The Off Topic Topic

[Sheilbh]

So this is fascinating:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sKqn3q6RgOOEBHB2qJeWJmL2-4atRURR/view

Basically, in the US factory built homes were the majority of homes built in the US during the 1960s and they were mostly regulated out of existence to protect the home building industry

Is this about those old kit homes you could order from companies like Sears? Those were pretty cool, all the parts would arrive by train and would be delivered right to your lot. You just needed to assemble it or hire a crew to do it. It was pretty cheap and efficient for the middle classes. I was wondering why those stopped being a thing.

Yeah - it is really interesting - recommend you have a read.

[Barrister]

So this is fascinating:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sKqn3q6RgOOEBHB2qJeWJmL2-4atRURR/view

Basically, in the US factory built homes were the majority of homes built in the US during the 1960s and they were mostly regulated out of existence to protect the home building industry

Is this about those old kit homes you could order from companies like Sears? Those were pretty cool, all the parts would arrive by train and would be delivered right to your lot. You just needed to assemble it or hire a crew to do it. It was pretty cheap and efficient for the middle classes. I was wondering why those stopped being a thing.

No - it's about mobile homes.  The ones that they just drive up to your lot and plop it down after it was built in a factory.

My brother and sister-in-law bought a new house for their farm - and they had it manufactured (I think from somewhere in Saskatchewan).  It's pretty nice.

[Valmy]

So this is fascinating:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sKqn3q6RgOOEBHB2qJeWJmL2-4atRURR/view

Basically, in the US factory built homes were the majority of homes built in the US during the 1960s and they were mostly regulated out of existence to protect the home building industry

Is this about those old kit homes you could order from companies like Sears? Those were pretty cool, all the parts would arrive by train and would be delivered right to your lot. You just needed to assemble it or hire a crew to do it. It was pretty cheap and efficient for the middle classes. I was wondering why those stopped being a thing.

No - it's about mobile homes.  The ones that they just drive up to your lot and plop it down after it was built in a factory.

My brother and sister-in-law bought a new house for their farm - and they had it manufactured (I think from somewhere in Saskatchewan).  It's pretty nice.

Actually they specifically mention kit homes on page 34 of the presentation. (edit: but it looks a little different since actually they are talking about modular homes which are entirely pre-assembled while old school kit homes would just have mass produced parts shipped to your lot for construction.)

A mobile home is one you can drive around at least in my part of the word. What you are describing is what I would consider a pre-fab or a modular home, which is what my grandparents lived in in Oklahoma (they lived very far from a city so not a ton of construction services around).

[Barrister]

So there's a restaurant called Peter's Drive In in Calgary.  It's been a Calgary institution for many many years, just selling basics like hamburgers, hotdogs and milkshakes.  I liked it when I lived in Calagary and went a few times.  It's very very basic, just drive-up service, but I like it.

For decades it only had that one location, but then a couple years ago they opened one in Red Deer (mid way between Calgary and Edmonton).  And now a couple of weeks ago they opened a location here in Edmonton.

I don't know if it's the lack of dine-in restaurants or what, but the place is crazy busy.  The drive-in lines snakes through their ample parking lot, then out onto the street and back a block or two - and the street it's on is a major thoroughfare.  Apparently people are waiting in line an hour or more just for burgers and milkshakes.  And it's been that way for 3-4 weeks or so.

I mean I like their food, but not enough to sit and wait for an hour...

[Savonarola]

How difficult would it be to make a working machine to jam 5g signals?
Of course I imagine the way to do this will be with more 5g signals.... But shhh

A second 5G system would be about the worst way to jam a 5G signal.  Spread spectrum technologies are fairly robust at resisting intra-system interference.  For instance you and your neighbor can have your WiFi set to the same channel and still have working system.  5G is similarly resistant.

A jammer is a basic machine; all you need is something that can generate white noise across the bandwidth you want to jam, a power amplifier and an antenna that can broadcast over the band.  The problem with 5G is that it operates on a wide channel and can operate simultaneously on multiple bands - so you'll probably need multiple jammers.  The other concern is how much area you want to jam; if you want a room it would be fairly low power, but if you want to jam the broadcast area of a cell tower you'll need a lot of power.

Is this just hypothetical; or do you have a reason to want to block 5G signals?  Usually it's easier (and far less risky from a legal standpoint) to build a Faraday Cage.

[Josquius]

Purely theoretical in response to the nutters with their magic USB sticks.

[The Larch]

The Dutch charm campaign towards southern EU countries continues.

[Savonarola]

Purely theoretical in response to the nutters with their magic USB sticks.

Okay, I'm glad I'm not aiding you in a felony.

I had not heard of the 5G Bio Shield before; that's amazing.  I see there's also EMF Proof Underwear as well; but only for the gentlemen - there's nothing for the ladies.  Yet another of society's double standards.   

I started work in cellular as the United States was switching from analog to digital technology.  Back then people were convinced that digital was more likely to give them cancer or that the PCS bands were way more dangerous than the cellular bands.  We hired a professor of Biology from the University of Michigan as a consultant to go with us to public hearings in order to try allay the public's fears.  I remember one meeting where he explained the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.  One of the city councilmen replied "Well I took biology in high school and I think you're wrong."

This was before widespread adoption of the internet.  That's made things much worse.  Later I'd have people confront me about "Radio Frequency;" not grasping that the transistor radio they listened to when they were young was receiving radio frequency.

[Sheilbh]

The Dutch charm campaign towards southern EU countries continues.

At least British Euroscepticism was focused on the Commission. This stuff is dangerous in the long run (obviously there'll be good papers in the Netherlands too).

[Sheilbh]

So people have been sharing stories on twitter of their worst door-knocking stories. And these aren't the worst but some have been posting about some interactions with voters.

Johnathan Reynolds Labout MP for Stalybridge and Hyde: "By no means the worst but a constituent refused to vote for me in the council elections in 2007 because of Harold Wilson's devaluation of the pound in 1967. I've seen him several times since and he's still unhappy about it."

And David Lidington, former MP, shared an anecdote he got told by Robert Rhodes James (MP for Cambridge 76-92) who met a constituent who told him "I voted Conservative once, in 1919 becuase they promised to hang the Kaiser. And they broke their promise and I've never voted Conservative since."

It all reminds me how amazingly crazy voters are. There's a Twitter account which just posts actually profiles of voters from the electoral survey and it is occasionally really extraordinary. A favourite:
69 year-old Catholic woman from Daventry, who didn't go to university and gets her new from the TV. She thinks Brexist will be bad for the NHS, the economy's getting worse, supports European integration and voted Remain and Lib Dem. She considers herslef to be very right-wing

[grumbler]

So this is fascinating:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sKqn3q6RgOOEBHB2qJeWJmL2-4atRURR/view

Basically, in the US factory built homes were the majority of homes built in the US during the 1960s and they were mostly regulated out of existence to protect the home building industry

Interesting.  So the dozens and dozens of companies in the US are selling  these factory-built homes illegally?

I'd note that the link is easily the least convincing presentation I have ever seen outisde of some of my students' poorer efforts.  Unidimensional analysis is generally a sign of fraud.  Lack of any sort of citations or works consulted would earn it a "rework and resubmit" from any decent high school class.

[Eddie Teach]

I bet Tyr agrees with the woman.

[Sheilbh]

Interesting.  So the dozens and dozens of companies in the US are selling  these factory-built homes illegally?

That's not quite what it says

Obviously this is just a slideshow but they are working on a paper.

[grumbler]

Interesting.  So the dozens and dozens of companies in the US are selling  these factory-built homes illegally?

That's not quite what it says

Obviously this is just a slideshow but they are working on a paper.

I hope that, in their paper, they don't make up the line describing what happened in the 20-year gap in the evidence, like this "presentation" (which is, to be fair, just a google doc and so not an attempt to claim being authoritative).  And I hope that they don't just assume the cause in the decline in factory-built housing, and then use their assumption as the basis for their conclusion (identical to their assumption).  They seem to have some qualifications, but their presentation is an embarrassment.

[grumbler]

Interesting.  So the dozens and dozens of companies in the US are selling  these factory-built homes illegally?

That's not quite what it says

Obviously this is just a slideshow but they are working on a paper.

Here's an interesting tidbit:  the Conference they presented this at had 12 presentations: https://cla.umn.edu/sites/cla.umn.edu/files/prescott_conference_program.pdf

The University of Minnesota had graduate students summarize the finding of 11 of those 12 presentations: https://cla.umn.edu/heller-hurwicz/news-events/news/edward-prescott-conference-proceedings

Guess which presentation the university didn't assign to graduate students to summarize!