I only use a 78% nitrogen mix in my tires.

Our crime rate is high because our official city limits are way inside of what you would think of as Springfield city limits. You'll be right in the middle of a neighborhood and there will be a "city limits" sign. Of course all of our older neighborhoods with lower owner-occupancy rates will have higher crime rates than our newer neighborhoods with higher owner-occupied rates. Our newest neighborhoods are all outside of our official city limits.

Even our "high crime" areas are not all that bad, and random violence is rare, and most victims of violent crime know the perpetrator.

I will say that it feels like rural crime rates are on the rise. I work in a surrounding county, and it feels like drugs and desperation are causing more crime than it seemed like it has in the past, but I don't have any data to back that up.

Great Stuff spray foam in the slots to the speakers works just as well, and more permanently.

I get gas at Signal at Lone Pine and Battlefield because while they have ads, they don't have sound, and I don't look at them. If they start using sound, I will drop them like a bad habit.

The tennis scene is very strong. That's what decades of free, well-lit courts will do for a sport. They're everywhere, all over town.

I think those all got converted to pickleball courts.

Again, downvotes without any comments. Is the downvote button just a disagree button?

I don't know why I get downvoted for this idea. I think it's at least as feasible as an in-town rail system, and has all of the benefits of cars without the drawbacks. Just because nobody has ever done it doesn't mean we can't be the first.

For me to use mass transit it’s going to have to be faster than driving, cheaper than driving, and more convenient than driving. I think I have a plan to make a system that’s all three of those things. We’ll build a light-duty overhead monorail style track system that special light electric cars hook to from ground level and there will be entrance and exit points all over town. You just drive down Glenstone until you get to the Barataria entrance point, merge into the entrance lane, and seamlessly hook onto the system, and the motorized hook on the top of your car powers you down the track at 60mph. Each entrance only has one exit, and the Barataria entrance exits on Chestnut near Drury. It’s like teleportation portals.

The cars would be inexpensive and electric, designed for cross-town trips, and very small.

I agree. We could use a bike jump park, a few free skateparks, an RC racetrack, a pumptrack, a whitewater park, and some mountain biking trails IN TOWN. We have some good parks, but we could use more activity-specific parks.

I'll tell you what's great and free in downtown KC, and that's Penn Valley Skatepark. That bowl is completely sick, and I drive up a few times a year to skate it. There's also Harrison Street DIY, but Penn Valley is just amazing.

I used to use those Therma-Rest Z-Lite or RidgeRest pads because I was young and tough, and they were cheap and warm to sleep on, but then I switched to a classic inflatable like the BaseCamp and I was more comfortable for just a little bit of extra weight. These days though I use the Neo-Air pads, and they're no extra weight and WAY more comfortable, and they pack tighter. I think they sleep a little colder though. Even if I replaced all of my backpacking gear with minimalist ultra-light gear, I wouldn't give up that Neo-Air. It's too comfortable.

Nixa's test scores are really good, but at the expense of any sort of autonomy on the teacher's part. I personally think standardized test scores are a terrible way to judge a school, but Nixa has bought in fully. I know about a dozen teachers that teach there and they're ready to have a mutiny. Most are planning their exits. Nixa has no choice though; there's nothing else going on in Nixa. It's a bedroom community for Springfield's professionals, and they are voting for school board members to keep their test scores high, to keep their property values high, in the hopes that people moving in will equate high standardized test scores with a good school.

Many school districts are facing this same problem, but it's particularly bad in Nixa. Working for Springfield Public Schools is OK, but hit or miss depending on your principal. The deficiency in Springfield seems to be in the administration above principals but below the superintendent.

I'm a teacher in a surrounding district, and my district is awesome. I love it, and school system stands for what is genuinely important in education, and they follow through on their actions in student and teacher support. I'm not going to say what it is though, because I know some of my students are here.

Equifax's website says:

>Paying off debt is more likely to help your credit scores than to hurt them. You are likely to see your credit scores improve after paying off debt unless the debt you repaid meets the unique criteria listed above.

The unique criteria listed above is indeed what you described:

>For example, paying off your only installment loan, such as an auto loan or mortgage, could negatively impact your credit scores by decreasing the diversity of your credit mix. Creditors like to see that you can responsibly manage different types of debt. Paying off your only line of installment credit reduces your credit mix and may ultimately decrease your credit scores.

To me that seems like a rare situation. Generally people with good credit have multiple lines of credit that they are managing at the same time. I have a mortgage that I pay, I pay my credit card off in full each month, and in the past I've had car payments that I've finished paying on. I have a hard time imagining that I could finish paying off my house and then my credit score would drop by enough that I couldn't get a used car loan. Debt free people are getting car loans. I'm sure of it.

Paying off a loan will rarely lower your credit score, and in the rare situations when it does the effect is very slight and temporary.

Well it's only a half step better than a gravel lot. There's no lines or any indication of where rows should be. I mean, you'd like to think that people could figure out how to park without blocking people in, but that's not the world we live in.

I'm not helping that guy with anything. When he moved in there was a woman and a 2 year old kid, but he would cuss her so loudly in their back yard that we could hear it inside our house. Sometimes he would cuss her from inside the house and we could hear it plain as day in our yard. Trash. She has since left, which I'm thankful for.

This really is amazing.

>I asked for an explanation and reasons. Not a look it up yourself reply.

I almost upvoted this for the comedy gold. Almost.

Did chatGPT write this? That's funny. It's way off base here though in it's support for Mexican Villa. I am strongly on the pro-Mexican Villa side of the argument, and so are most of the people I know, but NOBODY would say

>The food is delicious and always fresh

I mean, that's just false.

>I truly believe that Mexican Villa is a Springfield classic that everyone should try at least once. Give it a chance and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised!

That's false too. If you don't like it already, you won't like it. There is no point in recommending Mexican Villa to anybody, ever.

What if I back out of a parking spot carelessly and drag my front bumper all the way down your passenger door. Your door still works fine, but now there's this huge scrape down the side. Would you care? Your car still drives fine; it does all the things that a car needs to do to be useful.

No, you would not be ok with that. Why? Because you don't want to look at a big old gash down the side of your door every single time you get in and out of your car, and it greatly decreases the value of your car.

It's the same thing with neighborhoods. You can park an old dead El Camino in your front yard and my house still does everything it's supposed to do. It keeps me warm and the rain off of me just like it always did. But I don't want to look at that dead El Camino with weeds growing up through the engine compartment every time I go in our out my front door, and it reduces the value of my house.

I guess it's a NIMBY (NIMFY? NIYFY?) thing to not want to live near unpleasant things. I don't know what to tell you if that baffles you.

You may be able to install a paver driveway into your backyard, and parking your vehicle on that may satisfy the HOA rules.

If you're running an informal salvage yard out of your front yard that's going to get on your neighbor's nerves.

>So you act like land lords do nothing.

No, I said they add no value. Leeches do something. They put effort into what they do, but they're still leeches.

>You can fix your credit score.

My credit score is perfect. I mean perfect. I get the lowest rates on everything. I've cultivated my credit score my whole life, deliberately. My investments are doing well. I'm not desperate, and that's why I'm not renting. It's true that the overall problem of low credit scores and financial illiteracy in America are as big of a problem as landlords, but the excessive rentals in Springfield is as big of a problem.

I will say that it's important to be able to rent when you need a house for less time than would make sense to buy in a particular location, and in that case landlords do add value, but our rental situation is such that the excessive rentals are screwing with housing prices, and it needs a correction. We have way too many in Springfield right now.

I don't think someone who bought a bunch of houses and rent them out for significantly more than their mortgage payment is really comparable to McDonald's. McDonald's takes raw food products and cooks them and packages them in a way that's convenient, and thus adds value. Landlords are more like people who buy McDonald's food and sell it for more than McDonald's charges to people who don't have a 750 credit score, while adding no value.