Even if you could obtain a permit, a structural engineer told me in 2007 that the soil in HI would not generally support a basement. He had a query from a mainlander (Northeast USA) who wanted to build a home with a basement in Honolulu. Sure, if he were a corporation with tens of millions of dollars, and a licensed architect and construction company, they might be able to do it.

Then there's the constant upkeep and improvements which home refinancing and equity loans make possible.  It's rare to hire anyone to do work on your home and spend less than $10,000.  A new roof for mine would be over $24K.  That's insane.

Tell me about that. We have been improvers, sellers and purchasers, in the past two years. First, a new roof on our primary home was estimated to cost $155,000 in east Oahu. Not the price of an asphalt tile, but concrete tile. There are homes in what used to be "reasonable" investments in Kapolei (west Oahu). These modest houses had Monier tile roofs. That company was purchased by another company, and zoom, up went the replacement costs. It is so expensive to replace tile roofs now that many of my neighbors put off the repair, and rely on a hurricane to entertain the project. I am not in a position to take a 100% hit for this replacement. It was cheaper to just replace 30 faulty tiles for $3000.
As for selling a property, that has been the most hellish experience since 2008. My wife took out a hard money loan on a condo. This bled close to $85K from our assets. She had no idea about how to smoothly complete the fixups needed to put the property on the market. She had one buyer who needed to obtain a VA loan in 2025. This took nearly two months to complete. The gubmint surprisingly approved the required loan amount, which allowed the wife to avoid defaulting on her hard money loan. I have no idea about the future of the VA loan process, with or without DOGE meddling. If you are a veteran and need to buy a home, good luck before the market collapses.
The third thing we did in the past two years was buying a home for one of our Ohana. If an individual or family has to go through the hoops to obtain a loan in this time frame, it will be worse than getting a root canal, heart transplant, and brain surgery. Most old homes have undocumented improvements, and while lenders seem to ignore these features, the Department of Planning and Permits could make your life hellish, in the future.
Real estate investment in 2025 will be a challenge. This youtube video is one of the pessimistic views of the housing market.

There are some ordinances being considered that probably ban open carry or firing in a public space. I do not know if KHSC even has a lane for air rifles, since the range re-opened,



$500 dolla fine, braddah, for open carry.

After 6 months, why is this news drawing the attention of the Wall Street Journal today?

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/foreign-purchase-of-u-s-ammo-maker-sparks-national-security-battle-db31490d

Sorry for the pay-walled link, but this is a Rupert Murdoch owned company. In the capitalist world, ammo is a commodity, and like a lot of other products, it gets outsourced to foreign manufacturers. We probably agree that this is a national security issue, but why didn't Mike Johnson take care of it with hearings? The National Police Officers Organization and many other groups are against the takeover. Whose pockets are being lined to get the domestic business possibly gutted?
I found a more recent article (about a month old) that is not pay-walled-
https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/vista-outdoor-urges-mnc-capital-increase-offer-price-3-bln-bid-2024-04-22/
Since VSTO is still trading this morning, I hope there is a deal looming that would protect U.S. interests.

Very poor acknowledgement to one of the last big power outages on Oahu:

https://x.com/HwnElectric/status/1792104184545738902

From a cursory read, it appears to have started in Mililani at around 11:15 PM Saturday May 18, 2024. It hit my neighborhood around midnight. My security cam shows a black hole ending at 3:43 AM on Sunday. I estimate 100K customers experienced the blackout, based on the fact that it struck town. Uganda has a better power grid. As usual, the HECO employees monitoring X (Twitter) posted few updates before and after the outage.

Anyone have ideas on how to set up a hospital grade backup power system? It needs to support either a freezer or refrigerator for several days. MRE and dry foods are only a partial solution. Real men like pizza, frozen or refrigerated. Cold beer is a must. Is dry ice (CO2) viable? I think Thermoelectric refrigerators can work at 12 V, but what's hospital grade?

Tin foil or not, someone needs to archive all the property records in the damaged areas. I saw a fly-by video on youtube, but the records tell the true story. Which properties are fee simple, which are leasehold, and how many are owned by shady trusts? Document the assessed values, before and after. What are the mineral rights? We are witnessing an $8 billion dollar loss, which will get worse when inflation, insurance and taxes destroy homeowners across all islands. HECO and Maui Electric are going to sock us with infrastructure rate boosts. We pay for their dumb mistakes, and they make more money.

Here's da problem with suicide by gun. It is often not the real cause of death of a person. It can be a staged act, when a wife rigs up ("arranges") the death of her husband.

There was a "death by suicide" of a cop on a neighbor island. Like a lot of acts, it was covered up by local authorities.

On the mainland, we have the case of a "texting suicide" caused by a nasty woman messing with the mind of her boyfriend. He died by carbon monoxide poisoning. She was convicted of manslaughter. Do we ban cars, using CDC reasoning?

I theorize that the bad building codes allowed the flames to spread like wildfire. Being near the ocean, it would not be surprising if acetone and other accelerants were present in some homes. During the demolition process, FEMA should devote some funds to researching better ways to protect neighborhoods from massive, uncontrolled destruction. There are third world countries with better fire control / safety regulations on their books. State Farm, which is one of the biggest insurers in Hawaii, will probably put the hammer down on homeowners. Their underwriters are probably going to force new customers to pay for fire assessments on their homes. If the property does not meet current codes, the owner will have to self-insure. We have only to look at what insurance companies have done in Florida. The victims of any disaster are never confined to just the damaged community.

Three tings u need: 45 automatic handgun, shotgun, and plenty of ammo (preferably in a mag).

The fourth thing you need to find is inside the apartment building. She's a blonde.

With all the old people in the state, why are there no Senior competitions? Are organizers afraid of old people being unable to get off a mat, or falling asleep during the match?