You should probably cut direct the landlord's kid.

We did not get the death-is-coming lesson for drunk driving and I did plenty of it. We did get the Death Lesson (or at least the Death VHS tape) for PCP and, separately, for not shooting carelessly into the woods. I've never done either.

The 70s were a different time. Nobody ever heard of a doctor called a primary care physician.

You guys do some pretty weird stuff in your schools, and I am from the UK so my bar for "weird stuff done in schools" is believe me not low.

Once a year, we would all get reminded that we were going to die, but that's what Catholics do on Ash Wednesday.

4: Seems mighty weird to me too.

But you were raised on the sophisticated eastern coastal area.

7: That is true. I vaguely remember a school assembly in high school after a kid died in a car accident. Presumably there was alcohol involved, but I don't remember.

It's just so over-the-top that it feels like it will traumatize any kid who is grieving something already, and all of the rest will find it irresistible fodder for relentless mockery.

Or at least, I would have been in the relentless mockery camp, because the thought of conceding vulnerability in that kind of heavy-handed environment would have actually killed me.

Yeah. Relentless mocking is the way to handle that.

We had a lot of very special presentations about drugs and drunk driving in Vermont in the 90s, but I think I would have remembered Grim Reaper LARPing. Wow.

I didn't even notice that bit. Getting to dress up as Death and pick out random classmates would be FANTASTIC. (Block capitals used advisedly.)

If a parent wants to stop it, I think the easiest complaint to make successfully would be that bringing the Grim Reaper into the school is introducing paganism.

If you are pagan, you could insist they replace the Reaper with a Valkyrie.

If you earn a living by painting the sides of vans, you might also get some future business.

I remember that we generally enjoyed the "Drugs are bad and scary" presentations that we got in the early 80s. In addition to getting out of a class period, the films of people having drug induced freak outs were kind of cool to watch.

We didn't get videos, just two stunningly boring lectures, word for word identical, about 5 years apart.

18: Tried and true educational methods!

These people ain't novelists, I'll tell you what. You have to be a little subtle about these lessons. We got the crashed-car stuff when I was in school, but the one thing that actually stayed with me was a demonstration of someone riding a metal sled sliding down a slight incline into a solid piece of metal. It was only going about 10-15 miles per hour, but the THUNK, and the obvious force on the person riding it made the meaning of "collision" very clear.

I don't remember any scary or embarrassing presentations. Someone from the police showed up a couple times representing D.A.R.E. just to give a friendly speech. Drug information was presented in the form of "health class". "Health" meaning half drugs and half sex.

I don't think we got anything on drink driving in school, but then driver's ed in school isn't a thing here either. We did get traumatic public information adverts on TV though.

"Health" meaning half drugs and half sex.

2 good things that go great together!

Our high school did have a mock accident set up on the front lawn every year but no grim reaper performance. The joke was that they should really redesign the road if there's a fatal accident at the same place every single year.

I believe that we had a mangled car displayed in front of the school, sponsored by MADD.

25: So did we! Maybe it was the same car and they just moved it around the country.

Am I to understand none of you folks were treated to compelled to watch Red Asphalt in high school?

"Living Dead" students will not return to class for the remainder of the day.

So the "living dead" position becomes a highly coveted spot...

This is so deeply weird! I love how they'll have counselors on hand to manage the trauma that they intend to inflict upon the students.

Our M.A.D.D. mangled car was at the fork of two highways in front of a Friendly's, not near a school.

Our version of the scare thing for driving happened out of school, when we got our driver's licenses issued (The real ones at 16, I think). There was some courthouse ceremony they must have done every month that mostly consisted of telling us about some local kid who had been killed and then playing "Wish you were here" on a crappy boombox.

To part 1 of the OP: The landlord's clearly a dick, but I'm curious anyway: were they evicted purely for the hell of it, or was there some pretense of a reason like being late on rent?

Oakland has required just cause for evictions for a while now, and statewide laws are being proposed this year.

I'm guessing Texas is different.

"Because a family member of the landlord wanted to move in" is a valid reason for at least lease-non-renewal, even in a rent-stabilized apartment, in NY. Plausibly there's something like that in TX?

was there some pretense of a reason like being late on rent?

The way the mom phrased it, no. And it's a pretty common thing in this town for fancy parents to buy up our limited housing stock and let their kids live in houses for free, and they do so on a lax timeline, and rent otherwise. It's quite likely that he stated this to her up front, to be honest, and she still took it because it had a yard and other kids, etc.

In fact, the house in between ours and this kid's is the same situation - they bought it prior to 2006 (when I arrived), so that their kids could live there in college. The first five years or so, they just kept it as a vacation home. Then their first kid decided to go to school elsewhere, and they started renting it out. Then their second kid went elsewhere too, and they've continued to rent it.

We did get traumatic public information adverts on TV though.

Indeed. "Strike the back of the seat in front with the force of a charging elephant" remains a family joke to this day.

I hesitated to speak up about the neighbor thing because what that landlord did sounded like something my parents had done and also like what some people in my current neighborhood have done, but (a) I can't blame you for being annoyed on behalf of Pokey and his friend, and (b) I didn't want to turn it into a "everyone post your income" thread. But the details of 34 don't sound familiar at all. A rental house changing to owner-occupied or vice versa is one thing, buying a house mainly so you can loan it to a college-age or adult child is another. And a town where that's a common thing? Weird town.

27: We were shown that, but now I see it's a whole series. I want to nominate them for the national film registry.

A few months ago Oakland voters extended just cause protections to owner-occupied duplexes/triplexes, which previously been exempt, with eyes wide open that this would prevent family move-ins. We basically said "if you own a multi-unit building your tenants need protections more than you do." Not always true - there are owners poor in everything besides their house - but true enough in aggregate, plus it seemed the "owner-occupied" exemption had been rife with abuse.

"...buying a house mainly so you can loan it to a college-age or adult child..."

This is very common in Fayetteville (the university town where my kid goes to school).

I think it's new in the last 10 or 15 years -- now that people in the top 3% have so much money, what's buying an extra house or two? And that way you save on paying for the dorm and buying a meal ticket, which are the biggest expenses.

(I kind of smirk when a university offers free tuition. I mean, not that that's a SMALL expense -- it's $3400/semester at my kid's school. But it's the smallest item in the expense list. Renting a dorm room and buying a meal ticket runs twice that.)

Our landlord is selling our duplex; I wonder if he sees the writing on the wall and wants to get out before California and/or our city makes his landlordly life uncomfortable. We seriously considered trying to buy it, but the price is ridiculous and we don't want to be landlords, not least because the ridiculous price would necessitate charging ridiculous rent. I definitely understand families buying houses for their college-aged kids to offset some of the ridiculous cost of college, but it's one of these nice ideas, like biodiesel, that turns destructive at scale.

Can't you just buy your half, at least if somebody wants to buy the other half.

Around here, you mostly can as long as the duplex is side by side and not one on top of the other.

42: You have to create a condo association.

But my lawyer just got arrested for trying to extort a shoemaker.

41-43: More complicated in CA bc of our subdivision map act & also local jurisdictions particularly if charter cities can restrict condo conversions, leaving pretty much only the justifiably unpopular tenancy in common option to hold title. Wld guess that the sf gov't website probably has good explanatory material on condo conversions & related issues.

(one of many subjects abt which i know a colossally boring amount but don't go on abt here bc try to stay away from anything remotely connected w work, hence my relentless vacuity 😉.)

Most duplexes here aren't condos. They're just two houses built with a common wall in the middle. They call them half doubles. I think there are even row houses without condo associations.

There's a rule about how you can't tear your house down in the winter if it share a wall with your neighbor.

They call them half doubles.

Here they're called zero lot line houses, officially, but people just think of them as duplexes.

I was told there wasn't going to be math in this thread.

Also: gswift!

49.2 That's the other thread.

I just found out that Ubehebe Crater in Death Valley is pronounced "You-Be-Heebie." So, you know, had to share that. Sorry about the loss of the neighbors. Sucks not having play friends within walking distance.

We all behebe.

Here they're called zero lot line houses

That's what they call them here too. Ours is one. Not a condo setup, just separate townhouses physically connected by a wall along the property line.

But can you demolish in the winter?

I don't know. I don't imagine it's an issue that comes up much.

Alaska is known for its lack of winter.

would these be what we call "terrace houses", which I thought were "Row houses" in the US, or "Semi-detached" , where only two houses are conjoined?

No, no. Enough with that quaint incomprehensible British terminology, NW. In the US a house that shares a common wall with another house is a "half-double" unless it has a drive in which case it's a "Massachusetts Steamer", and if it shares a common wall with two other houses it's a "zero lot line house" - if it has more than one family living in it it's a "multiplex" unless one of the families has more than one child over the age of 12 in which case it is technically a "brothel" and the occupants are known as "senators", unless there are separate entrances for each flat, or "parish", in which case it's an "unincorporated municipality".

And when they're boarded up and full of corpses they are "council houses".

In ekranoplan (sort of) news...

I was reading the accident report on USAir 1549 and came across the following. Even in a simulator, that's ballsy!

Regarding the third flight scenario, a total of 14 runs were performed in the engineering simulator in which pilots attempted to touch down on the water within a target flightpath angle of -0.5°, consistent with the structural ditching certification criteria. [...]

In 11 of the 12 runs, the touchdown flightpath angle ranged between -1.5° and -3.6° (the touchdown flightpath angle achieved on the accident flight was -3.4°). In 1 of these 12 runs, a -0.2° touchdown flightpath angle was achieved by an Airbus test pilot who used a technique that involved approaching the water at a high speed, leveling the airplane a few feet above the water with the help of the radar altimeter, and then bleeding off airspeed in ground effect until the airplane settled into the water.

Ooh, fancy. Called it a pancake landing in my day.

Impressive.

I must admit I am a little sorry that the "flexible-deck" landing method - aka "you don't need undercarriage if you just crash the plane into a giant trampoline" - didn't get more use...

Johns worked in central London as a recruiting officer and rejected T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) as an RAF recruit for obviously giving a false name, but was later ordered to accept him.

Would you have trusted Lawrence with an airplane?

Interesting that the only ditching simulation that stayed within certification parameters was a very unconventional one.

NTSB noted severe damage in the actual aircraft that was not anticipated by Airbus as Airbus was too optimistic about the energy at ditching.

Would you have trusted Lawrence with an airplane?

No! Reminds me of a chap I knew during the war...

Okay, this series by Johns seems to be a cross of Biggles, Jeeves & Wooster, and Flash Gordon. I want to look for one, but I'm also afraid to.

A 10-volume science fiction series (1954-1963) that follows the interplanetary adventures of retired RAF Group Captain Timothy 'Tiger' Clinton, his son Rex, scientist Professor Lucius Brane (who invents a spaceship powered by cosmic rays) and Brane's resourceful butler Judkins.

Speaking of planes, Jerry Falwell is selling jet fuel to the Pentagon. Because Jesus was all about selling political support and military procurement.

Would you have trusted Lawrence with an airplane?

Seeing what the man could do with a mere motorcycle, emphatically not.

67. It's here!.

68: that is a real improvement, in moral terms, from taking money donated by people who thought it was going to famine relief and using it to invest in your slave labour diamond mining joint venture with a deranged war-criminal drug dealer. Well done Jerry.