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Posted by danso 9 hours ago

In an $80 motel room, a discovery to shed light on the origins of life(www.nytimes.com)
183 points | 74 commentspage 3
realo 5 hours ago|
Quoting the article:

"The team — brought together, in part, by disruptions and despair over the Trump administration’s freezes to federal science funding — then made an exciting discovery."

Apparently this is the new way of life for Scientists under the Trump regime.

Sad.

oofbey 7 hours ago||
Why did they work in a motel room? The article kinda implies it had something to do with Trump’s funding cuts, but unless I missed something the connection wasn’t made explicit.
dekhn 7 hours ago||
I think it's mainly to be close to the sample collection area while also having a place to do microscopy in semi-privacy. Looking at their equipment, I think they bought everything out of pocket and pay for the hotel on their own.
chrisandchris 6 hours ago||
> The team — brought together, in part, by disruptions and despair over the Trump administration’s freezes to federal science funding — [...]
specproc 5 hours ago||
I dunno about the states, but in most parts of the UK, it's considerably cheaper than 80 dollars a day to rent a small workspace.
NetMageSCW 4 hours ago||
Near the beach?
sevenart 8 hours ago||
non-paywall (perm): https://archive.ph/QpBF1
ransom1538 2 hours ago||
"Trump administration’s freezes to federal science"

Nytimes can't help itself. love it.

tombert 3 hours ago||
I just stayed in an $80 motel room myself and I also think I might have also discovered a new form of life in the showers.
kstrauser 8 hours ago||
[flagged]
_qua 8 hours ago|
You think pond water is the worst thing an $80 motel room has seen?
kstrauser 8 hours ago||
> Jugs of brackish water lined the walls. Buckets overflowed with hunks of marsh grass.

I don’t know, that goes a little above and beyond IMO. One typically doesn’t do science in a house-type setting, for many of the same reasons you don’t carpet a bathroom.

Brybry 8 hours ago|||
Probably poetic license. You can look at the pictures and see everything looks very clean.

The jugs are sealed. We can't see any "overflowing" buckets. Looking at some water samples under a microscope is not really that messy.

subscribed 8 hours ago||||
> for many of the same reasons you don’t carpet a bathroom

For some reason this is a commonplace in the UK.

Yeah....

stephbook 8 hours ago||
I had a colleague who walked the tiled floor in front of pissoirs in socks..
subscribed 7 hours ago||
Ugh, I just realised my imagination is too good :)
pengaru 8 hours ago|||
> for many of the same reasons you don’t carpet a bathroom.

someone should inform the orange POTUS of this: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/did-donald-trump-j...

mlkih 5 hours ago||
[flagged]
codedokode 6 hours ago|
So $80 is considered a "cheap room"? How is a person supposed to earn $80 a day to pay for it and have something left?

Also, cells can have scales? Amazing.

onlyrealcuzzo 6 hours ago||
It takes ~30 minutes to turn around a nightly hotel room, front desk check-in and other labor can easily make that >1h of labor per room per day.

Even in the budget industry, your nightly utility usage comes close to $10, consumables are $3+.

Hotel stays are typically taxed higher than typical sales tax.

Once you add that in, real estate taxes, and any corporate taxes - you're getting close to the $50 price point...

That's before you factor in the cost of maintaining the building, or the financing to buy the building itself (or any profit).

Are we supposed to live in a world where everyone's entitled to be able to stay in hotel rooms for 1 hour of minimum wage labor? Because, until we have far more automation, I don't see how that makes any possible sense.

iso1631 1 hour ago|||
There's very little labour cost in your price, not sure where automation would change the cost much.
650REDHAIR 6 hours ago|||
$80/day is a cheap room in most of the US and Canada.

My standards for hotel rooms on road trips are quite low and I will call the crappy motels to avoid the bloated .com booking rates and it’s not very often I find even 1 star hotels under $80/day after taxes.

dpc050505 4 hours ago|||
Per diems in the civil engineering union agreement in my Canadian province are 180$ a day to cover lodging and food when you're working away from home. Most people manage to spend less and save the leftover. That's tax free money unrelated to what you're actually getting paid for the work or transport time.

80$ might seem like a lot of money if you're making 60k a year as a biologist. If you're in a field where profit is the reason you work 80$ is peanuts.

mkirsten 6 hours ago|||
Have you stayed at hotels? Most people that work don’t stay at hotels and pay the hotel out of pocket.
codedokode 6 hours ago||
I am not from US and with that money I could rent a tiny apartment for 2-3 days. However, I prefer cheaper accomodation. $80 is super expensive if you have no other place to live.
buildsjets 4 hours ago|||
I'm currently on a business trip staying a Hampton Inn in a low cost rural area of the USA. The nightly rate is $120. This is not a high end hotel- generally considered 2-star level out of 5. The nearby Comfort Inn is one step lower in quality of accommodation and guests, and gets $75. Anything cheaper than that is a filthy, crime-ridden bucket of blood.
iso1631 1 hour ago||
I'm in Singapore at the moment and it's 200 USD a night for my current hotel, which is near the office - not down town - and not particularly expensive. There are some cheaper ones which aren't on our corporate booking system.

Last week in Beijing it only cost 150 USD at a fairly central Crown Plaza, which I felt was very cheap compared to how much it normally costs in London, and London is a bargain compared to anything I/work pays for in the US (which is mainly in DC and NY)

The flights dwarf the cost of the hotels though, indeed the flights cost more than the cost of me for the two week trip (Work paid a premium to avoid Russian airspace though)

yencabulator 5 hours ago||||
In most places, you don't pay the day rate for long stays.
WalterGR 5 hours ago||||
From my reading of the article, my understanding is that they’re doing science in the hotel room, not living there long-term.
physicalecon 6 hours ago||||
Motels are not a habitation of last resort by any means. They’re a convenient place to stay while traveling.

I expect the vast majority of motel patrons are additionally paying a rent/mortgage for their main habitation.

thatfrenchguy 5 hours ago||||
Yeah salaries in the US are higher in nominal terms
natedagreat22 4 hours ago|||
Where are you from? What would be a normal or comfortable rate for you?
buildsjets 4 hours ago||
You are supposed to be earning more than $80 a day. What do you do for a living that pays $10 an hour?