My wife and I traded living near a beach and lagoon in San Diego country for a small but nice house in a mountain tourist town (Sedona Arizona). That was back in 1998. Except for some time working as a contractor at Google in Mountain View and managing a deep learning team for Capital One in Urbana/Champaign IL, we have lived a quiet life in the mountains since 1998.
One reason for my success in being happy here is that I accept the 1 1/2 million tourists who flood through our town every year. I view them as good for our economy and go out of my way to offer advice on the hiking trails to people who are obviously visitors, easy to do since I like talking with people. A few of my friends are miserable because of the tourists, but they are just a fact of life.
I think this concept of "acceptance of other people" is key. There seems to be a sort of cultural meme, especially in the western US, that everyone should be able to have a ton of land to themselves, but that's simply not realistic.
"Beautiful, scenic place; solitude; easy access to population centers" - pick two. There's a popular Wilderness Area about a 30 minute drive from Bend, Oregon and people act all surprised that there are lots of people there. You're not going to get solitude in a place like that. You need to accept that others want to be there too, and deal with it. And maybe do some volunteering to maintain the trails / educate people about proper wilderness etiquette.
Exactly. With the slight caveat that beautiful and scenic really only enter into your triangular choice when a place is publicized (advertised?) as such. There are beautiful, restive, empty places to go within an hour Los Angeles, Seattle, ... that are kept that way only by relative obscurity and mildly inconvenient access.
I don't think just acceptance of tourists is enough. It's easy to deal with people, the problem is they act horribly. No one wants to educate people, that's confrontational.
I lived in Park City for a decade, and it's the same. If you live your life being mad at the traffic during the Sundance Festival and Christmas vacation skiiers, you're just an old man yelling at clouds. That tourist money pays for so many of the amenities that make our town a nice place to live during the rest of the year. Lighten up!
There are probably exceptions but the intersection between towns with a lot of nice restaurants, cultural amenities, etc. and towns that don't have any real tourist presence for at least part of the year is pretty much the null set. The reality is that the small towns that probably most appeal to many people here are somewhat unnatural constructs.
I typically agree but there are some places where this topic is a bit more nuanced and controversial - Hawaii for instance. We love visiting the islands but learned a while back that large parts of the indigenous population see the US as an occupying entity and not their country. While heavily relying on the tourist income, this creates a challenging relationship between the locals and visitors (not to mention the disrespect some tourists show to the local land and culture). This issue was made very apparent during a Pearl Harbor tour when the bus driver described how many Hawaiians actually identified more closely with Japan than America during WW2 (and still do to this day).
First, thank you for at least taking the time to try and understand how the history of Hawaii has shaped many of the issues facing Hawaii today. Second, I will add that I was not born in Hawaii but lived there for several years and have learned a lot about it myself from my wife, who was born and raised there and did research into some of these issues as a graduate student.
> We love visiting the islands but learned a while back that large parts of the indigenous population see the US as an occupying entity and not their country. While heavily relying on the tourist income, this creates a challenging relationship between the locals and visitors (not to mention the disrespect some tourists show to the local land and culture).
Yes, there is a contingent of the Native Hawaiian population that is making the case for sovereignty. Again, I do not have skin in the game, nor am I an expert in these matters. However, it is acknowledged by the U.S. itself that the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Hawaii was undermined through force and not by any mutual treaty or agreement; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_of_the_Hawaiian_King....
However, your statement seems to be conflating "locals" with Native Hawaiians, which is incorrect (but not uncommon among many Americans). The majority of the current local population are descendants not of Native Hawaiians but of other laborers that were brought to the Hawaiian islands by U.S. persons-owned sugar plantations during the 19th century, "Few natives were willing to work on the sugar plantations and so recruiters fanned out across Asia and Europe. As a result, between 1850 and 1900 some 200,000 contract laborers from China, Japan, the Philippines, Portugal and elsewhere came to Hawaiʻi under fixed term contracts (typically for five years). Most returned home on schedule, but large numbers stayed permanently. By 1908 about 180,000 Japanese workers had arrived. No more were allowed in, but 54,000 remained permanently." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_Kingdom#Economic,_soc...]. Considering that the current population of all eight populated islands is only around 1,415,872, you can do some rough math based on average population growth from those workers to get an idea of how much the influx of these laborers changed the demographics of Hawaii.
> "This issue was made very apparent during a Pearl Harbor tour when the bus driver described how many Hawaiians actually identified more closely with Japan than America during WW2 (and still do to this day)."
I will not speak for this bus driver's opinions, but I would encourage you, if you get another chance, to take a look at the memorial plaque of civilians who died during the attacks on Pearl Harbor an observe how many names were of Hawaiians (locals, not native Hawaiians) of Japanese descent; although these individuals were also Japanese-Americans, Hawaii was only a territory at this point and did not become a state until 1959.
My point here being that who the Japanese-Americans in Hawaii "actually identified more closely" with at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor is complicated. Considering that: 1. Hawaii was not a state at that time 2. Many Japanese (and Chinese/Filipino/etc.) were residents of Hawaii prior to it becoming a U.S. territory 3. The government sanctioned xenophobia/racism at the time.
Another important data point to keep in mind on this subject was the service of the 442nd regiment during WWII itself; which to this day is the most decorated unit of its size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/442nd_Infantry_Regiment_(Unite.... Meanwhile while they were fighting on behalf of the U.S., many of their relatives and family in Hawaii faced outright discrimination based on their descent and appearance (not to mention any relatives they had in California who were straight up imprisoned simply because they were of Japanese descent).
Park city is particularly atrocious because most of the place is designed as this super spread out suburb around arterial roads - if they just had massive condos downtown near the ski lifts, people would only have to drive in/out of town once.
Was there just a year ago, right before the pandemic. That is one hell of a beautiful town and you should feel extremely lucky to be able to live there.
I lived in tourist heavy cities (London, Paris, Miami, NYC) and loved chatting with them. And some of them get you to be a tourist in your own city. It took me years before I finally visited the Eiffel Tower. It was always in my periphery and I blended it into the background. Then someone personally invited me to come along.
I’ve been one of those tourists — Sedona is a magical place. Also, the alpine stretch as you drive out towards the north has always stuck with me as one of the most incredible areas of the planet I’ve been to.
What!? Capital One has a deep learning team? As a long-time customer of theirs, I can't even begin to guess what that team might do for their set of products, except maybe to optimize their credit card offerings.
Which company doesn't have a "deep learning" team. Not to be cynical but tons of companies that barely even know what it is have AI/ML teams because its the hot thing.
Fraud, bankruptcy risk prediction, product marketing, possibly phone tree / voice response / customer service, would be my general suspicions based on some previous industry contacts, though no current insights.
My thoughts too. Fraud detection seems like the first step ML for a financial institution. Consumer banking basically labels itself. The customers will come telling you X transaction = fraud, with all the features available like time, location, amount, etc.
capital one are experts in underwriting subprime consumer debt and seems like they know how to evaluate risk for the most profitable credit products in the market. Won't be suprised if they use suite of ML/DL, although banking regulations discourage using black-box models for anything banking, and requires models to be explainable and free of possible biases.
Looks like a very interesting field to work as an applied ML/DL researcher (explainability, white-box vs black-box, bias, etc)
One reason for my success in being happy here is that I accept the 1 1/2 million tourists who flood through our town every year. I view them as good for our economy and go out of my way to offer advice on the hiking trails to people who are obviously visitors, easy to do since I like talking with people. A few of my friends are miserable because of the tourists, but they are just a fact of life.