The aspiration of homeownership

In my last post, I was talking about our search for a new apartment. For the record, my motivation was that I hadn’t written much lately, so why not write about what I’ve been doing? I was not specifically trying to comment on the politics of housing.

But the politics of housing are surely relevant, and worth talking about–at the risk of repeating myself.

As I’ve said many times by now, my household is relatively wealthy. Plainly stated, we are millionaires. That’s not a brag, I simply think you deserve my honesty. Since around 2020, my husband and I have become tech workers without any dependents, debt, or expensive tastes–it’s a recipe for wealth. In our position, some people expect that we would buy a house. But we don’t want to become homeowners, and we are ideologically opposed to the expectation that we should.

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Our “luxury” apartment

For the past few weeks, my husband and I have been apartment searching.  That’s right, we’re renters!  Not sure if readers find that surprising.  But when I talk to coworkers, who are of similar economic class, they’re usually shocked to hear that we’re not homeowners.

So why rent, when we’re wealthy enough to afford a house?  One major reason: we hate cars.  We use public transit.  (This is also a shock to coworkers.)

So if you take transit time, and multiply it by our hourly wage, getting anywhere is very expensive.  We can afford it, it’s just time.  But it’s easily worth thousands of dollars per month to live in precisely the right location.  We want a place next to a grocery store, a train stop, and our workplace.  The typical suburban hellscape of single-family residences doesn’t work for us.  When you consider the economics of it, what we want is a good apartment complex.  In other words, we want what they call a “luxury” apartment.

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Link roundup: August 2026

Artificial Life | Emergent Garden (video, 35 min) – A video about simulations that simulate evolution or generate life-like complexity.  He draws a distinction between three kinds of simulations.  In the first kind, entities are given a goal, and they find a solution via genetic algorithm.  In the second kind, entities are given space to wander around freely, and evolve organically.  In the third kind, entities are not explicitly coded, and instead we see life-like patterns emerge from the rules.  I’ve played several games like this (mostly of the second kind), and I kind of want to make such a game, but it’s probably beyond my ability.

The underlying misogyny of grand romantic gestures | The Soak (video, 47 min, via) – I’ve never seen most of the movies discussed, but I’m still familiar.  I think film often depicts grand romantic gestures because they have to convincingly present a romantic entanglement within a very short amount of time.  Perhaps this is not unlike how porn jumps right into the sex, because that’s what the audience is here for.  Narrative justifications aside, I think many people have taken the trope seriously, and it’s damaging to people’s social skills, especially men’s.  Like, public education can’t realistically teach people about respectful dating etiquette, so instead people are left to absorb norms through movies.

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The modal ontological argument

The king of all useless arguments

Arguments for the existence of God are, generally agreed, not very compelling, and irrelevant to any real political arguments associated religion. And the ontological argument is king of the junk heap, as it is especially unconvincing and irrelevant. The ontological argument attempts to prove God’s existence a priori, with all the certainty of a mathematical theorem. Most people would say this is overly ambitious, and doomed from the start.

The ontological argument presents a deep and enduring mystery: who actually says this stuff? Does anyone say this stuff? What’s their deal?

The number of people who advocate the ontological argument is nonzero, but it’s quite rare in practice.  Let’s round down to zero and say nobody actually says this stuff. Theistic readers may proceed unthreatened, knowing that I’m talking about an argument that none of them actually advocate.

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Origami: U4-30 floral ball

U30

U4-30, designed by Kazutaka Naka

I folded this from someone else’s origami book, which was in Japanese.  I don’t know why it’s called U4-30, although I know the “30” comes from the 30 sheets of paper it’s made from.  Perhaps this is the sort of technical name you come up with when you’ve designed lots and lots of variants.  Yes, it was an entire book of roses and floral balls (Origami Rose & Kusudama).  It’s very nice, so I think it deserves an entire book of variants.

It’s a curler unit, meaning the units are attached by twisting them together.  I used three slightly different shades of red, which gives it a subtle texture without creating contrast between the different units.