Scott Alexander once wrote the funniest evisceration ever. I partly think it's because he was genuinely exasperated and not trying to be mean which somehow made it worse
Appliance repair is interesting from an economic standpoint. Repair techs need >$100/hr to be profitable, and most clients aren't sophisticated enough to provide actionable info. Thus, two trips are necessary (>$200) & this can quickly add up to >1/2 replacement cost.
I usually find that experience beats a PhD but after a week and a half of trying to get a repair guy I took my chances and triumphed!
Can now wash my clothes.
The owner's time in managing service techs often rivals the time it would take an amateur to make the repair. Thus there's a strong case for smart laypeople to attempt repairs themselves, and probably a separate case for dumb laypeople to simply replace the appliance.
When my wife was pregnant her friend was a few weeks behind her. She and her husband told us their baby name in the strictest confidence like it was a launch code. So when my son was born the first thing I did was bcc them into a fake stolen name birth announcement
Just learned of the Honduran libertarian charter city Prospera because I was interested in the recently reformulated but decades suppressed cure for dental cavities, so naturally I was reading the blog of a semi-anonymous California psychiatrist & rationalist
YIMBY reflections on HVAC licensing from my renewal class
- ~7500 HVAC licenses in NJ (some inactive)
- 15 people obtained licenses last year
- The licensing exam has ~90% failure rate
- ~230 licenses lost/yr (usually via death)
- ~10% of license holders are <40 yo
Public mistreatment of teenage boys is more common than you might expect. For whatever reason there seems to be a default expectation that if they're in public they're up to no good. My son and his friends have been screamed at for totally banal behavior
Yes! Table legs are $90 and a slab that seats 4-8 runs $500-$2k. You can build something incredible for your family in a few hours of sanding. Ridiculous that more people don't do this
@GeneralAntilles
It's so strange that medical practices can't give you an appointment time that's the time you're supposed to arrive. It's always t-x minutes where x is the buffer they want
First EA forum post! I argue that the HVAC workforce will significantly determine the success or failure of future IAQ interventions and is almost entirely overlooked.
My son's complete list of steps for preparing to go to a friend's house overnight:
1) place the head from an electric toothbrush in pants pocket
2) leave house
Interesting response. Trying to keep your employees from becoming destitute via expensive trucks comes up quite a bit when you're a blue collar boss. Other 2 risks are probably unwanted pregnancy and spouse exiting the workforce
Tbc I actually like a fair bit of Caplan's writing and thought his 80k interviews were great! Otoh this feels on the money because it often feels like Caplan is excessively contrarian/extreme (eg parenting probably matters but less than many parents believe)
There's a phenomenon where someone is immediately demonstrated to be incontrovertibly wrong but you just know they're going to respond with some version of "but still..."
I think this is a pretty good window into the general myopia that's often integral to trade licensing. It's not clear that trade licensing has improved consumer protection, and license issuers clearly don't have effective plans for issuing sufficient licenses
My buddy runs a local 5k every year. 8 years ago I outkicked him for 4th and acted like it was the Olympics. To further the humiliation, the race registration company uses our finish pic on his race page
Me behind the wheel of an F-150 early today getting outside the Beltway and finding out what real Americans are thinking about in Southampton, New York.
Many people don't realize how persistently awful the lives of bullied children are. I don't love that BJJ resolves this by giving victims greater skills with violence than their bullies, but in many cases there doesn't seem to be a better solution.
This debate is bizarre. Crary calls for scuttling EA altogether, both in the opening here and in the anti-EA book she published. Singer outlines a very basic EA case that Crary appears to be unaware of (?) so she retreats to a "bigger tent" argument 1/x
1942 American Electricians's Handbook. Back in the days when real men were expected to test for 250 volts with their fingers and lower voltages with their tongue
Just realized that my daughter - a 14 yo human - thought she had to press '1' after 'answer' to receive phone calls and this is why every call to her begins with a beep
@MirroredTwin2
@Coll3enG
Best guess in this case is either refrigerant leaking/improperly charged. It's a pernicious failure that tends to get overlooked due to endemic problems with HVAC incompetence.
@MirroredTwin2
@Coll3enG
I realize this might seem pedantic, but it's important that we not pre-load blanket excuses for failure, especially when doing so significantly jeopardizes occupant health and well-being.
@ryancbriggs
It's counter to popular beliefs around how people view research and statistics, but I think in some cases it's easier to be sympathetic to an abstract, empirical case vs individual behavior
@abettertake
Did you ever get around to checking for water heater spilling? A couple weeks ago I had a client with a concealed water heater flue pipe disconnect where the gases were partly being pulled back into the house via return leakage in the attic so there's also that
@jljcolorado
My view is that endemic HVAC incompetence is the dominant obstacle to the implementation of IAQ improvements. I wrote about this on the EA forum here:
@SpacedOutMatt
Lmao.
"You've seemed distant over the holidays, sweetie. Is everything OK?"
"Sorry, I just can't stop thinking about this great idea I have for an EA forum post."
Some of the primary challenges to fixing school ventilation systems are totally overlooked, especially in academia. We need a deeper understanding of the main obstacles to HVAC improvement. Thread
My mother has my dad in her phone as <his first name>:<the town they used to live in>. They've been married for 50 years and she's using their (former) town to avoid confusing him with other guys
A friend just had me check out her bath fan that her installers said was "broken". Went over and didn't find continuity in places where I should have so I yanked it. It was t connected in any way to electricity. So that's a first
@NathanB60857242
The modern Olympics were primarily a vehicle for excluding the working poor, and its normalization has facilitated the continued suppression of athletes via HS and college amateur athletic requirements.
If nothing else this is surprising because almost all teenagers have adult parents and many others like kids. We should have a strong cultural norm towards intervening when we see adults targeting children, and adults should feel less safe in doing so
Alarming 80k episode but getting shades of Gell-Mann in the repeated discussions around the difficult of achieving positive pressure in labs. One time I sealed an attic duct system and accidentally pressurized a bedroom to 25 Pa lol. Not difficult.
People's perception of cooling cost is often wildly out of line with reality, such that they'll often choose more costly alternatives that are less comfortable.
I once asked a guy if he "had any problems with water in his basement" and he said no. When I discovered 2" of standing water in his basement he said it wasn't a problem because he put down pallets to get to the washer and dryer.
@VenemousTurnip
Hey man, I get where you're coming from with this but if you're wondering why I didn't open with the fb market recommendation it's because I'm literally a guy who's drumming up work for his wood slab business
One of my ex-employees was once jailed for 30 days and extradited to DC due to having the same name as someone with an outstanding warrant. He was clocked in on a NJ job site the day the crime was committed.
I'm 50 so I'm at greater risk of dehydration and heatstroke. And I've been running in the heat! Luckily I'm still conscious and have access to water and containers
@ocnj3
Yes, but people have to be smart enough to locate model info, read diagnostic code, understand schematics. I can greatly speed an hvac service call with a smart person, but maybe works 1/3 of the time
I'm very surprised by the number of people who are surprised to learn that roofing is dangerous. Makes me curious to know which jobs people perceive as dangerous and how closely they align with real danger
Is the consolidation of hunting and fishing new? I don't recall having seen that.
But yeah, hurting yourself in a remote location and falls are both not great. Ime remote work was also dangerous due to working monster hours and having less scrutiny
@cremieuxrecueil
The Atlantic health section operates in a way that's just shy of grifting. It's like they know their marks want to hear that cico is somehow wrong but ofc they can't say that so they opt for bogus studies
@MelindaBChu1
@Mjreard
I appreciate your frankness but learning we didn't invent charity and philanthropy will obviously be a big blow to those of us in the community
The most frustrating thing about rampant HVAC fraud is everything is quantifiable but there's still almost no accountability. Techs write fraudulent & easily disproven service notes and recommendations all the time. A culture in which no one gets called out! 1/2
Was just interviewed for my first ever podcast on Building HVAC Science! I managed references to 2 NBER working papers, so things definitely got weird!
Here's the abstract to Crary's chapter. It's difficult to see this as anything other than vacuous nonsense. People who believe that institutional change should supplant eg malaria eradication should advance a specific case for its superiority
I've had to buy 2 trucks this month, which is double the number from the previous 3 months. If this trend continues in 2029 I'll have >1 million trucks
@Cpl_Dont_Know
You don't have to justify shit. People in construction are allowed to make money. Up front, fixed rate pricing pretty much precludes being ripped off because people can use you or someone else
@JMannhart
@RichardSSutton
The unfailing politeness of EAs might be an existential threat.
Them <clearly rationalizing building robot overlords>: When we finish there's no such thing as morality!
Us <politely>: I'm just going to push back on that a little...
Compatibility with institutions is a prerequisite for accomplishment not a reflection of faith in their intrinsic validity. Proponents of this view are getting a pass on how to effectively give. They should be pressed on their vision for tangible current alternatives
HVAC people, what size return filter grille would you pick?
I am looking for the best balance of:
- best/easiest/cheapest low ∆p MERV 13+ filters on the market
- least need for maintenance/highest capacity
Maximum size in the width dimension is 24 inches. Height is practically