I have seen people argue that "they are pretty intricate and expensive things to use only for the purposes of knitting gloves. ". To them, I would like to submit my wife’s $1100 sewing machine that definitely gets used, and isn’t just some weird status symbol among creative types.
Knitting isn’t attested until almost a millennium after this artifact was created. Nålbinding was practiced during this era in a variety of areas and can look very similar, but is mechanically very diffferent.
Less ambiguously worded: knitting did not exist in Roman late antiquity. Romans produced their fabric by weaving. It’s very easy to tell the difference when looking at a fabric if someone points it out to you. Knitting was an early medieval probably Middle Eastern/North African invention. It took a while to spread.
It’s very awesome that someone was able to use a model of one of these to knit a glove, but one time I got wasted and knit with pencils. I really love imagining little Roman schoolchildren in woolen mittens and beanies, but it’s just not realistic.
Man, i looked up nalbinding. It’s knitting, 7000 years old, romans made their socks and mittens that way, it’s not crochet, of course, but it’s knitting. Apparently it was only named nalbinding in the 70s, it was just knit before.
Nålbinding and knitting are not the same. They look very similar in the finished product, and can be hard to tell apart by non-experts, but are made by entirely separate processes. Because of the difficulty in identification - because honestly, many archeologists and historians before the 1970s were extremely ignorant on the history of “day to day” folks - many items were misidentified.
Key differences: Nålbinding uses smaller, shorter strands tied together (early spinning methods = shorter bits to work with). Nålbinding works with one finger holding the stitches, the earliest knitting (which tbh, didn’t really reach Europe until the late medieval period) was worked in the round on multiple double pointed needles. What the earliest knitting looked like wouldn’t have looked what granny was doing, or either of the two videos linked above. (I tried to find a video but FUCK dpens, circ gang 4lyf)
Here’s the thing. You said “nålbinding is knitting.”
Is it in the same family? Yes. No one’s arguing that.
As someone who is a scientist who studies knitting, I am telling you, specifically, in science, no one calls nålbinding knitting. If you want to be “specific” like you said, then you shouldn’t either. They’re not the same thing.
If you’re saying “knitting family” you’re referring to the hobby of weaving, which includes things from crochet to macramé to plaiting.
So your reasoning for calling nålbinding knitting is because random people “call fabric crafting knitting?” Let’s get felting and tatting in there, then, too.
Also, calling something knitting or weaving? It’s not one or the other, that’s not how taxonomy works. They’re both. Nålbinding is nålbinding and a member of the knitting family. But that’s not what you said. You said a nålbinding is knitting, which is not true unless you’re okay with calling all members of the knitting family knitting, which means you’d call macramé, plaiting, and other weaving methods knitting, too. Which you said you don’t.
Nålbinding is a very different technique because it is early - working with small scraps of fiber because you’re just grabbing what’s available, and it’s a technique that closes itself (unlike knitting or crochet, you don’t have to “weave in” the ends). Nålbinding also involves you working “off thumb.”
It’s very fun to imagine that Romans had a nifty way of mass producing gloves. But it’s a massive stretch. Clothing was made at home, by the women of the home. Poor women would not have been able to afford a fancy doohickey. Wealthy women didn’t make their own clothes. Prestige clothing (eg togas) was primarily woven.
I’ve seen lots of cool people make art with things that weren’t intended for the purpose of making art, and that’s great! Folks can write messages in the sky with airplanes - that doesn’t mean that airplanes were invented for skywriting.
It might be helpful to try both techniques yourself.
You can buy a spool at Walmart for pretty cheap, they’re often available at thrift stores for less. You’ll want to look up an “i-cord” tutorial. Any old yarn will do honestly, the acrylic super savers will work.
Nålbinding will require that you use wool. The joining process involves felting the ends together (an extra knitter might do this, but it’s not necessary - it’s okay to tie them together because you’re weaving in ends afterwards). Felting is using water and patience to shape wool. For practice, you can use a cheap plastic tapestry needle honestly - save money here because the wool is going to run you a bit more.
I find nålbinding uncomfortable and slow, personally.
Do you also think crochet and knitting are the same? This is a totally different fiber art. I both knit and crochet and would not be able to hop right into this; totally different movements and methods and ways of weaving the yarn. Just because the products are similar does not make it the same.
I hope you’re trolling because you’re getting me good lmao
Just because you could use it for knitting it doesn’t mean it was its purpose.
There’s not a lot of detail, but you can check on the Wiki why it’s ultimately an unlikely explanation: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron#Purpose
Wikipedia and this sort of thing…Yknow the article on saddles says that stirrups weren’t invented till the 9th century AD but the article on riding boots said the heel, to prevent your foot going through the stirrup, dates to 5th century BC.
Yeah it’s funny that’s never the conclusion but logically it makes sense to not dismiss something as unknown until we’re sure it wasn’t used for anything else. Still can’t wait for future civilizations to be very confused when they see my collection of funny looking coins.
Oftentimes, that’s a sort of inside joke. If it’s even remotely probe-shaped, they assume it was used for sex. But since that doesn’t look nice on academic papers, they’ll use “ritual” as a euphemism.
Seriously, archeologists find a lot of ancient dildos.
Gotta disagree, I bet they’re still finding great-great-great-[…]-grandmother’s dildos (or -grandfather’s, who knows?) and they hold up just fine, all things considered.
They do come to that conclusion all the time, but in some cases it’s impossible to know for sure. If they don’t know for sure then they’re not going to say it’s definitely for decoration only, but they’ll list it as an option, which they have done for this object.
Also helps if you’re in one of those stores where the toilets are out in the open like it’s another regular aisle. Stack up some boxes and you can position it to give yourself some privacy. Bring along some bottles of water too since sometimes the faucets don’t work.
It’s not so simple, my mom purchased a property with her divorce settlement and the return on the investment can be good, but it can also be not as good. She remodeled an Oregon property in Salem and sold it for less than cost later. While she did get rent for it before she sold, she could have saved a lot of effort just buying dividend stocks.
Real estate can be a good investment, but it can be a poor one.
Also if your asking me to feel bad for someone trying to make a profit off acting as a middleman to a basic human need you’re barking up the wrong tree.
My mom is the landlord and remodeling houses IS her work. She was a stay at home mom until I grew up, that’s what she does for a living after she divorced my dad. She lives on the rent of her properties while she does each project
I do? But I also support laws that heavily tax owning secondary properties. Building more houses is not helpful if they just get purchased by landlords.
If being a landlord is profitable where do you think that profit comes from? Logically landlord’s need to be making housing more expensive so they can get their cut.
Return on investment. Not everyone has money to buy a house. Home prices being high keeps rents high. Increase housing supply and it will resolve the issue
And where does this return on investment come from?
To put it another way: if a law was passed that owning a property you don’t live on is going to become illegal, there would suddenly be a lot of cheap property on the market.
It comes from owning an investment. The stock market has similar returns to the real estate market.
But the real estate market doesn’t need to keep going up. For example, after the increase in supply of housing in Austin, the prices are down 16% off the 2022 peak
If this could be replicated for the whole country, it would improve the situation immediately.
I don’t understand the law you’re proposing. Would it apply to hotels? Do you need to live in the hotel you own? Apartment building? Hot spring resort? Ski lodge?
Only if they’re selling the house. Owning builds equity but you can’t live off that unless you sell the asset to get access to the money. In order to live off of it the profit has to come directly from the renters.
I don’t understand the law you’re proposing.
It was a hypothetical to prove a point, not an actual proposed law. I would propose a significant tax increase on any residential land a person owns but doesn’t live on. This would have no affect on hotels, resorts, lodges etc. because there is a well defined difference between commercial and residential. This would affect apartment buildings by heavily encouraging the owner to live in one of the apartments, which would also encourage them to keep everything in the building running smoothly.
There’s a limit to how many people are interested in staying in hotels in a city.
There’s also the zoning issues between residential and commercial.
There’s also the fact that it’s far easier to buy a residential home and rent it than it is to tear it down, build a hotel, hire staff, and operate an actual business.
I realize you have a knee jerk need to defend landlords and reject anything that interferes with them making a profit of other people’s basic need for shelter, but try to take a moment to think if your argument sounds in any way reasonable before just throwing it out there.
Someone who legitimately thinks “People will just replace houses with hotels” is not someone I’m going to look to for advice on this subject. Hotels are already more profitable for their owners than rental properties. If what you suggested was in any way feasible it would already be happening.
If you implement this, people will be living long term in hostels in 6 people dorms because the landlords are not required to live in them.
First, “This law that doesn’t exist has a loophole” is a stupid argument. I’m not proposing the full legal text of the law, that would be for the government to figure out. Any imaginary loophole you come up they can also predict and not allow (include “hostel” on the list of properties the owner needs to also live on. Boom. Done.)
Second, you are suggesting people who currently live on their own will suddenly live in 6 person dorms. So what happened to those other 5 houses those people were living in? Are they also filled with 6 people dorms and we’ve magically created 6 times the population out of nowhere? Are they empty because they’ve been purchased by people who don’t live there (you know, the entire problem here) who are now paying taxes on properties with no occupants until they are forced to sell?
Why is my hypothetical disqualifying? A lot of people actually use their houses as hotels, it’s called air bnb. It’s pretty profitable to use the property like that
If you include the hostel owners to live in them, they will be converted into hotels that don’t have that requirement. That’s not my argument. My argument is permanent residents will be forced to live in hotels as apartment buildings get converted by their current owners who can’t possibly live in all of their properties at the same time
Look one of my siblings is doing the same thing. I’m happy I don’t have to worry about them financially, but I’m not going to say I wouldn’t prefer they made an honest living
My mom is too old to wash dishes in a restaurant, it’s really hard labor and she has carpal tunnel. She tried, it’s just not something a 60+ year old person is fit to do. So she can’t just sit on that money and do hard labor on the side. But drawing some plans and hiring contractors while painting some walls on her own time is something she can do
It shouldn’t be an investment at all. It should be used. It’s like saying water is a good investment. Sure, if you make it artificially scarce and are okay with a ton of people going without… Nestle.
I really wish other better brands would step up in making more consumable products for people with cancer(protein replacement drinks) or children though. It’s really rough when better options are very scarce.
Yup I get you. I managed to avoid nestle but I know I have a privileged life only because I don’t need particular things in my diet. I have vulnerable relatives where they cannot take such options to avoid nestle what with their situation. And I can’t judge them for it. But It’s not a pass on nestle. Nestle need to smarten the hell up. they have no excuses to be terrible.
I make an effort. The truth is there are s9 many things that are Nestle with no Nestle on the packaging due to the different layers of subsidiary companies. It’s practically impossible to completely avoid them without some smart phone app, database, etc (which may even be inaccurate) or a fuckin encyclopedic knowledge of the different brands lmao. Shits fucked, yo.
Right?!? I spend way too much time researching each product over actual use of the product. I had to deep dive to the level of “where is this product produced and who are their relatives and what is their mother’s maiden name??”
There used to be an app or site called “buycott” or something and you could set what you were trying to avoid(example: avoiding human rights violating companies, avoiding specific companies, morals of certain companies, etc.), and you could scan an item and it would tell you. I used it for a tiny bit years ago but didn’t stick with it. Not sure if it’s still around.
I dont know if I’m missing something, but I decided to look up nestle…
I use coffee mate coffee creamer, but its just coffee creamer. I use Purina dog food because a family member works there, but theres like 100 other dog food brands on chewy, I could use.
Idk what I’m supposed to be outraged about. What evil is there in coffee creamer and dog food? Am i missing something?
I mean i hate that americans buy wasteful bottled water when they dont need to, but that makes me more angry at Americans. Theres tons of bottled water brands.
Last time this shit came up, some dude chimed in that walking around the parking lot collecting lose carts was the best part of his day, since he could be outside away from managers slowly collecting them relaxing.
It was hit or miss at previous jobs. I worked at Kmart for a few years and would often help the stock guys round up carts in the evening. During summer evenings it was kind of fun wandering way out into that concrete sea with the boys, rounding up impossibly far carts and running the wrong carts (or electric scooters) back to the grocery store next door. But during the winter it was hell on fucking earth, and I’d help them round them up just to spare them the agony of a slipped disk.
I live in Canada now and couldn’t imagine rounding up carts during these cold snaps. You’d probably stick to them, imprisoning you in parking lot until you succumb to frostbite.
This is why I never ever put carts away. Give those poor kids something better to do than stand inside and listen to bitching customers while they bag their groceries.
They don’t even need to push the carts. They just walk around with a little machine that does the pushing while they bop around with their headphones on enjoying the fresh air.
Are they going to leave out the part where the president called it a hoax while simultaneously spitballing ideas about UV light, bleach and horse dewormer cures all while thousands of Americans were dying every day. Or the part where he emptied the treasury with zero oversight?
There’s a Twitter or 4chan post floating around about how putting the cart back is the apex test of your humanity because there’s no reward for doing it and no consequences for not. It’s just “are you a good enough dude to put the cart back?”
(Unless you live near one of those places where you “rent” the cart for a coin, in which case there is a slim monetary value in cart management.)
The book “Fall, or Dodge in Hell” has this as a key subplot that people just follow hallucinating meme generating AI feeds untill they are totally brainwashed into doing whatever it hallucinates they should do next
Everyone here loves to complain about landlords without realizing that the majority of single family home landlords (not corporate landlords) are barely making it by too.
Banks are really the ones making criminal amounts of money. 1/3 of rent is typically interest payments. 1/3 of rent then goes to taxes.
For instance, I make $2,900/mo. from rent, but pay $2,800/mo. for the mortgage. I’ve spent over $8k this year alone on repairs and maintenance. But please continue to complain how landlords are constantly raking in cash. It’s typical for a homeowner to pay 1% of the cost of the property per year to maintain it. I will never see a positive cash flow until the mortgage is paid off in 25 years. The only benefit I get by continuing to own the property is the appreciation in equity and principle payments to the mortgage. At the end of the year we will have a -$7k cash flow and $5k equity appreciation. In a HCOL area, that $5k on paper is less than 3% of the area’s median yearly salary.
I feel for anyone out there who has a landlord that didn’t consider the hidden costs and the fact they should expect to runa negative cash flow, because it’s those landlords that also can’t afford to fix the house you might be renting.
Surely you must ignorant of the economic realities and risk of owning a home and how renting can actually be more lucrative depending on your circumstances.
For everyone like you there are who knows how many dozens sitting on inheritances. To be clear I am not against people making money, I am against assholes.
Look a long long time ago a housemate of mine just vanished. Me and the landlord were talking and we decided to put all his stuff neatly in the basement. He shows up a few months later, turns out he was in the hospital. Me and the landlord help him get all his stuff into a new unit. A little bit of work to not screw over a guy.
I agree, there are people who try to exploit the system, and those people deserve 100% of the hate. And I appreciate the nuance you bring to the discussion.
There are those that will villify small-time landlords for the gall to try to make an extra cent. Ultimately, small-time landlords provide a very valuable service, with extremely tight margins. Frankly, it is just barely worth it for us to keep that home. Because additional risks that go into it includes a tenant trashing the place, skipping out on rent, the property being vacant between renters, rental listing fees (which amounts to a month’s rent typically), and so on.
In return a tenant is able to enjoy a home that would otherwise be unaffordable to them, zero risk, and the flexibility to move without being stuck in one location. If someone is only going to live somewhere for less than 3 years, it will always be better to rent than to buy, and take the money saved renting and invest that into the market. The renter is this case will always make more money in return. Some markets around the country would require someone to live in that home for over 10 years before they break even over the advantage of renting.
The reality is building or buying a home is expensive and that cost has to be borne by someone. For this instance, sure, landlords can provide a service. Smaller landlords who are actually PEOPLE and not faceless corpos who don’t even show up for home tours anymore though? Fuck em, heads on pikes, all of em. Seriously I have not even SEEN a person I rent from.
There are some benefits to being a renter, for sure, but they need to be comparable to the benefits the owners are getting, and they’re not. It’s not worth paying more than you would to actually OWN a thing, just to be able to move at a moments notice.
From the sounds of your situation in another post, you’re making about 5k in equity and spending, after collecting rent, an additional 7k. This sounds about right TBH. I could see it going up until those numbers are equal, no more.
You are absolutely right on all accounts. I’m sorry you’ve had shitty landlords, I wish there was a better way to weed those people out, because as it stands, the balance of power is heavily in the favor of the landlord due to the micro-monopolistic nature of renting a place for years at a time.
Renting vs Buying is very dependent on your local market. I have friends in Ottawa that I’ve run the numbers for and it would literally never be profitable to purchase a home compared to continuing to rent. Some areas two years is the break even point. These days with high interest rates, the break even on buying vs renting is after about 5 or 6 years. I encourage anyone to check it out for themselves! :)
I could’ve have been clear, but my situation has a very slight net benefit for me, and since my tenants only plan to live in the are for two years, they are getting the better end of the deal. In the end though, there is a mutual benefit and that’s what a competitive market should tend towards (as opposed to the monopolistic nature of corporate apartment housing which encourages the opposite).
My point is that the people who hate all landlords instead of just the bad ones don’t understand the economic realities of housing. It’s actually the mom and pops that rent out their homes for a short period that make renting cheaper on average for the market as a whole. Mostly because they are imperfect businessmen/women and don’t understand the full cost of being a landlord before it’s too late. Instead, most mom and pop landlords are just hoping to break even.
I’m not against people making money, I’m against people making money hand over fist with the level of effort I exert taking my morning shit, off the backs of people trying to scrape by.
A regular guy who’s a landlord np. Once it becomes your primary investments vector and you’re NOT giving that little extra effort of moving stuff to the basement, once you stop being a person who is a landlord and just become Landlord, it’s shit.
You know what your tenant get for paying your mortgage? Jackshit.
If you are truly getting nothing by renting, buy a home instead. If you respond by saying ‘but I don’t want to, or can’t because of x’, that is what you are paying for as a renter.
Oh yes, it costs me $7k a year for the pleasure of managing a property, responding to all the tenants needs, the risk of paying for major future repairs, trusting the tenant to pay on time and in full (collections is practically impossible to enforce), dealing with vacancies while I still pay the mortgage, paying real estate agent fees which amounts to a month’s rent every time I get a new tenant. And that’s all for a house that I am not able to live in, and that I have locked up 20% of the house’s value for a down payment. It’s much more profitable just to let that money sit in the stock market instead.
But please tell me more about how you know better and that’s it’s all sunshine and rainbows for a non-corporate landlord.
You get a building that is worth more than you paid for, so that’s your payment.
On 25 years, you pay a fifth of the building price for it. And that is not accounting for the equity that the house gains over the years like we’ve seen during covid.
Here, let me play you the sad song on the smallest violin of the world.
On 25 years, you pay a fifth of the building price for it. And that is not accounting for the equity that the house gains over the years like we’ve seen during covid.
So does every other home owner. That benefit is not for just landlords.
I don’t understand the hatred for the risk return of being a landlord. Let’s assume you can double your money in the stock market every 7 years.
Compare real estate and stock ownership for 20k (100k house). In the market, 20k becomes 40k in 7 and 80k in 14, 160k in 21, and so on. That’s 215 total over 25 years. As long as appreciation is close to 3% it’s almost a wash after 25 years. The difference is as a landlord you have the risk of capital expenses requiring you to hold cash and the value of your time to run a rental.
If you want to assume you’ll double your money somewhere else, sell up and do it.
The fact is you’ve borrowed against an asset, the bank took the initial risk on your ability to pay but it’s secured against the asset.
The tenant is in a position they pay more per month than your mortgage payment simply based on a deposit around 20% of the property value.
You get to take on 20% of the risk of buying a house, the bank 80% of the risk, and the tenant pays you both for it.
I’m going to assume the average landlord, just as you assume average returns. Sod all work and maintenance done, no time spent. A property initially bought in good condition coasting on for 10 years with little input required.
Then sold on at a profit after the tenant has paid rent, paid into the landlords mortgage and their equity. Just before the rental value starts to reflect poor condition.
It’s bought by a house flipper in poor cosmetic condition, tenants kicked out, renovations done to the lowest standard to last about 10 years. House sold on for a small additional premium as ready to rent to a buy to let landlord.
I really hope the buy to let landlords end up at a wash or worse. The tenant pays into equity, the house flipper adds value by actually working on the property.
The landlord in between just acts as an easy risk for the bank to charge their interest against while taking the tenants money. The bank makes a healthy profit and the landlord gets a cut of the tenants earnings too, simply for reducing the banks net risk to near zero by putting in their 20%.
Without the landlords banks would have to lend to the tenant directly or not at all. The lower number of actual buyers would lower the price, so they’d actually probably end up lending the same amount against the asset. But they’d have to do more work to ensure the value of the property.
Economically a passive landlord’s main function is to assess value and bet on the right property for the bank. Without landlords the postcode algorithm would be all that’s left as home owners tend to overvalue their potential home. And it’s not enough information.
Landlords could be replaced by banks employing decent surveyors allowing them to offer that 100% mortgage without crashing the market. But they don’t because landlords give them an out.
If, in the current system, real estate investment wasn’t profitable, no company or landlord would buy to let.
The problem is that there is a housing crisis right now where rent is through the roof, buying is out of reach for a big chunk of the population and its getting worse.
The commodification of housing fucked us over.
And then, you have people like the OP I was replying to, that whines because he has to pay the fifth of the value of the building, while the tenant pays his mortgage+ taxes minus 100$ and then get pissy when he gets called out.
Again, the saddest song in the world with the smallest.of.the violin.
For us, it’s because work required that we temporarily relocate. But we plan to move back in a couple years and we really like our house.
For others it usually has to do with the fact that selling a home costs 10% of the home’s value after all fees are accounted for.
Then there is the other set of people who genuinely think the equity in a property is more lucrative than money in the stock market (depending on the market and timing, it could be, but it’s ultimately a bet).
But I could ask the same question of every single person bemoaning the existence of landlords. If it’s oh so easy to be a landlord, why don’t they just become a landlord?
Probably because they don’t have the capital necessary to become a landlord in the first place. If you have enough money, being a landlord requires literally no work at all.
For single family homes, I disagree. Property management is around 10% and you’re not going to build wealth quickly by giving that much off the top if you only operate a couple rentals.
I guess getting that initial capital required no work at all either.
Why don’t they just get that initial capital if it’s so easy.
Unless someone was born with money, the argument against non-corporate landlords (97.5% of single family homes are owned by non-institutional investors) is nonsensical, because those owners had to work for the initial capital.
At the end of the day they’re still using that capital to exploit people by being landlords. Even if they earned that initial capital through hard work, the moment they invest some of it into a down payment on a house and begin to extract profit/equity via someone else’s labor, it becomes exploitation.
Myself, I don’t. Being a landlord has quite a bit of risk from awful tenants as well as quite a bit of effort to make it work well. I have a job, don’t want another, and don’t want the additional risk; my investments are thus elsewhere.
You know what your tenant get for paying your mortgage?
A place to live? If you need to move, all you have to do is break the lease? I agree that rental rates are artificially high, but to act like there is no value in renting is silly.
House for $105k that needs flooring and some appliances, so let’s call it $125k. There’s a choice. You probably don’t want to move to Oklahoma though.
There are trade offs for wanting to live near a city or somewhere popular or close to family. Yeah rental rates suck and home prices are climbing, and soon the cheap homes in the Midwest will start to keep up with the other states.
Sounds like you have a highly subsidized mortgage. That’s why you’re being downvoted. Investments are supposed to have risk. The risk of not making a profit is what you take on when you purchase real estate as an investment. It is not a renters problem whether you are profitable or not.
The only benefit I get by continuing to own the property is the appreciation in equity and principle payments to the mortgage.
Sounds like you’re still getting a sweet deal then. Once the mortgage is paid off you will own property outright that you paid very little for compared to it’s value.
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