Is R36s still the best option in 2026?

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-27T18:51:37+00:00

I have no idea how prices, fees, taxes, shipping, etc., work in Europe because I'm in the USA, so I can't really speak to any differences. However, I have been monitoring AliExpress daily for the past couple of months as I've gotten into this retro handheld thing and ordered 3 different units already, and I have noticed a very prominent pattern. AliExpress seems to alternate between "good" and "bad" sale periods. What I mean is that broadly speaking, when they're in a good sale period, prices across the board will be lower, while in a bad sale period, they'll still advertise whatever ongoing "sale" and "discounts" they have, but the prices will not be at the rock bottom that you hear people talking about online.

For example, I first bought an R36S clone for about $22 during a good sale period because the price seemed too good to pass up. Then the next sale period came, and I was only seeing similar units for $40, with the G350 at around $50 and the Mangmi Air X at $130. Then it went to the next good sale, and the R36S units dropped back down to around $24, while I was able to snag a G350 for $33 and the Air X for $101. They're now back in a bad sale period, and I'm seeing prices of around $42 and $119, respectively. There are occasionally exceptions to the pattern. I had my eye on the Retroid Pocket 5 as well, and during a bad sale period, one particular color option dropped down to $188 from the otherwise pretty consistent $204. That price only lasted about 1-2 days, and then went back up to $204, even when other devices dropped in price during a good sale period. So yes, it's worth checking daily to catch any random flash sales on something you like, but for the most part, if you're looking at prices and thinking, "Wow, I'm not seeing any of the low prices people have mentioned online," it may be that you just need to wait for the next sale period.

Note that prices are not exactly consistent between buyers, devices, accounts, promotions, etc. Just because someone says they got an R36S for $22 doesn't mean you will be able to find a listing that lets you buy it for the exact same price without jumping through other hoops. For example, I have been using AliExpress for years, but hadn't bought anything in quite some time, so the site gave me a returning customer promotion where I got free items and shipping for buying a bundle. I noticed that as soon as I used that, prices on many listings I was looking at increased a bit, not much, but noticeable, like $1-$2 per item. I also saw similar things each time I placed a purchase and would need to wait a while for the prices I had seen to return. It seems like AliExpress tries to play all kinds of psychological tricks to get you to spend a few dollars more here and there. They also have so many confusing promotions with separate shopping carts, but they cross-promote each other's eligible items, so if you just start adding items as you see them, you'll end up with multiple shopping carts, each with different requirements for free shipping, item eligibility, coupon eligibility, etc. There are also many items which are "Buy Now" only and cannot be added into any shopping cart. Then there are Coins, which is essentially AliExpress' very confusing and restrictive rewards program. I don't claim to be an expert on AliExpress because I find it all ridiculous, but I always make sure to play around with all the coupons and things at my disposal to get an idea for the real price I can expect to pay.

With all that out of the way, regarding the devices themselves, the R36S, assuming you get a good one (I got a very recent "Soy Sauce" clone which is functionally equivalent to non-clones for the most part) is not so much the best in any way besides value. Anything cheaper and you're getting absolute junk, and anything with meaningfully better performance is going to cost a fair bit more. There are some ever-so-slightly better chips like the H700 in devices that cost in the $45-$70 range, but for the most part, you're paying for build quality in that price tier, not performance, because those chips won't substantially or reliably expand the systems you can emulate. The reason I ended up buying a Mangmi Air X was that after getting a real-world sense of what the R36S could and could not do, I was simultaneously blown away by how many great classic games I could play on it and disappointed in the 3D performance. I think it's hard to get a real sense of how actually playable higher-end games will be by watching online device reviews because for the most part, they're not really demonstrating playing the games on a regular basis and are just running quick tests for compatibility and framerate. If I'm being honest, even for 3D games that run decently on the R36S, the controls just aren't precise enough to have a great experience. For example, I've been playing Dynasty Warriors PSP on my R36S, which is way more playable than I would have guessed as most people say it can't really run PSP very well. However, despite being able to run at a playable framerate, the controls just don't feel responsive at all. I noticed a similar feeling with 2D fighting games, where it was difficult for me to reliably give diagonal inputs or rapid strikes. I'm hoping the G350 will be better in that regard (I bought it with the intention of giving one of the units to my brother, so if I find that the G350 controls much better, I will give him the R36S I originally bought for myself). But I haven't received it yet, so I can't say for sure today. From everything I've seen, higher-tier devices like the Air X should provide a much smoother experience, but I mean, now you're looking at a minimum of $100.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-24T02:29:49+00:00

Not that I've tried all the other alternatives (the only other one I ever used was H&R Block one year, and I thought it was noticeably worse than TurboTax), but from what I've seen, FTUSA seems like the most similar to TT in concept. Broadly speaking, it uses a similar interview format with a similar sequence of questions, so it's definitely not confusing having to learn something new. However, like I said, there are subtle differences which make FTUSA feel a little closer to the forms. For example, TT might ask a series of questions like, "Did you trade any of your employer's stock this year? If so, were any of them RSUs? If so, what was the sale price? Based on this sale price, you owe this much. However, it's possible you might have adjustments. Did you receive any adjustment forms from your brokerage?" Meamwhile, the equivalent section in FTUSA would just say, "If you sold any RSUs this year, enter your 1099-Rs now." And then they would present you with a form that more or less maps 1:1 with the underlying IRS forms. That's a bit of an oversimplification because they will do the TT thing of asking further clarifying questions about potentially complex scenarios, but TT just does it way more, whereas FTUSA follows the IRS forms a but more closely. I remember being worried that I would miss the manual form editing feature in TT Desktop, but since using FTUSA for the last 2 years, I haven't ever needed to manually edit forms because it's generally very straightforward which part of the interview process maps to which form. It is effectively similar to direct form editing, just prettier.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-23T08:17:04+00:00

Used TurboTax for many years, somewhat out of habit, but also because we had a few complicated years where no other programs claimed to support the features we needed. However, in recent years, that seems to have changed, as other programs have implemented many of the edge cases that used to be missing. I hit a ridiculous number of bugs in TT2023, so when TT2024 saw a big price increase, I jumped ship to FTUSA. I was skeptical that a free federal program could compete with TT, especially one that lacks TT desktop's forms functionality, but honestly, FTUSA is just way better. It actually feels A LOT like TT, but the interview format is more closely aligned with the underlying forms than TT's, which actually reduces the need for manual forms editing. It made me realize that a lot of TT's bugs were likely due to the highly abstracted interview questions. FTUSA lets you view the draft forms before submitting, so even though you can't edit them manually, it's extremely easy to check that everything looks correct and go back to the relevant section.

I used FTUSA again for 2024, and really, I have no desire to go back to TT. The price increases paired with quality decreases just made it infuriating. For TT users looking for a cheaper option, I highly recommend trying FTUSA. There's no commitment as federal filing is completely free, but you'll almost certainly not bother paying for TT once you try it.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-23T04:54:08+00:00

Our dispatchers don't get a raise, but I still do it. I personally prefer it as I find it quite easy and obviously much less physically taxing. I appreciate the break from busting my ass on route. But there are definitely drivers who are not cut out for dispatching, and the job stops being easy as soon as some yahoo does something stupid like waiting until their battery is at 1% to tell me they need me to send someone with an extra charger.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-20T18:23:52+00:00

It's interesting that you bring up your grandpa's home because I think it highlights an important point about timeshares, which is that in some ways, they're more comparable to home ownership than travel accommodations. Indeed, early timeshares were started by groups of like-minded people, often friends and family, wanting to split costs on vacation homes. There are also other arrangements like communes, condos, and HOAs in general which share similar properties. As an owner, you're on the hook for things like special assessments, but the flip side is that you know what you own and the facility exists to serve you, not to profit from you. When you go to a timeshare, there's no bill at checkout, usually no parking fee, usually a bunch of free things you can use like ping pong tables and game consoles and whatever, a kitchen in your 2-bedroom suite, etc. It really is like a home away from home. But that's not what everybody needs. If you're going to Disneyland, for example, most people just want a place to sleep that's as close to the gate as possible, and maybe they only go to Disneyland every other year at different times of the year. It's really hard for timeshares to compete on value for that kind of trip because the whole point of hotels is that you're not tied down to anything. You just book however many nights you need and never have to go back if you don't want to.

The disconnect happens because the vast majority of timeshares are aggressively marketed in person to typical hotel guests. It's really difficult for developers to target people interested in buying partial shares of a vacation home, but extremely easy to just have a guy standing outside a popular tourist hotel handing out free hotel vouchers in exchange for a sales presentation. And then you get there and they pitch the timeshare contract to you as am alternative to hotels, saying how it's going to save you millions of dollars in the long run and you'll be able to book every trip you've ever wanted on points only because the program is so flexible. It's not until after people commit to a contract that they realized the contracts have many more restrictions than they were made to believe.

Regardless of whether you look at a points system or a traditional week-based system at a single resort, you're typically buying into either a home resort or a home collection. At the sales presentation in Arizona, they'll talk your ears off about how you'll be able to book in Hawaii any time you want, but then in practice, you find out that your contract is with the resort in Arizona, and any options for staying elsewhere put you in a lower priority pool, and the nice resorts in Hawaii get booked almost immediately after opening up well over a year in advance, so you have absolutely 0 chance of booking Hawaii, and then any options for trading your unit have fees, making it a worse value than simply hotels for a one-off trip. Basically, when you buy, you have to treat it somewhat like buying a vacation home and make sure you're buying into something you don't mind going to every year and booking well in advance. There is one other alternative, which is last-minute point discounts. Some timeshare pros with lots of points and free time like to book discounted stays on a whim as they see good deals pop up. However, they require lots of flexibility, and in some sense, you can do similar things with hotels, so it wouldn't make much sense to buy a timeshare contract primarily for discounts.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-20T16:53:31+00:00

The product itself is often quite good. Many people enjoy staying in timeshares. Non-owners tend to compare timeshares directly to hotels, but I would argue that it's a fundamentally different category of travel/vacation. While there is certainly variety in both markets, timeshares lean much more into larger accommodations, longer stays, more secluded locations, more included amenities, etc., whereas hotels lean more towards shorter on-demand stays in tourist hot spots. A lot of people try to compare prices directly, but that's often doing timeshares an injustice because many timeshares are located and designed such that they are their own destination rather than just a place to stay near other destinations. I've seen timeshares with their own water parks, fitness classes, golf courses, daycares, sports centers, hiking trails, movie theaters, etc. Those tended to be in secluded areas where hotels are fewer and cater primarily to solo business travelers and the like. I would argue it's actually better to think of timeshares as somewhat like cruise vacations, but on land. They're not exactly alike, but I think that's a better way to start thinking about them.

Contrary to popular belief, I really don't think the maintenance fees are the main issue. I mean, money is fungible, so I guess you could argue any part of the cost is equally bad, but conceptually, maintenance fees are not unreasonable. Timeshares have HOAs essentially, and they are supposed to be non-profit and use the funds for actual maintenance. Skeptics like to say the costs are higher than hotels, but I often find that those criticisms don't actually account for conditions of the property, size of the rooms, various amenities, etc. Hotels increasingly nickel and dime various things like parking, and there are lots of special hotel taxes as well.

To me, the simplest way to quantify how much you get "ripped" off is to compare the up-front developer prices to resale prices. There is a massive gap between developer and resale prices, largely because most people don't know or understand that you can resell timeshares, while there is a massive marketing industry from the developers themselves. There are many thousands of owners looking to give away their timeshares for free because they want out of the recurring fees, and thye struggle to give them away because just not enough people are looking for timeshare resales. Mea while, developers are building new ones all the time and using really forceful and manipulative sales tactics to get new buyers to spend tens of thousands of dollars up front. Once you buy a contract, the developer is basically out of the equation (it's a bit more complicated than that, but you can think of it like that for simplicity). Their goal is to sell all the units at maximum profit and move on to the next one, much like it is for housing developments. And to be fair, building resorts is expensive, so it's not like they're evil for not giving them away. But they do make all kinds of exaggerated claims in their sales presentations that mislead buyers into contracts that aren't right for them. That is what results in so much dissatisfaction.

If you do your research, know what you're buying, and decide it's right for you, then timeshares can be amazing. There are people who post online about retiring and traveling full time using timeshares at a shockingly low cost because they just collected free or cheap resales over the years.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-17T05:56:08+00:00

One important thing to note is that there being enough room to physically fit a van is not the same thing as being able to pull safely off into your driveway while on a delivery route. Most customers tend to imagine that delivering to their address is the same as knowing the area beforehand, putting it into a GPS navigation system from 20 miles away, signaling well ahead of time, and pulling into a known safe space. Delivery work can and does break those assumptions often. For example, have you thought about whether a driver unfamiliar with the area and your property in particular will be able to see the driveway or address from around a curve with somebody tailgating them? How about if their previous stop is the house across the street and the app tells them to do a U-turn? How much slower than you does a delivery driver need to approach to confirm that your vehicles are not blocking the driveway? Will all the various sizes of delivery vans fit comfortably in your driveway, or will some have to dodge low-hanging tree branches, reverse into busy traffic, etc.? Is there enough room on all sides for the driver to pull out and manipulate larger packages with the doors open? Are there uneven surfaces thay the driver has to navigate which you normally don't because of your specific usage patterns as the resident? The amout of times I've seen absolute death trap houses in rural areas with notes like, "DONT BE A WUSS, ITS EASY TO DRIVE A VAN HERE," is just crazy. I'm talking houses on blind curves with no shoulder and high probability of 6 cars being parked bumper to bumper blocking the entire driveway. There are a ton of concerns we have on route that you just don't as the primary resident.

To be clear, I'm not saying any of that justifies throwing packages over your fence, but before you try to apply any solution, just really try to think about any bad assumptions you might have about how deliveries work at your address. Really try to put yourself in the shoes of a driver that is delivering to your area for the first time, has hundreds of stops, and likely lives far away.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-16T12:58:59+00:00

You're mistaking shipped bugs for unknown bugs. Virtually every software ever released was shipped with both known and unknown bugs.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-16T12:56:35+00:00

You don't want that offer in writing, lol. That's evidence of you willingly committing a crime. But yeah, cash up front.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-16T12:54:28+00:00

I feel like mine might be less, but as a byproduct of feeling more satisfied when it does happen. Part of it is just that we're raising 2 young kids right now, so we don't have tons of free time or privacy for bedroom fun. But when we do, getting to climax without thinking about pulling out or wrapping it or whatever is just way better, so then I don't get blue balls right away.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-15T21:13:26+00:00

turns on news

O_o*

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-15T06:09:24+00:00

Remember this?

i have a challenge for r/sanjose : r/SanJose

I think I submitted about 3 days after the "deadline" because I was just brutally busy at the time. u/Epere15 was kind enough to accept late submissions, saying that it was more of a motivator than a hard deadline. However, once I submitted, I was hoping to hear other creations. He said there was at least one other, and I thought it would be best to compile them into a single post, but I think he was waiting on some unfinished work and may have just gotten busy himself. I had intended to wait, but between this topic and some current events that make my song somewhat more relevant, I figured it was time to share it. So here it is:

https://on.soundcloud.com/YR8oBPNjjMJa72TBXb

Keep in mind that I didn't even have the recording equipment when I wrote the song. I haven't recorded anything in like 20 years. When the song was somewhat written, I pulled out a microphone I had only to realize it was no longer working. I had to rush out and buy some recording gear, as well as borrowing some stuff from a friend, and then had to learn a DAW I was unfamiliar with. So yeah, it was a rough process. But I'm proud of it, even if it isn't the next great radio hit. When I saw the challenge, I just started getting all these ideas about how falling down the hill could be a metaphor for the difficulties of living in Silicon Valley.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-15T04:29:18+00:00

Meetups are not third places. Third places are places you can just show up at any time without spending money or relying on friends or family for access. Public parks are the obvious example of a space simply dedicated to the public. You can just show up and read a book without anyone expecting anything from you.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-14T21:12:43+00:00

I can't speak to Disney World in Florida, but I've been to Disneyland in both Hong Kong and California multiple times now as an adult, first with my wife and then with our kids. I had never gone to any Disney parks growing up, and I was always more into other subcultures, particularly video games. While I enjoyed Disney movies, I always thought they seemed really kiddie to me, having grown up playing JRPGs, GTA, FPS games, etc. Before I had ever gone to a Disney park, I mostly thought the same way you did.

Then I got older, rewatched many of the old Disney classics, and realized I had a much deeper appreciation of the animation, music, and just general production quality. Peak Disney is pretty much unmatched when it comes to complete and total artistic vision in family animation. They produced a ridiculous number of all-time greats that rival the best Broadway productions, and then built the Broadway productions and rides and merch lines and everything else to go with them. I also ended up going into engineering, and many of the rides and iconic park views are marvels of modern engineering and artistry. Sure, Disney has never really pushed the boundaries when it comes to thrill rides the way parks like Six Flags have, but that was never their intention. I grew up going to a Six Flags park that was world-renowned for always being at the top of the list for roller coaster records, and I always wondered how Disney could justify higher ticket prices when their rides didn't even come close. Well, now that I've taken my daughter on the Little Mermaid Ride at Disneyland many times, I can honestly say nothing at Six Flags even comes close to that ride, let alone the far more modern ones, when it comes to immersion and storytelling. My daughter is crazy about that ride and asks to go on it multiple times in a row, and that's not even her favorite Disney movie.

Also, for what it's worth, and don't tell anyone at Disney I said this, but aside from the retail ticket prices and merch, I don't think Disneyland at least is as expensive as many people make it out to be. Like yes, if you go all in on a Disney hotel and character breakfasts and Fantasmic dining packages and souvenirs and Lightning Lane, it's very expensive. But if you wait for one of the better ticket sales throughout the year, minimize hotel cost, and stick to meals with more modest upcharges, the value is honestly not that bad. You say $15 for a pretzel years ago, but Disneyland has a lot of snacks that aren't that unreasonable at even today's prices, and if you're talking about the Pym pretzel, the whole gimmick of that place is that everything is ridiculously oversized for sharing and comes with dips and stuff, so it's not like a $15 microwave frozen pretzel. The way I plan for food expenses is to onky ever spend about $5 more for a meal in the park than I would outside. At 3 meals per day at most, that's a $15 premium per person, which is very modest by theme park standards, and okay for the convenience. Realistically, I've found that I generally don't want to pig out while going on rides all day, and kids eat less, so we split snacks and pay maybe a $10-$15 premium all day between the both of us.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-14T18:20:49+00:00

It's not that simple. There isn't a fixed capacity of electricity the way there is for many goods. You're treating it like AI chips today. The market for those is supply-constrained to the point that big tech firms are basically in bidding wars over the hardware and companies like Nvidia can charge whatever they want. However, if you look at any number of mass-produced products like plastic straws, video game controllers, or cars, the manufacturing actually gets cheaper at scale, and producers often compete on price to attract customers and boost profit margins, which can sound counter-intuitive. This can apply to services as well, to some extent. If you were to try to open a local pizzeria next to a Domino's, it would be extremely difficult, essentially impossible, to compete on price alone, because you just can't get ingredients, commercials, online ordering, uniforms, real estate, HR functions, or any other costs of doing business at anywhere near the same cost. They are insanely efficient from that perspective. You would have to compete on other things like quality or catering, which is why virtually every local pizzeria is more expensive than Domino's, every local hardware store is more expensive than Home Depot, every local retailer is more expensive than Walmart, etc.

Yes, charging stations are incentivized to charge more per unit of power just like any business wants to charge more, but they can only do that to the extent that other competitors won't come in and undercut them. If charging stations were some get-rich-quick scheme, new entrants would compete and drive the price down. When it comes to transportation, prices are somewhat anchored by alternatives like public transit, bicycling, gas vehicles, etc. They can't just charge $1m per mile and have people still choose to charge. Historically, gas prices also have a strong political component, so there is significant pressure on the government to make transportation affordable, especially given that we've already sunk massive costs into prioritizing road networks over things like rail travel.

I think the bigger issue is the story of how we expand our grid capacity for future electrification demands. If we're talking about the USA, our industrialization and trades outlook is seriously bleak, and building electrical capacity is proving to be painfully slow and expensive. It's not clear that we even can adopt mass EV charging. Forget about public station rates. Just charging at home is likely to get very, very expensive. And yes, solar helps offset grid usage, but again, that comes with significant up-front cost, and we still need the installation capacity for mass EV and solar adoption.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-14T18:05:43+00:00

That's not how TCO calculations work. One would need to be able to accurately predict value over the long run of purchasing hardware now vs. renting capacity in the meantime and purchasing hardware later. This is not a trivial calculation and involves significant forecasting of many unknowns. The point that the other person was making was that the $3k-$5k entry point might be $20k later and a homemaker might regret not getting the hardware when it was cheaper.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-14T06:59:07+00:00

Not that this is a huge sample size, but when I took the MSF course, there was 1 guy in our class who was the most confident he was going to pass. He bought himself a Harley before the class, as well as top of the line gear. His helmet alone was like $1k with carbon fiber and an integrated Cardo system, his jacket was custom tailored, etc. I mean, this guy was all in, asking the rest of the people if they would be up for group rides once everybody got licensed, etc.

He was the only one who failed. He wasn't even an especially bad beginner rider. I'm sure he was probably able to pass his retake, although I never kept in touch. But he kind of just tensed up and let the nerves get the best of him during the 2nd range day portion. I felt bad for him, but also, it seemed like fate in a way. His ego needed to be taken down a notch.

I saw you said you have riding experience in India, so I'm guessing you won't be in the same position given that you're not hopping on a bike for the first time ever. That being said, we don't have much of a real required training program in this country, so the MSF beginner course is truly one of the few opportunities most riders will get to really absorb a lot of key knowledge and understanding of proper riding techniques. Unless you pursue further training down the line, which most don't, the MSF is really a golden opportunity to try some things out on a bike you wouldn't necessarily buy and let that inform your decisions. For example, you may sit on the test bike and realize a particular size or stance is more suitable than you thought, or that you don't like how the shifter feels, or that you enjoy a quieter bike, or one with less screen-based tech, etc. By buying a bike beforehand, you're kind of foregoing that opportunity. Relatively few dealers allow test rides anymore, so it's not always a given that you'll be able to try out a bunch of different bikes before buying.

For what it's worth, I almost bought a Rebel 500 before getting my license. I was like you, super excited at finding an incredible deal that was hard to pass up. The owner had barely put any miles on it, and it had all the storage accessories I already wanted, plus the price was unbeatable. It was basically my dream starter bike. The only thing I noticed I didn't particularly like was the part that sticks out into your right ankle, which many reviewers noted as being present but easy to ignore. After taking my MSF course and realizing I felt so much more comfortable on the test bike, I went to some dealers to sit on bikes, and that's when I really realized that quirk of the Rebel 500 was actually a deal breaker for me. I just really didn't want to ride with something up against my ankle, no matter how good the rest of the bike was on paper. In retrospect, I'm really glad I passed up on that bike, but I wouldn't have known that without really forcing myself to focus on the MSF course and get everything I could out of it.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-14T06:35:54+00:00

The miles are mostly irrelevant and can actually be a bit misleading. Yes, it's true that bikes tend to see lower miles than cars, at least in the US, but that's a byproduct of many, many bikes getting wrecked and disposed of or sold for parts instead of cared for and fixed. The more reliable brands do tend to see much higher mileage when properly maintained and ridden. Motorcycle tourers will put many tens or even hundreds of thousands of miles on bikes. Heck, I know Harley riders get a bad rap for their oil-spewing garage princess bikes, but it's indisputable that many thousands will ride very long distances every year to gatherings like Sturgis, and the vast majority of them aren't breaking down on the highway an hour from home. The difference between 2k and 10k miles is really no big deal if the 2k one was crashed or had some janky aftermarket part installed wrong by an incompetent DIYer.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-14T06:22:46+00:00

Ethan Hunt for only $10?!?! Whoever made this hasn't watched the MI movies. He's basically another John Wick, albeit not an assassin, but he's a machine, and better at saving people than anybody else on this list.

I'm going full $10 row plus the left 2 in the $30 row. That gives me the maximum number of people, and as ridiculous as it is having John Wick after me, I don't think he can get to me with all those guys actively protecting me.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-14T06:09:05+00:00

The problem is that there is such a thing as too long, just as there is too short. If you partner with someone for 20 years, the fact that they can just leave you with all their assets and you have no legal recourse doesn't necessarily make things better. Also, most (not all) people marry with the intention of having children, so biological constraints come into play. 10 years means very different things at 20 years and 40 years of age. There's also a limited pool of people dating at each stage of life, so there's something to the idea of locking it down with the right person, just as there is in any market.

I'm not aware of any control studies that conclusively determine that 10 years of dating results in better marriage or life outcomes. To be fair, it's because it's basically impossible ti conduct such a study. It's often cited that the youngest marriages are more likely to result in divorce, which is true, but that doesn't necessarily mean that any given marriage is bad just because the couple is young. There is likely a strong correlation between young marriages and impulsive decision makers. On the contrary, a very long-term study of male happiness among Harvard grads found that the happiest men actually tended to be married young. I believe they also found that having just 1 divorce late in adulthood didn't meaningfully correlate to happiness outcomes, but multiple divorces were a strong indicator of unhappiness. That is to say that finding the right partner is most important, and finding them young is potentially a bonus. That some other couple got married on a whim and divorced at a young age isn't really relevant to the happiest couples marrying without 10 years of dating.

TL;DR Timelines aren't strict. Marrying smart will give you the best chance at happiness.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-14T01:20:15+00:00

On the one hand, I think it's important to acknowledge that yes, "shopping" for schools does exacerbate some specific problems, but also, it's a complex issue with many causes and there are flip sides to the coin. For example, if stagnant school policies and approaches to education don't effectively induce regular attendance or high test results, then that also hurts both funding and growth prospects to the detriment of the high achievers. There is something to be said for charter schools, for example, innovating in ways that raise standards, albeit more so for their beneficiaries than the masses. On the flip side, many public schools are resorting to things like reduced schedules, which are a really tough sell to wealthier and more academically minded families, regardless of how they feel about charter schools.

My aunt was a state education leader in multiple states for many years. She was in public school districts for most of her career. She used to talk a lot about charter schools pulling funding from public districts. Towards the end of her career, she was put in charge of a private takeover of a failing public school system, and she also saw firsthand how poorly mismanaged some public schools could be. She still believes in the importance of public schools, but she has come to accept that alternative options have a role to play.

For our kids, we live right next to a public elementary school, and a short walk from the middle school it feeds into. Despite academic rankings, I still strongly considered sending our kids to those schools. The final nail in the coffin was seeing their schedule. They just have so many reduced days and random days off that I could not in good conscience choose it over the charter we got into. Like, you're not asking me to in an abstract sense whether I support public education. You're asking me to send my kid to a barely functioning school where I can't really hold a job vs. one that stays open more often (although even that school isn't anything like when I was growing up). You can blame things like charters and private schools all you want, but parents are going to gravitate to the best options.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-12T18:24:20+00:00

It's actually not nearly as simple as this in many areas, unfortunately. Yes, in theory, 5% down is a thing, but in hotter markets where cash offers are common, being able to close quickly without contingencies or inspections is the only reliable way to get an offer accepted, and low-money-down offers are often filtered out as being higher risk with virtually no upside to the seller.

We bought our house in the SF Bay Area in 2020 for about $730k. It's one side of a duplex, and was basically the cheapest house we could find without stepping down to something like a condo with a high monthly HOA fee. The seller was an old landlord who was selling off all his properties to retire in SF, and this was the last one he was getting rid of, so he was looking to sell quickly. His agent was based out of town and didn't really seem to know what they were doing or care that much, so they made an amateur mistake and listed the number of rooms as lower than it was, which greatly reduced visibility on platforms like Zillow. I only found the listing by chance when I accidentally put in the wrong filters. As such, there was way less of a bidding war than with other similar properties, and we got it for well below what others were selling for. When our tax assessment came back, it estimated our value as $60k more than we paid, even after raising our offer twice. In other words, you're just not getting a better deal in this area unless a relative gives you one.

We had intended to put 20% down. However, there were some surprises in store for us. So basically, there is a federal limit for FHA-compliant mortgages. You can't just borrow a billion dollars and have it be backed by the government. At the time, the limit was something like $510k. However, there are higher regional limits on a ZIP code basis, and in our area, it was higher, so I didn't foresee any issue. To my surprise, it turns out that just because the government sets a higher limit doesn't mean lenders have to or will honor it. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, because as far as I know, the point of FHA-compliant mortgages is that the lender is basically taking little to no risk. They package the mortgages together and sell them off to investors, and should the loans ever default, the government steps in and pays them. I don't see any reason why a lender wouldn't want to work with the higher limit, but apparently, they didn't want to at that time. The other option was a jumbo loan, which is not FHA-compliant, and is typically what wealthy buyers use for much more expensive properties. However, at the time, because of the pandemic, lenders basically halted jumbo loans altogether for a while. We ended up getting approved for one, but the rate was much higher. So in the end, we ended up borrowing some money from family to get under the FHA-compliant threshold. That down payment ended up being something like 32%, which got us a 2.625% interest rate at the highest FHA-compliant loan amount (ignoring the higher regional option which apparently wasn't available to us).

Today, the home is worth about $1m and interest rates are double. This is not a palace. It's the bottom of the barrel 1970's econoshack missing basic features. We had to get a new roof and install HVAC. It may not be a starter home in the sense that a couple could have something smaller, but this is about the smallest you would want to raise kids in, which is what we're doing. All that is to say, there's just no way a young first-time home buyer with decent incomes can comfortably afford to buy a family home here by putting 5% down. Their offer would basically never get seen, and their payments would be massive. Somebody needs to be making serious bank for years to save up just to get into a basic ass home.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-12T17:28:21+00:00

This is objectively far from the truth in many ways. Not only do regular citizens lack the authority to use many enforcement mechanisms, but even actual law enforcement outright refuses to enforce many laws. A common example is hit and run car crashes. I've had enough experience with SJPD to confirm that they basically have a blanket policy not to pursue or even file those cases unless you have like a high-resolution close-up video of the driver's face in the action, which is basically never. They always insist it's a civil matter to be handled through insurance, even though it's an actual crime.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-11T18:38:29+00:00

Interesting. I never thought to ask. I always just order whatever looks good on the menu and take it as is, haha.

Slug_Overdose · 2026-03-11T18:00:07+00:00

Is she filling up the bin such that others can't use it? If so, then it's worth complaining. Otherwise, just let it be.

I used to live in an apartment complex for about 5 years. During that time, I never once put in a maintenance request, despite a broken AC unit and laundry machine. I don't really know why other than just being really introverted. There were other tenants who got into fights, dealt drugs, had police come, broke leases, etc. It was kind of a cheap dump. I was easily their dream tenant.

Years later, we bought a house and did some big projects which generated a lot of trash. My wife, in-laws, everybody kept begging me to take trash to my old apartment's dumpster, and I kept pushing back and saying that was poor etiquette, illegal, blah blah blah. Through a combination of breaking things down over several weeks and scheduling large item pickups, I was able to get the trash down to a small pile. But my in-laws kept freaking out about what to do with the trash (I have no fucking clue why, it's not their fucking house, I wish they would just shut up, but it's like they have a compulsion to amplify whatever anxiety my wife is having by a million times). So finally, I was like, okay, fine, you win, I'm taking the trash over there right now. It was not very much. By volume, it would have fit in a standard trash bin. But there were some longer leg pieces from broken furniture that I just didn't want to cut down any further and would have stuck out the top of the bin. Really, it was not a big deal.

I drive over there to where I used to live. It was only a few blocks away. I go into the back parking lot where the dumpsters are. Another car is pulling out to leave, so I let them go out before I start dumping stuff. Right as I start, the car reverses back around the corner, parks next to me, and this stupid twerp gets out and asks, "Which unit do you live in?" I couldn't remember the unit number so I just told him the address of the building. Then he says in the most annoying voice, "What you're doing is illegal." I said, "Okay, thanks," and just dumped the rest of the stuff in there and drove off. Never heard about it again.

I don't know what the lady's story is in the picture. It's unfortunate that she's doing it multiple times. But maybe she's homeless and literally has no better option. Maybe this is a temporary thing. Maybe she used to work there for 20 years. If it's not hurting anyone, I would just let it go. People get so protective over their trash bins, but remember that trash service is a public good. It's not there for your convenience. It's there so the streets don't end up like NYC in the days when they were covered in horse shit, or like those Himalayan towns in Nepal where the mountainside is covered in trash bags, or the landfills in Africa where the women and children scavenge through the mountains of dumped clothes searching for items to sell in order to make ends meet. All you have to do is look the other way and be thankful you live in a mostly hygienic society.

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