I definitely feel a bit drained about my job lately, but then last night I was looking through my linkedin connections and basically everyone who left in the last 6+ months doesn't have a new job title, at least not one they care to share on linkedin.
No harm in keeping the resume up to date, but I'm not getting my hopes up at all.
We have this nonsense in Washington too, I made an effort last time I went to pick up takeout to bring one of my reusable bags with me to avoid the 8 cent bag fee, they had already bagged my order in a new one, the restaurant was like "Oh you have your own? We'll just take that one off your hands." Well, it wasn't one of the restaurants it was just a random grocery store one I had laying around, what are they going to do with it?
I wonder how many people even know those heavy bags ARE supposed to be reusable. I only know because I was bored and read my shopping bag.
We also have some kind of ban on fastfood giving you plastics without you asking for them first that as far as I can tell literally no one, except for a singular KFC near my house, actually abides by. It's all just ridiculous theater.
Funny to see this now. A couple days ago I was on vacation in San Diego and visited the San Diego Model Railroad Museum in Balboa Park and a lot of the traffic flowing through my head about it are all points addressed in the above article:
"Almost everyone working here is quite old"
"The amount of space this takes up is incredible, I wonder how people get into this hobby, I've never lived anywhere where I'd have enough space to set up a model railway long term"
It's kind of a shame too, it was the first time I think I've ever really appreciated the large scale model train installations. When I was younger I'd see them at random historical museums and mostly just think "yeah choo-choo sure does go in a circle haha". I think the San Diego museum did a good job of conveying that it isn't really just about the trains as much as it's about modeling the landscapes and towns the trains actually go through. Viewing it from the perspective of a massive scale diorama of some region really raised my overall appreciation for the whole endeavour.
My father was an enthusiast. When we moved into their current house (1988), the builder had the option of a three-car garage or enclosing the third-car section, and that was intended as a railway room. He favoured the large German "LGB" trains, in part bought because they were among the more durable products on the market, so it would be child-resistant for the kids to use. He built the framework and a track plan but never really had the time he wanted to work on it.
I, in turn, moved on to smaller American (HO scale) and British (OO) trains, using the same room, but now find that the tables designed for big 1:22.5 trains have irregularities enough to make 1:87 trackwork unreliable. Will probably need to rework them.
The hobby itself has definitely changed though: Yes, today's modern models are higher quality than a lot of the old "Blue Box" Athearn kits, but they're also $50 instead of $7, and come ready-to-run, so the hobby aspect of building and customizing it is gone. Many models don't even come as an undecorated version anymore, if you wanted the classic "paint it for your own custom railway" narrative. You don't get the same "hours of fun per dollar" out of that side of the hobby anymore.
What's interesting is that there's definitely an opportunity for synergy with the rise of hobby electronics-- the trains have moved from "variable DC on the rails" to "AC with a command bus" and sometimes even Bluetooth, so there's a lot of interesting stuff you could do with computer or microcontroller interfacing. I bought a project for an automatic traffic-signal design using some 555 timers and capacitors, and thought "this is 10 lines of code on a $3 Arduino, for this generation of hobbyists."
Shops are closing-- I make it a point to try to find a model-railway shop and pick up something exotic when I go on holiday, but even pretty big cities don't have one, or it's a billion miles from anywhere. I was sort of saddened to get a note from Hattons (an excellent UK retailer-- surprisingly cheap shipping to the US) that they have started to wind down operations in the last month.
> Shops are closing-- I make it a point to try to find a model-railway shop and pick up something exotic when I go on holiday, but even pretty big cities don't have one, or it's a billion miles from anywhere.
Berlin has two or three big shops and some smaller ones.
>Shops are closing-- I make it a point to try to find a model-railway shop and pick up something exotic when I go on holiday, but even pretty big cities don't have one
Tokyo has tons of them. They're even in the big, new shopping malls, along with huge dioramas.
> "The amount of space this takes up is incredible, I wonder how people get into this hobby, I've never lived anywhere where I'd have enough space to set up a model railway long term"
So much "millenials killing X" discourse is just "property prices killing X" in disguise.
My maternal grandfather was a pipe fitter on the railroad, before becoming a defense contractor, and also before contracting mesothelioma and dying when I was 6.
He owned a sizable property in California which included a large home and some attached apartments. They ran a boarding-house for immigrants, and later, my widowed grandmother became a landlady.
I was raised with a fervent love for railroads of all types. I had little engineer togs as a toddler and a professional photoshoot to prove it. We rode around on a scale railroad in the park. But most of all, my grandfather's labor of love was building a model train set for me in an upstairs bedroom.
It was essentially a simple affair; grandpa had built a large plywood table topped with Astroturf. The rails themselves were in a large figure-eight, with not much landscaping or scenery around. We concentrated on the technical bits: a good AC/DC transformer with variable knob, some nice rolling stock with the traditional freight-train assortment of cars, and a locomotive that had that smokestack where you could insert a little tablet and it'd puff out "steam" while it ran.
My sister and I loved that whole setup, and it was like catnip to us in our youth, at least until the Atari 2600 took over. The railroad remained the centerpiece of that room and a focal point of our entertainment for years and years, even after grandpa passed away. It was really a cool thing for an authentic railroad guy to pass that on to his grandchildren.
I'm not sure how much of it is space, as I remember even 20-30 years ago the model railroad magazines always had a "how to fit a layout in the space you have" - up to and including elaborate folding layouts that would fit in something not much bigger than a briefcase.
If people really want to do something, they make space/time available for it, even if it involves clubs, etc.
The number of people who want to build models in general is down, I suspect, given that we have so many other things to do with "free time".
> If people really want to do something, they make space/time available for it
There's other space-saving solutions, like layouts that swing up against the wall (like a Murphy bed), or that can be pulled up against the ceiling. Some handiwork required.
The only time that museum was filled with kids was the yearly "LEGO Train" exhibit, which I partook of once or twice.
And the people I was with (setting up the exhibit) were mostly younger (at the time) ranging from the 10 or so year old kids of the people leading it to mid 20s - not counting the leaders who were middle aged.
Everyone loved it and the number of visitors in that two week period or whatever it was would rival the total number of visitors the rest of the year.
But LEGO trains are not model trains (my goodness), they're toy trains - a completely and unrespectable thing.
“ But LEGO trains are not model trains (my goodness), they're toy trains - a completely and unrespectable thing.”
I love this condescending sounding distinction, it’s actually very accurate! When I was 12 or 13 I had an uncle that was into model railroading and I thought it looked so fun and cool! Then I started looking into it more and it’s not really (at least to me at that age) because it’s not a toy you take out of the box and play with a 100 different ways. You build a very static and detailed landscape, put your rails down, start the train up, and just sit back and look at it. Where’s the fun in that?
I just got a Lego train set for me and my kids and we’ve already built several different ways, crashed the train and rebuilt parts of multiple tiles, discovered you can program it with the new PoweredUp system, put mini figures on the roof of the cars, etc.
Not only can you change the track around easily, my kids have proven again and again that the track is not necessary and that the train can keep going (and going and going…) without the track.
I also suspect that many of the young people who can afford and are interested in many of these sorts of hobbies have, at least incrementally, tended to shift more urban which makes them impractical absent some shared club/store space. When I first got an apartment after school--and pre-digital photography--I tried doing home processing in a half-bathroom and rapidly concluded that was for the birds. (Even after I got a house, there really wasn't a suitable space and then digital photography came in.)
Also I know a few people who are into model train and I would not call them old. Also they use quite modern tech (resin 3D priters and fully automated train control).
As for the space issue, they even sorta sved that as well via modular layouts - you build a certain part of a layout that conforms to an interface spec (rail placement at edges, electrical connections) and then you can join other enthusiasts at events where they build massive layouts from these modules in a rented hall somewhere for a couple days.
It's not just the space although you either have to belong to a club of some sort or have a house with a fair bit of extra room. But stamp and coin collecting is pretty much out of fashion as well.
This is where I'm at. I want very little more than to than to buy some permanent property that I can remodel to my taste at my leisure, but mortgage rates just keep going up. Why spend 3.6k+ a month on mortgage when I can spend 2.1k a month to stall. I really can't imagine going in on a house right now without at least a 20% down payment to skip out on PMI (and lowering the amount of the mortgage overall)
Because at the end of the year your assets line for home will be -$25,200. In the mortgage case it'd be -$36,000 for payments but probably like +$25,000 for home equity bought so if cash flow isn't a problem you're better off.
If your mortgage payment is $3100/mo let’s say that’s a $450k loan for 30yr at 7.5%, you are not looking at anywhere close to that much added equity after a year. Just about $4k after the first year. Less if the payment was to include taxes and insurance.
PMI IS a waste of money, but it's relatively negligible. if it helps you get your house years earlier, that could easily be worth it, not only financially but also happiness (if owning is emotionally important).
i paid 5% down on my house and my PMI is only 4% of my all in monthly payment (mortgage, PMI, prop tax, insurance). if i had to wait until i had saved 20% i'd probably still be saving & renting. instead i've already paid down another 5% of my mortgage plus getting the interest tax breaks each year.
The mortgage itself is a waste of money if you don't pay if off early. I wish people understood this better. There is almost no situation where owning a home makes sense if you don't pay it off before the term and we aren't in some wacky pandemic or financial bubble.
I'm in this situation with my car right now, I have the money to pay it off but why bother when I can make the monthly payment with savings account interest.
Depends... It would depend on the price to service the mortgage. I would do a quick model to see the timeline to "break even" on paying in full verses the total amount of interest paid to service the loan for duration of the term.
Presumably that £3.6K ish is repayment, not interest only.
Try working out how much you need to save over 30 years (while renting) to buy a home. Don't forget to account for inflation in any assumed investment return.
I'm generally pretty pro "pay for the service you're using", but, I just can't bring myself to pay for youtube. It's so...creepy. I'll be in a small Twitch chat talking about donuts or something, I go over to youtube and my recommendation has at least 1 video about donuts in it. This happened like 3 times in the span of 2 days, so I convinced the chat to artificially talk about camping, a topic I have no time for, for about 15 minutes. Lo and behold: camping videos.
Part of me can somehow still tolerate this if it's at least free, but I have no desire in a world where I'm paying for this. If it means I have to rewire my brain to go for a walk or do pushups or open a book or slam my head into a wall every time I think about going to youtube...so be it frankly.
I think the argument in the macro sense about who is more at fault between the pervert store owner taping my conversations at their store and the pervert store owner who paid money for the tape because they just had to know what I was saying is a very subjective one. I personally do blame them both equally. The actual micro case of why I'd stop shopping at Store B and not Store A is mostly just related to my personal situation.
I know corpos and governments are passively spying on me either directly or by having others do it, and honestly as long as they maintain an absolute minimum level of social decorum to not let me know about it, I don't REALLY care enough to do anything about it. Google/Youtube just couldn't be bothered to do even that much.
Ha, one of the Seattle ones shut down is the former Dollar Tree on the Ave in the U District. They started a big remodel of the building right around when I left in 2017, thing barely lasted 4 years apparently.
The other Seattle store also lasted just under 4 years (opened November 2019). Seems more like they're closing recently-opened under-profitable stores.
Not for nothing, Postwoman has existed for years, but a couple years ago they renamed to Hoppscotch. Might want to choose a different name because I definitely thought you were them changing their name back, and I'm sure others will as well.
I bought a 6800XT because I was due for an upgrade anyways (I've come a long way since playing Skyrim 20 FPS low on intel integrated graphics laptop) and it came with the game. I'm playing it on 1080p high everything. Realizing that isn't exactly dripping in ambition for that tier of card, I haven't run into any serious problems.
The first big city you end up is definitely chewing frames but the rest of the game works fine...mostly. I will say I walked into a coniferous forest for the first time, and while it was maintaing 60 FPS, the card was sounding and heating up like it was going to explode more than it had at any other point in 30ish hours of play. The forest had this thick layer of fog over it too so you couldn't see too far ahead of you (and therefore the game didn't have to render too much), so I think some areas are more problematic than others.
As a frequent pedestrian, I can't square this thought at all. If the right has a red that means the crosswalk directly in front of the car has a green. I've never had issues walking perpendicular to traffic because almost no one thinks they have right of way sitting in front of a red. The issues I've had is when I'm walking parallel to traffic and people turning right on green have the thought "Oh, he's far enough away from my lane, I can squeeze in", causing a cascade of people having the same thought. Or even people who just don't notice me b/c they're looking straight at the light more than they're looking right at who is waiting on the sidewalk.
