Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

so apparently the guy who bought a bunch of real estate in that arkansas town has recordings and transcripts from the city meetings where he was trying to pitch his plans on his own website

it's him trying to get someone to walk through and tell him what he'd need to fix, and they keep explaining that it's a change in zoning, he needs plans signed off by an engineer and completed, etc.

I mean, there are areas of the country with less stringent building and occupancy codes, but dude bought a giant warehouse and adjoining buildings and wants to use them for commercial purposes!

it's been done before by various people with various levels of success ... on the one hand you have Las Vegas and the current incarnation of Burning Man ... on the other hand you have this guy, as well as stuff in between like the guy who bought a town in Nevada and then there was a fire that burned like 90% of it ... though that guy had done something similar in an urban area and had gotten displaced, so he had an existing community of people as well as some experience

― sarahell

this is one of the settings for _summer fun_, the trans brian wilson book i'm reading for my book club...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceport_America

I think buying abandoned real estate and attempting to use it as-is is different from building an entertainment city mostly from scratch or building a temporary city in the desert, though? This isn’t “if you build it,” it’s “if I get them to turn electrical service back on” or at least it was until someone stole his walls

Unless we’re not talking about the Arkansas guy

it's him trying to get someone to walk through and tell him what he'd need to fix, and they keep explaining that it's a change in zoning, he needs plans signed off by an engineer and completed, etc.

I mean, there are areas of the country with less stringent building and occupancy codes, but dude bought a giant warehouse and adjoining buildings and wants to use them for commercial purposes!

― mh, Thursday, August 18, 2022 3:04 PM (two hours ago)

this is a lot of what the org I work for does tbh. part of this guy's problem is the way the system works ... like, it is highly unlikely one person will be able to tell him everything he would need to do, and there's a lot of if/then at play ...
if you want this, the process involves x, but if you are willing to do it somewhat differently, you could maybe avoid doing x, but you would have to do y.
the existing structure / condition / etc of the building would need to be determined to meet certain criteria in order for him to do x, but a licensed engineer would have to actually do a study and calculations and find out if it does meet those criteria. If it does, then the process involves x, if it doesn't, then, before you can even think about doing x, you would need to do z, and maybe, instead of doing z and then doing x, you might want to re-think the whole thing ...

yes, the absolutely basic thing is to make a proposed plan, and hire an engineer

he seemed to just show up to meetings and propose completely different things every time with no blueprints or engineering assessment, just “hey guys but can I do this instead”

I mean, the way the system works may be convoluted beyond that, but that’s entry level “how do I shot occupancy”

also every time he describes the site it reminds me of an EPA superfund site in my city that’s getting slowly developed with so many caveats

"an" engineer ... dude, you might need structural, mechanical, and civil engineers depending on the project ...

generally, the first person you go to is an architect

yes

move fast and break stuff amirite

everyone otm re pine bluff itt. ((man alive also getting points for knowing about the state's criminal, not civil, penalties against renters (which is a whole other subject.))

I can't talk about Pine Bluff. It's sad, it's tragic, it's a whole damn city that's dying a slow death.

But man. I won't say I enjoyed that man's misfortunes, but I sure did enjoy reading about them.

https://i.imgur.com/4M7pRYt.jpg

A few years ago, the paper had a story featuring the mayor pointing at different piles of rubble in town, going "You see this shit?"

I know, I know, in the UK they point at potholes.

https://i.imgur.com/GODvMDN.png

Town so damn broke, the mcdonalds only got one arch

That's some pretty impressive rubble.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55lqCerTvVA

CEDELL SAID COME ON DOWN.

A few years ago, the paper had a story featuring the mayor pointing at different piles of rubble in town, going "You see this shit?"

― pplains, Thursday, September 1, 2022 8:37 PM (two days ago)

she should visit Oakland! So many piles of rubble to point at!

the parallel valleys https://t.co/RxD3iB2vlo pic.twitter.com/4o7Ush2J1V

— kate conger (@kateconger) September 26, 2022

They finally put this genius on the 10 o'clock news:
https://www.kark.com/news/local-news/theft-causing-problems-for-man-wanting-to-bring-science-museum-to-pine-bluff/

science-museum and pine-bluff in the same url. I finally lived to see the day.

Elizabeth Holmes gets 11-year sentence.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-scammer-11-years-prison-1234630584/

non-paywalled story:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/18/former-theranos-ceo-elizabeth-holmes-sentenced-to-more-than-11-years-in-prison.html

I didn't realize she was expecting a second kid... that's rough
She probably deserves it, but the kids don't

My mind went immediately to "she got pregnant to get sympathy/a shorter sentence."

Ha I thought the same thing

And of course the prisons are full of parents, so...

Imagine if every Book is converted into an Animated Book and made 10x more engaging. AI will do this. Huge opportunity here to disrupt Kindle and Audible.

— Gaurav Munjal (@gauravmunjal) January 21, 2023

The builders who survive (aka thrive) over the next several years will be those who are fundamentally self actualizing on some core vector via what they’re building.

Too hard otherwise.

— Geoff Lewis (@GeoffLewisOrg) March 8, 2023

It says so much.

"Bedrock is a technology investment firm in search of narrative violations."

what happened to Silicon Valley Bank???

it almost seems like an old fashioned bank run - lots of companies pulling their deposits

I think it was exactly an old-fashioned bank run.

what was the cause of it though?

Per SF Chronicle:

SVB lost $1.8 billion in the sale of U.S. treasuries and mortgage-backed securities in which it had invested, thanks to rising interest rates, TechCrunch reported. On top of that, the bank was facing shrinking deposits as the tech industry struggled.

Amid these concerns, the company announced it would sell $1.25 billion of its common stock to investors, $500 million of depositary shares and, separately, $500 million of common stock to private equity firm General Atlantic. After the announcement, shares in SVB plummeted nearly 70% before trading was halted before the opening bell on the Nasdaq, the Associated Press Reported. Clients began pulling out their money, leading to a run on the bank.

But I'm sure there's more BS at work too.

one of my very first bookkeeping clients 20 years ago had an account there, and they would mail the checks they received from customers to the bank for the bank to deposit ... I thought that was kinda dumb tbh.

SVB plummeted nearly 70% before trading was halted

So much for the 'free market'... so many of these companies welcome regulation-free laissez-faire markets, and yet still the paternal stock markets will swoop in and halt trading before things get out of hand

I say let 'em sink to the bottom

the money's not here. your money's in joe’s apes, right next to your apes. and in the full self driving cybertruck, and mrs. macklin's metaverse, and, and a hundred other memecoins pic.twitter.com/Iqo9JEyYQx

— kilgore trout, death to putiner (@KT_So_It_Goes) March 10, 2023

I mean in the case of banks it’s bc the FDIC steps in to liquidate the bank. This was the bottom.

Unexpected fallout!

https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/wine/article/silicon-valley-bank-wine-california-17831927.php

yeah exactly, it sounds like SVB is going to be allowed to fail and other than the FDIC insuring retail customers up to $250k, this liquidation is pretty much the definition of a free market.

if you have stock in SVB the value of that has been zero'd out as of today, notwithstanding what it says on your brokerage page. maybe it'll go up if the FDIC helps find a buyer for this pig.

There is a zero perfect chance Silicon Valley Bank fails, despite the current bank run.

There is no world where the US Gov let’s a top 20 bank fail to honor deposits.

— Nick Huber (@sweatystartup) March 9, 2023

good and sober piece on how SVB implosion happened (and why it was self-inflicted since the Fed has been telegraphing it’s moves for a long time…)https://t.co/145RjXPbJa

— rat king 🐀 (@MikeIsaac) March 10, 2023

that tweet aged well xp

matt levine seems to think theres a good chance another bank will buy it and make its customers whole since it still does have a lot of assets theyre just in illiquid bonds

and the government is hard at work

I’m working with my CA colleagues to address the Silicon Valley Bank crisis. We must make sure all deposits exceeding the FDIC $250k limit are honored. Banking is about confidence. If depositors lose confidence on the safety of their deposits over 250k then we are in trouble.

— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) March 10, 2023

heres the levine piece https://archive.ph/pe8MY

thank you sir, looking out for the wealthiest underinsured people, and making sure they get more free insurance.

pic.twitter.com/YW1XEPEzVv

— Sam Biddle (@samfbiddle) March 10, 2023

the bonds are actually very liquid since they're treasuries xp

i mean you cant pay them out to the people lining up to get their money

if i had my emergency fund in one of those weird little fintech startup banks people use for an extra $35.17 a year in interest i’d be moving it to marcus right about now, even if it was FDIC insured.

Yeah those things seem super sketchy