Tesla rental from Avis experience

by philg

A friend from the Northeast is getting his son settled as a freshman at the University of Florida in beautiful Gainesville. The program starts in the middle of the Florida summer for no reason that I can understand (if kids are smart enough to get into UF, ranked #30 by US News, you’d think they’d be smart enough to run away from July in Florida). His teenage daughter accompanied him. He rented a 2023 Tesla Model 3 “long range dual motor” with 52,000 miles from Avis in Orlando for the trip. Here are some of his messages to a group chat that includes a couple of Tesla owners.

  • Oh so my rental doesn’t have the famous FSD. Or EAP [Tesla Enhanced Autopilot]. Took 62% of the charge to get to Gainesville from Orlando. I am at 22% now and have range anxiety.
  • Wood veneer is coming off. Leather on the steering wheel too.
  • The car wobbles at 70-80 mph.
  • Some sort of a noise in the cabin – my guess something came loose.
  • UI is cool and looks Apple-y
  • The key card situation is kind of [Trigger Warning!] retarded. Mercedes keyless go is more ergonomic in the sense that it opens the car when you grab the handle. The concept of affordance.
  • The EV acceleration is cool, probably matches most sport cars 5x its price. One pedal braking feels pretty stupid.
  • Anyway I have two more days, but so far it is nothing to write home about and I am perplexed why you guys are SO in love with it. In terms of positives, its UI is certainly better than that of most cars, but it is changing. [Editor: I would vehemently disagree with this. A screen in the middle of the dashboard isn’t the right UI for a car! The driver shouldn’t have to turn his/her/zir/their head.]
  • [responding to the Tesla owners who tell him to use the automation] I am 100% engaging AutoSteer. It is what nearly every new gas car has today. I suspected based on description that this is what it was and it turned out to be exactly that. I had that in a Mercedes GLS since February 2017. It is utterly just meh. I drive around and I don’t feel a difference between it and other rental cars except excellent acceleration.
  • [responding to a Tesla owner who says he loves his new Tesla (HW4) with FSD] this reminds me of how Apple people speak about apple products. Irrational excitement about things available in other forms. “You should absolutely get it. It is simply the best and next level.” Then I look at it and go “this????” I am getting a [Toyota] Grand Highlander. [Response from a Tesla fanboy: You are like the people who argued for horses after the automobile came out.]
  • Right now there are two chargers in Gainesville. So many hot moms at UF. Not that many but infinitely more than in Boston because the number there is around zero.
  • There are douchebags like me sitting for half an hour here at the supercharger waiting for their cars to charge. 122 miles are 63% [the “long range” Tesla lost 63% battery over 122 miles; it starting charging at 467 miles/hr and once over 80% slowed down to 186 miles/hr]
  • [in response to my question about whether the charging station was somewhere convenient] No it is nowhere I wanted to be. I drove specifically there
  • My car performed at 1.9 miles per % charge. That is 95 mile radius with 0% charge upon arrival. 90 miles with 5% reserve. Basically if you remove fanboyism, it is very limited. Not a real car. However, this also says charge limit 85%. Why is it there, why is it set to this value and most importantly, why are we calculating ranges based on 100%. Let us assume a 5% reserve and 85% max. This leaves us with 80% battery which implies a 76 mile [round-trip] range.
  • [daughter] just got into the car and asked how come this car has constant weird noises. Something is clicking something is wiggling
  • it was in the worst shape of any rental car i got in the last two years or more
  • Tesla key card only works on the driver side and not on the passenger side. I know I’m using it wrong. I should be using an app like the enlightened people. So I had to go around the car to lock it.
  • We got into the car this morning. The car was hot because it was black. I reached out to turn the vent to blow on my face for some time and discovered that its vents aren’t adjustable.
  • Navigation is seriously flawed [Tesla does not supply CarPlay and Android Auto like every other car]. It says turn right on west X road while the signs show turn left on west and turn right on east. I have never seen this happen on Waze.
  • Its vehicle detection has a ton of mistakes. It detects big electronic signs as cars. Sees objects on the road that aren’t there. So if FSD relies on this stuff, I am not sure it works as advertised.
  • [the tall son] just said – “Back seat is terrible. I had to get out and stretch because everything hurt”; These people are used to driving for 4-5 hours in the back of a car non-stop to NYC.
  • I will have to add 30 minutes to my travel time because I have to return the car charged to Avis. Or I will be charged at crazy rates (similar to not filling up your tank).
  • Tesla shackles me and adds hours of tax on my freedom.

One of the Tesla owners in the chat, whose Tesla Y is just three months old (latest AI hardware), posted a video of his drive home on FSD. “Dark, rain, lane changes, stop lights, merge onto highway, passing other cars, sharp curves.”

Question: If Full Self-Driving is great and Tesla knows that it is great why wouldn’t Tesla enable it on all rental Teslas so as to promote sales of the machines?

Also, why doesn’t Tesla have support for rentals in its app whereby Avis or Hertz can conveniently authorize a renter temporarily to use the Tesla app instead of the key card? Tesla actually does have support for authorizing additional drivers who will use the app, but it appears to be a facility more for family members who are going to be long-term authorized drivers.

He included a photo of what might be intended to appeal to white cisgender heterosexuals who claim to be “allies” of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community:

My own story: I rented a beater Chevy Malibu from Avis in Idaho (about 50,000 miles and smelled like a “bustling Gaza shisha cafe”). It had more than 500 miles of range forecast and delivered. Drove about 800 miles and spent maybe 6 minutes at two charging stations. We couldn’t have done our trip in the above-described rental Tesla without significant planning. Craters of the Moon is in a no-charger desert as well as a no-water desert (energy.gov):

We drove 154 miles from Sun Valley (Ketchum) to Twin Falls by way of Craters of the Moon:

If we’d been delivered a rental Tesla 3 at 85 percent and didn’t use Dog Mode or cabin overheat protection we would have perhaps made it into Twin Falls on fumes and with bitten nails.

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Report from Sun Valley, Idaho

by philg

Here’s a report on last month’s trip to Sun Valley, Idaho.

We changed planes in Denver, surrounded by Scientists, to get a regional jet to KSUN, one of the nation’s most dangerous airports (see U.S. local and federal governments respond to an urgent safety situation (2016), regarding a safety problem recognized by the Feds no later than 2009).

I talked to the pilots after the flight and learned that special sim training is required to operate at this airport. Here’s a best-case instrument approach plate for an aircraft that can climb at 420 feet per nautical mile (might be tough after an engine fails in an airliner):

Notice that the aircraft can’t land unless the lowest clouds are no lower than 900′ above the runway (minimum descent altitude (MDA) without seeing the runway is 6180′ and the runway is 5289′ (TDZE at the top)). That’s essentially visual flying conditions. “What if you’re at 200′ above the runway and a vehicle or another aircraft drives onto the runway?” I asked. “That becomes an ‘extraction’, not a missed approach,” the pilot responded. “Can it be done on one engine?” was my follow-up. “No.” (i.e., there are no good options for a go-around once close to the runway in the event of an engine failure). You can see from this plate that an airport built at JUNOL, just 10 nm south of KSUN, would be idiot-proof.

The downtown hotel recommended by the lawyer with whom I was working, a coronapanic refugee from San Francisco who never did go back to the office, was quoting $1,700 per night. I decided on the budget option of one of the last rooms at the venerable Sun Valley Lodge for $750 per night. While the elites swan around in their G-Wagons, Grenadiers, Ferraris, and restored classic cars, the local post office reminds the peasants how to renew their Medicaid:

(Why don’t the peasants get rich working in town and become ineligible for Medicaid? Most of the servers and cleaners in the village seemed to be from Eastern Europe, here in the U.S. on temporary work visas.)

Returning to swanning around, here are the resident swans in front of the Sun Valley Lodge:

The restaurant at the lodge isn’t abusively expensive, but if you want to save some $$ and honor Maryland’s leading citizen you can zip over to El Niño Y Pupuseria in downtown Ketchum for the inexpensive snack (pupusas) that purportedly resulted in Kilmar Armando Ábrego García being targeted by unspecified gangs in his native El Salvador. The restaurant is quite smoky inside so don’t go unless the weather is nice enough for dining at the outdoor tables.

For soups, sandwiches, and salads at breakfast and lunch hit Bigwood Bread Bakery & Cafe instead (recommended by a local). Grumpy’s was the recommended hamburger joint, but we didn’t try it.

Make reservations in advance for the Thursday night barbecue at Galena Lodge, which features good company at big tables and live music. Drive beyond Galena to the Galena Summit Overlook (8,440′ above sea level according to my phone), if not all the way to Stanley (next town north after Ketchum). Do some hiking on side trails before coming back to Galena Lodge and the easy trails that begin right from there. It would be great to have a Tesla full self-driving car for this journey so as to appreciate the scenery on both sides of the road.

Downtown has an interesting free museum on the opposite corner of an intersection from the library. Part of the museum features Ernest Hemingway. Note the #Truth that the Spanish Civil War was against Fascism. The progressives who traveled to Spain were definitely not fighting for Stalinism, forced collectivization, and the killing of roughly 7,000 Catholic priests.

Stickers in the gift shop remind patrons that the library and the museum are united under the sacred Rainbow Flag:

The Library has an awesome treehouse plus the usual books:

If you’ve got a lot of leftover climbing rope, the library stocks BDSM 101:

They’d just begun to run the lift up to the top of “Baldy” (just over 9000′):

It’s unclear why a 1940s or 1950s car is the right choice for mountain roads, but we saw quite a few beautiful classics in and around town. 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Ville:

1948 Buick Roadmaster in front of the (unimpressive) supermarket (drive 20 minutes south to Hailey to get to an Albertson’s):

And we found the same car later at the National Ballet of Canada performance in the Sun Valley Village:

Sun Valley is an awesome place to spend the summer, but it desperately needs a better airport. It’s not as offensively ritzy as Jackson, Wyoming (maybe because Idaho imposes a state personal income tax rate of over 5 percent vs. 0 percent in Wyoming?). It’s reasonably flat and easy to walk around. The access to trails and outdoor activities is as good as anywhere in the U.S.

What about as a year-round home, either in Ketchum or in Hailey (probably more practical)? Aside from the skiing opportunities, one big plus for young people seems to be college admissions. The kids I talked to who’d gone to high school in Idaho had been admitted to all of the colleges where they applied whereas the kids I know in Maskachusetts, except for one bizarrely superhuman half-Asian boy (admitted even to Harvard, the gold standard for Asian hate!), were rejected almost everywhere.

Related:

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Craters of the Moon National Park

by philg

Loyal readers may remember that I’m an advocate for increasing the number of National Parks as the U.S. population is expanded via immigration. From 2020, Do we need some more national parks?:

Our National Park system was set up in 1872, i.e., for a country with a population of roughly 40 million. Today there are 330 million residents of the U.S. (or 350 million maybe?). Mobility, even in coronashutdown, is greater than it was in 1872. This leads to what I would have previously called “Manhattan-style crowding” in some parks (but now Manhattan has been de-crowded!).

(Note that, due to the population collapse and near-term extinction of the human race cited by Elon Musk, the official Census population right now is over 342 million, up more than 12 million from 2020; we’ve added humans comparable to Metro San Francisco and Metro Miami during humanity’s march to oblivion.)

Back in June, I visited Idaho’s Craters of the Moon National Monument, which could easily become a full National Park with a bit of development. Due to the lack of facilities, it’s certainly much more relaxing than the current slate of National Parks! I think this place could handle the construction of a lodge. There is a jet-capable airport a 15-minute drive away in nuclear-powered Arco, Idaho that is, wonderfully, named after our next President: AOC (6600′ runway, which is a little tight considering the 5,335′ altitude, but it looks as though it could be easily lengthened).

Some snapshots:

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Parallel universes in New York Times and New York Post

by philg

According to the print version of the New York Times, New York City is mostly peaceful and the principal hazards to human happiness are the continued and persistent existences of Donald Trump and the state of Israel:

The parallel universe version of Manhattan covered by the New York Post is a war zone in which people carry rifles as they walk along the sidewalk:

(The gun violence, which never would have happened if Kamala Harris had been elected president, occurred at 6:30 pm yesterday and Southwest Harbor, Maine is a bit far from any printing plant so some of the discrepancy might be explained by logistics.)

As long as we’re on the subject of our media heroes, here’s a CNN story about purported starvation in Gaza in which a woman with a double chin was selected as to illustrate the story:

Screenshot

What am I doing in this nearly-all-white corner of Maine, you might ask? Waiting for BIPOC Climbing Night:

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Los Angeles Central Library, 39 years after the arson attack(s)

by philg

Californians love to destroy things that taxpayers fund, e.g., the Santa Monica Airport. Thirty nine years ago, this love of destruction reached the Los Angeles Central Library, torched by a still-unknown arsonist (see state-sponsored NPR). Nearly 400,000 books were destroyed. Here are some photos from the restored building.

Note the mural showing happy children with guns and also one of Elizabeth Warren’s ancestors:

We need humanoid robots so that every house can have one of these candeliers:

A plaque reminds us that Californians torched their own library twice in one year:

Egypt before the Muslim Conquest:

More than five years since the start of Coronapanic, the locals are still trying to avoid SARS-CoV-2 by voluntarily entering a crowded public space while wearing a cloth mask of some sort (note accessory Whole Foods bag):

From my earlier A Greta Thunberg yacht trip to California?, a poster in the Teen section reminding young Californians that humans are in charge of viruses and can end a pandemic via their own actions:

Also worth a repeat, the library reminds teens to cooperate in thwarting ICE:

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Will Zohran Kwame Mamdani eventually restore Constitutional Equal Protection to New Yorkers?

by philg

NYC landlords aren’t big fans of almost-certain-to-be-incoming-mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani. In particular, Mamdani’s promise to “freeze the rent”. “NYC Developers Gripped by Hysteria After Mamdani’s Sudden Rise” (Wall Street Journal):

New York City’s developers and landlords are in a mad scramble to block from City Hall the socialist who wants to freeze rent.

Mamdani is pushing for a host of housing changes to try to ease costs for renters. While he seems to have softened his stance toward working with private developers more recently, at the top of his list is still a controversial rent freeze on the city’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments.

I can’t figure out how the U.S. patchwork of government-controlled housing prices meets the Constitution’s Equal Protection clause. American A chooses to refrain from work and lives in public housing and pays $0/month. American B chooses to refrain from work and lives in rent-stabilized or rent-controlled housing and pays whatever housing cost back before 80 million migrants were invited into the U.S. (60 million through 2015). American C chooses to refrain from work and is forced to pay market rates, i.e., fight with over 300 million humans for scraps. What’s “equal” about the government giving these three equally idle humans radically different housing options and prices?

It looks like Mayor Mamdani’s first act, after a huge Queers for Palestine rally, will be to freeze the rent on apartments that are already absurdly cheap compared to the market. But I wonder if that could just be a first step toward government control of all residential rents in New York City. If the government did step in to control rents on all NYC buildings that would be a tremendous step toward the Equal Protection that Americans are supposed to receive from their government.

We live in a democracy, otherwise known was “mob rule”. There are way more tenants than landlords. Nearly every American city is divided into those who are blessed by the government with free or cheap rent and those subjected to cruel market forces. Maybe suburban homeowners would feel some sympathy for landlords, but wouldn’t we expect a majority of voters in nearly every city to vote for government-set (low) rents? It seems like the kind of simple decision that voters in Maskachusetts earning less than $1 million/year were asked to make regarding raising tax rates on those earning more than $1 million/year (the constitutional amendment passed and, supposedly, the fatcats didn’t move).

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A trip to Los Angeles’s Koreatown

by philg

It’s the 72nd anniversary of the Korean War Armistice.

Our virtual loosely related journey starts in downtown Los Angeles:

A 15-minute Uber ride with photos taken out the window, Garry Winogrand-style:

Once you get to “Koreatown” you discover that it isn’t a town at all, but rather some strip malls that happen to contain a lot of Korean restaurants and shops. (Little Tokyo, by contrast, has a few attempts at recreating the experience of being in Japan.) Example:

Pro Tip: Eat at the 24-hour BCD Tofu House.

Even in the heart of Koreatown, the signature elements of downtown Los Angeles (trash and tents on the sidewalk) prevail:

In closing…

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Update on the Islamic Republic of Twin Falls, Idaho

by philg

Nine years ago in the Washington Post, “In Twin Falls, Idaho, co-dependency of whites and immigrants faces a test” (paywall-free-version):

Twin Falls is now a testing ground for whether the bitter cultural divisions intensified by this year’s presidential campaign [Good Hillary vs. Evil Trump] can recede in favor of the co-dependency that marks many communities with large white and immigrant populations. In this southern Idaho city of 45,000, the question surrounds a growing Muslim population.

The rancor in Twin Falls began to surface only over the past year and a half as concerns about domestic terrorism awakened a fierce and sudden debate about whether the local Muslim population represented a point of pride or a potential danger — an anxiety that Trump amplified during his campaign. For decades before, the refu­gee resettlement program run by a local community college had flourished with little opposition, with refugees filling open jobs on dairy farms and in cheese factories.

The headline reminds white readers that they’re “dependent” on the “local Muslim” immigrants and also that Muslims aren’t “white”. But the body of the article reveals that it is local business owners seeking cheap labor who are dependent on the imports. There is, apparently, no need to explain how a working-class native-born resident of Twin Falls is better off as a result of the new arrivals or how he/she/ze/they would suffer if the immigrants on which he/she/ze/they “depends” departed. The “local community college” is getting most of the federal cash, it seems, in exchange for facilitating the importation of humans (which is not “human trafficking”?).

The article goes on to remind readers that non-coastal Americans are stupid because they can’t distinguish among the various species of migrants:

A sexual assault took place in a local apartment complex, and rumors spread that the suspects were Syrian teens. “Syrian Refugees Rape Little Girl at Knifepoint in Idaho,” read a headline on the Drudge Report. The case was sealed because it involved juveniles, including the victim, a 5-year-old girl. Still, Twin Falls police corrected a few facts, saying the suspects were from Sudan and Iraq.

The real issue with the sexual assault of a 5-year-old, according to the Washington Post, is that some natives of Twin Falls can’t tell the difference between a Syrian and an Iraqi.

What’s happening in Twin Falls circa 2025? As tourists wandering/biking around for three days we encountered Islamically covered women at least 4 or 5 times a day. No burqas with full face coverings, but always more than a hijab. The clothing was sharply at odds with the prevailing shorts and T-shirt fashion for the typical female out in the 80-90-degree dry heat. The elites live in a Muslim-free environment. We didn’t see any covered women at an upscale restaurant overlooking the canyon, on the trails leading to waterfalls, or in expensive neighborhoods (“expensive” = $600,000+ for a house). The Twin Falls Mosque is in a neighborhood of shabby $200,000+ houses.

We talked to some local high-school- and college-aged native-born kids. They expressed pride that their high school was “diverse”, but also noted that the Muslim immigrants formed an entirely separate society within the high school and that they themselves had never been friends with a Muslim student.

The local science museum explains that non-natives lead to environmental, ecological, economic, social, and human health impacts.

On our way out of town we were reminded that ecosystems can be destroyed by newcomers who “end up where they shouldn’t be”…

Note that all of Twin Falls is apparently considered a dumping ground by the elites of Boise, some of whom we met in Sun Valley. They all advised us to avoid even a brief stay in Twin Falls. The density of hijabs is lower in Boise, at least in the expensive downtown areas where we spent most of our time. That said, Google Maps shows a variety of mosques:

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Humanoid robots to paint giant murals?

by philg

The Murakami show at the Cleveland Museum of Art includes some murals that would be awesome to have in a kid’s room if only a humanoid robot could be adapted to do the work of either applying wallpaper or directly painting.

Another area where the robot could work… recreating Sol LeWitt murals in the home. Different color schemes for every holiday.

Note that the museum’s permanent collection is free, even to those who have jobs (see How to get free museum admissions for life: sign up for food stamps (SNAP/EBT)). Separately, a fair number of visitors were #Scientifically masked:

For my friends in health care, the artist’s conception of what a nurse looks like:

Circling back to the principal theme for today… if you had nearly-free high-skill labor from a robot would you use some of it to have wall murals in your house? Or would it make more sense to cover a wall in large tiles of flat-screen TVs and do this electronically?

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If Zohran Mamdani were Ugandan would that have made his claim to be “Black or African-American” more fair?

by philg

The New York Times, which said that anything negative about the Biden family was Russian disinformation, jumped immediately on a story regarding the progressive on track to be New York City’s next mayor: “Mamdani Identified as Asian and African American on College Application”.

The implication of the article is that it would have been righteous for Zohran Mamdani to check the “I am Black” box for a race-based preference if he had actually been Ugandan rather than part of an immigrant population from India.

Today’s question is why it would have been fair for a recent immigrant from Uganda, even one with the correct skin color, to receive preference in college admissions or hiring. America’s race-based college admissions and jobs allocation systems were advertised as reparations for past discrimination and slavery. If someone who shows up in the U.S. five minutes ago scoops up these preferences doesn’t that prevent the preferences from going to the people for whom they were intended? What discrimination could an actual Black Ugandan who arrived in the U.S. yesterday, for example, have suffered at the hands of the bad people (i.e., white Americans)?

The idea of affirmative action (race-based discrimination by do-gooders or white-/Asian-haters, depending on your perspective) was started by President Lyndon Johnson via Executive Order 11246 in 1965. This was, coincidentally, at a point when immigrants weren’t a significant percentage of the U.S. population (Pew):

(Note that the open borders of the Biden-Harris administration made the above 2015 forecast inaccurate. The U.S. became 15.8 percent foreign-born in 2025 (CIS).)

Even though Donald Trump has gotten the federal government out of the race-based discrimination business we still have private corporations and universities engaging in it. The question for today: Why are race-based preferences available to immigrants?

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