Another good thing associated with America’s least objectionable retail behemoth:

A real-estate developer in Los Angeles is testing a new blueprint for affordable housing: stack apartments on top of a Costco.

Thrive Living is planning to begin construction in early 2025 on an 800-unit affordable-housing complex with the megaretailer on the ground floor in the Baldwin Village neighborhood of South Los Angeles. The project, which includes a rooftop pool and fitness center, would have 184 apartments for low-income households.

The property would be the first residential development in the U.S. with a built-in Costco, which is best known for its fiercely loyal customers who load up carts with everything from bulk pickles to gold bars. The rent that Costco Wholesale pays Thrive will help the developer rely less on government subsidies for the affordable housing, according to Thrive’s founder, Ben Shaoul.

If it works, Shaoul said he hopes to use the same tools elsewhere to create more affordable housing. “I want to build thousands and thousands of apartments every year, not hundreds,” said Shaoul, who also runs Magnum Real Estate Group, in New York.

The Baldwin Village location would give Costco access to a densely populated urban market as well as an automatic customer base in the apartments upstairs. Many residents might join the tens of millions of Costco members who pay fees to shop there.

A great idea I hope gets spread elsewhere.

The post One small victory against NIMBYs appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

[“The Society for Totally Useless Pranks and Immature Dumbassery” has my current favorite acronym of 2025.]

Friend-of-the-site Colin T. knows of my love of both truck-eating bridges and googly eyes. So naturally, he swiftly alerted me to the existence of Lansing, Michigan’s Big Penny.

My favorite part is the tally of trucks munched. We ought to bring that to Storrow Drive here in Boston.

Link: https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2024/12/how-michigans-capital-learned-to-love-a-truck-eating-bridge.html

Sexism in gaming isn’t a new thing at all — good ol’ Dungeons & Dragons was full of it. Here’s Gary Gygax, one of the creators of the game, opining on women in gaming sometime in the early 2000s:

There were never many female gamers in our group. My daughter Elise was one of two original play-testers for the first draft of Wi, Usa ‘what became the D&D game, and both of her younger sisters played…and lost interest in a few months as she did.
In our campaign group that cycled through in a couple of years (74-75) something in the neighborhood of 100 or so different players, there were perhaps three females.
As a biological determinist, | am positive that most females do not play RPGs because of a difference in brain function. They can play as well as males, but they do not achieve the same sense of satisfaction from playing.
In short there is no special game that will attract females–other that LARPing, which is more csocialization and theatrics and gaming–and it is a waste of time and effort to attempt such a thing.
This calls to mind when Lionel made pastel colored trains and train cars to appeal to females. The effort bombed, the sets were recalled and re-dine as standard models, and those pastel ones that survived are rare collectors items.
So much for this topic.

One thing that jumped out at me was his flat statement that he was a “biological determinist”. Gygax had no training in biology, no college degree at all — he was an insurance agent before he became famous as a gamer. You can dismiss anything he says about “brain function” as a product of ignorance.

He mentions that few women were interested in his game in 1974-75, when they “tested” the idea. Women were not interested, according to him, because their brains were different. I have an alternative explanation: here’s Gygax writing about the subject in 1975.

I have been accused of being a nasty, old, sexist-male Chauvinist-pig, for the wording in D&D isn’t what it should be. There should be more emphasis on the female role, more non-gender names, and so forth. I thought perhaps these folks were right and considered adding women in the ‘Raping and Pillaging_ section, in the ‘Whorses and Tavern Wenches’ chapter, the special magical part of dealith with ‘Hags and Crones’, and thought of perhaps adding and appendix of ‘Midieval Harems, Slave Girls and Going Viking’. Damn right I am a sexist. It doesn’t matter to me if women get paid as much as men, get jobs traditionally male, and shower in the men’s locker room. They can jolly well stay away from war-gaming in droves for all I care. I’ve seen many a good wargame and wargamer spoiled thanks to the fair sex. I’ll detail that if anyone wishes.

Wow. Just wow. What an asshole.

Were you shocked by gamergate in the 2010s? I was. I shouldn’t have been, if I’d been paying attention in the 1970s. I don’t think Gygax was a cause, but a symptom of an attitude common at the time.

Let’s not forget the weird racism in old school D&D, either. I suspect he was a “race realist” in addition to being a “sex realist”, and now it’s coloring my impressions of the game.

[Alas, they lasted just a day or so.]

Frankly, this is good advice for all drivers:

The profanity on some of the other sham signs is not ideal, but bringing awareness to the violence of automobiles in America is a worthwhile endeavor.

Link: https://www.cpr.org/2024/11/21/boulder-explicit-traffic-safety-signs/

He’s better than the Bible.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” shouted Moist. “You can’t just go around killing people!”
“Why Not? You do.” The golem lowered his arm.
“What?” snapped Moist. “I do not! Who told you that?”
“I worked it out. You have killed 2.338 people,” said the golem calmly.
“I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be–– all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!”
“No, you have not. But you have stolen, embezzled, defrauded and swindled without discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You have ruined businesses and destroyed jobs. When banks fail, it is seldom bankers who starve. Your actions have taken money from those who had little enough to begin with. In myriad small ways you have hastened the deaths of many. You do not know them. You did not see them bleed. But you snatched bread from their mouths and tore clothes from their backs. For sport, Mr Lipvig. For sport. For the joy of the game.”

Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

[End-to-end encryption ought to be table stakes for communication wherever possible.]

The FBI has long waged an anti-encryption campaign, seeking to mandate the creation of backdoors into end-to-end encrypted communications like WhatsApp, Signal, and Apple’s iMessages. In their fantasy, these backdoors would be accessible only to law enforcement, and could otherwise never be exploited. To gin up support, they amplified the specter of child exploitation and spouted nonsense terms like “lawful access”, all in the hopes of convincing people that a “safe backdoor” wasn’t a complete and utter contradiction in terms.

But make no mistake about it, there are no safe backdoors.

Consider this analogy. You are the parent of a seven-year-old mischief-maker. You tell the child, “I’m leaving the house for an hour. There is a bag of candy hidden somewhere, but don’t look for it because it’s so well hidden you cannot ever find it.”

Of course, the child is going to do exactly what you expect and search for the candy. The same principle applies to creating a backdoor for the government in encryption. When bad actors are told there’s a government-mandated backdoor, they’re going to search for it if they know it exists. Even if it’s just to prove they could find the impossible only for bragging rights. Eventually, someone will find it. And once that door is open, it’s almost impossible to close it.

We’re now learning that China has penetrated America’s telecommunications systems deeply, in a breathtaking hack whose scope is still being revealed. It appears this was accomplished using backdoors mandated back in 1994 for use by law enforcement. This should not be surprising. When it comes to backdoors being exploited maliciously, it’s a matter of “when”, not “if”.

As a result of this hack, government officials are making an abrupt about-face. Americans are now being urged to use encrypted communications whenever possible. That is a good idea.

Link: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/us-officials-urge-americans-use-encrypted-apps-cyberattack-rcna182694