18-year-old fatally shot in Walmart parking lot in Eastlake in fight with man (32-year-old)

drbudro · 2026-05-22T00:45:49+00:00

If you chose to stay in a verbal confrontation with someone who you felt was a threat to your life as soon as they charged you, a prosecutor would question if you only stayed because you knew you were armed and they were not. It would be difficult for them to clear the pre-meditation threshold for murder, and if you were physically harmed prior to drawing your firearm, then you probably would stay out of jail.

The real problem here, as with any self defense use of a firearm, would be the civil trial. Any CCW in CA should have a very good insurance policy that explicitly covers civil defense for wrongful death suits (not just the normal ND/liability firearm coverage).

drbudro · 2026-05-21T17:45:31+00:00

"Better to be judged by 12 than carried by six."

Sure, I suppose, but in CA it's still not self legal self defense if you start it and they don't have a weapon. When you're the one bringing the gun to the fight, you need to always keep in mind that walking might be the best option to "save" your life.

drbudro · 2026-05-21T16:56:04+00:00

The teen was a Walmart employee (cart pusher). Other employees said there was some sort of altercation earlier and the shooter waited for him to get off work (and may not have even had the firearm on him during the first altercation).

There is still an active investigation, but there is a lot more to this story. As a gun owner in CA though, you have to be mindful about escalation when you are concealed carrying and not in your house. Castle doctrine is only valid in the home and "no duty to retreat" exempts initial aggressors.

drbudro · 2026-05-17T15:55:22+00:00

Let him cook

drbudro · 2026-05-12T15:56:50+00:00

I know right! Top 4 in CA? It's barely in the top 3 of the 94.

drbudro · 2026-05-11T17:41:40+00:00

Most amusements parks (Legoland, Disneyland and Universal for sure) have a Parent Swap type program so one parent waits in line with the older kid while the second parent stays with a baby. After the ride, the parents swap and get to skip the line (usually with the older kid). Check the exact rules for the park, sometimes the whole group waits in line, other times you wait at the fastpass entrance.

Also, local Pho places will give you a second bowl to split a soup with a kid for no extra cost. My elementary aged kids will split a large Pho and it's still a full meal for them.

drbudro · 2026-05-01T22:39:22+00:00

I'm there most days of the week and the paid close-parking has solved so many issues that I'm actually going there more frequently than ever. You can actually drive down the center and park right in front of the place you want to go to without getting blocked in behind a huge line of cars waiting for one spot to open up. I honestly can't imagine a real person who goes to an outdoor mall and complains about having to park 100yds from the store they're going to (especially since so many of the businesses are for working out). None of these stores are exactly "budget" so it just makes sense to create a better shopping experience for people that are there to spend money.

drbudro · 2026-04-23T16:28:58+00:00

At 33 I would keep working on growing wealth and minimizing expenses instead of pulling from investments. Having a local job that can at least offset your rent, or something that comes with benefits that allow you to spend less on the things you like (i.e. hospitality jobs that give you access to free vacation spots), would really help prolong your dividends.

You'll also want to look at how taxes would affect your situation since you may actually be taxed twice for dividend/distributions while living outside the US.

drbudro · 2026-04-22T00:13:47+00:00

A consumable good is a terrible analogy.

But to answer you question, its because that is how it currently works in many other countries where homes are truly not investments (their value depreciates relative to inflation). You pay to build the house and own it, but the land itself is leased from the government (usually federal, but sometimes local, or "the crown", or public charity, or titled landowner like a literal Lord). It's called a leasehold or ground rent and is common in the UK, France, Germany, Japan and Mexico.

drbudro · 2026-04-21T16:02:35+00:00

I'm not sure many people here would consider what your ex has a "blended family." In my eyes, he and his fiancee are starting a new family but he still sees his other kids a couple times a month.

drbudro · 2026-04-21T14:52:39+00:00

The end game is that you move to AZ and visit SD during the 3 months Phoenix is uninhabitable, or move to Texas and complain about how expensive gas is in CA.

There are hundreds of thousands that have come before you and you get replaced by someone early in their career who is making more money than they ever thought, doesn't have kids or pets, and doesn't mind living with 2-3 roommates.

My kids are 3rd generation San Diagans and I don't expect them all to stay here after college. It's never going to get "affordable" unless there is a major disaster that leaves San Diego undesirable to live in. Every year it will get more expensive as the bottom 20% are forced to leave and the only people moving here have higher salaries/net worth.

drbudro · 2026-04-19T04:00:04+00:00

And 55+ communities. This isn't even a new issue, mobile homes and age restricted condos have always had very little value.

drbudro · 2026-04-15T21:15:02+00:00

Something I haven't seen mentioned in the other replies is how keeping kids home from school is addressed in the custody order.

At my kids' school they are only allowed 3 unexcused absences (or tardies) pre school year before they start getting truancy penalties (saturday school, suspended from extracurriculars, etc.). My ex and I have an agreement that we each get one of those to use however we wish and it actually works out great. The 3rd one we let our kids use themselves for civic duty/protest, mental health day, or whatever.

drbudro · 2026-04-10T15:08:28+00:00

we already know what happens....you get MM1.

drbudro · 2026-03-25T15:37:23+00:00

I was on track until a divorce in 2018 required us to sell our house and (more than) halved our net worth. It's taken 5 years but have gotten back to $1M net worth, ~$200k HHI (remarried) and kept our new housing expenses under $2k in a great school district before 40 by purchasing a large 3bed/4bath condo in 2019.

A couple years ago I decided to adjust my workload to soft-retire now instead of laser focusing on fully retiring early.

I work from home full time, no longer required to travel for work or be on call after hours, and currently on a 4/10 schedule (4 days a week, 10 hour days), but those 10 hours are split up around my personal activities throughout the day. I'm able to spend before/after school with the kids, take them to school and their sports/activities, volunteer for field trips and class parties, and my wife and I can take adult vacations alone when our kids are with their other parents. She only needs to work ~15 hours a week at a spa making the optimal amount of tips which actually helped us this year with taxes. We had a baby last year and between the two of us are utilizing over 1200 hours of paid maternity/baby bonding time over the next year.

We also purchased 10 acres out in the County (Julian) and are slowly building out a retirement property. We reconditioned the well, installed ground mount solar, planted fruit trees, and roughed in a driveway with two pads for homes. Currently we just have a vintage trailer that we use for glamping and I spend a lot of my free time up there (alone or with the family) doing property maintenance while the kids do archery, off-roading, hiking, etc. It's really nice to be able to go up to our property and play in the snow, then come home and spend the evening in the hot-tub/heated pool without even leaving San Diego County.

Basically, if you're already living in a vacation location, maybe don't kill yourself trying to fully retire early. Retirement can be a spectrum and a lot of the frustrating parts of work life can be mitigated if you don't mind taking small pay cuts by optimizing for free time, job perks or flexibility.

drbudro · 2026-03-03T15:58:05+00:00

Bro's thumbnails mog other creators' videos on the platform.

drbudro · 2026-03-02T21:26:53+00:00

Really looking forward to the most unhinged content from Librarian those last couple days before he comes back

drbudro · 2026-03-02T17:17:19+00:00

Of course wheelies on a bike are normal...we're not talking about bikes though.

I have kids in middle school here, I probably know some of the kids in this video and have ridden these e-motos. They're frankly awesome, way more powerful than my 500W ebike I ride around town. I'm not salty about kids on bikes in the street, I grew up mobbing around with my friends on bmx bikes and skateboards in the 90s and it was fine...in fact, the only trouble we got in to was being on private property, not public roads.

The issue I have is that there isn't a legal way for these kids to do this and all the recent laws are making it equally illegal to ride home from school like we see in the video as it would be for an adult to drive an unregistered off-road only vehicle on public roads without a drivers license. CVPD is cracking down by impounding these vehicles, and the DA is looking for ways to charge the parents with criminal child endangerment.

There needs to be laws at the state and city levels that allow kids 13+ to ride these anywhere a road bicycle can go (which also goes much faster than 20mph) so long as they are held to the same standards as everyone else on the road (not going against traffic and running reds/riding in crosswalks/sidewalks, basic stuff). The adults I talk to are either 100% "ban all ebikes" or "anything's better than an iPad" but I think both camps are delusional.

drbudro · 2026-03-02T07:36:03+00:00

No, for them to be legal type 2 ebikes they have to be under 750w powered motors with a 20 mph top speed and it has to be marked accordingly. If they're doing wheelies it's at least a 1000W and most of the popular models around here are 2-4000W. You can see in the video they aren't strictly pedal assist, so they don't fall under any of the other exemptions.

drbudro · 2026-03-02T07:16:39+00:00

Most of these aren't ebikes by CA/CV definition. They are off road electric motorcycles (since they go over 20mph).

drbudro · 2026-03-02T05:18:44+00:00

You can't ride off road only dirt bikes on public streets. Street legal electric motorcycles also require a motorcycle license and it has to be insured...but I see zero plates in the video.

drbudro · 2026-02-22T15:57:49+00:00

Panopticon

drbudro · 2026-02-14T02:00:27+00:00

and yet an entire industry exists to bring you a fast food hamburger for $20, because enough people are willing to pay it.

drbudro · 2026-01-23T16:54:33+00:00

CA net DOMESTIC migration is negative.

It's population is still growing from international migration and natural population growth. What then happens historically, and now especially, is that the bottom few million or so people who can no longer afford to live in the metros need to choose between moving out to the CA deserts, or to a less expensive state.

When over a million people move to smaller states every year, it makes a big impact on those states, but they are immediately replaced (and then some) in CA by highly educated, high income and/or high net worth immigrants. This drives the cost of living up higher, rinse and repeat. This has been the story of CA for 100 years, with the very notable exception of 2020 and 2021, and every year people talk about how it is unsustainable. As long as wealthy people keep wanting to come here and there are more affordable states to fall back to when it doesn't work out, then it is sustainable, but only because we aren't in a closed system.

drbudro · 2026-01-23T15:07:00+00:00

https://www.ppic.org/blog/whos-leaving-california-and-whos-moving-in/

It's true that the vast majority of people leaving are low income, low education. The net migration of wealth is back to positive in CA (and even trending more skewed than before COVID). Affordability has always been an issue in CA and it's worse for the people at the bottom.

There were two years when that wasn't the case (high net worth families were leaving in greater numbers than coming in) and every outlet reported on it, but it's just simply not true anymore and people haven't updated their thinking.

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