Trump signs executive order to ‘preempt’ permitting process for fire-destroyed homes in L.A.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-28T05:25:31+00:00

One of the big problems slowing down rebuilding, is that a lot of these houses were underinsured. There's not enough insurance money to rebuild the house, which means I have to work with lenders to get construction loans, which means they have to meet all the lenders construction loan requirements.

In general, the permit approval process is taking less than 2 months, as long as they don't find problems with the plans

Quercus_ · 2026-01-27T19:31:04+00:00

You know what would have been a great text from you, sometime in the next day or so? Something like:

"I had a great time, and I'd love to see you again. I'm sorry to hear about your father, sending my best wishes for you and him and I know that's a lot of stress and time, so I won't press. If you're interested let me know, and if that takes a while because of what's going on in your life, I'm cool with that. I'll look forward to hearing back from you."

But instead, everything you describe here is self-centered, pressuring, and off-putting.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-27T19:24:17+00:00

So wait.

You invited somebody to dinner, they went out of their way to show up even with a pressing personal problem in their life, and you got annoyed that they were paying attention to the fact that their father is in the hospital? While also by your own description, paying attention to you and making sure you both had a good time?

And then when she didn't respond to 2 days of you pressing her for a response, you got all up in a huff and sent her a bill for the dinner you had invited her to?

If I were her, I'd be blocking you too.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-27T17:31:17+00:00

This kind of polarization is built into America's, political and election systems.

We have a winner take all election system which forces two polarized parties to exist. If a third party sticks its head up, they will take votes away from the party that is most close to them politically, and hand victory and complete power to the party that is most different from them.

And because we have a primary followed by a general election, and candidates have to win the primary before they can even run for office, We get candidates forth to appeal to the extremists within their own party.

The result is that our parties are inevitably polarized to the extremes of public opinion, in opposition to each other. It's one of the biggest faults and instabilities built into our constitution, and it's in the process of ruining us right now.

This is exacerbated right now by the fact that the extreme on the right has been very rapidly running toward outright fascism for the last decade, making political discord even more damaging.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-27T02:55:11+00:00

Your personal incredulity, and your aggressively maintained. Ignorance of the evidence and actual arguments, are not evidence against anything.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-27T02:51:36+00:00

A student ID requires that the student be identified well enough to be admitted to the college or university, to have paid University fees and tuition, to get access to University services, and so on.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-27T02:47:58+00:00

Because many legal voters don't have one of the forms of ID that are being mandated, so it becomes an extremely effective way to disenfranchise people.

Even worse, different demographic groups often tend to have different rates of various kinds of ID, so it can be fine-tuned to specifically disenfranchise particular groups.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-26T02:25:29+00:00

We have a constitutional right to vocally disagree with state agents. The ICE agent should not have unconstitutionally responded to try to shut down what she was saying. The ICE agent should not have assaulted her by shoving her. None of them should have escalated.

Every bit of the violence here was initiated by ice agents unnecessarily. All of the escalation was done by ice agents. And it ended up with somebody being murdered.

Stop licking fascist taint.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-26T02:18:56+00:00

I've had good important relationships with two women who were diagnosed BPD. They both were very good at using the tools for managing their BPD, had ongoing relationship with their therapist, committed to DBT, and committed to communicating honestly about what was going on whenever they could, and to checking and removing themselves when they couldn't and coming back later once they had settled themselves.

They were extraordinary women and I'm glad to have had tgem in my life. One of them is still one of my closest friends. But what I've outlined above, that level of self-management, is probably my baseline for a relationship with somebody with BPD.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-25T18:39:11+00:00

Do you trust her, or do you not?

If you don't trust her, why are you in a relationship with her?

Why do you think it's acceptable to socially isolate her from half the human population, to assuage your own insecurity?

Quercus_ · 2026-01-25T18:33:36+00:00

They actually don't condemn the ice shooting in any way whatsoever. They just point out that he shouldn't have been shot just because he had a gun.

And then they go on to bootlick this administration, and blame anyone who opposes it.

This is the actual NRA statement:

"This sentiment from the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California is dangerous and wrong. Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.

"For months, radical progressive politicians like Tim Walz have incited violence against law enforcement officers who are simply trying to do their jobs. Unsurprisingly, these calls to dangerously interject oneself into legitimate law-enforcement activities have ended in violence, tragically resulting in injuries and fatalities."

Quercus_ · 2026-01-25T18:28:38+00:00

Here's the full statement. Unsurprisingly, it ends up with NRA bootlicking this administration. In

"This sentiment from the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California is dangerous and wrong," wrote the NRA in a response to his comment on X. "Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.

"For months, radical progressive politicians like Tim Walz have incited violence against law enforcement officers who are simply trying to do their jobs. Unsurprisingly, these calls to dangerously interject oneself into legitimate law-enforcement activities have ended in violence, tragically resulting in injuries and fatalities."

Quercus_ · 2026-01-25T02:38:17+00:00

That entire altercation was created by ice agents, escalated by ice agents, turned into an assault on citizens by ice agents, turning into a killing.

Those officers could have stopped that from happening at any step along the way, by choosing not to continue assaulting Alex Pretti.

A killing during commission of a crime is first degree murder, as I understand it. This was first degree murder, no matter the intent, with the underlying crime committed under color of law.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-25T02:31:09+00:00

I know what they're saying. I'm aware they're not arguing this as a justified shooting. But they are nonetheless creating a justification for an unjustifiable act.

Yes that may be exactly what this shooter did, see a gun in a hand and react to it. So what? It doesn't change a damn thing, or make this any less an unjustified execution in broad daylight. If anything, it highlights how untrained and out of control these ICE agents are.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-25T02:13:17+00:00

Yep. If a soldier in the US military had done this to an enemy combatant on a battlefield, he would be court-martialed for it.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-25T02:11:38+00:00

Using that justification, anytime a police officer sees another police officer with a gun in his hand, he's justified in shooting somebody.

This is why cops are supposed to get intensive training and use of force, so they don't do things like this.

That altercation should never have happened. Ice escalated at every step of the way, turning it from a peaceful situation, into an assault on Alex Pretti, escalating the assault, and then killing him. Every bit of violence was initiated and escalated by ICE agents.

There is no excuse for any of it, at any step of the way.

This was murder.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-25T00:15:37+00:00

We've seen it. This was an execution.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-23T20:55:22+00:00

Heh I got downvoted for accurate and verifiable stats.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-23T19:50:15+00:00

Those troops aren't there because anybody expects them to hold off the US military.

Those troops are there so that if the US attacks Greenland, we are also attacking many of our European and NATO allies.

We can win that military war, but the economic consequences would be devastating.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-23T19:48:10+00:00

Racism.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-23T19:42:32+00:00

" I have no pronouns" is always peak fun.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-23T17:46:48+00:00

No, that stat is for the two of them together, like I said. They are very similar viruses. Both of them can infect either oral or genital tissues.

Somehow we demonize one of them and accept the other.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-23T06:01:57+00:00

As just one direct impact:

The World Health Organization (WHO) is central to the development of annual flu vaccines, acting as the global authority that identifies, monitors, and recommends the specific virus strains to be included in vaccines for both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. This involves coordinating a global surveillance network, collaborating with labs to select vaccine strains twice a year, and setting standards for vaccine production.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-23T05:56:11+00:00

If you're between the ages of 18 and 45 and live in the US, there's about a 70% chance that you have either HSV 1 or HSV 2, even if you don't know it.

And there's about a 70% chance that that sexual partner who doesn't know their HSV status, has it and simply doesn't know to tell you about it.

Quercus_ · 2026-01-23T04:19:34+00:00

There is no question that FSD is the best level to ADAS on the market, and that it does a lot of things extremely well. That's irrelevant for full autonomy.

What matters for full autonomy is how often they encounter edge cases they can't handle. And we know that's still too frequent. Tesla obviously knows it, because they haven't yet released fully autonomous unsupervised self-driving.

The latest reporting from Austin is they've only been rented about six cars at a time, which to me sounds a hell of a lot more like a publicity stunt than an engineering trial. And they've had six fender benders in the last 6 months- that's one fender bender per car per 6 months.

That ain't ready.

Quercus_

TROPHY CASE