A California startup is offering cocoon-like pods to allow 14 residents to share a single house as an escape from soaring rents and real estate prices

Brownstone Shared Housing has two locations: the first is just minutes away from Stanford University in Palo Alto and houses 14, while the second sleeps 6 in central Bakersfield.

“We started with how can we house as many people as possible in an existing space in a way that preserves dignity and comfort and privacy,” CEO James Stallworth, who co-founded the self-financed Brownstone with Christina Lennox, said in an interview with Insider.

Both houses are fully furnished with shared co-working and living spaces, along with two bathrooms and a shared kitchen.

What makes the concept different is the “fully equipped” sleeping pods that the company says are 40% larger than a traditional bunk bed.

At $800 per month, which includes utilities, the cost of a pod is less than half the rent of a studio apartment in Palo Alto. Meanwhile, the median sale price topped $4 million in March for single-family homes, according to Redfin.

This feels like a joke from Demolition Man.

You cannot preserve dignity, comfort, and privacy when you charge $800 per month to share a house with 14 people and only have a box that is 40% larger than a bunk bed to yourself.

The old California dream was to buy a house.  California once had the highest middle-class quality of life of any state.

Today, the California dream is affording your own pod rental.

This is an obscenity.

I am a Star Trek fan.

I will acknowledge that Star Trek was always a bit on the left, but it was Liberal left.  A utopian world where infinite resources eliminated scarcity and a desire to accumulate wealth, so people were free to follow their passions and discover new things for the sake of discovery, not profit.

Star Trek was an aspirational future.

The wife and I watched the first season of Star Trek: Picard and like it.

Season Two is a woke shit-show.

One character, Captain Rios, is awesome.  He’s played by a Chilean actor.

They go back to Los Angeles in 2024, which doesn’t look any different from LA in 2022.

Rios is arrested by ICE who raid a “we don’t ask questions or need to see your papers” clinic run by another Hispanic woman.

ICE are all white guys who don’t speak Spanish and torture scared and timid Hispanics.  Suspected illegals are put on a bus and “disappeared” without trial in less than 24 hours after being arrested, never to be heard of again.  The dialog is peppered with commentary about how evil this is.

Later on, Picard runs into a young Guinan (not played by Woopie Goldberg).  Guinan, who has been on Earth for years says to Picard that fairness is something “for people that look like you, not like me” – because he’s a white man abs she’s a black woman – and that society is just as racist as it ever was and only “wears a suit instead of a hood.”

The absolute fuck is this?

It’s woke hyperbole that America hasn’t changed since Alabama in 1959 or even 1859, we just hide it better.

This is objectively untrue.

As for the ICE thing, this is Los Angeles, California, at the end if the Biden Administration (April, 2024).ICE and CBP are overwhelmingly Hispanic.  It is illegal to perform an immigration arrest in a hospital or health care facility.  Bybtgis time Title 42 would have expired so they’re not deporting anyone without a felony conviction.

In reality, if ICE even bothered to contact Rios, he’d probably be given a cellphone, a few hundred dollars in cash, and a subsidized hotel room with a note to when to show up at court for his immigration hearing.

But reality doesn’t spread the woke message that America is a horrible, white supremacist nation. So they have to make ICE look like Nazi Jew-hunters going after poor Hispanics.

It’s impossibly bad and totally destructive to the legacy of Star Trek.

Why the sudden need to target Catholic churches? The position has been the same for eons and I do not recall seeing any special church influence on the leaked SCOTUS document.

At the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, left-wing protesters tried shutting down Sunday mass to protest in support of abortion. They are forced out by security & parishioners. Video by @Romangod7. #ProLife #prochoice #abortion #catholic pic.twitter.com/ANYTJh1gcW

— Andy Ngô ?️‍? (@MrAndyNgo) May 9, 2022

My second question is: How come there were no protests in mosques? Muslim faith is as “restrictive” as Catholic faith when it comes to abortion, but they never get challenged about that, how come?

This thing of walking into a store and stealing because you can and won’t be prosecuted, does not work everywhere. And that goes double if you become aggressive.

GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas — An armed robbery suspect was shot and killed by a customer inside a Grand Prairie business Thursday night, police say.

Around 9:10 p.m., Grand Prairie police officers responded to a reported robbery in progress at a business in the 1600 block of West Polo Road. When officers arrived, they located the alleged robbery suspect suffering from an apparent gunshot wound.

Police said the suspect was transported to a local hospital and was later pronounced dead.

During the investigation, detectives determined the armed suspect was in the act of robbing the business and an employee, when they were confronted by a customer.

The customer, who police say is a concealed handgun license holder, told detectives that he feared for his life and the life of the employee, so he intervened and shot the suspect.

Grand Prairie police: Robbery suspect shot at 1600 W. Polo Road | wfaa.com

For fun’s sake, I checked the address and the only thing in the area with possible available cash for a quick fix is a Dollar General. How embarrassing has to be for the family to admit the dumb asshole got popped robbing a cheap store? Well, not so cheap if you consider the price he paid for his stupidity.

Hat Tip GaryE.

Just saw it in Twitter:

The subject in the photo was given Ballistic Beatification status so an old photo was used (I read it was homecoming of something.) I believe a more recent photo a top of his achievements is actually needed:

Much better, don’t you think?

The marchers have made it to what appears to be Justice Kavanaugh’s house. pic.twitter.com/c5YJMULMv7

— Douglas Blair (@DouglasKBlair) May 8, 2022

This is Level 1.

This is angry Leftist activists chanting ugly slogans.

These are the people who will be used to provide cover for Level 2, activists who engage in property damage.

The vandals will hide among the protesters allowing the media to call them “mostly peaceful” and portray any attempts to clear the protesters as repressive attempts to deny people their civil rights to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

This is well orchestrated.

The first time I ate Honest-to-God BBQ was in this joint not far from where my wife’s parents lived. It was religious experience and I was damned for eternity on how pork should be done. Then in Miami, there was this joint near MIA where smoked pork was done so good, even my quiet Father In Law demanded to see the owner, identified himself as long-time BBQ eater and proud Southerner and congratulated him on a most delicious BBQ.

What both places had in common was huge stacks of wood on the back to feed their pits: They BBQed on site. Hell, many times we visited, the pork went from the smoker to our plates or bag to go home. It does not get any fresher than that.

Yesterday to celebrate my weigh loss, I took the missus and MiL to a very famous location in town, recommended by several people as to have the best BBQ in town. When we arrived there, I saw no smoke, neither I smelled the wafting aroma of pork over coals nor I saw cords upon cords of wood stacked anywhere. It was not a stand-alone place, but at the end of one long building with other assorted stores  Still, I gave them a chance only to be properly disappointed.

To be nice, I’ll just say it was bland and I am complimenting it. No noticeable smoke ring, but at least it was soft.

The place had a selection of different BBQ sauces, but that is not the issue. Any meat, properly prepared should be able to stand a test of flavor without the need of external post-cooking sauces or creams. The fries were OK, the coleslaw the same and both overpriced.

And they put sugar in their cornbread. I believe that is illegal in Tennessee.

These were done by yours truly. Suckers tased 50 times better and cost a helluva lot less.

The smoker collapsed once again before we moved to TN, so I just dumped it figuring good BBQ was available everywhere.

I was wrong.

If I find a good source of pork, I will seriously think about getting back into smoking my own. That unless I do find a true BBQ joint and not an overpriced strip mall pork restaurant.