One of the more unintentional "reject modernity, embrace tradition" posts on this site. In a world where this catches on someone will come up with the bright idea of serialized novels again. It's like a payment plan for a book! More watercooler moments waiting for the next volume! Authors incorporating fan feedback between volumes! Imagine all the Dickensian possibilities.
Printing is a good constraint against getting too long, both the physical and cost constraints. Though the Harry Potter series in full still managed to reach a million words.
For another comparison, the Bible is around three quarters of a million words, and tends to use special paper (20–40gsm/30–50 micron) so it works in one volume.
Handwriting is also a good idea for encouraging keeping lengths down; typing and dictation make verbosity too easy; and as for LLMs, words are clearly far too cheap there.
Chrome/Firefox extension that redirects or alerts you when you open a Fandom or Fextralife wiki that has an independent alternative (many of which are migrations off those platforms): https://getindie.wiki/
Maybe eventually, but not now. Our AI-crazed org is doing everything possible to have us automate our jobs out and has laid off anyone who isn't hitting their targets to do so. Our CEO point-blank said he wants our department cut by end of the FY. Same org just acquihired dozens of senior SWEs.
The distance from the Mississippi's flow or mouth is irrelevant compared to the sediment that flowed out of it before levees forced it to exit the way it does today.
Erosion from that decision was already an issue 50 years ago; weather events accelerated the pace, but so have upriver dams that cut off sediment supply, and also shipping canals that have carved gaps into it that push surges further inland than they would otherwise, and also the chéniers that diverted floodwaters regardless of cause into more fragile marshes, and also farmland that was in active use as far south as Pecan Island up until Rita salted it, and also 50 years of oil-industry support infrastructure, and also the Deepwater rig explosion that leaked oil that killed off marshes (the settlement of which is how the state ended up capable of awarding this land), and also rampant invasive nutria that negated efforts to use agricultural fresh-water discharge to reverse previous damage.
> In Portland, I didn’t need a permit for the building because it was under the size threshold
You still need a structural building permit, beyond any electrical or plumbing permits, if it's both heated and used either as a living space or "for a business".
The city added the "for a business" wrinkle in 2024 and is very squirrely about whether using it as a work-from-home office counts as "for a business". It _does_ include working from it without bringing employees or clients into the buildling, but the way it's written implies that it's for people running a business out of their home address and not working for someone else's business.
It's a gray-enough area that I hope you got some solid legal advice. We ended up getting the permit to cover our bases in case I had to move to freelance/consulting self-employment.
Author of the blog post here. That new "for business" line was added in 2024, a year after I completed this build. It's good to know now though in case we sell and I want to do another build like this.
There've been a lot of pieces written about this, especially about Covert Action,[1][2][3][4] the game that Meier most explicitly called out for being a bunch of minigames that lacked coherence.
Specifically, if the minigames were too engrossing and the overarching layer too complex, you'd go into one of them with an objective that you've forgotten by the time you gotten out of it.[5]
And it's not a new argument, either. XCOM, also published by Microprose as a later contemporary, was very close to the medley model that Meier felt that he struggled with, but its various modes and mechanical levels (base-building, interceptors, budget/time/people management, research and manufacturing, tactical combat) all worked so well that it became the DNA for decades of a franchise.[6]
There's still a point to be made about maintaining an overarching focus, but it's a much muddier, know-it-when-you-see-it (or not-for-everybody) quality to it that makes it hard to turn into an actual rule.
The story in that link is also linked to from this Ars story:
> After the most recent BIOS update, some users reported that Framework support told them they needed a new motherboard, but Framework wouldn’t provide it for free because the customer was past warranty.
> Framework’s statement to Ars says:
> > … in addition to replacing in-warranty Mainboards, we are making exceptions for out-of-warranty replacements where we can confirm a stable-release BIOS update caused the board to become non-bootable.
> Framework is also introducing a “Crisis Recovery Mode” BIOS functionality to enable a path for failed updates to be directly recoverable.
So there are engineers building component CMSs for Markdown to help engineers edit product docs, and there are product people building component CMSs for DITA XML to help product people edit customer docs, and never the twain shall meet because an engineer would rather jump into a burning building than share a repo with DITA XML. Even when there's an interface layer on top of it with features that are fully indistinguishable from this product.
The future is batshit. I hate DITA and I still think this is deeply funny, in the same way as falling into my own grave and realizing they're throwing dirt on me would be funny.
Totally agree. The fight is still on. It's my only attempt to bring these two worlds together, taking into account the AI era where people generate MD files.
My approach is to get the product team to use a Git repository by providing them with a tool that allows them to work with MD files as they would with Google Docs: sharing a link for easy opening (like Zoom), comments, and a nice editor, and completely hiding Git.
I personally use Spec Kit for writing specifications for future AI coding, and many people (not only engineers) are doing the same and generating different documents in MD using AI. However, the biggest issue is that people are trying to find an editor to work with generated MD files or push them to another storage via SCP/CLI, which doesn't work as well as local MD files.
I would be happy if it helps some teams as it did for me.
"Gen Z electricians making $240-280k in data centers" was a viral ploy by Mike Rowe on a podcast to promote his trades-training hustle.
> "The electricians that I interviewed and met two months ago in a data center in Plano, Texas, all under 30 years old, all making $240,000 to $280,000 a year, all with as much overtime as they want, none with any debt, all three of whom were poached three times in the prior 18 months," Rowe said ...
Google AI summaries then pick up wealth/finance grifter social media clickbait about it and parrots it as a fact.
There are contract data-center electrical jobs paying $55-65/hr (some with signing bonuses, per-diems, and benefits on top), but they only come close to $200,000 takehome by working 12/7 with generous overtime. And these are 5+ years of experience, OSHA 30, journeyman license, bring-your-own-tools. They're also exceptional; most are still $25-40/hr.
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