#not to mention poor people often dont have the time money etc to invest in hobbies like that

[boag]

Literally…. See: the way resellers take all the nice stuff from thrift stores for cheap and then jack up prices as if that’s not still screwing over poor people

[bonecorn]

I love your anatomy/references posts & I love skulls and skeletons & I would love to know how you convince people to give you their animal heads to clean. Also any bone cleaning tips for suburban areas?? When I was living on a farm it was easy to leave stuff out and let the bugs take care of it but my parents said hard no to dead things bleaching on the porch

Oh this is very easy!

Find a friend or acquaintance with land and leave your stuff there. Bug cleaning and tub maceration don't need a lot of hands-on attendance so you can check in however often you like.

There's also "hot water maceration" where you simmer (dont boil!) fresh heads in hot water and remove the cooked meat by hand. Make sure you scramble the brains first and then cook away inside or with a camping stove on the porch. And "bleaching" which is done with hydrogen peroxide can be done inside since the skulls are already clean by then anyway.

I don't actually convince people to give me their pets. For livestock, I ask because most people aren't emotionally attached to their livestock.

For pets, I wait to be offered the remains. More on that under the cut.

TLDR: Know the pet owner, wait to be offered bodies rather than asking. Make sure they are always in control. Ask for livestock no problem. Don't let scavengers eat euthanized meat.

holy crap lol

I don't ask for pet bodies. The trick is to be very open and excited about what you do so that people who know you know about bones and know that you are respectful of animal remains. Then, when a beloved pet dies, they might think about you.

Open up the conversation on death before it's relevant

You can also plant the seed ahead of time during a conversation about bones while the pet in question is alive and healthy. "Sometimes I do pets if their owner is ok with it, though most want to bury. Have you ever thought about that for Baxter?" It's in SUPER poor taste to do this while an animal is dying, when you'll need to be way more tactful.

Know your friend well enough to guess their feelings on it

It SUPER depends on the person and how they view bodies and death. My ex's dog passed away and he was always queasy about corpses. I comforted him and cried with him while his beloved 15 year old dog declined and passed. I didn't ask or even mention it because I knew him enough to know that he would say no, and that asking would be painful and upsetting for him to think about. Same with my dear friend and her 20 year old cat. She had a beautiful pet graveyard with headstones and everything. You just know not to ask some people because traditionally laying bodies to rest is important to them.

Other pet owners are chill about it, ESPECIALLY if they come from a livestock background. Livestock people are used to sending their animals to be recycled into glue and wax when they die, because it's generally not feasible to bury or cremate a horse. If someone does plan to take that on, you know they are absolutely dedicated to traditional burial and won't give you anything.

Make it their choice to offer, rather than it being your request

Anyway. If you know the person, and you know they might be ok with giving up their pet's body due to how they view bodies and death, then you work on making them think about you. First, you comfort and do everything you can to help the person through their grief. If you weren't already planning on doing that, then you have no business asking for their pet. Do not comfort someone in order to get something out of them. That's disgusting. Just straight up ask them for their pet and know that they will view you as tactless and rude, but its better than manipulating them.

What I do is not manipulation, it's reminding people what you do and then letting them make their own decisions. When your friend is feeling a little better and is not crying, you can ask about logistics. I ask "What do you plan to do for burial/with the body?" and that usually makes them think about me and what I do with bodies. If they already have a meaningful spot picked out to bury or scatter/keep ashes, then that means the body is important to them and I shouldn't ask further.

At this point, they should realize what you could use the body for and think about how they feel about that. This is when my sister (who has a livestock background) offered her dog to me. We talked about how she thought of bodies, and she thought that the soul is the only thing that matters and once her dog passes there's nothing important left. I did not say anything to convince her, these were all her own thoughts.

It's very VERY important to respect and love the pet owner because they're extremely vulnerable and emotionally raw. That's why I don't straight up ask, because when you're losing a pet, you don't want to feel like someone is trying to gain something from you.

If your friend says they don't know or haven't decided what to do for the body, you can gently say "Let me know if you want me to help bury it, to take it with me, or to just be there for you." This is a close-ended statement and not a question. A question means that your friend has to come up with an answer right there and then, while an offer is actionable. This puts the power and autonomy in your friend's hands, so that when they make a decision it comes fully from their wants and needs and is not about you and what you want.

Be there for them even if you get nothing out of it

If they don't offer at this point, they're not going to. Now hold up your end of the bargain and continue to comfort and help through the grieving process. Again, if you aren't already invested in this person enough to want to soothe and comfort and be there for the human person in the equation, then you have no business asking for their pet. When a pet dies, your first concern should be to the person. If it's not, then you aren't close enough to ask for goodies.

Helping someone grieve is not payment for their pet's body. If you realize they aren't going to give you something in return for your comfort and so you abandon them, you're a terrible person using their grief to manipulate them for your own gain. Comfort is not payment. Closeness in grief is a metric by which you measure "Do I have any business to ask?"

The pet owner runs the show, not you

Throughout this process, stress that the owner can change their mind at any time. You don't want the owner to think "I hate this but I can't back out now because I promised..." Even when they animal is all wrapped up an in your vehicle and ready to go, quietly tell the owner that they can still choose what happens and if they have second thoughts, that's ok and you won't be mad.

My sister let me be there for putting her dog down and it was all about her and her love for her dog. She carried him out and laid him in my trunk and we stood in the rain and talked and hugged. She then told me she was happy that he could bring happiness to someone in life and now still in death, but that she didn't want to know anything. I agreed not to tell her or post anything about processing her dog, so for her it would be like burial. The same thing happened with my other friend's horse. She spent some time with him and then as soon as he passed she drove away and let me do what I wanted. She didn't want to hear Any of it. Again, I didn't ask or even offer, she came up with the idea of giving me the body all on her own even before I knew he was dying.

Horse people are much closer to pet owners than livestock owners, but they are used to sending their friend's bodies off to a different kind of processing (at Tallow factories, livestock remains are ground up, cut apart, cooked, and spun around to extract various substances that become soap, glue, candles, etc) so they know not to think about what happens after death. It still depends on how well you know the owner and know how they think about death, but if you offer to handle logistics like dealing with the tallow guy, they can actually save money by letting you have it.

You're actually doing livestock a favor

Livestock people are generally chill and have a much more utility/asset view of their animals. If the animal doesn't even have a name they probably don't care what happens when it's dead. In fact, most farmers will jump at the chance to give you their animal for free because calling the tallow company to haul it away costs them money. This is also why in areas with lots of livestock, you sometimes find bodies dumped in ditches or left on the side of the road, because the farmer didn't want to pay to get rid of it so they made it everyone else's problem. Even pet animals like dogs and cats are more Utility than pure companions on a farm, so you might have a better chance of getting remains from a farmer than a neighbor.

One more thing about pets and livestock.

When I find a dead deer, I flay it open and let the vultures eat it. For domestic animals, they are often put to sleep via chemical/drug.

THIS IS POISONOUS TO SCAVENGERS.

DO NOT LET SCAVENGERS EAT EUTHANIZED ANIMALS

Seriously. If you like nature, you need to protect it. Deflesh it yourself, throw all the meat/blood/offal away or bury it 6 feet down. Idk what it does to the environment so I always freeze it and then throw it away on garbage day.

Rot bacteria and beetle larvae dermestids don't mind. In fact, dermestid droppings and pupa shells can be analyzed for toxins by forensic scientists to determine cause of death. Neat! Just make sure that if you process outdoors, the remains are EXTREMELY SECURE and cannot be opened by vultures, coyotes, or wild pigs.

Remember the living, human person

I know I look very clinical by picking apart human emotions, but I respond, feel, love, and grieve just like everyone else. I didn't plan how to get any of the animals in the above stories, I just acted on instinct and these are the ones where that paid off well.

Most of the time if I go "huh. I feel that may not go over well" I can then take that feeling apart and figure out why. So hopefully explaining how my feelings work it can help you listen to your most useful and most compassionate ones.

The living person is always more important than a dead pet. Sometimes you can get the dead pet without distressing your friend, sometimes you shouldn't even try.

Respecting the dead

A final note on working with pets vs wild animals. This is someone's family member, so don't play puppet with it like you might with a skunk skin. Don't take pictures of any part of the process until they are rendered to bones. Pictures of dead pet species are even more distressing to the general public than wild animals, and sick freaks might take your photos and send them to people for kicks or attention. Better to just not have photos than for that to happen.

What processing a pet feels like

Working on a pet is always going to be different for you, the vulture, than a wild animal. Everything you see is touched by human hands. My sister's dog was... beautiful. You don't really realize how moved you're going to be by seeing the perfect amount of healthy fat covering, or beautiful muscles that speak of exercise and attention. She rescued this starving pup and turned him into the healthiest animal I have ever seen. She's a vet assistant and the care and love she put into this dog had me sitting there crying while I held his paws; with their perfectly maintained clipped and sanded nails. I'd only met the dog once for a few minutes when he was alive, but his body was a canvas and every inch was painted with layers and layers of love. It made me so, so sad that his neurological issues couldn't be helped because his body was proof of someone who would stop at nothing to cure what could be cured, and that the last months of his life were happier than he ever imagined.

On the flip side, pets whose bodies show signs of neglect and abuse are going to hit you harder than any deer could. The dog I found discarded in a garbage bag on the side of the road had rotten teeth and nails so long they curled over themselves into hoops. An overgrown and suffering deer is just the sign of nature taking its course. An overgrown and suffering dog is the sign of human cruelty, of shirked responsibility.

Most pets you get will between these two dogs. No owner is perfect. Most old dogs have lost teeth to rot, sick cats too weak to scratch properly may have overgrown nails.

Death as beauty

A pet's body usually a beautiful story full of ups and downs; of owners doing things wrong and then doing things right. A vulture or an artist can read a body like rings on a tree and feel the heart beat in their chest that tells them how strong and full of love this life had been. You need to be ready for this part. Every detail is a message from your fellow human and even though we are all animals and we decompose into the same dirt, we're meant to connect to each other here and now.

Keep your emotions open when working with remains.

Listen to what they have to teach you.

[savefrog]

There are definitely kickstarter scams out there.

But a lot of those failed video game kickstarters are definitely more complicated than scams

Its the result of poor management, technical issues, experience levels, poor design choices and so many different things.

A lot of time and money goes into games and most kickstarter budgets dont even approach the normal amount needed to feed a team for the months planned...and if that game is delayed at all to fix issues? More money is needed for that team.

A "scam" implies some sort of intention to trick people out of their money. And i understand how people can feel that way if they spent money on something that doesn't meet their expectations or turns out bad. But i dont think it was the developers intentions to fool people and run off with the money.

Yooka Laylee, for example, seemed promising. But they made really bad choices. They thought huge worlds would be a selling point...instead, they turned out feeling empty. Things that are good on paper can turn out awful when put into place, but you may have no idea until all the assets are made, maps designed, months have passed and things are only just coming together. This is a result of not playtesting soon enough; a time management issue, and it happens all the time.

And as I mentioned before; fixing issues requires more time, which may cause delays, which in turn costs more money.

And struggling kickstarters may end up cutting out staff because games are expensive. Which just makes it harder to complete.

The AAA industry funds games based on how successful/safe they predict they will be. Kickstarters fund games primarily through hype.

Games the AAA industry wouldve tossed aside as being "too risky" have found success on Kickstarter and that's amazing! But...there's a reason it's risky.

Unlike call of duty or fifa or whatever, there's no formula for what works and what doesnt work.

Industry professionals trying to make a game through kickstarter are entirely responsible for their checkpoints, whereas before a higher up wouldve been like "we want to see a prototype on ______ date." They suddenly have more freedom.

It makes sense how games like Broken Age and Yooka Laylee could fall apart despite having industry professionals on board.

As for games with inexperienced game designers? Thats a whole other kettle of fish.

AAA games in general never have everything the developers planned to put in. There's never enough time. Stuff is always cut down and then cut down again.

Kickstarter games are held to the standards set when they wrote the game features on the page. This is understandable; as the consumers paid for what the kickstarter said it would deliver.

Yet if they cut those features: they face criticism. If they dont cut those features....they lose time to work on making the game as a whole better, less resources, badly Implemented features, etc.

Im not saying this to excuse bad design. When making Yooka Laylee they shouldve tested the levels as early as possible. They should've looked even harder at how Banjo worked. And with the money they raised from the kickstarter...!?

But at the same time I can see how they didnt have time to make a revised version. And they probably will never make a Yooka Laylee 2 to fix that. And the kickstarter money was crumbs compared to AAA budgets. And AAA games fall flat VERY OFTEN.

Its just a bad game. Not a scam. Not some evil trick to fool consumers.

It's always a risk to back these projects; just as its a risk when a company invests millions into a new game. Be careful because you really dont know what to expect.

Its just a lot more...skeevy, I suppose, when the funding comes directly from excited consumers rather then industry investors. Kickstarters in general are probably a whole other discussion that Im nowhere near qualified to talk about.

[therealestatesparkblog]

Stop Building Garages: How Driverless Cars Will Affect Real Estate

Driver-less cars are going to change alot, and if you havent been actively reading about this, then its most likely going to happen much faster than youre expecting. At first glance, there may not seem to be much overlap between the auto industry and the real estate industry, but the impacts and infrastructure changes from this technology will be felt by everyone. As investors, its our responsibility to understand changes as far out in advance as possible so we can adapt to progress and mitigate new risks. Just about everything in this article takes place across the next 1530+ years, which may seem useless to some. However, if youre currently buying 30-year mortgages then youve got commitments that fall well within this transition period, and these changes will affect you. Having a better understanding of the future can be massive risk-mitigation tool against getting caught off guard when changes negatively affect you. Driving Will Change Where People Want to Live Because Cars Will Commute for Us Imagine you could wake up at 6 a.m. and crawl into your car and tell it to head to work while you got back to sleep. In two hours, youre there, youre safe, fully rested, and you arrive at work on time without having to deal with traffic or the monotonous task of driving. This is not science fiction. In fact, based on todays technology, this isnt even far fetched. This is science inevitability. So how does this affect real estate? Well, think of all the people who dont want to live in Washington D.C., Los Angeles, or New York City. What if they could live an hour or two outside the city and commute to work without losing any real time out of their day? How might this affect home values in a city when people can commute there easily without having to live there and without making any sacrifice to do so? It doesnt even have to be this extreme, either. Lots of people would be willing to commute for one hour each way if they didnt have to drive. This creates a lot of space between a city hub and the places people can live without taking on the financial burden of city costs. Might home values in a city go down when the necessity to live close by is reduced? Maybe cities will create an even larger price premium for those who can afford to live there while the masses are forced to commute an hour or two each day from poorer suburbs. Cars Will Be the Next Rental Real EstateOwning a Car Will Be a Luxury Car ownership is going to be a thing of the past before you know it. Sound crazy? Its not even a secret in the auto industry. Did you know that Ford, the oldest car company in America, has announced its going to stop selling cars and just sell trucks and SUVs? How can they do this? Thats a lot of cars to give up on selling unless they dont expect to lose that many sales. Companies who host ride sharing like Uber, Waymo, and Lyft are developing fully autonomous vehicles and are building fleets to replace personal car as we speak. General Motors is building a mass-market, fully autonomous car right now that will not be sold to the public. It will be only be used as part of a ride-sharing platform and available (supposedly) in 2019. That means two of the biggest auto manufacturers are starting to just flat-out not sell their products to the public. This is a signal of really big change. Owning a car isnt really that expensive, but there is zero return on investment. Its only an expense. However, once cars can finally drive themselves 24-hours a day, all while producing income, the value of ownership will go through the roof. The most likely scenario is that Uber will sell unlimited-use passes by the month, and we will all happily give up car ownership in trade. Itll be on-demand, easy, fast, and awesome. It may sound far fetched, but people will happily give up car ownership in the not-so-distant future when the cost savings become obvious. The value of any business is based on its income production. If you think cars are expensive now, imagine how much more they might cost when its a guaranteed profitable purchase. Related:Your Car is an Expensive, Health-Sucking, Time-Wasting Machine. So, Ditch It! Those with means to own their personal cars will create a moat between social classes. These days we might see a Ferrari and say, Oooooh, that person has money! Look at their fancy car! In the future, someone driving a Camry might get similar treatment: Ooooooh, that person has money, they can afford to have a personal car!!! Lots of people in America buy their own homes, and some own an extra house as a rental. The volume of landlords is relatively small because owning a house requires capital, resources, knowledge, risk mitigation, etc. In the future, cars will be the new rental real estate; people with means will still own their cars, and a few will own an extra car. The second car will drive itself around as part of a ride-sharing platform and produce income, just like a taxi, but passive.

Remember That Extra 900 Square Feet Everyone Had to Add to Our Houses to House a Car? What Were They Called? Oh Right, Garages! Why would you need a garage if you dont own a car? What value does a garage provide? Storage, for sure: We get to put our unsightly water heater there, the Christmas decorations, and the treadmill that my wife just had to own. Is that all worth the space and cost that a garage requires? Not likely. So will garages be a premium in the future, or a nuisance? More likely itll fade from importance in middle-to-low-end housing and continue in luxury homes. This problem is already being tackled with large parking garages. It might be a bold claim to say you wont need your garage in 20 years, but the world really wont need massive multi-level parking garages. Efforts are already being made to find out how to convert these spaces into light retail, office, storage and other amenities. Its not going to be feasible to tear down all that concrete, but it will be imperative to find something useful to do with all that space. Currently we pay a premium for garages because they are a highly sought after convenience. However, when the majority of people dont own cars, will that garage command a premium? Or will it be a detriment? Whats the Land Underneath a Gas Station Worth? Some of the most valuable land you can find is sitting underneath a gas station, and for good reason. Corner lots with good road access on busy cross streets serve a lot of cars and provide tons of ancillary needs. (Where else are we supposed to buy Slim Jims?). This infrastructure has been built up over decades and billions of drivers, but at its core it really relies on one thing: the internal combustion engine. Electric cars, however, dont need gasoline (surprise!). Youll charge at your home and probably at work. So how often are we going to need a gas station then? Hard to say, but the fact is, people will use a lot less gasoline, and my assumption is they will use gas stations much less. Now, obviously, some operators will find competitive advantages to survive, but many will not. And in rural areas, we should expect this problem to be much worse. A complete halt on gasoline sales is unlikely, because there are still uses for the product: small engines, generators, non-EV-conformers, etc. Thats a pretty weak position to hold onto though. Lots of industries are long gone, but still have niche support. Walmart will still sell you a CD Walkman (I saw one recently for $30!), but you wouldnt use that example to highlight the value of compact discs. Related:7 Sharing Economy Side Hustles Real Estate Investors Can Use to Earn Extra Cash When gasoline sales do slow, what will gas station owners do? I personally think most will go away, but not before suffering increasingly diminished profits as they experience the decline. Many will sell their businesses because of this, and what will their assets be worth? No one wants to look at a declining income statement trend and then pay top dollar. What about all the stores attached or adjacent to gas stations that capitalize on the heavy traffic? Ive heard of no great solutions to these questions, but that wont stop the impending takeover of autonomous and electric cars. How Long Will All My Daydreaming Take to Come to Fruition? If you dont read often about this topic, then its likely that this transition will happen much sooner than you would guess. People hear about autonomous cars and say, Itll never happen. Well, never will begin in 2020 when both General Motors, Ford, and others start to produce mass-market autonomous cars. What happens when every cab and Uber driver across the country goes jobless in a few short years? Ride sharing platforms will replace car ownership, as I mentioned earlier, and it will start next year. GM has publicly announced plans to build cars not sold to the public. They will only be part of their ride sharing platform.next year.How will home values be affected when waves of mass unemployment start? Take everything Ive mentioned so far and apply it to truck drivers as well. In fact, they will be unemployed first, as autonomous 18-wheelers are already being used in the UK. Unfortunately, I have no good advice for how to adapt to this, but anticipation and being proactive about change should help. For the Itll never happen camp, they will not take any measures to protect themselves and it will cost them dearly. What I dont want to convey here is not to buy a house with a garage because you might not need one in 30 years. Thats silly, but maybe get used to the idea of not needing one in the future. Sleeping in our cars is what poor college kids do when they are really stretching, but in 10 years it might be a feasible temporary option instead of stretching to rent an apartment. Twenty years ago smartphones didnt exist, now I cant go three minutes without touching mine. Its important not to get too confident of what is normal, as you may get caught stuck in the past. You dont need to have an MBA to know that businesses who refuse to participate in new technology go under. The board members at Blockbuster obviously had a strict head-in-the-sand policy. Dont be like Blockbuster. Embrace and adapt to changing technology.

What do you think? Am I on to something? Where do you see the future of garages and personal vehicles? Share below! https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/stop-building-garages/