I've seen various people say "everyone's going to get omicron" -- usually in a smug way, along with "covid is endemic", implying that it's foolish to try to avoid it. Usually these people are healthy and not obviously possessed of frail people they care about. At any rate, I'm inclined to try to prove them wrong, and avoid getting it until they ( Read more... )

Followup to https://mindstalk.dreamwidth.org/583277.html

The child:adult ratios for older kids are higher, so I wondered if this would be reflected in the finances. Based on some cursory searching, the answer is yes; averages for preschool teachers were said to be mid to high 30s, vs. low to mid 20s for infant/child care. And a PDF from Westchester ( Read more... )

I'd wondered why child care is so expensive yet pays the workers so little. I spent part of yesterday reading articles and watching videos; the answer seems pretty simple.

Average US fees are like $10,000 per kid. So say a worker is caring for 3 kids. That's $30,000, to pay for everything. Even if overhead is very low, so that 80% goes to ( Read more... )

3rd in a series, previous is here.

kchoze had said the US has 8000-12000 people per supermarket, so I've been using 12,000 to be conservative. But a casual websearch turned up the US having 38,000 "supermarkets", or one per 8400 people. Say 8000. Then a density of 8000 people/km2 is walkable like 12,000, one market per square kilometer. And we ( Read more... )

I still like my 2019 model of how even 3000 people/km2 can be kind of walkable (and bikable) if you do it right. Short recap: supermarket needs 8-12,000 people, so imagine a 2 km x 2 km superblock, with a market right in the center (along with bus/rail intersection). Furthest walk is 2 km or 24 minutes, from the corners, which isn't great, but ( Read more... )

Some Saudi prince has proposed a 100 mile long city, a 5 minute walk wide. This is stupid but I was more sympathetic than others, until I did math. Pasting a comment:

But I've convinced myself even a reasonable version is stupid, using math.

Imagine a sensible linear city, 10 miles long, 1 wide. east-west, say.

Now we could make it 10x longer, 100 ( Read more... )

Something I've been struggling with recently: my various models of a city built around cars yield numbers similar to actual densities. My models of human oriented cities yield much higher densities than the real cities that inspire them. But I think I've realized at least part of why ( Read more... )

An exercise ( Read more... )

This comes up a lot in discussion of density. The idea being that 2-4 story or such buildings are "human scale", vs. skyscrapers. My gut has some sympathy with it. OTOH ( Read more... )

Another exercise, regarding Floor Area Ratio ( Read more... )