The wealthier part of the Boomers has sucked up so much money, I do wonder what will happen to the financial sector if enough of them need to sell their houses and pay for nursing care all at the same time. You need a counter party in every transaction.

I hurt my pinky once and I just ignored it and now I have a permanent disability. That pinkie is stuck in a bent position. I just can't handle not being perfect anymore.

1: That's what billionaires are for.

Sure, but having just a few buyers really tends to drive down the price.

4: Maybe that could solve the housing crisis? All the McMansions converted to group living homes?

So, people have at various times tried to get me to move out to suburbs with very big, nice new houses for not much more money than my current older, small house. I always refused because I didn't want to spend my free time in a car. But now I'm refusing because they are bug-fuck crazy out there. I guess my point is, it doesn't do much good if the house is where nobody with a decently paid job will live.

On the implicit OP topic of "what is there to talk about?"... I'm not sure what it signifies that there has been no post about the Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings (we had 3 for Kavanaugh!) and no one, including me, has mentioned it in comments, even in a venting sort of way. Here's Dahlia Lithwick.

I understand that the decision was taken to just get the nominee confirmed. Take the win. But for those of us watching and waiting to see Democrats support and back the nominee, there was an immense sense of underreaction. Jackson looked alone fending off the QAnon smear brigade for much of these hearings because she was alone, at least until Sen. Cory Booker took it upon himself in his last colloquy to offer up a powerful corrective to the hatred being leveled at her, and to remind us why love can be an equal and opposite reaction to fear.

Take my word for this one thing: If you have been subject to abuse, bullying, and intimidation, what you really don't need to hear from people in power is that they think you are "brave," or that you're modeling perseverance and grace. What you really want is for someone to stand beside you and take a punch--or throw one. Yet beyond a handful of such moments, and notably Booker's final speech, virtually everything Democrats did felt insufficient to the moment. More than that, it felt inexplicable.

5: The perpetual dream, but no. The cost of conversion outstrips the value of the structure. I mean, you could do it informally, like a house full of college students, but the local government would only turn a blind eye to a limited amount of that.

Old fashioned construction, with plaster & lath walls, is much more fire resistant, which is why the old Victorians converted well. They also tended to have simpler layouts, more readily altered for new uses. McMansions tend to have very fussy layouts that don't lend themselves to alteration. The one thing they do have going for them is the huge numbers of bathrooms.

Incidentally, this is the same answer for "if office work isn't coming back, just convert all those office buildings to apartments." You can certainly do it, but it's very expensive and you end up with crappy units because most modern office buildings have fairly deep floorplates--by the time you put the bedrooms and living rooms on the perimeters for windows, you end up with a big, leftover, windowless square in the middle. The mechanical systems are all wrong (literally 100% unusable), the plumbing has to be redone almost from scratch, etc.

I'm not sure what it signifies that there has been no post about the Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings (we had 3 for Kavanaugh!) and no one, including me, has mentioned it in comments, even in a venting sort of way.

I mean, for me, it's "what is there to say?" We all think she's eminently qualified. Do we want to give airtime to Ted Cruz being his normal shitstained self? I was idly waiting until the actual vote got closer to post on it.

8:

Well, of course, this would require totally changing zoning laws.

The one thing they do have going for them is the huge numbers of bathrooms

I think this is the most important thing. As long as each person or couple have their own bathroom, every thing else can be worked out.

I agree with you about office buildings.

It's a pain having only one full bath because we need to get it redone. We'll probably need a hotel room during the work.

11: Rent a port-a-potty?

We have a second toilet. It's the shower we need. This isn't Ohio.

13: A shower? You Pennsylvania people are fancy!

Have I bragged that I have not plunged a toilet since January? it's a christmas miracle.

13: Now I remember that when we got our bathroom remodeled, I got a free trial membership at the gym in the building where I work, so I could take showers there.

15: Congratulations!

I forget -- did you get a new toilet or did you change your kids' diet?

New toilet. Much easier.

9: We need to give equal time to people who think that a woman's place isn't on the Supreme Court but instead being married to a Supreme Court Justice while supporting the overthrow of the United States government.

8 and 10: Or group homes for the disabled! So much nicer than the cramped shitty ones they have now which might make very nice single-family houses if gutted and rehabbed. They'll probably get pushed out. I know of one in Roxbury that is in a grentrifying location. A huge house with a bathroom for every resident would work.

7, 9: I'm reassured how little substance there seems to be (so far)(unless I've missed it because I'm living in a bubble). Republicans are being racist assholes but they absolutely would have been to absolutely any Democratic nominee, whether her or someone whiter and maler than Garland. All they have is tantrum-throwing, not allegations of something like paying a nanny under the table, let alone actual judicial incompetence or corruption. It means Jackson is having a miserable week, but in the end it'll all depend on Manchin and Sinema, just like someone could have predicted the day Breyer announced his retirement.

When do we ever scale back? When do conferences get phased out because maybe there are too many conferences? When do clubs and organizations get sunsetted?

I was about to say, "never, but when they're clearly dying due to lack of interest, they often merge with, i.e. get subsumed into, similar but better organizations."

However, I Googled a nonprofit I worked at once to check my intuition about this sort of thing, my first job after college. Their Web site is still up and looks mostly functional, although a bit outdated. The copyright notice at the bottom says "2002-2021", which looks recent enough, right? Right below that, it says "Site Supported by Austin Dumpster Rental," which links to exactly what it sounds like. Look a bit closer at the nonprofit's Web site, and it says "Apply now for TCP's second cohort to begin August 2004." Hmmm. I'm thinking this isn't actually that active.

I looked a bit more. A lot of the people behind that nonprofit I worked at are doing something very similar for an organization with a different name, and that organization does have a strong online presence. So that's something else that happens: they reinvent themselves, and it actually goes well.

11: We're planning a lot of renovations to our house at some vague point in the future. (We figure we need another bathroom before we have a teenager, and we have a six-year-old now, so you can do the math.) If we can afford all the dream projects we'd like, we'd probably have to spend most of a year in another house entirely. Not sure how that will work with school and stuff.

A propos of nothing else here so far, I just started another game of Wikitrivia, and I appreciated this blurb: "Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex: Helicopter pilot".

Speaking of plumbing, a couple weeks ago we had a minor recurrence of the drain backup issue, which we did manage to get fixed at no cost to us (the plumbers did the work under warranty from their previous work) though it was obviously stressful especially since it backed up on a Saturday, the plumber came and snaked it, then it backed up again the following Monday, when the plumbers did a more thorough cleanout and sent a camera down. They identified a misalignment of the pipe way down inside the utility easement near where it connects to the main, which means fixing it would be the city's responsibility. The city agreed that the misalignment is in their easement and would be their problem, but they didn't think it was major enough to be the cause of the backup. So a bit of an impasse, but it hasn't backed up again since then so the city may well be right that it was just the buildup of gunk that the plumber cleaned out.

This all did get me to finally replace the wax ring on the toilet, which I had long suspected was how the water was backing up onto the floor of the bathroom and surrounding areas. Sure enough, it had failed spectacularly. I replaced it with a non-wax version that should be sturdier. So if it ever does back up again it should just come up through the actual drains and won't be such a pain to clean up.

If wax was good enough for Frank Sinatra poops, it's good enough for your poops.

If heebie is looking for posting ideas, we could probably use a new Ukraine thread.

And/or a new check-in thread. My father-in-law has COVID again.

My father-in-law hasn't even had it once.

10: There are a ton of zoning laws and even some building codes I would wipe away if I could, but one I would not is the ban on windowless homes.

I don't even own a father-in-law.

Well, of course, this would require totally changing zoning laws.

Sorry, wasn't clear: really nothing I was saying was about zoning. I was almost entirely focused on the building code. The "almost" is because number of occupants per building is only partly addressed in the building code. If I'm reading it right, you can have 16 long term residents of a building without triggering a complete rebuild, although I suspect you'd still have to make some changes. So maybe you actually could have a communal living situation with several families, totaling less than 17, requiring relatively little renovation. But that would need to be not an apartment situation--once you make discrete units, you ned the kind of massive rebuild I was describing.

But anyway, legally you'd have to change the certificate of occupancy, so there'd be a code review. Among other things, that's going to end up needing sprinklers or a second set of stairs, I think. But I've really never dealt with that category, since it's not a common desire.

20: You must not have been in a lot of McMansions. Suitable for the disabled they ain't. Obviously not all disabilities are about mobility, but there's a reason that purpose-built facilities are huge, single-story facilities or multi-story with hospital-style elevators.

Anyway, you can have up to 5 people in a "care facility" without triggering more stuff than I described in 29, but you absolutely need to sprinkler it.

7: I caught only bits of the hearings, and much of that via TV news, but it seemed to me that plenty of Dems stood up for Jackson. What didn't happen is that the media declined to discuss the hearings in terms of their overt racism and ridiculousness. Similarly, is being discussed in the media as someone who made some controversial choices -- not as, you know, an insurrectionist whose husband engaged in a blatant conflict of interest in order to cover up her sedition.

I would like to see Dems (beyond Ihan Omar) call for Clarence Thomas's impeachment. But the media should be taking the whole thing more seriously without prompting from Democrats.

30: No, I haven't, but I have been in group homes for individuals with serious mental illness (mostly psychotic disorders) as well as those with developmental disabilities. No elevators. Cramped brownstone in a gentrifying neighborhood or a regular farmhouse or colonial in a dangerous one. Developmental disabilities folks have nicer stuff than the patients with schizophrenia, because they are more sympathetic and better funded.

I figure the expansive kitchens would allow for group prep of meals. The far suburbs would be tricky. A lot of group homes have vans, but it would be better if residents can walk to a bus or corner store. I'm kind of being facetious.

In housing regulations, clubs, codebases, what is inside storage closets, and lots of other things, getting rid of things is more important than creating. It feels like part is a evolutionary/cultural legacy from when humans didn't have many thing, enough information, etc., and new we needed to keep everything anyone created. Now it would be much better to get rid of the cruft, but we still lionize being making new things (even in the sphere of physical buildings, we focus far too much on keeping old crap). Declutter all the things.

And as far as office->homes, we could start with all those old houses around CBDs that have accountants offices now. They could work as homes, even if we don't replace them with better buildings.

I can't poop if an accountant is still nearby.

19: Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC on twitter: "ONE MORE TIME -- THE CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WHO WAS TRYING TO STAY IN POWER ILLEGALLY-PLOTTED WITH THE WIFE OF A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE WHO COULD'VE ENDED UP RULING ON THE TRANSITION OF POWER -"

Each unhoused person gets a McMansion. New nomenclature will be to call people without homes McMansionless.

It's really a lot of work to keep up a big house with a yard.

I am still sort of stuck on the basic premise of Moby's comment back on 1. We've got this situation where homes are a major vehicle for wealth accumulation in the US. But something is only worth what it can be sold for. So you're planning on accessing your accumulation of wealth by selling your place-holder to the next generation, which has been systematically denied the opportunity to accumulate wealth with which to buy your wealth-placeholder?

37: I remember reading that homeless people have a lot of time on their hands.

Sometimes, but that kind of house also eats money and shits broken fixtures.

38: Yes, that's what I worry about. In general. Obviously, for a subset of houses, prices are through the roof.

The roof is a metaphor.

Your house would probably need less upkeep if you got a regular nonmetaphorical roof

Plus, stinting on public education and then, right before the bulk of the largest generation starts to enter nursing homes, making sure that a huge number of nurses are stressed into leaving the profession seems like poor planning.

43: I guess the roof is real and metaphorical. The thing going through the roof is only going through the metaphorical roof, not the real roof.

31.1 That was my impression from the bits I saw/heard. And anyway, Judge Jackson isn't supposed to look like she's on team D, she's supposed to look like a highly qualified judge, beyond that, an above the partisan fray figure of genuine historic importance.

The chances of Justice Thomas being removed are 0. The chances of him being shamed into resignation are maybe greater than 0, but less that .005%. These people thrive on 'victimization,' but there is no way on earth that Thomas steps down, short of imminent death (and probably not then) with Biden in the White House.

I don't have anything against performative efforts to shame him, because they might have decent collateral impacts on some tiny segment of the population -- conservatives not in the cult. No one should be fooling themselves, though, on this going somewhere good. And I don't think very much bandwidth ought to be used on this rather than on trying to get Manchin to say yes to something, and trying to hold both houses of Congress.

(When it comes out, you'll see that the GTMO lawyers' joint letter that went to the judiciary committee was also signed by our implacable foes from the government.)

48 Letter in support of KBJ. Not a letter against Justice Thomas.

Thomas steps down, short of imminent death

I was briefly hopeful earlier this week! It was a delightful few seconds before I saw he's on the mend.

But now he's still in the hospital and no one is saying how he is and I can't stop having a few minutes of hope again.

Sure is a hell of a time for a mysterious hospitalization.

That's why getting your routine mysterious care is important.

Not casting any particular aspersions. Just weird confluence of probably coincidental events.

There's no particular indication other than the mysterious hospitalization that Thomas is in poor health, but once Breyer leaves he will be the oldest justice.

It's a tough conversation to let your parent's know they can't drive. Telling your mom she's too old to attempt to install an authoritarian regime has got to be worse.

"Even with glasses, your doctor is worried that you might shoot a Republican."