Dakar-A

Imagine it like this- your entire life, your favorite food has been pizza. You've always know you were all about pizza, but everyone in your life, from random strangers in the street to your closest friends and family would be like "oh, you don't like pizza, you're a sushi person!".

Now you don't hate sushi, in fact you enjoy parts of it sometimes. But you know that you're all about pizza. But when people come out and go against the dominant social idea that people like you like sushi, you've seen what happens to them- they are demonized, people call them food poisoners, there were all those movies in the 90s where the butt of the joke was being disgusted that people liked pizza.

So from this perspective, think about what you're saying- you're telling someone who knows deep down that pizza is their thing that actually, they should just give in to what society is telling them that they know isn't right for them- why can't they just enjoy sushi with some pepperoni and dip it in tomato sauce, right? It's basically the same thing!

The core of this idea is that identity is personal, and that society tries to regulate the personal into simplistic boxes that are easier for other people to understand. Your friend didn't suffer because she was wrong about her identity, she suffered because our society is very unfriendly to people like her who rock the boat and break away from easily understood identity.

Follow up- might you consider making sets without the electronic brick for AFOLs who would want chromed bricks?

If you don't have a burner email at this point for newsletters, contest entries and the like, then you're doing it wrong

It is, in a sense. As they have said in another comment, the main problem is restrictive single family zoning, but it's an intersectional problem relating to highway- and car-oriented development, redlining and "urban renewal" -war policies dating back to the 50s and 60s, the calcification of the ideal of homes as the main investment vehicle for middle and lower class Americans, and the way that all of these play together to make a Gordian knot of archaic laws, poor development decisions, and NIMBYism thay is incredibly difficult to solve with one move.

A good starting place for understanding is here, but there are a number of quality urbanist YouTubers and books that you can read more into the history and current status of the problem. If you'd like, I can dig some more and grab some more resources!

Where would you say that luck factored in more than hard work or other factors that you had control over?