If someone is keeping up maintenance, you'd be surprised how well preserved things can stay.

> As the market normalizes, some short-term-rental hosts are coming to grips with the fact that the banner days of 2021 are long gone.

We're a year past 2021 and people are acting like Airbnb's are now a thing of the past?

Not to mention the article burying the lede on why occupancy is falling: new rentals coming online are outstripping increased demand. So if demand doubles and the number of available Airbnb's triple, then it's still booked as an increase in vacancies according to this article. I have many, many issues with Airbnb, but it's continuing to make record profits with no end in sight.

Cheaper contractors usually result in shoddier work. When I was doing consulting with city and regional governments, it was not uncommon for a government to pick one of our competitors because they promised to get the work done for half the price. Then, six months later, it becomes evident that the competitor vastly underbid and ended up delivering results that were well below expectations. The government then has to basically throw that work out and start over.

Teenagers exist in that dangerous zone between "realizing that all the rules you grew up with were made up" and "realizing that all the rules you grew up with were made up for a reason."

And some never reach that second point.

Looks to have been $800k last year and about $600k the year before that.

That's what I've found with so many feel-good subs like /r/upliftingnews. "Child Starts Lemonade Stand to Pay for Classmates' Lunch Debts" is only a small bright light in an otherwise needlessly bleak situation.

> I'm definitely surprised to see BD&SP, Let's Go, and S&S so low, given how well all of the pokemon games sell.

That's exactly the reason: Pokémon is a massive enough brand to carry even lackluster products. Go on most forums related to the games and you'll commonly hear "yeah the reviews were terrible, but I bought it because it's still Pokémon."

Is that surprising, though? I can't think of too many complex systems that require extra work to become less safe. The first cars didn't start out with seatbelts and the first buildings didn't have emergency exits.

I'd be more shocked if the researchers came out and said "yeah, we trained an AI on an unfiltered dataset containing the totality of internet discourse, and all it does is post helpful product reviews and gush about its cats."

Yep. I'll be honest, I tried Hot Lola's when it first opened in Ballston and couldn't handle even the Shy Guy (which I think was called Shy Hot when they opened) but could do fine with the RR Extra Hot. Roaming Rooster ended up being my gateway into hot chicken.

Now I can't leave Hot Lola's since the Flippin' Hot is the only heat I can actually feel.

I'm not commenting on the overall quality; Hot Lola's was (and is) better but didn't get the same social media clout. People didn't line up for it the same way they did for RR until relatively recently.

There was another thread here where someone said to go to Roaming Rooster and say "just fuck my day up" and they'll give you something approaching Wooboi or Hot Lola's.

I tried that and I'd say they got close, but still nowhere near the hottest that those two can provide.

> I know roaming roasters is pretty good and popular but IMHO it's a generic chicken sandwich

It's wild how much chicken sandwiches have evolved in the last three years. Pre-pandemic, Roaming Rooster was the chicken sandwich in the DMV.

My experiences at Brewlights at the ZooLights in previous years remain some of the best events I've been to in my adult life. It was awful to get the email about FONZ leaving, and even worse to see Brew at the Zoo fall apart and BrewLights not even happen.

Yep, praise politicians and celebrities for the positive work they do, but don't put them on such a pedestal that you're willing to decorate your home with their face.

A friend of mine was so enamored by Andrew Cuomo's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic that they got a mug with his face on it. That mug aged extremely poorly in just a couple months.

Most domesticated capsicum varieties (C Annuum, C Chinense, C Frutescens) should both last a few years if overwintered properly. Bring your chilis in when it's chilly! If you're cold, they're cold.