Nowhere in the interview does the architect say that this is an original idea. She explicitly mentions that it is a growing trend, in fact. And also the words "micro" and "mini" don't appear at all in the article.
This is cool because she did a stunningly beautiful job on an 11,000$ budget. Her aesthetic sensibilities are, from the looks of this project, almost perfectly aligned with mine... but I have none of the talent to create something so beautiful in any medium unfortunately. Wow!
The point I'm trying to make is that this has been a growing trend for more than 30 or 40 years. And every year, sometimes several times a year, we see an article that talks about how great this style of living and building is. But it never goes any further than that.
And the fact that the article doesn't specifically call it a micro, mini or tiny home, does not negate the fact that there is an entire industry that caters to this market.
It's cool that she built it herself, but that's about it.
I moved to Cambodia on a whim 4 months ago and I have ~14,000$ in the bank. Given my current monthly expenses (100$ rent, 200$ food, 50$ miscellaneous), I'll have the next three years to work on projects and coding (more than enough time) without worrying about making money.
Like others have said, money is not the limiting factor for most people in regards to moving half-way around the world. Being 12,000 miles away from my parents is very hard though; this move was something I absolutely needed to do, but I know if something were to happen to them I would completely regret my decision to come here.
Heya are you in Phnom Penh or in the provinces? Am doing the same (many folks like us increasingly in Phnom Penh, all of us contributing somewhat to ever-rising prices though I'm sure ;) -- should hang for coffee!
Even if we accept that the NSA is comprised solely of benevolent actors practicing perfect discretion, and will remain so for the indefinite future, the mere act of collecting "everything" is an enormous hazard. OP recognizes as much:
CBS reported that in 2007 the US suffered an "espionage Pearl Harbor" in which entities "broke into all of the high tech agencies, all of the military agencies, and downloaded terabytes of information."
What's to stop this from happening again to the NSA? They couldn't even implement audit trails internally -- there should be huge doubt as to the agency's competence in securing their data.
Also, OP, did you not hear about parallel construction? How do you rationalize your statement that the NSA "is not a law enforcement agency" in light of this?
in my experience age has nothing to do with it. it mostly boils down to misinformation, or knowing or having known people who's lives have been ruined by drug abuse (these people also often can't discriminate between 'use' and 'abuse'), and not stopping to think how this situation was brought about in the first place, or how destigmatization of the whole topic could maybe have prevented the whole thing from getting out of hand.
Edit:
taken from the commment directly below mine at the time of writing:
I've got addicts and alcoholics in my family. My cousin died from overdose. I've got close friends who killed themselves with drink. Lots of you do too.
Exciting times? IMHO, the last thing we should celebrate is new ways to get a buzz on.
some people won't end up in jail for buying/selling/consuming drugs but those are just like little drops in the sea.
No. At any given time, around half of the men and women incarcerated in the US are there for non-violent drug offenses. To date, 31 million people have been arrested on drug related charges.
A situation where the demand becomes bigger (because it's not illegal anymore) will only put more fuel onto their war.
This is just obnoxiously wrong. How can you not understand that drug cartels won't even be a part of the picture after legalization? It will be LEGAL! It will be exactly the same as any other commodity. Beyond that, available evidence suggests that rates of drug abuse decrease when punishments become less draconian (see Portugal).
Ok wow, I didn't knew that the proportion of inmates related would be that high! I didn't make my homework hehe.
But drug cartels will still be part of the picture; with police out of the way they would have one less thing to worry about and they will still be fighting between each other for the market. Those people will not give up at all.
But drug cartels will still be part of the picture
I'm having a difficult time understanding this position. If it suddenly became as legal to grow marijuana as it is to grow tomatoes, why would someone purchase their marijuana from a cartel? Assuming a country like the US regulated pot the same way that tobacco or alcohol is regulated, why wouldn't a customer just buy pot from the local supermarket?
Supply would increase quickly eroding the high-margin that attracts the cartels. They'd still be around as long as there was any drug to smuggle, but I'd expect they would bother with pot any longer.
I'm more curious what would happen to demand. And how much of the increase in demand would be as a result of actual new pot users versus current pot users who are now allowed to be open about their use.
> But drug cartels will still be part of the picture
Er, why? Its not like the similar organized crime operations that were involved in the alcohol trade during Prohibition remained "part of the picture" as "alcohol cartels" once Prohibition was lifted.
They still existed, in some cases, continuing the other organized crime they had been engaged in. So, to the extent that drug cartels are involved in other for-profit criminal activity, you can expect that with drugs legalized and that market taken over by pharmaceutical companies -- who exist, have lots of money, and existing connections with regulators -- some of the cartels would try to pivot to focus on their other lines of business. But they wouldn't still exist as drug cartels.
The police won't be "out of the way" if the cartels continue with murder, selling to minors, underage workers, kidnapping, tax evasion etc. Those are all still crimes even if hard drugs were made legal. The cartels would have to choose between going legit, and delivering goods like coors, malboro etc, or continuing their other illegal activities and get taken down by the police
> ... or continuing their other illegal activities and get taken down by the police.
Yeah sure, just as they are being taken down right now. Haha, they even made you consider to change the laws on their favor (yeah, if you think you came up with that idea, think again).
Also, implying that bad guys care about police/law/wrong/right...
This is cool because she did a stunningly beautiful job on an 11,000$ budget. Her aesthetic sensibilities are, from the looks of this project, almost perfectly aligned with mine... but I have none of the talent to create something so beautiful in any medium unfortunately. Wow!