My buddy did the same thing and wasted a ton of money on a warehouse slab.

My uncle got deep into flat earth stuff a few years back, and it was all these slick YouTube videos with arrows and circles on satellite photos. He'd never read a book about it in his life. The vibe is totally different now, like you're watching a trailer for a conspiracy instead of having a real talk. It's harder to argue with a feeling a video gives you than with a page number someone points to.

Remember when you could tell a client was real because they'd send back a one line email in all caps about your terrible taste in music? Now my inbox is full of perfect, polite AI replies that all sound like they were written by the same very boring robot. I got a meeting once because I misspelled the same word the same way a founder did in their old blog post. You can't automate that kind of beautiful, shared human error.

Seriously, what's the actual rule of thumb then? I've seen decks where the posts are like six inches apart and it feels fine, but my neighbor put his at eight and the whole thing looks weirdly sparse. Is it just about the total span or does post thickness change the math?

Yeah, that's the real test. Saw a place over on Maple where they did it, and the patina against the slate roof was perfect. Makes a standard dormer look custom.