Technology

Ugh. Bougie homeless. Just sleep in your car like normal people. 🙄 /s

I do want sleep pods at airports.

$700 for this is insane. I get why they’re doing it but there’s no reason anyone should pay $700 for a bed.

San Francisco should build their own get that shit up to code, make it about 30 stories, have spots for restaurants, stores, retail at the bottom and make it actually affordable and for everyone. There should be no market for 700 a month 4 foot tall boxes. Greedy fucks.

Shit should be like $50 a month max and yea it’s dystopian AF but if people want to do it I guess whatever. Just don’t rip them off.

ugh, this is dysphorian THIS IS NOT FUCKING NORMAL. THIS IS LATE STAGE CAPITALISM

"A big hit" with people who desperately need accommodation that won't bankrupt them.

A pod for sleeping at home: 👍 A pod for sleeping in a hotel: 👍 A pod to rent for cheap on vacation: 👍

A pod is your fucking home: 👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎

I remember reading about, "pod hotels" in Akiharbara, "Electric Town", Japan in the late 90s or early 2000s. I recall them being marketed as a cheap way to see the neighborhood. Even back then, Akiharbara was the global epicenter of anime/manga, retro gaming, arcades, computer stores and repair shops.

Glad to see the concept has now evolved to, "dystopian hell" some 20 years later.

Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE to see modern SRO-style buildings, noise proofed, with small individual bathrooms and kitchenettes. That sort of development would be a godsend to the housing shortage, perfect for young people, supercommuters, and recent transplants, as well as for stopgap homeless prevention.

This isn't that. This is horrible.

Centered in the square carpet of green plastic turf, a Japanese teenager sat behind a C-shaped console, reading a textbook. The white fiberglass coffins were racked in a framework of industrial scaffolding. Six tiers of coffins, ten coffins on a side. Case nodded in the boy's direction and limped across the plastic grass to the nearest ladder. The compound was roofed with cheap laminated matting that rattled in a strong wind and leaked when it rained, but the coffins were reasonably difficult to open without a key.

The expansion-grate catwalk vibrated with his weight as he edged his way along the third tier to Number 92. The coffins were three meters long, the oval hatches a meter wide and just under a meter and a half tall.

-- William Gibson, Neuromancer

Cyberpunk was supposed to be a dystopian vision.

Crush this trend, now.

Gotta love that if you have enough money you can just do the thing you want to do, and if it's illegal the government will simply ask you nicely to fix it later, maybe even fine you an amount of money that's at least on order of magnitude lower than the profits you made from it.

$700 / 30 = $23.33 a day to sleep in a wood box... brilliant!

This is the dumbest thing I've seen in a while

“Became a big hit with tech workers” lmao that’s fucking stupid. There’s just nowhere to live that’s remotely reasonably priced in SF. This is like one of the only choices if you really don’t want a roommate.

Who had William Gibson's coffins on their Cyberpunk Bingo?

Spoiler: They appeared in Japan in the late 80s in hotels, rented a day at a time.

They write "tech workers" but it's pronounced "tech slaves"

Tech companies that offer places to sleep, eat and play at work, only do so so they can keep you working as long as a possible. If you never leave the office they make boatloads of money and make yourself a free Eggo waffle. And if you try to work from home so you can live in a city you can actually afford, they make come into the office so it’s impossible. Not because you aren’t doing good work at home, but because you can’t won’t 24/7 at home.

As someone who's not American and had a couple of job opportunities to move to San Francisco, I'm glad not to have done it.

What kind of hellhole is that city? I had an impression it was extremely expensive but also very wealthy. The more I hear the worse it seems.

$700 a month?!

Skipping permits is a way of life in SF. (I had work conversations about buying older gromex so the dates were before you purchased in case am inspector noticed. Inspectors were prohibited from noticing anything they were not specifically there for.)

I wondered at the specific permit they missed.

without a permit changing the building from a bank to a living space and illegally converting a toilet into a shower.

That seems important to do properly.

You get more space and amenities in prison. And much cheaper.