Posted inCars

Best description of Tesla Full Self-Driving I’ve ever come across

I"m a big fan of Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised). It's what tilted the scale in favor of my getting a 2026 Model Y Juniper last May. Taking a test drive and trying FSD out convinced me that a Tesla needed to replace my Subaru Crosstrek. Since, I've been using FSD 95% of the time. Tesla keeps track of that stat automatically. It feels strange to drive the car manually, which I mainly do when parking, especially in a parking garage, given that FSD sometimes handles parking fine, but sometimes does decidedly weird things. It's kind of difficult to describe why…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Sustainability

A very strong El Nino means upcoming warmer weather for Oregon and maybe more precipitation

El Nino is coming. A story in the Oregonian describes what El Nino is and what its usual effects are. An El Niño event occurs when central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean temperatures become unusually warm, shifting weather patterns across the globe. Historically, El Niños have caused severe heat and droughts in parts of Asia and Australia, warmer and drier conditions in Canada and the northern United States and heavy rainfall and flooding in California and the southwest U.S. Ten days ago the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center said that there's a 90 percent chance the upcoming El Nino…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

My 1966 high school graduation speech describes the United States in 2026

I had one semester of college French. So one of the few French sayings I know is Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. "The more it changes, the more it is the same thing." That was the thought I had after I found my 1966 graduation speech at Woodlake Union High School (go Tigers!) in central California yesterday. My wife and I just had our carpets replaced, so everything had to be taken out of drawers and cabinets. Then replaced. When I was putting an unorganized pile of my early writings in a somewhat more organized state before…
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Posted inCars

Here’s 20 reasons why I’m liking my Tesla Model Y Premium more than any other car

Having gotten my driver's license at 16, I've driven lots of different cars in the past 61 years (from that you math wizards can figure out how old I am). This makes the title of this blog post a huge endorsement of the 2026 Tesla Model Y Juniper -- a car I'm liking much more than I thought I would after I leased a red model about nine weeks ago. In mid-June I listed some of the things I enjoyed about the car. Here's an updated list, now that I'm considerably more familiar with my Tesla. In no particular order...…
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