In the US, among other places, housing costs are skyrocketing. It can sometimes be difficult to get a feel for the scale of the issue and how it hits neighborhoods differently. [Justin Blinder] has designed a device to help people get a more visceral understanding of the problem.
In New York City, Citi Bikes are everywhere in the city’s transportation landscape. [Blinder] used a GPS module plugged into an ESP32S3 to vary the amount of resistance on one of these bikes by actuating the front brake with a servo. As a rider takes the bike through different neighborhoods, the resistance varies in proportion to the rent burden experienced there.
[Blinder] explains, “One of the main technical challenges was calibrating this relationship so that the changes were physically noticeable without feeling abrupt or unsafe.” As rent burden is merely the percentage of income taken up by rent in an area (by the block in this dataset), it is only one indicator of the additional friction a family might feel in an area, but a useful one to at least begin to convey the disparities in the urban environment. We really like how this connects abstract statistics to something more experiential.
If you’re looking for some other bike hacks, how about wireless brakes or a sleeper e-bike with a solenoid display?
via Next City
Let’s do also the opposite – automatically increase the rents when bikers are wandering around…
A well-executed and thoughtful piece of performance art with a progressive political message.
I am sure the usual HaD crowd will be very normal about this.
This smarmy comment is way more common in my experience
until they realize you pedal harder in rent control neighborhoods and cities with communists in charge.
Don’t know about NY, but local to me prices tripled in two decades. Most people’s salaries barely increased, and I certainly don’t know anyone who’s salary tripled, even when jumping between better-paying jobs. BTW, where I live houses are considered low-priced. Yes. half million quids is now “low-priced”. McMansions? Not always, some are old two-story condos (no basement) built using matchsticks and cardboard (relatively speaking). Lucky those who bought them two decades ago for reasonably low priced and paid off by now.
Rental prices followed the house prices fairly diligently, and the latest updates are people forced to co-rent. USSR is calling and reminds how 100 years ago communal flats were the norm, multiple families sharing one bathroom and one kitchen. Funny how capitalism reinvented the worst parts of early socialism. Communal living always comes with all kinds of unexpected easter eggs, scandals who uses who’s soap/shampoo, etc.
You can thank the Catholic Church who is the biggest landowner in Europe (except for Belarus, Ukraine Baltics and Russia). Papacy should be abolished and Vatican should become a democratic society based on mutual trust enforced by modern cryptographic technologies.
I don’t think prices in NYC are due to the Catholic church
Theodore McCarrick, does that name ring any bells bro? If not leave computer and go read a book because clearly you don’t have education.
Yep. Other people with funny hats are involved. :P
(((people)))
FTFY
We in the US of A just reinvented the Early Ages Catholic Church, except they are called “corporations”, but already starting resembling Spanish Catholic Church – the one who later went full speed with The Inquisition.
The present-day mainline hairsplitting is not too far away from the “how many angels can dance on the tip of the needle” and avoids discussing real topics, for example, unstoppable rollback of nascent democracies worldwide, and cancelling all the spoils from the cheap mass-produced products (that was won by reducing the varieties to too few – similarly how modern for-profit farming focuses on maybe a dozen varieties of same grains engineered for large harvests – but not necessarily good nutritional value – ersatz-foodstuffs, so to speak, imitation of food).
Economics 101, every profit sooner or later HAS to be backed by some kind of value, ie, exchanged for product that’s needed. If there is no good product, then it has to be faked, or mass-produced products hoarded, production halted, ie, bronze age economy of artificial scarcity to fill the void created. I don’t see corporate lackeys discussing this at all, though they sure spend inordinate time gaslighting about profits or new markets or new products or new whatever. Catholic Church, too, is usually happy with New Plan for all of us once we are on The Other Side, but I am not clear it can be cross-referenced, so back to the number of angels dancing on a tip of a needle.
US “capitalism” has more barriers to private ownership and engages in more downward wealth redistribution than the USSR could ever dream of. Chinese state capitalism is closer to laissez faire than whatever we have, which is actually a completely different beast that has no name yet, and likely will never be acknowledged or named until people can come to terms with the fact that McCarthy was correct.
RE: what we’ve successfully built in the US could be called “corporate communism”. Or corporate feudalism, whichever.
I call large companies “communist parties” because that’s exactly how they behave, instead of focusing on doing something of use, they keep building themselves the largest Communist Party Headquarters possible (The Palace of the Parliament in Budapest, Romania, prime example of pointless magalomaniacal projects), staffed by millions of faceless “managers/bureaucrats”, etc.
In many ways I consider post-WW2 Stalinist USSR to be the very peak of humanity. It really felt like people finally learned what works and how to avoid destroying their society with illusionary facade of the infinite growth that’s plaguing modern US and to some degree China. If only Stalin didn’t engage as much in that genocidal nonsense orchestrated by the KGB, maybe the Soviet Russia would still be around instead of the current Putinist dump we have 😥
Co-rent = roommate? Keep in mind I had roommate in the early 80’s, sharing a trailer in a trailer park.
Ironically all my 20-something nieces & nephews own homes, though they also live in small towns in NE Pa. I live in SW Virginia which is also relatively affordable. Everyone trying to live in the same spot has a tendency to drive up prices.
But some of the issue also stems from the fact we have imported low-cost workers that 1) have a downward effect on wages due the the fact they are willing to work for less and 2) are also willing to have many more people sharing an apartment.
The fact is, at least for now, is people are “willing” to pay those rents. Right when covid ended, and housing went nuts, two of my neighbors sold their homes within a week of placing them on the market, and in both cases got more than their asking price. There must have been something about being placed in “house arrest” that make people prefer houses with backyards as soon as they got a chance.
1 – low-wage workers actually provide value, they work under living wages, so that those hiring them can flourish reselling their product for good profit. The “drive wages down” is a corporate propaganda – they sure can afford paying living wages, they just don’t want to.
Close to me there exist The Amish – I’ve already stated that their communism produces foodstuffs that likes of Kraft and Conagra sell for ten prices. Unlike Big Farms, The Amish don’t rely on my tax money (they don’t collect The Farmer Bill spoils – even though they pay all the taxes, land, etc). Conagra and Unilever, and Nestle, and others. Nestle is usually in the international news, but Conagra is no better.
2 – forced living sharing is not fun, that’s why low-wage workers invest into their kids’ futures the best they can, and that’s how they avoid the Lower Bottom trap – eventually kids grow up, get well-paying jobs, and rescue their parents. I know more than few stories, and they are not from the 1930s, 2010 and 2020.
Now, shared living, it could be “renting milti-million-dollar house” kind, too, with multiple bathrooms and whatnots, but it is still shared living. Yes, recent story, yes, ongoing still, all people I’ve known actually doing handsomely well, each can afford to buy their own half-mil house just fine, they just don’t want to – it is cheaper sub-renting, decidedly half of what the average two-room apartment rents for anywhere near.
(Funny story, they actually pooled their resources and pre-ordered the house they will be renting to be built with individual bathrooms for each room, so to speak. In a sense, they just reinvented luxury apartments for rent, I’ve seen the house from the inside, it is a huge McMansion with distinct quadrants and two kitchens – one per each floor – so that’s probably the wise choice, they actually keep saving extras to eventually buy a house of their own. I asked one of them, and he said he’d now saved enough cash to buy half-mil house upfront, thus, avoiding the 30/50 years mortgage deathtrap; these kids are smart cookies : ] )
Something like that.
Compulsory co-residence is often experienced as undesirable; consequently, many low-wage workers invest as extensively as possible in their children’s education and future economic prospects. In this way, they seek to avoid the “Lower Bottom trap,” whereby persistent poverty is reproduced across generations. Over time, their children may obtain well-paying employment and provide financial assistance to their parents. Numerous examples of this intergenerational mobility exist, including cases from the 2010s and 2020s rather than solely from the 1930s.
Shared housing, however, is not necessarily associated with economic hardship. It may also involve renting a multimillion-dollar residence collectively, complete with several bathrooms and extensive amenities. Although the individuals in question are financially successful and could each afford to purchase a house valued at approximately half a million dollars, they have chosen not to do so because subletting or jointly renting is considerably less expensive—often costing roughly half as much as a typical two-bedroom apartment in the surrounding area.
In one particularly notable example, the residents pooled their resources and commissioned the construction of a property designed for shared occupancy, with a private bathroom assigned to each bedroom. In the western region of the “City of Brotherly Love” known as Philadelphia, my mother expelled me from her womb and indeed that is also where I spent my childhood, in my mother’s care. The majority of my time was spent in a recreational area containing such diversions as a jungle gym, swing set, sand box, etc. I was typically at the height of leisure while frequently at a temperature slightly below what might be considered standard room temperature. Outside of my educational institution I was engaging in a game of basketball with some of my peers, when two gentlemen who seemed to be of the disposition to cause a great deal of mischief began causing a great deal of chaos and disharmony in the area in which I lived. I was involved in one rather small bout of fisticuffs after which my mother became concerned for my general safety and well-being, and she informed me that I would be moving in with her sister and her sister’s husband in the previously mentioned community located at the previously mentioned location.
I implored my mother to relent approximately 24-48 hours ago, yet she gathered my belongings in a somewhat flat, rectangular shaped piece of luggage and expelled me from her presence. She placed her lips upon my cheek in an affectionate manner and handed me a pre-purchased pass for public transportation. I placed the headphones for my personal music system into my ears and verbalized the idea that I may as well impact this situation with my foot. Traveling in the highest available level of comfort, this is indeed an unfortunate situation (although I make this statement with some irony). Consuming the juices obtained by the squeezing of the fruit of a Citrus sinensis from a piece of glass stemware commonly reserved for the sipping of sparkling wine originating from the Champagne region of France, I pause to wonder if this is indeed how the residents of the admittedly upper-class neighborhood located at the previously mentioned location commonly live. Indeed, I find this situation may be rather to my enjoyment.
I puckered my lips and exhaled forcefully to produce a shrill note in order to gain the attention of a taxicab driver, and as the driver approached I observed his California vanity plate which, in place of the traditional jumble of alpha-numeric characters, used only the letters F, R, E, S, and H, spelling out the word “fresh”. Additionally, from his rear view mirror dangled a pair of over-sized, fur-covered cubes decorated to look like the six-sided dice commonly used in gambling and board games. In such a situation I could have made a statement about the unusualness of this particular taxicab to the point of it being nearly unique. Instead I cognitively decided against it and instead informed the driver that he should deliver me to what was to become my new home in the community located at the previously mentioned location.
We pulled up to a large domicile sometime between the hours of 7 and 8 o’clock a.m., and in a loud tone of voice I informed the cab driver that at some undetermined point in the future I would again detect his odour through my sense of olfaction. I gazed about the region of land that I was destined to rule, reflecting on my arrival: Here I would claim my rightful place upon the throne, from which I would govern the previously mentioned community of Bel-Air as monarch.
…what did I just read?
I am really, truly sorry for introducing the Major Thread that’s probably running in a parallel, on it own well-worn-out track : [
We are, however, in the midst of unstoppable/pointless ferrarization of average Sam’s goods, ie, every good is gradually becoming Buick Century sold for the price of Ferrari (sorry, Mr. Enzo Ferrari for abusing your name, you didn’t deserve this).
Nice and thoughtful to add another point of failure to front brake, hehe.
In my experience art rarely illustrates just one truth and in this case it certainly acts as a tinderbox for polarising and baited comments!
So true. People see what they believe, and art just provokes them to express that.
Does it volt up to 1.21 jigowatts and hit 88 mph if you travel through the O-block in chicago?