dewster

GM’s Super Cruise is the best hands free system short of a Tesla.

Drive them all. That’s what we did and we ended up in a Yukon XL AT4. Your choice of 3 different engines, and the best ride in the class. No gas particulate filters. Plenty of power. The diesel gets excellent mileage. The L84 5.3L is a reliable unit - much improved over the L83 from a couple of years ago. They claim the 6.2 is improved but we’ll see.

Expedition is second best. Definitely a solid option if the local Ford dealer is really good or if you don’t like the styling of the GM trucks. Some weird interior design choices by Ford but this is a very solid option otherwise. Some of them have a gas particulate filter in 2026, and I’m opposed to that in principle.

Sequoia is a disappointment. I wanted to like it. I am a Toyota guy and I was trading in a 5th Gen 4Runner because we needed more space. But that Sequoia is a train wreck from a design standpoint, and offers the least reliable engine in its class - which is saying something.

The Nissan Armada is surprisingly good. Much better than the Sequoia, but I’m not sure if Nissan will hold their value.

Jeep is the worst from a depreciation standpoint, but I think it has one of the best engines. The Hurricane motor is very responsive and smooth. The interior is well designed on this rig too. But it’s got a history of having a lot of issues.

Before anyone asks….my beloved 5th gen 4Runner has already been sold. I’m going to miss it.

We’ll see how this works out. The younger generation in the US haven’t had the opportunities to develop in the last 10 years. It’s hurt our ability to find good mid level talent now too.

Maybe this changes. But IBM is probably going with H1B’s for this.

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Culvers butter burger is the best I have ever eaten. Had it on a business trip to Chicago.

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Lived in Chicago for 4 years and I don't understand why people like Culvers. It's big, clean, but the food is bland. This restaurant would get it's arse handed to it outside of the midwest because you can't taste the damn food.

Resort fees, parking fees, insane dining prices, and other predatory tactics have become the norm in Las Vegas. It has annoyed a lot of tourists who have reallocated their travel budgets to Florida and other places.

And also there is an increasingly obvious issue with cleanliness and homelessness. That is also turning people away. Vegas spent decades ridding itself of that gritty, sketchy desert city only to let that element come right back in.

Vegas is in steep decline. It has excellent entertainment venues still, but the writing is on the wall. It will get worse before it gets better especially when regular folks have so many alternative outlets for cheap gambling.

Whatever floats your boat.

From a practical standpoint….it’s supposed to be stupid expensive to get repaired. So I wouldn’t buy a car with it, at least until I could verify that stuff.

Matriculation statistics for medical schools were posted annually by race up until at least a few years ago. It was eye opening and really frustrating to learn that MCAT and GPA averages of those accepted differed wildly by race. It was such a huge delta that the only explanation was that the system is, in some ways, expecting far more from Asian and white applicants.

The real issue here is that a lot of native Americans and African Americans are totally screwed by public schools, teacher unions, and the special interests that have hijacked all of those entities. If there is unequal representation in our medical schools, the correct way to address this is to take an honest look at the problems in our K-12 public education system that are charged with helping these applicants ready themselves for the world.

It seems like there is a problem with unequal access to basic education, but instead of sorting that root cause out - we just stack the deck in a way that addresses the symptoms of that problem in a hugely unfair way.

Another example of progressives in education resorting to discriminatory practices to solve a problem that they created. And trust me on this - all of the applicants know this. They may not talk about it, but they know what's happening.

It's obvious and deliberate. These are not rounding errors. These are huge deltas in standards by race. And it's not something that can be defended in a rational argument:

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short term rentals.

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These shouldn't be so popular. They thrive in areas where hotels are either very difficult or impossible to construct because of local zoning laws.

FYI it’s based on home value and income, not wealth.

Some correlation between the them is likely. But it’s still misleading.

I’ve never saw this in Chicago. But it only got down to a severely miserable and legit dangerous -22F there when I was there. I’ve heard the pops but never saw an explosive shedding of bark.

I imagine the Elms and Maples common to that area aren’t quite as susceptible to this…..but -40F is just something I never want to experience. That doesn’t happen every year - even on the other side of the lake.

I kind of want to see it. But I don’t want to be where it’s cold enough to see it.

I keep waiting for this to happen but it hasn’t yet. I know every place eventually declines. But for now, new businesses are still rolling into Zachary. I know some fairly well off families that are still moving in.

Traffic sucks though. It’s not a small town anymore. More like Gonzales north. Not that appealing to me.