I lived in LA and commuted to Berkeley by plane to save on rent
old.reddit.comKey quotes:
> I was living in LA, rent free.
> I love flying and I have a lot of frequent flyer miles/points from credit card sign up bonus/flying over the past few years.
> I booked all my tickets for Fall 2022 back in April and May 2022. Then I booked all my tickets for Spring 2023 back in Nov 2022. Most tickets were booked using Alaska miles or Southwest points
> I have elite status with Alaska and Southwest, both offer a valuable perk called same-day change. I always book the cheapest flight of that day and call them when the check-in window opened to change to other flights of that day free of charge.
> Spent 45972 minutes on my commute, equivalent to 31.93 24-hr days.
So basically, if you're rich and have already spent several times the cost of rent on travel in your gap year(s), willing to spend over 20 hours a week commuting for 3 days of class, and have literally no concept of the value of your time, you too can afford the miserable commute from LA to Berkeley for university!
What's with the indignation over this on HN? I didn't see them suggesting anyone/everyone would be able to do it, or that it was practical.
It was just a funny set of cirucmstances that allowed for an attention catching headline and a mildly amusing tale. Yeeeesh.
I think some people on here default to a highly comparative/competitive mindset. When they see titles like the one here, they assume there's a subline reading And because I found this hack and executed on it, I'm more resourceful, capable, and smarter than you, and if you can't keep up with me its your fault if you don't succeed
Not saying everyone here thinks it but the emotional reaction to these kinds of things makes it seem this is how it feels to some people.
I agree with part of your assumption, but, for me, the second half is more “and here’s how I can learn from it, internalize, and improve my processes to be better.”
So it’s not so much competitive to exceed others but competitive to improve methods to improve self.
Yeah. The title is a misdirect. The unspoken promise of the article that this is about a more cost-effective/practical/efficient process of commuting.
I guess predictable HN click bait leads to predictable HN criticism leads to predictable HN meta-comment leads to predictable HN meta-rebuttal.
It's the circle of life :-)
It's a cool story, but the headline is bullshit since they didn't include the value of 576k frequent flier miles. That more than doubles the cost.
While you’re at it, why don’t you throw in the real cost of living “rent free”, which is a huge reason why it works.
agreed the true hacker spirit is to sometimes do something completely overzealous and over the top just in the spirit of what if or I can. This person was essentially load balancing their life to play with time and finance variables a true hacker spirit.
Exactly, what's with the critical and defensive reactionary response here? This story is hilarious! And the amount of effort it took to execute and maintain it. And to keep full track of commute time and expenses on a spreadsheet no less? Bravo.
It's a "critical" response for sure, but "defensive"? What makes it defensive (or "emotional" or "indignant", as others have characterized the response)?
I enjoyed the article, and I applaud the author for comitting to the bit. But on the other hand, I completely agree with the parent: the headline is somewhat misleading, and it's an absurdly impractical way to commute to school. Sure it might do the parent some good to lighten up a bit, but it's completely understandable that a person would have this reaction when reading the article. And for me, reading peoples' 100%-justifiably-negative reactions only ehances the absurdity and comedy of it all.
It's also a grand waste of resources, not to mention quite a tasteless flaunt of the enjoyment of a level of privilege that very few have access to.
If you saw an article about how Bezos bragged openly on the internet about how much he spent a day on gourmet food flown in on private jets from faraway countries, do you think you'd respond any differently? Why or why not?
Yes, the elite, priviledged lifestyle of waking up at 3:30 three days a week, to spend 8-10 hours on a plane and public transport, because you can’t afford housing on campus.
Just rich kid things!
Clearly they could have afforded housing on campus if they just saved all the money they had spent on that credit card.
The luxury of affording your credit card bill every month as a college student, and living a lush life on all the things that money affords, then attending a prestigious school with a near guarantee of stable high income in perpetuity, is not a chance many get. By definition, privilege is the enjoyment of things that many others cannot enjoy.
Do you have a point to make or is this just a kneejerk reaction from a "temporarily embarrassed millionaire"?
> Do you have a point to make
Yes. It's ridiculous to accuse somehow who put themselves through this insane, sleep-depriving, patience-punishing, tarmac-sitting schedule, of flaunting their privilege. He has more money than many, but (evidently) not enough to live in the same city as his classmates.
Just enjoy a crazy-hilarious story, man.
That's exactly it. He put himself through it. It was completely unnecessary and it was his choice to do it this way. That doesn't justify any of what he did, if anything, it points out the absurdity of your response. If someone had no choice but to do this your defense would make more sense, but this dude just planned his life poorly and used capital to make up for his mistakes. Rent is free, that means he has parents who own a home and let him live there after reaching adulthood. He has a good credit card, that means he had parents who helped him with financial literacy and likely paid his bills for the first few years to help him build his credit score. Exploiting the people and resources (especially carbon emissions) around you for such cockamammie plans is dumb and antisocial and this person deserves to be ridiculed.
Remarkable, the sycophancy on this site. In what world is wasting a massive amount of other people's resources to save a couple thousand dollars in your pocket anywhere related to the "hacker spirit"?
What do you mean "very few have". They are a Berkeley student, that's 45,000 students who can afford to live in Berkeley which is more expensive than what this guy did.
Seems the opposite of "privilege few have".
Get off your high horse.
You are aware, of course, that the human population is larger than 90k people, right?
You are aware that Berkeley isn’t the only college in the US right?
Saying a 20-something college student is among the “very few” is just silly.
It’s just not very remarkable. The same day change part is clever but otherwise was just “here’s how I spent a bunch of money” and not very interesting or useful to me.
So as equally amusing as “my parents paid for my gap years where I visited many cool locations using routine and typical methods.”
I guess it's not necessarily a poor use of time if you can study in the airport and/or on the plane. Or if you just enjoy flying.
I'm getting close to a similar situation.
I live in Washington and negotiating with my employer about doing a weekend MBA program in Texas. Most, if not all, tuition is covered, I'm staying with family there. However, it's not nothing money-wise. I'm my own with flights.
What I see as a pro, though, is that I'm highly productive on planes and airport lounges. At home, I'm distracted by spouse, pets, Netflix/Hulu/Amazon, etc. I've always been able to focus much more while traveling. I'm confident I can do most of the work for the program in the air, plus I get to hang out with extended family once a week.
I've tried many times to work on flights, and failed miserably every time.
I genuinely can not imagine enjoying flying. Airports are a form of living hell.
For a year and a half I was doing LHR<->SFO every 6 weeks or so. I wouldn't say I enjoyed it much, but it soon became a weird sport to optimize everything. I got it down to ~16 hours door to door, by e.g. ensuring I never needed to check anything in and trying out several options on either end of the flight. I maximised my upgrades by carefully picking flights, and so rapidly got up the tiers of the reward program (I was flying United, because while their standard was low compared to e.g. BA or Virgin, their reward program was far more generous, so if flying often it was a better experience back then). I found great headphones, sleeping masks, pillows. At that point it was close to enjoyable.
But that was with transatlantic flights. Having experienced domestic US flights, I can't imagine doing that regularly. Difference even within the same carriers at least used to be awful. To the point where I'd insist on direct flights over stretching my legs on the east coast because the domestic flights were so awful.
I used to commute (weekly) SoCal/NoCal for a while and still fly quite often. Between airline status and perks like PreCheck and CLEAR and lounge access (all of which one of my CCs gives me for "free") flying is a lot less hassle than it used to be; I can usually show up at the airport only 5 mins before either bag cutoff, or boarding start nowadays, with the biggest hassle usually getting to/from the airport(s).
The LAX-SFO flight averages to around an hour and a half one way. It sounds like he really liked commuting to and from the airport more than flying.
He would have been better off with a PPL and a Piper that takes off from the nearest small airport. It would have cost a little more but the bulk of it would have amortized better over the course of a four year degree (frequent flyer miles and elite status vs life time of PPL and resale value of the plane)
Well you're still at the mercy of weather and airspace restrictions in your Piper. Flying IFR helps, but there's going to be days you'll need to scrap your flight because of winds or days you'll have to fly in pattern for a while waiting for clearance to land, potentially making you late for class.
Scrub the flight )) It's the Piper that is scraped ))> scrap your flight
Small planes like that burn a lot of gas though which isn't cheap. You also can't nap while flying your own plane.
> it would have amortized better over the course of a four year degree
"I got accepted into a one-year MEng program (technically 10 months)"
Reminds me of hearing one of my classmates in college complain about how their boyfriend (at the same college, but a junior or senior) was having to fly back to Hong Kong every weekend to help run the family business. I can only hope that they were able to spend those hours sleeping or studying.
Oh yea those TSA lines and cramped boarding gates and the endless cramped narrowbody planes that take forever to board and deboard. Doing the same route over and over and over again. Must be joyful!
Didn't say I would enjoy it, but I'm sure there are some out there who would. I can more easily imagine it being productive though.
meh - it's not the destination, it's the journey.
Why is doing all the stuff any different than getting in your car and doing stuff. Just because it's different stuff than what you do during your day doesn't mean it's not an enjoyable life.
My takeaway from reading about the person's experience is that we need better high speed public transportation in California. It would unlock a lot of economic and non-economic opportunities if people can move across the state within an hour. Imagine if Berkeley was a commuter school for people in Los Angeles, or UCLA was a commuter school for people in Bay Area.
I voted for California High Speed Rail when I was in university. I’m middle-aged now. I hope that one day, my grandchildren will be able to take that train.
No, you didn’t.
You voted for California rail but nothing high speed was ever proposed.
The proposed rail line you are referring to was a normal speed train and didn’t even complete the SF to LA trip in two hours.
Which is to say: we would have achieved, in 2030, what most of the world achieved in 1990.
This is the entire point of the high speed rail. It unlocks new labor markets. Now workers can live maybe not in LA and commute to berkeley, but further in the central valley and go either way. Cities like Fresno or Merced could see booms as these areas take on the housing demand brought on by labor.
Brightline Rail Company gets it. They are predominantly a real estate play, buying up land surrounding their "higher" speed rail services. They have a Cali project currently though it is to connect to Las Vegas.
Buy the land, build the rail connector and enjoy the boost in land value you created.
It feels like everyone wants rail, benefits from rail and advocates for rail, but no rail gets done.
Brightline rail has the worst safety record in the country. They're too cheap to even put up fencing around their track. The only thing Brightline gets is sacrificing a few lives to make a buck.
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/29/799962246/brightline-nations-...
If you see some of the videos that often end up on reddit it is absurd how many cars end up stalled on the tracks in front of an active crossing in Florida. I wouldn't blame bright line really, the odds of having a car break down right on a rail crossing are so astonishingly small that at least a few of these incidents are probably outright fraud. People also sometimes ignore the gates and drive around thinking they can beat the train. Maybe they are used to a miles long freight train going a few mph where that idiotic move hasn't burned them yet.
Either way, in socal the metrolink trains operate at grade going pretty fast up to 80mph and you don't see so many accidents. I'd blame some other factor over the fact the train runs on the surface behind a gate.
Such as? Brightline has the worst record in the country. In the Bay Area Caltrain runs similar speeds, for a similar length of track, and still manages half the annual deaths. And, yes, Caltrain deals with people on the tracks fairly regularly. And, yes, I know nothing's perfect – someone just managed to drive right into a BART train last Monday. Regardless, Brightline is doing a worse job than any other rail company and they're resistant to any obvious (and relatively low cost) improvements. Caltrain, while already having a better safety record, is moving towards grade separated crossings to safely facilitate higher speeds. Grade separation is way more expensive than the shit that Brightline is refusing to do.Either way, in socal the metrolink trains operate at grade going pretty fast up to 80mph and you don't see so many accidents. I'd blame some other factor over the fact the train runs on the surface behind a gate.I would guess its just that people are used to slow moving freight trains compared to an 80mph train in florida. I can't otherwise explain why so many Floridians insist on driving past a rail gate. I can't blame brightline when they seem to have the exact same sort of flashing light and gate in socal without this safety record. So in these two cases the train is operating at the same speed, the level of infrastructure is the same, so the only factor I could think to be different that might explain the difference in safety is the culture of the drivers. It just doesn't make sense to knock brightline imo when they are just doing what other rail agencies are doing, and its probably something that's federally standardized somehow anyway, so if anything blame falls on the agency writing standards that aren't enough to meet the realities.
Not sure where the rail with no fencing is, but it's pretty common around the world to not have fencing on long stretches of track in unpopulated areas.
I just read the article you linked, and while I am just taking the article interviewees word for it, it sounds like they are concerned about pedestrian control at intersections in suburbs. Fair enough concern, but that is going to be up to the state to regulate I think. Rail companies will cut where they can, it's still a heavy industry, not exactly the poster children of ethics.
Many parts of Europe do not have fencing around railways, yet this isn't an issue here?
Is it? Most, if not all, of the rail I've seen in Europe is either grade separated or access restricted in some manner. The UK in particular stands out to me.
Brightrail runs 130 kph trains through populated areas, mostly at grade including crossings. Caltrain runs a comparable system in length and speed and sees roughly half the annual deaths. Do you have a better explanation?
I think you have to differentiate. At least in germany, most rail is not fenced off and when we do, we do not use fences but instead sound barriers. I think faster rail is usually behind sound barriers in populated ares, and slower commuter rail is often not fenced off. We do not have many at-grade crossings in more populated areas though, they are really only present on the country-side so I think the rail-infrastructure is not that "present". Nobody really walks or drives over rails usually and it's usually naturally separated, so you can't enter tracks by accident and therefore accidents are quite rare.
Yeah, the crazy part was the flying. But, people commute long distances for work or school all the time to save money on rents, especially all major cities. Having better subways definitely helps. For e.g. in NYC, where many commute from Jersey, or Long Island.
A high speed rail enabling people to commute to SF/LA from 100+ miles away in under an hour would immediately relieve a huge amount of housing issues while creating tons of jobs in low income areas. The whole central valley would become a valid place for people to commute from.
Too bad we are incapable of building one.
https://buildhsr.com/ is tracking the progress (ie, we are capable, if slow). First up, Bakersfield to Fresno.
What a stupid section to start on. They should have done LA-Anaheim-San Diego or SF-San José or Sac-Stockton and started making money on shorter routes. Instead, they’re building a longer stretch between less populated and less wealthy cities.
> Instead, they’re building a longer stretch between less populated and less wealthy cities.
Environmental clearance was known to be quicker there, which met the priority for shovel-ready projects in federal funding being distributed as part of the 2009 stimulus, and the fact that it was in a more economically precarious part of the state was also in line with the funding concerns. It didn’t hurt with the state or federal politics of funding that that was in a more Republican area of the state, either. At the same time, the Bay Area and LA basin were getting a lot of the initial investment for “bookend” projects to improve existing transit systems both for the independent value that produces and as eventual HSR feeder systems.
Sac to Stockton was never even part of the Phase I plan anyway, but part of the distant idea of a Phase II extension after the SF-LA run was complete that would add Sacramento and San Diego.
SF to San Jose is almost completely electrified now with support for HSR and electric Caltrain. Electrified Caltrain testing starts this year with the new service opening to the public in 2024.
The new Caltrain service should be faster and more reliable, so even if HSR is never completed, the Bay Area will get a nice upgrade in its regional rail system.
On the other hand, because it's the less populated and poorer cities, mistakes (which are going to happen) will be cheaper to fix. This translates to not making those mistakes on the more expensive parts of the project.
yup it would be logical thing to build so no way California will do that.
Have you seen Caltrain's service lately? To be realistic, I'd prefer our regional systems have more frequent headways and BART to circle the bay. SF-LA commuters are a drop compared to local commuters. I'll even settle for a 3am last BART train instead of the lone 800 bus or the 24 hour service we'll never get.
Build more density in the cities you want rather than bussing people in. That's the best answer.
Here is an interesting take on California HSR.
TL;DR the physics is really hard and California might not be the best place for it.
https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/10/11/why-high-speed...
Thanks for linking that read! I didn't walk away with that tldr. Mine was that airplanes are better because adding airports is way easier than adding train stations, and that HSR is hard (as in, not just a California thing).
> Total Cost: $5592.66
For 10 months. Even if true story, only make sense if you can find rent $559 cheaper in LA (and don't value your time & the environment of course). It was extra special for the OP as he'd live rent free in LA.
> Typically, the door-to-door commute time between my home in LA and my classroom in Berkeley is 4-5hrs EACH WAY
Waking up at 3:30am and wasting 9h every day doesn't seem worth the $ savings. I feel a part time on-campus job or something would be less draining, more rewarding, and financially same...
If you check out the OP's FlyerTalk thread, they were already doing LAX-MIA-LAX mileage runs before attending Cal.
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-reports/2093205-epic-co...
Yep. I would routinely fly weekend trips from the Midwest to Jakarta on my weekends in college just to get AA miles. The views of FT posters should be taken with a massive grain of salt - we’re not normal.
> routinely fly weekend trips from the Midwest to Jakarta on my weekends in college ,,just to get AA mile,,
I'm sorry, can you clarify? Is there some secret cheap flights from the midwest to Jakarta or were you spending a grand+ every weekend?
At this time (late 2000s, early 2010s) you could purchase open jaw fares (say ORD-NRT-CGK/CGK-NRT-STL) and between the open jaw/double open jaw and sometimes a fuel dump, get an economy ticket for less than $400. I would generate typically 40k-50k+ miles at a time, meaning I was getting essentially a free economy round trip between US and Europe for every flight.
So basically I was pocketing a minimum of a few hundred bucks in profit per flight and visiting quite a few SE Asian locations, even if it was 8/10/14 hours at a time. I’d work on the flights and I saved up enough miles to have visited over 100 countries by the time I finished university at 23.
EDIT: This is still possible to do but much more difficult now that most US carriers only give mileage based earnings for their partner flights. The golden days of this arbitrage are long gone.
> and visiting quite a few SE Asian locations, even if it was 8/10/14 hours
Visiting the airport.
Nope. If you’re doing this regularly you get to know the hacks to get through customs/security/etc quickly. I would always knock off at least two of the following on every trip: museums, restaurants, parks, architectural sites.
Plus I had enough miles and a flexible enough schedule that if I did miss a flight, I’d just book a reward flight home a few days later and make a proper trip out of it.
They were living rent free. So they'd have had to find a room for $559 near Cal. That was hard in 2005.
Otoh, they have missed out on the chance to build connections with their classmates, which is one of the main benefits of even a year at a good school.
Whatever part time job you have on campus, it sure isn't going to make you enough to rent anything close to a good location. You'd still have to commute quite far, just now you also have to work.
Also they used a lot of miles. So real $ cost would be higher.
For full context, this is someone with a wife and two kids[1] who had a couple of semesters and just needed a temporary solution, not a 20 year old kid. Different then the title might suggest.
[1] https://www.berkeleyside.org/2023/05/15/uc-berkeley-la-plane...
Doesn't seem so. The article talks about a person getting a sociology degree, while the Reddit post talks about someone working on an MEng degree. Given the poster's extensive posts on Flyertalk and his comments saying that there are two of them[1], I think there actually might be two different folks doing this.
edit: Found an older post where the poster says they're doing an MEng Civil Engineering program[2]
[1] https://old.reddit.com/user/greateranglia [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/berkeley/comments/urcxua/is_it_poss...
Correct, but you don't even need to search the post history. The difference in the major is already noticeable in the original post. These are two different people. Just imagine, these two could have been commuting together and syncing up.
> actual psychos attend this school
LOL I read a good amount of r/berkeley but this plane-commute story has to be one of the funniest posts I've ever read.
So humbled to share space, living and interacting with the absolute most-fucking-insane students ever. I wish I could have that dedication for anything, as insane as it sounds. Wow. Inspirational.
> Total Cost: $5592.66
This is highly misleading since it doesn't include $ value of all the freq flyer miles used (as far as i can tell).
And I'm left wondering was it really cheaper? If yes, by how much?
>This is highly misleading since it doesn't include $ value of all the freq flyer miles used (as far as i can tell).
Yep. Here are the amounts with the value of the miles factored in[1]:
>$1366.06 on Alaska, 307500 Alaska miles
307500 Alaska miles * 1.2 cents/mile = $3690
>$380.86 on Southwest, 43732 Southwest points
43732 Southwest points * 1.5 cents/point = $655.98
>$42.80 on United, 5500 United miles
5500 United miles * 1.2 cents/mile = $66
>$15.60 on Avianca, 6500 Avianca miles
6500 Avianca miles * 1.2 cents/mile = $78
So for the fall semester it costed him $1805.32 in cash, but if you factor in the value of the points that rises to $6295.30. He also mentioned that he spent 45972 minutes on commuting. If you factor the value of time (eg. minimum wage), the "cost" rises further to $17,788.30.
[1] obtained from googling "[points program] value"
Valuing miles us a tricky thing to do because it depends on factors each are personal, and in this case unknown. I get that the airline has a book-value for them, but that's not the same as value-to-me.
Firstly, unlike $ they can expire. So it's not like you can save them forever. I recently had 15 000 miles expire, simply because there was nothing I wanted, or needed, that I could spend them on.
Secondly they're not universal. To follow the article, i can't spend them on rent. So they really only have a value if I can trade them for something I would/could have spent $ on. So sure, upgrades are nice, but not like essential.
It's the same with time. You can be time-rich or time-poor. You can be cash-rich or cash-poor. Typically your priorities will be to reduce poorness. Rich people spend cash to get more time. Cash-poor people spend time to get more cash.
Miles-rich follows the same argument.
So it's not so easy to put a $ price on miles or time. Clearly the equation will vary from one person to another.
Incidentally given the choice of commuting or working minimum wage, I'll choose commuting all day long. Especially if that commuting is eyes-free, so I can use that time in a productive or entertaining way.
Miles don’t expire on any of the major airlines
At least when I was in the Bay Area around 4 years ago, it was possible to get a 3 bedroom apartment right by Ashby BART for $3,000/mo. So yeah I don’t think this worked in this persons favor especially given the miserable schedule
FTA:
> I was living in LA, rent free.
But also, FTA:
> August 2022-May 2023
So 10 months. At the quoted amount of 5592, that's 559 dollars a month. Do you think you could find a reasonable, safe, clean place to live in the Berkely area for 560 / mo? A quick search says no.
>Do you think you could find a reasonable, safe, clean place to live in the Berkely area for 560 / mo? A quick search says no.
But to get that low quoted amount, you need to ignore the value of the frequent flyer miles used, and the value of his time spent commuting. If you factor those in, the cost is about $17.8k for the fall semester alone, plenty of money to get a nice place to live.
Sorry I'm not understanding the point you're trying to make. This person handed over the 5500 in cash, not the 17.8k you quoted, correct? It's not like they had a budget of 17.8k, because they wouldn't have gotten those miles had they not been flying in the first place.
The point is it wouldn't apply to most people without points. And the point they were trying to prove in the post is it was possible for others.
> And the point they were trying to prove in the post is it was possible for others.
Qualifying for sign up rewards is doable by almost anyone with decent credit. And if you didn't have the credit, you wouldn't be able to get the lease anyway.
Did you also do the math for how long it takes to accrue that many points and how much money you need to spend to get access to them? I don't see any evidence that you considered those factors.
And also ignore value of tim, and costs of travel to/from the airport.
I guess I'm not seeing the argument here when the starting premise is free rent in a similarly high cost of living city.
The starting premise is that some students have families in different areas than their schools?
Sure, nothing beats living rent-free.
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/roo/d/san-francisco-awesome...
BART would usually be faster
Alternatively, drive to Bakersfield and take the Amtrack to there/Oakland. It's a much more eco-friendly and enjoyable ride. They sell 10-packs and monthly passes too.
Is that more reliable than the one that runs along the coast? Bay area to coastal SoCal Amtrak is notoriously late.
I took it 20-30 times 15 years ago, I don't remember it being late.
That's a ~9 hour trip including the drive and 30 minutes safety margin.
Yes, much longer time, but net work/read/sleep time should be same or greater.
I never understand how NIMBYSM is considered environmentally correct or friendly. Every movement is taken over by vested interests. Average 4-8 floor height buildings with existing American infrastructure otherwise should be enough to flood market with 'cheap enough' homes.
Does anyone consider NIMBYism environmentally friendly?
No, but environmental reviews are a popular tool for enforcing it
California NIMBYs generally consider themselves to be saving the world from overpopulation. That’s mainly an object permanence problem, but it’s true that high housing prices deter household & family formation.
There’s also the old canard about how environmentalism demands maximally convenient driving and parking because congestion and hunting for spaces causes cars to run longer.
My parents are from the "boomer" generation, and their idea of environmentalism is pretty good in a lot of ways, but in terms of lifestyle, they think of it as "live on a big lot with a lot of trees and drive everywhere". Yes, they get to see lots of green - but they are very fossil fuel dependent.
There really is a shift in mentality from thinking about what you see out your front door to thinking about the whole thing as a global system, and not everyone is capable of connecting the dots.
Supposedly protecting the rare endangered birds keeping high density housing from being built next to mansions on the Malibu shore is extremely environmentally friendly NIMBY.
An interesting story of someone who did something very similar last year: https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/05/11/thirty-years-and-100-fl....
From the article:
Twice a week, Parnell rises before 5 a.m. in Whittier, about 25 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. He takes a quick shower, hops in his car and drives 35 minutes to the Long Beach airport. He breezes through TSA precheck and, with coveted “A group” boarding status, claims a seat near the front of the morning Southwest Airlines flight bound for Oakland.
Parnell knocks out some course readings on the 45-minute flight before dashing off the plane and subjecting himself to the mercy of BART. If all goes according to plan, he steps onto the UC Berkeley campus just in time for his 10 a.m. discussion section on the future of nuclear energy.
“It’s a sprint,” Parnell said. “I use every minute.”
When — if — things are on time, he gets back home to his wife and two children around 10 p.m.
The fight for mitigating climate change has a long way to go. I understand the funnily absurd side of the story, but the obvious flip side hurts my eyes for not being mentioned: it's trivializing pollution to an extreme.
This story reminded me of a story I heard in 2017, during a cocktail party.
Some entrepreneur had worked out a lease for living space, in the commercial heart of a large urban city....living in what during daytime is *literally* some VC office. He would come in at 8pm+ when the VC staff had left, and leave in the AM to work. And he paid a ridiculous low amount of rent to have what was effectively a 25K lease at market price.
Not sure what exactly was the motivation for the VC to agree to this (imagine having a bed in your office?) but , wondering if there is an underground network for this that im not aware of?
> Not sure what exactly was the motivation for the VC to agree to this (imagine having a bed in your office?
That's just an Entrepreneur-"in-Residence".
Sounds like it might be breaking some kind of building usage code.
But the VC might have a free nighttime security guard, and coffee machine warmed up for breakfast time.
Upon reading title I thought it was some clever hack involving hitching a ride on a private plane or something. Flying commercial for school 3 times a week is bonkers
If a 4-5 hour each-way commute and 3:40 wake up times throughout an entire year of school is worth cheaper rent to a person, it's their choice.
I assumed he would use Surf Air or something similar (AYCE commuter plane for $2000-$2500).
Makes sense if you have lots if FF miles and free rent somewhere else.
It is creative. I'll give the writer that.
Can't say I have the stomach for such a grueling travel schedule and I have done my share of frequent travels, including intercontinental long-hauls.
Nevertheless, it solved a problem for the writer and made for interesting reading.
And here I was thinking someone was commuting in their own plane...
zero fucks given
tl;dr student doesn’t appreciate the extreme privilege they live in (LA rent free?!?!?) and don’t realize this is totally untenable for someone scraping by trying to afford college (i.e. anyone in the USA not in the upper class).
From what I read I don't see how I'd make any conclusions about what they do or don't appreciate or think is tenable for anyone in particular else. Where do you see that?
Socal is full of people living rent free. You don’t need to be rich to do it either. You just need to revise your living standards.