u/Jenikovista

I went shopping for quartzite slabs in Northern California yesterday and the vast majority of available slabs were 2 cms across multiple stores.

I have read online that 3 cms is a much better choice, but each and every stone store I visited said that is an East Coast/Midwest thing, and that 2 cms is standard in the Western US for quartzite kitchen countertops.

Is this true or are they all full of baloney trying to offload substandard slabs to me? Or is 2 cms fine and not really a big deal, assuming it's got the plywood underlayment?

We moved to webflow from wordpress and it's been a disaster. No one on the team wants to use it, everyone is afraid of breaking something, and so we're moving back.

However it's been a few years and our old template/builder is no longer supported and was shyte anyways. We prize simplicity and site speed. What builder would you recommend these days?

I thought it would be a good idea to select my new appliances now (during remodel ideation) so I would have the dimensions to share with the builder for the cabinet plans. This seems to me the best way to make sure everything fits well and I get the appliances I want.

But I mentioned this idea to my mom and she strongly (forcefully) advised to wait until after the cabinet plans were done so I could then select appliances that would work in the kitchen.

This seems really limiting to me and destined to result in ill-fitting appliances. What am I missing? Is mom right, or me?

Last week I put in an offer on a home that had been on the market for 682 days. Over 300 days at the current list price.

I offered 6% under asking, which was inline with comps and given that the market had rejected their list price, a fair offer.

It’s not that I didn’t expect them to negotiate. I did. There was a little wiggle room.

Instead they decided to try to squeeze. They countered at only 1% off the list price, and they wanted to stay rent-free in the home until the end of summer.

Um no.

I could have countered back. But what they didn’t know what I was on the fence between their house and another. And sometime in that 48 hours they took to respond to my offer, my mind had wandered back to the other.

So when the ridiculous counter finally came in, instead of answering it I simply made an offer on the other house.

The second sellers were not so dumb. They accepted my offer with one small concession on my side. It only took them 2 hours. Deal done!

I am now happily in contract. The first seller’s agent reached out to mine today to ask “what went wrong?” And to see if they could reconsider my original offer. My agent said I was already in contract on another property.

The moral of this story is that buying and selling a home is a negotiation for sure, but don’t overplay your hand. If someone makes you a fair offer, don’t quibble or get cocky. Know what you want upfront money and timing wise and you’ll be a lot more confident in your decision-making, and won’t blow your deal.

Summary: Two exiled Russian media sources published a report estimating around 352,000 Russian soldiers have died in the fighting with Ukraine, and a total of 500,000 from both sides.

My take: I have always supported Ukraine given the Russian aggression and a deep belief that Ukrainians have a right to self-governance in peace and to make whatever treaties and alliances they'd like.

But the scope of this loss for Russia is almost unfathomable. An entire generation of young men, gone (while Russian women do serve in the Russian military and in combat roles, they are mostly kept from the front lines and early-war estimates put the number of deaths to be very low).

I don't know what this means for Russia in the long-term, but it struck me as really sad. I'm not a fan of the Russian government but I've known many Russians (and Ukrainians) over the years through work and enjoyed them all so much. Maybe it was growing up during perestroika and the fall of the Berlin wall, but I don't see Russian people as fascists or communists or whatever label of the year the media or other governments want to put on them. I see them as people who time and time again get f*ed by dictators.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/09/world/europe/russia-ukraine-war-death-toll.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hFA.wzlH.AilTOnS2p0D8&smid=url-share