If you are rich, why not? When sea level rise, increased frequency or intensity of bad storms, etc., makes it not worth living there...they can buy another house somewhere inland. Even if they have to completely write off the waterfront property, they should be reasonably OK.
It's the people who aren't rich who have to worry the most--the people that have most of their wealth tied up in their house, and so need to be able to sell it for a good price to afford to move.
With sea level rise projected to be less than two meters in the next century, why not? Unless the land is extremely low lying, like some sand covered atoll in the Pacific, the property will outlast both yourself and your children.
I don't know about you, but I don't sweat what happens to my investments after myself and my children are long gone. Honestly, most of the time I have trouble just planning ten years out.
Flood insurance is a national program underwritten by FEMA. We have it on our house in inland New Jersey, because we're on a river.
You may be thinking of the windstorm insurance program. The state of Florida underwrites that, and started it as insurance of last resort after insurers started bailing following Andrew.
Possible. The point was that people kept building mansions in clearly unsuitable areas and when the private market wouldn’t insure them they made the government do so.
Yes, the people who can buy multi-million dollar cars just to have them sit uselessly in a garage can also afford to buy properties that may be useless in a few decades. Others are buying up land in New Zealand on the belief it's relative isolation will protect them from societal collapse.
Insurers and the Pentagon seem to be treating it as a real threat, which is probably more indicative than the purchasing habits of people who tend to love rapidly depreciating status symbols.
There are actually maps which show where the water levels will be at each year. My great grandma's house was recently sold for over $1m and only has 70 years before it will be permanently underwater and likely destroyed by 50 years if there is any heavy rainfall.
I wish more wealthy people would lead by example though. Like instead if Obamas bought much smaller place and made it carbon neutral.
Also, I have no idea, but what is the timeline for ocean's rising to make a place like his on beach uninhabitable? I thought it was much less time, like 12 years or so, there are so many predictions out there.
That 100-mile border thing really bothers me, since it includes basically every major city in the US. Does anyone know if there's been any legal challenges to this ruling in court?
And now an annoying aside. I really wish the ACLU was sincere in fighting this but they won't get any more of my money. I used to support the ACLU because these were the types of P1 issues they would battle. It seems in the last years it's faded to more social justice platform. Fine for them if that's what they believe are the most pressing issues of our time, but not my P1 constitutional concerns.
What's the point of anything if the government can railroad your 1st and 4th amendment rights? Are there good alternatives to the ACLU of yore?
The key to these types of solutions is always to follow the 80/20 rule. For example, it’s foolish to say and attempt “I will automate all of your data entry people” because there will always be weird idiosyncrasies that are better fit for humans. You will dash yourself against the rocks trying to get a “100% complete” solution.
Instead, create software that allows 1 person to do the job of 5. You create massive business value without getting sucked down the hole of edge cases.
True. In the same spirit, I'd also add record linkage to automated data entry. It's a big problem both if your previous data is noisy or your automated solution doesn't transcribe some fields correctly.
A simple probabilistic programming solution can work really well.
I’m building a tool to speed up data entry. It highlights OCR‘d words with low confidence for human review. It uses templates for capturing structured data and a fast interface for capturing unstructured data.
It grew out of consulting projects and is almost ready for beta testing if anyone is interested in playing with it and giving me some feedback - my email is in my profile :)
How do you guys network with the right business people to speak their language and find out how their processes work? You need that info (a problem description) before you come out with a solution, don’t you?
Just ask. People absolutely love talking about their problems, it'll probably be the most animated thing they have to say about the business they're in.
"Some people profess difficulty at finding applications to write. I have never understood this: talk to people. People have problems — lots of problems, more than you could enumerate in a hundred lifetimes. Talk to a carpenter, ask him what about carpentry sucks. Talk to the receptionist at your dentist’s office — ask her what about her job sucks. Talk to a teacher — ask her what she spends time that she thinks adds the least value to her day."
The "just ask" approach is very tricky. It does not emphasize a critical element : Most people love to rant and complain about things that annoy or bother them. People rarely if ever get to ideas to solve problems or even to describing the underlying problem.
> People rarely if ever get to ideas to solve problems or even to describing the underlying problem.
That's your job. Develop hypotheses about what the underlying problem is and ask them questions to try to falsify them. Develop hypotheses about solutions and build mockups or proofs-of-concept and have them try them out to falsify them.
No one will hand you a business idea on a platter. But problems to solve are the easiest thing to find in the world.
The question I was answering was: "How do you guys network with the right business people to speak their language and find out how their processes work?"
I don't think "just ask" is misleading at all. The fact that most people will happily complain about their business processes but won't have ideas to solve them doesn't make it "tricky", it makes it an opportunity.
There might be fields of endeavor where identifying solvable problems is incredibly hard, maybe in academia or politics, but business processes? Execution and, if you want to get rich, scaling up are hard. But identifying solvable problems with people's business processes is totally one of the "easiest [things] in the world".
> In March 2003 [..] it reportedly took International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials only a matter of hours to determine that these documents were fake. IAEA experts discovered indications of a crude forgery, such as the use of incorrect names of Nigerien officials.
The CIA and foreign intelligence services did do some good work to try to correct that particular false narrative - something originally spread from Iran's intel service no less (which sounds a lot like the discredited 2016 'dossier' which came from questionable Russian sources). But they clearly didn't do enough. Probably because they were on the brink of getting new massive sweeping powers.
> ”Each day I walk into work, and this slot opens up above my head, and money falls out ... the next day I come back, and the slot reopens; more money falls out.” This is a surprisingly dark way to view your life’s work.
This is a very realistic and nice way to look at money and finances. You were paid to do a job. Take what comes out and put it into all of the appropriate places, then you’ll be ready when you come back to work and — wouldn’t you know it — nothing comes out.
> the conclusion was extremely clear, children raised with hyper focused protective parents succeeded
By what metrics? An Ivy League student who requires their parents to intercede with their teachers versus a well adjusted state school student who takes care of themselves.
I read back some of your history. I hope the dark clouds break in your life and you get some much needed warm rays of hope. It’s sad what happens to people in this country stuck in the kafkaesque twilight of our medical system. And then to be rejected by friends and family...
“Why have you made me your target? Have I become a burden to you?”
Thank you for your kindness, but it won't happen. It's not happened in all these years and the need and issues are worse now. If I had been born in the first world with a proper social safety net I would have had help rebuilding from the start of this, and support to survive were that not possible. I've known people in my shoes who have that safety and live because of it. In this country its all about profits and if you aren't a producer of profits you don't get the privilege of life. I have to accept its over. All resisting that and fighting does it take more away and make the end worse and take away more agency. I can't stand anymore "Praying to Jesus changed my life" or "just do this hard and unstable job that even a young healthy person struggles with" advices, and seeing how many people respond with arguments about how "the market" is the right answer without caring that human life is involved. I am sick of all of it.
Blaming this on budget cuts is absurd. There didn't even use to be something such as an "STD clinic", let alone easy access. In many states STD testing is totally free and anonymous. How long has that been around?
Besides, have you seen sex education in schools these days? Let's just say it's... comprehensive. Compare that to the 70s, 80s, 90s, ANY other time. Children today go into sexual relationships with way more information that any previous generation.
