I have an XC70 from 2011, last of the full size wagons, and a f150 platinum. I took demi cross country road trips in both over the last month. The XC70 is the 2nd best purchase I have ever made based on its longevity, but the f150 was more comfortable.
Well, prescription drugs are ubiquitous as is access to pornography and cheap vidya.
Ersatz substitutes that work just well enough? We'll have to wait and see. Plus, America is highly insulated from the extremes what may well crush other places.
Because they all have done the math and know that no one will support them. Nobody wants to be first after all. Because you die and everyone says bad things about you.
But understand, that the moment the camel's back breaks we will be in a full scale nation-wide civil war in less than two weeks. Possibly even less than one week. And it will be very violent and very bloody. We've already seen this in other western countries.
It really is a very delicate balance right now. Whether or not we ever tip over it into civil war is something that all the smart people are watching.
Maybe that's why the democrats are trying to start WW3 with Russia? To try and cause a third outcome that doesn't end up with them dying? We live in interesting times, and as with all interesting times, it's not going to end well, I'm sure.
Whenever things are going bad for the Uniparty, they bray for national unity. When things are going well, they instruct the FBI to ignore foreigners who are only taking the first half of flight training so they can put those resources into better harassing the Solider Of Fortune subscription list.
Probably because their mother or grandmother took them to church and they have some basis on which to make moral decisions, and a longer term view of the world and their own mortality.
For a while I had some hope that the male Boomer veterans, rather than just go gently into that good night, would collectively decapitate the American government and corporate hierarchy as a long-overdue repentance for the sins they visited on their children. Kind of like "The Expendables" in real life.
The truck sizing thing is parroted as fact on every automotive site too. TRUCKS ARE BIGGER THAN EVER!!
The reality is my 2019 Super Duty is no wider or taller than a 1970s model, and marginally longer to account for crash bumpers and more cab space. That, and trucks are styled to look bigger than they are. The “big rig” design trend since the ‘94 Ram has worked beyond its creators’ wildest dreams and deluded everyone into thinking we are driving around in Peterbilts.
The average truck might be bigger, because crew cabs and 4x4 are more popular than decades ago, but configured like for like, sizes have been stable for at least 20 years.
Replying to myself to give credit where it’s due: The Autopian published a pretty thorough takedown of the truck bed article today. So I’ll revise my statement to say the truck sizing fallacy is parroted only on “most automotive sites.”
The Fit/Jazz has a huge blind spot because of how they did the thick A pillar with the secondary window. I'm sure that it has to do with rollover protection but sometimes things get lost.
Styling is huge. The first gen Tundra is a good example of this. First and second gen double cabs are almost identically sized, but the first gen looks dramatically smaller.
It's a PR firm paying media outlets to run articles against pickups. The PR firm is hired by US government or one of the beltway think tanks.
I have personal experience of this. Back in around 2010 the US government decided to eliminate the US retail Forex industry because it was eating into the trading volume of the exchanges like CME. Suddenly the mainstream news was full of articles about people who had lost money trading forex. It was clearly an organized campaign. And it worked, the forty or so US regulated brokers back then are now down to two.
I also recall back in summer 2011 reading in the Chicago Sun Times that the police had closed the beach at Lake Shore Drive because it was "too hot". I was confused because it was eighty degrees out. A quick glance at the comment section told the true story: there was a massive fight taking place among beachgoers! The Sun Times did the decent thing and disabled and hid the comments. Over at the Tribune new comments were disabled but old ones were left up.
No wonder comment sections are long gone: the commenters are better informed and more ethical, and frequently better writers, than the 'journalists' responsible for the articles being commented on !
The mother corporation and possibly even the government. News Organizations are no longer (or maybe I should say 'once again') expected to make a profit. They're expect to push 'the message' and the propaganda.
Period.
Again, it's why all of the big journalists these days are millionaire kids with trust funds, or relatives to those in office.
I like Awaken with JP, but when he does overtly political videos (which are almost always funny) he sometimes gets things wrong (or he purposely ignores them to please the crowd). So I read through his comments section and learn where he makes a mistake and see what he's ignoring/ignorant of. Not all youtube comments are terrible, in other words.
Fascinating. I have often wondered about the apparent “coordination” of opinions emanating from the likes of the Times, the Atlantic, etc. Top down or “organic”?
I have significant reason to believe that former TTAC editor Edward "Ted" Niedermeyer was in the pay of a right-wing consensus farm for a couple of years.
They have mailing lists and the like that they all subscribe to so they can coordinate their messages and talking points. They've been exposed more than once about doing this.
So now they're more careful. But they haven't changed their ways. These people really aren't all that smart. But to be honest, no one cares anymore.
As a complete outsider I have two unsubstantiated views:
1. If a media outlet is part of the Trusted New Initiative, allow me to indulge in a tautalogical analogy that like minded people think alike.
2. I suspect there is an element of conformity. Choose any verbal tick of your choosing: saying "lol" out loud in regular conversation, writing the word "like" in an e-mail, etc.
To me Ryan Holliday's "Trust Me I'm Lying" book makes me think it can be a bit of both, which is trying to recall a read from a long time ago. ISBN 1591846285
I am lucky. I have always viewed the media as trash. In 1970, a jr in high school, my hs located literally a mile from a large Army base, everyone had relations that served in Nam. 30% of the males from my class were in uniform by the fall, like me. We knew the reporting was full of shit. Plus that time was when the inside info on jFK, FDR, LBJ started to come indicating that the press had deliberately withheld info that might have hurt their preferred.
Bemusingly at around the same R&T ran a glowing review of the Rover 2000TC. If you knew even one English car mechanic you knew Rovers had a half life similar to a soda cracker. What an embarrassment.
Out of curiosity, not having lived through it, how was the media full of shit then on Nam?
Oddly, I was just offered a very nice, 1 owner Rover 2000 TC for very small money. I'd probably have it in hand for a thousand or two. The single owner was a university professor and Rover club member, who drove it daily for the better part of two decades (I'm guessing it was parked in the winters). I might have taken a flyer on it, but while it was complete, the complete engine was in pieces. Too much work for something I'd have limited interest in.
It may seem strange but both the pro war and anti war (by 1970 90% of the media) weren’t very good. My dad, who was serving in his 3rd war by 1968, along with most lifers, had interesting viewpoints shall we say. Meanwhile tunnel rats serving virtually continuous tours had other thoughts. If I live another 20 years and get to 90 I may actually read a decent history of 1964-1971 Vietnam. But getting the NVA and CIA records may still be tricky at that point.
Part of my early awakening about media bias happened when watching CBS News reporting on the second battle of Khe Sanh (where U.S. Marines decidedly did not reenact how the French handled Dien Bien Phu). Every day we saw disheartening reports from the Marine base, which showed fierce fighting, but this was the film era when photographs were still transmitted line by line over phone wires and portable video tape machines were rare if not nonexistant. Nobody at CBS explained how, with the Marines under such intense fire, they were able to get the film to Saigon or Danang for processing and the reporters in and out of the base. The certainly never showed us the thousands of dead communist soldiers there were in the wake of the battle.
Of course, with footage of Marines fighting VC on the grounds of the U.S. embassy in Saigon and the number of U.S. casualties being non-trivial (~200/wk if I recall correctly) it wasn't that hard to spin Tet as a defeat, even though it meant the end of the VC as an effective fighting force.
Regarding spin, Eddie Adams regarded Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan as a good man and while Saigon Execution certainly helped Adams' career as a photojournalist, he had regrets about how the image was used to slander Nguyen.
I think Walter did that gratis, for the cause, but CBS paid him enough money to have a summer home on Martha's Vinyard and a custom 64 foot sailing yacht. Apparently he took up ocean sailing because his family thought that racing Lotus Elevens was a bit too risky. A man with an interesting life, he wasn't as saintly as his fans think and probably not as evil as you and I would like to believe.
I had a Rover 2000SC in 1968. I liked the styling, the smell of the leather interior, and it had better acceleration and handling than most of its competitors...when it ran. "Rovers had a half life similar to a soda cracker" is an excellent summation of my experience with that car.
I wish I could post pictures here. You wouldn't believe how surprised i was to see an obviously well kept 2000 TC in the wild close to home. As a kid there was a fair number of them in Toronto in the 70s but I likely haven't seen one since 1980.
To be fair, I would probably attempt to wipe myself off social media if I was embroiled in a national news scandal. Walker is just a guy who works at Pfizer, not the villain of the story.
All I will say about this is: If Walker really is who he said he was, then the level of scrubbing was more than he could have accomplished without hitting the panic button at work and calling in major players.
I wonder if the Forbes writer considered a deliberate abscence from social media. A VP I worker for in the past made it a point not to use LinkedIn and such to prevent phishing attempts.
I don't put my current gig on LinkedIn. Not EVER. Because someone will call them and say I'm a combination of Reinhard Heydrich and the villain from Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom.
'You’d be foolish to ignore these articles because this is literally how “consensus” is built in America today; via a flood of identical think pieces that create the impression of an overwhelming social shift.'
It's a highly effective method because in real life we assume different sources aren't in cahoots (e.g., I ask 5 people at work why system {X} was designed to produce {Y} and if they all say the same thing it's probably true) and we might go to check multiple sources to verify/validate and like in real life when you ask a bunch of people you assume they aren't working amongst themselves to get their stories straight.; doubly so when, in America, "both sides" media say the same things. This is used, as you note, to agitate for legal changes to drive behavior. Incidentally, people say you can't legislate morality, but in a world where your carbon use is analogous to sin (and companies can buy indulgences), we sure are legislating morality and trying to push people in a certain way.
Bonus points for using false or poor statistics, data which has biases, so on and so forth.
As for PV, here's a question: have they ever lost a court case? Meaning, what is their track record which we can use as a proxy for likelihood of being deliberately misleading (though not really, because you can careful state things that a human will note are untrue but can be unassailable via lawfare).
They got dinged for putting an operative in "Democracy Partners LLC", and they also got hit with legal fees for Stanford, which even the trial court admitted was a kind of backhand SLAPP.
Didn't they get in trouble with some Planned Parenthood videos like 15 or 20 years ago? Or was that a different group of right-wing video guerillas? I seem to remember something about that going wrong when I was in college...
they have settled/lost lawsuits for using deceptive practices for obtaining interviews. i do not believe they have ever been hoaxed by a target or found to have published false information. they sued the new york times for defamation in 2020. the case is still in court.
i had a coworker who was falsely accused of supplying them with info. she was fired without any opportunity to defend herself.
I half-heartedly follow Richard Hanania's Substack. Sometimes he has some very interesting things to say, like his thing about self-confidence last summer... or early fall... (whenever it was, give me a break, I flew back from Japan last Friday and I'm still suffering through sleepless nights so this post might become a disjointed adventure, stay tuned, we'll see) was though-provoking in a good way. I even told my wife about it, and I don't share much about the things I read because she has different interests.
But last week--no, last week I was in Japan enjoying myself, the week before that, too. It feels like last week, though. So, a few weeks ago he posted about someone saying the MSM lies a lot less than we think, and gets almost everything right. I suppose that since my news consumption is here and Instapundit I doubted the assertions, but the first article Hanania linked to made a certain amount of sense, especially when talking about what he considers lying versus what his readers consider lying. Then Hanania went more in depth in an article of his own and it reeked of all the things I hate about his writing. It was sanctimonious. It was uncritical. "The Times says they don't lie and since they're a credible source I believe them. Oh, and everyone I talk to there is nice to me." (not a direct quote, but if you read his article it comes across that way)
When he writes articles like these (and the one last year or the year before praising the CCP for its power and efficiency) he seems like he's a part of the machine, part of TLP's Cathedral. He certainly is friends with a lot of those reporters and of course he would want to go to bat to defend his friends. Who wouldn't? But when they get things wrong (like the Trump-Russia story which they reported on endlessly) they bury a retraction deep in the abyss where no one will ever see it, and that's only if they get caught.
The other thing Hanania does in his article is talk about the MSM's science articles and how the science reporters get all their stuff right. He talks about how all the reporters for these big publications are some of the smartest people he knows, and they have to be! While Hanania knows his field (whatever it is), how does he know if the science reporting across subjects is right? Should I just trust them to be right? Should I have faith in them? With all the shenanigans their political counterparts get wrong (like the Trump-Russia collusion story they desperately hoped was true) or are intentionally misleading about (as with this Axios piece on trucks), is it wise to place my trust in them? And when you combine that with the fact that there are always "scientific studies" contradicting each other (eggs are bad for you! Wait, they're not! Wait, just the yolk is bad, only eat the whites! Wait, maybe not...) what am I supposed to believe? Who should I trust? I don't trust them, and I trust Hanania a little less than I did before. His article reads as though he flippantly thinks Gell-Mann amnesia is not a thing.
So I have a few sources I trust. I'm here because you seem honest and forthright. You're a lot more critical than I am and I appreciate the ability to see a point of view I could never have myself. Maybe "consuming" my news second-hand through sites like this is not an ideal situation, but since I find the Marxist/postmodernist lenses through which almost the entirety of corporate media is focused this seems to be the best way possible.
I am no kind of scientist other than a COMPUTER scientist, but I can tell you that the media gets basic facts about the Internet and computing wrong far more often than they get 'em right.
A reporter up here for a local TV station wrote an article (after interviewing the county treasurer!) about property taxes and how Michigan levies them and how they are capped and got almost every single thing wrong. I keep this in mind when anyone talks about something they read (or saw) in the news.
Literally every story that I have ever read where I had firsthand knowledge of what was being reported on contained inaccuracies or outright falsehoods.
Exactly. I SAW Bigfoot, but if you look up the story in the lamestream media it's "hirsute local man cited for indecent exposure." You can't fool me, I know what I saw running out of that Arby's.
I think a part of the explanation is that Jack's exceptional recall is what enables him to pierce the veil.
The sheer volume and rapidity of stories and what you're supposed to care about is bewildering, and most people are plugged in and unable to stay grounded or recollect with any clarity what came before and mark out what was wrong.
I got my degree in journalism, which I’ve used to dazzling effect in the oil and gas industry over the years. As such, it honestly baffles me when people believe more than maybe half of what they see in the media. The opportunities for unconscious bias, let alone outright manipulation as outlined above, are just too great.
Maybe you can only really appreciate how the sausage is made when you’ve manned the lips-and-assholes grinder yourself.
Intent to mislead or just wannabe "journalists" trying to push out articles and get numbers?
I can see the entire truck article starting out with someone thinking, "Wow! Pickups are bigger than ever!" and then doing the minimum amount of work required to do an article that says the same thing. Since they don't really know shit about trucks and can't be bothered to look up a top down photo of a crew cab from the 70s they just use what they can easily get. Wrap up this entire article in an afternoon and collect your check. Most readers will look at that article and nod, because it seems to us that truck are pretty big things these days, and then go back about their day. A few people will get annoyed. Life goes on until a few weeks later when another blogger needs a quick, agreeable article and decides to do the same thing all over again.
On the Veritas piece, the whole thing seems stupid. Find some dude on Grindr, get him in a bar and get him to spout off in the hopes that he can score. Any research on who this guy really is or are you just going by his profile? It's a dating site on the internet so no one will lie on there, right? And we all know that no one ever lies to a stranger in a bar in the hopes of getting casual sex before they ghost this person. But again, the whole point isn't to educate anyone, the whole point is to generate clicks From that standpoint, seems like it works.
Rather hilariously, it's the PowerPC vs x86 debate all over again.
Several times in my adult life, I have seen a competing processor architecture come in and make mincemeat of x86 -- but the next x86 would always redress this. Because when you sell a zillion processors, you can put a lot more money into making them right.
Similarly, the F-150 has economies of scale for both production and R&D that greatly outweigh any materials savings from a 4400 pound Ranger vs a 5200 pound F-150.
(Ssshh... but this was the case in 1995 as well. I could sell you an F-150 almost as cheap as a Ranger back then.)
It would be a good story, but wouldn't need to be a long one. Aside from economies of scale (as Jack mentions), the other factor is that those compact trucks of the '70s and '80s had close to zero crash protection. Make them meet modern safety standards and they have to get bigger and heavier. Heavier means they need bigger engines to move the mass and keep up with modern traffic. You end up with a Tacoma or a modern Ranger. Toss on the "minimum" acceptable options on a modern vehicle, and really you end up with a $15/month difference on a 60 month loan between a modern mini truck and it's much more comfortable and capable full sized half ton.
I looked at a loaded Ranger twelve years ago and the price was so close to an F-150 Lariat that it didn’t make sense to get a Ranger. So got the F-150 and still have it and use it to haul things such as motorcycles and hay. The rear of the cab is very handy and can hold a lot. The 5.5’ bed is enough for most things. My dad has a 90s F-250 crew cab with an 8’ bed. Nice when needed but it’s a little unwieldy for daily use.
If the Axios evolution continues pickups will eventually not have beds. Problem solved.
Look for coordination; particularly when a bunch of stories are all released with near simultaneity, and even better if they cross-reference each other.
Also, PV seems to operate on getting the mark, validating their identity, and then exploiting which is supposedly (so I've heard) similar to how nation-states might leverage someone for espionage.
Sexual blackmail was practiced by covert agencies on both sides of the Iron Curtain, which is how we get that fantastic shot of Keri Russell's tiny cute ass on "The Americans"
Sexual blackmail was a specialty of organized crime. The rich and powerful enjoyed things like, say, dressing up in women's clothing and having sex with underage boys. This penchant was catered to by organized crime, and in turn when Mary Hoover took off her dress and went back to being J. Edgar Hoover and running the FBI the mob interests didn't get interfered with. This includes their money laundering of prohibition, drug smuggling, arms trafficking, and human trafficking that was all done with the help of banks. Among them the largest corporate banks of our time. Those same banks were also useful in moving around money and assets for various intelligence agencies, themselves in league with organized crime because it turned out to be useful to move money, weapons, drugs, and people all over the world.
Everybody did it, but it was elevated to high art in the American system. Hell, LBJ ran his own brothel that catered to legislators specifically for that purpose.
I hold by Miss Manners, who said that the title doctor should not be used socially, outside of professional circles, unless one is an actual medical practictioner. When I correspond with professors with PhDs, I refer to them as Prof. Soandso, not Dr.
My mother, o'b'm', had four sisters. The oldest married a lawyer. My mom, who was second, married a veterinarian. Jackie, who was 4th, married a dentist. When Gail, the youngest, married a MD, my grandmother referred to him as a "RD, a real doctor."
My father, the aforementioned veterinarian, rarely put on airs but in as much as he was consulted by MDs and DOs, it annoyed him just a little when people would say he wasn't a real doctor. There was a Reform rabbi in Detroit for whom the Reform movement wasn't reform enough, so he started a "humanist synagogue" i.e. a temple for athiest Jews. My dad and I were discussing him one day and I said, "Well, he isn't a real rabbi." To which my father replied, "He went to a seminary and was ordained so he deserves the title." So I asked, "Dad, is a chiropractor a real doctor?" He gave me one of those looks but he had nothing to say in response.
On the other hand, they can have the freedom (and expense) of running their own business, without insurance companies, hospital administrators, and government bureaucrats (see pain treatment) telling them how to practice medicine.
Another petty annoyance: dual MD couples that go by "Dr. & Dr" in the wife's zeal for equal billing. It's "Drs. Fred and Mary Smith".
A shocking number of the members of my college friend group are now "professor" in your system, not the smart ones. They all obnoxiously go by Dr. My wife who is and MD refuses to even acknowledge being a doctor outside of work.
I'm surprised that lawyers with JDs don't call themselves "doctor", but then they always have Esq. to distinguish themselves from the uncredentialed masses.
Speaking of ginned-up phrases...everyone knows what a white supremacist is, but what exactly is a "white nationalist"? Someone who thinks is it desirable (or even possible) to build a nation comprised solely of white people? I doubt there are more than 5000 people like that in the United States. No, I suspect what they really mean is "anyone who opposes globalism and has skin of a lighter tone than a paper bag." That's probably 85% of your readers, including me. Uh oh.
A "white nationalist" is anyone who thinks that the United States, or any European state, should be majority white.
There is no equivalent term for "Chinese Nationalist", or "Indian Nationalist", or "Peruvian Nationalist", by the way. If a country full of non-whites wants to keep whites out, that's a reasonable policy that is totally their choice. If a country full of whites wants to -- fuck it, not STOP their replacement by non-whites, but SLOW THE RATE OF REPLACEMENT -- then they are "white nationalists" and should be put in the My Lai ditch ASAP.
Any white dude who has ever tried to get a work visa or a residency pass in, say, Singapore or Japan, knows just how high the barriers are to that. What are the barriers in the other direction? Uh, well, there has been a PROPOSAL to limit the INCREASE in the RATE OF INCREASE of H1-B.
I actually have seen the phrase "Hindu nationalists" but, yes, the media generally ignores Han supremacism.
On the other hand, there are those folks like Theodore Beale that call Israel an "ethnostate" while simultaneously decrying the fact that the Franks may become a minority in France, along with the Swedes in Sweden, and the Danes in Denmark.
It's interesting who gets a pass and who gets condemned, and by whom.
While Israel's "Right of Return" granting immediate citizenship upon immigration only applies to Jews, non-Jews can be citizens (20% of Israeli citizens are Muslim or Christian Arabs) native born and naturalized. If you aren't Han Chinese, you simply cannot become a Chinese citizen. There are ethnically Korean Japanese who have lived their for generations but are not really accepted. Asian cultures can teach those in the West a thing or two about xenophobia.
China will go so far as to silence the ethnic Uighur who have been living in that part of China for generations (longer than many chinese empires) and replace them with Muslim Hui (often descendants of/straight up are han chinese who have converted to islam) people in cities through resettlement mainly because the Hui openly pledge allegiance to china; the Uighurs do not
As a South Asian myself, yes there is a very strong sense of nationalism eminating from the big three nations there; India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The original basis was to split India into Hindu and Muslim majority areas, but now its gone beyond that. This was made worse due to the 1947 Partition and subsequent 1971 Bangladesh war of Liberation. Its enough for India and Pakistan to come into near nuclear war with each other a few times in the Kashmir region (which is a whole can of worms of disputed territory and fighting)
I see the India/Pakistan situation as an unfortunate prototype for America's future. I'm not equipped to say who got the raw deal there -- I have friends on both sides of the conflict, one of whom was a top-ranking general with photos of Hilary Clinton on his desk -- but someone sure did.
Strong (possibly TOO strong) nationalism is definitely prevalent in South Asia. Even tiny Sri Lanka where I'm from has that issue with the majority Sinhala/Buddhists having long had a weird kind of superiority complex. This ended up leading to a couple of decades of civil war, which was, basically hell. It's been over a decade since the war ended, but the root causes still have not been addressed.
If you want a dose of real racism, feel free to ask my wife how she feels about anyone other than Japanese or white people. It's hilarious and adorable and a little appalling all at the same time!
"I've been all around the world and compared to Europeans, Asians, and Africans, Americans are ranks amateurs when it comes to racism." - Prof. Lewis Lancaster, Dept of East Asian Languages, University of California Berkeley
Prior to 2020, I had this naïve belief that more than anything else (including race), what made an American an American was the belief that freedom was more valuable than safety or security. COVID proved just how wrong I was. Those of us who value freedom were steamrolled by those who believe government can save them from the flu. Our posse's gettin' small, and our posse's gettin' smaller.
BTW - if you Google "Ben Franklin liberty safety quote," the top results are all gaslighting. "Ben Franklin's original quote lost its context," "How the world butchered Ben Franklin's quote," "What Benjamin Franklin really said." No wonder most people don't comprehend what "shall not be infringed" means.
To get a spousal visa in Japan is actually pretty easy. All I would have had to do is show up at an immigration center with my Japanese wife and sign some papers. Well, stamp them. In order to become a Japanese citizen? It might as well be impossible.
I feel like somewhere in Japan there is someone who has achieved Peak Unassimilated Immigrant: A southern American with Japanese citizenship, driving an imported light duty pickup truck, eating everything with traditional western cutlery, teaching ESL or something and cranking out Japanese speakers of English who adopt a southern drawl.
I'd probably be considered a "hard right Zionist" other than the fact that I do my zionizing from suburban Detroit, unlike my brother who lives in Jerusalem and may not have voted for Likud because he thinks they are squishes. R' Meir Kahane, ה׳ ינקום דמו, sometimes stayed at my cousin's house when he was in town.
That being said, some Hindu Nationalists make my JDLnik friends look positively moderate.
It's definitely a weird thing for them to get so hung up on, and I'm not the first one to make this argument but I think it's largely motivated by spiteful miserable city-dwelling journalists seeing (what remains of) healthy virile middle class Americans who can still (with some stretching via credit) afford to buy a big comfy truck to fit their families and maybe even tow a boat or camper and help with hauling stuff for their suburban yard. You see all those photos on twitter of people standing their kids next to bumper of street parked trucks with some horrifying captions, etc.... they're just "jelly" as the kids say.
I agree with you, what’s more mysterious to me is how many otherwise intelligent-seeming commenters on auto sites go along with it. As if freedom of choice in driving should stop at full size trucks (or large SUVs). As if the city folks won’t come for their Mustangs, GTIs, WRXes, or fun cars of choice next…..smdh
We have a whole generation of automotive enthusiasts who have been face-fucked by the economy.
It never occurred to me growing up that I wouldn't be able to afford some "Destination cars". By my 31st birthday I had a new BMW 330i and a barely-used 911. The current generation no longer labors under that illusion -- and since they don't expect to have anything nice, they will eagerly assent to any policy that takes away what OTHERS have.
One of the primary motivators behind my RAPACIOUS bloodlust for filthy lucre is my aspiration to buy up desirable gas guzzling cars to prevent other people from BESPOILING the environment by exercising them!
I’m sure this is part of it too. And it’s a mindset I can’t speak to very honestly, since I bought my Viper new at 30. So I don’t begrudge those people their feelings.
At the same time, it’s more than just pure jealousy, at least for the enthusiasts. There’s no constituency on car sites reviling me for Viper ownership (not yet at least). There’s a large and vocal constituency reviling me for F350 ownership. Never mind which one is more objectively wasteful.
I don’t know if it’s willful blindness on their part to what’s coming or not, but the idea that any kind of ICE enthusiasm is going to be permitted strikes me as highly dubious. The fact that you were screaming on every article about how wasteful and stupid your neighbor’s F150 was isn’t going to save your Mustang or 911 when your betters come for it.
We who like cars and trucks should have a bigger tent, I guess is my larger point. Truck people are some of the biggest gear heads I know, and there ought to be a place for them.
And this condition of America's youth is propagated in no small part by the climate alarmist who are teaching the upcoming generations they must accept a lower standard of living to atone for the sins of their parents and grandparents against the virgin goddess of climate.
I think a lot of car guys have a bit of a "I know better" superiority complex (heck I know I do) so they turn their noses up at pickup-truck buying "normies." The one semi-cogent angle that gets expressed by car-guy circles is that with all these huge/tall trucks around it gets to be more and more of a liability to drive a low-slung sports car/older car around. IMO the bigger issue is how distracted drivers are by electronics, and as a motorcyclist a poorly driven Nissan Altima will kill me about as surely as an F150.
The most dangerous vehicles on the American road, to a motorcyclist, are the cars driven by rich women and poor men. Doesn't matter what they are. An angry twenty-something in a Challenger will kill you out of temper and poor control. A wealthy woman in a Tahoe will cash your check and not realize she did it.
Let me add "distracted and/or angry black female careening along in a beat up Altima on atleast one space saver tire" to the mix. But yes up by my house the "trophy wife in a new Denali" is perhaps the deadliest demographic to a motorcyclist.
I brake-checked a Malcolm-X-looking black woman in one who was tailgating me on the way to work one morning, which led to a 120-mph slalom run through rush hour freeway traffic, including on the shoulders, because she was put out that anyone would object to her riding of rear bumpers. I just wanted to get away from her.
The best part was that she bumped a car trying to get me when we came to a light at the exit, which I was able to squeeze through but she wasn't, being occupied with the rightly-angry driver of the car she hit. As I drove away, I could hear her screaming, "He ignint! He ignint!" and pointing at me.
Sir, you're talking to someone who bought a new Flex Limited in 2009 and an MKT Reserve in 2019!
Too bad the drivelines are made of cardboard.
Don't get the turbo.
And make sure you change the water pump the day you buy the car.
An FWD Flex with water pumps every 75k has no effective expiration date. An Ecoboost Flex with AWD? Uh...
The S-Max will probably be easier to fix, the same way a Flex would be easier to find than an S-Max here!
There's something about the rear suspension on the Flex that results in noticeable negative camber.
I have an XC70 from 2011, last of the full size wagons, and a f150 platinum. I took demi cross country road trips in both over the last month. The XC70 is the 2nd best purchase I have ever made based on its longevity, but the f150 was more comfortable.
There are answers, but they will require an iron heart.
Well, prescription drugs are ubiquitous as is access to pornography and cheap vidya.
Ersatz substitutes that work just well enough? We'll have to wait and see. Plus, America is highly insulated from the extremes what may well crush other places.
Because they all have done the math and know that no one will support them. Nobody wants to be first after all. Because you die and everyone says bad things about you.
But understand, that the moment the camel's back breaks we will be in a full scale nation-wide civil war in less than two weeks. Possibly even less than one week. And it will be very violent and very bloody. We've already seen this in other western countries.
It really is a very delicate balance right now. Whether or not we ever tip over it into civil war is something that all the smart people are watching.
Maybe that's why the democrats are trying to start WW3 with Russia? To try and cause a third outcome that doesn't end up with them dying? We live in interesting times, and as with all interesting times, it's not going to end well, I'm sure.
(Note: I pray that I'm wrong).
I've moved most of my retirement into investment property. I figured it was safer there.
Biden is floating nationalized rent control via EO, I hear. And don't forget Kelo v. New London. They can *take* your muthuhfockin land.
Whenever things are going bad for the Uniparty, they bray for national unity. When things are going well, they instruct the FBI to ignore foreigners who are only taking the first half of flight training so they can put those resources into better harassing the Solider Of Fortune subscription list.
The Saudi suicide hotline.
"I'm feeling depressed."
"Great! Can you fly a plane?"
Probably because their mother or grandmother took them to church and they have some basis on which to make moral decisions, and a longer term view of the world and their own mortality.
For a while I had some hope that the male Boomer veterans, rather than just go gently into that good night, would collectively decapitate the American government and corporate hierarchy as a long-overdue repentance for the sins they visited on their children. Kind of like "The Expendables" in real life.
Turns out they all had a golf game that day!
Parasites.
Nope. They've got too much to lose.
Damn near sent this to you when axios sent it to my junk gmail last week....would’ve been prescient
The truck sizing thing is parroted as fact on every automotive site too. TRUCKS ARE BIGGER THAN EVER!!
The reality is my 2019 Super Duty is no wider or taller than a 1970s model, and marginally longer to account for crash bumpers and more cab space. That, and trucks are styled to look bigger than they are. The “big rig” design trend since the ‘94 Ram has worked beyond its creators’ wildest dreams and deluded everyone into thinking we are driving around in Peterbilts.
The average truck might be bigger, because crew cabs and 4x4 are more popular than decades ago, but configured like for like, sizes have been stable for at least 20 years.
Yeah I parked next to a 1976 F150 SuperCab two weeks ago. It was every bit as substantial as our 2008 Silverado supercab.
I often see S-10 or Tacoma pickups that are longer, wider, and have bigger tires than my 2003 short-box regular-cab Silverado.
Replying to myself to give credit where it’s due: The Autopian published a pretty thorough takedown of the truck bed article today. So I’ll revise my statement to say the truck sizing fallacy is parroted only on “most automotive sites.”
Maybe it's because I drive a small car (5/8 scale Honda Odyssey aka Fit), but it seems to me that the hood lines are taller than they were.
Yes, pedestrian impact regulations.
i dont mind bigger vehicles, but at least make me able to see out of the damn things!
~ fellow fit driver lol
The Fit/Jazz has a huge blind spot because of how they did the thick A pillar with the secondary window. I'm sure that it has to do with rollover protection but sometimes things get lost.
Styling is huge. The first gen Tundra is a good example of this. First and second gen double cabs are almost identically sized, but the first gen looks dramatically smaller.
It's a PR firm paying media outlets to run articles against pickups. The PR firm is hired by US government or one of the beltway think tanks.
I have personal experience of this. Back in around 2010 the US government decided to eliminate the US retail Forex industry because it was eating into the trading volume of the exchanges like CME. Suddenly the mainstream news was full of articles about people who had lost money trading forex. It was clearly an organized campaign. And it worked, the forty or so US regulated brokers back then are now down to two.
I also recall back in summer 2011 reading in the Chicago Sun Times that the police had closed the beach at Lake Shore Drive because it was "too hot". I was confused because it was eighty degrees out. A quick glance at the comment section told the true story: there was a massive fight taking place among beachgoers! The Sun Times did the decent thing and disabled and hid the comments. Over at the Tribune new comments were disabled but old ones were left up.
No wonder comment sections are long gone: the commenters are better informed and more ethical, and frequently better writers, than the 'journalists' responsible for the articles being commented on !
Great theory and one I hadn't considered. But who is paying the bills?
in the end either the taxpayer or someone like George Soros
taxes are just matching donations to the george soros fund
The mother corporation and possibly even the government. News Organizations are no longer (or maybe I should say 'once again') expected to make a profit. They're expect to push 'the message' and the propaganda.
Period.
Again, it's why all of the big journalists these days are millionaire kids with trust funds, or relatives to those in office.
and why real journalism has migrated to, for example, Substack!
Fascinating on the forex history.
I like Awaken with JP, but when he does overtly political videos (which are almost always funny) he sometimes gets things wrong (or he purposely ignores them to please the crowd). So I read through his comments section and learn where he makes a mistake and see what he's ignoring/ignorant of. Not all youtube comments are terrible, in other words.
Fascinating. I have often wondered about the apparent “coordination” of opinions emanating from the likes of the Times, the Atlantic, etc. Top down or “organic”?
They're probably just as organic as the endless antifa riots in 2020 that organically stopped all at the same time.
I have significant reason to believe that former TTAC editor Edward "Ted" Niedermeyer was in the pay of a right-wing consensus farm for a couple of years.
Odd, considering his Dad is as about as lefty as they come! Occupational hazard of living in Portland, I guess!
"Those pallets of bricks and coolers full of frozen water bottles just happened to be there already, you election denier!"
They have mailing lists and the like that they all subscribe to so they can coordinate their messages and talking points. They've been exposed more than once about doing this.
So now they're more careful. But they haven't changed their ways. These people really aren't all that smart. But to be honest, no one cares anymore.
Lightly redone paid content written by PR agencies
As a complete outsider I have two unsubstantiated views:
1. If a media outlet is part of the Trusted New Initiative, allow me to indulge in a tautalogical analogy that like minded people think alike.
2. I suspect there is an element of conformity. Choose any verbal tick of your choosing: saying "lol" out loud in regular conversation, writing the word "like" in an e-mail, etc.
To me Ryan Holliday's "Trust Me I'm Lying" book makes me think it can be a bit of both, which is trying to recall a read from a long time ago. ISBN 1591846285
I am lucky. I have always viewed the media as trash. In 1970, a jr in high school, my hs located literally a mile from a large Army base, everyone had relations that served in Nam. 30% of the males from my class were in uniform by the fall, like me. We knew the reporting was full of shit. Plus that time was when the inside info on jFK, FDR, LBJ started to come indicating that the press had deliberately withheld info that might have hurt their preferred.
Bemusingly at around the same R&T ran a glowing review of the Rover 2000TC. If you knew even one English car mechanic you knew Rovers had a half life similar to a soda cracker. What an embarrassment.
Out of curiosity, not having lived through it, how was the media full of shit then on Nam?
Oddly, I was just offered a very nice, 1 owner Rover 2000 TC for very small money. I'd probably have it in hand for a thousand or two. The single owner was a university professor and Rover club member, who drove it daily for the better part of two decades (I'm guessing it was parked in the winters). I might have taken a flyer on it, but while it was complete, the complete engine was in pieces. Too much work for something I'd have limited interest in.
My guess: because the US military won EVERY decisive engagement in Vietnam but still had to leave.
The NVA and VC got curb-stomped in the Tet Offensive, for example, but it was widely described as a humiliating loss for our forces in American media.
It may seem strange but both the pro war and anti war (by 1970 90% of the media) weren’t very good. My dad, who was serving in his 3rd war by 1968, along with most lifers, had interesting viewpoints shall we say. Meanwhile tunnel rats serving virtually continuous tours had other thoughts. If I live another 20 years and get to 90 I may actually read a decent history of 1964-1971 Vietnam. But getting the NVA and CIA records may still be tricky at that point.
Part of my early awakening about media bias happened when watching CBS News reporting on the second battle of Khe Sanh (where U.S. Marines decidedly did not reenact how the French handled Dien Bien Phu). Every day we saw disheartening reports from the Marine base, which showed fierce fighting, but this was the film era when photographs were still transmitted line by line over phone wires and portable video tape machines were rare if not nonexistant. Nobody at CBS explained how, with the Marines under such intense fire, they were able to get the film to Saigon or Danang for processing and the reporters in and out of the base. The certainly never showed us the thousands of dead communist soldiers there were in the wake of the battle.
Of course, with footage of Marines fighting VC on the grounds of the U.S. embassy in Saigon and the number of U.S. casualties being non-trivial (~200/wk if I recall correctly) it wasn't that hard to spin Tet as a defeat, even though it meant the end of the VC as an effective fighting force.
Regarding spin, Eddie Adams regarded Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan as a good man and while Saigon Execution certainly helped Adams' career as a photojournalist, he had regrets about how the image was used to slander Nguyen.
My dad was a Marine from '68-'72. He STILL hates Cronkite and thinks the man should've been hanged as a traitor.
That was when Roger Cronkite sold out the country. Wonder how much he got paid for that?
I think Walter did that gratis, for the cause, but CBS paid him enough money to have a summer home on Martha's Vinyard and a custom 64 foot sailing yacht. Apparently he took up ocean sailing because his family thought that racing Lotus Elevens was a bit too risky. A man with an interesting life, he wasn't as saintly as his fans think and probably not as evil as you and I would like to believe.
I had a Rover 2000SC in 1968. I liked the styling, the smell of the leather interior, and it had better acceleration and handling than most of its competitors...when it ran. "Rovers had a half life similar to a soda cracker" is an excellent summation of my experience with that car.
I wish I could post pictures here. You wouldn't believe how surprised i was to see an obviously well kept 2000 TC in the wild close to home. As a kid there was a fair number of them in Toronto in the 70s but I likely haven't seen one since 1980.
The hive mind claimed that Walker was scrubbed from LinkedIn and such after the PV piece. Not sus at all.
To be fair, I would probably attempt to wipe myself off social media if I was embroiled in a national news scandal. Walker is just a guy who works at Pfizer, not the villain of the story.
Social media scrubbing is common for the living, and more interesting when it happens for those departed.
All I will say about this is: If Walker really is who he said he was, then the level of scrubbing was more than he could have accomplished without hitting the panic button at work and calling in major players.
I wonder if the Forbes writer considered a deliberate abscence from social media. A VP I worker for in the past made it a point not to use LinkedIn and such to prevent phishing attempts.
I don't put my current gig on LinkedIn. Not EVER. Because someone will call them and say I'm a combination of Reinhard Heydrich and the villain from Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom.
I don't either, yet somehow two different recruiters e-mailed me at my new work address.
Supercabs started in 1974, not 1973 😀. More bad journalism?
There were certainly some BUILT in 1973!
It just goes to show, you can't trust ANYONE.
'You’d be foolish to ignore these articles because this is literally how “consensus” is built in America today; via a flood of identical think pieces that create the impression of an overwhelming social shift.'
It's a highly effective method because in real life we assume different sources aren't in cahoots (e.g., I ask 5 people at work why system {X} was designed to produce {Y} and if they all say the same thing it's probably true) and we might go to check multiple sources to verify/validate and like in real life when you ask a bunch of people you assume they aren't working amongst themselves to get their stories straight.; doubly so when, in America, "both sides" media say the same things. This is used, as you note, to agitate for legal changes to drive behavior. Incidentally, people say you can't legislate morality, but in a world where your carbon use is analogous to sin (and companies can buy indulgences), we sure are legislating morality and trying to push people in a certain way.
Bonus points for using false or poor statistics, data which has biases, so on and so forth.
As for PV, here's a question: have they ever lost a court case? Meaning, what is their track record which we can use as a proxy for likelihood of being deliberately misleading (though not really, because you can careful state things that a human will note are untrue but can be unassailable via lawfare).
They got dinged for putting an operative in "Democracy Partners LLC", and they also got hit with legal fees for Stanford, which even the trial court admitted was a kind of backhand SLAPP.
Didn't they get in trouble with some Planned Parenthood videos like 15 or 20 years ago? Or was that a different group of right-wing video guerillas? I seem to remember something about that going wrong when I was in college...
Possibly. They also got raided by the FBI.
The Cathedral, such as it is, really does not like O'Keefe. Which endears him to me regardless of how I view his tactics and behavior.
Being raided by the FBI says about as much about your moral status as getting a ticket for 15 over these days.
It certainly doesn't invoke the gasp-and-swoon it did back in The Before Time.
they have settled/lost lawsuits for using deceptive practices for obtaining interviews. i do not believe they have ever been hoaxed by a target or found to have published false information. they sued the new york times for defamation in 2020. the case is still in court.
i had a coworker who was falsely accused of supplying them with info. she was fired without any opportunity to defend herself.
I half-heartedly follow Richard Hanania's Substack. Sometimes he has some very interesting things to say, like his thing about self-confidence last summer... or early fall... (whenever it was, give me a break, I flew back from Japan last Friday and I'm still suffering through sleepless nights so this post might become a disjointed adventure, stay tuned, we'll see) was though-provoking in a good way. I even told my wife about it, and I don't share much about the things I read because she has different interests.
But last week--no, last week I was in Japan enjoying myself, the week before that, too. It feels like last week, though. So, a few weeks ago he posted about someone saying the MSM lies a lot less than we think, and gets almost everything right. I suppose that since my news consumption is here and Instapundit I doubted the assertions, but the first article Hanania linked to made a certain amount of sense, especially when talking about what he considers lying versus what his readers consider lying. Then Hanania went more in depth in an article of his own and it reeked of all the things I hate about his writing. It was sanctimonious. It was uncritical. "The Times says they don't lie and since they're a credible source I believe them. Oh, and everyone I talk to there is nice to me." (not a direct quote, but if you read his article it comes across that way)
When he writes articles like these (and the one last year or the year before praising the CCP for its power and efficiency) he seems like he's a part of the machine, part of TLP's Cathedral. He certainly is friends with a lot of those reporters and of course he would want to go to bat to defend his friends. Who wouldn't? But when they get things wrong (like the Trump-Russia story which they reported on endlessly) they bury a retraction deep in the abyss where no one will ever see it, and that's only if they get caught.
The other thing Hanania does in his article is talk about the MSM's science articles and how the science reporters get all their stuff right. He talks about how all the reporters for these big publications are some of the smartest people he knows, and they have to be! While Hanania knows his field (whatever it is), how does he know if the science reporting across subjects is right? Should I just trust them to be right? Should I have faith in them? With all the shenanigans their political counterparts get wrong (like the Trump-Russia collusion story they desperately hoped was true) or are intentionally misleading about (as with this Axios piece on trucks), is it wise to place my trust in them? And when you combine that with the fact that there are always "scientific studies" contradicting each other (eggs are bad for you! Wait, they're not! Wait, just the yolk is bad, only eat the whites! Wait, maybe not...) what am I supposed to believe? Who should I trust? I don't trust them, and I trust Hanania a little less than I did before. His article reads as though he flippantly thinks Gell-Mann amnesia is not a thing.
So I have a few sources I trust. I'm here because you seem honest and forthright. You're a lot more critical than I am and I appreciate the ability to see a point of view I could never have myself. Maybe "consuming" my news second-hand through sites like this is not an ideal situation, but since I find the Marxist/postmodernist lenses through which almost the entirety of corporate media is focused this seems to be the best way possible.
I am no kind of scientist other than a COMPUTER scientist, but I can tell you that the media gets basic facts about the Internet and computing wrong far more often than they get 'em right.
A reporter up here for a local TV station wrote an article (after interviewing the county treasurer!) about property taxes and how Michigan levies them and how they are capped and got almost every single thing wrong. I keep this in mind when anyone talks about something they read (or saw) in the news.
Literally every story that I have ever read where I had firsthand knowledge of what was being reported on contained inaccuracies or outright falsehoods.
Just like how eyewitnesses are the worst kind of evidence in a trial.
Remember, people are absolutely certain, and will swear on a stack of Bibles, that they saw Elvis, Bigfoot, that flying saucer, etc.
Exactly. I SAW Bigfoot, but if you look up the story in the lamestream media it's "hirsute local man cited for indecent exposure." You can't fool me, I know what I saw running out of that Arby's.
Thank you. I needed a good laugh this morning.
Arby's.
I think a part of the explanation is that Jack's exceptional recall is what enables him to pierce the veil.
The sheer volume and rapidity of stories and what you're supposed to care about is bewildering, and most people are plugged in and unable to stay grounded or recollect with any clarity what came before and mark out what was wrong.
I got my degree in journalism, which I’ve used to dazzling effect in the oil and gas industry over the years. As such, it honestly baffles me when people believe more than maybe half of what they see in the media. The opportunities for unconscious bias, let alone outright manipulation as outlined above, are just too great.
Maybe you can only really appreciate how the sausage is made when you’ve manned the lips-and-assholes grinder yourself.
Intent to mislead or just wannabe "journalists" trying to push out articles and get numbers?
I can see the entire truck article starting out with someone thinking, "Wow! Pickups are bigger than ever!" and then doing the minimum amount of work required to do an article that says the same thing. Since they don't really know shit about trucks and can't be bothered to look up a top down photo of a crew cab from the 70s they just use what they can easily get. Wrap up this entire article in an afternoon and collect your check. Most readers will look at that article and nod, because it seems to us that truck are pretty big things these days, and then go back about their day. A few people will get annoyed. Life goes on until a few weeks later when another blogger needs a quick, agreeable article and decides to do the same thing all over again.
On the Veritas piece, the whole thing seems stupid. Find some dude on Grindr, get him in a bar and get him to spout off in the hopes that he can score. Any research on who this guy really is or are you just going by his profile? It's a dating site on the internet so no one will lie on there, right? And we all know that no one ever lies to a stranger in a bar in the hopes of getting casual sex before they ghost this person. But again, the whole point isn't to educate anyone, the whole point is to generate clicks From that standpoint, seems like it works.
Rather hilariously, it's the PowerPC vs x86 debate all over again.
Several times in my adult life, I have seen a competing processor architecture come in and make mincemeat of x86 -- but the next x86 would always redress this. Because when you sell a zillion processors, you can put a lot more money into making them right.
Similarly, the F-150 has economies of scale for both production and R&D that greatly outweigh any materials savings from a 4400 pound Ranger vs a 5200 pound F-150.
(Ssshh... but this was the case in 1995 as well. I could sell you an F-150 almost as cheap as a Ranger back then.)
I should note that RISC won in the end, the same way the Porsche 928 won in the end: by adapting the camouflage of the competition.
It would be a good story, but wouldn't need to be a long one. Aside from economies of scale (as Jack mentions), the other factor is that those compact trucks of the '70s and '80s had close to zero crash protection. Make them meet modern safety standards and they have to get bigger and heavier. Heavier means they need bigger engines to move the mass and keep up with modern traffic. You end up with a Tacoma or a modern Ranger. Toss on the "minimum" acceptable options on a modern vehicle, and really you end up with a $15/month difference on a 60 month loan between a modern mini truck and it's much more comfortable and capable full sized half ton.
I looked at a loaded Ranger twelve years ago and the price was so close to an F-150 Lariat that it didn’t make sense to get a Ranger. So got the F-150 and still have it and use it to haul things such as motorcycles and hay. The rear of the cab is very handy and can hold a lot. The 5.5’ bed is enough for most things. My dad has a 90s F-250 crew cab with an 8’ bed. Nice when needed but it’s a little unwieldy for daily use.
If the Axios evolution continues pickups will eventually not have beds. Problem solved.
Actually, we had pickups without beds years ago. We called them station wagons.
Look for coordination; particularly when a bunch of stories are all released with near simultaneity, and even better if they cross-reference each other.
Also, PV seems to operate on getting the mark, validating their identity, and then exploiting which is supposedly (so I've heard) similar to how nation-states might leverage someone for espionage.
Sexual blackmail was practiced by covert agencies on both sides of the Iron Curtain, which is how we get that fantastic shot of Keri Russell's tiny cute ass on "The Americans"
Seems legit. I'll let you run the search on his substack. https://brianoshea.substack.com/
Sexual blackmail was a specialty of organized crime. The rich and powerful enjoyed things like, say, dressing up in women's clothing and having sex with underage boys. This penchant was catered to by organized crime, and in turn when Mary Hoover took off her dress and went back to being J. Edgar Hoover and running the FBI the mob interests didn't get interfered with. This includes their money laundering of prohibition, drug smuggling, arms trafficking, and human trafficking that was all done with the help of banks. Among them the largest corporate banks of our time. Those same banks were also useful in moving around money and assets for various intelligence agencies, themselves in league with organized crime because it turned out to be useful to move money, weapons, drugs, and people all over the world.
Everybody did it, but it was elevated to high art in the American system. Hell, LBJ ran his own brothel that catered to legislators specifically for that purpose.
I saw that Forbes article, and almost read it through until I read the author's name.
Bruce Lee.
Yeah, right buddy! Who proofread this, Jackie Chan?
Maybe he got his medical degree at the same community college where "Dr." Jill Biden is a "professor".
I hold by Miss Manners, who said that the title doctor should not be used socially, outside of professional circles, unless one is an actual medical practictioner. When I correspond with professors with PhDs, I refer to them as Prof. Soandso, not Dr.
My mother, o'b'm', had four sisters. The oldest married a lawyer. My mom, who was second, married a veterinarian. Jackie, who was 4th, married a dentist. When Gail, the youngest, married a MD, my grandmother referred to him as a "RD, a real doctor."
My father, the aforementioned veterinarian, rarely put on airs but in as much as he was consulted by MDs and DOs, it annoyed him just a little when people would say he wasn't a real doctor. There was a Reform rabbi in Detroit for whom the Reform movement wasn't reform enough, so he started a "humanist synagogue" i.e. a temple for athiest Jews. My dad and I were discussing him one day and I said, "Well, he isn't a real rabbi." To which my father replied, "He went to a seminary and was ordained so he deserves the title." So I asked, "Dad, is a chiropractor a real doctor?" He gave me one of those looks but he had nothing to say in response.
On the other hand, they can have the freedom (and expense) of running their own business, without insurance companies, hospital administrators, and government bureaucrats (see pain treatment) telling them how to practice medicine.
Another petty annoyance: dual MD couples that go by "Dr. & Dr" in the wife's zeal for equal billing. It's "Drs. Fred and Mary Smith".
A shocking number of the members of my college friend group are now "professor" in your system, not the smart ones. They all obnoxiously go by Dr. My wife who is and MD refuses to even acknowledge being a doctor outside of work.
I'm surprised that lawyers with JDs don't call themselves "doctor", but then they always have Esq. to distinguish themselves from the uncredentialed masses.
Doctor my ass.
Dr. Demento is more of a doctor than Jill Biden.
Speaking of ginned-up phrases...everyone knows what a white supremacist is, but what exactly is a "white nationalist"? Someone who thinks is it desirable (or even possible) to build a nation comprised solely of white people? I doubt there are more than 5000 people like that in the United States. No, I suspect what they really mean is "anyone who opposes globalism and has skin of a lighter tone than a paper bag." That's probably 85% of your readers, including me. Uh oh.
A "white nationalist" is anyone who thinks that the United States, or any European state, should be majority white.
There is no equivalent term for "Chinese Nationalist", or "Indian Nationalist", or "Peruvian Nationalist", by the way. If a country full of non-whites wants to keep whites out, that's a reasonable policy that is totally their choice. If a country full of whites wants to -- fuck it, not STOP their replacement by non-whites, but SLOW THE RATE OF REPLACEMENT -- then they are "white nationalists" and should be put in the My Lai ditch ASAP.
Any white dude who has ever tried to get a work visa or a residency pass in, say, Singapore or Japan, knows just how high the barriers are to that. What are the barriers in the other direction? Uh, well, there has been a PROPOSAL to limit the INCREASE in the RATE OF INCREASE of H1-B.
So...you're telling me there's a proposal to reduce the Jerk or Jolt of H1-B?
There's a pun in there somewhere if I try hard enough.
Actually, having sat and thought about this for a moment, I think we’re still just talking about plain old acceleration.
I actually have seen the phrase "Hindu nationalists" but, yes, the media generally ignores Han supremacism.
On the other hand, there are those folks like Theodore Beale that call Israel an "ethnostate" while simultaneously decrying the fact that the Franks may become a minority in France, along with the Swedes in Sweden, and the Danes in Denmark.
It's interesting who gets a pass and who gets condemned, and by whom.
While Israel's "Right of Return" granting immediate citizenship upon immigration only applies to Jews, non-Jews can be citizens (20% of Israeli citizens are Muslim or Christian Arabs) native born and naturalized. If you aren't Han Chinese, you simply cannot become a Chinese citizen. There are ethnically Korean Japanese who have lived their for generations but are not really accepted. Asian cultures can teach those in the West a thing or two about xenophobia.
China will go so far as to silence the ethnic Uighur who have been living in that part of China for generations (longer than many chinese empires) and replace them with Muslim Hui (often descendants of/straight up are han chinese who have converted to islam) people in cities through resettlement mainly because the Hui openly pledge allegiance to china; the Uighurs do not
As a South Asian myself, yes there is a very strong sense of nationalism eminating from the big three nations there; India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The original basis was to split India into Hindu and Muslim majority areas, but now its gone beyond that. This was made worse due to the 1947 Partition and subsequent 1971 Bangladesh war of Liberation. Its enough for India and Pakistan to come into near nuclear war with each other a few times in the Kashmir region (which is a whole can of worms of disputed territory and fighting)
I see the India/Pakistan situation as an unfortunate prototype for America's future. I'm not equipped to say who got the raw deal there -- I have friends on both sides of the conflict, one of whom was a top-ranking general with photos of Hilary Clinton on his desk -- but someone sure did.
Strong (possibly TOO strong) nationalism is definitely prevalent in South Asia. Even tiny Sri Lanka where I'm from has that issue with the majority Sinhala/Buddhists having long had a weird kind of superiority complex. This ended up leading to a couple of decades of civil war, which was, basically hell. It's been over a decade since the war ended, but the root causes still have not been addressed.
A few years ago, I worked with a dude who rode a Yamaha R6 and we rolled out to lunch together. I don't know how the topic came up, but he said to me,
"First thing: I'm Sri Lankan, so fuck India. (pauses a moment for thought) Fuck Sri Lanka, too."
Do you think he'd have even been here AT ALL if he wasn't thinking, on some level, "Fuck Sri Lanka?"
Why do I think "who says the Kashmir is Indian or Pakistani?" is a popular attitude in Beijing?
If you want a dose of real racism, feel free to ask my wife how she feels about anyone other than Japanese or white people. It's hilarious and adorable and a little appalling all at the same time!
"I've been all around the world and compared to Europeans, Asians, and Africans, Americans are ranks amateurs when it comes to racism." - Prof. Lewis Lancaster, Dept of East Asian Languages, University of California Berkeley
Prior to 2020, I had this naïve belief that more than anything else (including race), what made an American an American was the belief that freedom was more valuable than safety or security. COVID proved just how wrong I was. Those of us who value freedom were steamrolled by those who believe government can save them from the flu. Our posse's gettin' small, and our posse's gettin' smaller.
BTW - if you Google "Ben Franklin liberty safety quote," the top results are all gaslighting. "Ben Franklin's original quote lost its context," "How the world butchered Ben Franklin's quote," "What Benjamin Franklin really said." No wonder most people don't comprehend what "shall not be infringed" means.
WHEN A PREGNANT TRANS MAN OF COLOR WAVED HIS TRIRACIAL PENIS AT BEN FRANKLIN, WHAT HAPPENED NEXT WILL SHOCK YOU!
Studies show and experts say that according to science, that comment was hilarious.
Or so say people familiar with the matter.
To get a spousal visa in Japan is actually pretty easy. All I would have had to do is show up at an immigration center with my Japanese wife and sign some papers. Well, stamp them. In order to become a Japanese citizen? It might as well be impossible.
I feel like somewhere in Japan there is someone who has achieved Peak Unassimilated Immigrant: A southern American with Japanese citizenship, driving an imported light duty pickup truck, eating everything with traditional western cutlery, teaching ESL or something and cranking out Japanese speakers of English who adopt a southern drawl.
From what I've heard, even IF you became a citizen, you'd still get the stink-eye from everybody other than your wife.
TODAY there is such a thing as 'Indian Nationalist' and no points for guessing what the media says we should react to such individuals.
I'd probably be considered a "hard right Zionist" other than the fact that I do my zionizing from suburban Detroit, unlike my brother who lives in Jerusalem and may not have voted for Likud because he thinks they are squishes. R' Meir Kahane, ה׳ ינקום דמו, sometimes stayed at my cousin's house when he was in town.
That being said, some Hindu Nationalists make my JDLnik friends look positively moderate.
It's definitely a weird thing for them to get so hung up on, and I'm not the first one to make this argument but I think it's largely motivated by spiteful miserable city-dwelling journalists seeing (what remains of) healthy virile middle class Americans who can still (with some stretching via credit) afford to buy a big comfy truck to fit their families and maybe even tow a boat or camper and help with hauling stuff for their suburban yard. You see all those photos on twitter of people standing their kids next to bumper of street parked trucks with some horrifying captions, etc.... they're just "jelly" as the kids say.
I agree with you, what’s more mysterious to me is how many otherwise intelligent-seeming commenters on auto sites go along with it. As if freedom of choice in driving should stop at full size trucks (or large SUVs). As if the city folks won’t come for their Mustangs, GTIs, WRXes, or fun cars of choice next…..smdh
We have a whole generation of automotive enthusiasts who have been face-fucked by the economy.
It never occurred to me growing up that I wouldn't be able to afford some "Destination cars". By my 31st birthday I had a new BMW 330i and a barely-used 911. The current generation no longer labors under that illusion -- and since they don't expect to have anything nice, they will eagerly assent to any policy that takes away what OTHERS have.
One of the primary motivators behind my RAPACIOUS bloodlust for filthy lucre is my aspiration to buy up desirable gas guzzling cars to prevent other people from BESPOILING the environment by exercising them!
Someone has to bear this burden and I'm glad it's you!
Thank you for saving the environment one supercar at a time.
I’m sure this is part of it too. And it’s a mindset I can’t speak to very honestly, since I bought my Viper new at 30. So I don’t begrudge those people their feelings.
At the same time, it’s more than just pure jealousy, at least for the enthusiasts. There’s no constituency on car sites reviling me for Viper ownership (not yet at least). There’s a large and vocal constituency reviling me for F350 ownership. Never mind which one is more objectively wasteful.
I don’t know if it’s willful blindness on their part to what’s coming or not, but the idea that any kind of ICE enthusiasm is going to be permitted strikes me as highly dubious. The fact that you were screaming on every article about how wasteful and stupid your neighbor’s F150 was isn’t going to save your Mustang or 911 when your betters come for it.
We who like cars and trucks should have a bigger tent, I guess is my larger point. Truck people are some of the biggest gear heads I know, and there ought to be a place for them.
we got rid of the stupid 55mph speed limit by ignoring it and campaigning against it. i never thought that would happen!
And this condition of America's youth is propagated in no small part by the climate alarmist who are teaching the upcoming generations they must accept a lower standard of living to atone for the sins of their parents and grandparents against the virgin goddess of climate.
I think a lot of car guys have a bit of a "I know better" superiority complex (heck I know I do) so they turn their noses up at pickup-truck buying "normies." The one semi-cogent angle that gets expressed by car-guy circles is that with all these huge/tall trucks around it gets to be more and more of a liability to drive a low-slung sports car/older car around. IMO the bigger issue is how distracted drivers are by electronics, and as a motorcyclist a poorly driven Nissan Altima will kill me about as surely as an F150.
The most dangerous vehicles on the American road, to a motorcyclist, are the cars driven by rich women and poor men. Doesn't matter what they are. An angry twenty-something in a Challenger will kill you out of temper and poor control. A wealthy woman in a Tahoe will cash your check and not realize she did it.
Let me add "distracted and/or angry black female careening along in a beat up Altima on atleast one space saver tire" to the mix. But yes up by my house the "trophy wife in a new Denali" is perhaps the deadliest demographic to a motorcyclist.
THAT person you can see at a distance and avoid. Usually.
And it's ALWAYS an Altima on a donut.
"I ain't drivin' no damn Sentra!"
I brake-checked a Malcolm-X-looking black woman in one who was tailgating me on the way to work one morning, which led to a 120-mph slalom run through rush hour freeway traffic, including on the shoulders, because she was put out that anyone would object to her riding of rear bumpers. I just wanted to get away from her.
The best part was that she bumped a car trying to get me when we came to a light at the exit, which I was able to squeeze through but she wasn't, being occupied with the rightly-angry driver of the car she hit. As I drove away, I could hear her screaming, "He ignint! He ignint!" and pointing at me.
Fucking bitch.
Can't you just hear Steve Urkel plaintively asking, "Oh. Did I do that?"