I think it would depend on how old or experienced one is ~ if you don't have the frame of reference to know the probable outcomes, many things would seem enticing .
Maybe I'm just feeling particularly Grinchian today, but my first thought watching that 296 disintegrate was, "it probably isn't true that Darwin smiles whenever idiots die in such predictable fashion, but I'll bet he ain't crying, either."
When McLaren gave me the opportunity to drive a 675LT for a couple of days in southern California, I asked Matt Farah to send me the nav information for his canyon runs in the Santa Monica Mountains, which is how I drove from LA to Oxnard, where the Mullin museum was. It's a very capable car but the combination of a relatively narrow two lane road, numerous switchbacks, blind curves, mountainous drop offs if you screwed up, and my complete lack of performance driving instruction or training, convinced me to be careful with the go-fast pedal. It reminded me a bit of the Tunnel of Trees between Petoskey and Cross Village, along the Lake Michigan coast. You'd think it'd be fun to drive fast, but with trees just inches from the asphalt, a 200 foot drop off to the lake, cyclists and the occasional pedestrian, anything more than a quick pace would be reckless.
The only thing I feel qualified to say about the crash is this: COD4 was the greatest vidya game of our generation, slightly edging out MW2 and MGS2.
Part of the reason is due to how good the stories were for campaign mode. The fact that COD4/MW2 had the all-time best multiplayer was just a bonus.
Full Disclosure: This is about the era where I stopped playing video games, so YMMV.
As for car wishes. I’d settle for not tying so many options up in packages. For example, on a truck it’s ridiculous that you are stuck with a center console if you want anything beyond a basic work truck.
Otherwise, give us utilitarian vehicles that we crave. The people deserve durable vehicles at a fair price that’ll last 20 years and 200k miles with basic maintenance. Cash for Clunkers and EPA/DOT regs killed off basic transportation for people.
4 door Mustang? Stretch the platform and give us a Godzilla Crown Vic. Let Toyota bring Kei trucks AND 70 Series LCs in. Jeep should get cracking on a modern XJ. GM needs to whip up a new Malibu and Impala. Honda go back to being Honda.
Anyway, Merry Christmas everyone. I hope you all have an excellent time with your families this week. We are constantly barraged with negativity. Take this week to reset and focus upon what’s important.
EDIT - I don’t know how this got nested under Ronnie’s comment vs. a thread on its own. This app is so terrible sometimes.
"COD4 was the greatest vidya game of our generation, slightly edging out MW2 and MGS2"
calling it better than mgs2 is a searing hot take
i think the lasting legacy of cod is how brilliant the movement and aiming is. just about every other fps ever made is worse to handle in that regard. destiny is very high up there as well as battlefield. id put mw2 over cod4 though. also mgs3 and rdr1 existed in nearly the same timeframe
I once wanted to trademark a game titled First Person Shooter. Come to think of it, it might actually work today, some generic game engine that you can customize with skins to fit every military conflict in human history.
I'm not a gamer so if what I just said is stupid, well, I'm not a gamer.
MGS2 is more memeable, but the things like Otacon crying about his sister annoyed me. So did the missions where you had to swim or take photos. I didn’t find COD4 or MW2 to have those boring parts.
I played MGS 3-4, GTA V, and Far Cry 3-6 much more recently. So far I think Far Cry 5 has been my favorite. A good story, open world, ability to go stealth or come in hot.
I’ve had RDR2 for like two years now. I’m hoping to play through that this winter. Gaming is usually something I only do when I’m sick or something.
ive 100% fc3 again a bit ago and i still like it. the reborn mod looks to fix a lot of my complaints (optics are complete garbage) but ive not gotten around to fc4 or 5 though 5 is on the radar for me. gamelplay looks a lot like fc3 plus some additional features with a story i might actually like.
now that im thinking out loud i really want to play fallout new vegas again. even on console its enjoyable but i bet mods are where its at
I recently did a major junkyard seat mix and match so my stripper Ford Ranger now has a nifty folding center thing that has a large, latchable storage bin and a cup holder able to carry a double extra large Slurpee.....
All factory parts no less .
I think I'd enjoy being able to go back in time and be a fly on the wall so to speak , don't think I'd make any good changes though .
My friend had an extended cab Ranger in HS. We regularly had 5-6 guys in it. I remember leaving the backrests of the rear seats folded down so I could get some extra leg room by sitting higher.
Older five speeds (? Clark ?) had 5th gear back towards the seat .
Modern vehicles have 5th gear forward and away from the seat, still directly where the middle passenger's leg goes .
If you want to carry three people, get a standard size 1/2 ton truck .
I would if they still made any .
I stumbled into this 2000 Ranger base model quite by accident and I'd prefer a late 60's or early 70's American made 1/2 tonner with i6 engine, slushbox, AC, PS, PB, step side short bed but manual windows etc. but they didn't sell well so stopped being made .
I nearly had it knocked with my 1969 Chevy C/10, it turned out to have terminal cab rust so I $pent way more than it'll ever be worth having it restored using a factory AC cab, the shop did marvelous body and paint work but skinned me alive and returned it not running, I sold it at a dead loss a few years later and bought the nice Ranger .
I expect the Ranger will be my last truck before I die ~ no rust here .
I've both driven and ridden in a lot of Rangers. It'll be a snowy day in hell before I buy one myself, but they're great little trucks and surprisingly capable.
in some ways it beats bf3/4 becuase you kept getting torn apart by guys with fully unlocked skill trees for every class and vehicle whereas bfbc2 was more limited in that regard. i still miss the vietnam expansion pack
Yeah, I'm always surprised I don't hear about more mountain disasters. I was up driving my S2000 through the hills here in CO with my buddy in his GT500. I wasn't going 10/10 or anything but still having some fun. At some point, there was a group that flew by us doing some pretty ridiculous speeds. On the straight I was probably going around 80-90 and based on how fast they whizzed by I'm guessing they were upwards of 150. Granted, there were some seriously capable vehicles in the group but I'm still surprised there aren't more tragic stories.
I'm not sure such crashes are considered newsworthy if they lack a hook. I used to go to Palomar Mountain with an S2000 club. There would be groups of sportbike riders, sports car clubs, and bicyclists all making the most of a winding road with drop offs, adjacent trees, and blind corners. It was unusual to not see some incident being mopped up and at least one medivac chopper in the air. I wouldn't have known anything about it while living in San Diego for a decade if a friend hadn't brought me up there to see it myself.
Yeah, you're probably right. I was involved in a fatal motor cycle accident this past year and considering how bad it was, there was 0 coverage. Shut down a major intersection for half a day!
A friend of mine that works in trauma tells me that at their practice, they just call motor cycles Donor Cycles. Pretty harsh, but apparently it's WAY more common than what I see in the news.
1) 11/22/63 is a fun read about the JFK assassination, time travel, and the pit falls found within it. One of King’s better books.
2A) A Mustang Lincoln is not something I’d ever be able to afford new (I am a part of the problem) but I would absolutely buy a used one. That’s a dream car of mine, tbh.
2B) As one of the VERY few that has actually bought a two door SUV brand new (in green! With a manual! And factory 35s! And literally ZERO other options but a steel bumper!) I feel uniquely qualified to say that we both should have more options *and* every one of them fails in the marketplace. The consumer just does not want them, in much the same way they do not want coupes. The market wants something practical, and a two door anything just ain’t it. The benefits — which are almost entirely aesthetic — just aren’t enough for a business case. Still though, a two door Grand Cherokee, say, is something I’d love to own.
2C) Sir how much more bare bones could you possibly want a Corolla LE to be? They are true penalty boxes whose best qualities (durability, resale) are largely offset by how hateful they are to drive and be in. Terrible interior spaces. They are about $3k too expensive, and Toyota can barely keep them in stock though so what do I know?
I prefer coupes and manuals because it makes me feel interesting, but income + living situation = neither really makes sense right now. Gotta have one car that can do it all, and that will likely push me to an SUV next as neither my car nor my wife’s is capable of much in the way of carrying shit.
I just gifted my GF a copy of 11/22/63 (along with "Cat Tales.") She's a big fan of King's early works but disavowed him after he went full-TDS. I reassured her that it at least made him a marginally better writer.
entirely justified but i thought they could both come together over their shared love of fucking kids what with trump doing it and king writing about it
I've had manuals in every car I purchased new. I originally bought cars with manual transmissions because they were $800-$1000 cheaper than the automatic option. Now I buy them because they are fun and in my mind, more reliable. I think Toyota and Honda could drop manuals into all of their cars and knock a couple grand off the price. Trump should order the EPA to stop making the auto makers certify every engine/transmission combo and allow quality by similarity.
They could, but the take rate would be negligible. Honda didn’t cancel manuals in base or non-sporting Civics because they sold too well.
And Toyota distributors for SURE would make it so that they’d be impossible to buy even if you wanted one. Check the number of Tacoma manuals available vs automatics to get an idea of that. They sell every single manual Tacoma they make, and could probably sell a few thousand more on top, but the supply is artificially strangled by the distributors. It’s how it always goes.
I think if you marketed a manual Corolla or Civic to Gen Z as a $2000 savings and fun to drive. I don't know, people bitch about costs so give them the option to save 5% on a Corolla.
It wouldn't be savings because they'd have to pay to take lessons to learn how to drive it. How many of them know someone with a manual to teach them on? I'm not teaching my son on my Lotus, for God's sake....
No, kids these days don’t want to drive so it’s hard enough just to get them into an automatic.
One of my two kids drives, albeit reluctantly, and most of my nieces and nephews prefer not to get behind the wheel.
You can market until you’re blue in the face but you won’t be able to sell manuals anymore.
I love driving stick and there’s a five speed manual in my garage, but there’s many days when that old neck injury or decrepit rotator cuff make it more of a chore than a happy experience.
If the government can mandate EVs, they can mandate manual transmissions. If more people had manuals they’d learn how to drive instead of just pointing their car in the direction they want it to go.
As it is Toyota makes (supposedly) about $500 on a Corolla. There is no reason for them to sell one at $3k less and I’d assume earn less profit, especially as metioned^, they sell them pretty easily.
No doubt! Point I was trying to make there was that a Corolla LE feels like a car that should cost like $19500, not $23k or whatever it is. In base trim, they are barely cheap and certainly not cheerful.
Similarly priced cars —Jetta S, Sentra SV, Mazda 3, Trax LT — are much nicer methods of transportation.
I agree, Toyota’s have a premium vs the competition, so you get reliability at the expense of extras, like you mention above. I think there are enough Toyota people who just buy them that it doesn’t matter. People who shop around will go for the goodies.
As hard as it is to believe, there are people who get in their cars and drive without any concern for the experience. They are buying appliances. They get in, run the appliance, and get out at the destination. This might be many people.
Had a relative like this but with Hondas. Scoffed at people spending money on cars they wanted. Magically he started making more money and his Saturn (yes, he was first a dedicated Saturn guy) turned into a base accord turned into an EX-L V6 and his wife moved from CRXs to CRVs to RDXs. When you can’t afford it, you convince yourself you never wanted it
I’ve yet to drive one, but the brand new facelifted Mk7s I’ve seen have brought back at least the image of the VW being the superior mass market brand. They are really sharp and their color selections seem pretty good
My 8.5 was brilliant right up til that moment a buck jumped in front of it and Volkswagen refused to make available the wiring harness needed to put it back on the road. Fuck those Krauts.
I ALSO have zero meaningful time in one, but they present really well.
And, like, CHEAP. $20k for a brand new Jetta in the pretty blue is about as good a deal as you will ever find in the current market.
In my recent efforts to save money, I’m test driving a used Grand Cherokee tomorrow, however I have zero reasons beyond my own vanity to not buy this car.
If you don’t need the space I’d EASILY take a new Jetta over a used WK2 JGC. I’ve significant seat time in my wife’s former 2017 which she took from almost new to 100k with nothing but the basics. It was pleasantly fun to drive, did great in snow with winter tires, and was nice enough to feel semi premium but cheap enough to leave overnight places or in not great parking spots and not fret.
I have immediate family with, idk ~150k miles combined on two pre-refresh Jettas with the 1.4.
They are entirely unremarkable and have a truly dreadful stereo, but they have also been very efficient, comfortable, quiet, and extremely reliable. No issues to note at all.
My own vanity is the big hang up here because, as noted many times, I’m an idiot. It would be an EXCELLENT decision though.
The basic Civic is also pretty basic. Naturally aspirated dour cylinder with a cvt. would a manual really be cheaper? What could Honda cut from that car?
If I could go back in time….the epa wouldn’t exist in a form that it does now, I know, California and a tiny few other places had smog problems, that said, I would buy as many 1967 gm hotrods as I could and fill warehouses full of them in climate controlled stasis, wait thirty five years and start selling pristine original survivor muscle cars for income, who am I kidding, time is an arrow and it doesn’t change direction…
Classical Indian thought regarded time as cyclical, as did some Greek philosophers. The Abrahamic cultures see it more as a straight line with a clear beginning.
If I could go back in time there are historical figures that I'd want to meet, but if I wanted to change history, I'd show Moses Mendelsohn the last 200 years of Jewish history and ask him if the positive impact to the world at large from the "haskalah", the Jewish "enlightenment" in the 18th and 19th centuries, was worth the negative impact it had on the Jewish world.
Our understanding of time and modern physics….honestly, it’s more philosophical than science, I can’t go back thirty years and change the outcome, so I don’t think in terms of time being a cyclical process or phenomenon, many paradoxical things, we should at this point have enough imagination to see what could happen in the future given all of this history that we have actual documentation of.
It's an interesting question. Europeans had been killing Jews off and on and trying to forcibly convert them for a couple thousand years but they didn't try completely exterminating them until after Jews were emancipated. Emancipating Jews meant that they could compete academically and economically. There were fewer points of friction when Jews were restricted to economic and physical ghettos.
There was a shift from "You can't live among us as Jews," to, 'You can't live among us," to, "You can't live."
Theodore Herzl, who had been a journalist mostly uninvolved with things Jewish, embraced and invigorated the Zionist movement in the wake of the Dreyfuss affair in France. After watching anti-Jewish riots in Paris, he became convinced that emancipation was a folly and that Jews would never be considered full citizens of any country where they weren't sovereign.
While it obviously shares elements with other bigotries like xenophobia (which I'm not entirely sure is actually a phobia, stranger danger is a real thing) and resenting minority middlemen, my personal opinion is that there is a supernatural aspect to Jew-hatred.
I definitely think it’s a spiritual thing that causes the Jewish society to be a punching bag for the last two thousand years, it’s evil that hasn’t been stopped.
Whatever the reason, the equation has changed. Since the time the romans vanquished the Jews untill 2 years ago Jewish lives came cheap. As in you could kill jews with near impunity and not much retribution.
Then we had the Hams gaza war. Now if you're going to invade someone's home, rape kill their women strangle their children and take hostages, well those same people, will destroy your homes and kill as many of you as is necessary to get those hostages back and make a point. The equation ahs changed and that juice aint worth the squeeze.
There are American jews and Israelis plus Jews from a few other places, in other word's two types, yall have the passive types here. If anybody thinks that an israel going down wont use its 75 Nukes to obliterate a whole bunch of stuff Gaza should make everyone think differently.
Weve gone from the Jews who defied the Romans at Masada full circle back to that type of tough Jew. Actually Mayer lansky and Benny Siegal indicate they were always around, but now they have a country, an army and nukes.
The movie, “Munich” comes to mind, I have never thought about how soft American Jewish culture was, but it is, but Israeli Jewish culture couldn’t really afford to be soft, October 7 was a massacre, someone up high dropped the ball on that evil day, unless it was a deliberate false flag to justify taking Gaza back, Idk.
"my personal opinion is that there is a supernatural aspect to Jew-hatred"
doubt it
god made us all equal in his eyes so theres probably a more concrete reason than the supernatural (which ive never believed in other than demonic entities and such)
I'm also not partial to belief in demons but there is such a thing as evil and there are things about Jew-hatred that aren't rational. It generally has not been something that has resulted in positive outcomes for the societies that have embraced it. Maybe Jews really do have a very powerful Friend that would like to see us hang around.
"For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth."
Ronnie, I just do not understand this focus on “Jew Hatred”. Maybe I don’t get it but I have Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Jewish, Presbyterian, Mormon, people I know, and the church they attend is not a big deal. Now when I was very young we had a preacher that railed against the Catholics as idol worshipers, and Jews as money grabbers, and Mormons as polygamists but I did not find any of the people I know that or have ever know to be that way. I think to much attention is paid to stereotypes of the past. Just my thoughts. Ronnie just look at Al the diverse friends you have here at ACF, no one is attacking anyone’s church of choice.
I think the problem is that people of good will are of good will but not everybody is like that. It'd be nice to watch a YouTuber without seeing comments in the chat about "Talmudic Jews." There are people out there with literally medieval attitudes. Twenty four cartloads, about 10,000 volumes, of the Talmud were burned in Paris in 1242.
It's almost funny. I'm fluent in Hebrew, know a bit of Aramaic, and I can barely learn Talmud. I have friends who are actual scholars of the Talmud and if they go slowly I can almost keep up.
Then I go online and I see people "quote" the Talmud when they wouldn't be able to open one of the 25 volumes from the correct side, let alone identify where the supposed quote is from.
"I'm fluent in Hebrew, know a bit of Aramaic, and I can barely learn Talmud. I have friends who are actual scholars of the Talmud and if they go slowly I can almost keep up"
you make it sound like the very worst kind of legalese
As I've posted here before, I was decidedly underwhelmed with my ES 350 (Non-Ultra) Luxury experience, but I'd be willing to give that coupe a second chance. I kind of love how the AI basically used a ninth-gen Accord coupe greenhouse while still preserving the ES sedan's stuck-on "NOT DLO FAIL!" C-pillar chrome triangle.
I can't tell from the video whether he's in the seat when they are dragging him away and I'm not going to watch it again.
Out of respect for the dead I try not to repeatedly watch videos of events where actual people actually died, like this or the recent UPS plane crash. I also won't look at photos or films of Holocaust victims and I've refused to watch the Oct. 7th videos. The least I can do is not treat death as a literal spectacle.
I was having a holiday meal with my neighbors and their adult kids in their Sukkah. The word "Jewess" came up and their son's girlfriend, now his wife, said that words with feminine endings were "sexist". I asked her, "Well, what about dominatrix?" She replied, "Well, that's a job title." I said, "No, it's just that French feminine suffixes sound more girly than Latin ones."
The Chinaman is not the issue here, Dude. I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand, Dude. Across this line, you DO NOT... Also, Dude, "Chinaman" is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please.
Those 900 hp supercars should come with license endorsements similar to endorsements required by the faa for upgrading to faster and more complex aircraft, when I was a young person, 300 hp at the wheels was a rare thing and accidents like that one last week were rather rare flukes, I don’t condone a displacement tax like in Europe or Japan or other authoritarian regimes, but in America, if you want to drive semi trucks, you have to have a cdl endorsement, which doesn’t go far enough (looking at class A motorhomes with big ass diesel engines and air brakes)the young tech bros buying these supercars have no experience with high horsepower street cars, they probably never even played in a snowy parking lot.
See all the recent accidents involving recent immigrants, mainly from India and Pakistan, who were given CDLs but never passed the tests or met the qualifications.
Then there is this wonderful individual that hit a school bus on I5 outside of Olympia earlier this month. Luckily the bus had no kids on it. No CDL, insurance and medical cert. Seattle media and the State Patrol tied itself in knots to keep the drivers identity a mystery. Came out at his court appearance. Juan Hernandez-Santos, 40, of Huentitlan, Mexico. Needed an interpreter as no habla englese. Probably was bailed out and is scooting back to Mexico. Some company in CA owned the semi and employed him. I would not be surprised if that company had ties into Sacramento.
I've long thought this is true of motorcycles. Anyone with the cash or an acceptable credit rating can walk into a dealership and ride home on a literbike. It's insane.
The only problem with this, is where does this stop, a classic literbike, has a hell of a lot more speed in it than a 96” dual cam Harley does, I agree that you should have to prove yourself to your state government dmv, but how far would that agency take it?
I've been riding Motocycles for close to 60 years now and I think that tiered licensing like mandatory firearms training would be the smart way to go .
As far as CDL's, I never bothered but looking at the incredible horrific crashes these days I gotta wonder how much do they actually test ? .
California requires a motorcycle riding test in addition to the written test but waives the ridden test if you have passed the Motorcycle Safety Foundation rider training course.
I remember getting my basic riding skill test at age 16, I think it was on a '62 Honda Dream or Benly .
By the time my son began riding they'd raised the age to 18 and I needed him to learn by riding a Honda CT90 daily across town to high school, he did so sans papers and learned a lot .
He's a better, faster and safer rider than I could dream of =8-) .
-Nate
EDITED to show when I was licensed versus my son .
Never took any safety courses for motorcycle endorsement, had to do a written exam and a figure eight in the alley behind the secretary of state’s office crashed once at 55 mph, just road rash, because of course I was only wearing jeans and a t shirt, I recommend msf courses to anyone talking about getting a motorcycle, when I got my chauffeurs class a truck license, it was just a written, and that grandfathered into a class a cdl, if you want the cdl the right way, it requires a written and knowledge test of pre and post trip inspection of the truck and trailer, and if the truck you are driving is going to be a manual transmission, you must bring that kind of transmission to the road test, if you are pulled over in a manual transmission truck and you don’t have the transmission endorsement on your license, they can put the truck out of service….
A few years ago, the testing was difficult and rigorous, now I guess you shop around for someone who will take the grift.
None, but if we have tired licensing then maybe thats possible.
As a youngster in Italy in the 809s, the Fiat 500s had a 80 kmh decal on the back, ie they were limited tot hat speed, other cars were rated at 120kmh.
is it possible to have logic. So iof I have say a corvette or Golf R, and appropriate driver training/certification we have tiered licenses and said driver in said cars is allowed to go faster than moms suv?
Not gonna happen in reality because speeding is revenuer for cops lawyers courts etc. Plus its grist for politicians mill. The reality is the way to reduce road deaths is with proper driver training. But that woudl eliminate 80% of current drivers who at the very least woudl need retraining. Thta woudl also dent car sales. The USA model is the minimum requirement remotely possible so its easy to buy cars.
Another solution is a HP cap. Thta would also have the benefit of forcing manufactures to make lighter sportscars again to retain performance.
Not gonna happen because as we see people want corvette zr1x even thoi8ugh there is nowhere street or track one can plausibly use its particular performance envelope.
But imagine how great an Alfa 4c with the Alfa TTv6 of "only" 500 hp would be.
Agreed and Im against regulation. But with a tesla that can do 0-60 belw 2.5 secs i fear that regulation as to performance specs is in debate. Id rather have power caps and let manufactures extract performance cleverly like lightweight.
Still Im prob wrong and the free market, as in the late 60s will intervene with ruinous insurance rates for fast accessible cars.
Get em while you can. Under Trump Ice has had a stay of execution, and with the scrapping of the epa fuel reg fines well prb get some great powertrains with appropriate gearing.
I'm not sure it's feasible when you can raise holy hell with an Altima on 3 donut spares and a freeway. The body count is almost always apt to be higher. But I agree in concept that there probably is a point where common sense and training should kick in.
If there's any training at all. The Altima drivers are just trying to keep one step ahead of either the cops or repo man. Or just in a hurry to get to the weed shop.
when I got my license in 1984, Iowa required mandatory driver's education for anyone who wanted to get a license at age 16. If you didn't take it, you had to wait until you were 18, IIRC. anyway, it was a full semester, taught in public schools, with driving simulators (mechanical, with what was essentially a movie screen in front of you) and practical experience on the road with an instructor who had an auxiliary brake pedal.
Our instructor would make us drive him to the bank, the dry cleaners, etc. At the time, I thought, "This is is so lame. He's just using us to do his errands." It was decades later when I realized it was a brilliant move - we were getting real-world experience doing the kind of driving we do 90 percent of the time.
I am convinced that today's teenagers and young adults have learned to drive playing Grand Theft Auto, Dirt, Forza, and Gran Turismo.
All of this! It was mostly the same in 1976 in Michigan, except that I went outside of the education system and paid for it myself, drove a slant 6 Plymouth Volare, the instructor had an attitude, one of contempt and disinterest, no one died🤣. Hilarious point with the Altima drivers 😂.
My state required drivers education in 1981 consisted of 10th grade study hall trips to Lawson's (NE Ohio 7-Eleven) with 2 other 16 year old boys and a slutty 22 year old driving instructor reeking of weed and Charlie by Revlon.
I’m not sure which of the 12 steps my driving instructor was on, but I do remember that he chain smoked the whole time and was very laid back when he pointed out that I shouldn’t exit the wrong way in a one way area after I almost hit someone head on. He barely broke stride in whatever story he was telling while I panicked.
I don’t hate electric vehicles, but they are not visceral like an old GTO or a TransAm, they are certainly faster, but how fast can you drive on the street and keep your license?
Faster in a straight line, but at 5000lns + not really fast.
The twisted part here is someone wouldn't throw the keys to a hellcat Challenger to a 16 yo, but they will let them drive the family tesla, with predictable outcomes.
And yet in my town we had that exact accident, Tesla+ 16yo kid, 17yo female in passenger seat, accelerated away from a traffic light and a minivan turning left 2 blocks up never saw them coming, everyone killed.
"There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don't."
Followed by:
"There are three kinds of people in the world:
"(1) Those who would use a time machine to kill Hitler;
"(2) Those who would use a time machine to save JFK; and
"(3) Those who would use a time machine to save Marilyn Monroe."
It's one of those unanswerable questions, but... I think a lot of the thinking about "If JFK had survived" is nothing but wishful thinking.
If you go back and read JFK's Inaugural Address... there's a lot of sabre-rattling going on there. JFK was obsessed with not looking weak or indecisive. He would say that it was better to make a wrong decision rather than to "wait and see," because "wait and see" looks indecisive. The fact that he was juiced up on speed and painkillers helped the situation not at all. He had almost no toleration for ambiguity.
A case can be made that JFK turned a "situation" into the Cuban Missile Crisis, for his own domestic political/re-election interests.
The fact of the matter was that the US should have known that while Soviet missiles in Cuba was a slap in the face as well as a threat... the Soviets would in rather short time make the Cuban missiles a non-issue, because submarines capable of launching nuclear missiles were on the way. "Forget Cuba, 90 miles from Miami. We can sneak a sub with nuclear warheads to within 12 miles of the White House, all day every day. Sleep tight!"
And don't bet on Vietnam. What should be better known, but it is not, because it does not fit the narrative, is that, in a rather shocking interference where he should not have interfered, the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston tried to give Congressman Kennedy a leg up by setting up a meeting between JFK and an obscure 40-ish year old virgin studying Roman Catholic Theology outside of Boston: Ngo Dinh Diem, who was installed as the President of South Vietnam. The Cardinal wanted to hand Kennedy a "Foreign Policy Issue" on a silver platter. And look where that got us.
Kennedy, perhaps not knowing what he was doing, when his golf game was interrupted to answer a question, appeared to be, to say the least, indifferent to the CIA-led coup d'etat in which Diem and his brother were murdered. Some believe that the sticking point was that, in order to counter the perception that RVN was being re-colonized by the USA, Diem insisted that all US military personnel entering RVN had to show passports and be processed as foreign visitors. Which was unacceptable to the US military.
Anyway, I don't think that the truth about November 22 will get out during my lifetime.
Belated memory... RVN President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Nhu were murdered November 2, 1963.
As I watched the live unscripted TV coverage of the JFK assassination's aftermath (Sunday?), one reporter, apparently reading from a wire-service teletype paper scroll, informed us that a reporter in Saigon had asked Diem's brother's widow if she had any comments on JFK's assassination; and Madame Nhu, to the best of my recollection, replied:
"At least Jackie now knows what it feels like."
IIRC, one of the other TV reporters with an open mike whistled a descending glissando scale. And there were other little expressions of shock.
Ouchsies. There is at least one book claiming that the South Vietnamese were somehow involved in JFK's assassination, but I found it not convincing.
BTW56... there is also a theory that the US intelligence services had advance knowledge of the attempt on de Gaulle's life that was dramatized in the film "Day of the Jackal," but they just sat on that intel and let nature take its course. (De Gaulle obviously survived.)
Supposedly, Mr. "Two Fishing Poles" (Deux Galles) learned of this; and so, when there was intercepted chatter about French assassins intent on killing JFK for the Mafia... de Gaulle just sat on that intel and let nature take its course.
He did cut a fine figure at the head of JFK's funeral procession.
(Edit: Memory slip. After all, it was more than 60 years ago. Diem was a Catholic Priest Wanna-Be, so he was celibate and never married. So, the woman who threw a little shade on Jackie was Diem's brother's widow, known as "Madame Nhu." NTL, she was viewed as the Power Behind the Throne.)
(Edit 2: I cleaned up the form or style of the Vietnamese names. What came first was the family name Ngo, and then the personal or given name. So, Diem was a given name, and his brother’s given name was Nhu. And Nhu’s wife, the de-facto First Lady, was Madame Nhu.)
"If you’re racing a Civic or Miata in LeMons or something that, you should be proud of the fact that you’re driving competitively on-track. Just don’t expect it to translate to something like a 296 Ferrari"
I race with a great team in a West Coast-based endurance racing league. Very (relatively) low-dollar, cheap low-hp cars... our team runs a first gen Ford Focus, with about 170-180 hp...
...even with low-hp cars, things get out of hand pretty quickly. I've seen an RX-8 rolling end over end, so high that it almost hit the pedestrian bridge across the track. This in a car that can't have much more than 200hp...
The danger isn't the power or the capability of the car... that same scenario could have been an old Miata coming out of the tunnel. The difference is race cars are built and tech'd for driver safety. That same accident in a race car, with the driver strapped into an FIA seat, with SFI harnesses and gear, inside a roll cage, would result in a dazed driver hopping out under his own power...
I would go back to 1991 or 1992 and figure out a way to prevent Clinton or Bush from winning. My goal would be to prevent NAFTA and to derail China's path to MFN trade status and admission the the WTO. Assuming I can download hours of video onto my phone before I board the time machine, I would use it to help Ross Perot's campaign.
One of my pet theories is the importance of 1992 also.
Even Minnesota Democrat "get clean for" Gene McCarthy ran coincident with a book titled _A Colony of the World_:
In A Colony of the World, Eugene McCarthy asserts that the United States is now in a colonial, or neocolonial, relationship to a combination of outside and inside forces which impose a colonial status on the country.
0. RIP Vince, he’s responsible for Titanfall 1 and 2, two of the finest shooters ever and in 2s case, probably the best FPS campaign as well.
1. Hitler dead in ‘41 may also have led to a more open and honest design for the StG 44, instead of being secretly designed as a sub gun… but then again, pressure and diamonds, so who knows. Worth messing it up for millions of lives saved either way.
2. Pencil me ALL THE WAY in for a Lincoln Mustang. Fully beige interior with buttery leather and tuned a bit softer for comfort, take my cash!
Unfortunately 1 was a “had to be there for it” Xbox one exclusive multiplayer only thing. But fortunately, 2 is the best one and is less than $5 on Steam right now!
Time machine wishlist: The benefit cascade of killing Wilson is stronger than Hitler. No US entry into WW1, no Versailles. No Versailles, no Weimar, no Hitler. Or kill Lenin instead...the Czar survives and no attempted Communist coup in Germany, ergo no Hitler and no Communist takeover of Eastern Europe or Cold War.
Option 2: plant the related generals and heads of state in No Man's Land for the Christmas Truce and end the war in 1914.
Current day wishlist: all the Maiden architects or those that dragged out the Ukrainian war to include Nuland, Blinken, Merkel, Johnson, Macron, von der Leyen, are stripped naked, marched through the streets of Keeev through a gauntlet of war widows and orphans and maimed vets to be pelted by excrement on their way to the scaffold.
Car wishlist:
ND Miata with a tuned 1.5, LSD, no dash screen and built to a 2100# curb weight.
Sedans that can carry luggage for four or better yet, a return of station wagons.
Correct re: Time Machine. You could also go back in time and prevent Lincoln from killing 2% of the country which would also have some shockingly ameliorative effects of this nations tragic destiny.
Even better, Time Machine to the 1700s to prevent the “worlds most expensive cotton” from being picked
Prevent the killing of archduke ferdnald, no ww1 no communists, now ww2. Odds are though chaos woudl erupt somewhere and there woudl be big wars, either better or worse. Nature has a way.
i like to watch the man in the high castle yearly, so many what ifs.
Time Machine? I think I’d go back and grab Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida in the early 60s, and send them off to a small island, where they could enjoy their communism in peace. And their poison would have never infested the universities and institutions of America. Political correctness, “wokeness”, identity politics. All wouldn’t have happened. Communism might not have died, but it wouldn’t have been reborn in the late 60s. Plus, We’d have a strong, liberal Democratic Party still.
I was going to say Moscow but then Lenin spent some time in Paris.
A joke from the bad old days:
The Politburo decides that to celebrate the October Revolution they should commission a large scale painting titled "Lenin in Paris," from the revolutionary's time in exile. They approach the most prominent muralist in Moscow, and he agrees, under the condition that he has complete artistic freedom and that they can't see the painting until it is finished. The Politburo reluctantly agrees. Six months later the Politburo arrives at the artist's studio for the reveal. He pulls away a sheet to reveal a massive, 20 foot by 10 foot oil painting of Trotsky doing Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin's wife, doggy style.
The communists are outraged and bluster, "This was supposed to be Lenin in Paris. Where's Lenin?"
The $15,000 basic pickup truck. With crank windows. Or a basic full size sedan with a BENCH SEAT and crank windows. But with the "customer wanted features" probably will be $25,000...
"Boney M."
Let’s be honest; I would go back in time and do my best to plumb the depths of depravity.
Perspective as it is, I did that. If I went back, I would explore it a lot less.
I think it would depend on how old or experienced one is ~ if you don't have the frame of reference to know the probable outcomes, many things would seem enticing .
-Nate
Exactly the point.
I had access to things as a largely unsupervised teen in Germany that 2025 me would have warned 1982 me about.
I suspect many older Americans are the same, I certainly was .
-Nate
Those YouTuber canyon drives reviewing cars look like an accident waiting to happen.
Maybe I'm just feeling particularly Grinchian today, but my first thought watching that 296 disintegrate was, "it probably isn't true that Darwin smiles whenever idiots die in such predictable fashion, but I'll bet he ain't crying, either."
When McLaren gave me the opportunity to drive a 675LT for a couple of days in southern California, I asked Matt Farah to send me the nav information for his canyon runs in the Santa Monica Mountains, which is how I drove from LA to Oxnard, where the Mullin museum was. It's a very capable car but the combination of a relatively narrow two lane road, numerous switchbacks, blind curves, mountainous drop offs if you screwed up, and my complete lack of performance driving instruction or training, convinced me to be careful with the go-fast pedal. It reminded me a bit of the Tunnel of Trees between Petoskey and Cross Village, along the Lake Michigan coast. You'd think it'd be fun to drive fast, but with trees just inches from the asphalt, a 200 foot drop off to the lake, cyclists and the occasional pedestrian, anything more than a quick pace would be reckless.
The only thing I feel qualified to say about the crash is this: COD4 was the greatest vidya game of our generation, slightly edging out MW2 and MGS2.
Part of the reason is due to how good the stories were for campaign mode. The fact that COD4/MW2 had the all-time best multiplayer was just a bonus.
Full Disclosure: This is about the era where I stopped playing video games, so YMMV.
As for car wishes. I’d settle for not tying so many options up in packages. For example, on a truck it’s ridiculous that you are stuck with a center console if you want anything beyond a basic work truck.
Otherwise, give us utilitarian vehicles that we crave. The people deserve durable vehicles at a fair price that’ll last 20 years and 200k miles with basic maintenance. Cash for Clunkers and EPA/DOT regs killed off basic transportation for people.
4 door Mustang? Stretch the platform and give us a Godzilla Crown Vic. Let Toyota bring Kei trucks AND 70 Series LCs in. Jeep should get cracking on a modern XJ. GM needs to whip up a new Malibu and Impala. Honda go back to being Honda.
Anyway, Merry Christmas everyone. I hope you all have an excellent time with your families this week. We are constantly barraged with negativity. Take this week to reset and focus upon what’s important.
EDIT - I don’t know how this got nested under Ronnie’s comment vs. a thread on its own. This app is so terrible sometimes.
"COD4 was the greatest vidya game of our generation, slightly edging out MW2 and MGS2"
calling it better than mgs2 is a searing hot take
i think the lasting legacy of cod is how brilliant the movement and aiming is. just about every other fps ever made is worse to handle in that regard. destiny is very high up there as well as battlefield. id put mw2 over cod4 though. also mgs3 and rdr1 existed in nearly the same timeframe
I once wanted to trademark a game titled First Person Shooter. Come to think of it, it might actually work today, some generic game engine that you can customize with skins to fit every military conflict in human history.
I'm not a gamer so if what I just said is stupid, well, I'm not a gamer.
"some generic game engine that you can customize with skins to fit every military conflict in human history"
have you ever heard of arma?
MGS2 is more memeable, but the things like Otacon crying about his sister annoyed me. So did the missions where you had to swim or take photos. I didn’t find COD4 or MW2 to have those boring parts.
I played MGS 3-4, GTA V, and Far Cry 3-6 much more recently. So far I think Far Cry 5 has been my favorite. A good story, open world, ability to go stealth or come in hot.
I’ve had RDR2 for like two years now. I’m hoping to play through that this winter. Gaming is usually something I only do when I’m sick or something.
ive 100% fc3 again a bit ago and i still like it. the reborn mod looks to fix a lot of my complaints (optics are complete garbage) but ive not gotten around to fc4 or 5 though 5 is on the radar for me. gamelplay looks a lot like fc3 plus some additional features with a story i might actually like.
now that im thinking out loud i really want to play fallout new vegas again. even on console its enjoyable but i bet mods are where its at
Agreed on the truck center console thing .
I recently did a major junkyard seat mix and match so my stripper Ford Ranger now has a nifty folding center thing that has a large, latchable storage bin and a cup holder able to carry a double extra large Slurpee.....
All factory parts no less .
I think I'd enjoy being able to go back in time and be a fly on the wall so to speak , don't think I'd make any good changes though .
-Nate
BTW : yes, when folded up it seats three across, I've done that two or three times but a Ranger is _NOT_ a three man truck .
-Nate
My friend had an extended cab Ranger in HS. We regularly had 5-6 guys in it. I remember leaving the backrests of the rear seats folded down so I could get some extra leg room by sitting higher.
Yeah ;
I'm not keen on crew/club cabs .
In the 1980's I had a 1978 F150 Ranger long bed, 302 W/ HD cooling system, it was a nice if basic truck .
-Nate
When I was really young, my dad had a single cab Ranger with the 4 speed + OD.
Whichever one of us was in the middle always had to scoot over when he went into second or fourth.
The idea of trying to do that today with a couple buddies IS really funny.
You ain't kidding .
Older five speeds (? Clark ?) had 5th gear back towards the seat .
Modern vehicles have 5th gear forward and away from the seat, still directly where the middle passenger's leg goes .
If you want to carry three people, get a standard size 1/2 ton truck .
I would if they still made any .
I stumbled into this 2000 Ranger base model quite by accident and I'd prefer a late 60's or early 70's American made 1/2 tonner with i6 engine, slushbox, AC, PS, PB, step side short bed but manual windows etc. but they didn't sell well so stopped being made .
I nearly had it knocked with my 1969 Chevy C/10, it turned out to have terminal cab rust so I $pent way more than it'll ever be worth having it restored using a factory AC cab, the shop did marvelous body and paint work but skinned me alive and returned it not running, I sold it at a dead loss a few years later and bought the nice Ranger .
I expect the Ranger will be my last truck before I die ~ no rust here .
-Nate
I've both driven and ridden in a lot of Rangers. It'll be a snowy day in hell before I buy one myself, but they're great little trucks and surprisingly capable.
Landon gets it .
-Nate
Battlefield Bad Company 2 has entered the chat. Greatest multiplayer FPS ever made.
YES
who knew that driving tanks and then blowing up houses with said tank would be fun
I loved the fact it favoured brains and cunning over reflexes. Meant I was half-decent at it.
same
in some ways it beats bf3/4 becuase you kept getting torn apart by guys with fully unlocked skill trees for every class and vehicle whereas bfbc2 was more limited in that regard. i still miss the vietnam expansion pack
Yeah, I'm always surprised I don't hear about more mountain disasters. I was up driving my S2000 through the hills here in CO with my buddy in his GT500. I wasn't going 10/10 or anything but still having some fun. At some point, there was a group that flew by us doing some pretty ridiculous speeds. On the straight I was probably going around 80-90 and based on how fast they whizzed by I'm guessing they were upwards of 150. Granted, there were some seriously capable vehicles in the group but I'm still surprised there aren't more tragic stories.
I'm not sure such crashes are considered newsworthy if they lack a hook. I used to go to Palomar Mountain with an S2000 club. There would be groups of sportbike riders, sports car clubs, and bicyclists all making the most of a winding road with drop offs, adjacent trees, and blind corners. It was unusual to not see some incident being mopped up and at least one medivac chopper in the air. I wouldn't have known anything about it while living in San Diego for a decade if a friend hadn't brought me up there to see it myself.
Yeah, you're probably right. I was involved in a fatal motor cycle accident this past year and considering how bad it was, there was 0 coverage. Shut down a major intersection for half a day!
A friend of mine that works in trauma tells me that at their practice, they just call motor cycles Donor Cycles. Pretty harsh, but apparently it's WAY more common than what I see in the news.
You died or you killed the guy?
If I answer the binary to this, I wonder if it incriminates me with the courts somehow. LOL
While I’m bored at my parents’…
1) 11/22/63 is a fun read about the JFK assassination, time travel, and the pit falls found within it. One of King’s better books.
2A) A Mustang Lincoln is not something I’d ever be able to afford new (I am a part of the problem) but I would absolutely buy a used one. That’s a dream car of mine, tbh.
2B) As one of the VERY few that has actually bought a two door SUV brand new (in green! With a manual! And factory 35s! And literally ZERO other options but a steel bumper!) I feel uniquely qualified to say that we both should have more options *and* every one of them fails in the marketplace. The consumer just does not want them, in much the same way they do not want coupes. The market wants something practical, and a two door anything just ain’t it. The benefits — which are almost entirely aesthetic — just aren’t enough for a business case. Still though, a two door Grand Cherokee, say, is something I’d love to own.
2C) Sir how much more bare bones could you possibly want a Corolla LE to be? They are true penalty boxes whose best qualities (durability, resale) are largely offset by how hateful they are to drive and be in. Terrible interior spaces. They are about $3k too expensive, and Toyota can barely keep them in stock though so what do I know?
I prefer coupes and manuals because it makes me feel interesting, but income + living situation = neither really makes sense right now. Gotta have one car that can do it all, and that will likely push me to an SUV next as neither my car nor my wife’s is capable of much in the way of carrying shit.
A coupe makes access a little easier for the driver on the rare occasion that you have room to open the door!
In my humble opinion true coupes (not sedans with 2 doors chopped out) look better than sedans.
I just gifted my GF a copy of 11/22/63 (along with "Cat Tales.") She's a big fan of King's early works but disavowed him after he went full-TDS. I reassured her that it at least made him a marginally better writer.
"disavowed him after he went full-TDS"
entirely justified but i thought they could both come together over their shared love of fucking kids what with trump doing it and king writing about it
Lmao
I've had manuals in every car I purchased new. I originally bought cars with manual transmissions because they were $800-$1000 cheaper than the automatic option. Now I buy them because they are fun and in my mind, more reliable. I think Toyota and Honda could drop manuals into all of their cars and knock a couple grand off the price. Trump should order the EPA to stop making the auto makers certify every engine/transmission combo and allow quality by similarity.
Qualify by Similarity
They could, but the take rate would be negligible. Honda didn’t cancel manuals in base or non-sporting Civics because they sold too well.
And Toyota distributors for SURE would make it so that they’d be impossible to buy even if you wanted one. Check the number of Tacoma manuals available vs automatics to get an idea of that. They sell every single manual Tacoma they make, and could probably sell a few thousand more on top, but the supply is artificially strangled by the distributors. It’s how it always goes.
I think if you marketed a manual Corolla or Civic to Gen Z as a $2000 savings and fun to drive. I don't know, people bitch about costs so give them the option to save 5% on a Corolla.
I am legitimately curious how high the take rate would be on a cheap and cheerful econobox with a manual that was sincerely marketed.
I am extremely pessimistic, but it’s been a bit since anyone has tried so who knows
Show a hot girl gripping the shifter. Certainly couldn't hurt.
It wouldn't be savings because they'd have to pay to take lessons to learn how to drive it. How many of them know someone with a manual to teach them on? I'm not teaching my son on my Lotus, for God's sake....
i mean its just a regular manual transmission it only takes a few minutes to figure out
No, kids these days don’t want to drive so it’s hard enough just to get them into an automatic.
One of my two kids drives, albeit reluctantly, and most of my nieces and nephews prefer not to get behind the wheel.
You can market until you’re blue in the face but you won’t be able to sell manuals anymore.
I love driving stick and there’s a five speed manual in my garage, but there’s many days when that old neck injury or decrepit rotator cuff make it more of a chore than a happy experience.
If the government can mandate EVs, they can mandate manual transmissions. If more people had manuals they’d learn how to drive instead of just pointing their car in the direction they want it to go.
As it is Toyota makes (supposedly) about $500 on a Corolla. There is no reason for them to sell one at $3k less and I’d assume earn less profit, especially as metioned^, they sell them pretty easily.
No doubt! Point I was trying to make there was that a Corolla LE feels like a car that should cost like $19500, not $23k or whatever it is. In base trim, they are barely cheap and certainly not cheerful.
Similarly priced cars —Jetta S, Sentra SV, Mazda 3, Trax LT — are much nicer methods of transportation.
I agree, Toyota’s have a premium vs the competition, so you get reliability at the expense of extras, like you mention above. I think there are enough Toyota people who just buy them that it doesn’t matter. People who shop around will go for the goodies.
I wonder if Toyota buyers have ever tried anything else. They might not have context for how cruel Toyota can be with their interiors.
As hard as it is to believe, there are people who get in their cars and drive without any concern for the experience. They are buying appliances. They get in, run the appliance, and get out at the destination. This might be many people.
I know this intellectually, but I struggle to really grasp the impact of that logic. It doesn't have to be that way!
Had a relative like this but with Hondas. Scoffed at people spending money on cars they wanted. Magically he started making more money and his Saturn (yes, he was first a dedicated Saturn guy) turned into a base accord turned into an EX-L V6 and his wife moved from CRXs to CRVs to RDXs. When you can’t afford it, you convince yourself you never wanted it
I’ve yet to drive one, but the brand new facelifted Mk7s I’ve seen have brought back at least the image of the VW being the superior mass market brand. They are really sharp and their color selections seem pretty good
My 8.5 was brilliant right up til that moment a buck jumped in front of it and Volkswagen refused to make available the wiring harness needed to put it back on the road. Fuck those Krauts.
“Why? Because fuck you, that’s why!” - VWoA, probably
Same opinions here all around.
I ALSO have zero meaningful time in one, but they present really well.
And, like, CHEAP. $20k for a brand new Jetta in the pretty blue is about as good a deal as you will ever find in the current market.
In my recent efforts to save money, I’m test driving a used Grand Cherokee tomorrow, however I have zero reasons beyond my own vanity to not buy this car.
https://www.volkswagenofbethesda.com/new-inventory/new/Volkswagen/2025-Volkswagen-Jetta-f776c34bac184a9b6e3800da217dac9b.htm?_cl=2qN6nRDoMjVPYXNJylYV0hVv&utm_
If you don’t need the space I’d EASILY take a new Jetta over a used WK2 JGC. I’ve significant seat time in my wife’s former 2017 which she took from almost new to 100k with nothing but the basics. It was pleasantly fun to drive, did great in snow with winter tires, and was nice enough to feel semi premium but cheap enough to leave overnight places or in not great parking spots and not fret.
I have immediate family with, idk ~150k miles combined on two pre-refresh Jettas with the 1.4.
They are entirely unremarkable and have a truly dreadful stereo, but they have also been very efficient, comfortable, quiet, and extremely reliable. No issues to note at all.
My own vanity is the big hang up here because, as noted many times, I’m an idiot. It would be an EXCELLENT decision though.
You'll miss the twin turbo V6 power but those really are good cars.
It looks like it has clown lips in lighter colors.
I think they are more like mid 24s in the real world. Steel wheels and all.
I presume that about 90% of the people who'd buy a base manual Corolla would buy another Toyota to follow it. Play the long game! Please Toyota!
Personally, amigo, I fail, even after all these years, to find any "fun" in the JFK assasination.
Thank you Sir .
-Nate
That’s fair
It is a well-written book that takes the subject matter very seriously. Will say that much.
If you’re even mildly interested in sci-fi and Stephen King and the like, it’s worth a read.
The basic Civic is also pretty basic. Naturally aspirated dour cylinder with a cvt. would a manual really be cheaper? What could Honda cut from that car?
Auto climate, LED exterior lights, power side mirrors, fold down rear seat. It's really not much.
If I could go back in time….the epa wouldn’t exist in a form that it does now, I know, California and a tiny few other places had smog problems, that said, I would buy as many 1967 gm hotrods as I could and fill warehouses full of them in climate controlled stasis, wait thirty five years and start selling pristine original survivor muscle cars for income, who am I kidding, time is an arrow and it doesn’t change direction…
Yep
Classical Indian thought regarded time as cyclical, as did some Greek philosophers. The Abrahamic cultures see it more as a straight line with a clear beginning.
If I could go back in time there are historical figures that I'd want to meet, but if I wanted to change history, I'd show Moses Mendelsohn the last 200 years of Jewish history and ask him if the positive impact to the world at large from the "haskalah", the Jewish "enlightenment" in the 18th and 19th centuries, was worth the negative impact it had on the Jewish world.
Our understanding of time and modern physics….honestly, it’s more philosophical than science, I can’t go back thirty years and change the outcome, so I don’t think in terms of time being a cyclical process or phenomenon, many paradoxical things, we should at this point have enough imagination to see what could happen in the future given all of this history that we have actual documentation of.
Yes, that's why there's been such a push to rewrite history.
Gotta wonder, how much of our written history is real? Especially knowing how petty people can be.
the victors write history
most of it is probably fake anyway
and of course that would only make sense. People in power don't do this for charity and leave things to chance.
Inasmuch as anti-Semitism has been with us for a millennia or two, one wonders.
It's an interesting question. Europeans had been killing Jews off and on and trying to forcibly convert them for a couple thousand years but they didn't try completely exterminating them until after Jews were emancipated. Emancipating Jews meant that they could compete academically and economically. There were fewer points of friction when Jews were restricted to economic and physical ghettos.
There was a shift from "You can't live among us as Jews," to, 'You can't live among us," to, "You can't live."
Theodore Herzl, who had been a journalist mostly uninvolved with things Jewish, embraced and invigorated the Zionist movement in the wake of the Dreyfuss affair in France. After watching anti-Jewish riots in Paris, he became convinced that emancipation was a folly and that Jews would never be considered full citizens of any country where they weren't sovereign.
While it obviously shares elements with other bigotries like xenophobia (which I'm not entirely sure is actually a phobia, stranger danger is a real thing) and resenting minority middlemen, my personal opinion is that there is a supernatural aspect to Jew-hatred.
I definitely think it’s a spiritual thing that causes the Jewish society to be a punching bag for the last two thousand years, it’s evil that hasn’t been stopped.
Wait, what ? .
Are you saying here that Judaism is evil ? .
-Nate
(hoping I mis read that)
You definitely misread that.
The evil doesn’t come from the jewish side of this.
Whatever the reason, the equation has changed. Since the time the romans vanquished the Jews untill 2 years ago Jewish lives came cheap. As in you could kill jews with near impunity and not much retribution.
Then we had the Hams gaza war. Now if you're going to invade someone's home, rape kill their women strangle their children and take hostages, well those same people, will destroy your homes and kill as many of you as is necessary to get those hostages back and make a point. The equation ahs changed and that juice aint worth the squeeze.
There are American jews and Israelis plus Jews from a few other places, in other word's two types, yall have the passive types here. If anybody thinks that an israel going down wont use its 75 Nukes to obliterate a whole bunch of stuff Gaza should make everyone think differently.
Weve gone from the Jews who defied the Romans at Masada full circle back to that type of tough Jew. Actually Mayer lansky and Benny Siegal indicate they were always around, but now they have a country, an army and nukes.
"f anybody thinks that an israel going down wont use its 75 Nukes to obliterate a whole bunch of stuff Gaza should make everyone think differently."
if the "samson option" is real then its absolutely terrifying
The movie, “Munich” comes to mind, I have never thought about how soft American Jewish culture was, but it is, but Israeli Jewish culture couldn’t really afford to be soft, October 7 was a massacre, someone up high dropped the ball on that evil day, unless it was a deliberate false flag to justify taking Gaza back, Idk.
"my personal opinion is that there is a supernatural aspect to Jew-hatred"
doubt it
god made us all equal in his eyes so theres probably a more concrete reason than the supernatural (which ive never believed in other than demonic entities and such)
I'm also not partial to belief in demons but there is such a thing as evil and there are things about Jew-hatred that aren't rational. It generally has not been something that has resulted in positive outcomes for the societies that have embraced it. Maybe Jews really do have a very powerful Friend that would like to see us hang around.
"For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth."
Deuteronomy 14:2
galatians 3:28
also acts was basically about being saved through christ regardless of jew or gentile
Ronnie, I just do not understand this focus on “Jew Hatred”. Maybe I don’t get it but I have Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Jewish, Presbyterian, Mormon, people I know, and the church they attend is not a big deal. Now when I was very young we had a preacher that railed against the Catholics as idol worshipers, and Jews as money grabbers, and Mormons as polygamists but I did not find any of the people I know that or have ever know to be that way. I think to much attention is paid to stereotypes of the past. Just my thoughts. Ronnie just look at Al the diverse friends you have here at ACF, no one is attacking anyone’s church of choice.
I think the problem is that people of good will are of good will but not everybody is like that. It'd be nice to watch a YouTuber without seeing comments in the chat about "Talmudic Jews." There are people out there with literally medieval attitudes. Twenty four cartloads, about 10,000 volumes, of the Talmud were burned in Paris in 1242.
It's almost funny. I'm fluent in Hebrew, know a bit of Aramaic, and I can barely learn Talmud. I have friends who are actual scholars of the Talmud and if they go slowly I can almost keep up.
Then I go online and I see people "quote" the Talmud when they wouldn't be able to open one of the 25 volumes from the correct side, let alone identify where the supposed quote is from.
"I'm fluent in Hebrew, know a bit of Aramaic, and I can barely learn Talmud. I have friends who are actual scholars of the Talmud and if they go slowly I can almost keep up"
you make it sound like the very worst kind of legalese
one does wonder
"All this has happened before, and all this will happen again."
That sounds like a pretty good definition of hell to me.
As I've posted here before, I was decidedly underwhelmed with my ES 350 (Non-Ultra) Luxury experience, but I'd be willing to give that coupe a second chance. I kind of love how the AI basically used a ninth-gen Accord coupe greenhouse while still preserving the ES sedan's stuck-on "NOT DLO FAIL!" C-pillar chrome triangle.
Did the seat mounts fail or was he driving at speed without seat belts?
the latter sounds more likely but he was carrying some serious velocity there
I can't tell from the video whether he's in the seat when they are dragging him away and I'm not going to watch it again.
Out of respect for the dead I try not to repeatedly watch videos of events where actual people actually died, like this or the recent UPS plane crash. I also won't look at photos or films of Holocaust victims and I've refused to watch the Oct. 7th videos. The least I can do is not treat death as a literal spectacle.
"The least I can do is not treat death as a literal spectacle"
a healthy outlook
between bestgore and liveleak i swear ive seen more dead chinamen than a marine at the chosin reservoir
not unique or a good idea
I love words like Chinaman and Jewess.
its somehow both offensive yet technically accurate
a chinaman is literally a chinese man
I was having a holiday meal with my neighbors and their adult kids in their Sukkah. The word "Jewess" came up and their son's girlfriend, now his wife, said that words with feminine endings were "sexist". I asked her, "Well, what about dominatrix?" She replied, "Well, that's a job title." I said, "No, it's just that French feminine suffixes sound more girly than Latin ones."
Tell your red-pilled friends about http://www.no19th.com
The Chinaman is not the issue here, Dude. I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand, Dude. Across this line, you DO NOT... Also, Dude, "Chinaman" is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please.
Jeez, Jason, I'm not talking about the guys who built the fucking railroad here.
So what do you call a Chinese dude who lives in Canada? Or a Chinese dude who lives in Norway?
Amen. There's too much suffering and pain in the world and we don't need to treat it as a spectator sport. We're too desensitized as it is.
Those 900 hp supercars should come with license endorsements similar to endorsements required by the faa for upgrading to faster and more complex aircraft, when I was a young person, 300 hp at the wheels was a rare thing and accidents like that one last week were rather rare flukes, I don’t condone a displacement tax like in Europe or Japan or other authoritarian regimes, but in America, if you want to drive semi trucks, you have to have a cdl endorsement, which doesn’t go far enough (looking at class A motorhomes with big ass diesel engines and air brakes)the young tech bros buying these supercars have no experience with high horsepower street cars, they probably never even played in a snowy parking lot.
Slight correction: you used to have to have a cdl to drive a semi. Now, not so much…
whats changed now?
It was deemed unfair to require a real CDL. So some states handed them out like candy.
See all the recent accidents involving recent immigrants, mainly from India and Pakistan, who were given CDLs but never passed the tests or met the qualifications.
Then there is this wonderful individual that hit a school bus on I5 outside of Olympia earlier this month. Luckily the bus had no kids on it. No CDL, insurance and medical cert. Seattle media and the State Patrol tied itself in knots to keep the drivers identity a mystery. Came out at his court appearance. Juan Hernandez-Santos, 40, of Huentitlan, Mexico. Needed an interpreter as no habla englese. Probably was bailed out and is scooting back to Mexico. Some company in CA owned the semi and employed him. I would not be surprised if that company had ties into Sacramento.
https://komonews.com/news/local/crash-between-semi-truck-school-bus-snarls-traffic-down-nb-i-5-near-lacey-wsdot-commute-road-conditions-alternate-route-children-safety-accident-injuries-update-washington
Open borders and the relentless drive to labor cost = 0.
I've long thought this is true of motorcycles. Anyone with the cash or an acceptable credit rating can walk into a dealership and ride home on a literbike. It's insane.
The only problem with this, is where does this stop, a classic literbike, has a hell of a lot more speed in it than a 96” dual cam Harley does, I agree that you should have to prove yourself to your state government dmv, but how far would that agency take it?
I've been riding Motocycles for close to 60 years now and I think that tiered licensing like mandatory firearms training would be the smart way to go .
As far as CDL's, I never bothered but looking at the incredible horrific crashes these days I gotta wonder how much do they actually test ? .
-Nate
California requires a motorcycle riding test in addition to the written test but waives the ridden test if you have passed the Motorcycle Safety Foundation rider training course.
Yeah ;
I remember getting my basic riding skill test at age 16, I think it was on a '62 Honda Dream or Benly .
By the time my son began riding they'd raised the age to 18 and I needed him to learn by riding a Honda CT90 daily across town to high school, he did so sans papers and learned a lot .
He's a better, faster and safer rider than I could dream of =8-) .
-Nate
EDITED to show when I was licensed versus my son .
Never took any safety courses for motorcycle endorsement, had to do a written exam and a figure eight in the alley behind the secretary of state’s office crashed once at 55 mph, just road rash, because of course I was only wearing jeans and a t shirt, I recommend msf courses to anyone talking about getting a motorcycle, when I got my chauffeurs class a truck license, it was just a written, and that grandfathered into a class a cdl, if you want the cdl the right way, it requires a written and knowledge test of pre and post trip inspection of the truck and trailer, and if the truck you are driving is going to be a manual transmission, you must bring that kind of transmission to the road test, if you are pulled over in a manual transmission truck and you don’t have the transmission endorsement on your license, they can put the truck out of service….
A few years ago, the testing was difficult and rigorous, now I guess you shop around for someone who will take the grift.
With tiered licensing can I then cruise open roads rated to 100mph?
What U.S.A. state has 100 MPH limit ? .
-Nate
None, but if we have tired licensing then maybe thats possible.
As a youngster in Italy in the 809s, the Fiat 500s had a 80 kmh decal on the back, ie they were limited tot hat speed, other cars were rated at 120kmh.
is it possible to have logic. So iof I have say a corvette or Golf R, and appropriate driver training/certification we have tiered licenses and said driver in said cars is allowed to go faster than moms suv?
Not gonna happen in reality because speeding is revenuer for cops lawyers courts etc. Plus its grist for politicians mill. The reality is the way to reduce road deaths is with proper driver training. But that woudl eliminate 80% of current drivers who at the very least woudl need retraining. Thta woudl also dent car sales. The USA model is the minimum requirement remotely possible so its easy to buy cars.
that's a good point; I was speaking more to horsepower and acceleration than displacement. Nate mentions tiered licensing as one solution.
Another solution is a HP cap. Thta would also have the benefit of forcing manufactures to make lighter sportscars again to retain performance.
Not gonna happen because as we see people want corvette zr1x even thoi8ugh there is nowhere street or track one can plausibly use its particular performance envelope.
But imagine how great an Alfa 4c with the Alfa TTv6 of "only" 500 hp would be.
Very few drivers ever use anywhere near the capacity of their vehicles, I don't think a power cap is a good idea (slippery slope and all that) .
-Nate
Agreed and Im against regulation. But with a tesla that can do 0-60 belw 2.5 secs i fear that regulation as to performance specs is in debate. Id rather have power caps and let manufactures extract performance cleverly like lightweight.
Still Im prob wrong and the free market, as in the late 60s will intervene with ruinous insurance rates for fast accessible cars.
Get em while you can. Under Trump Ice has had a stay of execution, and with the scrapping of the epa fuel reg fines well prb get some great powertrains with appropriate gearing.
I'm not sure it's feasible when you can raise holy hell with an Altima on 3 donut spares and a freeway. The body count is almost always apt to be higher. But I agree in concept that there probably is a point where common sense and training should kick in.
Basic driver training in this country is a joke, and the Altima drivers are largely insane.
If there's any training at all. The Altima drivers are just trying to keep one step ahead of either the cops or repo man. Or just in a hurry to get to the weed shop.
when I got my license in 1984, Iowa required mandatory driver's education for anyone who wanted to get a license at age 16. If you didn't take it, you had to wait until you were 18, IIRC. anyway, it was a full semester, taught in public schools, with driving simulators (mechanical, with what was essentially a movie screen in front of you) and practical experience on the road with an instructor who had an auxiliary brake pedal.
Our instructor would make us drive him to the bank, the dry cleaners, etc. At the time, I thought, "This is is so lame. He's just using us to do his errands." It was decades later when I realized it was a brilliant move - we were getting real-world experience doing the kind of driving we do 90 percent of the time.
I am convinced that today's teenagers and young adults have learned to drive playing Grand Theft Auto, Dirt, Forza, and Gran Turismo.
All of this! It was mostly the same in 1976 in Michigan, except that I went outside of the education system and paid for it myself, drove a slant 6 Plymouth Volare, the instructor had an attitude, one of contempt and disinterest, no one died🤣. Hilarious point with the Altima drivers 😂.
My state required drivers education in 1981 consisted of 10th grade study hall trips to Lawson's (NE Ohio 7-Eleven) with 2 other 16 year old boys and a slutty 22 year old driving instructor reeking of weed and Charlie by Revlon.
OH wasn't much better by the 90's--16 classroom hours, got out early most times, 8 supervised driving hours.
I’m not sure which of the 12 steps my driving instructor was on, but I do remember that he chain smoked the whole time and was very laid back when he pointed out that I shouldn’t exit the wrong way in a one way area after I almost hit someone head on. He barely broke stride in whatever story he was telling while I panicked.
How about a 1000hp tesla.
I don’t hate electric vehicles, but they are not visceral like an old GTO or a TransAm, they are certainly faster, but how fast can you drive on the street and keep your license?
Faster in a straight line, but at 5000lns + not really fast.
The twisted part here is someone wouldn't throw the keys to a hellcat Challenger to a 16 yo, but they will let them drive the family tesla, with predictable outcomes.
But you or I wouldn’t .
And yet in my town we had that exact accident, Tesla+ 16yo kid, 17yo female in passenger seat, accelerated away from a traffic light and a minivan turning left 2 blocks up never saw them coming, everyone killed.
A well-worn joke of mine is:
"There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don't."
Followed by:
"There are three kinds of people in the world:
"(1) Those who would use a time machine to kill Hitler;
"(2) Those who would use a time machine to save JFK; and
"(3) Those who would use a time machine to save Marilyn Monroe."
It's one of those unanswerable questions, but... I think a lot of the thinking about "If JFK had survived" is nothing but wishful thinking.
If you go back and read JFK's Inaugural Address... there's a lot of sabre-rattling going on there. JFK was obsessed with not looking weak or indecisive. He would say that it was better to make a wrong decision rather than to "wait and see," because "wait and see" looks indecisive. The fact that he was juiced up on speed and painkillers helped the situation not at all. He had almost no toleration for ambiguity.
A case can be made that JFK turned a "situation" into the Cuban Missile Crisis, for his own domestic political/re-election interests.
The fact of the matter was that the US should have known that while Soviet missiles in Cuba was a slap in the face as well as a threat... the Soviets would in rather short time make the Cuban missiles a non-issue, because submarines capable of launching nuclear missiles were on the way. "Forget Cuba, 90 miles from Miami. We can sneak a sub with nuclear warheads to within 12 miles of the White House, all day every day. Sleep tight!"
And don't bet on Vietnam. What should be better known, but it is not, because it does not fit the narrative, is that, in a rather shocking interference where he should not have interfered, the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston tried to give Congressman Kennedy a leg up by setting up a meeting between JFK and an obscure 40-ish year old virgin studying Roman Catholic Theology outside of Boston: Ngo Dinh Diem, who was installed as the President of South Vietnam. The Cardinal wanted to hand Kennedy a "Foreign Policy Issue" on a silver platter. And look where that got us.
Kennedy, perhaps not knowing what he was doing, when his golf game was interrupted to answer a question, appeared to be, to say the least, indifferent to the CIA-led coup d'etat in which Diem and his brother were murdered. Some believe that the sticking point was that, in order to counter the perception that RVN was being re-colonized by the USA, Diem insisted that all US military personnel entering RVN had to show passports and be processed as foreign visitors. Which was unacceptable to the US military.
Anyway, I don't think that the truth about November 22 will get out during my lifetime.
Belated memory... RVN President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Nhu were murdered November 2, 1963.
As I watched the live unscripted TV coverage of the JFK assassination's aftermath (Sunday?), one reporter, apparently reading from a wire-service teletype paper scroll, informed us that a reporter in Saigon had asked Diem's brother's widow if she had any comments on JFK's assassination; and Madame Nhu, to the best of my recollection, replied:
"At least Jackie now knows what it feels like."
IIRC, one of the other TV reporters with an open mike whistled a descending glissando scale. And there were other little expressions of shock.
Ouchsies. There is at least one book claiming that the South Vietnamese were somehow involved in JFK's assassination, but I found it not convincing.
BTW56... there is also a theory that the US intelligence services had advance knowledge of the attempt on de Gaulle's life that was dramatized in the film "Day of the Jackal," but they just sat on that intel and let nature take its course. (De Gaulle obviously survived.)
Supposedly, Mr. "Two Fishing Poles" (Deux Galles) learned of this; and so, when there was intercepted chatter about French assassins intent on killing JFK for the Mafia... de Gaulle just sat on that intel and let nature take its course.
He did cut a fine figure at the head of JFK's funeral procession.
(Edit: Memory slip. After all, it was more than 60 years ago. Diem was a Catholic Priest Wanna-Be, so he was celibate and never married. So, the woman who threw a little shade on Jackie was Diem's brother's widow, known as "Madame Nhu." NTL, she was viewed as the Power Behind the Throne.)
(Edit 2: I cleaned up the form or style of the Vietnamese names. What came first was the family name Ngo, and then the personal or given name. So, Diem was a given name, and his brother’s given name was Nhu. And Nhu’s wife, the de-facto First Lady, was Madame Nhu.)
"If you’re racing a Civic or Miata in LeMons or something that, you should be proud of the fact that you’re driving competitively on-track. Just don’t expect it to translate to something like a 296 Ferrari"
I race with a great team in a West Coast-based endurance racing league. Very (relatively) low-dollar, cheap low-hp cars... our team runs a first gen Ford Focus, with about 170-180 hp...
...even with low-hp cars, things get out of hand pretty quickly. I've seen an RX-8 rolling end over end, so high that it almost hit the pedestrian bridge across the track. This in a car that can't have much more than 200hp...
The danger isn't the power or the capability of the car... that same scenario could have been an old Miata coming out of the tunnel. The difference is race cars are built and tech'd for driver safety. That same accident in a race car, with the driver strapped into an FIA seat, with SFI harnesses and gear, inside a roll cage, would result in a dazed driver hopping out under his own power...
Merry Christmas!
Christ is born!
indeed he is
praise be
I would go back to 1991 or 1992 and figure out a way to prevent Clinton or Bush from winning. My goal would be to prevent NAFTA and to derail China's path to MFN trade status and admission the the WTO. Assuming I can download hours of video onto my phone before I board the time machine, I would use it to help Ross Perot's campaign.
Or Buchanan in the primary.
Buchanan needs a Medal of Freedom ASAP
https://americarenewing.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Pat-Buchanan-Presidential-Medal-of-Freedom-Primer.pdf
One of my pet theories is the importance of 1992 also.
Even Minnesota Democrat "get clean for" Gene McCarthy ran coincident with a book titled _A Colony of the World_:
In A Colony of the World, Eugene McCarthy asserts that the United States is now in a colonial, or neocolonial, relationship to a combination of outside and inside forces which impose a colonial status on the country.
https://www.amazon.com/Colony-World-Americas-Statesman-Countrymen/dp/0781801028
Merry Christmas all!
0. RIP Vince, he’s responsible for Titanfall 1 and 2, two of the finest shooters ever and in 2s case, probably the best FPS campaign as well.
1. Hitler dead in ‘41 may also have led to a more open and honest design for the StG 44, instead of being secretly designed as a sub gun… but then again, pressure and diamonds, so who knows. Worth messing it up for millions of lives saved either way.
2. Pencil me ALL THE WAY in for a Lincoln Mustang. Fully beige interior with buttery leather and tuned a bit softer for comfort, take my cash!
"Titanfall 1 and 2, two of the finest shooters ever"
taking that praise and looking to grab both of those now
Unfortunately 1 was a “had to be there for it” Xbox one exclusive multiplayer only thing. But fortunately, 2 is the best one and is less than $5 on Steam right now!
darn
i really ought to get steam sometime now that i have a half decent laptop but its SO TEMPTING to just buy a hundred dollars worth of games in 15 mins
i still like x360 titles off facebook marketplace purchased for $5
Let’s just call it the Mercury Cougar, and sell it in Lincoln showrooms as “Mercury by Lincoln.”
Time machine wishlist: The benefit cascade of killing Wilson is stronger than Hitler. No US entry into WW1, no Versailles. No Versailles, no Weimar, no Hitler. Or kill Lenin instead...the Czar survives and no attempted Communist coup in Germany, ergo no Hitler and no Communist takeover of Eastern Europe or Cold War.
Option 2: plant the related generals and heads of state in No Man's Land for the Christmas Truce and end the war in 1914.
Current day wishlist: all the Maiden architects or those that dragged out the Ukrainian war to include Nuland, Blinken, Merkel, Johnson, Macron, von der Leyen, are stripped naked, marched through the streets of Keeev through a gauntlet of war widows and orphans and maimed vets to be pelted by excrement on their way to the scaffold.
Car wishlist:
ND Miata with a tuned 1.5, LSD, no dash screen and built to a 2100# curb weight.
Sedans that can carry luggage for four or better yet, a return of station wagons.
One big Caddy or Lincoln.
I agree with the attempt to prevent the Bolshevik/communist takeover of Russia. That would be an incredible change to history.
Wouldn't even have to KILL Marx or Lenin. Just keep them busy till they're too old to cause trouble.
Correct re: Time Machine. You could also go back in time and prevent Lincoln from killing 2% of the country which would also have some shockingly ameliorative effects of this nations tragic destiny.
Even better, Time Machine to the 1700s to prevent the “worlds most expensive cotton” from being picked
No Woodrow Wilson was the first thought I had as well. Let nature take its course from there.
Prevent the killing of archduke ferdnald, no ww1 no communists, now ww2. Odds are though chaos woudl erupt somewhere and there woudl be big wars, either better or worse. Nature has a way.
i like to watch the man in the high castle yearly, so many what ifs.
You forgot no income tax.
I just posted something similar, but had the Allies just properly finishing WW1.
Time Machine? I think I’d go back and grab Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida in the early 60s, and send them off to a small island, where they could enjoy their communism in peace. And their poison would have never infested the universities and institutions of America. Political correctness, “wokeness”, identity politics. All wouldn’t have happened. Communism might not have died, but it wouldn’t have been reborn in the late 60s. Plus, We’d have a strong, liberal Democratic Party still.
Add Gramsci, Finkelstein, Chomsky, Zinn, and the Frankfurt School to the list.
Yes. There were many that led to it. And many that followed. But Foucault and Derrida seem the ones that really drove the change.
We could add Walter Gropius too. He being responsible for ruining architecture and making the world ugly.
Basically, all the evil in the world was spawned in Germany and France in a very short span of time.
I was going to say Moscow but then Lenin spent some time in Paris.
A joke from the bad old days:
The Politburo decides that to celebrate the October Revolution they should commission a large scale painting titled "Lenin in Paris," from the revolutionary's time in exile. They approach the most prominent muralist in Moscow, and he agrees, under the condition that he has complete artistic freedom and that they can't see the painting until it is finished. The Politburo reluctantly agrees. Six months later the Politburo arrives at the artist's studio for the reveal. He pulls away a sheet to reveal a massive, 20 foot by 10 foot oil painting of Trotsky doing Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin's wife, doggy style.
The communists are outraged and bluster, "This was supposed to be Lenin in Paris. Where's Lenin?"
The artist replied, "In Paris."
who was in paris?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG_dA32oH44&list=RDgG_dA32oH44&start_radio=1
'We could add Walter Gropius too. He being responsible for ruining architecture and making the world ugly.'
You have, Sir, quite a serious point.
The $15,000 basic pickup truck. With crank windows. Or a basic full size sedan with a BENCH SEAT and crank windows. But with the "customer wanted features" probably will be $25,000...
I’d like a 1980ish Ford Courier pickup for $8999 please.