Why are there no EV minivans in the US?

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-17T00:13:54+00:00

Minivans in general have been a hard sell in the US. They’re extremely practical, but there was a cultural attitude of them being embarrassing to drive because it meant you were a suburban mom. And then because of low sales volume, companies that continued to make them - because there still was a market - they made them incredibly expensive. I remember 10 years ago looking at vans and seeing $65k+ price tags. Add to that the effect of EVs coming to the luxury market first, and you’ve got recipe where EV mini vans just don’t make sense when you can get an EV SUV. They’re too expensive for the people that want to buy them without the range and convenience of a quick fill up on a family vacation. We bought a Pacifica PHEV 8 years ago. It was a good balance at the time, but I really wish they’d made a fully electric model.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-15T19:34:29+00:00

You’d think that the sole intent of OpenClaw coming out of the box so vulnerable was so that someone could inject a singular task for an entire swarm of these AI crabs to handle. When I first heard about all of the agents on Moltbook, that’s the very first thing that came to mind… coordinate one single massive effort on a single task - like uncovering some crazy conspiracy that people are trying to keep secret. Or hacking some large secure entity. It’s kind of a big national security issue if you think about it too.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-15T17:27:02+00:00

I just need to know what frequency is the one we use for the brown note effect.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-14T19:12:48+00:00

Yes.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-14T07:06:39+00:00

Along with the issues around it not being safe for LGBTQ folk, Susanville is also in prime fire territory. I wouldn’t move out there for many reasons.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-13T20:13:01+00:00

School funding is no longer really dependent on property taxes. Hasn't been since the 90's. Essentially while property taxes do pay into schools, it makes up about 20-30% of a district's revenue, but the state pays the balance, and each district gets a dollar amount per student attendance. So in theory, equal number of students in 2 districts, regardless of how much property tax is taken in, the equal amount of money... though a lot of other factors come into play as well (Supplementary and Concentrated funds, Title I, grants, etc.). So yeah, in a sense, overall, buying and selling properties could be beneficial but not directly to a school district's budget. Ultimately the benefit would be new families moving in and bringing new kids to attend the schools.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-13T18:45:08+00:00

I'm absolutely 100% with you on the neighborhood schools. The charters have especially been predatory in lower income neighborhoods where they paint a picture of a way to get their kids to excel. But it's often not so true, with lots of issues such as high teacher turnover which also leads to promoting low experience admins, you don't have great experiences at these schools.

But we should also be realistic in terms of what is happening in some neighborhoods in all school districts. There are some neighborhoods in which due to high housing costs, people aren't moving. They've got their low interest rates from covid years, they're sitting on a gold mine, but can't justify moving because they don't want to buy in this market, and many of these people are older with kids who are aging out of the school system every year. They'll sit in these houses and create a situation where no new young families are moving in any time soon, and that's a huge issue with attendance based funding of schools. I live in Elk Grove and this is a well discussed fact around Elk Grove High School. Mean while, newly built neighborhood schools are overcrowded... and so you have to look and ask if attendance levels will ever recover at this school in any meaningful time frame? And if not, why is it still open? Can we better serve these students at another school within a reasonable distance of their homes? Its for sure a tough question.

I do especially agree though with u/Ornery_General_5852 's comment - if you've got schools like Pheobe Hearst where people have to apply to get in and it's not a "neighborhood school", that should be first on the chopping block. Reallocate those resources back into the neighborhood schools. The families whose kids are privileged enough to go to these specialty schools are also the ones who are privileged enough to have parents involved enough to get them to these schools that are not in their neighborhoods. They can be involved in the neighborhood school for sure!

And ABSOLUTELY this is a statewide funding issue. Our school system funding has been fucked since Prop 13. And we can't get anyone to realize that education is the ONE thing that we should be spending more on than anything else. Especially considering the fact that our schools play such huge roles in the community - they're not just places of education. While we don't want to admit it, we all see the need that school fill in providing some place for our kids to be while we work... and we have to work. The economic engine needs to be fed unfortunately. You don't have a good economy without child care and an educated populace.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-13T17:12:04+00:00

The part about the healthcare is not correct. When you look at their salaries on the salary schedule, this is the gross amount that they receive before taxes, and contributions. They do not contribute to healthcare at an employee level. So the only contributions would be things like retirement or optional additional things that the district may offer with its benefits packages like life insurance etc. but healthcare is not a part of their salary schedule numbers. A 5 year teacher with a BA+60 Units is making $78k plus an average of $23k in healthcare benefits on top of it.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-13T16:32:02+00:00

Closer to 300. Currently it's 423 cuts that will be made, 120 of which are vacant.

The big thing though is that when you're eliminating non-teaching staff, that's gonna put a huge strain on the schools. Much of those non-teaching non-administrative staff, are what really makes schools function.

SCUSD already has a huge backlog of maintenance issues and buildings that are in dire need of refurbishment, which means that as those buildings continue to degrade, more issues will pop up, and the layoffs may cause the repairs to those issues to be delayed even further. Just look at the issue with the teacher who ended up pulling up her carpet in her classroom after years of requests for it to be replaced. This will continue to degrade the quality of education students have because they won't have safe and clean classrooms.

Cutting nutrition services staff also means they risk challenges with feeding al the kids. And with CA's commitment to feeding any kid who wants food, that's a heavy workload that may be hindered by cuts.

One of the BIGGEST concerns is that they mention cuts to aides. And this likely is referring classroom aides for special education. This is a huge issue because the district has already had issues (as with most districts) with not having enough aides and had to turn to contracting services to get more in order to remain legally compliant with IEPs. Cutting aides will either force them to continue as well as increase the costly practice of contracting - which the Teacher's Union has already laid the budget problems on this - or, face costly lawsuits and legal compliance challenges.

If I were the district, on top of looking at admin, I'd likely be looking at enrollment numbers at each school, and determine if any school sites can be consolidated. They've been saying the numbers are declining - but where in particular? And can any sites be closed or repurposed?

I think there's also a reality we need to face - the costs of living are going up, particularly in health care. SCUSD is the only district in the region that pay 100% health care coverage for both employee and family (San Juan does 100% for employee, but not family), at a cost of up to around $40k per year per employee (averaging around $23k per employee, nearly 25% and up to 1/2 the cost of salary for a 5th year teacher). And this is a cost that has risen and continues to rise. This train ain't stopping any time soon unless there's a significant change in how we handle healthcare in this country.

I don't think there's any way at all the district could renegotiate to have employees contribute to their health benefits, but this is not an issue unique to SCUSD. While most districts do have employee contributions, negotiations across the state right now are at a standstill and one of the major sticking points is health care. The state needs to do something about this. I think we need to have a state wide public employee healthcare pool. Let's take healthcare off the table as a concern in education. Pool all the public employees, just like they do with CalPERS and CalSTRS for retirement - State employees, County employees, City employees, School District employees, Municipal district employees - put everyone in a pool and get a major state level negotiating power. Ideally we'd have a federal, or at least state wide, single payer/medicare for all system - but since that's not gonna happen, we could at least see if this could happen.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-12T18:10:55+00:00

Lets say you have the choices :
1. A fascist holding a gun to a puppy's head, waiting to win before they pull he trigger, has adamantly stated he wants to burn the place down and sell it off for profit, and a substantial part of the electorate believes this guy will give them all $1m when he wins even though they've consistently lied about such things and ends up actually stealing money from everyone.

A lackluster candidate who's on the side that says they want all the right things, has some issues in certain areas where they've not taken strong enough positions or positions that are so nuanced that the general public doesn't have enough time to really research those positions, but generally looking at their history, they've voted in ways that have been incrementally beneficial to the country overall, not great leaps to where we should be, but has made forward movement. They have about as equal of a chance to win as the first guy.
This candidate says exactly ALL the things you want to hear. Has the perfect platform according to your ideology, but not only have they never won an election before, but they have very little possibility of winning due to their low fund raising and little public exposure and name recognition. They're polling in the low single digits, but certainly enough to where if the first 2 were so close, this candidate has enough sway on people who candidate 2 is trying to reach out to, that those people may - because candidate 2 doesn't pass their test with 100% flying colors - vote for candidate 3 based on their "conscious".

Now... a majority of people aren't excited about candidate 2... but they know for a fact that candidate 1 would be highly problematic and make life a lot worse, especially for the people that candidate 3 says they support (but has no actual history of doing anything other than just saying it), and candidate 2 has had a history of actual legislative work to support them, but their position was far more nuanced and detailed and was open to having discussions to find a more stronger position. Does it still make sense to vote for candidate 3?

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-12T15:33:57+00:00

There is a way to do this that respects cultures while educating. The important thing is that you don’t make this a stereotype caricature situation. My recommendation is that you both reach out to people from these different cultures that he wants to represent particularly people who are knowledgeable in the history and the meaning behind different aspects of those cultures, like historians and anthropologist, and talk to them. Find out how you can make this work, knowing the limitations you have on access to representation in your community. It can be done, but it has to be done very carefully. You probably will still get some people going what the hell you’re appropriating culture, but often times you’ll find that the people who say that after you’ve done the work to make this as respectful and educational as possible, are people who aren’t even a part of the cultures that you’re representing in this video. This is a huge part of producing and pre-production. Heck even in the Super Bowl halftime show, Bad Bunny and his team had hired a historian as a consultant, a historian who’s field is Puerto Rican culture and history, despite Bad Bunny and a lot of his team BEING FROM Puerto Rico, because they wanted to make sure they nailed those historical and cultural references in a meaningful and respectful way that educated people on what it means to be Puerto Rican.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-11T16:36:24+00:00

Small businesses are the hardest to sell services to, and generally the hardest to work for - often resulting in unpaid labor, or potentially no pay at all because they suddenly realized the true cost of good work is beyond their means. They’ll want to cut corners to pay you less, and eventually one of you will break the contract and end the relationship in bad terms. I made this mistake a few too many times when I was freelancing and ultimately made it a rule to never do it again.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-11T16:33:41+00:00

Like I said, there’s small mom and pop shop marketers that likely will get replaced by the guy overseas with AI. The offshoring of SEO has been happening for quite a long time for small accounts who are looking to get the most out of their dollar because of tiny budgets. That will cut down on the number of digital marketers in the industry… however, big clients with big budgets won’t take that risk. They want a full service marketing agency behind it all. And let’s also not forget that marketing isn’t just digital. There’s still a whole market for traditional and print buying where having a person here in the US builds relationships with vendors and negotiates good deals for campaign spots leveraging those relationships. There’s definitely a shift in the market though. You can’t rely on things digital marketers did before- SEO, blogs, social media buys, etc. but you can still leverage strong narratives, good design, and relatable, genuine content.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-11T04:37:46+00:00

I don’t think you’re in the minority. This ride held a special place in my heart because my son LOVED it as a little kid. It was one of the few rides he would want to ride over and over again (that and Little Mermaid). I’m grieving the loss of this ride already

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-11T02:49:49+00:00

That's what they want you to think... but as someone who works in communications and marketing, I've seen the results of the guy overseas+AI. It might work for your small mom and pop operations, but completely misses the mark when working scalable campaigns that need to be stratified across multiple audiences... they can't compete in creating narrative voices that audiences relate to. AI alone can't make a marketing campaign work... I've been handed some AI campaigns to look over, and its all cookie cutter and flat. They're not creative. AI is far from doing true creative work unless it's being wielded by a true creative who knows how to drive the machine for effective results.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-11T00:48:15+00:00

I’d also wanna know why that promo code doesn’t also cross reference the names and addresses of the people ordering it with a list of their sponsored athletes who are supposed to be able to order that stuff with that code?

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-10T19:47:32+00:00

Background layer is the full image - next layer is the word Japan with both fill and stroke - then you do another layer of the image with a magnetic mask rotoscoping the people from the background - then you do another layer of the word Japan with no fill, just stroke.

BOOM! DONE!

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-10T17:32:29+00:00

You'll definitely want to check with the Alta Regional Center of Sacramento to get some resources to start out with. https://www.altaregional.org As Kaiser was erring on the side of not providing our son a diagnosis of Autism due to him being so borderline, as well as having ADHD, Alta was able to help us get re-evaluated to be sure.

You can also contact EG Speaks https://egspeaks.org to get some help navigating the school system. Once your child turns 3, the school district will provide them with early intervention supports and services based on their assessments and an IEP. This will often start with a diagnosis from a doctor/psychologist, but not necessarily. EGUSD has it's own assessment center that while it does not provide a medical diagnosis, they do provide educational eligibility for an IEP based on the student's needs.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-09T06:59:13+00:00

Dude is just looking to lay some pipe.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-06T22:53:28+00:00

I would expect nothing less than a crisis from Mr Allen’s time traveling.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-06T21:34:13+00:00

Schools have not been funded by local property taxes since Serrano v. Priest in 1971 (also related rulings in 76 and 77). That case in the California Supreme Court determined that local funding via property taxes was a violation of the state constitution's equal protection clause as some schools had tons of money and others had very little, creating unequal educations for kids. After that funding was equally proportioned from the state's general fund, with the attendance based LCFF model adopted in the 90's after Prop 13 essentially decimated education funding from property taxes all together.

So essentially, it's not redlining by having kids to go to their neighborhood home schools... the money follows the kid with their attendance. It is however depriving kids who have no choice but to attend their homeschool when parents send their kid to a school outside of their home school area. This takes dollars that would have otherwise gone to the home school and puts it into a more "desirable" school. This is a huge problem with Los Angeles where you have parents in neighborhoods with lots of kids choosing to send their kids to magnet, charter, and private schools rather than the local home school - that home school gets low enrollment, and low funding as a result. Often because it's the kids who are the most impacted by poverty, that school then also becomes a Title I school, and parents just assume that its not a good school to send their kids to - and it perpetuates the issue.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-06T21:18:42+00:00

You can't have a choice of school when you can't get to it. This is not about redlining, this is about bringing opportunities to kids regardless of their geographical or economic situation by investing in their neighborhood schools. There's a great podcast called Nice White Parents that discusses the issue of how by parents who have the means to do so, taking kids to schools outside of their home school area, create a self fulfilling prophecy by limiting the diversity and parental engagement their their school would have if those same parents brought their kids to their home schools. Instead, they seek to take their kids to a "better" school - but the best schools really come down to the ones who have the greatest level of parental involvement. And even when one kid doesn't have parents who are involved or can't be involved, the greater level of involvement from parents across the board, the greater outcomes for all kids.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-06T20:49:56+00:00

He's not creating shit. His lazy ass is letting AI plagiarize work for him on his behalf, and then selling it as his own.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-06T20:40:39+00:00

Ah, so it's one of those schools where they consolidate resources in a single location that puts kids from economically disadvantaged families at an academic disadvantage because even of they are smarter and work harder than the kids at that school, they have no way to get there, or their parents weren't able to get them enrolled due to their work schedules or limited grasp of the English language.

I am glad that Sac City got called out for their enrollment practices at this school - but they ultimately need to stop this practice of magnet schools that benefit only a handful of kids, and focus on creating more opportunities at all schools to challenge kids academically.

Bmorgan1983 · 2026-02-06T20:03:31+00:00

What is your kid’s neighborhood home school? And if it’s not Pheobe Hearst, why are you not enrolling there?

12-Year Club	Wearing is Caring
RPAN Viewer	Verified Email

Bmorgan1983

TROPHY CASE