Current building codes allow the construction of wood frame buildings up to 18 stories tall. You need to expand your knowledge of wood construction beyond what you learned reading The Three Little Pigs.

I agree. Wood is clearly the superior material.

The key difference between all previous civilizational collapses and the one we potentially face is that most people in the past were farmers. Even in the grandest empires like Rome, less than 10% of the population actually lived in cities. Most people lived in the countryside working the land. The city of Rome lost something like 95% of its population. But those people didn’t just crawl in a hole and die. They abandoned the city and joined the vast majority of the population that was living in the countryside. Many in the countryside actually saw their quality of life improve substantially. Many who had been slaves found the old legal system enforcing their slavery no longer existed. Rome collapsing just meant the end of the grand cities; political and economic systems could fragment, and people would just live more locally.

But today? Less than 5% of the population actually works on a farm. The vast majority of the population lives in cities. If the political and economic system collapses, the countryside can’t just absorb all those extra people. Hell, the farms can’t even operate without the equipment, fuels, and chemicals produced by the larger economic system.

Historically, when civilizations collapsed, the common folk just left the cities, abandoned the corrupt elites to their madness, and returned to small villages and rural life. But now there is simply nowhere for people to retreat to.

You might find some inspiration in this desk I built.

500 cigarettes.

You can’t even post a youtube link on there without a socialist bot scolding you for not instead using some janky commie tube alternative.

I mean, North Korea itself is literally run by grown adults.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/26/blackstone-group-accused-global-housing-crisis-un

https://pestakeholder.org/reports/helter-shelter-how-blackstone-contributes-to-and-profits-from-californias-broken-housing-system/

https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/almost-a-crime-report-finds-blackstone-hiked-rent-nearly-double-market-rate/

https://prospect.org/education/2023-02-28-university-california-blackstone-housing/

https://www.archpaper.com/2025/01/blackstone-cushman-wakefield-landlords-justice-department/

While I don’t support mass shootings in general, if someone is so far off the deep end that they’re going to throw their life away in an act of random violence, I at least hope they choose targets like Blackstone instead of a random elementary school. At least they’re smiting someone who deserves it, for once. The country would be a lot better off if we had several hundred corporate shootings and zero school shootings each year. No shooting period would be better. But if you’re going to go on a rampage, at least go after evil people first.

Get the audiobooks. Listen to it in the car. But yeah, one of the plot points is basically exactly this, where people can effectively have a “save point” in life. I won’t spoil it, but it’s great.

Read Peter F Hamilton’s Void saga.

Every 10 years the Israelis have to all move to Gaza, and the Gazans get to move into Israel. They trade places every ten years.

If you have a problem with the number of people your partner slept with prior to meeting you, you really shouldn’t be dating, as you need therapy to work through your issues before you start mucking about with other people.

Let’s leave the border the same. But just to spice things up, we’ll move all the South Koreans to North Korea and all the North Koreans to South Korea. Then they’ll just swap places every ten years. It will so whimsical!

You must have hated Mark Twain.

It gets absorbed and reemitted by the walls of the room. Its reemitted as infrared light, due to the temperature of the walls. Eventually it just all ends up as heat.

The answer to the question “where did the energy go?” is “heat” 99% of the time.

A climate of mild paranoia.

And this is why Brian Thompson got what was coming to him.

I loved the concept of Peter F Hamilton’s Commonwealth saga. People invent wormhole technology. Interstellar colonization is done by opening wormholes directly to alien worlds. Except the tech isn’t cheap or easy. IIRC they described an interstellar generator as made of half a cubic kilometer of intricate machinery. They’re giant machines that can open portals to distant star systems.

Because of the immense expense, they need to make maximum use of these gateways. The generators operate on regular schedules, connecting to different worlds in the human sphere of colonization. And to make maximum use of the gateways…they run trains through them. You travel to a distant star system by buying a train ticket.

Yeah I have a subscription there. I recommend it.

I would say it’s not a community just based on the fact that you can’t have any kind of actual conversation in the comments section. Commenting on YouTube videos is just screaming into the void.