This is (anecdotally) not true for families in the highest income decile (in California). Kids are pushed harder to learn things earlier than when I was growing up. For example, nearly all of my kid's classmates could read before they started kindergarten. All could do basic arithmetic. Now that he's in first grade, most can read chapter books and have a grasp of multiplication. My mom pushed me hard to get me ahead of my peers, but I didn't hit those milestones until a year later. The standards and expectations are extremely high now because it's never been harder to get a spot at a top 20 university—perhaps because a top 20 school is the best chance you can get to maintain your living standards.
"I have known more people whose lives have been ruined by getting a Ph.D. in physics than by drugs."
This seems a bit hyperbolic. In the mid to late 2000s, only 5 of the 15 close grad student friends I had at Caltech didn't get a tenure track position somewhere. Four of the five work in tech, and the fifth is a government electrical engineer. 4/5 were homegrown, the fifth is an immigrant, and all ten tenure track (now mostly tenured) profs are immigrants.
Forgotten by some, maybe, but there are many Iranian-American and Armenian-American families with medlar trees in their suburban LA yards. It is sold at Paradise Nursery in Chatsworth.
> Reportedly the leadership of SpaceX manages him like he's a medieval boy king
A family friend who works closely with Elon at SpaceX puts it like, "you have to make him believe that your technical conclusions and recommendations are actually his to have any hope of traction." Otherwise, even if you're proven right years later when Elon's strategy fails, he will hold you to task for, "not convincing him hard enough."
If I were inclined to rob houses, I would find the challenge and risk of robbing houses here quite interesting. Apart from the fact that all roads in go through manned gates, this is the most republican city in SoCal. In translation: most of us have a lot of guns.
I came here to say the same as the sibling comment. Why not slow down? That is what happens in my city: residents drive slowly because they don't want to hit a neighbor.
I'm fond of warm, yellow hues for indoor spaces. If I were forced to choose a color for outdoor lighting, I would go for the same. However, white vs. yellow has already played out in some areas: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-09-30-mn-40657-...
> If I live in such a place, I expect to be able to walk on sidewalks without a flashlight.
We don't have any sidewalks. People either take trails adjacent to roads or walk on the roads themselves. Everyone is aware that pedestrians and equestrians are first class citizens, so residents drive slowly. That's not true for some delivery drivers and domestic workers, but we find the risk-reward tradeoff reasonable enough to have left the lighting provision in our CC&Rs for the last eighty years. Sometimes, expectations are at odds with the realities of what is tolerable in terms of safety, good for local flora and fauna, and pleasurable for ourselves.
It depends. If there's a full moon out, I often walk without a light. It's wonderful. Otherwise, I use a headlamp.
> Doesn't this cause issues?
No. I think the main effect is that people finish their walks, bike rides, and so forth before dark. Obviously that's impossible for much of the year for people who work 9 to 5, but given the demographics of this community—small business owners with flexible schedules and retirees—it works for most. In particular, there is one woman from a nearby street who walks past my office window every afternoon: in the winter she walks by at 3, and in the summers she walks by around 6 with her husband.
> getting lost
I don't think this is a realistic concern for those with smart phones. Moreover, the hilly topography and lack of cycles in the road network (barring one) make it very easy to remain oriented.
HOAs have their downsides, but I do really appreciate one of my CC&Rs: in my ~4 square mile city, we are not allowed to have exterior lights apart from ones to illuminate driveways and patios. Moreover, there are no street lights in the entire city.
It's an oasis of uncorrupted night in the unlikeliest of places: Los Angeles. You can see city lights from certain vantage points, but in most places it is pitch black. Living here feels like perpetual camping. It is wonderful, and it would be stressful for me to return to living in a place with perpetual illumination.
The alternative is gating on soft skills and job experience. Do you really think it's easier for privileged kids to game our industry's admissions tests?
A poor kid would have a much harder time developing soft skills and getting job experience than a rich kid would have passing our admissions tests, which would be worse for social mobility than the status quo. A poor kid with a blue collar dad can't get an internship at his dad's friend's startup. A poor kid didn't go to a high school with a computer science club. A poor kid didn't grow up developing soft skills at a dozen different after school activities.
However, the poor kid can go to college on a Pell Grant (like me), study hard, and at least have a chance to meet the Leetcode bar and gain entry to the middle class.
Does anyone have experience with going to a "school within a school" for "gifted and talented" kids? I was trying to figure out why I don't remember any bullying from my middle school or high school, when it dawned on me that I might have been insulated from it by taking classes exclusively with gifted and talented kids —i.e., kids from stable/whole/educated households. I went to a high school where kids came from a mix of blue collar and lower-earning white collar families; does bullying still happen at public high schools in wealthy areas?
There's a lot of discussion here about how private school kids are insulated from bullying. Does anyone have first-hand experience or hard evidence of this? Based on books and movies about boarding school, it's hard to believe this.
I was a physics major until I stumbled across the jargon file online. It was an, "aha, my people!" moment. It was already showing its age then—nearly 20 years ago!—but sucked me into CS where I was much happier.
I grew my first giant pumpkin this year. Unfortunately, it's a bit too small for me to sit in—it's only about 500 lbs [1]. I will know for sure next Saturday when I move it to a contest.
I think I'll be able to grow a larger one next year, since I did quite a few things wrong this time. If anyone in Los Angeles (South Bay area) wants into this silly project—whether for growing, escorting with a boat, or even paddling—please get in touch :-)
Ethics have a cultural and temporal context: if you believe strongly enough in the expansionary imperative of humanity, you would gift the generational ship's inhabitants with a suitable religion.
Our electricity usage increased significantly when we realized that predictable temperatures result in better infant/toddler naps, so the "post-installation" numbers below are for more kWh than the "pre-installation" ones. We were also forced to switch from a "tiered" rate plan to a time-of-use (TOU) one when we applied for net energy metering, which also makes it a little harder to calculate the benefit. But the offset roughly averages out to ~$200/month. I'm unable to access my old bills because I moved to a new house, thus the imprecise numbers.
Your personal benefit is a function of your weather and latitude. High temps reduce efficiency, as do, more obviously, cloud cover and shading. With TOU plans, your benefit will also depend on your usage habits and schedule.
In my case, the benefit was mainly psychological. I never wanted to use AC before, but I started to use it liberally after I turned on my solar system. My wife and child were grateful!
I got a couple of quotes for an installation in late 2019, balked, and tried to install and permit the panels myself. I'd never tried a "physical side project" or home-improvement project, but I found it surprisingly straight-forward.
I got a copy of my friend's permit application from a professional installation, learned a bit about the equipment and tools needed, started a spreadsheet of parts, and modified my "permit template" with details about my installation and house. My permit application was stamped on my first try (Manhattan Beach in LA County), so I placed my order.
It was a little tricky to get all my supplies on the roof of my two-story house. I settled on carrying things up the stairs, putting them on a balcony, and pulling them up a ramp I built out of some cheap wood. See pics here [1].
I probably went overboard on quality of parts to compensate for inexperience and not knowing which corners it's OK to cut, but my final cost ended up at $1.64/watt, including about $1000 for my electrician to pull some copper, ground everything, and connect to my panel.