Whenever I watch movies, sometimes I need to remind myself not to get caught up and to just allow the story to tell itself.

Yeah, I want to pay you directly. I, admittedly, pirate things. When those things are good, I make an effort to go send money to the creator directly. Sometimes it’s hard, especially with things like books. I don’t want to buy it on Amazon. And unless someone is self-published, they’re getting peanuts. I’d much rather Venmo an author money direct. When Radiohead released In Rainbows way back when and put it out for “pay what you want,” I gave them five bucks I think.

I understand it can’t always be like that, and that the people between a content creator and me do serve some purpose.

Same. Me and a buddy were on a stretch of highway with no exits or entrances that was downhill for a few miles, so decided to see what my Nismo could do. It was surprisingly smooth up to 167 (American units), but the wind was almost deafening. Let it come down and 90 felt like a crawl.

This was 15 or so years ago, and I can easily say something I would never do again, perhaps the difference between early 20s and late 30s. I still enjoy a spirited ride, but can’t get out of the back of my head all the possible things that could go wrong.

I’m not familiar with the particular site, but having dealt with similar sites through my work, it’s presumably under the management of an LSRP as to any sort of landfill.

So landfills are pretty common everywhere. Back in the 20s, up to the 50s, they didn’t have trucks to take garbage out, and so there was just a lace in town where they dumped everything. It’s becoming common that the contents of these sites are identified, any potential contaminants are remediated, and the rest of the stuff is basically capped. There are procedures in place to demarcate where the landfill begins, in the event someone has to dig in the future, and beyond that they put loads of soil, gravel, and then a blacktop cap over top (in some cases they will leave areas green). There are strict standards for residential, and once those are met, they’re deemed safe. Very common these days. And the kind of fill in these old sites is garbage that was present in the first half of the century, and it’s mainly just junk. As I said, LSRPs would identify any potentially hazardous materials and remediate them.

Now, as far as a munitions depot, I have not come across them in my work, and so that’s new to me. That being said, the sites for these affordable housing projects under Mt. Laurel are chosen by the municipalities, and so it wasn’t a developer coming and saying yeah, it’s fine; it was the municipality saying so. They’re also generally part of a settlement in court.

During the long process of determining eligible sites, they conduct what’s called a Phase 1 environmental assessment, which identifies potential for contamination. So if there is potential, they’d move on to additional, more detailed studies. And, basically, if you’re aware of the site’s history, so are the folks involved in the project, and they’ve moved on to identifying potential contaminants and remediating it. For affordable projects, they’ll presumably get grant monies, either federal or state, which will require they comply with whatever guidelines are appropriate. NJDEP have some of the strictest standards (because we have so much experience) in the country.

But yeah, munitions depot, or at least what was essentially a firing range, is absolutely new to me, and I really hope they get some kind of UXO robots in there before you have guys in heavy machinery moving through. And I’m sure they have, because the State and the municipality would essentially be on the hook, as far as liability.

Edit: I should add, planning board and council meetings with regard to the project are open to members of the public, and in some cases they’re streamed online (one of the good things to come out of COVID). If you are interested, it’s a great place to see some of the inner workings of all of this. The municipality isn’t just stepping aside, they have their advocates, legal, engineering, and the like, and they’ll do a thorough vetting. It’s rare for affordable projects to get denied, but it does happen, and site safety can be a big factor.

Damn, I’m from Jersey, though Central, and this is all news to me. And I’m aware of the Frankfurt Armory explosion and all of that, but never did any research beyond. Very interesting.

I live in Jersey (New). As a background, I’m at the edge of civilization, I like to joke. If you go west of me, there’s farms, what we call mountains, hiking, all that kinda stuff. To the east of me, it gets more and more urban until you get to NYC.

Here are my walking distances:

• To the nearest convenience store: half a mile
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 1 mile
• To the bus stop: half a mile
• To the nearest park: quarter mile
• To the nearest big supermarket: 1 mile (same as above)
• To the nearest library: I am 1 mile from two different libraries, pretty much smack in the middle.
• To the nearest train station: 1 mile

Adding:

• To the nearest mall: 1 mile
• To the nearest gym: quarter mile
• To the nearest hospital: 1.1 miles
• To the nearest ice cream parlor: .9 miles
• To the nearest record store: .9 miles
• To the nearest arcade: .9 miles

Straight-line distance to Big Ben: Just shy of 3500 miles. Straight-line distance to the Statue of Liberty: 30 miles

I terrify my wife. When she comes home I hide next to the fridge and I say “BOO!” and I get her just about every time. Then I hug my kids and finish making dinner.

Your pity party here is a self-fulfilling prophecy and screams white knight and all that. You can do better, get out of your head.

What about options? I don’t want an apartment. I have a modest home on less than a quarter acre of property. My neighbor’s house is 16ft from mine. Some people have bigger. Some people like apartments. Just options, you know? Or should everyone need to live in sense, urban areas? And I say this, the town I live in has about 5500 people/square mile, which is pretty dense. If I drive 10m south it’s farms. There’s a real variety.

The whole one solution fits all, my way or the highway (pun intended) ethos that is rampant on Lemmy is exactly why their goals won’t be met. Refusal to compromise and blatant hostility will be met with much of the same, but hey, if I’m out here calling people with cars retards, I’m doing my part!

They need a bigger plane that can just drop a net on the other plane and tow it in to Japan and give the pilot a stern talking to, and then they take the plane apart and send it back in a box. Dismantling the pilot optional.

When I worked at Barnes&Noble as a teen (~2007-2008), my coworker and I would just whip gift cards around at each other. Was a good three months.

Smedley Butler was a great American.

I respect you for this incredibly outlandish take. I will start saying a few but only meaning two. A couple? Could be anything. Several will now be seven only.

SOAD had two great albums, and they most certainly were not Mezermize/Hypnotize. And Steal This Album wasn’t even a real album.

I live in America and I’m good for about 4 minutes a day and that’s enough.

I volunteered driving ambulances. Started in high school, 2003-2004. Our rigs at the time were a '97 Chevy van with a box and a '99 F250 with a box. They were the biggest things I’d driven at the time.

Moved away, did life, came back a decade later. Newest rigs were now 2015 F450 Super Duty with a box you could legit stand up in. Thing was unnecessarily large. All the things you’re saying are correct. The rig we purchased while I was there ended up being a slightly larger mod, but came with front, side, and rear cameras, because you’re absolutely right, can’t see shit. Blind spot in the front is legit 10-15 feet from the bumper.

You know what didn’t change in that interim? People’s windy, tiny driveways. I won’t toot my own horn but I’m a good driver, I frequently tell my wife “You could fit a Mac truck through there” when she’s driving and won’t squeeze through a gap. So when it came time to back these rigs up these narrow, curving driveways, up a hill, it was difficult. I’d have my crew get out generally and go begin assessment so I could get the rig in place for takedown. Problem is that I couldn’t drive all the time, and so the rig would frequently get left down on the road. And I don’t blame anyone, they were difficult maneuvers. I knew a few members who outright refused to drive the newer rigs becaude they were so massive, so now we’ve neutered our manpower.

To add to that, it’s all to distract everyone too. If I’m busy hating on your shitty choice of color, then I’m not thinking about how my true least favorite color is wealth hording.

Wait, you can secure SSDs and not just kinda push em in there?!

It is. I watched it with my daughter when s1 came out, and it was well beyond just tolerable, which is the baseline for kids shows. Good story, well acted, great animations, good music.

They’re the size of my kids, since they’re generally the target if my references to goofballs.

And I guess my phone thought changing golfball to goofball was what I needed. Maybe I should read a little better what I write. Maybe next time.