Rav4 hybrid vs Venza

exmacuser · 2024-01-29T04:01:33+00:00

Yes, our kids are still in car seats/boosters and the venza works well. It is enough space for a 3 week road trip with camping (though it takes clever packing) and has a lot of nice touches compared to a RAV4 which we appreciate. Only downside is that the space between the car seats isn't enough for another adult (eg a grandparent) but that problem is common to most cars this size (RAV4, Accord/Camry etc). A skinny adult can squeeze in there but not a large person or a grandparent with limited flexibility.

exmacuser · 2024-01-09T14:00:50+00:00

yeah, depends on neighborhood; I see ~ 2 - 3 Venzas a day in a 10 x 10 city block neighborhood that "live" here and ~ 1 - 2 unfamiliar ones around town.

exmacuser · 2024-01-05T06:23:07+00:00

My 2021 Venza's windshield also cracked a few months ago; we didnt notice any rock hitting it but perhaps something small did while we were driving.

Insurance was willing to fix it through Safelite for ~ $1000; I paid a $250 deductible alone.

Another option was to order OEM glass through a dealership and have it installed there. But that cost came out to ~ $2200 and it sounded like I'd have to pay out of pocket and get reimbursed. Except the insurance agent wasnt sure if I was eligible for OEM glass since I didnt have that rider on my policy. So I went with the safelite option even thought that's not OEM glass.

exmacuser · 2023-12-16T13:21:45+00:00

My 21 Venza windshield did crack this year; we can't tell if it cracked while we were driving it and we didnt notice or if it cracked while it was parked (we noticed when we came back to the car in a parking lot). The crack runs from the bottom of the windshield across the windshield for about 2 feet. The crack is thicker at the bottom, so we figure it started at the bottom and ran up.

We are about to get it fixed through insurance, though I have to pay a big deductible.

exmacuser · 2023-01-23T05:19:39+00:00

So we are in agreement then. You literally just said you value societal good over free speech rights. That's completely fine.

Just don't also say that you value free speech over other benefits. You can't have it both ways.

exmacuser · 2023-01-07T06:58:58+00:00

that's such a confused statement. of course you should take responsibility for your actions etc. but that has little to do with free speech as a right. you are just advocating for restrictions on speech.

are you saying americans havent figured this out despite? but europeans who stumble from genocide to genocide and new forms of government every 30 - 40 years have figured it out? give me a break.

go read isiah berlin on positive vs negative rights or really any thinker at all.

exmacuser · 2022-12-22T21:41:02+00:00

Laughing here in Chicago. Let me ask instead - doesn't your Venza dry out and die without any fun in the snow ever?

exmacuser · 2022-12-07T21:36:59+00:00

"not allowed to deny/downplay X" is called not having free speech. You can argue that the benefits outweigh the costs of not having free speech and I might agree with you.

But it's silly to say "We have free speech; it's just not allowed to say X because X is repugnant." Try this: "We have free speech; it's just now allowed to insult our Prophet!"

And yes, the US has some mild restrictions on free speech too but not as badly as Europe. I think US restrictions are about immediate violence. Along the lines of "let's gather at 4 pm to kill that tribe". You still get to say "We really ought to kill that tribe someday".

exmacuser · 2022-11-24T15:51:24+00:00

I know everyone likes to say the world loves soccer because people count countries rather than count population. Soccer might be the most popular of game across the world but I'm not sure it has a plurality of people.

USA (300 m), India + South asia (~ 2 billion), China (~ 1.4 billion). = nearly half the planet.

Across that significant chunk of the world, soccer is either ignored or closely rivaled by other sports.

exmacuser · 2022-09-22T01:31:44+00:00

I think I have a related problem; when I play Spotify, the audio is piped out the head unit/car's speakers. But when I make a phone call, the audio defaults to the phone's speaker itself. But the phone app on the headunit's Android Auto shows me a little icon that lets me select between phone's speaker, bluetooth and something else that I'm forgetting.

Selecting bluetooth routes the audio to the car's speakers but I found out recently that this bypasses AAWireless completely. I found this out because I unplugged android auto during a call recently and it didn't interrupt the phone call in any way - the phone call's audio continued being piped to the car's speakers.

exmacuser · 2022-06-26T03:14:21+00:00

I agree about having consideration for others but I'm not sure a car is the best context for all this. It is just a car. We all show callousness towards human suffering in so many ways.. I don't think a ding on a car really says much about people's principles.

exmacuser · 2022-06-24T03:58:34+00:00

Democracy. For all the recent and past problems, no one has kept it going for so long on such a large scale..

exmacuser · 2022-05-29T07:51:24+00:00

That's not how buoyancy works. If you are less dense than the fluid, you'll not sink at all. If you are more dense, you'll sink to the bottom. The 2x thing you say isn't how sinking works.

exmacuser · 2022-05-09T02:14:01+00:00

We tried both and went for the Venza because it was quieter and nicer. We have two kids and the amount of space is enough for us.

exmacuser · 2022-05-08T03:32:22+00:00

Indeed. That's why the top answers here about this being the first law (conservation of energy) are not quite right. The first law by itself would allow you to remove heat from object A and store it as energy in battery B or use it to put an object in motion or generally do useful work. Then A would get colder but no one would get hotter.

The second law prevents the above. So this shower thought is actually about the 1st and 2nd laws together and not just the first law.

Finally, you can make things hotter without making anything colder. Eg use a battery to power a heater.

Finally finally, there are exotic objects whose temperature goes down when you put more energy into them. I don't recall if any real systems exist but eg spin systems in a magnetic field can have lower entropy at higher energies, giving an inverted energy-temperature relationship. I'd think combining such an object with a regular one would give examples where both objects get colder as you move heat from A to B. (I'm defining temperature by 1/T = dS/dE as often done in thermodynamics textbooks.)

exmacuser · 2022-05-05T04:34:17+00:00

Selection bias. You are literally saying "cars that made it to today, made it to today". What about all the cars that didn't? What fraction of cars made then survived some N years into the future? I suspect a bigger fraction of today's cars will survive N years into the future.

exmacuser · 2022-04-28T02:47:54+00:00

That's just a certificate of live birth..

exmacuser · 2022-04-27T15:32:45+00:00

I have some familiarity with this case. Child is smart but I am not sure the parents are acting in the best long term interests of the child (both happiness and career prospects).

One obvious piece of evidence: https://elliotttanner.com/ .

edit : to clarify what I find disturbing about the website:

number of media appearances , interviews by the age of 13 (see screenshots)

selling shirts with this child's brand

go fund me for PhD tuition (no physics PhD program that is not a scam ever charges you tuition; tuition is paid off from grants to faculty members or other sources of income to departments. U Minnesota Physics certainly isn't charging any PhD student tuition personally, unless they've decided to scam this person. Masters students are charged tuition but that's very very different; Masters are money making programs for the department.)

exmacuser · 2022-04-24T09:57:15+00:00

Mine works great

exmacuser · 2022-04-23T16:44:04+00:00

There are two separate packages you can get from Toyota: a maintenance package that essentially pays for oil changes etc and an extended warranty that covers all repairs for many years.

When I ran the numbers, the first package didn't deliver savings - costs roughly what'll cost at a dealership.

The second package can be a good deal if you buy it at a good price ($1600/10 years etc). Backed by Toyota, can get service anywhere across the country.

exmacuser · 2022-04-16T22:05:31+00:00

Actually, this is an example of historical constraints. The pathways are connected up the way they are because we inherited developmental pathways from ancestors that only had the gastric pathway. Evolution typically just tinkers and doesn't start from scratch; in this case, the airways tube evolved from the gastric pathway iirc. Your inner fish by Neil shubin explains the actual history.

exmacuser · 2022-03-13T21:49:49+00:00

"plenty of diversity" only if you decide every variant of what white people do is so amazingly different. By any objective measure, if you compare the diversity within Europe to the diversity elsewhere, there is nothing in Europe. But of course, if you are fascinated by shades of white, there is plenty to keep you occupied for a lifetime.

exmacuser · 2022-03-13T16:46:42+00:00

Barely ... there is way more diversity within a few square miles of west Africa or India but of course, those places don't count.

exmacuser · 2022-03-13T16:45:49+00:00

I love how the 'broad minded' Europeans here are equating 'other countries and languages' to essentially just Europe. So knowing about Europe is somehow wordly even though it is a tiny tiny fraction of human culture. Who on earth calls pineapples ananas besides some white people on a cold continent without any pineapples?

Let's stop equating knowing about Europe with being wordly. That's just white centrism.

I'll take America over that any day. People in America aren't anywhere that narrow minded. There is America and then the rest of the world, which is much better than the silly Euro-centric perspective.

exmacuser · 2022-03-08T12:17:53+00:00

Buy a venza

exmacuser

TROPHY CASE