Interesting take on the history of homo saps use of fire since we learned how to start it back in the mist of prehistoric times.  It's a little pedantic and I'm not sure how practical any of this academic insight is toward building a more sustainable civilization, but nevertheless makes interesting reading.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/we-are-living-in-the-pyrocene-at-our-peril/

We Are Living in the Pyrocene—At Our Peril

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The ongoing tragedy of the wildfires consuming the Mansions in the Hollywood Hills cannot be overstated. Some of our biggest stars homes have been reduced to ashes in Laurel Canyon and along Mulholland Drive.  A-List homeowners in Malibu were seen running panic stricken along the beach heading for the safety of the ocean, only to be swept away by the rip tide and undertow.  Jamie Lee Curtis is now among the many homeless living in tents on Hollywood Boulevard.



There is some reason for hope.  Prior to leaving office, POTUS Joe has declared it a Federal Disaster and promised to bail out all the insurance companies so the stars can rebuild as quickly as possible.  The Red Cross has established a fund all Americans are encouraged to donate money to protect or national security by rebuilding the mansions as quickly as possible.  No important actor should be placed in danger of getting pneumonia when her house burns down.  You can donate your used clothing as well, since many gowns and tuxedos were burned in the fires.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/09/los-angeles-wildfires-spread-hills-hollywood-boulevard

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The video coming out of LA is truly Apocalyptic.  The "Big One" of a 9.0 Earthquake wasn't even necessary to destroy Sodom & Gomorrah, the firestorm alone was enough to reduce everything from Palm Springs to Malibu to ashes.

The Insurance adjusting in the aftermath is going to be interesting.  These are neighborhoods where every house on the block has a pricetag 7 or 8 digits long, many of them packed with artwork worth more than the house.  Wardrobes full of Gucci bags, not to mention jewelry and baseball card and comic book collections.

Then there are all the biznesses like gyms and hair salons that cater to the rich and chharge huge membership fees and private trainers and coaches wh will lose their clients at least for weeks and permanently in many cases.  Tax revenue will drop like a stone.

Also worth noting will be the difference between how this gets fixed up versus say the devastated neighborhoods around NOLA after Katrina.  One suspects these people will not be housed in FEMA trailers. lol.

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It is already all but impossible for younger generations to purchase a home. The vast majority of working class nooks simply will not be able to purchase a home in climate crisis America. Insurance companies are deserting climate change-stricken areas, and if you cannot get your home insured, you cannot get a mortgage. If people can't buy houses that insurers say could easily be destroyed due to risk. then the value of those houses go down. as does the tax base. If the value of the houses go down, so do the property taxes the state collects from those communities at climate risk. If the state collects less property taxes, they provide less services to the area, creating a death spiral where the only logical conclusion is that no one lives in these communities vulnerable to climate impacts.
Coming to a theater or drive-in near you...

I hope it keeps raining here.




California's insurance is in crisis. The solution will cost homeowners a ton.

As the refrain from an old Steely Dan song goes, "Here come those Santa Ana winds again..."

These seasonal Santa Ana winds and drought have combined to turn the LA fires into monstrous blowtorches swallowing houses and commercial buildings in minutes. Normally peaking at 50-60 mph, the winds are now gusting over 100 miles per hour, accelerating the fires to points not seen before. 10,000 structures burned, at least 10 dead, and 200,000+ people displaced.

From the photographs, Malibu looks like Hiroshima or Dresden. Nobody of good faith can argue that this is not a climate change inflected disaster of the first order. Unfortunately, the woods are full of people not of good faith.

You can't even make the "there have always been [fill in disaster]" argument you get with hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes & floods.  9 or the 10 largest firestorms in SoCal history have all occured in the last decade.  It's worse, happening more often and getting worser.

Far as insurance goes, it's the same problem you have with dental insurance and why it doesn't work.  Nearly everyone gets tooth decay and needs dental work regularly, so you can't spread out the risk over a population.  Today, if you live in LA fora decade, it's almost certain a firestorm will hit your neighborhood at some point.  Most mortgages are 30 years, so chances are the house burns before it's even paid off.  Your premium has to be close to the cost of the mortgage itself.

There are only 2 ways to live there now, which is either you are rich enough to be able to afford rebuilding yourself, or use the old Japanese solution which was to build cheap structures out f paper and wood that could burn and be rebuilt in a matter of days.  Of course, modern building codes don't allow for that.

Given how widespread the devastation is, it's hard to imagine how they are going to rebuild n any reasonable timeframe.  There aren't enough contractors and construction workers to build that many houses all at the same time, even if they try importing them in from all over the country.  Particularly not fancy individual mansions that are custom architectural plans.  Maybe if they do modular construction and factory built housing, but what celebrity would want one of those?

Hollywood was already having trouble keeping production in that neighborhood due to the tax structure and cost of living for the support personnel.  This may very well be the end of Hollywood as the global movie capitol of the world.  Which would also mean an enormous hit to CA tax revenue since it's a major industry there.

The effects of this conflagration are going to be felt for a long time.  I don't think they'll ever recover.  LA is going to be like Detroit after the auto industry left.

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Quote from: Surly1 on Jan 09, 2025, 03:06 PMIt is already all but impossible for younger generations to purchase a home.

Can you quantify "all but"? My daughter did it in the most expensive non-coastal city in the US by the age of 25. The boy could as well, but is choosing not to. I work with quite a few reasonably young people, say 24-29, generally well educated, and more than a few of them own homes. I oresume others will get them after they settle in at work.

By no means do these folks represent "younger generations" at large as they went to college, didn't get degrees in basket weaving, and then went job hunting. But if "all but impossible" just means "those who can't be bothered to want to do anything with themselves other than McDonalds" that is different. Are there stats on what constitutes "all but impossible" to you?

I am just watching out for a standard representation that occurs often online, which is representing the exception as the norm, when in fact it might just be...."more often than it used to be".

Quote from: TDoS on Jan 10, 2025, 04:10 PM

Quote from: Surly1 on Jan 09, 2025, 03:06 PMIt is already all but impossible for younger generations to purchase a home.

I am just watching out for a standard representation that occurs often online, which is representing the exception as the norm, when in fact it might just be...."more often than it used to be".

QuoteThe boy could as well, but is choosing not to.

And I could bone Taylor Swift, but I choose not to.

That is Tdos SAD (statistically anomalous daughter), the motorcycle racing, 6 figure salary ultra motivated super model  MMA champion who he whips out every time he wants to show that all the statistics about Gen Z are wrong and they're actually doing just great like his Super Daughter.



Of course, he also knows I made his incessant bragging about his super successful kids against the rules, so he's going back in the cooler...again.

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In my time working at retail banking as a personal banker in London it was my experience that most people getting mortgages were NOT 25 or under. It was mostly people in the 30 plus range. In this group I include people buying their first starter homes.

Of the people who did get mortgages early (people in their 20s) they often go a lot of support from their parents on the deposit. In fact it is often said that when it comes to mortgages one of the biggest providers in the UK is the bank of "mum and dad". In other words the reason get ahead isn't so much about being entrepreneurial spirit but just picking the right parents at birth. Any person who had no support and still managed to make a purchase in their 20s usually had a good story on how they got their wealth so quickly. But those were the exceptional people and were not the norm.

Whilst my experiences are from London I don't think there is a reason to believe these experiences are atypical and I bet a similar dynamic would be found in California.

We hear about the stories of the young kids getting mortgages because the stories are exceptional and news worthy. But they are the exceptions and not the norm. The reality is less people are able to afford buying a house with or without a mortgage and this is an indicator that there is a decline in the middle class. Buying a house is a middle class activity, you don't see the working class do it as often.

EDIT

Just found this timely article on The Guardian which describes the hotel of "mum and dad" (new term to me) being busier than ever before. The hotel of mum and dad is alluding to the fact that a fifth 24-34 year olds in Britain are living with their parents so you see mum and dad are increasingly taking on the roles of banking and hotels for these children and society in general:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jan/11/hotel-of-mum-and-dad-in-uk-at-its-fullest-in-two-decades-study-finds

It is a sign of our times this is happening and to simply blame it on the youth today being lazy is ironically a lazy response that fails to consider the prevailing economic conditions we live in.

Reading between the lines here, I can predict with 90% certainty that the state backed insurer of last resort FAIR plan does not have enough money to cover their share of the losses and will require a bailout.  I will make a slightly less confident bet that the private insurers of State Farm and Allstate will also need a bailout.

Further, even for those who get an insurance payout, who is going to insure them to rebuild on the same piece of property?  They could get started framing the house, and next week the winds could kick up again and the frame of the new house could burn all over again.

Then there are the large number of people NOT insured who still also owe money on their mortgage.  They can't afford to rebuild and they have nowhere to live and since they have to pay the old mortgage do not have money to also pay even a 1 bedroom apt rental price in that area, if they could find one because that type of housing mostly doesn't exist in that area.

Then also for many the only reason they could afford to live in those neighborhoods was because they had some kind of high paying job in the area.  Does this job still exist?  If not, will they be able to find a job at anywhere near their old salary if say they are a 50 year old mid level producer on some TV show?  You are going to have some real sob stories of people who on paper were 1%-ers with a $3M house and $300K job whose insurance was cancelled last year and now are homeless and bankrupt with no job and still have $2M left on their old mortgage to pay off.  There's no housing in the area near their old job even if it still exists.  The only thing they have left is the Mercedes they drove away in, their other cars all burned up with the house.  They still owe money on the Mercedes too.

Corollary to all of this is the RE market there is going to be totally in the toilet.  Anybody with half a brain who does get a insurance payout won't rebuild, they'll take a chunk of the money to clear the debris and then put the bare land on the market at (literally) firesale prices.  Maybe Hedge Funds will snap up properties on the cheap this way, but I'm not sure even Hedge Fund mgrs would want to risk buying bare land there.  Anyhow, otherwise after cleaning up and putting the property up for sale, the smart former Hollywood resident will take the rest of the insurance payout and GTFO of Dodge and buy a nice house in Missouri for !/10th the price of their old Hollywood house and just as big.

On top of all of this, the event really isn't even over.  High winds are expected again next week, the current fires are 50% contained or less and new fires can start anywhere that hasn't burned yet.  Los Angeles could burn for the rest of February.  Probably not and it's already a wipeout, but it could.

Finally, at some point this going to bleed over into the rest of the economy and CA will be in a mega recession/depression.  This in turn will affect the national economy.  LA was of course already just packed with homeless people, now you have instantly made another say 50K homeless and simultaneously removed housing stock AND made it more difficult to do any rebuilding.

Basically, for Los Angeles, IT'S OVAH!  The Fat Lady has sung.  It has COLLAPSED and it won't recover.  It's going to be the West Coast Detroit in no time.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-los-angeles-wildfires-insurance/?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=gnews&utm_campaign=CDAqEAgAKgcICjDi7PAKMIXduwIw3bXXAw&utm_content=rundown&gaa_at=la&gaa_n=AVINqTxN7WjdAMLpvyQtRijVaMaACpPPYcK3ivqUTxHP7_SfWuAWHsqdrOpN0jys5JWQDhepj9-0LqJx9qCo1a4LhT0-&gaa_ts=6782b317&gaa_sig=8CdktzwjmGNNTuzFQSnPzsDpoPk36iqQf5uvNWrnTHSoxCSrI0sCIZ0Rmd-1EQslSnMos7TOcK2m098_7MJq2g%3D%3D

LA Wildfires Push California Insurance Market to Its Limit

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Fire still raging, now burning Brentwood.

Apparently also there has been some weird activity for the last 2 days over Area 51 with streaks of something being dropped in the air then picked up on radar blowing over the areas that are on fire.   Conspiracy channels are buzzing about this.


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And I found a source that says the LA fires are being started by homeless people.

And that article is not being repeated here.

I attempted to trace the ownership of the news outlet and it appears to have been generated by AIPAC.

Now why would AIPAC want to blame LA fires on homeless people?  Can anyone figure it out?

Why would there be disgusting manipulation to make us think about 'us' and 'them'.

Why would 'they' want to harden hearts that way.

Any ideas?

Why make us comfortable fearing 'others'.


The truly sad thing is that such disgusting manipulation is effective.