Shop around at other dealers. It seems there are plenty of hybrid RAV4s sitting on lots. I suspect it is just a strategy to take and hold your money. https://www.chicagotoyota.com/...

This is a nonsense definition of "art" because it is meaningless and it is not a definition. You might as well say "FLKJING" is defined as any way anyone wants to define it. It's not helpful or useful because using the word flkjing, since it is defined as "anything," is pointless as it communicates nothing.

I recognize there is no singular definition of art; but to me it does not become art until human expression is involved. For example, a naturally occurring mountain is not art. It can be beautiful and amazing, but it isn't art. Now, a photo or drawing or painting or poem about a mountain, created by a human, that is art.

AI tries to predict or guess what art might look like. And until AI is manipulated and used by a human for some kind of expression, it isn't art.

Because art should be about human expression. When there's no human, there's no art. People who are interested in art want to be able to filter out the AI garbage and not be tricked into supporting it.

We care about tariffs because it is a direct example of why a president actively promoting, selling, and managing for-profit business is a conflict of interest (aka corruption). The president seems to believe he can apply tariffs on any product he wants, willy-nilly...so the issue is that he can apply tariffs to competing products (e.g., those from Apple and Samsung) while exempting a product he is promoting / selling.

Faux News and the other Republicans would be screaming if Biden had sold so much as a license for sunglasses, but they remain completely silent on this latest grift by Trump.

I'm guessing somehow it will be exempted from tariffs.

Research clearly shows:
A) You are more likely to die from gun violence if you own a gun.
B) If you are robbed, and you have a gun, you are much more likely to be shot than if you are robbed and don't have a gun.
C) Owning a gun makes you a target for thieves, as stolen guns have a high "resell" value.
D) Even though gun owners believe their guns prevent criminals from robbing them, there is no rigorous scientific evidence that supports this view.

But, please, go on about how owning guns is the key to preventing crime...

Glad you got your stuff back but, frankly, this was a pretty dumb and dangerous idea. Risking your own life for a couple thousand dollars. Next time, just call the insurance company and buy new stuff.

It would be great if Waymo would solve the crackhead problem...maybe Waymo could carry Naloxone and offer a needle exchange...

Waymo does operate in more locations than I had thought, but their operating zone within those cities is still pretty limited (for example, in LA only a fraction of the city is covered by Waymo: https://waymo.com/waymo-one-lo...). Apparently they are working on expanding to new cities (such as DC, ha, that should be fun), although they spend extensive time initially mapping. My bigger point was that if they want to be able to drive in different places under different conditions, they eventually will have to start driving in those places, as repeatedly driving one set of roads over and over likely will not translate directly to other places.

The problem is they don't need to repeat the same boring, uneventful drive over and over again. They need more data on fringe cases - like a deer suddenly darting onto the road - and those are unusual and high-risk cases that often result in vehicle damage or injury. Shuttling people back and forth across the same route over and over again isn't really that useful for expanding to different routes or new environments where these fringe cases are more likely to occur.

And annual submission of that information, via a tax return, verifies it is correct.

Unless you are audited, the IRS really does not have that much information about you other than what you tell them and the limited info they get from employers, banks, and investment firms.

You'd be surprised how little information the government actually knows about you. Facebook and Google definitely have more detailed information about you than the IRS.

Take something simple, such as number of dependents. Birth and death records are maintained by the states, and parental records are not associated directly with social security numbers. Further, the state-level records are stored in a bunch of different ways, and there's no centralized federal collection of births and deaths as associated with social security numbers. So even for something simple, such as number of dependents, the IRS really has no idea.

Now, if you get audited, they will definitely investigate and want evidence for whatever number you submitted. But no, they don't "just know" this information about you and have no way of computing the correct tax requirements unless you tell them.

Technically, the number of citizens deported will always be zero because you cannot deport a citizen...that is called "exile". https://duckduckgo.com/?q=defi...

Then as a car guy you should know that crash ratings only compare vehicles within that same class of vehicle. That is to say, a "top crash rating" for a sub-compact car simply means it is safe compared to other sub-compact cars...all of which are extremely dangerous on a road full of huge SUVs.

Okay, so I had a minute to look at some numbers (https://opendoorsdata.org/fact_sheets/fast-facts/). In 2023-2024, undergraduate international student numbers continued a significant downward trend, while graduate students were significantly up, pushing total numbers to an all-time high in 2023-2024. These numbers also vary by state (and by institution), so your experience may vary. To my point about other countries building their own institutions, China was down 4% overall from 2022-2023 to 2023-2024, while India was up 20%+.
Self-pay students were about half of the population for international students studying in the U.S.; 19% relied on U.S. College / University (primarily through grant funds).

The Trump administration is trying to give away the U.S.'s competitive advantage in higher education, and based on trends we are seeing from International students, these numbers will plummet in 2025-2026, which will grow global higher ed quality as those students spend their money and knowledge on institutions outside the U.S.

International student numbers were already substantially down, particularly from China, and that was even before COVID (which was a big hit and there's been some recovery but still below pre-COVID numbers), but my point remains that students now have great institutions to attend in their home countries, and just don't need the U.S. any more. This will only speed things up.