dewster

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I'm in the minority, but I'm not a huge hybrid fan.

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I might be sold on it if the battery didn't consume so much cargo space.

The right move for Toyota would have been to put the V6 from the Tundra in the 4Runner without the hybrid. That's give the vehicle more power without robbing the cargo space. It's not reliable, but that's likely a problem with the 4 cylinder turbo too.

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Italian power company estimates service should resume in mid-2028

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Nah it will be sooner than that. LADOTD doesn't handle the powerline maintenance.

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Those that have bought brand new homes. How long until carriers get your address correct?

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If you build a house in a newer development with similar looking homes...it could be a while. Make sure your house number is big and clear.

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Los Angeles

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My least favorite of America's large cities. The traffic, the people, the homeless camps, and the general shitty condition of everything......it's impressive in the worst way.

I honestly don't care. Trump should ignore it and let SCOTUS figure it out.

What kind of LADOTD bullshite is this? No jersey barriers or warning signs?

That’s not how anyone calculates net worth.

China's only leverage is invasion of Taiwan and disrupting semiconductor production for consumer goods. That might be the only thing that unites their country behind leadership when people start going hungry. And it's sort of obvious that Trump is driving a wedge between China and their most powerful allies right now.

If this continues, China won't really be able to afford an expensive war. They'd have to invade quickly before anyone can react.

Our media struggles to get this right (because China is less than honest about their own issues), but their total debt to GDP ratio is almost never reported properly. It's catastrophic.

Some perspective: The US is about 122% debt to GDP and we are attempting to cut costs. We are feeling the pinch of this. We also have the benefit of being the world's reserve currency.

Our media only reports China's provided national debt of around 60% debt to GDP ratio...... but China is frequently very dishonest about this since they exclude the massive provincial debt that their local and regional governments incur to develop and expand their cities (remember how property is owned and managed in China). Including their state owned companies, all of their provinces, and their national debt - China is estimated to be 300+% debt to GDP ratio. They don't collect too many taxes, but the Chinese government is particularly exposed to a real estate crisis.

That debt to GDP ratio huge, but they are fine so long as their GDP continues to grow rapidly. Trump didn't just threaten that. He just cut them off at their knees and they are going to get desperate.

China doesn't have many levers to pull. They have to act fast. Don't be shocked if they stage some kind of bullshite anti-American event to unite their people. They may even elect to invade Taiwan very soon.

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I looked into getting a Land Cruiser but they all have hybrid engines which is the furthest thing away from simplicity and bullet proof. Would not want to have to deal with those things once the warranty runs out. 4Runner options are also getting worse.

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Yeah I'd say to try the Lexus GX since you can get it without the hybrid powertrain, but it's reliant on that V35A that's been clogging up Toyota's service departments for quite some time now. Maybe wait a few more years before you pick one up.

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Sort of, but she was more of a stage 5 clinger than stalker.

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These are the ones you need to worry about. I started ghosting/ignoring a girl that I had a very casual, sporadic relationship with before I met the girl who would eventually become my wife.

Thought about not posting this but WTH...here it goes:

At the time I didn't really put two and two together, but some weird things started happening. Keep in mind that during all of this time I was routinely getting crazy texts from this chick. It makes it seem even dumber that I didn't recognize this but who the hell expects an otherwise pleasant 23/24 year old woman to be a stalker even months after a very short, casual/informal relationship was clearly over?

Weird things started happening that I kept dismissing as random. In hindsight the most disturbing was my laundry got lost twice at a local dry clean/laundry place in Baton Rouge called KEANS. I went there often enough that the guy that worked in the Sherwood/Old Hammond location (where the Pizza Hut is now) recognized me. The second time my laundry got lost I was legitimately pissed and the KEANS guy was very confused. He asked if my girlfriend picked them up, but I didn't have a girlfriend at the time and I figured that the staff was just making excuses for a mistake. I did have a girl with me at some point months earlier when I picked up my weekly laundry and the KEANS laundry bags at my house where she may have seen them. But it didn't cross my mind at the time that they were related. I kind of dismissed this as incompetence at the cleaners for not demanding the ticket number and account pin code at pickup. I moved on and replaced the clothes. I started using a different cleaners and this never happened again.

Then things escalated - there was some vandalism to my vehicle that didn't make any sense. The little Chevrolet logo on the back was removed along with some random lettering and trim on the side. You could tell with the damage to the paint that the perp used a flat head screwdriver to pry them off. This happened at my house when it was parked less than 20' from where I was sleeping. I walked through the neighborhood and found no other vehicles that were vandalized. Around this time I had an issue with water in the gas tank as well. I dismissed this as a "living in Baton Rouge" problem at the time with some ghetto element responsible for the highly random act of vandalism and bad gasoline from a local service station explaining the mechanical repair. Had to make an insurance claim for the body work and got the vehicle fixed.

There were other weird things.....my grad school class had a social media page that didn't have the best privacy settings. If you knew were to look, you could figure out where our socials were, what bars/restaurants we'd go to for the away games, etc. I started seeing a girl that I used to casually date just happen to be in those establishments when we were. At one point on the way to the bathroom at a very crowded place, I damn near ran into her and made eye contact with her and pretended that I didn't see her. She approached me at some point when I was a little drunk and started aggressively flirting. I kind of made an excuse to get out of there and left. For one of the class social events that I skipped, a buddy of mine told me that the crazy chick I used to see and her roommate were there. I dismissed this as an annoying coincidence - it isn't THAT weird to see that crazy chick so frequently in a small town like Baton Rouge.

At some point I took my new girlfriend (now wife) to dinner at Monjuni's in Baton Rouge. I was sitting in a seat that faced the windows, which were very decorated with a lot of stuff at the time. If you aren't familiar with this place.....it's difficult, but not impossible to see outside at night if you are in the restaurant. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a girl I used to date driving past the window slowly looking into the restaurant. I immediately got up and made like I was going to the restroom, but I went to the front door to see if she was still outside. She wasn't in sight anymore but it was definitely her and her car. I dismissed this at the time as Baton Rouge just being an overgrown small town and knowing that my ex liked that coffee shop a few doors down that shared a parking area.

This all happened over the course of like 6 months. During all this time there were more than a few crazy texts from that chick that were left unanswered. Probably once or twice a month she would mention that she was near my house and suggested that we should hang out. More than once she’d text either topless pics or pics of her with a very flattering new bra.

It eventually clicked one night randomly. The missing clothes. The vandalism. The "accidental encounters" where my location was known/expected. The random crazy texts including one where she referenced the hair color of my new girlfriend (red).

I mentioned that I think I have a stalker to my then girlfriend (now wife) and one of my buddies. My buddy thought it was hilarious, but my girlfriend did not. We were more careful about posting on our socials and were more aware of our surroundings. I started using credit cards/debit cards everywhere I went to keep a virtual paper trail so I can account for my whereabouts at any given time. I confided to a couple of my grad school friends, who then ramped up the privacy settings on our class social media pages.

My guess is this girl who I only casually saw read a lot more into that relationship than was actually there. I suspect that either her or her friends/roommates saw me and my new girlfriend in Baton Rouge somewhere so she went a little crazy. It eventually either slowed down to the point I didn't notice anymore or it stopped about 4-5 months before I graduated and moved away.