It pulls in air from outside. So if their is smoke in the air from a wild fire then it will just fill your whole house with smoke. So you can run it, just highly ill advised.
What about dust storms? Seems like some areas in the American Southwest (AZ, NM, West Texas) are dry enough for swamp coolers, but they also can have these insane dust storms that are so intense you can't see to drive on the highway.
It's actually deeper than that. It imprints the image into our collective minds. Even if YOU don't think iPhones are better, it may still be rational for you to buy one if you know that people will think more highly of you when they see you holding one.
> you can do an un-permitted remodel of your downstairs, add drains, pave over the soil filter, create a massive sewage flooding problem, and sf will do... nothing. But if you were to try to tear down a house and replace it with a properly engineered multi unit dwelling... are you kidding me?
This is a really good point. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this applies to US in general; not just SF. Cities will never inspect your house unless you give them a reason (e.g. apply for a permit).
The main deterrents to un-permitted work are: 1) if you need to sell the house, buyers don't like unpermitted work, and 2) your neighbors can file a complaint.
Why should a city have standing to inspect your house without a reason? "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated"
I've bought two houses in my life. Both had obviously unpermitted work; I had no issue in either case as it was generally acceptable quality of work. If a shopper for my house has a problem with unpermitted work when I go to sell, they're free to move along and find a house without any.
Without a reason, they shouldn't. But there's an ambiguous area in there.
For instance, my house in SF actually shares a foundation with the two neighboring houses. This was an issue when I wanted to remodel to get better ceiling heights. I'd say I'm not free to do whatever I want with a shared foundation.
Also, when you share a wall, you do have an interest in verifying that the electrical and firewall work done next to your house is up to code.
It can get out of hand, but there are a lot of reasons for permits and inspections. I don't think entering someone's house, scheduled well in advance, with a very limited agenda to simply verify that recently added wiring in a dense, crowded neighborhood with shared walls, and leaving immediately afterwards, would qualify as an unreasonable search and seizure.
You're describing an inspection of work associated with a permit. I don't think anyone reasonably objects to that.
It sounded in your earlier post that you were suggesting (or lamenting the lack of) periodic inspections for the purposes of finding unpermitted work, which I (and probably many others) would find unreasonable and likely contrary to the 4th Amendment.
My biggest lament is the pave over of the external front setback (yard), as this is the really destructive practice on s large scale. When the practice becomes widespread, The loss of soil filter really does harm to the infrastructure. This could be inspected with a simple drive by. Sf actually does enforce this on a complaint driven basis with a fine, though there’s a backlog and a quick drive through many sf neighborhoods will suggest little to no enforcement.
Entering someone’s home is a big deal. Ideally there would be strong cause and very limited scope.
On a related note, I do think that if you Airbnb, you’ve left the realm of home and entered the realm of commercial property subject to audit for public safety.
I did not suggest any solutions (period inspections or what not).
I'm pointing out that the situation - that we have a set rules (zoning), but they aren't enforced - which causes people to knowingly build without a permit.
The parent comment provided legitimate reasons why cities have some zoning rules in place (shared sewage, flooding, etc..).
Isn't data collection by the ISPs/phone companies a bigger issue? Consumers truly have no choice there. Whereas you could get by without FAANG, though it'd be inconvenient.
I agree it should be harder the bigger you are, but it's not the tax rate. Right now, FAANGs either run a 0% profit margin, or book their profits to Ireland.
In January 2016, the FDA finally banned the Teflon-like, grease-resistant chemical that's been linked to various cancers, infertility, thyroid issues, and birth defects from being used in food packaging: perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). That was great news since a study by the FDA found that up to 20 percent of PFOA levels in our bodies can come from consuming a mere 10 bags of popcorn a year. Unfortunately, the FDA has already approved nearly 100 PFOA-like compounds for use in food packaging—a majority of which have little to no information regarding long-term health consequences, according to the Environmental Working Group. So, although all of the bags listed below are PFOA-free, there is little evidence to support (or deny) that PFOA substitutes are safe to be in contact with your food. Ah, the joys of food manufacturing.
And the book it cites "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States".
Few quotes to whet your appetite:
> The first is that, for thousands of years, the agricultural revolution was, for most of the people living through it, a disaster. The fossil record shows that life for agriculturalists was harder than it had been for hunter-gatherers.
> there is a crucial, direct link between the cultivation of cereal crops and the birth of the first states. It’s not that cereal grains were humankind’s only staples; it’s just that they were the only ones that encouraged the formation of states... Only grains are, in Scott’s words, “visible, divisible, assessable, storable, transportable, and ‘rationable.’ ” Other crops have some of these advantages, but only cereal grains have them all, and so grain became “the main food starch, the unit of taxation in kind, and the basis for a hegemonic agrarian calendar.”
> War, slavery, rule by élites—all were made easier by another new technology of control: writing... writing was used exclusively for bookkeeping: “the massive effort through a system of notation to make a society, its manpower, and its production legible to its rulers and temple officials, and to extract grain and labor from it.”
As someone who knows a few property owners in San Francisco this is a common thing. People in tech make peanuts compared to who is holding property in the city. Most of these wealthy people don't rent because rent control will bring down the value of their property (you can't evict the tenants).
We're talking about international levels of wealth, these same people have multiple pieces of property in Hong Kong which makes San Francisco look dirt cheap.
Are the people you know single or two home owners? I’m talking about multi home owners in the Bay Area (4+) with property in the most expensive cities in the world. That’s a very different social class than a Bay Area home owner.
The ones who do rent usually hire an agency to take care of the headaches for them.
While prostitution was seldom legal in the catholic belt (unlike in countries north of the Austrian border), brothels played an important role in male culture as much as family. Men would usually lose their virginity with professionals, often as part of the "man-making" ritual happening during conscription (e.g. money received from the Army as a refund for the expenses to reach the conscription offices to get the first medical evaluation, often in the regional capital far away from home, would be spent on booze, cigarettes and hookers).
For what concerns Italy, maybe Tinto Brass' "Paprika" and other of his movies are a good NSFW primer on this specific subject.
