Comment by srbloom
8 days ago
This is super freaking cool. I'm curious how you feel about Austin vs Bay Area in terms of general quality of life, culture, things like that?
8 days ago
This is super freaking cool. I'm curious how you feel about Austin vs Bay Area in terms of general quality of life, culture, things like that?
It feels pretty similar, but more chill. Distances are shorter. The sky doesn't fill with smoke for a week every year. The weather is much more interesting -- honestly I got really bored with Bay Area weather after 15 years. I even like the heat in the summer, in short intervals. There are enough tech people here to be interesting, but not enough that a random person you meet on the street is likely to be in tech.
One thing I appreciate is that there is tons of building happening. Housing prices went up during the pandemic, but there is new housing being built everywhere you look, and as a result the prices are now going down quite a bit! (Which I'm fine with, even as a homeowner, because I wasn't planning to sell anytime soon anyway and I like to see problems getting solved.) The downtown skyline keeps changing -- the tallest tower when I arrived is now hardly notable!
All that said I'm not sure I personally am very affected by where I live. When I moved from Minneapolis to the Bay Area, people asked me if it was a culture shock, but all I really noticed was less snow and more left turn lanes...
Having lived in the Midwest, Texas and Bay Area I can soundly say there is no comparison which can be made about the natural splendor. Bay Area, even with smoke in the air for a week, is orders of magnitude more comfortable and interesting. In Texas people cloister into giant houses and say goodbye to enjoying nature, it’s really sad that people prefer such a reality. It lets them forget just how grand a world there is worth saving and fighting for instead of letting it all become privatized and exploited unsustainably.
I do a lot of biking, and TBH I've had an easier time finding enjoyable bike routes near my house in Austin than I did in Palo Alto. During the summer I go biking at dawn and it's great, and during the winter there are usually 70-degree days regularly enough.
Of course, on that measure, Minneapolis blows both of them out of the water -- at least during the half of the year when biking is enjoyable.
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I’ve made this same observation which might explain why there is such a divergent world view between people living in different parts of the country.
A neighbor of mine recently moved (back to) Texas. Where we live is 1/4 of a mile from a massive state park, right on the ocean full of mountainous trails. Dude admitted he had only visited it once in 5+ years, but complained about taxes and the price of gas constantly. It’s no wonder he wanted to go back.
Related to culture, I moved to Austin in 2012 and that was the first time I saw a restaurant advertising that their water had no fluoride.
Are people in Austin more concerned about fluoride?
I have never seen nor heard any mention of fluoride in Austin, FWIW.
I mean, maybe I just don't hang out with that crowd. But I do go to restaurants and haven't ever seen it mentioned.
I suspect it will be interesting when people all realize too much fluoride is very bad and isn’t actually disinformation. It’s obviously not an intentional conspiracy to make people dumb but it happens to be outdated science to fluoridate city water at levels we do in the US.
This is factually incorrect. In fact recent studies show that up to 25% of cavities are still prevented by fluoridating water. On top of that, multiple Canadian cities are adding fluoride back in their water after 10 years of having it removed because of excellent evidence that the lack of fluoridation in the water is what led to the increase in cavities in those cities, since they had neighboring cities who kept fluoride in the water during the same period
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