Soylent CEO charged over illegal, 'unsightly' container home
latimes.com
latimes.com
http://la.curbed.com/2016/7/21/12245620/soylent-illegal-ship...
Has some pictures of what they're talking about with respect to graffiti and trash.
It's also a bit funny that they say they did everything they could to keep the land clear, when he bought it for $21300; they could very easily have bought the land from or instead of him, as they did for the $1.4MM parcel.
He invited them onto the property. The property has been damaged (presumably not be those complaining, but the conspiracy minded will come up with something I'm sure):
> Rhinehart bought the parcel of land beneath the shipping container at auction in December for $21,300, property records show. Since then, neighbors say the container's glass windows have since been smashed and the entire unit has been extensively tagged with graffiti.
He isn't maintaining it. He isn't securing it. I do agree that the community ought to have considered buying it. But he bought it and he's poorly administered his property, to the point now of apparent negligence and potential criminal wrongdoing ("criminal", not sure I agree with that, seems like it should be a civil thing to be me, but they are criminal charges that have been brought up).
I don't think he invited Instagram user 'sashifly' into the container to take pictures of the garbage bags inside, though you may know more than me.
It seems like he isn't keeping the property clean all day every day, but leaving the remains from a barbecue outside one night and into the next day is far from negligence, and the fact that people take his property for granted doesn't incur any obligation on his part. The business about securing the container down is ridiculous; it isn't going anywhere in an earthquake (you'd have bigger problems than that if it did), and the people who want it gone should have bought the property themselves (or made an agreement with Rhinehart). The fact that others are coming on to his land and vandalizing his property is cause for Rhinehart to complain about poor policing and behavior on the part of the locals. If the windows were broken by meteorites, I might agree that he should fix them, but when people are repeatedly damaging your property, you have a limited responsibility to clean up after them.
From what I can see, the locals want a nice, clean, flat place to hike, and they don't want to pay for it, so they've begun a witch-hunt.
He is consistent, I will give him that. Hard to say that is the path I would want my life to follow. Sounds like a remarkably boring existence.
Regarding the container home: I'm not sure it's totally boring. These things are often about the size of a typical mobile or modular home. It's more like they've repurposed the space. It could be well-done on the inside (no pictures, can't say in his case). And you could (with proper permits) place them in a lot of interesting locales.
Eating is a boring activity. I would even take it a step further than soylent and like to be injected with all the required nutrients once, daily.
If you take into account how much time goes into buying, preparing, eating and cleaning up food, the picture becomes much rosier for something like soylent. If you cut out all those activities, you would save literally years of your life for activities that are actually fun.
EDIT: I just learned about the 'web' link under the title. Clicking that will take you to google with the same link I mentioned above.
The "web" link under the title on the discussion page does exactly the same thing your search link does; there is no need to 'Google' things for the rest of us.
"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its 'flag' link. If you think a comment is egregious, click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'flag' at the top. (Not all users see flag links; there's a small karma threshold.)"
"It's ok to ask how to read an article or to help other users by sharing a workaround. But please do this without going on about paywalls." Sorry I wasn't aware of the new 'web' link feature.
"The "web" link under the title on the discussion page does exactly the same thing your search link does" would have been sufficient. The second half of your comment comes off as snarky.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/kristinchirico/surprisingly-gorgeou...
Basically, there are building and lot codes that are in place to protect neighboring real estate values against urban blight or non conformance to community standards.
Many cities have ordinances such that someone can't buy a lot in a neighborhood and turn it into a landfill such that everyone's property values suffer.
A city is a community that wants to protect community interests like not spreading disease and not irritating every single neighbor you have and keeping the continuity information of ownership and property history.