Natural Gas prices have gone up here as well.

A few years ago my wife wanted to get rid of our decrepit electric stove and replace it with a gas stove. She grew up in an area where electricity was insanely expensive, so gas stoves were far more common. She knew she liked gas cooking much better.

The problem was, we would have to spend a few hundred to hire a plumber to tap into the home gas line for a stove.

Instead we got an induction stove. It is much nicer than the electric stove, and runs on electricity which is cheaper than gas where we live.

So save money with electric or induction would be a better message.

The problem is, electric power isn’t nearly as green as its proponents claim. Check out “Planet of the Humans” for an explanation.

Replies: @Jack D

The fact that she started at 20 is a big clue. A 20 year old woman has no shortage of suitors in her real life, so long as she is not fat*. Guys she knew in high school, guys at her job, bosses, guys at her college, college professors, guys in bars, guys at church (if she's religious), guys at concerts, random dudes on the street.....

A 20 year old woman (even if below-average in looks) cannot go a day in this country out in public without at least some guy in her league that she finds attractive making a play for her number or a date or more. For a girl of 20 looking for "love" or a LTR or a husband, she doesn't need a dating app, she just needs to live a normal social life and be discerning.

So the fact that she went on this app before she was old enough to drink -- and remained so during her prime attractiveness years (20-25) --- speaks volumes about her narcissism. This woman is literally addicted to male attention and desires men too high on the attractiveness totem pole for her (other than having a one night stand with her). Huge red flags.

*and even a fat 20 year old girl has lots of options.

Replies: @Recently Based, @AndrewR, @Barnard, @Anonymous, @Occasional lurker, @Rooster16

Since any halfway attractive woman receives dozens of matches a day, a woman who has not found a mate after eight years either does not want a mate or holds delusional ideas about who she can attract.
 

https://i.ibb.co/J5ndkMt/Screenshot-20220831-024735-Chrome.jpg

Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @AceDeuce, @fish, @Dumbo, @Badger Down

Agree.

Abby, 28, has been on dating apps for eight years, bouncing between OkCupid, Bumble, Tinder, eHarmony, Match, WooPlus, Coffee Meets Bagel and Hinge. A committed user, she can easily spend two or more hours a day piling up matches, messaging back and forth, and planning dates with men who seem promising. ... Not a single long-term relationship has blossomed from her efforts.
 

Agreed

I purchased a brand new Rav4 last year and haven't looked back. Though Steve is a bit taller than me so he may want something bigger. Toyota made the Camry very handsome looking about 10 years ago, and they finally did the same to the Rav4 with the 2019 redesign.

The used car market (and new car too) is so inflated buying new made more sense given the peace of mind one gets with warranties.

Unless you're destitute or just know exactly what you want and have your mind set on it, buying new makes sense right now.

Buy whatever Toyota comfortably fits your body.

Or Lexus, if you're into luxury vehicles.

For those who don't know, Lexuses (Lexii?) are basically just badge-engineered Toyotas.

Scotty Kilmer (the Jim Cramer of auto repair -- they both yell out their advice) cautions to stay clear of Nissan products, which I guess nixes a replacement Infiniti?

Besides Toyotas being reliable, Scotty thinks Mazdas have gotten a lot better as these days they are partnered with Toyota.

Scotty is warning that some Toyota models are not as super reliable as they once were. The 4-speed Aisin-brand transmission in a Camry was bullet proof, the 6-speed in more recent models OK, but the 8-speed has some concerns. Also, the base 2.5 liter 4-cylinder "Dynamic Force" four-cylinder has gone to gasoline direct injection. This gives up the benefit of gasoline acting as a cleaning solvent when injected against the intake valve port, but there is something about Toyota combining direct injection (straight into the cylinder) with some of the gas port injected (for the cleaning benefit)?

Part of Toyota bullet-proofing is those cars tolerated some degree of casual maintenance -- the newer one's may benefit from strict adherence to transmission fluid and oil change intervals.

2011 Toyota Sienna for my family of 7, 292,000 miles and still running strong. My 04 Accord has 264,000 and runs great. Had a Corolla that went to 300k and sold for $250. Steve should go Japanese.

I think the arrested shooter and some of the vics were black, per recent stories and an earlier TV news report interviewing (black) witness.

Some of the vics may have been Hispanic or even White, but based on the names most of the dead were black.

U.S. media treating the shooting gingerly since race of the shooters not yet known.
 

Replies: @Tundra

Wales is not a seperate country.

Replies: @anonymous, @Reg Cæsar, @Jonathan Mason

If they are separate countries, why don't they have separate militaries and their own ambassadors and treaties and the like?

Replies: @Goddard, @YetAnotherAnon

Difficult for an American to understand which made it a joke in the Ted Lasso show (American who goes to England to coach a football (their description) team).

Question: How many countries y'all got in this country?

Answer: Four

Elder once thought California was ungovernable until he became acquainted with the facts you cited.

Seriously? You think "traditions" is something dems go by when it's to their disadvantage to do so?

Plus, the Democrats would immediately stq
 

There is a tradition in Sacramento that the governor’s veto is never overriden... So, a Governor Elder should be able to veto successfully.
 

Stacey Abrams will sit on her.

Replies: @AnotherDad

No chance Newsom will be VP.
 

Replies: @Dumbo, @Neoconned, @Truth, @Anonymous, @Anonymous

It’s Game of Thrones for the race to be Biden’s VP. Biden has conceded he views his presidency as a caretaker role. It’s very likely he wouldn’t serve out his first term. Unfortunately for Newsom though is he’s a white male and Biden promised a female VP pick.

Replies: @anon

No chance Newsom will be VP.

Biden has California in the bag.
 

The problem with the conceit, of course, is that other men would be happy to tell a guy who looks like John Hamm that he’s wrong.
 

In other words, Crystal hasn't gotten mansplained? That's a good thing, right? Feminism! Yet ... perhaps ... not good enough. So let me set up the next game. "Even if just one woman gets mansplained in America today, that is one woman too many. It is not who we are!"

Joe Biden, do you read?

True, but you have to admit losing your hand trying to wave to a guy who looks like your high school gym teacher while flying in a helicopter in Africa is badass.

Better than losing it to an IED in some stupid neocon war.

There’s an episode of 30 Rock that flips the genders.
 

Justice, we had golf here in WNY but Cuomo modified his Executive Order and closed golf courses and boat launching ramps. Some guys are still going to hit the links as one owner said he is not chasing golfers off his course but the "course" is closed. The rules were simple, incuding no shared carts, leave the flag in the hole and a round still counted for your handicap. I read that Bethpage is still open and that is a State Course. So, two guys with a few clubs in a Sunday bag and a lone fisherman in his 14 foot aluminum boat, out catching perch, are as big a hazard as 200 people in a Walmart. And if you don't know, freshwater fishing in WNY is world class. Stay safe.

Replies: @The Wild Geese Howard

Sacramento isn't on the coast. The closest it has to beaches are some parks on the American River, and those were thoroughly colonized by bums and criminals long before the Wuflu hit.

Quaint. On the other hand, if they get sick they get free room and board with a comfortable bed. Decisions decisions.

Democrats are pushing for a lengthy shutdown in the hopes that a weak economy will harm the president’s chance of re-election.
 

They are also pushing for voting by mail so that they can steal the presidency and not just California house seats.

Bill Maher: This economy is going pretty well...I feel tike the bottom has to fall out at some point, and by the way, I'm hoping for it because I think one way you get rid of Trump is a crashing economy. So please, bring on the recession. Sorry if that hurts people, but it's either root for a recession or you lose your Democracy.

Bill Maher: I'm hoping for a recession so we can get rid of Trump

 

Thanks for the pointer.

The guy lost a libel case over it, and apologized. Sure, that could be forced, but it also doesn't appear that journalists have taken up the torch in the 4 years since... and this would be a huge story.

Further it also seems to be at least somewhat motivated by anti-Christian animus, possibly because of LGBT issues.

After about an hour of reading around this looks more like conspiracy theory than proven problem, though i could be wrong.

That said, Singapore's system seems pretty neat. It basically combines Social Security and 401k plans ... but you can also use (parts of it) to pay your mortgage.

https://www.singsaver.com.sg/blog/pros-and-cons-of-keeping-your-savings-in-your-cpf-special-account

Replies: @Justice Duvall

Hmm, i can't find anything obvious searching for support of that assertion. Do you have a link?

Forbes said Lee made his money by ownership of a bank. And he's "only" worth $1.2b.

Even if that's all graft (and over found no evidence that it's true) i'd take it over the Social Security trust fund and it's $2.8T of imaginary assets any day.

Replies: @Justice Duvall

It's inspiring that a mulatta elected not to breed

Don't worry, nobody will watch it, just like everything else its creators have done since The Wire.

Prius V is good. My 6'3" massively built uncle, who is 75 or so now, swears by his.

Replies: @Lot

It's not recruitment, or pederasty, it's mentorship.

The Democrat would also establish a national mentorship program for LGBTQ youth, as well as protect the rights and safety of all LBGTQ individuals.
 

Heh, heh, I hadn't thought of that. Hopefully one of the side effects of this "gaffe" will be that Canadian politicians quit pandering to ethnic groups in this particular way.

Replies: @Alfa158

Patents are not "grandma's attic." Tell that to Apple, Google, Facebook, Micro$oft, Amazon, Samsug, et al..

True enough most of it is now mostly down to what happens in the. district courts and the ITC.

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is incredibly corrupt. The previous Chief Judge (Rader) had to resign over corruption and ethics violations. The court routinely judges cases where its members benefit professionally from expanding jurisdiction and then eventually gets slapped down by the Supreme Court. And decisions always tilt toward expanding the incomes of its specialized bar, regardless of law and facts.

It created the software patent crisis and is the key promoter of patents on human genes.

It was created only in 1983 and is long overdue for termination.

Also it might be good in the primaries, even if it’s a losing issue in the general election.

So, it's "neo-busing", as in "neo-liberalism". No wait, that last one is alive. And it's bad. Even though it's really social-democracy-ism. "neo" is always bad. Like "neo-Jason" coming back from the grave. It's weird. I don't know.

VDare has noticed this for a decade or two.

As they were sure that only the goyim would be fleeced, the Israelis adopted the attitude of Neo in The Matrix: there is no ship.

In the 1988 during the election coverage, GHWB was fighting the “Wimp Factor.” Jeb in particular was angered by the notion and gave interviews talking about his Dad’s wartime heroics. In one such interview there is even footage of Jeb saying people are shocked to realize GHWB was much taller than Reagan when they meet them in person.

Reagan stands out in that photo for his ideal proportions and better fitting suit.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-01-13-ca-524-story.html

The film version of “Other People’s Money,” which will be the director’s 26th feature, is also notable for addressing, or rather sidestepping, another, more controversial, issue–the charges of anti-Semitism that greeted Sterner’s play during its initial New York run. The playwright’s protagonist, a Jewish corporate takeover artist, was named Larry Garfinkle, not Garfield. As played by the New York stage actor Kevin Conway in the Off-Broadway production, the portrayal of Garfinkle raised questions among some critics and audiences who found Conway’s performance to be larger-than-life–uncomfortably so. Some reviewers called Conway’s Garfinkle a Wall Street Jackie Mason–a performance more akin to stand-up comedy than straight theater, one that emphasized the character’s ethnicity and loaded Sterner’s play with potentially anti-Semitic “Merchant of Venice” overtones.

Critic Mel Gussow wrote in his review of the play in the New York Times: “One might legitimately ask whether it is necessary for the author to have a character that reinforces an ethnic stereotype.”

While Conway disputed any charges of anti-Semitism in his performance with an interview with the New York Times, it nonetheless was a portrayal that surprised even the play’s author, who had originally turned down the actor as not right for the role during an earlier regional theater run.

“The character that I had in my head was not the character that Kevin had in his head,” acknowledged Sterner, who added a cautionary postscript to the play’s published text: “The character of Garfinkle can be played in many ways. The one way he should not be played is overly, coarsely, ‘ethnic.’ ”

“I wrote that note because I was afraid that what Kevin had originated other actors would try to copy,” said Sterner in an interview with the New York Times. “I did not want the play to become controversial about what it is not about. It’s not about Garfinkle’s being Jewish, it’s about his doing good or not.”

Although the film version of “Other People’s Money” originally retained the name of Garfinkle for the protagonist–and indeed the cast and crew’s scripts carried the printed word “Garfinkle” crossed out with “Garfield” penciled in–Jewison is quick to dismiss any suggestion of capitulation.

“Who changed the name? I changed it,” says the director, who had met with the Off-Broadway actor after the play first opened. “I said ‘You have to be careful, man, not to overdo it.’ It’s not important that Larry Garfinkle is Jewish. Boone Pickens isn’t Jewish. Jimmy Goldsmith is, as are nine out of the 12 top corporate raiders in America, but there are three others that aren’t. What does it matter, anyway? This isn’t about religion.”

Adds DeVito: “Garfinkle? Garfield? John Garfield is my favorite actor.”

When pressed for further explanation, DeVito shrugs, “I’m obviously not Jewish, but my wife (actress Rhea Perlman) is and so I guess my kids are Jewish. Look, we’re not laying into any big ethnic thing here. You don’t look at me and think Norwegian. I’m Italian. But to play this guy as a Jewish arbitrager, don’t you think that would be like playing a gangster movie with only Italians? It’s kind of an ethnic slur.”
 

There are many ways to frame and pitch a story. If a journalist wanted to do something on the SPLC, it could be framed along the lines of "beloved national institution harassed by local two-bit fish wrapper rag," but in the process of writing that, information will be revealed that would be noticed. Why so much money? Why overseas accounts? If the paper said their hired auditors could go through all the SPLC checks in a week with minimal disruption, why not let them do it? What's with the thread of a defamation lawsuit? Just bury all that stuff after paragraph 50, NYT-like, and enough people will notice it. And other papers will follow up. And the your editor will change his mind and suggest you take another, more aggressive look at the story.

but no Big Time Reporter is going to routinely scan them for stories
 

Reporters in New York and DC consider local newspapers to be amateur operations run by losers who can’t get a job in New York or DC.
 

I think the pretenders to the Ottoman throne these days are pretty Swedish.

Replies: @Not Raul, @Pericles

He looks like a beard from my perspective.

QUOTE: Do Kamala Harris and her husband even live in the same city? Her political base as in San Francisco ... But her husband lives in Los Angeles.

Surely this would not be a political marriage of convenience with at least one homosexual spouse?

Kinocchio Jr.

Anthony Wiener

Replies: @Olorin

Is it easier for the NYT to bully WASPs into compliance.

Ergo, they hate the Catholics more.
 

“In rescuing me from a society in which people of my color were systematically oppressed . . . .”
 

Well, everyone knows black run countries are sh-oh, wait.

Like Tommy John surgery.

Replies: @Hodag

The cell line was always named HeLa although no one knew what it stood for.

The left hand is the Hand of the Devil!

We've had a lot of left handed Presidents, especially in recent years - Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr, Clinton and Obama were all left handed. Before that, Hoover and Truman. It's hard to say about earlier Presidents because back in the day most kids were forced to write with their right hand regardless of whether they were naturally left handed. This went on at least thru the 1920s if not later.

He skipped over key property topics like the estate system and water rights.

Because no Berkeley-educated lawyer in California ever has to worry about water rights .

That's just malpractice on Haney Lopez's part.

Replies: @Jack D

If I had it all to do over again, I would have either been a plumber or went to law school in order to specialize in property law. Even in a small town setting, you can make a great deal of money in that area, which I didn't know until very recently. And best yet, you don't have to greatly compromise your conscience the way defense or accident (traffic, workplace, supermarket slip and falls) lawyers do.

Replies: @Steve Sailer

Did Prof. Haney Lopez at least cover easements for tent camps and squatters' rights?

So, @Steve Sailer, Libby is still on the war path?

During my time at Boalt, class of 82, the 1L property course was just real property, and estates and trusts was a separate course. Water law I don't remember, but perhaps it was an elective, along with immigration, which I took, from a practitioner professor, an extremely good course, on-the-ground, practical immigration law, no activism. She emphasized how much discretion was involved, so you had to stick to one immigration office and get to know the quirks of the staff who worked there in order to help your client to the fullest extent possible.

I remember well the affirmative action admittees, Hispanics who all sat together. The professors still used the surprise Socratic method, and boy was it cringeworthy when one of the Hispanics was called on. They were seriously not qualified to be at Boalt. Now that I think about it, maybe Lopez was one of them ... no, too young. :-) After the trauma of witnessing a professor skinning an unprepared student alive, you make sure you are prepared for every class for the rest of law school. But the AA guys just never seemed to be able to be prepared.

Another memory just floated into my mind, the former college football athlete turned law professor who during a discussion of rape law (no trigger warnings in those days) raised the hypothetical of a couple who wanted to play "rape games," with prior consent, but no consent during the "rape" itself. There was an uncomfortable silence in the class, but nobody reported the guy for anything.

Racial justice expert Ian Haney López
 

But isn’t the measure of a good law school how much they DON’T teach to the bar exam? Or at least that’s what I’ve heard.

Replies: @Alden

So it's not like Paper Chase?

I recall the faculty diversity protests at Boalt in the spring of 1990. There was a 12-foot long banner that read, "Redefine Merit." Out on the grass, there was a gathering where a latino guy went to the microphone and introduced himself as the "Minister of Propaganda." Maybe he turned out to be your professor.

thats sounds right. Also older people have more likely experienced that they themselves have been wrong about something. So they don´t trust their own convictions enough to turn violent against someone who doesn't hold these convictions

Replies: @bomag

Different Theory:

Older people have lived long enough to know that crowds can be wrong, fashions change ...
 

Replies: @clyde, @bomag

Young people are short-tempered and tend to do rash stupid things because they're young. Same with very old people.

Replies: @Art Deco

ITT: old people patting themselves on the back while smearing the pesky whippersnappers

Clever graph. The average IQ people get a white (Caucasian) bar. The dull witted get a red (Amer-Indian/Hispanic)bar. The really stupid get a black bar.

Going the other way - the smarter than average (East Asians) get a yellow bar. The blue bar must be for Jews.

Tell me I got it right.

A valid point very well said.

Ah, yes. This is sweet. Like that white democrat in the next county getting primaried by the Hispanics that he thought would only trouble the BadWhites.

Georgetown Prep's tuition is Day Student Tuition: $37,215 (US)

And it takes boarding students too: $60k.

My old school, Notre Dame Sherman Oaks, is $16,000, while Harvard-Westlake is $38,400. So, going by tuition, Georgetown Prep is elite while NDHS is regular upper middle class.

The Jesuit HS in LA, Loyola of Los Angeles, is $21,000, so it's inbetween NDHS and Georgetown Prep.

Replies: @Alden

Georgetown Prep IS in fact elite. It's expensive, not as merit based as Gonzaga, sits in Bethesda, and has a 36 hole golf course. When my dad was at Gonzaga, they used to call Prep boys, rich sissies.

Habing said that, my girlfroend TOTALLY wants to join their pool and ravhet club. . . So do i.

Replies: @AnotherDad, @Old Palo Altan

In the 70s - 80s when "good" public schools were shifting to modern educational styles, and only public schools in "bad" neighborhoods could afford to stay open, it was a "sweet spot" where Catholic schools retained the substance, content, or both, of the classical educational model, and so people with money, and a choice, started sending their kids to Catholic schools.
A significant and likely overlooked factor is that generations earlier, WASPs had stopped reproducing in sufficient quantity to people their own private schools so they started steering their kids to Catholic HSs.

Replies: @Anon, @Alden

It's very simple: Jesuits teach both the real and the aspirational elite, the LaSalle Brothers teach the middle class, and the Irish Christian Brothers teach the lower class. That was basically it in the nineteenth century. As Catholics grew in numbers and wealth, things changed a bit: the Benedictines came over from England and immediately usurped the elite role, at least on the East Coast (except for Georgetown Prep, which held its own). The last of the English Benedictine incursions was to St Louis, where St Louis Priory now educates a good part of the Catholic elite, although the Jesuit and LaSalle schools have their loyalists. In California the Jesuits have kept the top spot (although there is the Benedictine Woodside Priory in the Bay Area, founded by refugees from Hungary) with Bellarmine in San Jose and Loyola in Los Angeles. Loyola has been able to keep the loyalty of the very top Catholic families, who continue to send their sons there, while Bellarmine is now a jewel in the educational crown of Silicon Valley. The Jesuits are rich enough to keep their tuition relatively low: they want to make sure that they catch the new elite in each generation, as they have indeed done for some 500 years.
As for the rest, the lowest schools in the hierarchy were the high schools which were (and are) merely diocesan; that is, run, not be religious orders but by teachers hired by this or that diocese. Such schools have never had any cachet, and rarely develop any sort of esprit de corps.
For girls, it was and is the two different orders of the Sacred Heart (amusingly, the flag ship schools of each are but a few hundred yards apart on Fifth Avenue) and perhaps the Visitation and Loretto nuns for the elite, and, who knows (not I) about the rest.

Replies: @JMcG

What if she gets lost and drives into the Grand Canyon like Thelma and Louise?

Replies: @Anon7

But do they pass the bar exam? [looks]

Pass rate: 39% from ABA schools, 36% from non approved.

Wow.

Self-interest: It all depends whose ox is being gored. Or the taxes one pays, or avoids...

https://youtu.be/OQXrEf4sqvg

Oxnard has had an astonishing level of gang violence. It's puzzling as none of the towns nearby seemed to compare. My guess is that it's due to the docks there.

Still, it has fairly stiff competition from places to the south -- like El Segundo, Long Beach, and San Pedro.

Replies: @Alden

Petros Papadakis regularly calls San Pedro where he lives "where the ghetto meets the sea."

Replies: @fish

The water is too cold up there and the schools are awful. Pesticides and other ag chems in the air and ground.

Speaking of real estate investment opportunity..

You can make as much as 1000% profit by buying Detroit homes in bulk. According to the Free Press, apparently a number of Californians are just wild about it.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2018/08/17/detroit-home-values-real-estate/921453002/

For some reason however, none of the investors choose to live in Detroit. Mystifying to say the least.

From the end of south O.C. to the beginning of San Diego, one can find somewhat affordable beach living: Carlsbad, Oceanside, and such. A lot of young drunk Marines may be a downside on weekends.

Port Hueneme has the least expensive beach-adjacent home property in SoCal, AFIK. It's all condos though. You can get an ocean view condo there for < 500k.

Oxnard does not have many condos near the beach. I bought one a few years ago, but it's a street away from the beach. The beach-front homes there are in the 1.5M and up range.

Neither Port Hueneme nor Oxnard are white (or asian) family-friendly though, as Lot noted. PH is very mexican. You will have to send your kids to a dominantly mexican elementary school there. The neighborhood elementary schools in Oxnard are better in that regard, but after elementary school they will go to a mexican dominated middle school and high school.

Near the beach or not, much of the value in SoCal real estate correlates with how many mexican kids are in the local public schools. There's not much social friction between whites and mexicans in CA until it's time to send your kids to a public school.

Parents look at school ratings on aggregate when choosing a place to live, not the ethnic breakdown. It could be that whites and asians do just fine in majority mexican schools, but they don't like the optics of having their kids getting segregated (on average!) into the advanced classes. And not segregating kids based on their academic ability is a PC pitfall that even unnerves liberal whites.