The Off Topic Topic

[Syt]

That's an interesting layout.  So they did dinner service on the main floor, with conventional theater seating in the balconies?

It seems it was mainly built/used as vaudeville venue before WW1, for iperettas after WW1, before being converted into a cinema in 1929. Apparently (based on what I find online) vaudevilles had less strict building requirements (no hallways around the main auditorium, no large foyer for breaks, smoking permission in the auditory since the audience would be in the main auditory most of the time, including taking food/drink there). It seems they skirted some of the requirements even so, because of the location being at a fairly uneven incline in Vienna's topography.

Next time I go there with friends I can annoy them with quite a but of trivia about the building.

[HVC]

Simpsons really can and do predict everything

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZMwhYuAvup

[grumbler]

So, anyone else following the  Bricks and Minifigs story?

If you ever need evidence for the arrogance and stupidity of the average person, point to this. BAM could have settled this easily months ago, but they insisted that they would only do so by court order, and told the owners that they defrauded that BAM would make it so expensive to recover the stolen goods that it wasn't worth it.

Lots of police and judicial shenanigans included. An amazing story. One you'd never believe except for the evidence that it is all true.

[Jacob]

I've seen some internet coverage, but am not up on the details in depth.

Still pretty crazy.

[Sheilbh]

Very very long piece - but interesting answer on the difference between Euro-continental and Anglo building patterns/urbanism (and the Low Countries exception):

https://www.anima-urbis.org/p/the-capital-stack-that-built-the

(Seems fairly convincing to me...)

[Josquius]

I've only been able to read part of it.
Seems the summary so far is, "leasehold innit"

[Sheilbh]

It'sa factor - particularly on the exit side of things. But not the only one, actually has a counter-example from within England where it's not really factor:

Huddersfield as the within-Britain control

Huddersfield supplies a useful within-Britain control on what a tenure regime can and cannot do. The Ramsden estate held a near-monopoly on the land around the town centre and operated under several leasing arrangements during the 19th century, including the 999-year leasehold that was the regional default in West Yorkshire. The 999-year lease is the interesting test point because it offers, in effect, near-perpetual tenure security - the very condition a developer financing a multi-storey rental investment would want. If long-duration tenure alone could lift Britain into apartment-block construction, this is where it would show up. It does not. Through every shift in the Ramsden estate's tenure form, the housing that came off the land remained the row house.

The estate also yields a covenant test. At Primrose Hill on Whitehead Lane, the Ramsden boundary met the Lockwood Proprietors' land along the same stretch of road. Between 1861 and 1865, the Lockwood Proprietors permitted back-to-back houses, and 76 of them were built at an average of 65 square yards per house. The Ramsden estate prohibited back-to-backs by covenant, and the same stretch of road yielded only six through houses at an average of 253 square yards per house - a four-fold difference in density driven by covenant, not by tenure.41 Both sides are still the same building type: a row house, compressed or spaced according to what the covenant allowed.


On the left, Lockwood-owned estate land where back-to-backs were allowed, resulting in a much denser urban fabric with an average of 65 square yards per house. On the same map scale to the right, Ramsden-held land where back-to-backs were not allowed, resulting in smaller densities with an average of 253 square yards per house. Source: Ordnance Survey 25-inch map, 1892-1914.

The conceptual point this experiment controls for is what no single variable inside the English bundle can do. Vary the tenure form alone, and the row house remains. Vary the covenant alone, and the row house compresses or spaces out but remains. The Continental apartment block requires the whole institutional bundle in alignment - forced-partition inheritance pushing capital into rentier corporations, Pfandbrief credit funding multi-year construction against future rental flow, alternatively divisible-by-floor ownership law for the exit, and the rentier-corporation or owner-occupier-mortgage market to absorb completed buildings. Britain had none of those. Huddersfield shows that varying the English variables one at a time inside that incomplete bundle - even the most apartment-friendly tenure available - does not produce apartments.

[grumbler]

I had an interesting couple of days.  Late Thursday, we had a big windstorm, in which I lost power. It turns out that a tree had fallen on the power line on the property of my neighbor across the street, Steve. Power was lost to eight houses. It was hot as hell even that early and I didn't get to sleep because of the heat. We were not a high priority for power restoration because of the few number of houses affected (there were worse cases in the county).

Dominion Power showed up early Friday morning and had restored power by eleven AM. But they had just cut away those portions of the tree that were actually interfering with the power lines. About noon, a tree company arrived to get rid of the rest of the tree. They had the power turned off (again, to my place and seven neighboring houses) at around one. They seemed to be having problems (they really didn't have the right equipment, like a bucket truck). Around 5PM a new crew showed up witht he right equipment, and by 6:30 or so the tree was down. I fully expected to see power restored shortly.

By 9:00PM i was getting concerned that the power was still not restored, so I checked with DP to see if they had an ETR. They were completely unaware that there had been an outage, so they wrote a ticket, but, since I was the only customer complaining, I didn't have a high priority. It was still hot as hell with no breeze, so I was looking at a second night without sleep. I told the power company to have their crew call when they got to my place, no matter the hour. They showed up at 2:00AM, I showed them where the power line was and where the tree had been. They took a look, saw no damage to anything, and restored power right there. Blessed AC made my house habitable by 3:00AM.

I didn't understand why Steve hadn't been after them from the start to restore power. It was his tree, after all, that had knocked out the power and his house was one of the ones affected. I also don't understand why none of my six other neighbors even bothered to check on the power situation (which would have been resolved faster had there been more complaints).

The passivity of my neighbors in the face of two very unpleasant nights without power has me baffled, but I am never going to ask them why.

[viper37]

The passivity of my neighbors in the face of two very unpleasant nights without power has me baffled, but I am never going to ask them why.

Obviously, they were all waiting on you to call the power company. 

[viper37]

Kangaroo escaped in Montreal South Shore

The text is in French.  Funny thing, I suppose, since it's not something we see everyday around here.  Someone was illegally keeping a kangaroo in a horse enclosure.  

When it was noticed, animal rescue was immediately called in.  They came to rescue the animal with everything needed to transfer it to a zoo properly equipped for this animal... only to realize they didn't have the proper license to do so.  By the time the government agents arrived on the scene, the kangaroo had escaped the stable...

It's been in the wild since Friday, in a little forested area, but they can't see exactly where, so they can't catch it.

[grumbler]

It's been in the wild since Friday, in a little forested area, but they can't see exactly where, so they can't catch it.

Kangaroos are notoriously among the most elusive forest creatures.

[viper37]

It's been in the wild since Friday, in a little forested area, but they can't see exactly where, so they can't catch it.

Kangaroos are notoriously among the most elusive forest creatures.

So small and tiny, can hide under any leave!

[HisMajestyBOB]

Reminds me of when some Zebras escaped a private zoo in Maryland. Could have been the start of a native zebra population, but unfortunately they were all caught. 

[viper37]

So, anyone else following the  Bricks and Minifigs story?

If you ever need evidence for the arrogance and stupidity of the average person, point to this. BAM could have settled this easily months ago, but they insisted that they would only do so by court order, and told the owners that they defrauded that BAM would make it so expensive to recover the stolen goods that it wasn't worth it.

Lots of police and judicial shenanigans included. An amazing story. One you'd never believe except for the evidence that it is all true.

I've watched the 3 Legal Eagle videos about this.  Pretty interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH09tltEw1U&t=2906s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P36bPNMxIM&t=2972s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ndFb1oLdbk

[Tonitrus]

We like to think we're above small-town corruption, not operating on the stereotyped level of Russian cops shaking down poor sods at a traffic stop.

I think we're worse...just more advanced and "sophisticated" about it.