thing Tidal served up was Come Out by Steve Reich:
I tried to book capsule hotel rooms several times when I had long layovers on trips through Tokyo but I never had enough notice to find a vacancy. They were always booked.
@Rufus:
Or they didn’t want a Gaijin staying there.
Certainly would be very busy though. The amount of business travel people do inside Japan is something to behold.
“For those unfamiliar, Jack Murphy was a leader in the man-o-sphere scene, which is a broad term covering anti-feminism, the pick-up artists, men’s rights and the general discussion of manliness in the modern age. Murphy pitched himself as a bit from all of those buckets, but mostly the latter. He ran something called the Liminal Order and charged men $100 a month to learn how to be better men. He also had ornamental facial hair and worked for The Claremont Institute.
It also turns out that he produced gay porn and was into something called cuckoldry, which is a sexual fetish involving voyeurism and sex with strangers. If you are interested in the details of Mr. Murphy’s side hobbies, someone calling herself Megan Fox posted them at PJ Media. Of course, Jack Murphy is not really Jack Murphy, Irish he-man, but rather, he is someone named John Goldman, who is not Irish. It is hard to imagine how this story could get any more ridiculous.”
I always knew the Claremont nest of Straussians cum Jaffaites were into some esoteric stuff, but had not realised that they have apparently veered totally off-piste into Sabbateanism 😛
Truly we live in an Age of Wonders!
Zaphod: I will say that “`” at least sounds better than “”.
Neo, I think you have an interesting point about the influence of the lateral dimension in that tiny house. I think back to the small apartments I lived in for a few years. There was a studio of about 350 sq ft, I believe, and right after that a 1-BR apartment that was about 325 sq ft, but with 4 rooms total. I would be okay with living in the latter again, and probably in part because, as you point out, it had enough breadth somehow to make sense. The rooms were in a 2×2 square arrangement, essentially, rather than being in a line or an L-shape.
JJ, your blood-alcohol quotient was 50 back then?! Yikes. 🙂
Rufus and Leland: it has struck me that the closest thing in planetary travel to space transit is being in a submarine. Maybe it’s something NASA should consider when it comes time to train people for really long-haul space journeys. Discovery One looks like a cruise liner in comparison to what I suspect they’ll be riding.
Tina, I tend to agree that Japan is quite an outlier. I don’t understand it.
(Tangentially, I just got a job posting in my mail that leads off with the statement that “Eurofins believes it is a global leader in food, environmental, [etc….].” It’s nice to see just a little bit of old-style modesty in these things.)
“Behind all of this is the fact that he found an easy home among people who are supposed to be more prudent and intellectually rigorous. In 2021, the Claremont Institute made him a Lincoln Fellow. For some reason, everything involving the name Lincoln turns out to be riddled with sexual degeneracy. Putting that aside, how is it possible that they did not know he was a faker? They surely did a background check on him before inviting him to the team.”
The jokes write themselves.
@Philip Sells:
— Zaphod: I will say that “`” at least sounds better than “”.
You’re a true connoisseur!
“Rufus and Leland: it has struck me that the closest thing in planetary travel to space transit is being in a submarine. Maybe it’s something NASA should consider when it comes time to train people for really long-haul space journeys. Discovery One looks like a cruise liner in comparison to what I suspect they’ll be riding.”
There’s an article about crew psychological modeling for Mars missions in the Christmas double edition of the Economist I’m currently ploughing through. Thinking is that that if they study the participants enough they can build tailor-made model which will monitor and dynamically re-arrange scheduled interactions and work partners to help smooth things over.
Re: Ploughing Through the Dead Tree Economist Xmas Edition Flopped on Sofa
Feels like hard work. I’ve grown accustomed to being able to take Trolling Breaks. The damn thing has no keyboard though. And you can’t copy/paste from a dead tree.
RTF: “… captures the alligator and releases it in a larger lake.” Do you mean like Lake Jessup? 🙂
physicsguy: nice slide show – and you will be well provisioned with venison, wild turkey, and turtle soup. Since your property area looks to be largely pines, I suggest you consider planting some live oaks. But keep them at least 50 to 60 ft. apart, so they grow and spread properly. Put them NE and NW of your house and you will eventually have really nice early/late summer day shade – something you will appreciate even more in time. Welcome to FL., and helping to keep us less purple than might otherwise be the case.
@R2L:
What kind of turtle soup? One reads scary things about gobs of gloopy green turtle soup at London Lord Mayor’s Banquets in days of yore. The Victorians were really into the stuff.
But I once tried the most glorious smoky delicious Consommé-like turtle soup in a very high end Japanese restaurant in HK which sadly closed down when Japan Inc. really hit the skids mid-90s and shuttered a lot of foreign junketing Representative Offices and sinecures to cut costs.
Amazing soup to die for!
Another excellent David Goldman = Spengler article on China:
Very nice, physicsguy! I agree about the need for space.
And a great suggestion from R2L about the live oaks. Be sure to drape some Pele’s Hair on them.
How will you maintain that acreage? I’ve got a full time job going with my single acre – and half of that is lawn my husband takes care of with the rider mower.
No gators here but the wild pigs are giving me grief.
And not a day goes by that I don’t give thanks – as I tromp around knee deep in vegetation – there are no snakes in Hawaii.
Darn, that empty “” was supposed to say “unpronounceable glyph” but in brackets. I see now what happened – the site thought I was trying to make an HTML tag out of it.
Molly, can you harvest some of the pigs or is that frowned upon where you are?
@ Rufus > In 1999, we had the opportunity to observe a space shuttle launch in Florida. We then gave our kids the choice of going to Disney World or St. Augustine.
We must have done something right raising them – it was a unanimous vote for the historical city, and we had a great time!
The Castillo de San Marcos was fantastic, and we climbed to the top of the lighthouse (I wouldn’t try that now, but my mother made the hike with us at age 72).
The only other “attractions” I remember are walking past the Huguenot Cemetery, visiting the Oldest Wooden Schoolhouse (Mom was a teacher) and admiring the Orthodox Shrine.
And the shop that sold guns and swords.
Philip, a few astronauts have spent time at this facility. A lot of studies on living in cramp conditions for extended times was performed leading up to Gemini. But Gemini was fairly short and fit the long flight fighter/bomber type conditions. I do think long term travel is closer to the nuclear submarine, which is generally cut off from what we think of the world for months at a time. It’s a 6 month trip just to get to or from Mars. That will not be easy for many people. And much of that 6 months will not be as scenic as popular culture tends to suggest.
Phillip Sells,
Yes, you can harvest the pigs and my good friend and neighbor had me over one night for slow cooker pig. She’s a good cook so it was pretty tasty.
The problem with ‘harvesting’ is finding someone to butcher them. Said friend spent hundreds on a trap after losing thousands in damage done to her irrigation system. She gets one every time it’s baited. My next door neighbor snares them and my son – when he visits – has caught them with a makeshift trap. However, there are only a few people to give them too. It’s really illustrative of how urbanized we have become, even out here in what is regarded as ‘The Country’. When I first moved into my house 32 years ago, on weekend mornings I would see pig hunters driving up the road past my house with their dogs in the truck bed and later driving back down with a pig on the hood. I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw this.
The state is trying to support hunting as the pigs are doing untold damage to the native plant life but not having much success. Hunting skills are passed down father to son and there has been a huge generational drop off. Same with horse culture. My neighborhood was originally an equestrian one but I see fewer and fewer riders every year. My daughter’s first word was ‘Horthey!’ as she sat in her high chair watching the riders go by. Won’t happen with the grandkids. Sad.
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Vanderleuen has a series of The Japanese: Nuked too much, or not nuked enough? This should be an entry.
I imagine that Japanese cats would have a field day scampering around those tiny apartments and seeing how well they can squeeze into the oddly shaped corners and crevices: “If it fits, they sits.”
Between the two architecture students, I’d hire the girl. She made the floor useful and I could imagine living in her space (except the bath, but at least she made it is own room). The key thing to me was listening to how they actually live. She just sits on the floor and watches out the window. He just sits in the tub and watches movie and tv. I can not imagine any romance in a place like that.
I would actually be onboard with any of those units. Whatever the word for the opposite of hoarding is… I have that affliction. I am very much a minimalist.
However, living spaces and design are much more important to my wife, so I typically go along with what she likes, but in time she has changed towards my tastes as far as reducing material possessions, owning fewer things and living in smaller spaces.
When asked what one would do if one won a significant amount of money in a lottery most everyone describes huge mansions, a garage full of exotic cars… My dream would be to live in a hotel in Manhattan. If I want to go somewhere, public transportation or ask the concierge to hail me a cab. Every few months pack up and live in a hotel in a foreign city for six to eight weeks…
I enjoy going to boat shows and touring living spaces on yachts. Like the female architecture student in the video, I’m fascinated by clever ways ship builders use the minimal space available for a life at sea. I would love to build a small, super practical home using fixtures, appliances, furniture and cabinets from boats.
Having spent a bit of time on sail boats in the past, from 22′ to 38′ , living and doing the life stuff in small spaces, compared to living on a boat these places are not too bad. Interesting the way they adapt but being students these places don’t appear to be used for a lifetime. Both the young man and woman appear to be great people but the woman is gorgeous and witty, this is a most interesting video of people making do with what they have.
OldTexan,
I also appreciated the young woman’s sense of humor.
I heard an interview with a realtor who said many in the 20 – 30 year age range have no interest in large homes. The smaller the better. They want low maintenance. Of my children, only one seems interested in owning a lot of land with some property on it. The others prefer a much smaller footprint than the houses my wife and I raised them in.
OldTexan:
What was it like living on a sailboat?
That’s a fantasy of mine I’ll probably never get to. But I like to hear the stories.
Fox has an article that claims that Rhode Island is now telling hospitals they can let Covid positive health care workers with symptoms come to work if they are short of workers. …. fired the unvaccinated but let sick vaccinated come to work….
When I was in my late 30’s I had dreams about cashing selling everything and cruising around the world, most of my experience had been short trips and racing my 22′ boat. A bit of an extended time in the Gulf of Mexico with my wife, now ex convinced me that there was no boat large enough for us to do actual long distance sailing. My experience over decades of sailing was never spending too much time without coming ashore and stuff gets damp, moldy and needs a lot of upkeep along with the fact that stuff breaks, all of the jokes about boats being holes you throw money in were true for me however sailing and racing was a hell of a lot of fun and it was even better when I learned how to rent a boat for a few days or weeks and turn it back in to the marina. In my older years with a few problems with shoulders and back my boating has been relegated to a Jon boat for fishing on a small lake, it has been almost 20 years since I was sailing a 38′ boat in high wind on Lake Texhoma having a great time.
Relative to the post topic, here’s a very interesting graph and article (emphasis mine): https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/japan-population
Interesting. And a contrast as we are now in the process of building a custom home. Our previous house in CT was on 3.5 acres and was 3000 sq ft. We are used to having some land and thus a bit of isolation attached and privacy. We almost despaired of finding such, along with my wife’s idea of being near some water, but we found a community originally designed for equestrian use so all the lots are minimum 2 acres. We bought a lot in May, and have been moving along on the house since we arrived in September. Final plans almost done. 2700 sq ft, open concept, lanai with attached pool on 3 acres with a pond in back…yeah I know gators, but neighbors say not a problem so far.
I guess many of you would call it excessive, but we are really looking forward to moving in at some point later this year.
https://www.jrchoa.org/
OldTexan:
Thanks for your view on sailboat living!
The AGW discussion set me to rereading John McCarthy’s archive. Some great stuff in there. Here’s his response to reader who advocated to world government to prevent nuclear war:
______________________________________
You say the only alternative to nuclear war is world government. There is only one possibility worse than nuclear war for the survival of modern civilization, and that is world government. Civilization might recover from the damage of a nuclear war, but judging by past static empires in Egypt and China, it might never recover from world government, there being no chance of external intervention. As it is, present governments are only prevented from becoming dominated by crazy ideas that will suppress all opposition by the existence of other governments. The only way a people can be sure that their government is substandard is that it does worse than those of other countries.
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/commentary.html
Physics guy: we live on a pond with gators. They don’t give us any trouble. We don’t feed them or otherwise entice them, and they seem to have enough to eat out there.
Now I’ve watched the video, I have to say that while I find most hotel rooms and apartments, and even homes, incredibly depressing, those spaces are attractive despite their extreme tininess.
My sister lived in Tokyo in an apartment about the size of these places but it didn’t have a bathroom, which she told me was fairly common. There was a bathroom down the hall and a public bath down the street. It’s a little surprising to see so much of the space in these apartments devoted to a tub or shower. I grew up in an old Victorian house but If I was alone I think I could live in one of these places without too much of a problem.
physicsguy,
Congratulations on the property! Looks like a beautiful development and, even though there will be heartaches and headaches along the way, you and your wife will ultimately enjoy the process of designing and building your own home.
I used to live full time in Orlando (and now have a small home about 60 miles southeast of you, in Saint Augustine). Natural and artificial retention ponds and lakes are everywhere. As Wendy wrote, alligators won’t typically bother you if you don’t bother them. I like to kayak and the local outfitters advised me that, unless I accidentally run over a nesting mother, I was unlikely to have any gator go near me.
However, it’s very common for folks to lose a dog to alligators in those neighborhood ponds. Even small ponds that aren’t big enough for an alligator to survive can hold a big alligator. During mating season males will often travel miles in search of mates and their own turf. We had big males show up in a small pond near our home several times. A call to the local authorities and a team comes out and captures the alligator and releases it in a larger lake.
Gregory Harper,
I stayed at a few places in old buildings in Europe like that. I don’t mind having to walk down a hallway for a bathroom. I’d prefer being in a small space in the heart of a location I enjoy over being in a large space a long commute from a location I enjoy.
I lived for a year in a space about twice the size as those featured in the video (minus the lofts), in Dallas, Texas. It was in an old part of town, near White Rock Lake. I used the park and trails around the lake often. Rode public transportation to work. Spent many hours in the Dallas Public Library. Reading in local parks. Many cities have great, public amenities available to residents.
I was also officially homeless while attending graduate school in Chicago. I had a 3rd shift job, so I was inside and safe most nights. It’s easy and safe to sleep during the day on a College campus. If the weather is nice lay a blanket down on the quad. If it’s bad just lean against a wall outside the computer lab, pretending to wait for a printout (which I often was!). I could use the sports facilities to exercise and shower. I knew of several apartment buildings in town that had clandestine, public access to the rooftop and would sleep there on nights I wasn’t working when the weather was good. It’s very safe on a rooftop at night.
Rufus, thanks. We got lucky. We spent 3 days driving around looking and were getting quite down as 99.999% of everything here is 1/4 acre lots where there’s like 6 feet between houses. We stumbled upon JRC by having the luck that the gate was open, so we drove in and discovered what a place it was. Then it was just finding the right lot that was for sale. We got lucky there also, as it’s on the end of a cul-de-sac at the edge of the whole development with a ranch to the east and state forest to the south.
We built our previous house in CT, so are familiar with the process, and our current builder seems very good.
We have 3 dogs (another reason for a bigger lot) and will be careful with them. Our next door neighbor, who got us hooked up with a builder, has a Jack Russell, so they also have been careful to look for gators.
I don’t know if the dogs or the gators are the instigators, but it seems those two species don’t mix well.
My biggest fear moving there was kids drowning. It seemed like once a week there was a story on the news about a local child drowning. Not only is water everywhere in nature, almost every home has a pool. Since we had very little kids, with very little friends, we had a removable security fence built in our pool enclosure. My wife found a “swimming survival school” for our youngest and it worked incredibly well! He was one year old and barely talking, yet they taught him how to save himself if he fell into a pool.
I soon learned that most Florida kids are fish! Very comfortable in and around water. Shortly after moving some new neighbors had a birthday for their four year old and invited my wife and I and our four year old. It seemed like there were two dozen small kids in the pool, running around the pool, in and out of the pool. All the adults were chatting calmly, socializing, drinking. I spent the whole afternoon with my head on a swivel, repeatedly counting heads! After the party my wife and I talked about how much more comfortable Florida kids were around water. In Chicago I was 8 before I learned to swim (but then again there’s only a few weeks when the ice is melted enough to learn 🙂 )!
I was also surprised by how much of Florida is agricultural and rural. Horses, cattle, farms… I’m sure you and your wife will make a lot of equine-minded friends! (And hopefully your neighborhood isn’t where all the annoying folks from New York and New Jersey are moving! 😉 )
Our place is in the Davis Shores neighborhood of Saint Augustine and I can sympathize with your difficulty finding a property. My wife and I had a heckuva time finding anything that wasn’t instantly scooped up, over asking price. But, seemingly like you, we lucked into something also and are very happy where we are.
The building looks as if it is still under construction.
The first unit he showed approximates my conception of what a prison cell should look like – single occupancy with a toilet, basin, chair, table, and bed. Meal delivery 3x a day, towel and linen delivery weekly. The windows should have bars, of course, and the door secure.
They’re not appropriate for people unless you have satisfactory public spaces to spend your time, e.g. parks and libraries. Just for sleeping and simple meals.
The young woman was adorable. My sister visiting Japan reported that the place has a twee quality.
The juxtaposition of the young man and the young woman each living alone in a cell is a signifier of what’s happened to Japan. The men may well be the most diligent earners of any affluent population in the world. The woman may be the most handsome and agreeable. And they’ve lost interest in each other. And they’ve lost interest in reproducing. It’s a society in a state of slow motion suicide.
When I first saw the still from the video, my first thought was “Those crazy Japanese!” But now that I’ve watched the video, I realize that my initial context was wrong. These are not houses or apartments like someone my age would live in. They are essentially dorm rooms, and for that purpose, they’re entirely fine. OK, the layouts are kind of crazy, but not the size.
Thinking back to my college days, I shared a 10 x 13 foot room with another student, so I might have jumped at the chance to have a space like this all my own, however small it is.
It wouldn’t be so terrible if there was freedom to come and go as you please and do what you want. But is Tokyo one of the nightmare cities that has ridiculously restricting Covid quarantine laws? If so it would be a beyond unacceptable.
I wandered into an Ikea some years ago and was mightily impressed with the demo apartments they had there with labels on them such as: “Living comfortably in 750 sq feet”.
For all I know they still have such designs up on the Web. But touring them was what I found impressive.
But then I began thinking, “Where do you keep your tool chests, your power tools, your different guns, your ammunition, and your hunting gear and clothes? Where does the work bench and vise go? What does one do with a couple thousand books?” Not to mention your fitness equipment.
A minimalist place in town like that could be a lot of fun … As in maybe one of three dwellings you own. But I don’t see how a fully grown adult who had daily responsibilites to others – even at a remove – and had to earn a free market income, could live in one.
A college age kid? Well, yeah a dorm room or its equivalent apparently more than suffices for many, given that they don’t so much live, as merely sleep and rest, there.
A nice place to visit for a bit: sort of like a comfortable couch in a tidy room on a sunny Sunday afternoon in the winter. But you don’t want to live there. You cannot, long term. Not really.
Even industrial working class families in the early 1950s had more space than we tend to imagine. That 1005 square foot ranch had a full basement. And the bathrooms and closets were not calculated as footage, or maybe it was counted as ‘rooms”, back then. The two or even one car garage alongside or behind the house, probably had floor space for a work bench, wall space and rafter headspace for tools, and likely was wired for electricity.
Even that modest “two bedroom” story and a half city bungalow had an entire semi-finished second level above, as well as a basement below. And a lawn always. And a garage too most of the time.
As Deco points out, only a subset of the members of a shriveling culture, can live in those tiny spaces more than temporarily.
I see that Kent said “dorm rooms” before I mentioned college kids.
Yes, basically a kind of dorm room for post grads.
Huxley…re John McCarthy comment on world government is very interesting. (For those who don’t know of him McCarthy was one of the early researchers in artificial intelligence, and also played a big role in the emergence of the computer time-sharing concept)
DNW,
To give my daughter-in-law a break I sometimes take my grandchildren to IKEA and they easily will spend two hours running in and out of and playing in those demo spaces you describe.
A friend divorced in his mid-50s and in the flux found himself homeless and autoless. He worked in the heart of a crowded city and so he rented a tiny apartment near his office. There was a place nearby where he could rent tools and workbench space by the hour. He would rent a car to get to places when public transportation or his bike weren’t feasible. I remember him having to ride with boards lashed to his bike from Home Depot to the tool rental place to build some shelves. He then rode a bus back to his apartment carrying the shelving unit and his bike.
My takeaway from his wacky, urban adventure was: don’t get divorced! 🙂
DNW; et al:
I could live comfortably in 750 square feet. Then again, I don’t have power tools. And a thousand square feet would be even better.
But the apartments in the video give me the creeps. They are, by my estimate, far less than 750 square feet, and the long thin shape of most of them feels awful even to look at.
A boat is quite different, although I’ve never lived on one. You are enclosed in the cabin, but on the deck everything is open to the wide world.
neo,
In perhaps, a similar way, I think I would go nuts submerged on a submarine but would be fine on the International Space Station. If there is the smallest breach in either container you are toast, either way, but something about knowing there is an infinite expanse of space overhead as opposed to a mile of sea water would, I think, put me at ease.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/01/dem-staffers-quit-jobs-due-to-jan-6-events-says-washington-post.php
OT, do you think the problem might be that Democratic members of Congress hire people who are head cases?
Further context — Hotel style pioneered in Japan
_________________________
Capsule Hotel
The guest room is a chamber roughly the length and width of a single bed, with sufficient height for a hotel guest to crawl in and sit up on the bed. The chamber walls may be made of wood, metal or any rigid material, but are often fibreglass or plastic. Amenities within the room generally include a small television, air conditioning, an electronic console, and power sockets. The capsules are stacked side-by-side, two units high, with steps or ladders providing access to the second level rooms, similar to bunk beds. The open end of the capsule can be closed with a curtain or a solid door for privacy, but can be locked from the inside only
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsule_hotel
Sorry, but there seems to be many aspects of Japanese culture that is just. Ph*cking. Weird. Add this to the list of other weird stuff…
My college dorm room was small, but not that small. A quick search says it was 17′ x 10′, which was plenty of room for two people, bunk bed, two desks, sink area. Toilet and Showers were shared down the hall. 750 square feet would be very roomy. Those Japanese rooms were much smaller than 750 square feet.
I’m learning that 4,500 sq ft is too much space, but if we don’t get rid of Fauci and people like him, then I rather have the extra space for my sanity. I understand Rufus dream of having a small space and going out in public to live life. The problem are the people so willing to make the public inaccessible by fiat.
BTW Rufus, I’ve seen the private rooms for ISS. It is comparable to a submarine bunk, and of course, the toilet and bathing area is shared. If a breach occurs (and they have), you have a much better chance on ISS than on a submarine. Even better chance if your return vehicle is a SpaceX dragon rather than a Soyuz.
I doubt any of them meet, much less are, in excess of, 150-180 sq ft.
After all, 200 sq ft is a 10×20 space.
Think of that 12×12 bedroom you had as a teenager, with its – probably bi-fold doors – closet.
No doubt it was substantially the same size or larger than the 5×15 plus 5×7 ft rectangles that seems to make up one of these tiny units.
Your Dad’s garage would have been palatial – spacewise at least – in comparison.
Apparently only about 25% or fewer of the apartments in Tokyo are as small as a 2 car garage.
And only a minuscule percentage are as small as the “apartments” featured in that video. Officially, anyway.
https://questionjapan.com/blog/average-apartment-size-in-tokyo/
huxley:
I read about the capsule hotels and wanted to stay in one on a planned trip to Japan. But then my sister divorced her Japanese husband and I canceled my trip. I’d still like to visit but not during the time of the Covid travel rules.
When I stay in hotels I very rarely use any of the furniture besides the bed so a capsule would be fine with me.
@Gregory+Harper:
Sod Capsule Hotels!
This is where you stay in Japan:
https://theokuratokyo.jp/en/
Don’t worry, it’s still Minimalist.
🙂
This one’s not bad, too:
https://www.newotani.co.jp/en/
Both of these were built for the 1964 Olympics and have some wonderful old stylistic cues… not all of which have been remodeled.
Seems I’ve become the ` on Formerly Known as Zaphod. Bizarre much!
Zaphod:
The KEF speakers arrived today, though not the amp, so I hooked them up to my old Sony receiver.
Very nice. Immaculate even. I’m not sure I could hear the difference between them and a better pair.
They passed my Terry Riley test. The track below (improvs over looped organ, electric piano, sax et al. ) starts buzzing/crackling fifteen seconds in on my old Bose speakers and cheap desktop speakers. The KEFs don’t.
–Terry Riley, “Journey From The Death Of A Friend”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISFOasSQ2lg
Great. It’s one of my favorite Riley pieces — after “Rainbow in Curved Air” of course. (I assume someone with the Z handle knows “Rainbow.”) Now I don’t have to listen to “Journey” just on headphones.
Thanks for the tip.
Pingback:The Japanese, nuked too much or not enough? Call for votes.
@Huxley:
I’m glad you like them!
I’m about to listen to the two tracks you mentioned courtesy of Tidal. And I know neither. Make of that what you will :).
I’ve got a recommendation for you which I learned about while doing some YouTube audio research over the Christmas Break:
The Art of the Balkan Bass by Nenad Vasilic.
Now I don’t know squat about Balkan Bass, but I like what I hear.
Zaphod:
If you listened to the original radio version of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” you know “Rainbow.”
I’ll check the Balkan Bass.
The architect for these tiny apartments must have cut his/her teeth on naval architecture. These tiny places resemble, except for the private bathing/toileting feature, the space a sailor, even young officers inhabit while on shipboard tours.
Add that none of the shipboard quarters have windows. And people wonder why sailors tend to get rowdy when they go ashore after a month at sea. 🙂
The first two years of my Navy life was spent in tiny quarters with congregant showers and toilets. So tiny living quarters were what we got. (The price was a Basic Allowance for Quarters.) Getting married changed that.
Our first apartment was about 700 square feet. One bedroom, one bath, a kitchen, and small living/dining area. We thought it was grand! The rent was twice my BAQ, – at that time $100. 🙁 Lo, these many years later we are living in a family compound (our daughter lives with us) of 2500 square feet and it feels cramped. Our circumstances change and so do our feelings about those circumstances.
@Huxley:
Watched the TV series in the Eighties and read the books. Only song I recall happened around about the “It Ain’t Easy Being a Cop” scene. If there’s a radio version I’d best be onto it then!
Re: Journey From the Death of a Friend
Half way through. Do you code to this? Or Meditate? Levitate?
Quite satisfyingly hypnotic. I’m tempted to try it out on Om.
Have a listen, Om!
@Huxley:
I don’t normally listen to this kind of music. But strikes that for much of this track, there is a very broad distribution of spectral energy — which can result in some speakers cracking up from trying to juggle too many balls at once. Your old Bose speakers (doubtless the age played a part) might be OK to play a loudish high frequency tone and then a loudish low tone but not both at once.
Well that’s bizarre. Tidal’s AI has convolved Huxley’s track with my usual classical and Jazz tastes and decided that the next thing I really want to discover is Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Studie 1.
Tidal’s AI needs its head checked.
Onwards to Rainbow!
Korben Dallas approved …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRkW6lJBwPY
Zaphod:
If you haven’t heard the “Hitchhikers” radio version, you’ve got a treat. It’s great for long drives. The TV version was close and the same actors on radio played Arthur Dent, Zaphod and the Voice of the Book for the TV.
“Journey From the Death of a Friend” is special. I often use it for coding and debugging. In fact I was listening to it in the early 80s while teaching myself to progam on a TRS-80, then an Apple II, in my Kenmore Square apartment.
@Huxley:
Rainbow just finishing up now. Doesn’t ring a sonic bell at all, so kind of confirms that I’ve never heard the radio version and forgotten it.
I’ll be downloading or otherwise pirating the radio version stat.
“I often use it for coding and debugging.”
Figured as much. I do something similar with contrapuntal music.
OK… so Rainbow finished and next thing Tidal served up was Come Out by Steve Reich:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_Out_(Reich)
You’re a deeply subversive fellow, Huxley!
You’re a deeply subversive fellow, Huxley!
Zaphod:
Why, thank you very much.
I take that in the same spirit as an English friend who informed me I had betrayed my class.
I got into Philip Glass because the writer of a Windows internals book recommended Glass’s “Solo Piano” for debugging. That’s good too.
The writer may have been Matt Pietrick, who apparently made his bucks on Windows and now devotes his life to tiki drinks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Pietrek
I’ll have to catch up on your music.
huxley,
I tried to book capsule hotel rooms several times when I had long layovers on trips through Tokyo but I never had enough notice to find a vacancy. They were always booked.
@Rufus:
Or they didn’t want a Gaijin staying there.
Certainly would be very busy though. The amount of business travel people do inside Japan is something to behold.
Here’s a bonbon for the Claremont Institute Fans:
https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=26197
“For those unfamiliar, Jack Murphy was a leader in the man-o-sphere scene, which is a broad term covering anti-feminism, the pick-up artists, men’s rights and the general discussion of manliness in the modern age. Murphy pitched himself as a bit from all of those buckets, but mostly the latter. He ran something called the Liminal Order and charged men $100 a month to learn how to be better men. He also had ornamental facial hair and worked for The Claremont Institute.
It also turns out that he produced gay porn and was into something called cuckoldry, which is a sexual fetish involving voyeurism and sex with strangers. If you are interested in the details of Mr. Murphy’s side hobbies, someone calling herself Megan Fox posted them at PJ Media. Of course, Jack Murphy is not really Jack Murphy, Irish he-man, but rather, he is someone named John Goldman, who is not Irish. It is hard to imagine how this story could get any more ridiculous.”
I always knew the Claremont nest of Straussians cum Jaffaites were into some esoteric stuff, but had not realised that they have apparently veered totally off-piste into Sabbateanism 😛
Truly we live in an Age of Wonders!
Zaphod: I will say that “`” at least sounds better than “”.
Neo, I think you have an interesting point about the influence of the lateral dimension in that tiny house. I think back to the small apartments I lived in for a few years. There was a studio of about 350 sq ft, I believe, and right after that a 1-BR apartment that was about 325 sq ft, but with 4 rooms total. I would be okay with living in the latter again, and probably in part because, as you point out, it had enough breadth somehow to make sense. The rooms were in a 2×2 square arrangement, essentially, rather than being in a line or an L-shape.
JJ, your blood-alcohol quotient was 50 back then?! Yikes. 🙂
Rufus and Leland: it has struck me that the closest thing in planetary travel to space transit is being in a submarine. Maybe it’s something NASA should consider when it comes time to train people for really long-haul space journeys. Discovery One looks like a cruise liner in comparison to what I suspect they’ll be riding.
Tina, I tend to agree that Japan is quite an outlier. I don’t understand it.
(Tangentially, I just got a job posting in my mail that leads off with the statement that “Eurofins believes it is a global leader in food, environmental, [etc….].” It’s nice to see just a little bit of old-style modesty in these things.)
“Behind all of this is the fact that he found an easy home among people who are supposed to be more prudent and intellectually rigorous. In 2021, the Claremont Institute made him a Lincoln Fellow. For some reason, everything involving the name Lincoln turns out to be riddled with sexual degeneracy. Putting that aside, how is it possible that they did not know he was a faker? They surely did a background check on him before inviting him to the team.”
The jokes write themselves.
@Philip Sells:
— Zaphod: I will say that “`” at least sounds better than “”.
You’re a true connoisseur!
“Rufus and Leland: it has struck me that the closest thing in planetary travel to space transit is being in a submarine. Maybe it’s something NASA should consider when it comes time to train people for really long-haul space journeys. Discovery One looks like a cruise liner in comparison to what I suspect they’ll be riding.”
There’s an article about crew psychological modeling for Mars missions in the Christmas double edition of the Economist I’m currently ploughing through. Thinking is that that if they study the participants enough they can build tailor-made model which will monitor and dynamically re-arrange scheduled interactions and work partners to help smooth things over.
Re: Ploughing Through the Dead Tree Economist Xmas Edition Flopped on Sofa
Feels like hard work. I’ve grown accustomed to being able to take Trolling Breaks. The damn thing has no keyboard though. And you can’t copy/paste from a dead tree.
RTF: “… captures the alligator and releases it in a larger lake.” Do you mean like Lake Jessup? 🙂
physicsguy: nice slide show – and you will be well provisioned with venison, wild turkey, and turtle soup. Since your property area looks to be largely pines, I suggest you consider planting some live oaks. But keep them at least 50 to 60 ft. apart, so they grow and spread properly. Put them NE and NW of your house and you will eventually have really nice early/late summer day shade – something you will appreciate even more in time. Welcome to FL., and helping to keep us less purple than might otherwise be the case.
@R2L:
What kind of turtle soup? One reads scary things about gobs of gloopy green turtle soup at London Lord Mayor’s Banquets in days of yore. The Victorians were really into the stuff.
But I once tried the most glorious smoky delicious Consommé-like turtle soup in a very high end Japanese restaurant in HK which sadly closed down when Japan Inc. really hit the skids mid-90s and shuttered a lot of foreign junketing Representative Offices and sinecures to cut costs.
Amazing soup to die for!
Another excellent David Goldman = Spengler article on China:
https://asiatimes.com/2022/01/why-does-the-west-think-china-wants-global-hegemony/
Very nice, physicsguy! I agree about the need for space.
And a great suggestion from R2L about the live oaks. Be sure to drape some Pele’s Hair on them.
How will you maintain that acreage? I’ve got a full time job going with my single acre – and half of that is lawn my husband takes care of with the rider mower.
No gators here but the wild pigs are giving me grief.
And not a day goes by that I don’t give thanks – as I tromp around knee deep in vegetation – there are no snakes in Hawaii.
Darn, that empty “” was supposed to say “unpronounceable glyph” but in brackets. I see now what happened – the site thought I was trying to make an HTML tag out of it.
Molly, can you harvest some of the pigs or is that frowned upon where you are?
@ Rufus > In 1999, we had the opportunity to observe a space shuttle launch in Florida. We then gave our kids the choice of going to Disney World or St. Augustine.
We must have done something right raising them – it was a unanimous vote for the historical city, and we had a great time!
The Castillo de San Marcos was fantastic, and we climbed to the top of the lighthouse (I wouldn’t try that now, but my mother made the hike with us at age 72).
The only other “attractions” I remember are walking past the Huguenot Cemetery, visiting the Oldest Wooden Schoolhouse (Mom was a teacher) and admiring the Orthodox Shrine.
And the shop that sold guns and swords.
Philip, a few astronauts have spent time at this facility. A lot of studies on living in cramp conditions for extended times was performed leading up to Gemini. But Gemini was fairly short and fit the long flight fighter/bomber type conditions. I do think long term travel is closer to the nuclear submarine, which is generally cut off from what we think of the world for months at a time. It’s a 6 month trip just to get to or from Mars. That will not be easy for many people. And much of that 6 months will not be as scenic as popular culture tends to suggest.
Phillip Sells,
Yes, you can harvest the pigs and my good friend and neighbor had me over one night for slow cooker pig. She’s a good cook so it was pretty tasty.
The problem with ‘harvesting’ is finding someone to butcher them. Said friend spent hundreds on a trap after losing thousands in damage done to her irrigation system. She gets one every time it’s baited. My next door neighbor snares them and my son – when he visits – has caught them with a makeshift trap. However, there are only a few people to give them too. It’s really illustrative of how urbanized we have become, even out here in what is regarded as ‘The Country’. When I first moved into my house 32 years ago, on weekend mornings I would see pig hunters driving up the road past my house with their dogs in the truck bed and later driving back down with a pig on the hood. I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw this.
The state is trying to support hunting as the pigs are doing untold damage to the native plant life but not having much success. Hunting skills are passed down father to son and there has been a huge generational drop off. Same with horse culture. My neighborhood was originally an equestrian one but I see fewer and fewer riders every year. My daughter’s first word was ‘Horthey!’ as she sat in her high chair watching the riders go by. Won’t happen with the grandkids. Sad.