To go even further on the realpolitik side of this, it was always the height of foolishness to believe that DEI wouldn't be made physically manifest *on the Jews first.*
The "why" is very simple. Look at what any murderously authoritarian regime puts out in their propaganda and you see that is only a matter of time before the demonization of the foreign enemy becomes a hunt for the enemies within. Not too many rednecks with rebel flags flying from their pickup trucks at Harvard Yard, don't you know.
There's only so much grievance you can mine off of somebody who isn't there, never was there, and who your entire system was specifically designed to keep away from there. To the point where you're all incredibly disturbed that a J.D. Vance slips through on rare occasion.
It was only a matter of time before it became a great big Jew hunt. It could go no other way because the entire system is there to support the descendants of the most corrupt and unrepentantly rapacious white people who have found endless excuses why they were entitled to rob, steal, and kill for their own profit and amusement. The Ivys are a weapon explicitly wielded against the Dalits. Jews were only allowed on campus after it became socially embarrassing to continue explicitly keeping them out. Jew hate and eugenics were as common and fervently advocated for by leading academics and lights of society as DEI is now before we started liberating camps in Europe. Indeed, Mr. Hitler and his "scientific" approach to government had many fans in the media and academia in general right up until it became useful to define a party of national socialists as "right wing".
Whereas you can find documented examples of even the Nazis feeling moral repulsion at slaughtering Jews wholesale, requiring a lot of liquor to numb their screaming conscience so they can go back and shoot more the next day, when you see the videos from Hamas they are in a state of absolute ecstasy as they literally rape and murder their way through unarmed civilian populations. All to the cheer and adulation of Biden, Hillary, and Obama voters.
See, the hillbilly driving his pickup truck in Appalachia isn't there...but you are. And there aren't that many of you. And unlike Bubba in the woods, you aren't armed. Yelling about somebody who isn't there doesn't satisfy quite like physically assaulting the 19 year old with the yarmulke on.
ISIS and the Palestinian terrorists...they're in it for the atrocity. They dress it up by yelling about Allah, but what really tickles their taint is the exercise of power over others. Their religion gives them special dispensation to treat the infidel as less than human. Any instinct they have towards the infidel is righteous just because they have it. And it doesn't stop there. You can look at the "grooming gang" scandals that the government of the UK still refuses to deal with fully to see more evidence. It doesn't matter how many infidel girls you drug and rape because they're infidels. They *deserve* what you are doing to them. You are morally right while you hold that white girl down, shove drugs down her throat, and rape her. Because she is the infidel and Allah has blessed you above her!
When you buy into the elitist game that Harvard sells, you're buying into the same basic ideology. What Jews on elite campuses are figuring out is that the "progressives" have so much admiration and support for the most degenerately violent psychopaths the middle east can produce because...and this is a big one...they are fundamentally the same people.
Sure, they can organize a campaign to go find Bubba in the sticks...but that's so far. And I bet they don't even have a fair trade coffee store there. And, you know, there's that whole Country Boy Can Survive thing. Much easier and more immediately satisfying to get your jollies by intimidating and assaulting that Jewish kid over there. Look how scared he looks when four or five dozen people surround him and chant From The River To The Sea!
Give it long enough and Harvard will have parties that would make Margit Thyssen/Batthyany blush!
If you don't know who Margit Thyssen is, you should look her up. And you should also look up the Thyssen family and all the neat things they got up to. And maybe start to ask questions about where Tyson foods really comes from...
From Ackman’s tweet, his main point is well summarized:
“This appears to have been the case with former President Gay’s selection. She did not possess the leadership skills to serve as Harvard’s president, putting aside any questions about her academic credentials. This became apparent shortly after October 7th, but there were many signs before then when she was Dean of the faculty.”
(PS - Dr. Gay, citing, crediting and attributing ideas to others as I’ve done above isn’t a Herculean task. Appreciating, crediting and subsequently building upon the works of others is a cornerstone of academia - if you can’t form an original thought and can’t be bothered to delineate between the works of others and your own, then you simply have no place in an academic setting.)
I hope he succeeds. Divorcing Harvard from DEI would send shockwaves across academia and might be a necessary first step in maybe getting them to be educational institutions again instead of subversive madrassas for woke jihad.
"The editors meant it when they replied to a reader, "Make no mistake about it: we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as 'the white race' is destroyed—not 'deconstructed' but destroyed."
I hope Ackman is just getting started because as this piece from Harvard Magazine back in 2002 shows, there's a LOT of work to be done.
Well, Business Insider came after his wife (Ackman's) for apparent plagerism. They are claiming missing citations for Wikipedia. (How does MIT allow that, even in the late 2000s? I couldn't for a 101 history paper in the early 2000s.)
According to Ackman's wife's Twitter account, in her MIT doctoral thesis, she forgot quotes but had citation. Maybe more in there but it was a long tweet and I might be a beer in.
It appears now Bill is going after Business Insider and MIT for plagerism reviews. It's getting
One thing I could never figure out was the focus on Jews specifically. As a demographic, they can be pretty tricky to actually to actually seek out as some of them look fairly white. I figured if you wanted a scapegoat, you'd look for the obvious outlier.
it is possible that i am not clever enough to see the answer in front of me
Remember that these elite institutions have gone to great lengths to make sure that only the right sort of white people are allowed in. Spotting Jews is child's play...especially as so many of them readily identify themselves because they thought they were safe.
You'd think losing the yarmulke would be easy enough to do to blend it. On a whim, I tried looking up demographics at Harvard to find the ethnic and religious breakdown and got nowhere. DIE was a disaster for everyone involved.
The UAE called Hamas nihilists. Islam is just a branding for the rubes.
That's why no supposedly fellow traveler country really wants anything to do them. They may also hate Israel, but they know if there was no Israel, these people would move on to them.
The "palestinians" are violent subversives. They were kicked out of Egypt and Jordan for being violent subversives that tried to overthrow the governments in those countries. The game that the Arab world has been playing for a long time is trying to use the violent subversives as a weapon against the west without being eaten by their own pit bull. This is more of the same Qatar is the hub of every bit of finance for Muslim Brotherhood aligned terrorism (which almost all of the shit we're dealing with is) but they face no repercussions because they are sufficiently in bed with enough corrupt politicians in the west to benefit from our blanket of protection.
This is why anyone who had sense was immediately hopeless when Shrub Bush said "Islam is a religion of peace." Translation: We can't afford to look too hard into why a bunch of Saudis hijacked planes and murdered thousands of people on our soil because boy howdy that'd really cut into our bottom line! Instead, we'll just engage in a protracted war that will make Vietnam look like the most well managed military operation in history by comparison while generating shitloads of money for the corruptocrats in DC while a new generation of middle and working class kids get to leave their limbs and pieces of their minds in yet another 3rd world disaster.
And if you question any of it, THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON!!!!
My only problem with this otherwise excellent statement is the characterization of the O-Clinton-Biden voter. I am that, and I consider Biden the best pres of my lifetime--which began during the first summer of the Eisenhower ADministration--but my stomach goes queasy when I see or hear DEI or 1619, or any suchlike tiresomeness.
And my position on immigration is that we need to stabilize the US population, because our country is environmentally unsustainable, and the average immigrant's greenhouse emissions rise threefold when they relocate to the major industrialized nation with the greatest per capita GH emissions, and the quality of life is going to hell b/c too many people. I don't understand why so many people don't understand that if you keep adding more people to a place, it fills up. I first understood that when I was 9.
My drive home to Boston from DC a handful of days ago may have been the worst ever, due to 2.5 hours of bumper to bumper traffic, for a total of 10 hours of driving. (It's a 7 hour drive with no traffic.) And Boston area traffic only gets worse every year, despite the major respite from the Big Dig.
It's certainly not easy...but it's true. The people perpetrating this didn't vote for the orange guy. They are loudly "progressive" and loudly championed Obama and Hillary and Biden. And Biden...or his handlers, however you choose to look at it...are all in on this shit. Left vs. right is a distraction from the reality of top vs. bottom. You can't fit a dime between Biden and Mitch McConnel because they're both entirely corrupt gangsters. All the people who voted for Obama aren't down with all of this just like all Muslims aren't terrorists. But there are literally hundreds of millions of Muslims who are A OK with what Hamas did, just as there are huge numbers of "progressives" who endorse all the madness that make you queasy. There's a fringe on the right, certainly...but they don't wield institutional power. You can't have a swastika hanging in your office and have a job cleaning toilets at a university or in the federal government, much less be a tenured professor or the head of an agency. But you can have a Palestinian flag or a communist flag. And that's the problem.
There are certainly a lot of nutty progressives, as you say. But I still think Biden's the best pres of my lifetime. What he's done makes me feel like I did when I had a strong wind at my back, cycling through the Great Plains on my way from Seattle to Boston nearly 50 years ago.
Biden has done many terrific things. Shoot, I don't know where to begin, but he's lowered healthcare costs for seniors, lowered drug prices, unemployment is lower than it's been probably in decades, he's lowered inflation down to around 2% from quite high during the former guy, he united NATO behind Ukraine, which bears on the security of Europe, and by extension, the US; he's stood with striking union members, and at the moment, tired in front of this computer, there are at least 5-10 other things he's done that I'm forgetting.
I've never gotten everything I wanted from a president. But I've gotten far more from Biden than anyone else. I've been working on immigration issues for more than 20 years, and I will keep doing so. But I recently had the opportunity to let my two Senators and my Congressperson (Markey Warren, and Katherine Clark) know that I was ***very*** concerned about Ukraine, and that I thought that doing a deal with the GOP on the border would help Biden get re-elected, and that it would also help the US become less environmentally unsustainable. I got a call back from Clark's office.
And I do think that just as young people understand that climage change needs to be stopped, they will realize that overpopulation is worsening climate change, and that we need to greatly reduce immigration.
Some clarification needed here. Who is "you" here : "To the point where you're all incredibly disturbed that a J.D. Vance slips through on rare occasion."
Since you seem to have better insight into all this, I've been terribly confused for years why the Jewish community still votes for progressive candidates. This thing on college campuses isn't exactly new. Just look at what the progressives did to the Jewish communities during the early days of Covid in NYC. Many progressive candidates support laws that directly or indirectly hurt Jewish businesses.
And Bill Ackman's post is on point, however, his problem is simply that the message is tainted because of who he is and where his loyalties lie.
"You" there refers to the unapologetic elitists in the Ivies. The ones who are convinced of their own superiority. Not everyone in the Ivies believes themselves a species apart...but a good many do.
Though, I would point out that there's no such thing as an "authoritarian" regime. The word "authoritarian" derives from "authority," and the defining characteristics of authority are that it is JUST and LEGITIMATE.
Put another way, "authority" is the right to rule without the consent of the governed. God wields authority over the universe. Parents have authority over their minor children.
Governments, however, wield power in the name of some abstraction, like The People or The Revolution. This is not the same as authority.
Since words are how we define ideas, and ideas are how we define reality, words matter. A better word would be "totalitarian."
I find here easy on the eyes, especially since she seems to be attainable for the average guy and wouldn't be an embarrassment in 99.9% of life's situations. Sure, she isn't Margot Roby, but I'm not DiCaprio either.
Of course, this was the same friend who got the lawn chairs out of the trunk of his car so we could watch the fire department try to put out the burning body shop in comfort.
-find a way to bill the hours (ie after the kids go to sleep)(note: often this eventually kills the host woman)
-not have kids (many do this, not always totally cognizantly/intentionally)
-get the decent 1% of law jobs--- ie , general counsel jobs that pay (they almost never do; maybe in SF Tech they do - maybe banking, other random spheres), jobs that aren't a drag (general counsel at Lilly Pulitzer? did 10,000 women apply for that one) or extremely rare [partner/non-equity-partner/more recently "counsel"] arrangements at firms where billable hours requirements are *reasonable.* I'm told it's exceptionally rare, but I'm told it exists for rare talents.
There is also the diversity scam. DEI partners make partner income but god knows what the billing requirements are given their inquisitorial activities are largely self-directed at the host firm.
These *can be* good gigs. Particularly with a spouse who makes similar money
In a previous life I once was shown the quality of applicants who apply for jobs similar to what you described. I didn't see a non top 10 law school in the stack.
My sister didn’t go to a top-10 law school, but my understanding is her law school, in DC, had a top-10 program for her field of study (communications law). She graduated #2 or 3 in her class IIRC. Lasted 9 months at a Big Law firm, then moved to government and hasn’t looked back. Low pay, but they did pay off her school loans on her 10th or 11th anniversary of working there.
Hopefully most people would understand context and that the comparison is to other lawyering jobs, not jobs in general, AND those people would understand the significant investment it takes to become a lawyer and maybe it’s not a good return. I make the same pay, a little more even, from a 4yr undergrad degree and a $10k/yr night school MBA from a directional state U. And I have significantly more runway; my sister is already atop the GS payscale and can’t go any higher aside from COLA without becoming a political appointee.
The firm I interned at did the “of counsel” thing for a lot of the lady lawyers, and they seemed generally contented. Usually labor & employment lawyers, did the research and writing for the senior partners who actually tried cases and labor arbitrations and such. Worked usually 40-50 hours a week and made about 190k-225k a year, most worked from home. A friend’s mom did that at the same firm growing up, and she had 3 kids and was super engaged with them. Excessively so, one might say.
I’ve dated a lawyer, and am currently talking to a law student. They tend to be less tolerant of my antics, which isn’t a bad thing. But Jack is right that, in some, the dominant tendency is strong. To counter, though, the divorce lawyer I had a thing with for a bit was dominant at work and nowhere else.
The divorce lawyer was actually rather sweet and earnest, and quite good at her job. But she was 29, wanted kids, and lived 3 hours away from me, so it wasn’t to be. If I were 5 or 6 years older it could’ve worked.
Is it that big? I'd always thought of it more the 150-200lb, 5'7-5'10 girl who was too small or athletic to be called fat, and yet too short to be "tall girl"
Oh god. I'm very glad that I am happily married now.
I think my view on height and fitness with women (and in general) is so skewed by years of elite rowing that I never would've thought of that. I'd think they'd just go from 5'9 140s up to "mid size" 175 at the worst case like the ones I know. But I my "inactive" level is also considered highly active for most....
Rowing is an anomaly in that muscle is more dense than fat: I met a high-level female rower who was publicly listed at 200 or 205 lb, but because it was muscle and she was over 6' tall she looked fine.
She's probably on the larger side too. Most of them are closer to the 6'1 175.
Never mind the weight, there's also the height aspect. I'm 5'9 (raced as a lightweight around 145lbs), but think that I'm short because I spent most of my younger life in a world where the women are 5'10-6'2, and the men even taller than that. I actually raced in a heavyweight program in college, and when picking the boat up out of the water, I would be unable to reach it...
The first girl on my college's crew team I dated was a bit short for my taste and obviously very fit. When it came to tossing her (playfully) around, I was shocked at the effort!
The photography and design needn’t be bad, or black and white. It would be my pleasure to direct and/or perform both for a nominal fee, while having as much fun doing it as the test driver throwing his arm out the window as he slides past my camera with the tail 45° wide of straight.
As someone who worked in the magazine industry as an AD, I’ve long noticed Jack’s contempt for the visual side of things (maybe one day he can show us where the photographer touched him?). Perhaps there’s too much emphasis on the visuals these days, but the reality is that visuals mattered in the old days too…it’s just that good photography was considerably harder and expensive to pull off in the analog era, so things naturally skewed towards the copy. But I have yet to meet a 70’s/80’s kid who had a poster of Lamborghini poetry on their wall.
In the end, both words and art matter…especially in the magazine world. You might be a literary savant, but if all you have is words, it may as well be a doctoral thesis that nobody reads. And you may be the second coming of Alexey Brodovitch, but if all you have is visual fluff, nobody will come back to read you once the hype dies down. A good magazine will always need a solid mix of both. You’ll probably still fail (because that’s the destiny of all magazines once the founder runs out of their fun money) but at least you’ll have a fighting chance.
I'm not a fan of the side gig economy. If you can make more at your side gig you should do your best to make it your main gig. I realize that's tough in our current w-2 environment
As someone who worked as an AD and shooter alongside Mr Baruth, I know he respects the need for and appreciates good photography—he just hates how much the production takes from his wheel time. Lucky for him I’m not one of those clowns that sets up shots for thirty minutes each. Run and gun / spray and pray. None of that fake rig slow shutter shit…
Glad to hear it! Although as an aside, I’m not gonna deride the photographers who take their time. As I’m sure you’re well aware, some situations call for spray-and-pray, and some call for complex multi-hour setups for a single shot. There's no perfect shooting style, and it’s all good if it works. Shoot time or ass-in-seat time, it’s all a balancing act, but at the end of the day all that matters is the end product. Too many times people (whether writers, photographer, editors etc.) forget that they are there to service their readers, not their own ego.
I personally like a wall of text a few fully lit photos that show the front back and side profile of a car, and maybe a detail shot of something relevant that was talked about in the review.
But the subscriber list for that magazine would be just me.
I would buy your magazine. I would beg to be part of it. I'd happily submerge a Malibu or Accord in water in Mexico, or even run head on into a cow. This is what we are lacking in the automotive world these days. Humor and fantasy. Instead we get Mack Hogan...enough said about him.
I know a girl from Wellesley, PJ was probably correct.
I have little hope for whatever is left of the auto rags to entertain me. Its all too obvious that the people doing the writing and editing have no idea what they're talking about and are mostly doing a cut and paste from the PR handbook for whatever they are writing about.
If DED can start Automobile Magazine I can't see why JB can't start XXX Magazine and make it successful.
People no longer read magazines. The only one I deliver multiple copies of is the New Yorker and I suspect that one only because of the high number of academics on my route. Couple of guys with vintage 911s get Porsche magazines. 2 addresses get Car and Driver but to names that don't actually live there. The 911 guys get no other car magazine, they both dropped Hagerty.
My father was a dentist, and during the 90s and 00s magazine publishers would send free issues to him for the waiting room.
He received Road & Track and Car & Driver gratis, which obviously never made it into the waiting room. He paid for Autoweek, because it carried (relatively) timely coverage of Formula 1. Our local cable package didn’t offer Formula 1 until 1998. I also had a subscription to Automobile that my parents paid for. I would occasionally read Motor Trend at the public library; even at that time, I knew that it was not worthy of any financial outlay.
Two to three weekends a month, we would need to go to Atlanta for something, which invariably occasioned a trip to Barnes & Noble and/or Borders. I started reading CAR, the newly-introduced Evo, and F1 Racing in 1998.
That was before No Child Left Behind, and my mother was a teacher at my elementary school, so I was able to read car magazines all day every day at school instead of doing the normal lessons. I also had stacks of coffee table books about every sort of automotive topic.
My dads an accountant but same. He used to bring all the waiting room magazines home after a couple months and I'd read them all. We still have a waiting room, just no magazines. We also don't have as many appointments as he used to.
The Libby app and website let me electronically read all the "power" magazines (auto, motorcycle, airplane...) for free via my public library card. Yet, I sorely miss the days when I could spend a Sunday afternoon comfortably ensconsed in a padded chair/sofa at Borders or Barnes & Noble while sipping on a late and/or diet coke. Of course, mooching off their inventory while only buying a drink or two made me part of the problem causing them to collapse. My bad. Sorry.
Is there a world where high end print mags come back kind of like vinyl records have?
It seems like a lot of brands want to publish these big coffee table style quarterlies now, why not a real automag in that style targeted at folks like us with real money to burn. Roleur mag seems to be doing it for road cycling now, but you know more about the business than I do...
That's essentially the model Hearst attempted with Road & Track and the publishers of The Road Rat follow (well, that was my impression with the few issues I read.). I think the issue (no pun intended) there is, as I mentioned earlier with Rodder's Journal, the audience willing to pay for such a magazine probably isn't the audience Jack would hope to reach.
You can quietly fix typos or errors rather than have them live forevermore; you can consume them on a device at any time; you can have a vibrant comment section; etc.
to be fair, back when magazines were magazines - which is to say, things that made money and were assembled with care and pride - typos and errors were few and far between. the investment in fact-checking and copyediting that went into top-tier publications rivaled the investment in the writing and design. the best outlets took that *very* seriously.
such things were among the first to be tossed overboard as the industry collapsed, and are all but unheard of in an era of private equity ownership of magazines.
The inaugural issue of the reboot contained multiple discrepancies about the number of 250 GTOs produced; A.J. Baime’s cover story included conflicting claims of 36 and 39 cars.
There was also a feature in that issue about Zak Brown. A side bar to that feature contained an anecdote about Brown buying one of Senna’s karts for $93K or $63K … another discrepancy.
But wait, there’s more! The same issue featured a listicle of motorsports controversies and referred to the collision between Michael Schumacher and Jacques Villeneuve at Jerez in 1997 as having taken place at the “Spanish” Grand Prix. It was, in fact, the European Grand Prix. The Spanish Grand Prix was held at the Circuit de Catalunya.
I had limited respect for R&T before that. I now have none.
I think we’re in that world but it’s mostly indie magazines. My friend was just published in a magazine he shoots for (Luna Collective). Not my typical thing but I bought a copy to support him. We could all only dream that other magazines would be printed to this level of quality.
Rouleur is a good callout as well. That’s the first that came to my mind.
Jack finds a Robin masters to fund his luxury magazine while Jack drives Ferraris in Hawaii. That's what it would take, someone willing to lose millions a year to fund something they like. You think Bezos makes money at the post?
Sure, but I've yet to see an "old school every successful man's car rag" in that format like Jack describes and we all remember C&D. I cite Roleur thinking of it that way, but I guess it's also a bit higher end in the bike world, as I forget that I tend to shop in the high end, handmade section there..
The first problem is that The (Successful) Everyman no longer reads. He spends his idle time consuming more passive media (social media scrolling, YouTube, the latest streaming show, podcasts, whatever).
Could he be persuaded to read a compelling magazine? I doubt it.
A better business case would be offering a superior product to those who do want to read. It’s obviously a lot cheaper to pay a skilled writer to turn out a magazine feature than it is to produce a Cammisa budget Icons video. But Cammisa can pull a million views easily, and the magazine feature would struggle to find 10,000 readers.
I agree with you on the superior product for those who read, but I think that audience wouldn’t necessarily line up with where advertisers and interest want to go. I’d also say that the successful Everyman is no longer an interesting target. I said this in another comment to Jack below, but the cultural zeitgeist has moved from targeting the successful top 20% to the top 5 or 1% so you’d get stud writing about what midwits think the “rich” want like Porsches and Rolexes rather than interesting or more attainable machinery like a Mustang or that great 2 series comparison that Jack did.
This is so very, very, true... but didn't Rodder's Journal exist largely without advertising? It has been a decade and a half since I read it (and so cannot say if it even exists anymore), but I seem to recall that it had just a few ads - inside the front and rear covers, and perhaps a few full-pagers at the back. It existed largely on its high price (I don't recall what a subscription cost, but seem to recall individual issues were $12.99.) It was successful enough, for a time, anyway, to inspire several copycats - Guitar Journal, Surfers Journal, etc.
Of course, that model was aimed squarely at the kind of people who spend six-figures having someone else build their "rat rod," and probably is not the audience your magazine would aspire to.
It costs a bit over a million dollars to make and ship 500,000 copies of a magazine.. if you don't have a lot of editorial costs. Road and Track had its budget repeatedly cut from $15m to $12m to $10m.
Realistically, I think a subscription to a zero-ads C/D equivalent would have to be $25 a year. Maybe $35. And that's if you can immediately get a critical mass of 500k subscribers. ACF is more expensive than that -- but I don't have 500k subscribers.
If I had 10,000 subscribers to this site, I could probably produce and distribute a six-times-monthly magazine as an extra perk.
Rodders Journal went away a few years ago and then I was told (maybe here?) that it came back. I don't see it at Barnes and Noble anymore so if it did, it's not out in mass circulation anymore. I'd sometimes pick up extra wrapped copies at the magazine racks at SEMA and then sell them on eBay when I got home :).
I sold my entire collection - several year’s worth, starting with issue four, IIRC, for a small fortune on eBay. I was surprised how much people would pay for them.
Ain't that the truth. My wife is an account manager for a marketing firm with a very specific clientele. They've found that the leads from pretty much all other SM platforms have gone to shit.
I sort of agree w Jack, at least on the “who is going to buy/read this thing”. It seems to me that most of the folks who would respond to auto advertising are the types that have “send nudes” next to their handle, and not to stereotype, but they don’t really seem like the reading type. Or the pay to read type.
The alternate model would be to have some sort of big dollar art book, like Modern Huntsman or that Porsche-flavored 000 zine, but I can’t imagine they have broad readership, especially and $20+ an issue.
The ideas for the articles and features, the art direction, most of the writing. It is superb, and it makes the likes of R&T or C&D look like a school project.
Best guess is that relying on advertising requires far more eyeballs beyond the handle suffix. The venn diagram of people interested in high quality, who are aware of the publication, and are willing to spend money on it is akin to the rare drop in [name your MMO] scenario. Perhaps as rare is the company willing to advertise alongside text which at least raises the figurative eyebrow.
Came here to post this as well. I love to binge-watch 80s-90s Motorweek. Love the cars love the format. Love to hear John Davis complain about inadequate instrumentation.
Malcolm X was a man of intense principle, considerable intellect, and absolute moral consistency. You might not like what he believed, but as a human being he was worthy of respect.
Denzel Washington must have played him in that movie because of that. Washington doesn't seem like your average Hollywood bloviator and from what I've seen and heard him say he is a man of principles himself.
Agreed, but they are kind of brushing up against it in this economy.
That being said, a LOT of people will severely restrict or change their lives to own a 392 Charger, so it's worth thinking about then when we think about affordability.
It's also silly that we've gotten to "aren't unobtainable" $50k+ vehicles as approachable enthusiast stuff. Where's the GTI and its ilk that are the price of the average car, but more fun for the enthusiast?
I guess to Jack's point though, this doughnut (where's the middle?) post-Obama economy and regulations probably killed any chance of real accessible fun.
I'd argue it always has been. It was always the upscale, upwardly mobile compact choice for the enthusiast. It was a premium priced compact, when those didn't really exist.
My father had an early 2000s GTI, and I don’t recall it feeling as premium as the MK7. Nor did the MK5. The MK8 would be my current car, but the frankly horrendous touch screen pushed me to an Audi.
It's all relative to the time. The MK4s were super premium feeling compared to the equivalent Civic or Toyota Matrix. The GTI was an upgrade on the standard VW compact that was already more premium feeling than its competition. Everyone has upped their game over the years as cars have gotten more expensive, and started obsessing over "soft touch plastic" and those awful touch screens.
I'm with you on the screens. We bought an Expedition XLT just to avoid the huge touch screen (saving $15k didn't hurt either), and I got encouraged to trade my Volvo because my wife hated that it had no buttons.
This is a rant that our Author has made, so I claim no credit, but what happened to the strip model cars that you could buy new? When I was in HS, you could go to Ford or Toyota or whatever and buy a new Ranger or Tacoma or Civic for like 12k or something, and that was doable on your bike shop/fast food/waitress salary if you didn’t mind a payment. These days people act like a 32k car is affordable and you’re supposed to be willing to pony up 50k for a Sienna hybrid or a GTI or a Civic SI. Do the manufactures not realize that you can get a real car, slightly used for that $$? Who TF is going to buy a Civic SI for 50 when they can get a mustang GT/CamaroSS/Dodge392 used for 30something and actually turn heads? It seems like feature creep, where they keep adding crap into the cars, making them heavier and more expensive, when all we wanted was 3 points and ABS? If you think I’m going to spend slightly used Corvette/Porsche money on a new breadbox to absorb my kids applesauce, you’re out of your mind.
Sir, please direct your attention to the Chevy Trax and Buick Envista. Sub $25k and you get a genuinely decent product with every conceivable tech feature you could actually want.
Is this a typo? According to Honda.com a Civic Si is $30,195 after destination. No real options, just whatever dealer accessories you may want. Is there any ADM on these anymore?
"Every Jewish educator who has fostered this “decolonization” mindset now finds himself or herself in the unpleasant situation of a white “pitbull mommy” whose precious dog just helped itself to a substantial portion of her infant’s windpipe."
The college protests are nothing. This is a minor flap. What happens when the people who think they control BLM/Antifa turn the violence knob up above a 7 or 8 to influence the next election and then can't turn the knob back down when they win? What happens when those rioters become a self-propagating phenom no longer under control?
My understanding is that most of those rioters are there for fun and games. Get paid, fight all day, do drugs and fuck all night, and sometimes score a free TV. At some point they are going realize they don't need to stop when told and things are going get even uglier. 2024 is off to a bad start and going to get worse.
Until the feds come in and your small town throws you under the bus. My "Best best to live" small town (it's not that small) had lovely BLM riots because it was fun for the 90% white teenagers. The other 10% are all Asian.
Some thin blonde college hippie threw herself on the hood of a cop car back during those halcyon days of 2020 summer in our isolated little college town. Of course no negative repercussions for any of those people.
When they had the "stop Asian hate" demonstrations downtown I asked my wife if she felt empowered.
I'm frankly surprised that someone hasn't bussed 500 rioters up to a place like Morrow County, Ohio, where they would be met with sustained and accurate fire. Done right, it could be a real martyrdom for The Cause and lead to much stronger gun control.
I assume something will occur along these lines in my hometown. The rehab centers pipe in people from NYC, NJ and LA; conflict will ensue at some point.
The rioters were pretty much all already criminals (see the people who attempted to murder Kyle Rittenhouse). The disparate groups the would-be controllers think will continue to be their foot soldiers all hate each other. There are not a lot of IQ points in those groups to begin with, and if they haven't tried bussing them into suburbs yet I doubt they ever will. Maybe the aforementioned Rittenhouse defending himself against a few of these nincompoops have scared some of them off. Since then they've really only burned, looted, and murdered in their own neighborhoods. If things come down to it, they're much more likely to keep killing each other than they are to kill whitey.
I had in mind the people who spent the "Summer of Protest" in 2020 riding buses from one hot-spot to another. Whatever entity was paying for their transportation didn't choose to send them anywhere rural.
Illinois passed an Ar-15 ban requiring registration of weapons. Less than % compliance rate. So now I go buy a ruger 23 and lever actions for my guns hobby instead of an Ar-15. It's all so stupid.
No illusions - if they came to my small town I'd probably flip a coin as to whether to bunker down or evac. Definitely would NOT go out and look for trouble. And unless they're coming down my street and approaching my house, I ain't pulling the trigger because that would be suicide. Either actually or figurative, my life would be over at that point. Which only means after the first one, might as well shoot the rest. And like Jack said, it'd be used as propaganda for the other side eventually.
Victor Davis Hanson talks about Gay and the liberalization of Harvard and other ivies extensively, and about the anti white racism and how it continues to gain steam in all forms of higher education, worth the read. I think that Jack could probably drive faster than Patrick Bedard, I don’t however know how much would be skill or how much would be better tires, suspension, transmissions or engines, and while Bedard did crash at Indy, he also raced at Indy......
I think C/D was the top of the line when Sherman, Bedard , and Yates( who I didn’t care about) were on the masthead, what really stopped me from subscribing to c/d was an op ed about supporting higher road and fuel taxes to keep the plebs from driving around any more than necessary. They wrote their own death sentence.
i took william jeanes to task for an article about supporting the 55mph limit because we good drivers could still get around but careless speeders would be the focus of the police. he apologized; said he might've had something with a deadline.
I will see if I can find the article, I remember having to drive under that bs law, in Michigan it was called an energy speed violation, and I don’t think points were assigned, am pretty sure I paid a couple of those tickets….
I got pulled over going 60-65 in a 55 in Indiana 18-19 years ago at midnight. Whatever, it's a ticket, but the very stern "You're going WAY TOO FAST" from the cop was a "Bro, fuck off" moment. I didn't say it, I'm not stupid.
For the third year in a row, I've sat down new years day and written out a list of goals in microsoft sticky notes: everything from personal development (limit screen time, read more books), fitness (hit 225 for 20 reps on the benchpress, get down to 190lbs), family goals (teach my son to read by the end of the year, have another child), relationship goals (be more supportive, more date nights) financial (finish paying off the house), home improvement (a number of landscaping projects, home repairs, etc), etc. Probably 25 or so line items with 5 highlighted most important ones.
I then track this throughout the year to remind myself, cross off things I complete, then review and reassess in the new year where I landed. To be clear, plenty of those 20+ things from last year unfortunately didn't get done, they get re-added in the new year. But every year my completion percentage improves.
I wish I had started doing this in my early 20s or even sooner.
The exorcism of George Santos had a similar tone. He is hispanic and gay. His lies and financial malfeasance are pure bush league work in Congress' terms. But, he claimed a certain heritage and that's what got him the boot. Oh my, the ink spilled in the local papers that the boomers read with their meds and metamucil. TDS lite.
The pearl clutching over Santos amongst the midwit shit libs (but I repeat myself) was over the top. Even Fetterman thought it was stupid and wants to know why Bob Menendez isn’t getting booted, too.
It’s the same thing with MTG, Gaetz, and Boebert. If Trump isn’t in the news, they obsess over these feckless clowns. Only Boebert is worth thinking about, and that’s only if you’re looking to get to second base on a movie date.
Boebert is legit good-looking. Like, I'd probably turn my head if I saw her on the street. It's nice to know that she also has an overactive sex drive. Gives me hope for the future. She does NOT appear to be what one might call "a Moynihan-esque colossus of political thought".
She's DC hot and not fat. That's about the nicest I can say about her. Something about her head is off-putting to me... Still. If I was single, would, obviously.
The DC revolving door of sponsoring legislation benefiting a certain industry, then taking a 1M+ lobbying gig on that industry’s behalf, makes Santos’ crimes look like an Abbot & Costello skit. The career of WV’s own Alan Mollohan is a reference--guy was getting lobbyists to invest in his beachfront development in exchange for stuff like payload contracts and appropriations. And funneling money from the government to corporations he secretly controlled through trusted former senior staffers and nests of LLCs. He didn’t go to prison, but was primaried and beat by a client of mine and forced to resign as Ranking Member of the *Ethics* Committee.
It's the same as all the DC vitriol against Trump. They treat him like a clown...and he is to an extent. The problem is that he's wearing a red nose and floppy shoes and then turns the spotlight on the rest of the tent where you can see that they're in full clown regalia, only holding knives dripping blood and actively consuming the flesh of children when the lights hit. His absurdity is nothing compared to theirs. Same thing with Santos...and the extent to which the Uniparty is in charge is evident in Santos' ouster. He was thrown out without a trial of fact ever taking place. Corrupt shitbirds like Mark Warner or Chuck Schumer or Mitch McConnel who have perpetrated immense crimes against their oath and the people of this country suffer no repercussions while Santos gets thrown out without even proper due process. Because these people have no principles...only a limitless appetite for power.
anybody remember the late allan girdler? in '73 i told him he was the most jesuitical-thinking person i'd ever met. he told me he went to a jesuit school. america's only autojournalist with even a faint similarity to ljk setright
Let's see how it goes, I've obviously got way more money into it than it is worth so I'm hoping I can get motivated to find a use for it to at least recoup some enjoyment out of the expense. I will keep you in mind if I ultimately decide to part ways.
It is as fun as you'd expect to drive, but the packaging constraints and de-bugging involved with swapping a completely different drivetrain has been wearing on me lately. I tried to practice a bit of constraint with the budget during the build process, not Youtuber "Hey Guys, today I'm going to LS swap this M3 for $300 and a blow job, but utilizing appropriate OEM systems as opposed to over built aftermarket when it made sense. In hindsight almost everywhere I made seemingly calculated budget decisions resulted in me spending both the cheaper and more expensive money, not to mention doing the work over again.
A word of advice at the tail end of this journey that applies to most of life but two fold when building a project car; buy once, cry once.
I went with Sikky for the mounts, headers, driveshaft, steering shaft, and oil pan. I do have their throw out bearing and power steering line kits. Vorshlag is the most well documented on the swap process, I utilized their build threads as a reference quite a bit.
A friend and former co-worker of mine had an E36 with what might have been the first Vorshlag swap in it - used an LS out of a late 90s Camaro as I recall. Fun car and man it would throw you back in your seat but the niggling little issues finally convinced him to sell it.
Come on - imagine that today!! But this is exactly what I grew up on. I remember being excited by this ad, for of all things, a Chrysler Laser Turbo - the front wheel drive twin of the Dodge Daytona.
But now, I'm just saddened by the reminder that Celica, 240SX, Laser, Eclipse, Evo, Thunderbird, Talon, RX7, Firebird, Probe, Fiero, Grand National, 3000GT, hell MANUAL COUPES IN GENERAL - are all about gone. I'm not saying those were all great name plates but the sheer fact that they existed and, in those quantities, means there was a buyer to support that market, and thus writing to support those buyers.
What does today's market of Terrian, Rogue, Rav4, CRV, Encore, CX-30, Compass, (THE NEW) Eclipse, and (THE NEW) Dodge Hornet - say about today's buyer?
I think today's market is a reflection of today's buyer: Woman.
Indeed... but in a smaller, lighter car. That SVO was a hoot to drive. Alas, I was young and stupid and didn't know how good I had it when he let me drive it in college. Nice cars, like youth, are wasted on the young.
My father had a green '79 (used) at the age of 19 in the early 80s. Was his pride and joy. Sold it when I came a long for a Pontiac Bonneville (which I remember fondly).
I keep an eye out for one - I'm in a position (very much thanks to the old man) that I could buy him one. He could too, but he's too opposed to spending money on himself that he won't.
Jade Green 79 Cobra? My dad had one when I was a kid. It was the first car that I remember going to shows with.
There's a thread on Foureyedpride talking about Jade Green Cobras. They reference a car sold in MI to a guy who eventually moved to IN. That's the exact car.
When I left my English teaching job in Japan in 2001, I had to pay a company around $100 US to take my 1986 Twin Turbo Supra. It had new tires, had been inspected less than a year before - meaning it had more that a year of sha-ken left on it, had a kick-ass stereo, had an automatic transmission, and was in fine shape inside and out. I couldn't give it away, even to my soon-to-be wife's friends who were actively looking for cars didn't want it.
The Japanese economy that spurred the creation of cars like my Supra was gone and people couldn't afford to have more than one vehicle any longer. Most Japanese families had one car, usually some kind of a van, and supplemented their trips around the neighborhood to bicycles or scooters. If a second car was required, it was usually a Kei. If I had owned a van rather than a Supra, there is a good chance someone would have wanted it, but a sporty car? No way!
That is where the US is today. Most young people can't really afford cars on their own and the ones that do have them seem more interested in them as appliances than something fun. People who want appliances want versatility and all the fun cars of our youth never offered that.
If you lived there you can get some extremely cool old JDM sporty stuff for incredibly low prices. For all the reasons NOT to live in Japan, that's not one of them. Of course, the car buying process itself is byzantine and takes weeks of your time....
Since you're familiar with Japanese culture, let me throw a theory at you.
I figure the reason the Japanese are all in love with ambiguity is that the country's still PTSDing over the kirisute-gomen, the Tokugawa-era law that gave samurai the right to kill peasants who were "disrepectful" to them. Of course, what constituted "disrespect" was left up to the individual samurai, and nobody knew what would set Watanabe-sama off THAT day, so they learned to be meek and two-faced.
A dozen generations of miltary dictatorship and touchy soldiers-playing-cops burned a pathology of indirectness into a whole culture, and there's this shadow of a fear of getting your head chopped off cause you looked somebody in the eye and told him what you were really thinking.
I didn't have the social connections to sell our van, so we sold it to some chain store for the US equuivalent of $500. The used car market is so strange there, and the buying process for any car is so strange. We had to wait two weeks when we bought our Impreza wagon, and get a stamped notice from the local fuzz, and map out our parking situation. The van we replaced it with was a similar wait, but I think that was more due to the body work and the sha-ken they performed than any paperwork.
When I left Okinawa in 2007 or so I sold my 2002 Mazda MPV, which I really liked, to the "host family" with whom I had stayed during a 1 month visit to Nagoya more than 10 years earlier. We had stayed in touch and they were good friends. I made them a good deal and they had the van put on a ferry and shipped to them in Nagoya. When we moved back to work with the Navy in 2015 they still owned that MPV.
That's actually remarkable. My father-in-law has had no fewer than four new cars in the time I've known him, and most of my (real Japanese) teacher colleagues drove nothing older than a few years. Our Impreza (and subsequent Premacy) were usually the oldest cars in the school lots.
My wife's parents don't change cars very frequently. When we first got together in 99 they owned a Mazda Bongo camper van (a diesel pusher) and a Mazda Carol kei car. After my wife and I got married and she moved overseas to live with me, they traded in both of those on a Mitsubishi Pajerio io that they had for about 10 years and when that got too old they bought a Honda Freed hybrid. I think they replaced that with another Freed a year or two ago.
As I recall, the rule is that you get three years on your first sha-ken and most dealers give you a pass on the second so you get about five years before they start nickel-and-diming you for repairs. I think that is when a lot of people decide to change rather than be bothered. Not sure what kind of value they get on their trade-ins.
I've done self sha-ken a couple of times and while it's not especially difficult, it is time consuming and stressful. I understand the desire to be free of it.
My company's kei car (horrible little thing) went through the sha-ken during the summer. I had a different kei as a loaner, a pink Honda... Life, maybe? And it was better in all sorts of ways. We had too many babies to fit in our Impreza and we traded it in before the sha-ken came due. We left Japan before the sha-ken came due on our van, I think we had it a little more than a year and a half.
I didn't know dealers gave you that first sha-ken. I suppose at three years it's likely mostly warranty work anyhow.
Loved that ad. Sounds like James Earl Jones on the voice over.
But more than that, it gave you info on the car. Modern ads rarely mention anything about the performance, handling, fuel economy. Maybe a truck ad mentions payload or towing, but that's about it.
"I think today's market is a reflection of today's buyer: Woman."
Hey, women drove the market for Celicas and six-cylinder Mustangs, too! But I think we show today's women different media. It encourages them to be financially prudent and sexually promiscuous. Used to kinda be the other way around.
I took the fam out for a very respectable steak dinner on NYE. The younger clone noticed not one but two tables of well dressed ~late 20s single women, perhaps pregaming for later festivities (I noticed a third on the way out). At least one from each table were exchanging dagger eyes for some high school level social transgression of some sort or another.
Quite true. I should rephrase, what I meant was today's buyer is aligned more w/feminine norms & values than masculine ones. Risk aversion vs risk taking. Safety, economy, and comfort trumps speed, power, and agility. This mindset has permeated just about every facet of society.
Not saying that's entirely a bad thing - but I wish there was more of a balance.
Remembering the market of the 80s and 90s (I'm talking sport offerings, not tech and safety) and comparing it to today - the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction.
Yeah, a couple of ladies in my neighborhood when I was a kid drove second generation Monte Carlo’s and the next door retired lady drove a black Mk2 Jaguar of all things. All the women in my current neighborhood drive pill bugs, except for one with a white 7 series.
People don't go to Harvard for a world-class education, they go there for the prestige the name adds to their resumes and for access to the Harvard network of alumni and close contacts. It strikes me more as an exclusive social club than a true institute of higher education. But thanks to antics like this, that club seems to be getting less exclusive every day and the odd thing is that the institution seems to be destroying itself through these kinds of choices. I wonder why that's the case?
Overall, I think that the dismantling of Harvard is probably a good thing. Success in a modern society should be based on effort and ability, not social connections.
Is Harvard even valuable as a networking exercise anymore? The figurehead of a Harvard alum is a fat blue haired “womyn” or a dark skinned racebaiter. Maybe there’s a core group of capable students standing silently behind them, ready to work, but I can’t imagine anyone, even those who theoretically agree with them, wanting to hire someone who endorses what Harvard has become.
It 100% is still valuable, but you have to make sure that you are in the right program and clubs/activities. Majoring in Econ, PoliSci, a traditional Liberal Art, or Science will build you a valuable network of folks going places at Harvard and its ilk. Majoring in _____ studies, not so much.
This current dustup may change things, but I see the money/board folks with the real power getting things sorted, as their businesses/industries still recruit heavily from these top schools. There's no better way to get on the fast track to six figure jobs than going to one of these top 20 schools.
As an alum of one of the big NE Catholic schools which have largely but not completely avoided this woke horseshit, I’m waiting Spice Adams style behind the tree as the Ivy League implodes. I assume the prestige of my degree can only improve as the so-called top schools continue to commit unforced errors.
See I went to a big-time Catholic HS and then a top liberal arts college, and I think those networks may be just as powerful for us being part of them as Harvards in terms of how the alums help each other.
Where you can't touch Harvard is the absolute breadth of the network, as well as the "man on the street" affect of everyone knowing someone who went to Harvard is smart versus me having to explain that I went to school in Western Mass...
My school has a decent network but I fucked it all up by falling in love with a girl from Chicago and moving out here where it’s Big 10 or nothing. No one cares about my semi-fancy private school from back east, no matter how many state school jokes I make.
I think the value of such a network is not necessarily the opportunity to get a “good” job in your 20s. Lots of schools offer that - if a company you’d like to work for recruits at, say, Penn State and Harvard, you have a shot at getting the job if you went to either school. If you make it to a “Super Day” style competitive process, you are on equal footing, more or less.
Rather, it’s the opportunities that come a bit later that make an “elite” education so valuable:
-Maybe you’ve fucked up in the past, but having a prestige name on the resume can get you a job interview, particularly if you’re changing careers; call it a career mulligan
-You can more easily knock on the door of someone prominent if you share alumni ties; the bigger the network, the harder this is, all else equal
-You will also (or should, at least) know friends who have been very successful who may invite you to work on something with them. I commented a few weeks ago about how one of my college acquaintances - who has become an adult friend as our careers and geographies have dovetailed - has a back of mind idea to start a finance company. He was disappointed with comp for ‘23, and his childhood best friend recently got the keys to the bulk of a 10 figure fortune, so he has an idea, motivation, and now a backer. For some reason, he would like me to play a role in that enterprise. I’m not as qualified as other people he would know based on his background and resume, but I would not turn him down.
I think that’s a really good way to put it. It’s not so much just your 20s and what you get recruited for, but the options that it keeps open. I’m actually just starting the career change “mulligan” sort of game as you describe now as I’m getting a bit burnt out on the startup game, and seeing a bit of a dark end to the “tunnel.” My classmates have been super helpful, but I’d definitely love to pick your brain on it as someone who’s a few years ahead and on less of our normal path.
the value of the network isn't in the people leading the institution, but in the people who graduated from it. the same is true of, say, Texas A&M University. flash that Aggie ring to another Aggie and you've got an automatic in.
But if I’m a graduate of Harvard from, say, 2000 and prior, and I’m looking at the resume of a recent grad, I have to be wondering what I’m getting. Someone like me, or a blue haired nebulous gendered crybaby fucking moron.
They're absolutely doing that, and have a very easy screening device. I've watched it happen - you just check the major and what their thesis was written on, along with activities they list. However you also underestimate how much certain parts of the woke dogma have affected even the pre-2000 folks, especially the green religion.
Last time I was there was in 2000 because I was at an MIT sailing regatta and someone I was with wanted to see what a Harvard party was like. We found a small house party, and I was dared to hit on a mildly attractive brunette who wasn’t any more interested in me than I was in her. I talked with her for about 5 minutes and then we amicably parted ways. She later sought me out to say goodbye when she left. We shared a brief hug.
I was later told that brunette was Natalie Portman. I am 100% not making this up.
I think she indulged me for a bit because I clearly had no idea who she was. Even after she introduced herself as “Natalie.” I had just gotten out of a long relationship with a brunette Jew and wasn’t looking for another, I was chasing a blonde cheerleader back at my school. With whom I got just as far. Shrug.
They don't look the same in real life vs when they're all hollywood dolled up. This does not apply to danny devito who looks exactly the same in real life. I ran into him at steamboat a lifetime ago.
"Success in a modern society should be based on effort and ability, not social connections"
Haven't social connections always been requisite for success, in all societies, modern and before? And effort and ability follow that connection, if necessary?
I believe the expert on this topic is Sherman, if he can be called away from his caviar flight brunch meetup. ;-)
100% agreed. Society is nothing but connections! It is easier to start when you have them, but at the same time, success is generally dictated by the connections that you can nurture and grow in your career even if you started with none.
Status seeking social monkeys. And caviar is rather nice, old chap! But not really quite so orgasmic as to justify the price, in my humble cheapskate opinion - best stick to foie gras.
I remember the culture shock of the “food” on my first trip to London in middle school; it was a school trip / packaged tour thing. We would load up on stale, crusty bread at the hotel’s continental breakfast. I also recall the refined Appalachian palate blanching at the Coca Cola varietal available in Blighty - apparently it contains vegetable oil?
I wouldn't know - it's reserved for strictly medicinal purposes in my house. However, some bars have these soda guns where the operator presses a button and the "drink" is somehow mixed in the head of the device. I wouldn't trust what comes out of one of those. Package tour food is a shocking subset of cheaped out "nutrition" - probably illegal to feed to pigs!
I do remember having a meal at Garfunkel’s Pizza in London, as well as a Sally Lunn Bun in Bath. I bonded with our tour guide over the music of Mike Oldfield. We were both fans of Tubular Bells, but I turned him on to Hergest Ridge, which meant that the entire charter bus got to listen to that album nearly every day.
The highlight of the trip was seeing the McLaren F1 in the showroom on Park Lane after a lunch of chicken tenders at the Hard Rock Cafe.
Both caviar and foie gras can be good, and as always tastes will differ. If you're ever curious seek out a Russian grocery store, assuming there is one in your area. If all you see in the case is red roe, ask if they have "black caviar"
I had a Kwanzaa Brunch on the 26th at the French joint where I dined during the Bentley brouhaha (over the summer); one of my fellow diners inquired about caviar service - sold out.
There is also a “fancy” (think Real Housewives of Atlanta cast members) steakhouse in a hotel lobby that serves “caviar fries” as a side for only $38.
To go even further on the realpolitik side of this, it was always the height of foolishness to believe that DEI wouldn't be made physically manifest *on the Jews first.*
The "why" is very simple. Look at what any murderously authoritarian regime puts out in their propaganda and you see that is only a matter of time before the demonization of the foreign enemy becomes a hunt for the enemies within. Not too many rednecks with rebel flags flying from their pickup trucks at Harvard Yard, don't you know.
There's only so much grievance you can mine off of somebody who isn't there, never was there, and who your entire system was specifically designed to keep away from there. To the point where you're all incredibly disturbed that a J.D. Vance slips through on rare occasion.
It was only a matter of time before it became a great big Jew hunt. It could go no other way because the entire system is there to support the descendants of the most corrupt and unrepentantly rapacious white people who have found endless excuses why they were entitled to rob, steal, and kill for their own profit and amusement. The Ivys are a weapon explicitly wielded against the Dalits. Jews were only allowed on campus after it became socially embarrassing to continue explicitly keeping them out. Jew hate and eugenics were as common and fervently advocated for by leading academics and lights of society as DEI is now before we started liberating camps in Europe. Indeed, Mr. Hitler and his "scientific" approach to government had many fans in the media and academia in general right up until it became useful to define a party of national socialists as "right wing".
Whereas you can find documented examples of even the Nazis feeling moral repulsion at slaughtering Jews wholesale, requiring a lot of liquor to numb their screaming conscience so they can go back and shoot more the next day, when you see the videos from Hamas they are in a state of absolute ecstasy as they literally rape and murder their way through unarmed civilian populations. All to the cheer and adulation of Biden, Hillary, and Obama voters.
See, the hillbilly driving his pickup truck in Appalachia isn't there...but you are. And there aren't that many of you. And unlike Bubba in the woods, you aren't armed. Yelling about somebody who isn't there doesn't satisfy quite like physically assaulting the 19 year old with the yarmulke on.
ISIS and the Palestinian terrorists...they're in it for the atrocity. They dress it up by yelling about Allah, but what really tickles their taint is the exercise of power over others. Their religion gives them special dispensation to treat the infidel as less than human. Any instinct they have towards the infidel is righteous just because they have it. And it doesn't stop there. You can look at the "grooming gang" scandals that the government of the UK still refuses to deal with fully to see more evidence. It doesn't matter how many infidel girls you drug and rape because they're infidels. They *deserve* what you are doing to them. You are morally right while you hold that white girl down, shove drugs down her throat, and rape her. Because she is the infidel and Allah has blessed you above her!
When you buy into the elitist game that Harvard sells, you're buying into the same basic ideology. What Jews on elite campuses are figuring out is that the "progressives" have so much admiration and support for the most degenerately violent psychopaths the middle east can produce because...and this is a big one...they are fundamentally the same people.
Sure, they can organize a campaign to go find Bubba in the sticks...but that's so far. And I bet they don't even have a fair trade coffee store there. And, you know, there's that whole Country Boy Can Survive thing. Much easier and more immediately satisfying to get your jollies by intimidating and assaulting that Jewish kid over there. Look how scared he looks when four or five dozen people surround him and chant From The River To The Sea!
Give it long enough and Harvard will have parties that would make Margit Thyssen/Batthyany blush!
If you don't know who Margit Thyssen is, you should look her up. And you should also look up the Thyssen family and all the neat things they got up to. And maybe start to ask questions about where Tyson foods really comes from...
Pinning this comment to make sure it gets all the eyeballs I can give it.
And after I pen that angry missive, take a look at what Bill Ackman posts on the twitter:
https://twitter.com/BillAckman/status/1742441534627184760
I feel like Bruce Willis in Die Hard: Welcome to the party, pal!
This is his "Free Press" article in a tweet. It might be late but it's said well.
From Ackman’s tweet, his main point is well summarized:
“This appears to have been the case with former President Gay’s selection. She did not possess the leadership skills to serve as Harvard’s president, putting aside any questions about her academic credentials. This became apparent shortly after October 7th, but there were many signs before then when she was Dean of the faculty.”
(PS - Dr. Gay, citing, crediting and attributing ideas to others as I’ve done above isn’t a Herculean task. Appreciating, crediting and subsequently building upon the works of others is a cornerstone of academia - if you can’t form an original thought and can’t be bothered to delineate between the works of others and your own, then you simply have no place in an academic setting.)
“Yippee-kai-yay, motherfucker!”
I get the feeling he’s just getting started...asking for the board to resign, too.
I hope he succeeds. Divorcing Harvard from DEI would send shockwaves across academia and might be a necessary first step in maybe getting them to be educational institutions again instead of subversive madrassas for woke jihad.
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2002/09/abolish-the-white-race-html
"The editors meant it when they replied to a reader, "Make no mistake about it: we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as 'the white race' is destroyed—not 'deconstructed' but destroyed."
I hope Ackman is just getting started because as this piece from Harvard Magazine back in 2002 shows, there's a LOT of work to be done.
Well, Business Insider came after his wife (Ackman's) for apparent plagerism. They are claiming missing citations for Wikipedia. (How does MIT allow that, even in the late 2000s? I couldn't for a 101 history paper in the early 2000s.)
According to Ackman's wife's Twitter account, in her MIT doctoral thesis, she forgot quotes but had citation. Maybe more in there but it was a long tweet and I might be a beer in.
It appears now Bill is going after Business Insider and MIT for plagerism reviews. It's getting
Ugly between ackman and the press/left wing Twitter. He's rich and can hold his own.
Magnificent.
One thing I could never figure out was the focus on Jews specifically. As a demographic, they can be pretty tricky to actually to actually seek out as some of them look fairly white. I figured if you wanted a scapegoat, you'd look for the obvious outlier.
it is possible that i am not clever enough to see the answer in front of me
Remember that these elite institutions have gone to great lengths to make sure that only the right sort of white people are allowed in. Spotting Jews is child's play...especially as so many of them readily identify themselves because they thought they were safe.
You'd think losing the yarmulke would be easy enough to do to blend it. On a whim, I tried looking up demographics at Harvard to find the ethnic and religious breakdown and got nowhere. DIE was a disaster for everyone involved.
The UAE called Hamas nihilists. Islam is just a branding for the rubes.
That's why no supposedly fellow traveler country really wants anything to do them. They may also hate Israel, but they know if there was no Israel, these people would move on to them.
The "palestinians" are violent subversives. They were kicked out of Egypt and Jordan for being violent subversives that tried to overthrow the governments in those countries. The game that the Arab world has been playing for a long time is trying to use the violent subversives as a weapon against the west without being eaten by their own pit bull. This is more of the same Qatar is the hub of every bit of finance for Muslim Brotherhood aligned terrorism (which almost all of the shit we're dealing with is) but they face no repercussions because they are sufficiently in bed with enough corrupt politicians in the west to benefit from our blanket of protection.
This is why anyone who had sense was immediately hopeless when Shrub Bush said "Islam is a religion of peace." Translation: We can't afford to look too hard into why a bunch of Saudis hijacked planes and murdered thousands of people on our soil because boy howdy that'd really cut into our bottom line! Instead, we'll just engage in a protracted war that will make Vietnam look like the most well managed military operation in history by comparison while generating shitloads of money for the corruptocrats in DC while a new generation of middle and working class kids get to leave their limbs and pieces of their minds in yet another 3rd world disaster.
And if you question any of it, THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON!!!!
"Paleosimians"
My only problem with this otherwise excellent statement is the characterization of the O-Clinton-Biden voter. I am that, and I consider Biden the best pres of my lifetime--which began during the first summer of the Eisenhower ADministration--but my stomach goes queasy when I see or hear DEI or 1619, or any suchlike tiresomeness.
And my position on immigration is that we need to stabilize the US population, because our country is environmentally unsustainable, and the average immigrant's greenhouse emissions rise threefold when they relocate to the major industrialized nation with the greatest per capita GH emissions, and the quality of life is going to hell b/c too many people. I don't understand why so many people don't understand that if you keep adding more people to a place, it fills up. I first understood that when I was 9.
My drive home to Boston from DC a handful of days ago may have been the worst ever, due to 2.5 hours of bumper to bumper traffic, for a total of 10 hours of driving. (It's a 7 hour drive with no traffic.) And Boston area traffic only gets worse every year, despite the major respite from the Big Dig.
It's certainly not easy...but it's true. The people perpetrating this didn't vote for the orange guy. They are loudly "progressive" and loudly championed Obama and Hillary and Biden. And Biden...or his handlers, however you choose to look at it...are all in on this shit. Left vs. right is a distraction from the reality of top vs. bottom. You can't fit a dime between Biden and Mitch McConnel because they're both entirely corrupt gangsters. All the people who voted for Obama aren't down with all of this just like all Muslims aren't terrorists. But there are literally hundreds of millions of Muslims who are A OK with what Hamas did, just as there are huge numbers of "progressives" who endorse all the madness that make you queasy. There's a fringe on the right, certainly...but they don't wield institutional power. You can't have a swastika hanging in your office and have a job cleaning toilets at a university or in the federal government, much less be a tenured professor or the head of an agency. But you can have a Palestinian flag or a communist flag. And that's the problem.
This, a thousand times!
For my money, all this alternative-reality crap took off during the second Obama administration. And it’s shifted into overdrive since 2020!
There are certainly a lot of nutty progressives, as you say. But I still think Biden's the best pres of my lifetime. What he's done makes me feel like I did when I had a strong wind at my back, cycling through the Great Plains on my way from Seattle to Boston nearly 50 years ago.
https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1742016495503175720
I'm guessing they don't feel the wind at their back.
The nutty progressives? Likely not!
“Left vs. right is a distraction from the reality of top vs. bottom.” This. This is what everything is about.
You’re against open borders but you think open border Biden is the best President in your lifetime?
Can you explain?
Biden has done many terrific things. Shoot, I don't know where to begin, but he's lowered healthcare costs for seniors, lowered drug prices, unemployment is lower than it's been probably in decades, he's lowered inflation down to around 2% from quite high during the former guy, he united NATO behind Ukraine, which bears on the security of Europe, and by extension, the US; he's stood with striking union members, and at the moment, tired in front of this computer, there are at least 5-10 other things he's done that I'm forgetting.
I've never gotten everything I wanted from a president. But I've gotten far more from Biden than anyone else. I've been working on immigration issues for more than 20 years, and I will keep doing so. But I recently had the opportunity to let my two Senators and my Congressperson (Markey Warren, and Katherine Clark) know that I was ***very*** concerned about Ukraine, and that I thought that doing a deal with the GOP on the border would help Biden get re-elected, and that it would also help the US become less environmentally unsustainable. I got a call back from Clark's office.
And I do think that just as young people understand that climage change needs to be stopped, they will realize that overpopulation is worsening climate change, and that we need to greatly reduce immigration.
Some clarification needed here. Who is "you" here : "To the point where you're all incredibly disturbed that a J.D. Vance slips through on rare occasion."
Since you seem to have better insight into all this, I've been terribly confused for years why the Jewish community still votes for progressive candidates. This thing on college campuses isn't exactly new. Just look at what the progressives did to the Jewish communities during the early days of Covid in NYC. Many progressive candidates support laws that directly or indirectly hurt Jewish businesses.
And Bill Ackman's post is on point, however, his problem is simply that the message is tainted because of who he is and where his loyalties lie.
"You" there refers to the unapologetic elitists in the Ivies. The ones who are convinced of their own superiority. Not everyone in the Ivies believes themselves a species apart...but a good many do.
Well put.
Though, I would point out that there's no such thing as an "authoritarian" regime. The word "authoritarian" derives from "authority," and the defining characteristics of authority are that it is JUST and LEGITIMATE.
Put another way, "authority" is the right to rule without the consent of the governed. God wields authority over the universe. Parents have authority over their minor children.
Governments, however, wield power in the name of some abstraction, like The People or The Revolution. This is not the same as authority.
Since words are how we define ideas, and ideas are how we define reality, words matter. A better word would be "totalitarian."
I don't know exactly what "mid-size girl" means, but if this 10 year old photo is representative, one could do worse
https://www.wrvo.org/elections/2014-10-29/in-north-country-republican-candidate-stefanik-says-people-want-a-new-generation-of-leaders
Agreed
I find here easy on the eyes, especially since she seems to be attainable for the average guy and wouldn't be an embarrassment in 99.9% of life's situations. Sure, she isn't Margot Roby, but I'm not DiCaprio either.
"So, what do you like about her?"
"Um, she's the top end of the Attainable Scale?"
I actually had this exact conversation with a friend once.
I'd like to think we all have.
I'm sure we have.
Of course, this was the same friend who got the lawn chairs out of the trunk of his car so we could watch the fire department try to put out the burning body shop in comfort.
Conversely, Congresspersons must be a minimum of 25 years of age, so DiCaprio would not be interested in her.
People these days shouldn't be VOTING at 25, let alone representing anyone in Congress.
Besides, isn't one definition of Congress "to fuck?"
congress does mean to fuck
the rest of us over
The Founding Fathers were prescient men. They knew the score when they named that august body.
Emphasis on 10 year old photo.
She’s actually younger than I realized. I briefly dated a woman who was actively involved in party politics, was comparable looking, and a bit older.
That cured me of pursuing women involved in politics.
I dated a lawyer briefly. The law is not kind to women and I don't mean from a career perspective.
I dated a Federal attorney for a few years. Would probably be married to her now but her impulse to run the show just came out a little strong.
Nothing more damaging to a relationship than a woman who has to win the argument.
but when you let 'em win you can smugly know you were the real winner
🤣
Been there, done that, won’t do it again.
Women who stick with the law have to either
-be psychos (many are!)
-find a way to bill the hours (ie after the kids go to sleep)(note: often this eventually kills the host woman)
-not have kids (many do this, not always totally cognizantly/intentionally)
-get the decent 1% of law jobs--- ie , general counsel jobs that pay (they almost never do; maybe in SF Tech they do - maybe banking, other random spheres), jobs that aren't a drag (general counsel at Lilly Pulitzer? did 10,000 women apply for that one) or extremely rare [partner/non-equity-partner/more recently "counsel"] arrangements at firms where billable hours requirements are *reasonable.* I'm told it's exceptionally rare, but I'm told it exists for rare talents.
There is also the diversity scam. DEI partners make partner income but god knows what the billing requirements are given their inquisitorial activities are largely self-directed at the host firm.
My sister is a lawyer for a (benign) 3-letter fed agency. Pay isn’t great (less than $200k) but hours are and the work is decent.
These *can be* good gigs. Particularly with a spouse who makes similar money
In a previous life I once was shown the quality of applicants who apply for jobs similar to what you described. I didn't see a non top 10 law school in the stack.
My sister didn’t go to a top-10 law school, but my understanding is her law school, in DC, had a top-10 program for her field of study (communications law). She graduated #2 or 3 in her class IIRC. Lasted 9 months at a Big Law firm, then moved to government and hasn’t looked back. Low pay, but they did pay off her school loans on her 10th or 11th anniversary of working there.
Many people would argue with the sentence "Pay isn't great (less than $200k)......"
Hopefully most people would understand context and that the comparison is to other lawyering jobs, not jobs in general, AND those people would understand the significant investment it takes to become a lawyer and maybe it’s not a good return. I make the same pay, a little more even, from a 4yr undergrad degree and a $10k/yr night school MBA from a directional state U. And I have significantly more runway; my sister is already atop the GS payscale and can’t go any higher aside from COLA without becoming a political appointee.
The firm I interned at did the “of counsel” thing for a lot of the lady lawyers, and they seemed generally contented. Usually labor & employment lawyers, did the research and writing for the senior partners who actually tried cases and labor arbitrations and such. Worked usually 40-50 hours a week and made about 190k-225k a year, most worked from home. A friend’s mom did that at the same firm growing up, and she had 3 kids and was super engaged with them. Excessively so, one might say.
Most of my first-year associate class, of both genders, is now in government (at a few different regulatory agencies). They haven't looked back.
I could easily have taken a similar path. I'm now a BigLaw partner but there is a whole series of weird coincidences behind that outcome.
I’ve dated a lawyer, and am currently talking to a law student. They tend to be less tolerant of my antics, which isn’t a bad thing. But Jack is right that, in some, the dominant tendency is strong. To counter, though, the divorce lawyer I had a thing with for a bit was dominant at work and nowhere else.
They're not all psychos
The divorce lawyer was actually rather sweet and earnest, and quite good at her job. But she was 29, wanted kids, and lived 3 hours away from me, so it wasn’t to be. If I were 5 or 6 years older it could’ve worked.
I'm just waiting for Alan to reply so I can agree with him here...
Not all, but most of them are.
🤣
"Mid-size girl" is what female-oriented social media calls women who weigh 175-250 pounds.
Iskra Lawrence is the ur-Midsizer.
Is it that big? I'd always thought of it more the 150-200lb, 5'7-5'10 girl who was too small or athletic to be called fat, and yet too short to be "tall girl"
inflationary times, man
It is. Mid-size means 1980 obese.
For a 5'9" woman to stay at 180 pounds after the age of 25... it requires a remarkable amount of effort for most.
Oh god. I'm very glad that I am happily married now.
I think my view on height and fitness with women (and in general) is so skewed by years of elite rowing that I never would've thought of that. I'd think they'd just go from 5'9 140s up to "mid size" 175 at the worst case like the ones I know. But I my "inactive" level is also considered highly active for most....
Rowing is an anomaly in that muscle is more dense than fat: I met a high-level female rower who was publicly listed at 200 or 205 lb, but because it was muscle and she was over 6' tall she looked fine.
She's probably on the larger side too. Most of them are closer to the 6'1 175.
Never mind the weight, there's also the height aspect. I'm 5'9 (raced as a lightweight around 145lbs), but think that I'm short because I spent most of my younger life in a world where the women are 5'10-6'2, and the men even taller than that. I actually raced in a heavyweight program in college, and when picking the boat up out of the water, I would be unable to reach it...
The first girl on my college's crew team I dated was a bit short for my taste and obviously very fit. When it came to tossing her (playfully) around, I was shocked at the effort!
ah yes
man sized women
not bad
She has put on some weight recently. Was MUCH fitter as recently as 2016.
The photography and design needn’t be bad, or black and white. It would be my pleasure to direct and/or perform both for a nominal fee, while having as much fun doing it as the test driver throwing his arm out the window as he slides past my camera with the tail 45° wide of straight.
Well, if I ever get any money for a project like this, I'll pay YOU first, because this stuff really does live and die on the looks now.
How much do you think the Galpin guy spent getting the Autopian up and running?
Not much. It would have been all salaries. 500k a year. But you can't get 500k a year back out of it.
Just last weekend I got some CR123s to finish the roll of Tri-X I loaded years ago
As someone who worked in the magazine industry as an AD, I’ve long noticed Jack’s contempt for the visual side of things (maybe one day he can show us where the photographer touched him?). Perhaps there’s too much emphasis on the visuals these days, but the reality is that visuals mattered in the old days too…it’s just that good photography was considerably harder and expensive to pull off in the analog era, so things naturally skewed towards the copy. But I have yet to meet a 70’s/80’s kid who had a poster of Lamborghini poetry on their wall.
In the end, both words and art matter…especially in the magazine world. You might be a literary savant, but if all you have is words, it may as well be a doctoral thesis that nobody reads. And you may be the second coming of Alexey Brodovitch, but if all you have is visual fluff, nobody will come back to read you once the hype dies down. A good magazine will always need a solid mix of both. You’ll probably still fail (because that’s the destiny of all magazines once the founder runs out of their fun money) but at least you’ll have a fighting chance.
It's not that I hate photography. I simply don't claim expertise or even interest in it. And it keeps me from getting more drive time!
It's all good, that's why art dorks like us are around.
I figure learning photography is like learning the guitar. You do it to get laid.
The hobbyist gets requests for senior portraits and group shots.
You do it to get laid AND have basically infinite number of side gigs available to you at any given time.
Shooting a wedding, at least as a second or third shooter, is a pretty easy and extremely lucrative way to spend a Saturday.
I'm not a fan of the side gig economy. If you can make more at your side gig you should do your best to make it your main gig. I realize that's tough in our current w-2 environment
As someone who worked as an AD and shooter alongside Mr Baruth, I know he respects the need for and appreciates good photography—he just hates how much the production takes from his wheel time. Lucky for him I’m not one of those clowns that sets up shots for thirty minutes each. Run and gun / spray and pray. None of that fake rig slow shutter shit…
Glad to hear it! Although as an aside, I’m not gonna deride the photographers who take their time. As I’m sure you’re well aware, some situations call for spray-and-pray, and some call for complex multi-hour setups for a single shot. There's no perfect shooting style, and it’s all good if it works. Shoot time or ass-in-seat time, it’s all a balancing act, but at the end of the day all that matters is the end product. Too many times people (whether writers, photographer, editors etc.) forget that they are there to service their readers, not their own ego.
I personally like a wall of text a few fully lit photos that show the front back and side profile of a car, and maybe a detail shot of something relevant that was talked about in the review.
But the subscriber list for that magazine would be just me.
Oh, I'd be on it as well.
I would buy your magazine. I would beg to be part of it. I'd happily submerge a Malibu or Accord in water in Mexico, or even run head on into a cow. This is what we are lacking in the automotive world these days. Humor and fantasy. Instead we get Mack Hogan...enough said about him.
I know a girl from Wellesley, PJ was probably correct.
I have little hope for whatever is left of the auto rags to entertain me. Its all too obvious that the people doing the writing and editing have no idea what they're talking about and are mostly doing a cut and paste from the PR handbook for whatever they are writing about.
If DED can start Automobile Magazine I can't see why JB can't start XXX Magazine and make it successful.
Dead-tree format, please.
Amen. This electronic crap hurts my aging eyes.
Large, dead tree format. Now get off my lawn!
Don't yell at me, yell at that cloud!
There are hundreds of thousands of comics on Comixology and similar apps. I buy back issues online. I hate e-readers.
And I want something I can put on a shelf.
People no longer read magazines. The only one I deliver multiple copies of is the New Yorker and I suspect that one only because of the high number of academics on my route. Couple of guys with vintage 911s get Porsche magazines. 2 addresses get Car and Driver but to names that don't actually live there. The 911 guys get no other car magazine, they both dropped Hagerty.
I ONLY subscribe to 000 and The Road Rat in print.
I do occasionally pay for an issue of CAR or Evo or Autocar online ( to read the longer features that never make the website).
I’ve never heard of the Road Rat, thanks! I just bought an issue.
And I imagine you once read every one you could get your hands on.
I LIVED for them.
My father was a dentist, and during the 90s and 00s magazine publishers would send free issues to him for the waiting room.
He received Road & Track and Car & Driver gratis, which obviously never made it into the waiting room. He paid for Autoweek, because it carried (relatively) timely coverage of Formula 1. Our local cable package didn’t offer Formula 1 until 1998. I also had a subscription to Automobile that my parents paid for. I would occasionally read Motor Trend at the public library; even at that time, I knew that it was not worthy of any financial outlay.
Two to three weekends a month, we would need to go to Atlanta for something, which invariably occasioned a trip to Barnes & Noble and/or Borders. I started reading CAR, the newly-introduced Evo, and F1 Racing in 1998.
That was before No Child Left Behind, and my mother was a teacher at my elementary school, so I was able to read car magazines all day every day at school instead of doing the normal lessons. I also had stacks of coffee table books about every sort of automotive topic.
My dads an accountant but same. He used to bring all the waiting room magazines home after a couple months and I'd read them all. We still have a waiting room, just no magazines. We also don't have as many appointments as he used to.
Car and EVO are both in the Apple News+ subscription
This is my only subscription that I pay for. I get AN for free at work. The perspectives of pretty much anyone else are worthless to me.
The Libby app and website let me electronically read all the "power" magazines (auto, motorcycle, airplane...) for free via my public library card. Yet, I sorely miss the days when I could spend a Sunday afternoon comfortably ensconsed in a padded chair/sofa at Borders or Barnes & Noble while sipping on a late and/or diet coke. Of course, mooching off their inventory while only buying a drink or two made me part of the problem causing them to collapse. My bad. Sorry.
My wife loves the Libby app for accessing book audios.
"If DED can start Automobile Magazine I can't see why JB can't start XXX Magazine and make it successful."
Advertising. You can't get it into print. Everybody wants to advertise on TikTok.
Is there a world where high end print mags come back kind of like vinyl records have?
It seems like a lot of brands want to publish these big coffee table style quarterlies now, why not a real automag in that style targeted at folks like us with real money to burn. Roleur mag seems to be doing it for road cycling now, but you know more about the business than I do...
That's essentially the model Hearst attempted with Road & Track and the publishers of The Road Rat follow (well, that was my impression with the few issues I read.). I think the issue (no pun intended) there is, as I mentioned earlier with Rodder's Journal, the audience willing to pay for such a magazine probably isn't the audience Jack would hope to reach.
Online content is actually better IMO.
You can quietly fix typos or errors rather than have them live forevermore; you can consume them on a device at any time; you can have a vibrant comment section; etc.
to be fair, back when magazines were magazines - which is to say, things that made money and were assembled with care and pride - typos and errors were few and far between. the investment in fact-checking and copyediting that went into top-tier publications rivaled the investment in the writing and design. the best outlets took that *very* seriously.
such things were among the first to be tossed overboard as the industry collapsed, and are all but unheard of in an era of private equity ownership of magazines.
R&T is LAUGHABLY bad in that regard.
The inaugural issue of the reboot contained multiple discrepancies about the number of 250 GTOs produced; A.J. Baime’s cover story included conflicting claims of 36 and 39 cars.
There was also a feature in that issue about Zak Brown. A side bar to that feature contained an anecdote about Brown buying one of Senna’s karts for $93K or $63K … another discrepancy.
But wait, there’s more! The same issue featured a listicle of motorsports controversies and referred to the collision between Michael Schumacher and Jacques Villeneuve at Jerez in 1997 as having taken place at the “Spanish” Grand Prix. It was, in fact, the European Grand Prix. The Spanish Grand Prix was held at the Circuit de Catalunya.
I had limited respect for R&T before that. I now have none.
You want a magazine? Get an
iPad.
I think we’re in that world but it’s mostly indie magazines. My friend was just published in a magazine he shoots for (Luna Collective). Not my typical thing but I bought a copy to support him. We could all only dream that other magazines would be printed to this level of quality.
Rouleur is a good callout as well. That’s the first that came to my mind.
Jack finds a Robin masters to fund his luxury magazine while Jack drives Ferraris in Hawaii. That's what it would take, someone willing to lose millions a year to fund something they like. You think Bezos makes money at the post?
Given how important government / political influence and favor are, I'd say yes, just not directly.
Yeah, it's a loss leader. He makes money from the post but not at the post.
You are literally living in that world TODAY!
There are plenty of “magazines” that are essentially soft-bound quarterly coffee table books on a variety of subjects.
Sure, but I've yet to see an "old school every successful man's car rag" in that format like Jack describes and we all remember C&D. I cite Roleur thinking of it that way, but I guess it's also a bit higher end in the bike world, as I forget that I tend to shop in the high end, handmade section there..
The first problem is that The (Successful) Everyman no longer reads. He spends his idle time consuming more passive media (social media scrolling, YouTube, the latest streaming show, podcasts, whatever).
Could he be persuaded to read a compelling magazine? I doubt it.
A better business case would be offering a superior product to those who do want to read. It’s obviously a lot cheaper to pay a skilled writer to turn out a magazine feature than it is to produce a Cammisa budget Icons video. But Cammisa can pull a million views easily, and the magazine feature would struggle to find 10,000 readers.
I agree with you on the superior product for those who read, but I think that audience wouldn’t necessarily line up with where advertisers and interest want to go. I’d also say that the successful Everyman is no longer an interesting target. I said this in another comment to Jack below, but the cultural zeitgeist has moved from targeting the successful top 20% to the top 5 or 1% so you’d get stud writing about what midwits think the “rich” want like Porsches and Rolexes rather than interesting or more attainable machinery like a Mustang or that great 2 series comparison that Jack did.
This is so very, very, true... but didn't Rodder's Journal exist largely without advertising? It has been a decade and a half since I read it (and so cannot say if it even exists anymore), but I seem to recall that it had just a few ads - inside the front and rear covers, and perhaps a few full-pagers at the back. It existed largely on its high price (I don't recall what a subscription cost, but seem to recall individual issues were $12.99.) It was successful enough, for a time, anyway, to inspire several copycats - Guitar Journal, Surfers Journal, etc.
Of course, that model was aimed squarely at the kind of people who spend six-figures having someone else build their "rat rod," and probably is not the audience your magazine would aspire to.
It costs a bit over a million dollars to make and ship 500,000 copies of a magazine.. if you don't have a lot of editorial costs. Road and Track had its budget repeatedly cut from $15m to $12m to $10m.
Realistically, I think a subscription to a zero-ads C/D equivalent would have to be $25 a year. Maybe $35. And that's if you can immediately get a critical mass of 500k subscribers. ACF is more expensive than that -- but I don't have 500k subscribers.
If I had 10,000 subscribers to this site, I could probably produce and distribute a six-times-monthly magazine as an extra perk.
But then we couldn't read all the comments!
we'd have to write letters to the editor
if ONLY there were a platform where damn near anyone can rack easily up 10,000 FANS with little more than the slightest effort.
I mean, 10,000 fans who aren't ACF subscribers. we ain't payin' to see that.
The ironclad rule of my life: if you want to see me naked, you either have to ride on a motorcycle with me or hear me play guitar beforehand.
I've done the latter, but thankfully didn't see you naked afterward. no offense, just not my cup of tea.
Fortunately, Rodder's Journal came back.
my favorite features were the cars in bare metal. it was always a treat to see the level of craftmanship that went into the cars before paint.
That's real talent there. No way to cover up your mistakes. Pure honesty.
Rodders Journal went away a few years ago and then I was told (maybe here?) that it came back. I don't see it at Barnes and Noble anymore so if it did, it's not out in mass circulation anymore. I'd sometimes pick up extra wrapped copies at the magazine racks at SEMA and then sell them on eBay when I got home :).
I sold my entire collection - several year’s worth, starting with issue four, IIRC, for a small fortune on eBay. I was surprised how much people would pay for them.
"Everyone wants to advertise on TikTok".
Ain't that the truth. My wife is an account manager for a marketing firm with a very specific clientele. They've found that the leads from pretty much all other SM platforms have gone to shit.
I sort of agree w Jack, at least on the “who is going to buy/read this thing”. It seems to me that most of the folks who would respond to auto advertising are the types that have “send nudes” next to their handle, and not to stereotype, but they don’t really seem like the reading type. Or the pay to read type.
The alternate model would be to have some sort of big dollar art book, like Modern Huntsman or that Porsche-flavored 000 zine, but I can’t imagine they have broad readership, especially and $20+ an issue.
000 is nearly $70 / issue
Not surprised, I think I pay like 35 for the Modern Huntsman. Is 000 worth it? I’ve not engaged beyond noticing their sign-up booth at Luft.
It is if you love Porsche arcana and want to read definitive articles about whatever topic they are covering.
I have every issue of both 000 and The Road Rat.
what do you think of The Road Rat? I read the first few issues - up to and including the Porsche 917 issue, if I recall correctly - but lost interest.
I love it.
The ideas for the articles and features, the art direction, most of the writing. It is superb, and it makes the likes of R&T or C&D look like a school project.
Best guess is that relying on advertising requires far more eyeballs beyond the handle suffix. The venn diagram of people interested in high quality, who are aware of the publication, and are willing to spend money on it is akin to the rare drop in [name your MMO] scenario. Perhaps as rare is the company willing to advertise alongside text which at least raises the figurative eyebrow.
MotorWeek reviews are also formulaic, and the consistency is lovely now that the 40 year old clips are on YouTube.
Came here to post this as well. I love to binge-watch 80s-90s Motorweek. Love the cars love the format. Love to hear John Davis complain about inadequate instrumentation.
There's some old pony car review from the mid 80s and it's just wonderful.
At the time he was considered a blowjob artist and servant of the manufacturers -- watch them now and it's astounding how critical he can be.
Compared to today's keeds with cameras and video editing skills as their resume? YES!
was it motor week that had that kinda lanky girl on it. she was very attractive to me and i can't really say why...probably general attitude
Lane Steigleman (~5:50)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBcCRwN4uYA
If not, maybe one of the names here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MotorWeek
Lisa Barrow? She was on when I watched it in college 30-35 years ago.
My favorite thing about those old Motorweek clips is John mispronouncing "Camry" for the first two generations. "Cam-ray"
Yes! hahaha
I thought Malcolm X was dead. When did they make him president of Harvard?
I'm going to strongly bounce back against that.
Malcolm X was a man of intense principle, considerable intellect, and absolute moral consistency. You might not like what he believed, but as a human being he was worthy of respect.
He's Jimmy Page and Claudine Gay is Adam Levine.
The career of Claudine Gay is made possible by the very sort of liberals Malcom X despised
Precisely.
Q: "Do you consider yourself militant?"
A: [soft chuckle] "I consider myself Malcolm."
Denzel Washington must have played him in that movie because of that. Washington doesn't seem like your average Hollywood bloviator and from what I've seen and heard him say he is a man of principles himself.
Watching "Flight" made me want to be a pilot -- it's basically the story of my first few years in club racing!
"It provides a second-hand experience for someone who can't afford the car"
I'm not sure what is being categorized as an "appliance vehicle" but a Dark Horse or Colorado ZR2 aren't unobtainable.
Agreed, but they are kind of brushing up against it in this economy.
That being said, a LOT of people will severely restrict or change their lives to own a 392 Charger, so it's worth thinking about then when we think about affordability.
It's also silly that we've gotten to "aren't unobtainable" $50k+ vehicles as approachable enthusiast stuff. Where's the GTI and its ilk that are the price of the average car, but more fun for the enthusiast?
I guess to Jack's point though, this doughnut (where's the middle?) post-Obama economy and regulations probably killed any chance of real accessible fun.
The GTI is a pretty premium product these days, a budget Audi more than anything.
I'd argue it always has been. It was always the upscale, upwardly mobile compact choice for the enthusiast. It was a premium priced compact, when those didn't really exist.
My father had an early 2000s GTI, and I don’t recall it feeling as premium as the MK7. Nor did the MK5. The MK8 would be my current car, but the frankly horrendous touch screen pushed me to an Audi.
It's all relative to the time. The MK4s were super premium feeling compared to the equivalent Civic or Toyota Matrix. The GTI was an upgrade on the standard VW compact that was already more premium feeling than its competition. Everyone has upped their game over the years as cars have gotten more expensive, and started obsessing over "soft touch plastic" and those awful touch screens.
I'm with you on the screens. We bought an Expedition XLT just to avoid the huge touch screen (saving $15k didn't hurt either), and I got encouraged to trade my Volvo because my wife hated that it had no buttons.
When I was cross shoping the GTI and the Mazdaspeed3, the GTI was night and day nicer. But the Mazda would smoke it. I got the Mazda
Even the civic SI is expensive these days, like low 40’s. That’s silly expensive.
This is a rant that our Author has made, so I claim no credit, but what happened to the strip model cars that you could buy new? When I was in HS, you could go to Ford or Toyota or whatever and buy a new Ranger or Tacoma or Civic for like 12k or something, and that was doable on your bike shop/fast food/waitress salary if you didn’t mind a payment. These days people act like a 32k car is affordable and you’re supposed to be willing to pony up 50k for a Sienna hybrid or a GTI or a Civic SI. Do the manufactures not realize that you can get a real car, slightly used for that $$? Who TF is going to buy a Civic SI for 50 when they can get a mustang GT/CamaroSS/Dodge392 used for 30something and actually turn heads? It seems like feature creep, where they keep adding crap into the cars, making them heavier and more expensive, when all we wanted was 3 points and ABS? If you think I’m going to spend slightly used Corvette/Porsche money on a new breadbox to absorb my kids applesauce, you’re out of your mind.
My first car, the Ford Mondeo, my parents paid 11k new when I was 15. I shared it with my sister. That is 22,300 in todays dollars. And it was nice!
Sir, please direct your attention to the Chevy Trax and Buick Envista. Sub $25k and you get a genuinely decent product with every conceivable tech feature you could actually want.
Is this a typo? According to Honda.com a Civic Si is $30,195 after destination. No real options, just whatever dealer accessories you may want. Is there any ADM on these anymore?
You’re right, I’m wrong. I was thinking of the type R. Those are 45+ and the SI is 30+.
A Civic Si is $30k, but maybe you have seen some dealer markups above that.
long ago bob snodgrass of brumos fame came up with a showroom stock racing idea: luxury cars! but, he said, they'd hafta cost over $50,000!
Almost 95% of 392 owners HAVE!
the other 5% stole them
Not entirely the reason I built a 392C Platinum, but part of it.
you basically made a cooler chrysler letter car
"Every Jewish educator who has fostered this “decolonization” mindset now finds himself or herself in the unpleasant situation of a white “pitbull mommy” whose precious dog just helped itself to a substantial portion of her infant’s windpipe."
The college protests are nothing. This is a minor flap. What happens when the people who think they control BLM/Antifa turn the violence knob up above a 7 or 8 to influence the next election and then can't turn the knob back down when they win? What happens when those rioters become a self-propagating phenom no longer under control?
My understanding is that most of those rioters are there for fun and games. Get paid, fight all day, do drugs and fuck all night, and sometimes score a free TV. At some point they are going realize they don't need to stop when told and things are going get even uglier. 2024 is off to a bad start and going to get worse.
The people who think they have Burn Loot Murder and Antifa on a leash are like those idiots who have pet chimps.
They're violent, they're vicious, they're unpredictable and when they go on a rampage it takes actual firepower to stop them.
I'm learning that there are almost as many different spellings of "pit bull" as there are of "Muhammad"
Muhammad? I know that guy! He's the bomb!
"Get paid, fight all day, do drugs and fuck all night, and sometimes score a free TV." And it's cheaper than college!
If you could read the minds of the would-be controllers, you'd probably see the following logic:
0. The riots are initialized and organized online.
1. Very soon we will have total fine-grained control of social media.
2. So we can turn off the riots, because we can stop everyone from communicating things we don't like.
This is a profoundly naive belief and will be shown as such in short order.
Something something try that in a small town where we’re all armed to the teeth and masturbate nightly about defending our turf with our arsenal.
Until the feds come in and your small town throws you under the bus. My "Best best to live" small town (it's not that small) had lovely BLM riots because it was fun for the 90% white teenagers. The other 10% are all Asian.
Some thin blonde college hippie threw herself on the hood of a cop car back during those halcyon days of 2020 summer in our isolated little college town. Of course no negative repercussions for any of those people.
When they had the "stop Asian hate" demonstrations downtown I asked my wife if she felt empowered.
"No, I feel embarrassed!"
Maybe they meant "Asians can't hate: it's OK to _hate Asians_."
Oh, but how Asians hate other kinds of Asians....
I'm frankly surprised that someone hasn't bussed 500 rioters up to a place like Morrow County, Ohio, where they would be met with sustained and accurate fire. Done right, it could be a real martyrdom for The Cause and lead to much stronger gun control.
I assume something will occur along these lines in my hometown. The rehab centers pipe in people from NYC, NJ and LA; conflict will ensue at some point.
The rioters were pretty much all already criminals (see the people who attempted to murder Kyle Rittenhouse). The disparate groups the would-be controllers think will continue to be their foot soldiers all hate each other. There are not a lot of IQ points in those groups to begin with, and if they haven't tried bussing them into suburbs yet I doubt they ever will. Maybe the aforementioned Rittenhouse defending himself against a few of these nincompoops have scared some of them off. Since then they've really only burned, looted, and murdered in their own neighborhoods. If things come down to it, they're much more likely to keep killing each other than they are to kill whitey.
Just go to Ukraine and see how Putin is going controlling and motivating criminals!
Your talking about the 1000's of people being bussed from Texas to NYC? Oh, that's right, they aren't rioters, just potential voters.
I had in mind the people who spent the "Summer of Protest" in 2020 riding buses from one hot-spot to another. Whatever entity was paying for their transportation didn't choose to send them anywhere rural.
Sorry, my comment was purely tongue in cheek with the current political climate between Texas and NYC.
Illinois passed an Ar-15 ban requiring registration of weapons. Less than % compliance rate. So now I go buy a ruger 23 and lever actions for my guns hobby instead of an Ar-15. It's all so stupid.
No illusions - if they came to my small town I'd probably flip a coin as to whether to bunker down or evac. Definitely would NOT go out and look for trouble. And unless they're coming down my street and approaching my house, I ain't pulling the trigger because that would be suicide. Either actually or figurative, my life would be over at that point. Which only means after the first one, might as well shoot the rest. And like Jack said, it'd be used as propaganda for the other side eventually.
Thanks for the LULZ....
This will play out at the Dem convention in Chicago (!) in August. The mix of the professional agitators with the local youts will be incendiary.
Victor Davis Hanson talks about Gay and the liberalization of Harvard and other ivies extensively, and about the anti white racism and how it continues to gain steam in all forms of higher education, worth the read. I think that Jack could probably drive faster than Patrick Bedard, I don’t however know how much would be skill or how much would be better tires, suspension, transmissions or engines, and while Bedard did crash at Indy, he also raced at Indy......
I think C/D was the top of the line when Sherman, Bedard , and Yates( who I didn’t care about) were on the masthead, what really stopped me from subscribing to c/d was an op ed about supporting higher road and fuel taxes to keep the plebs from driving around any more than necessary. They wrote their own death sentence.
Who was it that said that every driving enthusiast was a closet aristocrat?
If I had to guess, I would say Yates…..
Sounds about right.
I said it, about Yates!
Oh.
Whoops!
but what does it say that someone read something you wrote and recalled it as something Yates wrote?
It says that my catty comments about Yates becoming an out-of-touch old jerkbag elitist on a farm are perhaps rebounding on ME!
My thoughts on Yates, he wrote like he was talking to people with means, like he wouldn’t talk to anyone who had no power.
what exactly is automatically and inescapably wrong with being an aristocrat?
Who hasn't dreamed of a road without all the other idiots on it? Mostly so I can be a bigger idiot.
"Okay car, let's see if we built you correctly." (Flipping switches on panel) "Close breaker. Main power on. Arm secondaries. Confirm arm."
when this baby hits eighty-eight miles per hour... you're gonna see some serious sh*t.
"Jesus Christ Doc! You disintegrated Einstein!"
I was thinking more along the lines of "Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed...."
Not far off, actually.
Easy. Move to western North Carolina.
I'm a lot faster than Bedard.
Because I have the advantage of 30 years of education and knowledge that wasn't available to him.
Also, his data wasn't as good as the pros against whom he competed; mine always is as good or very close to modern pro data.
I buy that, I think Bedard was more engineering minded though.
Massively so.
i took william jeanes to task for an article about supporting the 55mph limit because we good drivers could still get around but careless speeders would be the focus of the police. he apologized; said he might've had something with a deadline.
I will see if I can find the article, I remember having to drive under that bs law, in Michigan it was called an energy speed violation, and I don’t think points were assigned, am pretty sure I paid a couple of those tickets….
I had one of those here in AZ. Low 60s in a 55 zone in my old Bronco. Paid $50-60 and no points/traffic school.
I got pulled over going 60-65 in a 55 in Indiana 18-19 years ago at midnight. Whatever, it's a ticket, but the very stern "You're going WAY TOO FAST" from the cop was a "Bro, fuck off" moment. I didn't say it, I'm not stupid.
For the third year in a row, I've sat down new years day and written out a list of goals in microsoft sticky notes: everything from personal development (limit screen time, read more books), fitness (hit 225 for 20 reps on the benchpress, get down to 190lbs), family goals (teach my son to read by the end of the year, have another child), relationship goals (be more supportive, more date nights) financial (finish paying off the house), home improvement (a number of landscaping projects, home repairs, etc), etc. Probably 25 or so line items with 5 highlighted most important ones.
I then track this throughout the year to remind myself, cross off things I complete, then review and reassess in the new year where I landed. To be clear, plenty of those 20+ things from last year unfortunately didn't get done, they get re-added in the new year. But every year my completion percentage improves.
I wish I had started doing this in my early 20s or even sooner.
Scott goal for 2024 "Create "to do" list"
I'll start that in 2025.
"1. Make list"
0. start making lists starting in 1
Screw both of you. Lists start with A.)
Since I’m an underachiever my list items all start with “-“.
Then there’s no pressure to get to the difficult ones.
I like this.
Sorry no room on this list. I'm up to Z already!
Scott's goal or Scott's wife's goal?😄
I guarantee she already has one for me
The exorcism of George Santos had a similar tone. He is hispanic and gay. His lies and financial malfeasance are pure bush league work in Congress' terms. But, he claimed a certain heritage and that's what got him the boot. Oh my, the ink spilled in the local papers that the boomers read with their meds and metamucil. TDS lite.
Harvard Erkel will do just fine.
https://babylonbee.com/news/santos-expelled-by-congress-for-doing-terrible-job-covering-up-his-ethics-violations
https://babylonbee.com/news/breaking-george-santos-arrested-only-534-members-of-congress-to-go
The pearl clutching over Santos amongst the midwit shit libs (but I repeat myself) was over the top. Even Fetterman thought it was stupid and wants to know why Bob Menendez isn’t getting booted, too.
It’s the same thing with MTG, Gaetz, and Boebert. If Trump isn’t in the news, they obsess over these feckless clowns. Only Boebert is worth thinking about, and that’s only if you’re looking to get to second base on a movie date.
Boebert is legit good-looking. Like, I'd probably turn my head if I saw her on the street. It's nice to know that she also has an overactive sex drive. Gives me hope for the future. She does NOT appear to be what one might call "a Moynihan-esque colossus of political thought".
The only gilf left in national politics.
She's DC hot and not fat. That's about the nicest I can say about her. Something about her head is off-putting to me... Still. If I was single, would, obviously.
what's wrong with semifanatic rightwingers?
Gaetz Feckless? I don't agree with his politics entirely, but my god, at least we got a "R" that's willing to hold other "R"s accountable.
The DC revolving door of sponsoring legislation benefiting a certain industry, then taking a 1M+ lobbying gig on that industry’s behalf, makes Santos’ crimes look like an Abbot & Costello skit. The career of WV’s own Alan Mollohan is a reference--guy was getting lobbyists to invest in his beachfront development in exchange for stuff like payload contracts and appropriations. And funneling money from the government to corporations he secretly controlled through trusted former senior staffers and nests of LLCs. He didn’t go to prison, but was primaried and beat by a client of mine and forced to resign as Ranking Member of the *Ethics* Committee.
It's the same as all the DC vitriol against Trump. They treat him like a clown...and he is to an extent. The problem is that he's wearing a red nose and floppy shoes and then turns the spotlight on the rest of the tent where you can see that they're in full clown regalia, only holding knives dripping blood and actively consuming the flesh of children when the lights hit. His absurdity is nothing compared to theirs. Same thing with Santos...and the extent to which the Uniparty is in charge is evident in Santos' ouster. He was thrown out without a trial of fact ever taking place. Corrupt shitbirds like Mark Warner or Chuck Schumer or Mitch McConnel who have perpetrated immense crimes against their oath and the people of this country suffer no repercussions while Santos gets thrown out without even proper due process. Because these people have no principles...only a limitless appetite for power.
McConnell might be the most traitorous of them all, too.
Everyone is above basket weaving until they have 20 merit badges…
In the old days, you had DED, Jr writing about the Ferrari as if he deserved the car, and it made you aspire to deserve the car too.
Today you have this limp wrist writing as if no one deserves the Ferrari.
One is fun to read, and one is banal virtue signaling and lecturing.
Fuck the second guy.
anybody remember the late allan girdler? in '73 i told him he was the most jesuitical-thinking person i'd ever met. he told me he went to a jesuit school. america's only autojournalist with even a faint similarity to ljk setright
2024 Expectations: (I don't subscribe to resolutions)
0. Spend more time doing things that bring me joy than I did last year
1. Stop doom scrolling as a default time filler
2. Get my bummer (the LS swapped E36) fully sorted and either drive it more regularly or move it onto someone who will.
I'd be open to a conversation about said E36 if you tired of it, assuming its some ways out.
Let's see how it goes, I've obviously got way more money into it than it is worth so I'm hoping I can get motivated to find a use for it to at least recoup some enjoyment out of the expense. I will keep you in mind if I ultimately decide to part ways.
> LS swapped E36
I've always loved the idea of taking something that came with a factory max of ~190 wheel horsepower and doubling that figure.
Salute for doing Gods work. Let us know how it goes
It is as fun as you'd expect to drive, but the packaging constraints and de-bugging involved with swapping a completely different drivetrain has been wearing on me lately. I tried to practice a bit of constraint with the budget during the build process, not Youtuber "Hey Guys, today I'm going to LS swap this M3 for $300 and a blow job, but utilizing appropriate OEM systems as opposed to over built aftermarket when it made sense. In hindsight almost everywhere I made seemingly calculated budget decisions resulted in me spending both the cheaper and more expensive money, not to mention doing the work over again.
A word of advice at the tail end of this journey that applies to most of life but two fold when building a project car; buy once, cry once.
Curious only because I enjoy his build threads. Did you use any of the Vorshlag swap components?
I went with Sikky for the mounts, headers, driveshaft, steering shaft, and oil pan. I do have their throw out bearing and power steering line kits. Vorshlag is the most well documented on the swap process, I utilized their build threads as a reference quite a bit.
A friend and former co-worker of mine had an E36 with what might have been the first Vorshlag swap in it - used an LS out of a late 90s Camaro as I recall. Fun car and man it would throw you back in your seat but the niggling little issues finally convinced him to sell it.
"What kind of luck would we have finding men who want to read about that sort of thing, in 2024? My guess: About the same as Lot had in Sodom."
This was my first thought as well - are there enough enthusiasts to support enthusiastic writing? Hell are there even enough enthusiastic cars??
"The competition is good. We had to be better." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdb5-aZHgKE
Come on - imagine that today!! But this is exactly what I grew up on. I remember being excited by this ad, for of all things, a Chrysler Laser Turbo - the front wheel drive twin of the Dodge Daytona.
But now, I'm just saddened by the reminder that Celica, 240SX, Laser, Eclipse, Evo, Thunderbird, Talon, RX7, Firebird, Probe, Fiero, Grand National, 3000GT, hell MANUAL COUPES IN GENERAL - are all about gone. I'm not saying those were all great name plates but the sheer fact that they existed and, in those quantities, means there was a buyer to support that market, and thus writing to support those buyers.
What does today's market of Terrian, Rogue, Rav4, CRV, Encore, CX-30, Compass, (THE NEW) Eclipse, and (THE NEW) Dodge Hornet - say about today's buyer?
I think today's market is a reflection of today's buyer: Woman.
There's a 5-speed Thunderbird Turbo Coupe at bringatrailer right now and it makes me sad I don't have the excess cash to make that happen for myself.
That car was a finalist when my father, at the age of 36, bought his first new car. It lost out to the Mustang SVO.
Still got that turbo engine!
Indeed... but in a smaller, lighter car. That SVO was a hoot to drive. Alas, I was young and stupid and didn't know how good I had it when he let me drive it in college. Nice cars, like youth, are wasted on the young.
My father had a green '79 (used) at the age of 19 in the early 80s. Was his pride and joy. Sold it when I came a long for a Pontiac Bonneville (which I remember fondly).
I keep an eye out for one - I'm in a position (very much thanks to the old man) that I could buy him one. He could too, but he's too opposed to spending money on himself that he won't.
Jade Green 79 Cobra? My dad had one when I was a kid. It was the first car that I remember going to shows with.
There's a thread on Foureyedpride talking about Jade Green Cobras. They reference a car sold in MI to a guy who eventually moved to IN. That's the exact car.
Sajeev has a gorgeous blue one in his warehouse... but it just had a wiring harness fire.
a Turbo Coupe or a Cobra?
say... I dunno that I see him around here. would be a nice addition.
Turbo Coupe.
The Turbo Coupe has been one of my favorite cars since I was a boy.
I’d second that motion.
When I left my English teaching job in Japan in 2001, I had to pay a company around $100 US to take my 1986 Twin Turbo Supra. It had new tires, had been inspected less than a year before - meaning it had more that a year of sha-ken left on it, had a kick-ass stereo, had an automatic transmission, and was in fine shape inside and out. I couldn't give it away, even to my soon-to-be wife's friends who were actively looking for cars didn't want it.
The Japanese economy that spurred the creation of cars like my Supra was gone and people couldn't afford to have more than one vehicle any longer. Most Japanese families had one car, usually some kind of a van, and supplemented their trips around the neighborhood to bicycles or scooters. If a second car was required, it was usually a Kei. If I had owned a van rather than a Supra, there is a good chance someone would have wanted it, but a sporty car? No way!
That is where the US is today. Most young people can't really afford cars on their own and the ones that do have them seem more interested in them as appliances than something fun. People who want appliances want versatility and all the fun cars of our youth never offered that.
Couldn't give away a 1JZ Supra...
Come on, asteroid!
If you lived there you can get some extremely cool old JDM sporty stuff for incredibly low prices. For all the reasons NOT to live in Japan, that's not one of them. Of course, the car buying process itself is byzantine and takes weeks of your time....
So I've read.
It's like that whole culture is a suicide hotline where the operator's like, "DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!"
If you can get past the suicide thing, you do get to bang Japanese chicks and drive cool JDM machinery. You know. If you're into that sort of thing.
Since you're familiar with Japanese culture, let me throw a theory at you.
I figure the reason the Japanese are all in love with ambiguity is that the country's still PTSDing over the kirisute-gomen, the Tokugawa-era law that gave samurai the right to kill peasants who were "disrepectful" to them. Of course, what constituted "disrespect" was left up to the individual samurai, and nobody knew what would set Watanabe-sama off THAT day, so they learned to be meek and two-faced.
A dozen generations of miltary dictatorship and touchy soldiers-playing-cops burned a pathology of indirectness into a whole culture, and there's this shadow of a fear of getting your head chopped off cause you looked somebody in the eye and told him what you were really thinking.
How far off am I?
I didn't have the social connections to sell our van, so we sold it to some chain store for the US equuivalent of $500. The used car market is so strange there, and the buying process for any car is so strange. We had to wait two weeks when we bought our Impreza wagon, and get a stamped notice from the local fuzz, and map out our parking situation. The van we replaced it with was a similar wait, but I think that was more due to the body work and the sha-ken they performed than any paperwork.
When I left Okinawa in 2007 or so I sold my 2002 Mazda MPV, which I really liked, to the "host family" with whom I had stayed during a 1 month visit to Nagoya more than 10 years earlier. We had stayed in touch and they were good friends. I made them a good deal and they had the van put on a ferry and shipped to them in Nagoya. When we moved back to work with the Navy in 2015 they still owned that MPV.
That's actually remarkable. My father-in-law has had no fewer than four new cars in the time I've known him, and most of my (real Japanese) teacher colleagues drove nothing older than a few years. Our Impreza (and subsequent Premacy) were usually the oldest cars in the school lots.
My wife's parents don't change cars very frequently. When we first got together in 99 they owned a Mazda Bongo camper van (a diesel pusher) and a Mazda Carol kei car. After my wife and I got married and she moved overseas to live with me, they traded in both of those on a Mitsubishi Pajerio io that they had for about 10 years and when that got too old they bought a Honda Freed hybrid. I think they replaced that with another Freed a year or two ago.
As I recall, the rule is that you get three years on your first sha-ken and most dealers give you a pass on the second so you get about five years before they start nickel-and-diming you for repairs. I think that is when a lot of people decide to change rather than be bothered. Not sure what kind of value they get on their trade-ins.
I've done self sha-ken a couple of times and while it's not especially difficult, it is time consuming and stressful. I understand the desire to be free of it.
My company's kei car (horrible little thing) went through the sha-ken during the summer. I had a different kei as a loaner, a pink Honda... Life, maybe? And it was better in all sorts of ways. We had too many babies to fit in our Impreza and we traded it in before the sha-ken came due. We left Japan before the sha-ken came due on our van, I think we had it a little more than a year and a half.
I didn't know dealers gave you that first sha-ken. I suppose at three years it's likely mostly warranty work anyhow.
Loved that ad. Sounds like James Earl Jones on the voice over.
But more than that, it gave you info on the car. Modern ads rarely mention anything about the performance, handling, fuel economy. Maybe a truck ad mentions payload or towing, but that's about it.
https://babylonbee.com/news/god-agrees-to-spare-dc-from-destruction-if-he-finds-just-10-staffers-without-a-gay-sex-tape
"I think today's market is a reflection of today's buyer: Woman."
Hey, women drove the market for Celicas and six-cylinder Mustangs, too! But I think we show today's women different media. It encourages them to be financially prudent and sexually promiscuous. Used to kinda be the other way around.
I took the fam out for a very respectable steak dinner on NYE. The younger clone noticed not one but two tables of well dressed ~late 20s single women, perhaps pregaming for later festivities (I noticed a third on the way out). At least one from each table were exchanging dagger eyes for some high school level social transgression of some sort or another.
RBF's cranked up to eleven. 'Christmas cakes.'
Quite true. I should rephrase, what I meant was today's buyer is aligned more w/feminine norms & values than masculine ones. Risk aversion vs risk taking. Safety, economy, and comfort trumps speed, power, and agility. This mindset has permeated just about every facet of society.
Not saying that's entirely a bad thing - but I wish there was more of a balance.
Remembering the market of the 80s and 90s (I'm talking sport offerings, not tech and safety) and comparing it to today - the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction.
women didn't always only drive combovers
Yeah, a couple of ladies in my neighborhood when I was a kid drove second generation Monte Carlo’s and the next door retired lady drove a black Mk2 Jaguar of all things. All the women in my current neighborhood drive pill bugs, except for one with a white 7 series.
My second grade teacher grove a camaro or firebird. I saw it when she dropped me candy off when I broke my leg. You probably can't do that anymore
People don't go to Harvard for a world-class education, they go there for the prestige the name adds to their resumes and for access to the Harvard network of alumni and close contacts. It strikes me more as an exclusive social club than a true institute of higher education. But thanks to antics like this, that club seems to be getting less exclusive every day and the odd thing is that the institution seems to be destroying itself through these kinds of choices. I wonder why that's the case?
Overall, I think that the dismantling of Harvard is probably a good thing. Success in a modern society should be based on effort and ability, not social connections.
Is Harvard even valuable as a networking exercise anymore? The figurehead of a Harvard alum is a fat blue haired “womyn” or a dark skinned racebaiter. Maybe there’s a core group of capable students standing silently behind them, ready to work, but I can’t imagine anyone, even those who theoretically agree with them, wanting to hire someone who endorses what Harvard has become.
Or maybe I’ve been in the Midwest too long.
It 100% is still valuable, but you have to make sure that you are in the right program and clubs/activities. Majoring in Econ, PoliSci, a traditional Liberal Art, or Science will build you a valuable network of folks going places at Harvard and its ilk. Majoring in _____ studies, not so much.
This current dustup may change things, but I see the money/board folks with the real power getting things sorted, as their businesses/industries still recruit heavily from these top schools. There's no better way to get on the fast track to six figure jobs than going to one of these top 20 schools.
As an alum of one of the big NE Catholic schools which have largely but not completely avoided this woke horseshit, I’m waiting Spice Adams style behind the tree as the Ivy League implodes. I assume the prestige of my degree can only improve as the so-called top schools continue to commit unforced errors.
See I went to a big-time Catholic HS and then a top liberal arts college, and I think those networks may be just as powerful for us being part of them as Harvards in terms of how the alums help each other.
Where you can't touch Harvard is the absolute breadth of the network, as well as the "man on the street" affect of everyone knowing someone who went to Harvard is smart versus me having to explain that I went to school in Western Mass...
My school has a decent network but I fucked it all up by falling in love with a girl from Chicago and moving out here where it’s Big 10 or nothing. No one cares about my semi-fancy private school from back east, no matter how many state school jokes I make.
Notre Dame is the dream network here. I was not smart enough to get into Notre Dame.
I've found that it's best to just assimilate. Did your girl go to a big 10 school? There ya go. Go blue haha
I think the value of such a network is not necessarily the opportunity to get a “good” job in your 20s. Lots of schools offer that - if a company you’d like to work for recruits at, say, Penn State and Harvard, you have a shot at getting the job if you went to either school. If you make it to a “Super Day” style competitive process, you are on equal footing, more or less.
Rather, it’s the opportunities that come a bit later that make an “elite” education so valuable:
-Maybe you’ve fucked up in the past, but having a prestige name on the resume can get you a job interview, particularly if you’re changing careers; call it a career mulligan
-You can more easily knock on the door of someone prominent if you share alumni ties; the bigger the network, the harder this is, all else equal
-You will also (or should, at least) know friends who have been very successful who may invite you to work on something with them. I commented a few weeks ago about how one of my college acquaintances - who has become an adult friend as our careers and geographies have dovetailed - has a back of mind idea to start a finance company. He was disappointed with comp for ‘23, and his childhood best friend recently got the keys to the bulk of a 10 figure fortune, so he has an idea, motivation, and now a backer. For some reason, he would like me to play a role in that enterprise. I’m not as qualified as other people he would know based on his background and resume, but I would not turn him down.
I think that’s a really good way to put it. It’s not so much just your 20s and what you get recruited for, but the options that it keeps open. I’m actually just starting the career change “mulligan” sort of game as you describe now as I’m getting a bit burnt out on the startup game, and seeing a bit of a dark end to the “tunnel.” My classmates have been super helpful, but I’d definitely love to pick your brain on it as someone who’s a few years ahead and on less of our normal path.
As I am a “contributor” here, I can see your email address.
I will send you an email shortly.
ilikebigbustybroads@aol.com is my throwaway address!
the value of the network isn't in the people leading the institution, but in the people who graduated from it. the same is true of, say, Texas A&M University. flash that Aggie ring to another Aggie and you've got an automatic in.
But if I’m a graduate of Harvard from, say, 2000 and prior, and I’m looking at the resume of a recent grad, I have to be wondering what I’m getting. Someone like me, or a blue haired nebulous gendered crybaby fucking moron.
true, but you're gonna at least give that application a second look.
They're absolutely doing that, and have a very easy screening device. I've watched it happen - you just check the major and what their thesis was written on, along with activities they list. However you also underestimate how much certain parts of the woke dogma have affected even the pre-2000 folks, especially the green religion.
Anybody who is 55 years old and has a Harvard degree is probably MUCH more left than you imagine.
True. My neighbors just had a 70 year old Harvard alum visit, and he proclaimed Biden as the best President of his lifetime.
We could use a man like that in morrow County. Could make soap from him.
Have you been to Harvard before?
The people you speak of as figureheads are mostly just the loudest. Harvard’s campus just looks like China.
Last time I was there was in 2000 because I was at an MIT sailing regatta and someone I was with wanted to see what a Harvard party was like. We found a small house party, and I was dared to hit on a mildly attractive brunette who wasn’t any more interested in me than I was in her. I talked with her for about 5 minutes and then we amicably parted ways. She later sought me out to say goodbye when she left. We shared a brief hug.
I was later told that brunette was Natalie Portman. I am 100% not making this up.
Haha you struck out with her worse than Jar-Jar
I think she indulged me for a bit because I clearly had no idea who she was. Even after she introduced herself as “Natalie.” I had just gotten out of a long relationship with a brunette Jew and wasn’t looking for another, I was chasing a blonde cheerleader back at my school. With whom I got just as far. Shrug.
They don't look the same in real life vs when they're all hollywood dolled up. This does not apply to danny devito who looks exactly the same in real life. I ran into him at steamboat a lifetime ago.
At least you got a hell of a story!
I met her at a middle school track meet. Too skinny then, same now.
Might need to turn in your man card. I was entering adulthood by the year 2000 and I'd seen "The Professional" at least 20 times.
In 2000, I was busy wanking to slutty looking blondes like Britney, Tara, and Anna.
In 2024, I’m doing the same thing.
"Success in a modern society should be based on effort and ability, not social connections"
Haven't social connections always been requisite for success, in all societies, modern and before? And effort and ability follow that connection, if necessary?
I believe the expert on this topic is Sherman, if he can be called away from his caviar flight brunch meetup. ;-)
Just call one of your five billionaire buddies and you too can swing million dollar deals at brunch. It's easy!
My goal for ‘24 is getting some air time with Carlos Slim!
Somehow, this is a sincere and actionable statement.
But remember, I grew up in Deliverance Country, and I recall adults lining up to ride an elevator at the newly opened bank branch 30 years ago.
100% agreed. Society is nothing but connections! It is easier to start when you have them, but at the same time, success is generally dictated by the connections that you can nurture and grow in your career even if you started with none.
I don’t think I have ever consumed caviar in my life, actually!
I like to believe that I am, ahem, meritorious, but we are social primates, and fighting against that is futile.
Status seeking social monkeys. And caviar is rather nice, old chap! But not really quite so orgasmic as to justify the price, in my humble cheapskate opinion - best stick to foie gras.
I don’t particularly care for foie gras either!
I remember the culture shock of the “food” on my first trip to London in middle school; it was a school trip / packaged tour thing. We would load up on stale, crusty bread at the hotel’s continental breakfast. I also recall the refined Appalachian palate blanching at the Coca Cola varietal available in Blighty - apparently it contains vegetable oil?
I wouldn't know - it's reserved for strictly medicinal purposes in my house. However, some bars have these soda guns where the operator presses a button and the "drink" is somehow mixed in the head of the device. I wouldn't trust what comes out of one of those. Package tour food is a shocking subset of cheaped out "nutrition" - probably illegal to feed to pigs!
This was 21 years ago.
I do remember having a meal at Garfunkel’s Pizza in London, as well as a Sally Lunn Bun in Bath. I bonded with our tour guide over the music of Mike Oldfield. We were both fans of Tubular Bells, but I turned him on to Hergest Ridge, which meant that the entire charter bus got to listen to that album nearly every day.
The highlight of the trip was seeing the McLaren F1 in the showroom on Park Lane after a lunch of chicken tenders at the Hard Rock Cafe.
Both caviar and foie gras can be good, and as always tastes will differ. If you're ever curious seek out a Russian grocery store, assuming there is one in your area. If all you see in the case is red roe, ask if they have "black caviar"
It’s around, pretty much everywhere.
I had a Kwanzaa Brunch on the 26th at the French joint where I dined during the Bentley brouhaha (over the summer); one of my fellow diners inquired about caviar service - sold out.
There is also a “fancy” (think Real Housewives of Atlanta cast members) steakhouse in a hotel lobby that serves “caviar fries” as a side for only $38.
foi gras is foul
fowl...
heated, yes. chilled : wonderful. with a glass of sauterne of course
Might have to give it another go then.