EdamAnchorman

Thanks for your insight! My wife (and then me by extension) can only get an Irish passport, so I'm not sure how NI would work but I did notice that the border was essentially non-existent when we crossed it. I only knew we crossed it because I paid for something in euro and received change in pounds. We did get to see giant's causeway, which was beautiful. And the food was great all over the country.

Thanks, everyone, all great advice. This is maybe the nicest one we've seen yet. That's about as close to the coast as I'd wanna get. The view from that dining room and deck is exactly what I want when I retire. https://www.daft.ie/for-sale/bungalow-dreenagh-ballyheigue-co-kerry/5608983 And yeah Westport was great, we spent about 4 days there. It was the perfect kind of town for us. It was the first time my brother and his family got to experience a true Irish pub with the music and crowds and everything, was a lot of fun.

Lol sorry. That's just the kind of info I was looking for, thanks. I'll check out the subreddit. We did see that the government is offering incentives for refurbishing dilapidated cottages / houses and we have explored that as well. Most move-in-ready places we've been seeing in areas we're searching have been between €3 - 500,000. These places have been far from tourist areas and the houses near the coast have all been relatively high on cliffs and far enough back where there's still an ocean view but the risk is lower. Here's a few that caught our eye, this is what we're looking for roughly https://www.daft.ie/for-sale/detached-house-knockaveelish-dunmore-east-co-waterford/5667900 https://www.daft.ie/for-sale/detached-house-cloona-westport-co-mayo/5650084 https://www.daft.ie/for-sale/detached-house-kilkerrin-connemara/5360967

Thanks for the info, it's very helpful. I guess I'm just looking for the kind of idiosyncratic advice that only comes from people who have lived there they're whole lives. We have taken a few trips, last time we drove from Dublin over to Roscommon (stayed a little) then up to Bushmills (stayed a few days), then down through Londonderry, Sligo, and Westport (stayed there a little). Then we went down to Valentia island and spent some time there. We did experience the most rain in the southwest, but it was the type of rain I can deal with (not the downpours we get in the states). We do want to be on the coast as the whole point of retiring there would be to have something really nice to look at and/or do each day, and we both like the coast. We'll have to deal with the property values but hopefully it won't be an issue as we're already living in one of the most expensive places in the northeast so selling our home here should cover a nice house over there.

Help me, WATMM. The wife and I would like to retire in Ireland primarily because the climate, culture, and natural surroundings suit us well (plus, my wife can get an Irish passport since her grandfather was born there). We're looking to buy soon and were wondering where are the best areas in terms of climate and other considerations. Here are some of our desires: We would like to be on or near the coast, hopefully with a view of the ocean. We don't need to be near any big cities, we're OK being near smaller towns. Ireland is pretty drivable compared to the US which is what we're used to. Annual rain and sunshine data suggest that Kerry would be not so good, which is a shame because it's a beautiful area. There seems to be a sweet spot between Galway and Dingle. The southern coast looks OK, too, but I haven't had a chance to visit Cork or the area east of that yet. Not sure how much difference there is in length of daylight from the north to south, but it would be nice to have more daylight, especially in winter. Rainfall: Sunny days:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/boeing-corporate-america-manufacturing/678137/

https://jalopnik.com/a-tiktoker-got-trapped-inside-her-115-degree-tesla-mode-1851404777

1. I don't necessarily buy that. I don't think he'd care enough about anyone except himself (even his child) to put in as much effort as he did / does with Twitter / X. 2. If so, what's so wrong with someone holding those beliefs, bruh?

These jerk-offs are not a legacy automaker, they are learning to build vehicles on the fly. They're compromising the safety of every Tesla driver and those around them but hey their market cap sure is impressive so let's keep the train going full speed...

Wife and I just finished it. Was mostly entertaining, but felt kinda forced and thin at times.

Wow. Gel-mullet + troglodyte chin + flannel + dumbass shades. Tell me you're a redneck moron without telling me you're a redneck moron.

It's very clear what they're doing. Musk decreed that LIDAR and other capabilities that literally every other level 3/4 self-driving vehicle uses are stupid and too expensive, so Tesla is relying on cameras only. To do this and to do it well requires a shit-ton of data (real-world data is best, obv.) so Musk turned his fanbois into beta-testers. These people are putting their lives (and the lives of others) on the line so that Tesla can save a few $ per unit, not to mention that it's just foolish to continue to attempt to get to level 4 autonomy with cameras alone, especially when such better supplementary technology exists. Tesla were even so cheap that they only very recently added a camera which monitors the driver's eyes to ensure that they are paying attention to the road while using autonomous systems, something that every other company has done from the beginning (again, risking lives strictly to cut cost and make share price go up / burn the shorts).

Wow, that's amazing! It managed to create what I hear in my head when I listen to most country songs!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5oKo4ArUKY/ Edit: Larry David tire changing AI song

Not an exact parallel, but did McDonald's make people stop and question why they like the foods they like and what food means to them? No, they just shove it down their gullet. Like someone above said, music to most people is something that's ancillary, disposable, on in the background while they work/jog/exercise, etc. I think there are enough people out there who value music enough to create a market for human-made music, as long as it can still offer a superior experience.

Idk, some of the stuff I find most interesting is when I hear something I didn't necessarily expect or something that I didn't necessarily know that I wanted to hear. Seems to me that this kind of thing would be great at churning out representative examples of what's out there but might not be as good or good at all at actually generating something good, new, and exciting that rests in a musical whitespace, so to speak?

My brother posted some nice pics from central Ohio

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-46346-0

IMHO, Tom Fec from Black Moth Super Rainbow / Tobacco is a master of vocoder Edit: just love this one

Half of me wants to say: But the other half of me would be fine if the R party was just blown into nonexistence.

Right in the nick of time.

Read the article. There's even a video of cicadas pissing.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2317878121

There is still an embargo and Americans are not allowed to travel for tourism, but there are several reasons for which we are allowed to travel. Look it up; the most popular is, "to help and support the Cuban people." Supposedly, you're supposed to do something like 40 hours worth of helping the people each day, and you're supposed to keep receipts that they can check for up to 5 years or something. We stayed in privately-owned AirBnBs and did several private tours, all of which count toward that goal. We did a farm tour in Viñales where our guide (a farmer) took us through tobacco fields and to a tobacco / honey / coffee farm. The gov't takes 90% of their crop, but they're allowed to do whatever with the remaining 10% and I may or may not have hypothetically in an alternate universe perhaps not purchased 50 cigars from this farmer (there's some gray area there, as they are not "branded" cigars; they are made and sold by the farmer not the government so nobody could tell me if they were illegal but idc because now I have them in my humidor). We also did a vintage car tour and an Afro-Cuban / Santeria tour in Havana; both supported privately-owned businesses. Inflation there recently has been crazy af (something like 100 - 500x?), the gov't ration books don't provide shit, and COVID / Trump's policy shift from Obama wrecked a lot of their tourism (country's main source of income) so they are facing a pretty bad time all around. Because of the embargo, we had to take a fat stack of cash and change it there (American credit cards and bank cards will not work), but tourists from other countries do not face this restriction, although you can really only use credit in a limited number of shops and there were long lines for the ATMs that were actually working (side note, the gov't restricts Cuban citizens to withdraw max 5,000 Cuban pesos per day, which currently is only about $16 USD). Bottom line was that we had an amazing time, and nearly all Cubans we met were friendly and helpful and had a lot of good things to say about American people. It also helped a lot to have a native Spanish speaker (father-in-law) and fluent Spanish speaker (my wife); I'm not sure how well I could've gotten around with limited Spanish. It was amazing to hear all kinds of stories like our Viñales hostess and how her 2 sons had to sell drugs for a coyote just so they could get to Grenada where they're barely making enough to eat but she says, "at least they're free". Or our Havana hostess who was a pharmacist but also does the hosting/AirBnB concierge gig because her pharmacist job pays less than $15 a month and that's not even enough to feed herself let alone her family (doctors make a whopping $20 a month)... I'd definitely recommend going, but do your research first and plan well.