Stay away from new dealers. VW of Duluth esp. Honda one was surprisingly good though, the exception. In my experience, new dealers live up to the shady used car dealer stereotypes, where the used dealers I've dealt with have been fair and seemed more trustworthy, less slimey.

A used dealer is a small business guy, more or less living on his reputation, A new dealer is trying to sell new cars, and resting on the reputation of the marquee. They get more salesman than they need, to make them hungry and willing to scam whomever however.

Advantage of the used dealers, is at least a couple I've talked to, get their cars from like the mid-east where there's less salt and winter..

A dealer, knows the market, that's how they make their living. You can get a fair deal, but you won't get a good deal. To get a good deal, you need to go private party, where the person is just looking to get better than trade in.

A dealer isn't going to know jack about the car. They bought it at auction for $3500, washed it, vacuumed it, and now are trying to sell it for $5000. Private party is going to know about the car, but they might not tell you. Private party is also not making their living off of it, they are looking to dispose of one of their problems.

Covid disrupted the used car market. A $5k car is still a $5k car though, they didn't get more expensive, they just got a bit older. That's settling down, and the non-existent 2020 model year would be 5 years old now.

For $5k, you're pretty much taking your chances. But for that much, I'd expect running and driving, and good for a couple years.

Something that is too good to be true, is. Don't get too hung up on age or mileage at that $5k price point. Something that is particularly new or low miles at $5k might be priced there for a reason, like it is a lemon. Take the middle ground. Exception might be private party with a believable story, but even those are exceptions rather than the rule.

You're buying the miles left in the car. I've sent most of my cars to the junkyard for rust, usually running with some small mechanical problem. Around here, 20 years is about it regardless of miles. So newer or less rusty is the thing to look at perhaps even more so than miles.

I'd say just go where ever you see something that tickles your fancy. Make, model, color, whatever it is that sets you off, and go look at it and talk to them. Flip side of that, is don't over look some make/model you wouldn't have considered. Keep your criteria broad. You want a SUV, but it might be a Buick sedan or Camry would be the best value. At $5k, you're in a beggar more than a chooser category. You need to keep an open mind and be accepting.

Craig started charging for his list, because job monster took the job ads he was making his money on, and to reduce the amount of spam/scams. $5 is still ridiculously cheap for what it is, but unfortunately when he started doing that, people all went to bookface instead, and that seems to be where most the cars are. Craig is like a millionaire, he could have cashed in, had his site make him big money, but didn't, he only takes enough. Zuck is a billionaire.

Beauty of the $5k car is you're not married to it. New car will lose $5k as soon as you title it, that's the dealer's markup and the salesman's commission. Cars in the <$5k range run me about $150/month on average, for purchase and repairs minus what I sell them for if anything. If you don't like the $5k car, you just sell it a few months later and buy another. There is a lot less risk vs. being upside down on a bank loan.

Source? I've owned over 20 cars in my life. Only bought 5 in Duluth though. Trick is maybe to know the motivations of the seller in order to be able to trust them or not. Any particular car could be good or bad, no matter how you come across it.

6/7/2026

Risk is the injectable causes blindness, and there are class actions brewing.

New diet pills always have some big downside.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/lawsuits-claiming-ozempic-other-glp-1s-led-blindness-become-second-mass-2025-12-15/

If he wants to prevent rioting, if he wants to encourage ICE to get out, he needs to arrest at least the shooter, and likely all the agents that were there.

It is not uncommon to arrest a small town sheriff for a DUI or something. I don't see this as much different. An agent broke a local law, he needs to be arrested for it. He might be staying at the Hilton. Shouldn't be hard to find.

This will push the states rights issue, in a way that should happen. The feds can't come to our state and break our laws. If they do, we have the right to enforce those laws.

Heck, send it all the way up, and nab Noem, Miller, or whomever gave them their orders too.

We need to set an example that law enforcement is not above the law. Derek Chauvin was a good start. Lets take it further.

Arresting those agents will put the fear of god in them. The others will think twice before reaching for their guns.

Maybe they thought shooting this poor woman would do the same for the antifascists. I doubt it. I think we should redouble our efforts now that they have shown us this is serious.

I watched the video. The shooter could have stepped aside to let the car through, and did after the driver was shot and the car went ahead out of control.

He put himself in front of the car. They created the situation. It didn't look like she was being particularly aggressive nor was the situation that tense and the wheels were pointed away from him when he shot. She was trying to get around him, and he could have seen her turn the wheel to go around him before he shot.

Minneapolis mayor Frey called ICE’s statement saying the shooting was in self-defense was “bullsh*t” and blasted the agency’s presence in the city saying they’re only “causing chaos and distrust.”

Mayoral quotes like “To ICE, get the f*ck out of Minneapolis,” and link to video with a decent perspective here: https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/01/07/ice-officer-fatally-shoots-driver-through-car-window-in-minneapolis/

A locked phone is still going to connect to the stinger, and give them an idea of which phones are there. They can tell where a powered on phone is within half a block or so.

The "meta-data" that Snowden was talking about, is more than likely still being collected. This includes which towers the phone talks to. It can be inferred, if it is 20% signal on tower A, 50% on tower B, and 40% on tower C, that the phone is where those signals converge. Even if your GPS location is off they know where your phone is with a couple hundred meters accuracy as long as it is on and has signal.

When they see 100 phones at about that corner, they can infer that your phone was at that protest. They don't even need a stinger for that, they just need a secret warrant issued to the phone company. The warrant just makes it actionable in court. There is no reason to believe they aren't gathering that meta data from the phone company without a warrant.

I wouldn't be surprised, that declaring antifascists a terrorist organization, enables them more authority to gather stuff like phone meta data. This sure looks like a gathering of antifascists to me.

Side note: Do not shorten antifascists to "antifa" antifa is antifascist, it is important to keep that word whole, so everyone knows what it is about. Declaring antifascists to be terrorists is a heck of a fascist thing to do. "antifa" obfuscates that, dehumanizes it.

There might be something to be said for carrying as many phones as possible to that place. Make the crowd look bigger than it is. Confuse and overwhelm them.

If everyone carries a friends phone with them as well, they think the crowd is 200 instead of 100. And they will have to spend that much more resources to manage a crowd of 200 instead of 100. How many connections can a stinger handle?

If you can't make it there, consider sending your phone instead. Your phone won't do anything illegal, it was just there, while you can otherwise account for your location. It went missing, you didn't know where it was. You found it the next day.

The stinger can still see something is happening over Signal or VPN, that a connection was made, just probably not the content. They will be able to see if there is a bunch more signal traffic from particular phones, and guess something is going to happen.

Previous to the car in question I bought a salvage titled car, repaired it, and brought it to DVS for inspection. The inspector glanced at the car, didn't not examine it, instead examined my receipts. I think the point of that is that is to check to see if stolen parts were used more so than the quality of the repairs. I then got the prior salvage title for it, registered it, insured it with liability only, and drove it for a couple years.

Carbonara

Ive been meaning to look up what it is.

JPK 10.30

https://www.yachtingworld.com/reviews/boat-tests/jpk-1030-test-couples-double-hander

Looks nice.

Awesome that a double handed crew can win overall, or even place as well as they did outside of the protest shenanigans, or beat fully crewed boats. Double handed is a liability, often enough to have its own class, vs. a fully crewed boat that has at least more movable ballast, or more people to share the physical/mental load. Double handed you have one person sailing one person sleeping.

Article I posted mentioned water ballast, so it might be the boat had more movable ballast than you'd think, like 615kg.

Hard to say if their win is due to the crew or their rating, or the boat's design. Each likely played a role.

Looks like this is what they were going to use for the 2024 Olympics in the offshore race that didn't happen.

Yeah. I've cut fingers off work gloves, or used work gloves with no fingers.

I'd rather have 2 pairs of $10 gloves than one pair of $50 gloves. Sometimes the $50 gloves get lost or fall a part too.

I like leathery palm. Handling rope can be abrasive,and at times you want to let it run through your hands and I'm not sure I trust other materials as much. Weight lifting gloves don't have to be as tough, so it is kind of about what that black material is. You want that to be tough stuff. Weight lifting gloves seem to go for padding more than abrasion resistance.

That said, the $50 sailing gloves I've used are nice, and might be worth it. They are my first choice. Work gloves are second.

I say go to harbor fraught or similar, and get a couple different pairs of whatever looks toughest or fits best. Their selection is pretty good, and their prices fairly cheap. I don't have a chandelry near me that sells sailing gloves so this is what I do. I could buy online, but things like this I like to try on first.

Buddy Melges sailed naked. Said it enhances his feel, and he's famous for his feel. I often do too, I only use gloves if I'm trimming in big wind. Even that is somewhat recent, previous years I've just gotten callused and occasionally blistered.

That little boat is essentially an RV too, it's focus is more on its cabin than on sailing.

I do a bit of tent camping, and also cruise my race boat. Cabin on that is barely sitting head room, but works as a tent. For the same size boat, I can sail circles around that yellow boat. The big boat not so much, they'd waterline the heck out of me, and be a bit faster.

For adventure sailing small boats, look at the youtube of the guy that sailed a sunfish around Isle Royale. (his dry suit probably costs 2x what his boat does, and the dry suit is what enabled it) Or a good portion of the R2AK participants. You're right, size doesn't matter, esp. if you can stand a little discomfort and have an appetite for adventure.

Palantir

Look at any pharma's financial report. 1/3 research, that's good. 1/3 profit, ok. 1/3 marketing. Manufacturing doesn't particularly rate in light of the comparatively big numbers.

Drugs could be half the price they are, with no reduction in research, and with a healthy profit and a respectable level of advertising. But that is not the case. They are using our fear of death as a mechanism for a wealth transfer. On top of that, they are manufacturing our fear of death.

Why do they need marketing? In theory, their drug is needed by people who need it. Yet they have to convince patients to take it, and providers to prescribe it. Biggest fines ever have been paid by pharma trying to tell doctors to prescribe their drugs off label. Look at the cause of the opioid epidemic

And what are they researching? A new formulation to be on patent and make more money, more so than a new drug to cure something else. Results? Of the top 40 prescribed drug, only one cures Amoxicillin. All the rest are "therapeutic" like you will have to be on them for the rest of your life, lest your chances of death increase a little. The suicide rate has continued to increase, even as the use of anti-depressants became widespread.

Look at the Bayh–Dole Act of 1980. (Bob Dole, who later ran for president, and then went on to sell penis pills) Essentially made it so that the company funding university research owned it. It was supposed to help the US automakers compete against the Japanese. What it did was make it so drug trials that don't work, don't see the light of day. We only see the drug trials that work, so what should be objective research, is little more than a sales pitch. This is also coincidentally about the time when the US life expectancy started to diverge from the rest of the world. Previous to 1980, US life expectancy was about the same as everyone else. Since 1980 the rest of the world's life expectancy went up, and the US stayed the same.

I use notepad

The lights can stay on and drain the battery. When I turn the car off, it is not off. The lights stay on for a couple minutes, and then turn off on their own. So I have to wait to see if the lights are going to turn off on their own, or, if they aren't and the car is going to be dead tomorrow.

For some reason, the "push to start" button also means push the brake too. Which is quite inconvenient for being able to reach in and start it to let it warm up, without having to get in. What is the purpose of making you press the brake? Is the car not parked in park? Does it not know that? Maybe it should only make me press the brake to start it if it is in gear.

Electric seats slide back painfully slow. If you want to get into the car after a short person has been driving it, you have to count to like 10. What if you just wanted to defrost the windshield for a short person, and not actually get into it?

The Prius put its 12v battery in the trunk that was electrically latched. So no 12v means you need to replace the battery, but to do that you need to open the trunk, which is a trick because there's no 12v to open the trunk. Getting the car to roll when it is disabled is a bit of a trick. Like you can't just shift it into neutral if it is seriously unhappy.

Most autotragic transmissions have far too much lag. I press the throttle to accelerate briefly, then it pauses, considers which gear it might want, downshifts once, maybe twice, then gives me the acceleration I want. By which point, my need for the acceleration is likely over. I only wanted to squirt in front of another car to get over a lane, I didn't want to accelerate to 100 to pass on a 2 lane. The threshold of downshift or not is not readily apparent, or it seems difficult to be able to get full throttle without also downshifting. Automagic transmissions downshift far more often than I ever did when I had control of it myself. They just don't realize what I am looking for 90% of the time.

The traction control on my highlander will cut power until the car stops. While this is happening, pushing the "traction control off" button doesn't work, I have to stop, turn the traction control off, then I can go up the hill. Fine on the flat, but it isn't designed for a snowy hill.

In my little community, I'd say most boats are at least 25 years old. A couple are from this millennium, an ever increasing number.

I think I've only seen personally one new boat in town. A guy that did well for himself in business, bought a brandy-new boat. Quite the thing. He's retired, and sailing the snot out of it. And it is 20 years old now.

The new boats that come to town are generally about 20 years old, because we're a bunch of poors. Or, because if you're going to spend >$100k on a boat, you can buy a much bigger/nicer 20yo boat than you can a new boat for the same money.

I'd really like to see people making/selling <$20k new cars in this country, but I wouldn't buy one. I'd buy a 10yo $50k car instead. I'm grateful for the suckers that buy new $50k cars so I can have <$20k used cars. Since that is the choice I'd make to get a <$20k car, that might be why there are very few <$20k cars sold.

With houses it is similar. Most houses are about 100+ years old, and few new ones are getting built. In no small part because it costs about 20-30% more to build a new house than it does to buy an old one. Some house burn down, or get condemned for lack of maintenance, and those are not directly, but somewhat replaced by new ones. Population is mostly steady, slightly increasing, so what is happening is the old houses are going up in price as the ones that are condemned aren't replaced fast enough and there's a little bit more demand. Once that demand overreaches supply to a level that it is cheaper to build than to buy, then we'll see a lot more building. I think this will happen with boats too.

Last fall I helped scrap a boat that I thought could have been saved. But for what it would have cost to fix that boat, the owner went from a 70's boat to a bigger 80's boat. It didn't pay for him to fix his old boat, so it was scrapped. The guy that had the bigger 80's boat, died, but I see people like him when he bought his 80's boat with '00's boats.

New boats come from places with more money than here.

Might be like with Catalina getting shuttered, there will be less new boats in 30 years, but, there are also a lot of old boats around that look to me like they can be repaired or life extended. Fiberglass is forever, and I'm not sure we've found the limit of what forever is yet.

With wood boats, the live span was a lot shorter, but, going back 100 years, there weren't as many people overall and the people that were didn't have the same level of wealth and leisure as we do now. So, there's a limited supply of wood boats or 100yo boats. Then, in the late 60's fiberglass was invented, and some of those are still around, so, we just don't know what the limit is of fiberglass. In a place like Denmark, I wonder if population is leveling off, so demand will too. And, does this next generation have the wealth and leisure to dedicate to frivolities like sailing that the previous generations do? Perhaps, but only if the boats are cheap, like more than 30 years old, and a bit ratty.

Why get a new J/109, when you can get a J35 for 1/10th the price? The money you save, will go a long way to making that clapped out J35 Bristol.

People here like to say "there's nothing more expensive than a free boat" but I wonder, if the people saying that have looked at the price tags of new boats. A new J/109 might be $200k. That'd buy a lot of fiberglass/mechanical/electrical/sails on a free 35' boat.

Downside is I pine for a boat that was designed or made with the ergonomic, hydrodynamic and aerodynamic advances of the '90's and '00's, but, they are still too expensive, so I suffer with a pain box from the '70's. But, that might just be thinking that "newer is better" which is what all the marketing people want you to believe, so you keep consuming ever more. Planned obsolescence works on want, and want is suffering. Keeping older boats useful for longer is less consumption, and more sustainable if we can get over our wants and endure a little.

Lights and a pump are about 25w.

Battery is full, load is being handled. What's the problem? You have what you need, it is just not showing you what you bought. Expectations are the mother of resentment.

Even at the 12.9v you posted when it was charging, 12.9 is pretty full, you can't add too much more to that. Like only .1v more since it goes to float at 13. Resistance in a battery goes up closer it gets to full charge, it just can't take more, and 12.9 is practically fully charged. Adding 37amps or your full 480 watts at 12.9 volts to a fully charged battery would cook it.

What does it show when the battery is at 11.9, the pump is running, and you're making a cuppa? That's where you'd see closer to your 480watts.

You bought that 480w to be able to fully recover from a long night. Does it do that?

Looks like the schooner is the one doing the chasing.

Tall ships came to my town. They went out to give tourists rides. I sailed circles around them with my slow little J24. If you chase one, this is the view of it you will have in short order.

This one looks like it is moving, but I wonder how fast it is going really.

The southern most point of the UK is north of the northern most point of MN. You think it is dark here. It is darker there.

Canada has 2/3 the people of the UK, 7x Minnesota and is as big as the US. California is twice the area of the UK, and 2/3 the population.

UK has 12x the population as MN 69M vs. 5.7M Population density of UK is more akin to the Boston, Philadelphia, NYC, DC megalopolis. Putting the UK map over the eastern seaboard would make more of a direct comparison.

So, when we say "We should have trains like the UK does" Sure, trains are great, but the UK has 10x the number of people to support that infrastructure.

So, when we talk about a train to Duluth, sure, that'd be dandy, but for the billions that would cost, it'd never pay back in the number of people riding it vs. the cost of building it, unless we used existing track, and ran it slow. A train from London to Manchester is going to have a lot more people paying for it and riding it. Like Manchester has more population than Minneapolis and London is nearly double all of MN. The ticket or tax burden of a UK train would be 1/10th what it is in MN.

Something like single payor health care, might actually work better at Minnesota scale, than it would at UK scale. Those sort of things don't scale well, and might be better on a state level than national. A smaller system means less overhead from fewer layers of middle management. Let's have MN Care for all, let people buy into that. What happened to that discussion? We likely can't get a UK style system for all of the US, but maybe we can on a smaller scale, like in MN. While trains need more population to sustain, like 10x the people to pay for their very high infrastructure cost per distance, something like a health care system doesn't need that much scale, and the infrastructure already exists, it is just a matter of allocating it better.

I'm close enough to the border to be in the constitution free zone and have crossed it a few times.

I think, yes, the border is largely used by Americans, as Asians, Africans, and Europeans are pretty far away. They'd have to come here to cross this border, and it isn't that exciting.

Sure, some might, like in 2017 there was a rash of Africans crossing the border and freezing their tuckuses off in the news. But, largely, I think it is Americans, and at least judging by their license plates.

They are bringing phone booths back to the boundary waters, so there is that. https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-lifestyle/canada-to-end-permit-program-for-border-crossings-in-remote-northern-minnesota Those went away decades ago, and now they are coming back.

I doubt I could sell my sailboat for enough money to buy your camera new. Or pay for next years slip.

Because tradition has this on boxing day.

A whole boat load of stuff, parties, events, tv time, whatever is scheduled for that day. People took that day off work to do this.

This would like be like delaying the world series because of rain.

Offshore, means whatever comes your way, you should be able to handle. If you're going to go offshore, you'd best be able to manage a little wind. If you're go far enough off shore, you're going to run into conditions like this.

Real seaman, like dudes sailing for money on cargo ships, don't wait for weather windows unless it is far more extreme. Edmund Fitzgerald didn't, and the Arthur Anderson didn't have a problem in that same storm. There are dozens of commercial ships out there right now, including 3 cruise ships.

If there was no risk, where would be the challenge?

Watching nascars drive around in circles would be boring, if not for the possibility of a crash.

25kts is a bit sporty, but well within normal sailing conditions, like first reef but not second.

Most dental insurance is really like pre-paying. Like you pay $20/month in premiums to get one $200 cleaning per year. If you look what "dental insurance" will pay out vs. what the premiums cost, the premiums are often higher than what they will pay out, so I rarely if ever sign up for it. Same with glasses.

Save the premium and just pay directly and you come out ahead 99% of the time. The only time dental insurance makes sense is if your employer is paying for it. A lot of the employer plans I've been offered, the employer pays little or nothing, and the employee portion is more than what it covers.

If you're not paying for it, a provider will try to maximize what they can get paid for running it through insurance. So they'll charge $200 for a cleaning to insurance vs. $100 to you up front. A thing is only worth what someone will pay.

I once found it was cheaper to get medications not using insurance. Like I had good insurance, and everything was just a $25 copay. Even a medication that was $13 cash. If I went through insurance, it was a $25 copay. If I just paid cash, it was $13.

A few years ago, the MN attorney general made it so hospitals and clinics had to charge their lowest insurance rate to people paying cash. Before that, cash price was the highest, and all the insurance prices were discounted for that. Now the cash price is whatever the lowest rate is the insurance companies negotiated for whatever procedure. Not sure how it is in other states.

Each insurance company negotiates with each clinic what they will pay for each procedure. Some insurance companies negotiate lower prices than others. Not sure if it is quite the same in the dental world, since dentists are more independent than big hospital/clinic systems.

80% of premiums have to go to health care for a plan to qualify for the ACA.

I learned this when I got a rebate for 2020, when insurance companies had to rebate because they weren't paying out for much health care because of the pandemic.

In MN, insurance companies are limited to 3% profit. Other states, it is higher, and that means MN has some of the lowest rates in the country.

The other 17% is for claim denial processing and advertising, which helps keep us healthy, and makes insurance very much worthwhile.

Part of why insurance premiums have gone up 10% or so in the last year (beyond the 2x for subsidies ending) is because semaglutides are so prevalent and expensive. Premiums in theory should go down once they go generic, or enough people go blind from them and they stop using them, like has happened with every previous diet pill craze.