The shit in our food is evidence of what I've been banging on about in comments here since the start: We only think that the name at the top of the ticket makes a difference when in reality most of the decisions that impact our lives, our health, and our fortunes are being made by unaccountable government actors in league with malevolent multi-national corporate interests to whom they regularly go for big paychecks when not "serving" in government.
This must stop, and it will only stop by application of deliberate and overwhelming force. That force is available to us through the ballot box and the jury box...for now. And if we don't make use of it real fucking quick we'll be stuck resorting to the cartridge box and friend you do not want to live in that world because there is no coming back from it. It will involve acts of violence that will absolutely destroy the soul of anyone involved. Imagine someone going to a private elementary school where the scions of our self styled elites are being educated to continue the evil empire their parents have profited from and utterly destroying every living soul there and the person who did that being hailed as a hero by 1/4 of the country and another 1/4 saying "Well, what did you expect to happen?" in response.
That's only the beginning of the future if we don't get a handle on this shit and get everybody to remember that the constitution was an agreement between a bunch of people who didn't trust anybody else to keep behind some lines so we don't devolve into violent bedlam.
And unfortunately what I'm talking about ain't the future, as anyone who bothered to look at the hot takes on Twitter in the aftermath of the shootings at the Nashville School or Osteen's church or the cheering for Hamas happening at Harvard could tell you. *It's the present.* But it takes putting it as something happening in an elite NY prep school before somebody will recognize it's happening right now and that our fate as humans is that there is an equal and horrible reaction for every such action.
People who fantasize about government troops jackbooting the shit out of people who refuse to give up their AR15...door to door confiscation by the national guard was actually proposed in the Virginia legislature...don't understand what happens next.
And I'm on bended knee begging with tears in my eyes, put the fucking pin back in or you WILL kill us all. Civilization is a gossamer thin construct that will evaporate right in front of your eyes. Slowly at first, and then all at once. And when that happens you and your children will never again see a peaceful day.
That kind of devolution is a choice, and one we don't have to make.
From an email I sent to a group of like minded friends: "Call me a coward, but as something of an amateur historian of 20th century conflicts and having a glimpse of what was going on when my cousin was in Iraq in 2007 I would do almost anything to avoid an open conflict on US soil. "Loss of life" does not even begin to describe what happens in a modern civil war."
I don't agree. I think a great deal of the public has been misled by false narratives and that they are waking up to reality. I see a potential reckoning of epic proportions on the horizon...and I'm not alone in seeing it. I think there are people inside the giant unaccountable machine who recognize the beginnings of a popular revolt against their rule that will wipe them out completely and that they're trying to get ahead of it.
The deep state is at a crisis point on what to do. Doubling down on authoritarianism in an ever more nakedly open ways is what a chunk of them are most definitely doing by reflex, and in so doing only making it more and more evident what's happening. The deep state nakedly subverting the Constitutional order makes it impossible for the deep state to continue existing. The more sophisticated actors with in it realize that their power exists only so long as it is not clearly seen by the man in the street.
What I think is most likely is a realignment. I think the smarter people within the deep state/shadow state recognize that some sort of reckoning will be necessary. And I think they'll offer up the dumber ones responsible for some of the more excessive acts as an acceptable sacrifice as they look to make a deal with an emerging political reality that makes even business as usual 25 years ago impossible.
To survive, I think they'll make a deal that has the appearance of reform without having nearly as much function as I would like. Give the "intelligence community" and other assorted would-be masters of our universe the choice between quiet survival or an all-out war of annihilation that they know they cannot win and I think they pick survival all day. It will mean a purge of their ranks but I think they'll happily offer up the foaming-at-the-mouth fanatics in their number with glee...because, after all, who the fuck wants those people around anyway?
That, too, is not new. The Church Committee came to be due to overreaching during the 60's, producing accountability that they had to work hard to manage. And they did it successfully, finding new casus belli in fighting the Cold War. And viola, in a few short years the institutions that had murdered JFK, MLK, RFK, and Malcom, that had plotted terrorist acts across the nation to justify starting a war for Cuba, that had planted cells in Europe to destabilize even NATO partners, that had partnered with organized crime to run drugs guns and people across the world filling cities with poison that would enslave entire generations...POOF...suddenly wrapped themselves in the flag of patriotism and fighting the communists to protect FREEDOM AND LIBERTY AND MOM AND APPLE PIE.
So successfully, I might add, that Benji Shapiro and Sean Hannity practically trip over themselves to defend those actors to this day.
"Dude, that's hardly a rosy picture." Yeah, it's not intended to be. But the optimistic part is that not all utterly corrupt power brokers are simultaneously catastrophically stupid on top of it. And thus survival and even some level of recovery is entirely possible even if purging their corruption from our body politic entirely isn't.
If you look at the Trump verdict, you can understand what the Left is dealing with.
They hate Trump so badly, and are so afraid of his return to the presidency that they've completely thrown the mask away. They stand revealed as totalitarians who'll go to any length to get their man...
...but everything they do digs them deeper into this public-relations pit they've made for themselves. They really can't win peacefully at this point.
I want to be clear: I do not see the vitriol against Trump to be a phenomenon of right or left, but of top and bottom. The unaccountable machine loathes Trump because of what Trump represents. He is the lighting rod of populist revolt that has been brewing for generations.
He's not the source or sustainment of it...he's just found himself on its back riding it. The high profile lawfare screwjobs have been a giant red suppository shoved up the rectum of normies. The things that have been done against Trump and Kyle Rittenhouse and various other targets of the "mainstream" press in service to the machine have shown what the machine has always done to dissidents and the downtrodden.
There's a credible argument to be made that the same sorts of people who brought us the Tuskegee experiments ran a great big one on the entire nation. The psychological experiments the "intelligence community" ran on prisoners and political dissidents in the 50's and 60's has been commoditized, digitized, and run on LITERALLY EVERYONE'S CHILDREN with the advent of social media. The abuses inside the federal prison system which used to be confined to accused drug dealers are now brought against non-violent January 6th protesters.
The end result of all that is that normies have increasingly begun seeing themselves in the crosshairs of stuff that used to only happen to the fringes of society and it's causing a wide array of people to rethink everything they assumed about the motivations of people in government. I can't tell you how many times I've seen "If they're doing this to Trump, what makes you think they aren't going to do it to you?"
...and this is not just fluff. Policing in America was dealt a severe blow during COVID when departments announced that they wouldn't be coming for any but the most severe calls for service while simultaneously enforcing legally dubious lockdown policies at gunpoint. A shitload of thin blue line stickers got scraped off of trucks and SUVs because people who had believed that the police were the good guys suddenly got a very rude reminder that armed agents of the state are *always* a potential menace to even the most basic civil rights. A good many people who believed the 9/11 NYPD police are heroes concept suddenly got a good look at just how many people in uniform pledge allegiance to their dental plan.
Bye bye traditional "conservative" support for "backing the blue!"
The institutions are discrediting themselves at a rapid pace. The extent of the problem could be witnessed in the US Supreme Court's hearing on the Colorado case to keep Trump off the ballot where EVERY JUSTICE expressed doubts on Colorado's arguments so severe that a good many analysts expect the USSC to unanimously reject the effort. And they kind of have to if the judiciary is to retain any credibility. And at least some members of the court seem to be actually thinking about the "and what happens next?" question by pointing out that under these novel theories nothing is stopping the other side from fully embracing the exact same theories and doing the very same thing.
And increasingly in populist circles there is a growing number of voices saying that the appropriate response to the weaponization of government is to weaponize in the other direction until the people doing it now cry uncle. And maybe even not stop when that happens.
...and, really, who can blame them? What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
And that's how we end up in an argument over who controls the guest list for the camps. None of that happens if the institutions themselves shed this nonsense and at least go back to pretending not to be picking a side. Some sacrifice of the more extreme agitators and claiming that they're all good now is something the normies can accept.
That's why I think it's the most likely outcome. It's the easiest fix for everybody. Purge the most extreme actors and put all the blame for everything that went wrong on them. Some of them go to jail and the people behind get to play patriotic reformer. Big tech and big corporations get chastened, but never face full accountability for the death and havoc they have wrought.
DC keeps getting paid. Corporations keep making money. Mr. and Mrs. America have a more normal quality of life and soon enough they'll stop being angry about what happened.
"The unaccountable machine loathes Trump because of what Trump represents"
While I agree with this, this doesn't reconcile the fact that even in 2016, after he defeated Clinton, people that I'd consider moderates or moderate left seemed to just seemed to hate him. Even after I pointed out that his policies were that far different than Clinton's husband's. They bought into the Russia narrative. They bought into the "both sides" hoax, they bought into the election interference narratives. These same "moderates" then refuse to consider any wrongdoing by the otherside?
Are there right wing/deep staters that have the same vitriol against Trump? Absolutely. They pale in comparison. The left still thinks he's Hitler.
I am sanguine as well. The purging of any better angels has already happened. The stage where they toned down the assassinations and coups and instead wrapped themselves in the flag and apple pie was when they directed their gaze on US citizens and now the gloves are off. Snowden might have triggered a chance at reversal. That was a decade ago.
Throwing the borders wide open is perhaps a last act of desperation, both to have a new domestic army to draw from and to keep the rabble on their heels and off the ruling class' collective throats.
As for the deal-cutters Tim described, snakes like that are not to be trusted.
You do know that what he's talking about in regards to the school thing did actually happen in a european country (I won't say which) and the man who did it is regarded as a saint now?
He's regarded by CERTAIN people as a saint, anyway. Not sure the man on the street there agrees. Of course, the media of the state had their say on it.
Indeed. But his elevation from homicidal monster to what some twisted minds would laud as some sort of freedom fighter has been a more recent phenomenon, and that in light of how things have...evolved or degraded...since. With the Nashville shooting the blood hadn't even stopped flowing before radicals who still have a place in polite society were on twitter lamenting there weren't more dead Christian kids or insisting "what did you expect" when Tennessee's legislature has expressed doubts about chemically and physically castrating teenagers.
The lack of a gap there is the disturbing part. I was pretty online in various discussion forums when Brevik did his evil deed and I don't remember a single contemporaneous statement about it being an act of spiritual or social hygiene. With Nashville the bile and vitriol was instant.
The steps between the people doing that and the people who gleefully filmed themselves raping and murdering innocent people at a music festival for peace in Israel are short and few...and that genie can't be stuffed back in the bottle.
Oh no, there were a lot of people who made some 'back handed' comments about just who the people were he killed. The 'freedom fighter' bit isn't recent. I heard about it form folks over in Europe after the initial fuss has settled down.
Everyone knew over there that he'd targeted the children of the ruling class. Everyone quickly saw that he gutted the ruling class that most people despised (or at least most of the ones I heard from). The effect on the nation's politics has been profound too.
And no, I would not say the 'steps are few'. I would not say that at all. There are zero similarities between the two events.
“will have a single guiding ethos that I hope comes through every single time you open a link: that powersports are inherently cool.”
Given that the single guiding ethos coming through every time I open a link in the automotive “enthusiast” press is “cars are bad and you’re a Neanderthal for liking them” I’ll take J-Klo’s, thanks very much.
The veiled reference is, basically, "SxS manufacturers have PR budget now, because sales are on the rise, while motorcycle manufacturers are moving their budget to influencers like the adorable Aya Dijkwel, so it's gonna be a whole lot of SxS from now on."
Fair enough. I get how that’s annoying. But still seems better than “this hobby is terrible and we should all hate ourselves for our involvement in it.”
That's never been the position of the motorcycling press, thankfully. It wasn't even the position at RideApart prior to Jonasponcon's arrival. I'll be curious to see if RideApart's enthusiasm carries over to things like ElectraGlides, or if THOSE are bad for the planet.
I mean in general the motorcycle community is so small, and the miles done per motorcycle outside of a few diehards/heroes/ironbutts so low, and the mpg efficiency of bikes so high, that no one should care about the environmental impact of motorcycles.
I, for one, am glad he told me that it's ok to think powersports are cool. I've thought that for a long time. I'm so happy he verified I wasn't engaging in wrong-think.
I mean yeah, that’s the cynical way to look at it. But if you read it sincerely, as I did, the message is “hey every other platform tells you you should feel bad for liking this stuff. We won’t.” But I could be naive.
I don't know why I visit that site. I don't even like it. Force of habit, more than anything else.
The one on that site that really annoys me is Andrew Collins' "Will It Dog?" where he writes about how well a car can handle several of the filthy beasts.
Dude, aren't you married? Why aren't you writing a column called "Will It Child?"
That's exactly where I was going. Prior to Rideapart, Klein was a typist at The Drive. He's commented here before. IIRC, it was an article where Jack called out another "journalist".
I photographed her in 2020 when she was running for the Democratic nomination. She is a handsome woman, lots of charisma. But she said Hillary is a warmonger and you can't have that.
I was all for bombing the shit out of the mideast back in 2001 and 2002, but watching how they fucked it up over the ensuing decades(!) has made me a peace-loving hippie. 2002 MD would not be able to recognize me, but I would hope he would be able to understand.
If we stayed in Afghanistan and focused just on OBL he would have never made it out of the Tora Bora caves. Instead we killed Saddam and Ghaddafi, made a run at Assad and in the process helped nurture the creation of ISIS. We also propped up the Pakistanis, let the Chinese catch up to us economically and weakened ourselves militarily to the point where Putin is emboldened enough to consolidate power (he will swallow what he wants of Ukraine by the end of the year). The worst thing we did is diminish our resolve to go after our enemies by staying in the middle east for so long for no good reason. If another 9/11 type attack happened, I dont know what our response would be now.
Saddam had taken Iraq from a poor backwater to a relatively advanced secularized state in the course of a few decades at the helm, putting nationalized BP oil money to work for his people. Things went sideways when he went at it with Iran (with our backing, funny enough). Gaddafi’s Libya was a similar story. Now they’re back to open air slave markets thanks to the forces of democracy at work in the form of Hillary.
We've got 100k+ overdose/fentanyl poisoning deaths a year, a decade long slide in life expectancy, and people like you are eager to fly across an ocean and then some to look for problems. Get a grip man.
Lest we forget the whole "Arab spring" thing in 2011 was kicked off by the CIA/ State Department. Once Libya was destroyed the CIA started to funnel Libyan guns to Syrian "peaceful protestors." Can't we just leave the poor bastards alone? (rhetorical question, the answer is no, because muh Israel and oil traded in dollars).
It's both and neither. Diet and exercise have come a long way so the fitter woman typically looks better than ever but the average woman is chubbier than ever.
Before I finish reading, I have to chime in on your counter interaction. As someone who spent the first 30 years of my life (except for college) within 25 miles of NYC and has now moved, interactions like this still shock me. We've been moving between CT, Nashville, and Florida for 3 years now and the fact that people are friendly and decent to strangers and service workers still give me pause. This morning here in Vero Beach the fact that the other two gentlemen in the coffee shop just wanted to chat about cycling and hobbies only had me wondering what their angle was and what they wanted from me!
In the bigger picture, it is a really nice breath of fresh air though. I just still have to get used to it in "middle America." The Miami chatter and friendliness make a lot more sense to me because it's just "my people," being a latin American city and all...
I’m from the East Coast and relocated to Chicagoland years ago, so I’m mostly used to friendly people in the public. But I was in St. Kitts and Nevis last year, and the people there are alarmingly friendly that you’re constantly convinced they’re trying to scam you or just sell you something. In my 5-6 days there, they never were, they were truly friendly. But in my defense, some of that anticipation is learned behavior from sketchier islands like Jamaica, St Thomas, Bahamas, etc.
A year spent in New York City, followed by a year spent in rural Ohio or Tennessee, will ABSOLUTELY educate any sensible human being as to why the former group of people don't want anyone to have a gun or even a knife while the latter group couldn't care less.
I know the NYC types are absolutely terrified of them, but why do you think that?
The true American rural culture is new to me, but I've always identified with it pretty well due to where my family is from in Spain. To me the huge gap is the credentials versus experience, and how that's used to prop up a false "elite" that knows nothing. They don't want to be overthrown!
"I know the NYC types are absolutely terrified of them, but why do you think that?"
They live in a place where it's assumed that everybody wants to do everyone harm -- and that said harm has to be prevented by a system. They think that because the average New Yorker of the non-Giuliani era has real and firsthand experience with street violence or robbery. This experience is now coming back into vogue after DiBlasio.
I've always live that way, but I was also taught that you need to be wary of your surroundings in the city. I'd also much rather be armed to defend myself than not, because I know it's my responsibility first.
I'm 32, and grew up under the Giuliani/Bloomberg eras with a father who's worked in NYC since the 80s. There's definitely a huge difference in outlook between the "locals" and the 2000s arrivals who only know the good years. What worries me, is that traditionally it was cyclical, but now I'm not sure they'll allow another law and order candidate to fix things.
I think the anti-gun thing is more out of fear, and in a way envy than anything. They've been taught to fear the weapon, because only "bad" people use them so they think they'll hurt someone rather than protect themselves. Then envy is because I think deep down, everyone wants to control their own destiny and many in NYC realize that they don't when it comes to their personal safety.
"Then envy is because I think deep down, everyone wants to control their own destiny and many in NYC realize that they don't when it comes to their personal safety."
When you listen to city mice blabbing about how WONDERFUL it is to ride the subway with the VIBRANT people of whom only a COWARD would be frightened, you realize that you're hearing the biggest "cope" in human history. Only an insane person would willingly expose their children or even their own bodies to the regular threat of random and uncontrollable violence. It's not "LIVING IN FEAR" to not want some homeless monster to masturbate in his pants while he locks eyes with your 4-year-old daughter on the subway.
I haven't entered a Subway since COVID and nearly everyone that I know will only get on them during rush hour when there's a crowd. Any city mice still saying that are clearly delusional and have only known the post-Giuliani safe NYC and continue to live their liberal fantasy.
It's also funny how despite all of the media propaganda, everyone I know has bought a place in the suburbs and moved out once they had kids. You're 100% right, no sane person is letting their kids grow up exposed to all of that. The only ones sticking to the city are the lifetime NYC-ers who have the money to avoid those problems.
Just look at the reporting on the "mass shooting" in Kansas City during the SB parade. Underage cretins in custody, identities undisclosed, but Daily Mail published the bangers pics. A week of pearl clutching about " gun violence" and what wretches we are as a society to permit mass shootings etc. anyone, and I mean everyone who lives near an urban area knew from the first moment what happened, and it wasn't a crazy dude shooting up a school.
Exactly. There are lots of takes about Tucker Carlson showing the cleanliness of the Moscow subway, but watching that sniveling twerp John Stewart literally argue that the utter fucking disaster of the NY subway is a blessing of liberty defines the absurdity.
A sensible person might be able to conclude that perhaps there's a sensible middle ground between Vlad Putin's Russia and this twisted notion of being perfectly free to shit or shoot up in the fucking subway but to be criminally prosecuted if you pull a violent vagrant off an innocent woman.
And in Illinois that training will be state run only, cost $1500/class, available only on the 6th Tuesday of every month, and the only facility that can give it will be mysteriously closed 10 months out of the year.
The CCL class wasn't too bad. You actually have to pass "proficiency" which is pretty easy. Taking 6-8 months for a FOID is a bit of a joke. I also never pass the instant background check which gets annoying.
A state Senator in Oklahoma has introduced a bill called the "Common Sense Freedom of Press Control Act", which would require any one who works in media to:
1) Complete a criminal background check
2) Purchase a License from the state
3) Obtain $1 million in liability insurance
4) Attend an eight-hour “propaganda-free” safety training developed by PragerU
5) Submit to quarterly drug tests.
6) Each video or article must contain the following disclaimer:
“WARNING: THIS ENTITY IS KNOWN TO PROVIDE PROPAGANDA. CONSUMING PROPAGANDA MAY BE DETRIMENTAL TO YOUR HEALTH AND HEALTH OF THE REPUBLIC.”
Let's apply the same philosophy to laws that the gun-grabbers apply to firearms.
Let's take lawmaking power away from Congress and the various state legislatures, then we go around confiscating every law we can and dispose of them.
Only those laws which have a "legitimate" purpose should be allowed to exist, such as the Bill of Rights.
Run comprehensive background checks on potential lawmakers, and subject them to strict licensing requirements (with grave penalties for violations) to ensure they aren't given to totalitarian urges and fantasies about using Deadly Assault Laws to go on legislative rampages and murder dozens of innocent freedoms without reloading.
Ban high-capacity subsections so that lawmakers can only prohibit one thing at a time.
The Second Amendment isn't about shooting ducks and deer - it's about shooting dictators.
The equivalent to this is just in antiquity when they made proposers of new laws propose them and extol their virtues with a noose around their neck, kicking out the stool under their feet if the new law was not passed by the assembly.
This would dramatically improve the quality of American lawmakers, but I'm not sure if American graveyards and crematories would have enough space / capacity to keep up.
It's all because they are trying to take away your right to self-defense so they can turn you into slaves, or kill you. Just like they've done every previous time.
Seriously though, I think a defining trait of Americans is that we're a basically DECENT people, in a way the populations of other nations just aren't.
I grew up upstate with a father that did the M-F NYC commute for a good chunk of my childhood. The first time someone held a door for me when I was still 50' away at a Michigan Walmart in college I was on full alert expecting to get robbed or sold something I didn't want. I resisted it and was just the typical NY asshole living in the Mid-West for the duration of college.
Fast forward to me moving to Charlotte in 2015 I was again shocked and a bit frustrated by the kindness of strangers, it felt burdensome as a North Easterner. After a while I let my guard down and learned to reciprocate the kindness (not a much as I should if you ask my wife), and get frustrated at the lack of consideration for ones fellow man when I go back north.
Now in the almost 9 years that I've been here a considerable amount of Damn Yankees have made there way down as well, unfortunately; we as a cohort have definitely impacted southern charm in a negative way. Hopefully they all start to recognize the good change like I have slowly been allowing myself to do and we don't dilute away common courtesy all together.
I wonder if the uniparty is ever going to go after big agriculture like they went after big tobacco. The foods are obviously addictive. When I get a little too fluffy, I typically go back to keto. Bright side: It's seriously simple to lose weight cause, and here's the down side you get so bored eating the same 5 things over and over and over again, you just don't eat. But that first week? Withdrawal. Worse than caffeine withdrawal, worse than cigarette withdrawal. An entire week of brain fog from cutting out carbs. I can't wait to knock of these last 20lbs so I can eat a burger and fries again.
It is. Unless you know the farm you're buying from, it is of zero good. The poultry industry may be as developed if not more so than the auto industry. It's INCREDIBLY mature.
I have a guy I try to keep buying from, but sometimes I have to go to the local equivalent of Whole Food or wherever hipsters buy shit in America. I'm sure the guy could probably tell me the names of the hens that laid the eggs and tell me their names.
And I'm reasonably sure that if I buy "free range" eggs here, they have to truly be free range. There are quite stiff regulations on both country and EU level about what can be called what.
I'm a monster so industrial farming doesn't bother me and I'll make it a point never to visit an industrial farm so I never have to come face to face with my dinner.
At work we own a division that does chicken farming. I’ve been there a few times. I don’t find it particularly bad to be honest. But I’ve also killed and gutted my own food before (deer) so I’m not squeamish. The conditions the chickens live in are not that bad all things considered, they have plenty of room to move around and all.
I think euros are infantile but on food they are right. Every time we have a trade deal that features agricultural products being sold there people in Europe go ape shit. And good for them. We cultivate and sell cheap poison.
The best chicken I ever ate was purchased from the kid next door that was raising a brood to compete in FFA. I bought two of the “losers.” Processed poultry is not even playing the same sport.
Best chicken I ever ate was "poulet de ferme" (a proper, slightly skinny, long legged thing that had spent its life on its feet running around, rather than on its arse in a shed with 10,000 others) cooked on a rotisserie in Lacanau in SW France, where we had taken the kids for a surfing holiday. Served with potatoes cooked in the drippings from the chickens and a "stuffing" (it never made it into the chickens) that was essentially old French bread with mountains of butter and more garlic and herbs than you could fit in your palm. Wrong season, but I would almost jump in my car, hop on a ferry and cover the 500 miles today to get some more...not a bad memory of something that dates back to 2006!
Michelle tried to help the kids not get fat and got put in her place really fast. In no world am I a fan of the Obamas, but I think they meant well there. The amount of fat kids out there is astounding. I don't make my kids eat Keto but the amount of sugar that average child consumes is "too much"
The irony here is that she failed for the same reason her husband got elected: a general and growing sense across the country that no member of any ethnic minority can ever be called to account for anything they've done, said, eaten, molested, spindled, or mutilated.
OR...We as a society consciously decide that parking your ass in front of a glowing screen for 12 hours a day is actually a shit job, and that greater physicality is necessary.
Every young woman political staffer on the hill is on ozempic. We're early innings on that one, super pumped to see the bizarre second- and third-order effects its usage brings forth!
What ever happened to Adderall. Two birds one stone. You won't eat AND you won't sleep so more hours spent working. Taking Ozempic seems insane to me but apparently all the rich people are already doing it.
Our school lunches became GARBAGE at some point in the first Obama administration. They load kids up with carbs and sugar and wonder why nobody can sit down all day
We do our best to have out kids eat decent food but the absolute barrage of candy and bullshit that is thrown at them is almost impossible to fight. It's a constant struggle for us because teachers are giving them candy in school, their friend's parents give it to them, and every holiday has some sort of candy theme now. Sugar is cheap and addictive. Get em' hooked early and you've got a customer for life. Fuck that shit.
I'm stricter than my wife is and she's the one who mostly feeds the kids. Our kids don't eat awful. We try and cook real meals most days but sometimes it's Nuggets and Mac and Cheese. Like you said, it's an uphill battle.
In my lifetime, until Trump, who I voted for first time around, all of our Presidents, regardless of flaws, were fundamentally decent people who were well meaning.
It doesn't stop them from doing monstrous things. Sometimes because decency them do it.
I think Trumps narcissism overrides any decency he has, compounded by having the attention span of a fruit fly. Comparisons to a certain German leader are very apt, it is just the leader is Wilhelm II.
Biden seems worse. It is unclear that he has a moral compass. Just an unwavering cowardice that always him to change direction at any moment.
You'll notice that he has basically two staffs, they're all obama people but it's the israel-sympathetic giga libs and the rashida-tlaib-sympathetic giga libs
We're kind of fortunate in that regard. Imagine the damage that could be done if this administrative was cohesive and driven towards the same goals. The best fed gov is a largely ineffectual one.
Not to be a utopian fantasist but the best one would be one that regarded its own people with benevolence and sought their best interests in all things.
Thank you, Donkey, for posting the link. Corporate lobbying is every bit as much of a threat to democracy as the postal "votes" Jack rails about. Perhaps more so, as it is so insidious.
It's a thorny issue for sure. While I try to advocate nuance, any time on the hill will tell you what lobbying is. It's bad people with big budgets (given to them by amoral at best people in bad organizations) to do bad things to good American people against the American people's will. Monopoly carve-outs, foreign aid, foreign bombs, "the food pyramid" lol.
*theoretically* I want to have no problem with lobbying qua speech as Antonin Scalia felt. But sensible government has to operate on effect not hope-wish-feel
They're never going to go after big anything anymore. Big corporate owns the uniparty now. Just look at how everyone is circling up to attack Lina Khan and the FTC from all sides for even thinking about looking at big business. While I don't agree with a lot of the reasoning she has, I do think all of this concentration in the economy is causing huge problems and needs to be looked at.
If they do, the end result will be the complete and total devastation of the little farmer.
People want to know why Yellowstone is popular... well, it's because people still want to romanticize the life where multigenerational ranches and farms mattered.
I really hate that show. My uncle watches and talks about it constantly.
The first two seasons were tolerable. I've been to Bozeman a few times and it's a beautiful area. Since the show has gotten popular, it's been overran with outsiders. Kind of ironic considering the whole show is about one family's disdain for outsiders.
One interesting tidbit from my time in MT. A lot of the guides and ranch hands that I interacted with all romanticize the UP the way I romanticize MT.
I hesitated watching it, but it's been pretty solid though more over the top in the past few seasons for obvious reasons. Most of my very brief experience with Montana was on the opposite side of the state in Billings and heading into Wyoming. It's less sexy to the LA types. I found nearly everyone to be a lot more native and I can easily see WHY it is romanticised. But also, talking to people, there is a battle brewing there as the lower class are priced out of living. It's pretty awful.
Great comparo to the UP. I took my stepdad up there on a quick trip and it was so memorable that he's always wanted to go back. That's after getting stuck in a cvt trans Pathfinder down a road only SxSs ended up driving. Yes, we were very, very lost in the sticks.
The UP is hereby included in the Great American Road Trip that I intend to undertake...in a '67 Coupe de Ville convertible...that may sadly be preceded by porcine aviation, ah, but a man can dream...
I lived in Montana 30 years ago and Bozeman was already starting to be overrun by outsiders (mostly from California). Locals were already being pushed out of town in 1992. The trend started long before Yellowstone
Apparently there's a procedure where a large gauge syringe is used to remove the fluid directly from the sack! I know this because I was dating a woman who desperately wanted to have a child with me after the procedure was accomplished, and she did the research.
The worst part of the procedure is when they cauterize your vas deferens with a laser. The smell... Honestly though, I've suffered far more unpleasant things in a doctors office.
My experience was a bit surreal. Doc was intent on having a full on conversation with me about aquatic life; specifically, sperm whales - while a national geographic ocean documentary played on the TV in the room. (I shit you not. I will never forget, it was like a fever dream come to life.)
I think having a sense of humor comes with the territory. Dude always had a joke for "turning off the hot water" or "shooting blanks".
I know it was old hat for him, but eventually I couldn't take it and asked if he could focus on my boys. I think understood, though was somewhat annoyed. To his credit he did a good job - I have two buddies with botched procedures that needed redos.
Worked with a guy who got snipped because of wife’s orders. They got divorced, and then the new gf turned into wife #2 who wanted kids. So he got un-snipped. All this in a little over a year, and freely shared on the shop floor.
Dude was in a lot of pain, and carried a special donut shaped pillow around with him in case he ever needed to sit down.
It was explained to me that within a year there was a decent shot of reversal. Each subsequent year the odds get worse and after 3 years it's pretty slim.
"If you can’t pour raw CPU-manufacturing effluvium into the Colorado River, you shouldn’t be allowed to buy something that’s made by pouring raw CPU-manufacturing effluvium into the Yangtze. Why isn’t this broadly understood?"
Because people are morons or assholes, or both. Take your pick. This is why I hate people in general.
At this point you've only led me to believe that brother Bark is a musically talented horndog.
As a younger father of two, its a constant battle of what I can afford in terms of keeping poison and unknown dangers away from my kids. I give up being able to gloat about USA made refrigerators so I can afford better water, milk and essentials for my kids while they're developing, as an example. Priorities.... The only saving grace is I think in general, we KNOW a lot more about what goes into our bodies these days than we did in the past. For example, I doubt even your grandfather knew the OTHER UNKNOWN mystery shit that went into General Mills products back in his day.
" I give up being able to gloat about USA made refrigerators so I can afford better water, milk and essentials for my kids while they're developing, as an example."
Tangentially related bought a USA made pool table over the weekend. WTF is with tag lines like "American Designed" or "American Engineered" or "American Tested".
The friggin Brunswick logo actually has "American" stamped on it. This nonsense should be criminal. You really have to be on top of things to avoid being deceived.
Ended up with an Olhausen made in TN. Funny enough it was $400 less than the comparable Brunswick that is made in China. USA made AND cheaper - double bonus.
"The friggin Brunswick logo actually has "American" stamped on it. This nonsense should be criminal. You really have to be on top of things to avoid being deceived."
Time was, you'd face union violence if you did something like that. Before the unions were repurposed as immigration boosters.
A 7 stage RO since my wife got pregnant with my first.
Further efforts have been limited by lack of sheer energy, but I'm open to upgrades at any price point. I was just using those as straw man arguments...
I'm doing the opposite: just drinking whatever happens to be 195 feet below my house. In the long run I'll be drinking my own urine, like Bear Grylls or a spaceman.
I'm drilled into rock past a couple of groundwater sources. It will be 20-30 years before today's waste water makes it into our well. The Teflon will still be there but I suspect everything else will have long since been diluted or deactivated to the point of unimportance.
we have an "artesian" well that's 300 or so feet deep, which I love the idea of, but am terrified of the bill for if it ever dries up or needs to be fixed.
In the olden days the aquifer itself could be said to provide filtration and that's still true for a lot of impurities, but hardly anything can separate water from some compounds, PFAS/teflon among them.
Your statement reminds me of a guy I read occasionally, Eric Peters.
He bills himself as The Libertarian Car Guy, but he strikes me as the sort who gives up his good job in the city to become a backwoods subsistence farmer because he's convinced the government's coming to get him.
He's a perfect example of libertarianism - he's not wrong, but he comes across as a self-destructive survivalist nut who nobody in their right mind would want to emulate.
The difficulty with "prepping" or "survivalism" is that so far it's been a losing bet -- and it might not even be a winning bet when the proverbial balloon goes up. I could hold out for 6 months to a year without the outside world getting involved... until I break my leg or get an infected tooth.
Too many decent people apply their moxy & gumption to things like making their own butter and chopping firewood, instead of directing it at taking over their crooked alderman's seat on the city council.
The most sensible "prepping" scenario is to plan for weather/natural disasters rather than the zombie apocalypse. For my area, that means Hurricane Season with expectations of high water (1 week, tops), contaminated municipal water supply (maybe 2 weeks), loss of electricity for up to a month, gas stations to run empty on day 2, and spotty FEMA help if you're ok standing in line all day for a case of bottled water. We can and do prep for that successfully. Anything else is end of the world scenario that most people won't survive no matter what prepping takes place.
i think from that depth any bacteria have been squished by the pressure; great way to partially purify water i read long ago: pump it down about 200' and bring it back up in a long u-tube
I'm debating upgrading, and/or doing a whole house system in addition to point-of-use. The whole house system would be unjustifiably expensive but The Kids Are Going To Drink Water From The Shower Nozzle No Matter What and I got no other ideas on that one.
Yep my kids drink some trivial amounts during their bath. If you don't mind sharing what you end up with on the whole house front I'd truly appreciate it.
35 years ago i had a filter system installed. a day or so later i was standing in the shower when 'rainwater' started coming out! i remember the marvelous sensation to this day!
The problem with RO systems is that you waste two gallons of every three. So your water bill triples. Then there's the service, which is expensive and often. Also, you have to dump those two toxic gallons somewhere.
The water here very alkaline and RO is the only way to deal with it, but the cost and the waste is insane.
Yeah. I think some of the whole-house systems are not RO, just five foot tall sand or carbon filters or both. Would help even in our situation with municipal water IIRC 700ppm
I wish there was a purpose I could discharge the gray water into. Probably good enough to grow a tree or other non-comestible plant
It really comes down to what's wrong with your water. Some issues won't hurt plants. Other's will. I wish there was an easier way to deal with our alkaline water, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I was seriously considering a remodel to put in an RO system (they take up a lot of space) until I saw how much water it wasted (water here isn't cheap) and how much periodic maintenance cost.
I've got a gravity-fed emergency water filtration system that claims it can purify 17,000 gallons before the filters need to be replaced, and my house backs up to a lake.
I want to drill a well (somehow it's still legal in my suburb) but $$$$
(With a well, a generator, and a 1000-gallon propane tank, a person could survive quite some time IMO. With propane deliveries, chickens, goats, 1 ac planted - i mean indefinite sounds like too long but a very very long time seems accomplishable)
All I really did was start doubling up on staples at the grocery store shortly after the Ukraine situation started. After a few months we were fully stocked. Keep it on extra shelves in my home office and we just rotate them into our regular cooking.
Having been driving across Spain two weeks ago when the protests started there, it's amazing that we're not seeing them here over this sort of thing. The tractors started rolling on February 6th to block highways and have been at it nonstop since over the latest EU regulations banning even more different types of fertilizer while allowing Moroccan (and other) imports of the same foods with them. I guess the corporatization of our farming is much bigger than I thought, and American's are much meeker than we're lead to believe.
I typically would've considered myself a "free market" conservative for a long time, but I've evolved over the last few years to more of a TR Rooseveltian outlook - we need to keep these big businesses competing, and keep the playing field level for national versus international. It's insane that we put in these regulations, and then basically encourage big companies to end run around them and go foreign.
"I guess the corporatization of our farming is much bigger than I thought, and American's are much meeker than we're lead to believe."
What I'd suggest here is that the tractor protests are born from a lifelong realization that European governments are simply royalty by another name, and they have to be fought to a standstill in Magna Carta style from time to time.
The American farmer assumes he can vote his way out of anything unpleasant. Which was legitimate for a long time. It's no longer legitimate. So when the aforementioned farmer realizes that, he'll take similar action -- plus he'll be armed.
You're much closer to it than me for the US folks, so that makes sense. I wonder if conditions here will allow it, because over there the police let a lot of it happen for folks to blow off steam. With how things are going here, I'd imagine the response would be just as well armed as the farmers and would look nothing like the BLM "response"
“So when the aforementioned farmer realizes that, he'll take similar action -- plus he'll be armed.”
They’re not going to do shit. Just like that trucker boycott of NYC that Breitbart et all were jerking themselves off over all weekend…until it didn’t happen, and Conservative, Inc immediately memory holed it.
One of the worst things about conservatives is this continual fantasy they engage in that “real Americans” are going to finally “do something.” It’s increasingly pathetic.
This is a good point. 2nd amendment ends up acting like an adult pacifier. Europeans, French in particular will take to the streets real quick. In the US it’s always “just you wait, keep pushing, we got guns!”
Part of that is because of the guns. Everybody understands that large scale European protests don't get people killed. Here in the USA that's only true for approved protests like BLM. Anything about real issues and there will be murders and executions.
Guns are a self-neutralizing totem for the right in that they make righties feel safe, but in a country THIS RIVEN by antipathy, only friendly laws, judges and juries can keep you safe. "The right has all the guns" and those guns don't do much, the right will be rolled up by the cops instantly if they even post on facebook: https://www.deseret.com/2023/8/9/23826780/witnesses-fbi-kill-utah-man-threats-biden-social-media
Not to blackpill of course. In your neck of the woods the situation is much better!
What I'm trying to say is that the first time we have a full-scale right-wing protest in this country, the Feds will open fire. The only reason it didn't happen on Jan 6 was because it was basically a guided tour of the Capitol that only got retconned into "insurrection" after everybody went home.
I absolutely agree. The only reason it hasn't happened yet is that most of the people who WOULD or COULD do something live in red states. Until the federal government significantly changes their way of life, it won't happen.
Eventually the dam does break. I have enough guns and ammo I think it might happen in my lifetime, but not enough where I definitely think it will. But yeah, it's mostly conservative fantasy. WACO was 30 years ago. Has it gotten any better?
In spite of all of the wailing, Americans still live too well for there to be a large revolt. Shit needs to seriously break before there will be any real pushback on the powers that be.
To be more specific, I'm not implying this will happen over Trump or gay frog birth control. It won't happen until farmers see children dying en masse in rural areas because the food goes directly to migrant zones.
I'm thinking about the Cliven Bundy cattle stand off where a bunch of armed rednecks made the BLM and FBI blink. The lesson worth remembering is the Fed Cops don't want to go home in bag either.
In 2020 we saw the closest thing to real-life executions, all the executions were executions *by libs* of conservatives, and only one of the two commie executioners got any sort of reaction. The executioner in Denver was not even charged!
The video of the communist revenge execution of Aaron Danielson below is beyond belief, it was actually coordinated murder---you've can clearly observe:
-team operating out in the open with multiple vehicles (kitted out Jeep Grand Cherokee, Dodge charger)
-shot callers (identifying who to murder)
-support crews (driving support vehicles, swarming the scene after)
-clean up crews (see the guys running around the scene with flashlights to pick up shell casings)
-videographer to produce video to demoralize their opposition
-videographer himself was a part of the murder squad - he falsely claims having mace in his face as a code to let the antifa murder team to know the cops are coming
Right wingers acting like they'll take action - outside of friendly spots in ID or NH perhaps - is the biggest hope cope of all time. Left wing death squads already exist, already are training in real life, and have already drawn first blood. They've committed open air coordinated murder *ON VIDEO* and with the exception of Michael Reinoehl none of them ever faced consequences. I've never seen a right winger do much other than turn the other cheek (Kyle Rittehouse was a civic nationalist CENTRIST, who regularly disavows the right wing) but I'd invite anyone to correct me.
The Denver thing is nuts. Spraying bear spray can get you killed? But drawing a pistol on someone and trying to shoot them, or trying to take their head off with a skateboard, has to go to a jury.
"(Kyle Rittehouse was a civic nationalist CENTRIST, who regularly disavows the right wing) "
Let me offer some perspective: if you have to shoot in self-defense, whether you're found guilty of anything or not, you have to spend the rest of your life treading very carefully. Otherwise you'll be sued and SWATted and your employers will be harassed until you're flat broke and suicidal.
given how the right wing seems to have more people that are vastly more competent with firearms, I kinda expected some dude to reach out and touch them at 600 yards. There must be guys out there who can make these shots regularly. A sniper in their AO would rattle them pretty bad. Fry The Brain apparently talks about this
And again as a naive American, maybe I give us too much credit, but I wonder how much of it is that many Americans just quietly ignore laws because we’re spread out and there’s a lot of us and culturally we don’t mind breaking the rules, versus Europe where none of that is true. For instance in IL they passed some draconian gun control laws where you must register your “assault weapons” and “hicap” mags. A vast vast majority of us (like 90%+) just…didn’t. Fuck ‘em. Why take to the streets and paint a target on yourself when you can just ignore them?
I of course moved whatever scary guns I may or may not have out of state immediately, but you know, everyone else.
I think a lot of "tragic boating" snark on the part of my friends won't survive a Louis Katona style ATF visit where they shove your wife into a miscarriage, stomp kittens in the yard, and put a gun in your mouth about it. Much of the tradcon rhetoric is designed for the world, and the Supreme Court, of 1955.
" “oh here you go, sweetie, go pretend to be Jack London online in your little fancy station wagon while Mommy finishes paying the bills for the month.”
This is a real thing, a woman tried do get me to do it .
" P.S. I lost by ten feet, more’s the pity." (you're just jealous)
"In what world is it “inherently cool” to disrespect moms? " in my world it is . a sad thing to be sure but I didn't choose it that way .
"That’s why nothing you see online feels like it’s worth reading anymore. " happily this isn't so by a long shot .
I love my unsweetened Cheerios, thanx for ruining them for me Jack .
So: who's producing good motorcycle content these days? I enjoy the stuff at Revzilla's Common Tread, especially Courts and Henning when they go race a sidecar rig in New England or ride Honda trail bikes across Alaska.
Revzilla is inherently suspect because they're a dealer, but yeah I think they're okay. I've been reading the British magazines for a very long time because there are fewer differences between the dealer inventories in Europe and America for bikes. (Notwithstanding the fact that we don't get the little ones.)
Revzilla’s Lemmy bought basically the same exact Bandit as my old one, within a month of me, and did a fantastic write up of it, so chalk me up as a fan of theirs, for the used retrospectives anyways.
I’ve been watching a lot of YT motorcycle content but it’s all rebuilding old Honda CBs. Kentucky Yankee and Motorcycle Rewind are both good and amateurish and earnest. Common Motorcycle Collective is OK but the dude is very Lieberman esque.
I'll have to check that out. Love the old CBs; my first bikes were a pair of '73 CB350s I bought out of a woman's shed for $300 after her husband passed. Now I'm sitting here thinking about how much I loved riding those, but hated rebuilding carburetors.
Common Motor Collective is good for instructional videos on how to fix old CB's, plus has a very good store for parts. big help for getting my 73 CB350 back on the road. For sheer entertainment and knowledge, I go to FortNine. Best overall that I've seen.
"It would mean that candidates with genuinely different positions could aggressively “primary” the existing elected Democrats..."
Buffalo, NY is one such city where the local Republican party does not even bother to run a candidate in elections anymore, including the mayoral race. Elections for any citywide office essentially come down to the Democratic primary. In the last race for mayor, the "change agent" came in the form of "Democratic Socialist" candidate India Walton, who won the primary over four-term incumbent mayor Byron Brown, who is very much an establishment Democrat. This meant that India Walton was the only candidate on the ballot for the November election, and the local Democratic Party had no choice but to endorse her as their candidate. And yet, she still lost the election. Byron Brown launched a successful write-in campaign and won a record fifth term as mayor.
Primary elections have been a disaster for parties and for our options. I'm all for bringing back the smoke filled rooms and letting the parties operate as the private organizations that they should be.
This happens all over in deep red and deep blue cities, and it's how we get AOC or Matt Gaetz. The primaries are all driven by the biggest wingnuts who turn out and vote for loudmouths who promise them the world because the sensible, establishment type negotiates and delivers incremental change.
Frankly, the parties aren't able to focus on winning elections and choosing a candidate who can because they have to be so terrified of their activist base. The Democrats have been this way post-Obama who leveraged the activist types to get in and Republicans fell for it with Trump who ran that playbook even better and absolutely wrecked the party in blue and purple states.
Turnout in these primary elections is historically so low, it doesn't really take many wingnuts to secure a win for their loudmouth candidate of choice. It could present an opportunity for a positive "change agent" type of candidate, but so far in reality it has mostly seemed to benefit the extremist types.
Exactly! It's really hard for a positive change agent to get past the activist wing nuts, especially in urban areas where they've built a non-profit industrial complex that really controls the party and drives turnout for these.
A base election like that is always about motivation, and the wingnuts who are deeply invested are much easier to turn out to vote versus anyone else.
There is nowhere near enough scrutiny of corruption in non-profits. Everyone looks at big organizations like Susan G. Komen, but how many receive sweetheart deals from local/county/state governments? Quite a few that we know of. Not to mention the number of people who cycle between .gov jobs and non-profits.
Nailed it! The real revolving door is between the non-profit "services" contractors to local governments and the government positions that decide the contracting. Everyone loves complaining about it for defense contractors, but there's way more of these.
“Trump who ran that playbook even better and absolutely wrecked the party in blue and purple states.”
This. The GOP is dead and buried in places like the Chicago collar counties, largely because of Trump, but also because of demographic shifts. It’s not coming back.
The remaining base is just fine with this, and continues to increase its isolation from politicians and voters that aren’t completely loyal to Trump. This is not how you win national elections.
On the contrary, Trump is actually making gains in heavy urban areas and with the black vote. He won't win a majority but he can win enough to put the assumed permanent Dem hammerlock in question. And immigration is one of the key issues. Shutting down schools and community centers to house, feed, *and fund* immigrants by the million is not sitting well with residents in neglected urban areas that haven't seen a Republican anywhere near a local office in nigh unto a century.
It's even causing some of them to question whether or not they've been getting played as suckers by the party of Jim Crow all along.
The Bush GOP is dead. Or very nearly so in a literal sense. Establishment republicans are not a sellable candidate anywhere in the US. Their hold on power is all that keeps them where they are at, but even that slips more by the day.
Republicans are such fuckwits, so they probably all voted for the establishment scumbag rather than launch an effort to put someone reasonable on the ballot. Even if they’re only a single digit portion of the electorate, that was probably enough to tilt it.
And of course, even when they haven’t held office in years, and don’t even bother fielding candidates, the Republicans are still the boogeyman in big city politics.
Good thing I've never really eaten Cheerios, and I can't remember the last time I ate ANY boxed cereal. But I get your point.
The bigger point, of course, is What Can Normal People Do?
I remember somebody writing that one purpose of the law is to prevent acts of vigilantism against criminals. It seems that at this point, large-scale vigilantism is the only answer to so many of our problems.
Refusing to sell accommodations, services or goods to illegal aliens, in direct violation of nondiscrimination law. Lynching burglars. Burning carjackers alive. Beating shoplifters unconscious. Shooting rioters en masse. Rounding up "youths" and "good boys" in hoods from sea to shining sea. Public "Bonfire of the Vanities" -style destruction of cheap foreign-made products.
Things civilized people should never have to do. But what other course of action is there when the people we appoint to keep order WON'T?
It's entirely dependent on the bread and circuses.
If the Uniparty can keep the Cheetos and Netflix coming, most Americans will be happy to descend into a South African or Eritrean level of public insanity. Most of us will accept a frog-boiling as long as we have SOMETHING to lose.
If the power turns off, however, and people think it's not going to be reliably turned back on, you'll see violence ASAP. I wouldn't want to be a stranger traveling my road on Day Six of any such scenario.
The one thing, THE ONLY THING, keeping criminals on both sides of the law alive in modern America is normal people's belief that we still have SOMETHING to lose.
I've changed my opinion of Netflix somewhat. It's not the same as doom-scrolling where the algorithm shows you what's next. Of course they use an algorithm for recommendations but you are free to search whatever content you want and watch it or not. The content is also, usually, full-length so it can be described more as entertainment than a dopamine fix. I'm not saying it's a good thing, only far less evil than the others from that regard.
This is so true. Had our power turned off for 18 hours last week because the grid couldn't cope after a storm.
Suddenly DGAF Luke was researching batteries for solar, vehicles with v2L capabilities, writing letters to members, campaigning for coal power upgrades. I never felt so insulted in my life.
What can normal people do? Reject the strictures of our "betters".
Start with personal choices. The food pyramid is a scam. Do the opposite. Eat more protein and animal products, as unadulterated as possible. Grain finished and fed beef isn't ideal, but it's at least not full of the shit that's in Cheerios. (Even the name is sinister) Eggs are actually very nutritious and not bad for you. Lift weights.
Learn how to handle medical emergencies. Teach your kids crucial life skills. Teach them critical thinking because Lord knows they aren't getting it in school or college.
Read sources the mainstream media insists are too dangerous. Don't necessarily believe them, but read them and know what they say. Compare and contrast.
Get involved in local political and policy concerns.
To quote my departed grandfather, you can't clean up the whole world but you can at least pick up the trash in the front yard.
Control what you can. Do what you can. And when you have the opportunity to do more, you do that. Because ultimately that is all we can do.
Yesterday our esteemed host learned me on IG that GnR used to have someone actually named Gun in the band. Having stopped paying attention to rock when David Lee Roth left Van Halen I was ignorant of this. Knowing Jack holds GnR in high regard I started to listen to their first album but soon gave up and sent Tidal to Women and Children First.
I don't know if they still do this but when I originally purchased WaCF enclosed like a toy in a box of Apple Jacks was a poster of David Lee Roth wearing only leather pants on his knees and bound to a chain link fence. Listening yesterday I remembered visiting 1820 Candle Company in East Palestine and seeing that poster on the wall in the room where they make their candles. Hadn't seen one in years.
When Biden visited last week the only business that would let him in was 1820 Candle. I know for certain that the nicest restaurant in town refused to have him. Anyway, this has been a long winded way to tell you all that while Joey was listening to the few folks that would talk to him on the wall right across from him was a bound, bare chested David Lee Roth and that really amused me and I just had to tell somebody.
No Cheerios but I do eat a big ass bowl of Quaker Oatmeal every morning rationalizing that's what allows me to indulge in paczkis filled with butter cream wedding cake frosting. One more thing they're taking from me.
1- It's becoming easier and easier to see that these younger hack writers are trash. They repeat the same things over and over again. Am I the only one who feels like it is just history repeating with different actors?
2- We do have cereal in our house, but overall try to stay away from it. Most dyes are banned when we can help it. It makes a GIANT difference for our oldest.
3- The Uniparty IS the house... and the house almost always wins. We're sort of in the last death throws of it just due to the unrest in the culture. That's why they feel the need to censor and force people into unavoidable situations. I was extremely anti UBI, but I have to say I've been swaying given the track we're on. If I'm thinking this and I'm far from left, that's NOT good. Desperation breeds more than just a revolution fought via violence.
I could almost forgive the born and raised in NYC "journalists" who fail to understand anything outside of their bubble. After all, they've never left the bubble and have no desire to.
What gets my goat are the guys like Jack highlights above. They all do this weird Hunter S. Thompson cosplay, but are not smart/crazy enough to come anywhere close. Instead, we get these contrived stories about "mobbing" some piece of machinery that sound like they were written by Ron Swanson but with the writing ability of an eighth grader.
"Instead, we get these contrived stories about "mobbing" some piece of machinery that sound like they were written by Ron Swanson but with the writing ability of an eighth grader."
To be fair, that was SUPPOSED to be a composite and not represent any singular person. Matt is just an easy target. He went from the guy who did fun/stupid things in cars on film (Bullrun, All Cars Go to Heaven) to shilling for stupid watches and branded ink pens. It's kind of sad in a way.
A lot of these guys practice some weird caricature of masculinity, which is why they get so offended when called out. Not that you needed me to explain this to you.
"If you can’t pour raw CPU-manufacturing effluvium into the Colorado River, you shouldn’t be allowed to buy something that’s made by pouring raw CPU-manufacturing effluvium into the Yangtze. Why isn’t this broadly understood?"
Because this whole green initiative is a hoax. If you buy a diesel Ford Super Duty pickup, it will have about 25ft of extraneous piping, valves, heat exchangers, sensors and whatnot for pollution control. It will have an exhaust that most resembles a Mk12 torpedo both in length and girth, that has about $2000 worth of noble metals in it to bind carcinogens. This whole shebang will be worth exactly $0 when the truck reaches about 75.000-150.000miles, depending on load. At which point it will flash a light at the owner to go to a Ford dealer and spend about double an average American household's monthly income on renewing all of this.
If you're buying the same truck from one of the dealers in the Middle East, half of the engine bay will be empty. It won't even have EGR. Because air doesn't come back to us from those brown people, right?
Same if you buy something with a Cummins in it. The magic word is "oilfield duty" - this removes every piece of pollution control equipment invented since the 80s from the engine.
> If you're buying the same truck from one of the dealers in the Middle East, half of the engine bay will be empty. It won't even have EGR. Because air doesn't come back to us from those brown people, right?
It doesn’t, not significantly anyways.
Pollution control on cars improves local air quality. That’s actually a pretty huge public health benefit and quality of life improvement for tens of millions of Americans.
The amount of confusion between local air quality and CO2 emissions is so vast as to be deliberate. Some of us believe they only moved on to targeting CO2 emissions because the efforts to improve air quality were so successful that the environmental lobby was in danger of becoming obsolete, so what else are we going to do to push our global dystopian agenda if we can’t scare them with asthma and acid rain anymore?
In the quest for MPGs, didn't DI pretty much set all that back 10-20 years? All of these government policies lack any understanding of what they are going to potentially do. California says its a consumption and CO and CO2 problem. Companies say ok, how about DI? California says "No No No, not like that."
The shit in our food is evidence of what I've been banging on about in comments here since the start: We only think that the name at the top of the ticket makes a difference when in reality most of the decisions that impact our lives, our health, and our fortunes are being made by unaccountable government actors in league with malevolent multi-national corporate interests to whom they regularly go for big paychecks when not "serving" in government.
This must stop, and it will only stop by application of deliberate and overwhelming force. That force is available to us through the ballot box and the jury box...for now. And if we don't make use of it real fucking quick we'll be stuck resorting to the cartridge box and friend you do not want to live in that world because there is no coming back from it. It will involve acts of violence that will absolutely destroy the soul of anyone involved. Imagine someone going to a private elementary school where the scions of our self styled elites are being educated to continue the evil empire their parents have profited from and utterly destroying every living soul there and the person who did that being hailed as a hero by 1/4 of the country and another 1/4 saying "Well, what did you expect to happen?" in response.
That's only the beginning of the future if we don't get a handle on this shit and get everybody to remember that the constitution was an agreement between a bunch of people who didn't trust anybody else to keep behind some lines so we don't devolve into violent bedlam.
And unfortunately what I'm talking about ain't the future, as anyone who bothered to look at the hot takes on Twitter in the aftermath of the shootings at the Nashville School or Osteen's church or the cheering for Hamas happening at Harvard could tell you. *It's the present.* But it takes putting it as something happening in an elite NY prep school before somebody will recognize it's happening right now and that our fate as humans is that there is an equal and horrible reaction for every such action.
People who fantasize about government troops jackbooting the shit out of people who refuse to give up their AR15...door to door confiscation by the national guard was actually proposed in the Virginia legislature...don't understand what happens next.
And I'm on bended knee begging with tears in my eyes, put the fucking pin back in or you WILL kill us all. Civilization is a gossamer thin construct that will evaporate right in front of your eyes. Slowly at first, and then all at once. And when that happens you and your children will never again see a peaceful day.
That kind of devolution is a choice, and one we don't have to make.
and im begging you to get a paid subscription so i can get takes like this more often
From an email I sent to a group of like minded friends: "Call me a coward, but as something of an amateur historian of 20th century conflicts and having a glimpse of what was going on when my cousin was in Iraq in 2007 I would do almost anything to avoid an open conflict on US soil. "Loss of life" does not even begin to describe what happens in a modern civil war."
NYC will have bodies five feet deep in the streets.
At least that'll match the bags of trash stacked five feet high.
I've not always had time to wade through the mass of comments on here these days, but snark like this is one of the reasons I do
ice does snark pretty damn well
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9rl_J9kdnM&t=294s Slowest motion possible. Start at 4:52. You'll know when to freeze frame. It's only 1, but it's a start. I think it's a chick.
So THAT'S what Heaven looks like!
Wow...
It's too late. We've already passed the tipping point. The only question is when it will start, and where.
I don't agree. I think a great deal of the public has been misled by false narratives and that they are waking up to reality. I see a potential reckoning of epic proportions on the horizon...and I'm not alone in seeing it. I think there are people inside the giant unaccountable machine who recognize the beginnings of a popular revolt against their rule that will wipe them out completely and that they're trying to get ahead of it.
The deep state is at a crisis point on what to do. Doubling down on authoritarianism in an ever more nakedly open ways is what a chunk of them are most definitely doing by reflex, and in so doing only making it more and more evident what's happening. The deep state nakedly subverting the Constitutional order makes it impossible for the deep state to continue existing. The more sophisticated actors with in it realize that their power exists only so long as it is not clearly seen by the man in the street.
What I think is most likely is a realignment. I think the smarter people within the deep state/shadow state recognize that some sort of reckoning will be necessary. And I think they'll offer up the dumber ones responsible for some of the more excessive acts as an acceptable sacrifice as they look to make a deal with an emerging political reality that makes even business as usual 25 years ago impossible.
To survive, I think they'll make a deal that has the appearance of reform without having nearly as much function as I would like. Give the "intelligence community" and other assorted would-be masters of our universe the choice between quiet survival or an all-out war of annihilation that they know they cannot win and I think they pick survival all day. It will mean a purge of their ranks but I think they'll happily offer up the foaming-at-the-mouth fanatics in their number with glee...because, after all, who the fuck wants those people around anyway?
That, too, is not new. The Church Committee came to be due to overreaching during the 60's, producing accountability that they had to work hard to manage. And they did it successfully, finding new casus belli in fighting the Cold War. And viola, in a few short years the institutions that had murdered JFK, MLK, RFK, and Malcom, that had plotted terrorist acts across the nation to justify starting a war for Cuba, that had planted cells in Europe to destabilize even NATO partners, that had partnered with organized crime to run drugs guns and people across the world filling cities with poison that would enslave entire generations...POOF...suddenly wrapped themselves in the flag of patriotism and fighting the communists to protect FREEDOM AND LIBERTY AND MOM AND APPLE PIE.
So successfully, I might add, that Benji Shapiro and Sean Hannity practically trip over themselves to defend those actors to this day.
"Dude, that's hardly a rosy picture." Yeah, it's not intended to be. But the optimistic part is that not all utterly corrupt power brokers are simultaneously catastrophically stupid on top of it. And thus survival and even some level of recovery is entirely possible even if purging their corruption from our body politic entirely isn't.
If you look at the Trump verdict, you can understand what the Left is dealing with.
They hate Trump so badly, and are so afraid of his return to the presidency that they've completely thrown the mask away. They stand revealed as totalitarians who'll go to any length to get their man...
...but everything they do digs them deeper into this public-relations pit they've made for themselves. They really can't win peacefully at this point.
I want to be clear: I do not see the vitriol against Trump to be a phenomenon of right or left, but of top and bottom. The unaccountable machine loathes Trump because of what Trump represents. He is the lighting rod of populist revolt that has been brewing for generations.
He's not the source or sustainment of it...he's just found himself on its back riding it. The high profile lawfare screwjobs have been a giant red suppository shoved up the rectum of normies. The things that have been done against Trump and Kyle Rittenhouse and various other targets of the "mainstream" press in service to the machine have shown what the machine has always done to dissidents and the downtrodden.
There's a credible argument to be made that the same sorts of people who brought us the Tuskegee experiments ran a great big one on the entire nation. The psychological experiments the "intelligence community" ran on prisoners and political dissidents in the 50's and 60's has been commoditized, digitized, and run on LITERALLY EVERYONE'S CHILDREN with the advent of social media. The abuses inside the federal prison system which used to be confined to accused drug dealers are now brought against non-violent January 6th protesters.
The end result of all that is that normies have increasingly begun seeing themselves in the crosshairs of stuff that used to only happen to the fringes of society and it's causing a wide array of people to rethink everything they assumed about the motivations of people in government. I can't tell you how many times I've seen "If they're doing this to Trump, what makes you think they aren't going to do it to you?"
...and this is not just fluff. Policing in America was dealt a severe blow during COVID when departments announced that they wouldn't be coming for any but the most severe calls for service while simultaneously enforcing legally dubious lockdown policies at gunpoint. A shitload of thin blue line stickers got scraped off of trucks and SUVs because people who had believed that the police were the good guys suddenly got a very rude reminder that armed agents of the state are *always* a potential menace to even the most basic civil rights. A good many people who believed the 9/11 NYPD police are heroes concept suddenly got a good look at just how many people in uniform pledge allegiance to their dental plan.
Bye bye traditional "conservative" support for "backing the blue!"
The institutions are discrediting themselves at a rapid pace. The extent of the problem could be witnessed in the US Supreme Court's hearing on the Colorado case to keep Trump off the ballot where EVERY JUSTICE expressed doubts on Colorado's arguments so severe that a good many analysts expect the USSC to unanimously reject the effort. And they kind of have to if the judiciary is to retain any credibility. And at least some members of the court seem to be actually thinking about the "and what happens next?" question by pointing out that under these novel theories nothing is stopping the other side from fully embracing the exact same theories and doing the very same thing.
And increasingly in populist circles there is a growing number of voices saying that the appropriate response to the weaponization of government is to weaponize in the other direction until the people doing it now cry uncle. And maybe even not stop when that happens.
...and, really, who can blame them? What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
And that's how we end up in an argument over who controls the guest list for the camps. None of that happens if the institutions themselves shed this nonsense and at least go back to pretending not to be picking a side. Some sacrifice of the more extreme agitators and claiming that they're all good now is something the normies can accept.
That's why I think it's the most likely outcome. It's the easiest fix for everybody. Purge the most extreme actors and put all the blame for everything that went wrong on them. Some of them go to jail and the people behind get to play patriotic reformer. Big tech and big corporations get chastened, but never face full accountability for the death and havoc they have wrought.
DC keeps getting paid. Corporations keep making money. Mr. and Mrs. America have a more normal quality of life and soon enough they'll stop being angry about what happened.
Nicely done!
You know, I'm sorry I won't live to read the books 26th Century historians write about America.
QotD: [we all] got a good look at just how many people in uniform pledge allegiance to their dental plan.
"The unaccountable machine loathes Trump because of what Trump represents"
While I agree with this, this doesn't reconcile the fact that even in 2016, after he defeated Clinton, people that I'd consider moderates or moderate left seemed to just seemed to hate him. Even after I pointed out that his policies were that far different than Clinton's husband's. They bought into the Russia narrative. They bought into the "both sides" hoax, they bought into the election interference narratives. These same "moderates" then refuse to consider any wrongdoing by the otherside?
Are there right wing/deep staters that have the same vitriol against Trump? Absolutely. They pale in comparison. The left still thinks he's Hitler.
I disagree. They're not that smart and they're not that charitable.
There's going to be a war.
Look at history.
Nothing can stop it. The only question is: when?
We're already in the opening stages of it.
I am sanguine as well. The purging of any better angels has already happened. The stage where they toned down the assassinations and coups and instead wrapped themselves in the flag and apple pie was when they directed their gaze on US citizens and now the gloves are off. Snowden might have triggered a chance at reversal. That was a decade ago.
Throwing the borders wide open is perhaps a last act of desperation, both to have a new domestic army to draw from and to keep the rabble on their heels and off the ruling class' collective throats.
As for the deal-cutters Tim described, snakes like that are not to be trusted.
oh boy
fifth column time
Pinned.
You do know that what he's talking about in regards to the school thing did actually happen in a european country (I won't say which) and the man who did it is regarded as a saint now?
He's regarded by CERTAIN people as a saint, anyway. Not sure the man on the street there agrees. Of course, the media of the state had their say on it.
Indeed. But his elevation from homicidal monster to what some twisted minds would laud as some sort of freedom fighter has been a more recent phenomenon, and that in light of how things have...evolved or degraded...since. With the Nashville shooting the blood hadn't even stopped flowing before radicals who still have a place in polite society were on twitter lamenting there weren't more dead Christian kids or insisting "what did you expect" when Tennessee's legislature has expressed doubts about chemically and physically castrating teenagers.
The lack of a gap there is the disturbing part. I was pretty online in various discussion forums when Brevik did his evil deed and I don't remember a single contemporaneous statement about it being an act of spiritual or social hygiene. With Nashville the bile and vitriol was instant.
The steps between the people doing that and the people who gleefully filmed themselves raping and murdering innocent people at a music festival for peace in Israel are short and few...and that genie can't be stuffed back in the bottle.
Oh no, there were a lot of people who made some 'back handed' comments about just who the people were he killed. The 'freedom fighter' bit isn't recent. I heard about it form folks over in Europe after the initial fuss has settled down.
Everyone knew over there that he'd targeted the children of the ruling class. Everyone quickly saw that he gutted the ruling class that most people despised (or at least most of the ones I heard from). The effect on the nation's politics has been profound too.
And no, I would not say the 'steps are few'. I would not say that at all. There are zero similarities between the two events.
I don’t? Norway?
Sweden
“will have a single guiding ethos that I hope comes through every single time you open a link: that powersports are inherently cool.”
Given that the single guiding ethos coming through every time I open a link in the automotive “enthusiast” press is “cars are bad and you’re a Neanderthal for liking them” I’ll take J-Klo’s, thanks very much.
Note, however, the emphasis on "powersports", rather than "motorcycles".
Maybe there’s some signal here I’m too dense to pick up, but I like other power sports too, assuming they mean ATVs, SxS, jet skis, snowmobiles, etc.
Or is this some veiled power bottom reference or something I’m not getting?
The veiled reference is, basically, "SxS manufacturers have PR budget now, because sales are on the rise, while motorcycle manufacturers are moving their budget to influencers like the adorable Aya Dijkwel, so it's gonna be a whole lot of SxS from now on."
Fair enough. I get how that’s annoying. But still seems better than “this hobby is terrible and we should all hate ourselves for our involvement in it.”
That's never been the position of the motorcycling press, thankfully. It wasn't even the position at RideApart prior to Jonasponcon's arrival. I'll be curious to see if RideApart's enthusiasm carries over to things like ElectraGlides, or if THOSE are bad for the planet.
I mean in general the motorcycle community is so small, and the miles done per motorcycle outside of a few diehards/heroes/ironbutts so low, and the mpg efficiency of bikes so high, that no one should care about the environmental impact of motorcycles.
Plodders gotta plod Jack .
Hence the Electroglide, it's actually a much better bike than my (first generation) 1965 PanHead ever was .
-Nate
Well it does have “Electra” in the name
They said they were interested in cool powersports.
That this professional conman even thinks he has to tell enthusiasts that vehicles are awesome says more about HIM than the audience.
I, for one, am glad he told me that it's ok to think powersports are cool. I've thought that for a long time. I'm so happy he verified I wasn't engaging in wrong-think.
I mean yeah, that’s the cynical way to look at it. But if you read it sincerely, as I did, the message is “hey every other platform tells you you should feel bad for liking this stuff. We won’t.” But I could be naive.
You have a point. It's really sad he thinks he has to say that.
2024 path to differentiate yourself for an enthusiast audience: “We are enthused!”
My first thought after reading this: This clown is going to Jalopnik my redneck hobbies, isn't he?
With any luck, he'll be back to writing "Deal of the Day" posts covering cheap impact guns and no-name lithium jump starters by next year.
Sounds like "The Drive."
I don't know why I visit that site. I don't even like it. Force of habit, more than anything else.
The one on that site that really annoys me is Andrew Collins' "Will It Dog?" where he writes about how well a car can handle several of the filthy beasts.
Dude, aren't you married? Why aren't you writing a column called "Will It Child?"
It took me years to break my TTAC habit. Ok, probably months, but it was a lot of months.
Once Jack and Derek were gone I found I didn't like any of the other writers so much.
Tim Healey was hired to kill it. Which he did.
Your articles about the behind-the-scenes stuff going on there in those days were really interesting.
One more to go!
Finally happened for me in the last week or two! What other sites are there just for brief bits of car news, e.g., changes to existing models, etc.?
Automotive News plus Archive.is?
That's exactly where I was going. Prior to Rideapart, Klein was a typist at The Drive. He's commented here before. IIRC, it was an article where Jack called out another "journalist".
I’ve driven around with two golden retrievers tethered to the roll bar of my Miata...anything “dogs”.
If anyone wants the "Will it child?" question answered in regards to supercars, just get me one for a week or two and I'll let you know.
Marty and Jennifer both fit in the passenger seat of a DeLorean.
They could probably both fit in the passenger seat of a McLaren 650S, too.
People weren't as zaftig in the 80s.
Takes on a whole new meaning on drive.co.uk 😬
Which is a blatant rip-off of Torch's original 'Will it baby?" articles on Jalopnik.
I at least got Torch's permission to do a "Will it Zayde?" as I've been babysitting and picking up grandsons since I still had access to press cars.
I would knock on a thousand freaking doors if one of them was Tulsi’s bedroom door!
I photographed her in 2020 when she was running for the Democratic nomination. She is a handsome woman, lots of charisma. But she said Hillary is a warmonger and you can't have that.
Tulsi is the most moderate of the political class, and what she says about kilery is accurate.
I was all for bombing the shit out of the mideast back in 2001 and 2002, but watching how they fucked it up over the ensuing decades(!) has made me a peace-loving hippie. 2002 MD would not be able to recognize me, but I would hope he would be able to understand.
Same camp!
Same here as well. We should have left Saddam alone.
All the state department did was unleash Hell.
If we stayed in Afghanistan and focused just on OBL he would have never made it out of the Tora Bora caves. Instead we killed Saddam and Ghaddafi, made a run at Assad and in the process helped nurture the creation of ISIS. We also propped up the Pakistanis, let the Chinese catch up to us economically and weakened ourselves militarily to the point where Putin is emboldened enough to consolidate power (he will swallow what he wants of Ukraine by the end of the year). The worst thing we did is diminish our resolve to go after our enemies by staying in the middle east for so long for no good reason. If another 9/11 type attack happened, I dont know what our response would be now.
Saddam had taken Iraq from a poor backwater to a relatively advanced secularized state in the course of a few decades at the helm, putting nationalized BP oil money to work for his people. Things went sideways when he went at it with Iran (with our backing, funny enough). Gaddafi’s Libya was a similar story. Now they’re back to open air slave markets thanks to the forces of democracy at work in the form of Hillary.
Which is what made Hillary great. No pussyfooting round Assad or shaking hands with Kim Jong UN.
Hillary was ready at any time to put a million white kids in the meatgrinder.
Scratch that. I think she was EAGER for it.
But the minute Trump vague-threatened her with jail, we had to change the whole world to keep it from ever happening again.
Why are/were we at *all* interested in Assad?
We've got 100k+ overdose/fentanyl poisoning deaths a year, a decade long slide in life expectancy, and people like you are eager to fly across an ocean and then some to look for problems. Get a grip man.
Because the poor kids from Aleppo or something. Remember them harping on and on about that during the debates?
American kids clearly don't matter.
Lest we forget the whole "Arab spring" thing in 2011 was kicked off by the CIA/ State Department. Once Libya was destroyed the CIA started to funnel Libyan guns to Syrian "peaceful protestors." Can't we just leave the poor bastards alone? (rhetorical question, the answer is no, because muh Israel and oil traded in dollars).
I can't decide if middle-aged women are hotter than they've ever been, or if it's just that I'm middle-aged now and appreciate them more.
I am in agreement, but I tend to like softer lines.
It's both and neither. Diet and exercise have come a long way so the fitter woman typically looks better than ever but the average woman is chubbier than ever.
I'm so glad I'm not married to the average woman.
Aren't you married to the average Japanese woman? (Not really)
She's definitely not average as a Japanese woman for being married to me!
That's kinda profound.
Profoundly depressing.
It's your hindbrain trying to maximize opportunities.
...before the dying of the embers and the guttering of the candles.
I realized with sadness a little while ago MILF now means 'attractive woman my own age'.
I had to look her up, but with that silver streak in her hair, she's certainly not without her charms. Crikey.
Crikey is right!
Before I finish reading, I have to chime in on your counter interaction. As someone who spent the first 30 years of my life (except for college) within 25 miles of NYC and has now moved, interactions like this still shock me. We've been moving between CT, Nashville, and Florida for 3 years now and the fact that people are friendly and decent to strangers and service workers still give me pause. This morning here in Vero Beach the fact that the other two gentlemen in the coffee shop just wanted to chat about cycling and hobbies only had me wondering what their angle was and what they wanted from me!
In the bigger picture, it is a really nice breath of fresh air though. I just still have to get used to it in "middle America." The Miami chatter and friendliness make a lot more sense to me because it's just "my people," being a latin American city and all...
I’m from the East Coast and relocated to Chicagoland years ago, so I’m mostly used to friendly people in the public. But I was in St. Kitts and Nevis last year, and the people there are alarmingly friendly that you’re constantly convinced they’re trying to scam you or just sell you something. In my 5-6 days there, they never were, they were truly friendly. But in my defense, some of that anticipation is learned behavior from sketchier islands like Jamaica, St Thomas, Bahamas, etc.
A year spent in New York City, followed by a year spent in rural Ohio or Tennessee, will ABSOLUTELY educate any sensible human being as to why the former group of people don't want anyone to have a gun or even a knife while the latter group couldn't care less.
I know the NYC types are absolutely terrified of them, but why do you think that?
The true American rural culture is new to me, but I've always identified with it pretty well due to where my family is from in Spain. To me the huge gap is the credentials versus experience, and how that's used to prop up a false "elite" that knows nothing. They don't want to be overthrown!
"I know the NYC types are absolutely terrified of them, but why do you think that?"
They live in a place where it's assumed that everybody wants to do everyone harm -- and that said harm has to be prevented by a system. They think that because the average New Yorker of the non-Giuliani era has real and firsthand experience with street violence or robbery. This experience is now coming back into vogue after DiBlasio.
I've always live that way, but I was also taught that you need to be wary of your surroundings in the city. I'd also much rather be armed to defend myself than not, because I know it's my responsibility first.
I'm 32, and grew up under the Giuliani/Bloomberg eras with a father who's worked in NYC since the 80s. There's definitely a huge difference in outlook between the "locals" and the 2000s arrivals who only know the good years. What worries me, is that traditionally it was cyclical, but now I'm not sure they'll allow another law and order candidate to fix things.
I think the anti-gun thing is more out of fear, and in a way envy than anything. They've been taught to fear the weapon, because only "bad" people use them so they think they'll hurt someone rather than protect themselves. Then envy is because I think deep down, everyone wants to control their own destiny and many in NYC realize that they don't when it comes to their personal safety.
"Then envy is because I think deep down, everyone wants to control their own destiny and many in NYC realize that they don't when it comes to their personal safety."
When you listen to city mice blabbing about how WONDERFUL it is to ride the subway with the VIBRANT people of whom only a COWARD would be frightened, you realize that you're hearing the biggest "cope" in human history. Only an insane person would willingly expose their children or even their own bodies to the regular threat of random and uncontrollable violence. It's not "LIVING IN FEAR" to not want some homeless monster to masturbate in his pants while he locks eyes with your 4-year-old daughter on the subway.
Gun control in blue cities is one of the most glaring examples of anarcho-tyranny going.
I haven't entered a Subway since COVID and nearly everyone that I know will only get on them during rush hour when there's a crowd. Any city mice still saying that are clearly delusional and have only known the post-Giuliani safe NYC and continue to live their liberal fantasy.
It's also funny how despite all of the media propaganda, everyone I know has bought a place in the suburbs and moved out once they had kids. You're 100% right, no sane person is letting their kids grow up exposed to all of that. The only ones sticking to the city are the lifetime NYC-ers who have the money to avoid those problems.
Just look at the reporting on the "mass shooting" in Kansas City during the SB parade. Underage cretins in custody, identities undisclosed, but Daily Mail published the bangers pics. A week of pearl clutching about " gun violence" and what wretches we are as a society to permit mass shootings etc. anyone, and I mean everyone who lives near an urban area knew from the first moment what happened, and it wasn't a crazy dude shooting up a school.
Riding the train's fine.
As long as my Glock 19 or Steyr M40 can come too.
Exactly. There are lots of takes about Tucker Carlson showing the cleanliness of the Moscow subway, but watching that sniveling twerp John Stewart literally argue that the utter fucking disaster of the NY subway is a blessing of liberty defines the absurdity.
A sensible person might be able to conclude that perhaps there's a sensible middle ground between Vlad Putin's Russia and this twisted notion of being perfectly free to shit or shoot up in the fucking subway but to be criminally prosecuted if you pull a violent vagrant off an innocent woman.
Or as my friend Dan, a native of Brooklyn, used to describe New York:
"Hey, look at that guy with no pants wavin' that machete."
"What, him?"
"No, the other one."
Nothing wrong with firearms, they just need mandatory training before being allowed to have one .
-Nate
Replace 'firearms' with 'voting'.
Or reproducing.
And in Illinois that training will be state run only, cost $1500/class, available only on the 6th Tuesday of every month, and the only facility that can give it will be mysteriously closed 10 months out of the year.
The CCL class wasn't too bad. You actually have to pass "proficiency" which is pretty easy. Taking 6-8 months for a FOID is a bit of a joke. I also never pass the instant background check which gets annoying.
How about that chickenshit business Chicago pulled back in the 70s?
"You can have a gun in the city. You just have to fill out a form."
"Okay, give me a form."
"Oh, we don't print them anymore."
A state Senator in Oklahoma has introduced a bill called the "Common Sense Freedom of Press Control Act", which would require any one who works in media to:
1) Complete a criminal background check
2) Purchase a License from the state
3) Obtain $1 million in liability insurance
4) Attend an eight-hour “propaganda-free” safety training developed by PragerU
5) Submit to quarterly drug tests.
6) Each video or article must contain the following disclaimer:
“WARNING: THIS ENTITY IS KNOWN TO PROVIDE PROPAGANDA. CONSUMING PROPAGANDA MAY BE DETRIMENTAL TO YOUR HEALTH AND HEALTH OF THE REPUBLIC.”
https://www.kosu.org/local-news/2024-01-19/oklahoma-state-senator-authors-bill-to-limit-freedom-of-the-press
Redditors were outraged; I think putting "Common Sense" in the title was the coup de grâce.
I would literally burn myself in the public square, monk-style, if it would ensure passage of that bill.
Nah; we want you alive. It's just a Rhetorical Bill.
Even with PragerU involved?
Let's apply the same philosophy to laws that the gun-grabbers apply to firearms.
Let's take lawmaking power away from Congress and the various state legislatures, then we go around confiscating every law we can and dispose of them.
Only those laws which have a "legitimate" purpose should be allowed to exist, such as the Bill of Rights.
Run comprehensive background checks on potential lawmakers, and subject them to strict licensing requirements (with grave penalties for violations) to ensure they aren't given to totalitarian urges and fantasies about using Deadly Assault Laws to go on legislative rampages and murder dozens of innocent freedoms without reloading.
Ban high-capacity subsections so that lawmakers can only prohibit one thing at a time.
The Second Amendment isn't about shooting ducks and deer - it's about shooting dictators.
The equivalent to this is just in antiquity when they made proposers of new laws propose them and extol their virtues with a noose around their neck, kicking out the stool under their feet if the new law was not passed by the assembly.
This would dramatically improve the quality of American lawmakers, but I'm not sure if American graveyards and crematories would have enough space / capacity to keep up.
Then why aren't schools teaching it?
Also, do you feel the same way about speech?
Oddly, some schools did! To the best of my knowledge, the "Farmers" hail from Union NEW JERSEY:
https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/image-99.png
Sadly being well educated isn't a priority anymore .
As far as mandatory firearms training, this should be part of the public education curriculum same as math, science, history and so on .
-Nate
"Then why aren't schools teaching it?" .
Good question follow the money .
'gun grabbers' is a bullshit attempt to avoid taking any responsibility .
-Nate
It's all because they are trying to take away your right to self-defense so they can turn you into slaves, or kill you. Just like they've done every previous time.
The Second Amendment doesn't require any responsibility on the user of "arms".
Instead of subverting the constitution, politicians should just make an amendment to adjust or change the second amendment.
As much as I detest Gavin Newsom, He is correct on this approach.
Welcome to America! The shitter's full!
Seriously though, I think a defining trait of Americans is that we're a basically DECENT people, in a way the populations of other nations just aren't.
i mean canada is pretty great if you only deal with canadians
you lot are pretty amicable too
Canada, too.
In fact, Americans AWAY FROM THE COASTS and Canadians WEST OF ONTARIO are pretty similar.
i mean i had a lovely time on the canadian east coast
would recommend
Now that they've expanded the definition of Canadian, I'm not sure you're right anymore. Parts of Toronto remind me of Tehran.
The ACF annual gift should probably be an old print dictionary which defines words like "vaccine" and "Canadian".
when i say canadians i really mean that
multigenerational sorts and not the "new canadians"
I grew up just outside of NYC in the 60's and 70's - even some of the 80's.
The place has changed radically from what it once was, and I honestly have no desire to go anywhere near it (though family wants me to visit).
There used to be a lot of nice people there. Not anymore.
The government used to care about fighting crime. Not anymore.
It's another socialist hellhole now.
I grew up upstate with a father that did the M-F NYC commute for a good chunk of my childhood. The first time someone held a door for me when I was still 50' away at a Michigan Walmart in college I was on full alert expecting to get robbed or sold something I didn't want. I resisted it and was just the typical NY asshole living in the Mid-West for the duration of college.
Fast forward to me moving to Charlotte in 2015 I was again shocked and a bit frustrated by the kindness of strangers, it felt burdensome as a North Easterner. After a while I let my guard down and learned to reciprocate the kindness (not a much as I should if you ask my wife), and get frustrated at the lack of consideration for ones fellow man when I go back north.
Now in the almost 9 years that I've been here a considerable amount of Damn Yankees have made there way down as well, unfortunately; we as a cohort have definitely impacted southern charm in a negative way. Hopefully they all start to recognize the good change like I have slowly been allowing myself to do and we don't dilute away common courtesy all together.
I wonder if the uniparty is ever going to go after big agriculture like they went after big tobacco. The foods are obviously addictive. When I get a little too fluffy, I typically go back to keto. Bright side: It's seriously simple to lose weight cause, and here's the down side you get so bored eating the same 5 things over and over and over again, you just don't eat. But that first week? Withdrawal. Worse than caffeine withdrawal, worse than cigarette withdrawal. An entire week of brain fog from cutting out carbs. I can't wait to knock of these last 20lbs so I can eat a burger and fries again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCV1PfmvjgQ
Say what you will about him, but Obamna tried to take on Big Chicken.
Spoiler - he did not succeed - but not clear that anyone from any party would have succeeded in his place.
Source: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2012/11/09/obamas-game-of-chicken/
Chicken farming is perhaps the most horrifying modern industrial process. It's almost alien.
All industrial farming is pretty brutal. I try and buy the cage free eggs but I'm sure that's just a different scam.
It is. Unless you know the farm you're buying from, it is of zero good. The poultry industry may be as developed if not more so than the auto industry. It's INCREDIBLY mature.
I have a guy I try to keep buying from, but sometimes I have to go to the local equivalent of Whole Food or wherever hipsters buy shit in America. I'm sure the guy could probably tell me the names of the hens that laid the eggs and tell me their names.
And I'm reasonably sure that if I buy "free range" eggs here, they have to truly be free range. There are quite stiff regulations on both country and EU level about what can be called what.
I'm a monster so industrial farming doesn't bother me and I'll make it a point never to visit an industrial farm so I never have to come face to face with my dinner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR_4h5A5z_A
Exactly!
I don’t recall if I’ve ever read Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” but I’m sure it would make me question food choices!
And I like chicken, beef and pork way too damn much to risk it!
I know a delightful and incredibly iconoclastic Iranian-born Canadian fellow who worked in a chicken CAFO for some time.
Perhaps his experience impacted his delightfully sardonic wit. What he told me suggests it'd be better to starve to death than work in a chicken CAFO.
At work we own a division that does chicken farming. I’ve been there a few times. I don’t find it particularly bad to be honest. But I’ve also killed and gutted my own food before (deer) so I’m not squeamish. The conditions the chickens live in are not that bad all things considered, they have plenty of room to move around and all.
I think euros are infantile but on food they are right. Every time we have a trade deal that features agricultural products being sold there people in Europe go ape shit. And good for them. We cultivate and sell cheap poison.
A childhood friend of mine is a “protein broker” (i.e., he sells chicken in large quantities).
He no longer eats chicken (his choice).
Was he henpicked for the position? I'll show myself out.
Very good!!!
He is a probably 105 IQ guy who did a semester at a Directional State University but quit to take a job working the night shift in a chicken plant.
An IQ of ~105 might as well be a Rhodes Scholarship in the world of rural chicken plants, so he got promoted several times in quick order.
He works mostly from his phone / from home now and I’d guess probably pulls in $200-$300K.
He told me that if he HAD to eat fast food chicken, he would select Chick Fil A and then Popeyes, but nothing else. The Popeyes comment surprised me.
The best chicken I ever ate was purchased from the kid next door that was raising a brood to compete in FFA. I bought two of the “losers.” Processed poultry is not even playing the same sport.
Best chicken I ever ate was "poulet de ferme" (a proper, slightly skinny, long legged thing that had spent its life on its feet running around, rather than on its arse in a shed with 10,000 others) cooked on a rotisserie in Lacanau in SW France, where we had taken the kids for a surfing holiday. Served with potatoes cooked in the drippings from the chickens and a "stuffing" (it never made it into the chickens) that was essentially old French bread with mountains of butter and more garlic and herbs than you could fit in your palm. Wrong season, but I would almost jump in my car, hop on a ferry and cover the 500 miles today to get some more...not a bad memory of something that dates back to 2006!
poulet des rêves
Is the room for 1 more? Sounds delicious. We visited Lyon in 2017, and I could easily retire there. Food was fantastic.
😋😋
Michelle tried to help the kids not get fat and got put in her place really fast. In no world am I a fan of the Obamas, but I think they meant well there. The amount of fat kids out there is astounding. I don't make my kids eat Keto but the amount of sugar that average child consumes is "too much"
The irony here is that she failed for the same reason her husband got elected: a general and growing sense across the country that no member of any ethnic minority can ever be called to account for anything they've done, said, eaten, molested, spindled, or mutilated.
I've started referring to her as "Big Mike."
OR...We as a society consciously decide that parking your ass in front of a glowing screen for 12 hours a day is actually a shit job, and that greater physicality is necessary.
Now they are putting them on Ozempic and such. And the junkfood mongers are panicking.
Every young woman political staffer on the hill is on ozempic. We're early innings on that one, super pumped to see the bizarre second- and third-order effects its usage brings forth!
I read that as "second- and third-udder effects." Thanks for the laugh!
LOL, no, thank you!
What ever happened to Adderall. Two birds one stone. You won't eat AND you won't sleep so more hours spent working. Taking Ozempic seems insane to me but apparently all the rich people are already doing it.
man i hated that stuff
why on earth would they give it to anyone is beyond me
I'm not prescribed but I hear there are shortages. Which is hilarious. We could land a man on the moon again with everyone on adderall*
*your reading on whether or not such a scenario would be "worth it" will vary
Also I think the women have to get off Ozempic to give birth.
That means they're going to GIGA BALLOON if they ever decide to have kids. Very cursed scenario.
My younger colleagues are still bitter about the vending machines' removal from schools thanks to her efforts.
Our school lunches became GARBAGE at some point in the first Obama administration. They load kids up with carbs and sugar and wonder why nobody can sit down all day
They were feeding them leaves and twigs. How could they get fat off that?!
We do our best to have out kids eat decent food but the absolute barrage of candy and bullshit that is thrown at them is almost impossible to fight. It's a constant struggle for us because teachers are giving them candy in school, their friend's parents give it to them, and every holiday has some sort of candy theme now. Sugar is cheap and addictive. Get em' hooked early and you've got a customer for life. Fuck that shit.
I'm stricter than my wife is and she's the one who mostly feeds the kids. Our kids don't eat awful. We try and cook real meals most days but sometimes it's Nuggets and Mac and Cheese. Like you said, it's an uphill battle.
It's funny, america is always very liberal when there's harm to the populace to be done, but incredibly draconian when public benefit could accrue.
Starting to notice a pattern
The goal is to keep the populace fat, sick, dumb, and fighting with each other so they can continue to make money.
I'm having a hard enough time battling our parents on this, and to a lesser extent, my wife.
He isn't even in school yet and someone is throwing sugar at him every other day.
In my lifetime, until Trump, who I voted for first time around, all of our Presidents, regardless of flaws, were fundamentally decent people who were well meaning.
It doesn't stop them from doing monstrous things. Sometimes because decency them do it.
I think Trumps narcissism overrides any decency he has, compounded by having the attention span of a fruit fly. Comparisons to a certain German leader are very apt, it is just the leader is Wilhelm II.
Biden seems worse. It is unclear that he has a moral compass. Just an unwavering cowardice that always him to change direction at any moment.
You'll notice that he has basically two staffs, they're all obama people but it's the israel-sympathetic giga libs and the rashida-tlaib-sympathetic giga libs
These two factions are tough to reconcile
We're kind of fortunate in that regard. Imagine the damage that could be done if this administrative was cohesive and driven towards the same goals. The best fed gov is a largely ineffectual one.
Not to be a utopian fantasist but the best one would be one that regarded its own people with benevolence and sought their best interests in all things.
And funny that it was founded to be precisely that. Oh well.
Thank you, Donkey, for posting the link. Corporate lobbying is every bit as much of a threat to democracy as the postal "votes" Jack rails about. Perhaps more so, as it is so insidious.
100%, don't you even get me STARTED on the subject
corporations might make you want to, but governments make you HAVE to. little comparison.
Which is why corporations lobby governments in order to cover the gap. Or are you on opioids again? - see comment a little way above:)
It's a thorny issue for sure. While I try to advocate nuance, any time on the hill will tell you what lobbying is. It's bad people with big budgets (given to them by amoral at best people in bad organizations) to do bad things to good American people against the American people's will. Monopoly carve-outs, foreign aid, foreign bombs, "the food pyramid" lol.
*theoretically* I want to have no problem with lobbying qua speech as Antonin Scalia felt. But sensible government has to operate on effect not hope-wish-feel
They're never going to go after big anything anymore. Big corporate owns the uniparty now. Just look at how everyone is circling up to attack Lina Khan and the FTC from all sides for even thinking about looking at big business. While I don't agree with a lot of the reasoning she has, I do think all of this concentration in the economy is causing huge problems and needs to be looked at.
If they do, the end result will be the complete and total devastation of the little farmer.
People want to know why Yellowstone is popular... well, it's because people still want to romanticize the life where multigenerational ranches and farms mattered.
I really hate that show. My uncle watches and talks about it constantly.
The first two seasons were tolerable. I've been to Bozeman a few times and it's a beautiful area. Since the show has gotten popular, it's been overran with outsiders. Kind of ironic considering the whole show is about one family's disdain for outsiders.
One interesting tidbit from my time in MT. A lot of the guides and ranch hands that I interacted with all romanticize the UP the way I romanticize MT.
Oh, if only they could see Marquette and the coffee-shop-loitering population that has congealed here....
Universities ruin towns. Except for Alma. Nobody cares to be in Alma.
I’m curious how long the gentrification has been going on in Marquette.
That’s MD’s place to answer. I’ve only passed through there.
What I can say is that a girl from HS went there. She was a declared Communist. Now she’s an elementary school teacher.
There goes my retirement plan and Mt. Bohemia season pass
I hesitated watching it, but it's been pretty solid though more over the top in the past few seasons for obvious reasons. Most of my very brief experience with Montana was on the opposite side of the state in Billings and heading into Wyoming. It's less sexy to the LA types. I found nearly everyone to be a lot more native and I can easily see WHY it is romanticised. But also, talking to people, there is a battle brewing there as the lower class are priced out of living. It's pretty awful.
Great comparo to the UP. I took my stepdad up there on a quick trip and it was so memorable that he's always wanted to go back. That's after getting stuck in a cvt trans Pathfinder down a road only SxSs ended up driving. Yes, we were very, very lost in the sticks.
The UP is hereby included in the Great American Road Trip that I intend to undertake...in a '67 Coupe de Ville convertible...that may sadly be preceded by porcine aviation, ah, but a man can dream...
I lived in Montana 30 years ago and Bozeman was already starting to be overrun by outsiders (mostly from California). Locals were already being pushed out of town in 1992. The trend started long before Yellowstone
“I can’t miss.”
YOU JUST SAID YOU GOT SNIPPED IN THE LAST COMMENT THREAD
On Tulsi: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13107019/Donald-Trump-VP-Ramaswamy-Noem-Gabbard-DeSantis.html
Apparently there's a procedure where a large gauge syringe is used to remove the fluid directly from the sack! I know this because I was dating a woman who desperately wanted to have a child with me after the procedure was accomplished, and she did the research.
Yes there is, and it painful from what I hear.
I wouldn't mind hearing more about whether her wish came true, and if not, why not?
It didn't happen because I met the woman now known as "Danger Girl" through a mutual friend.
Without that, I think I'd have two more sons now, with this other woman.
As if the snipping weren't bad enough, now there's large gauge needles. Directly in the sack.
If you want a vision of the future, Winston...
Oy! 😬😲
The worst part of the procedure is when they cauterize your vas deferens with a laser. The smell... Honestly though, I've suffered far more unpleasant things in a doctors office.
My experience was a bit surreal. Doc was intent on having a full on conversation with me about aquatic life; specifically, sperm whales - while a national geographic ocean documentary played on the TV in the room. (I shit you not. I will never forget, it was like a fever dream come to life.)
I think having a sense of humor comes with the territory. Dude always had a joke for "turning off the hot water" or "shooting blanks".
I know it was old hat for him, but eventually I couldn't take it and asked if he could focus on my boys. I think understood, though was somewhat annoyed. To his credit he did a good job - I have two buddies with botched procedures that needed redos.
IN THE PLUMS!
Speaking of pain and wishes…
Worked with a guy who got snipped because of wife’s orders. They got divorced, and then the new gf turned into wife #2 who wanted kids. So he got un-snipped. All this in a little over a year, and freely shared on the shop floor.
Dude was in a lot of pain, and carried a special donut shaped pillow around with him in case he ever needed to sit down.
This is like the Michael Scott skit in the office.
how on earth do they unsnip anyway
just put a bit of shrink wrap tubing on it or what
It was explained to me that within a year there was a decent shot of reversal. Each subsequent year the odds get worse and after 3 years it's pretty slim.
Did the un-snipping work?
I have no idea, was gone before there was any results.
"If you can’t pour raw CPU-manufacturing effluvium into the Colorado River, you shouldn’t be allowed to buy something that’s made by pouring raw CPU-manufacturing effluvium into the Yangtze. Why isn’t this broadly understood?"
Because people are morons or assholes, or both. Take your pick. This is why I hate people in general.
At this point you've only led me to believe that brother Bark is a musically talented horndog.
As a younger father of two, its a constant battle of what I can afford in terms of keeping poison and unknown dangers away from my kids. I give up being able to gloat about USA made refrigerators so I can afford better water, milk and essentials for my kids while they're developing, as an example. Priorities.... The only saving grace is I think in general, we KNOW a lot more about what goes into our bodies these days than we did in the past. For example, I doubt even your grandfather knew the OTHER UNKNOWN mystery shit that went into General Mills products back in his day.
" I give up being able to gloat about USA made refrigerators so I can afford better water, milk and essentials for my kids while they're developing, as an example."
FINE.
GO HAVE HEALTHY AND HAPPY CHILDREN.
WHO WILL BE GETTING THEIR DECENT FOOD
FROM YOUR EVIL REFRIGERATOR!
My kids don't know what cereal is, yet....
I hope you aren't feeding them chicken nuggets either, the universal symbol of bad parenting.
We happen to be vegetarians, but when the day arrives that my kids want to eat meat, it'll be straight up top grade...
Local butcher, or that grass-fed steak you have to get online.
I've learned recently that the "Denver Cut" is concerned a poor man's Wagyu. But, some people believe Wagyu is a joke. I've never had Wagyu.
Child abuse
I have never given my son a chicken nugget.
Because we call them "tendies".
"Tendies."
Amazing how one word can summarize every ugly thing about neckbeards.
tendies and choccy milk
breakfast (lunch because neets dont have good sleep schedules) of shutins
Tangentially related bought a USA made pool table over the weekend. WTF is with tag lines like "American Designed" or "American Engineered" or "American Tested".
The friggin Brunswick logo actually has "American" stamped on it. This nonsense should be criminal. You really have to be on top of things to avoid being deceived.
Ended up with an Olhausen made in TN. Funny enough it was $400 less than the comparable Brunswick that is made in China. USA made AND cheaper - double bonus.
"The friggin Brunswick logo actually has "American" stamped on it. This nonsense should be criminal. You really have to be on top of things to avoid being deceived."
Time was, you'd face union violence if you did something like that. Before the unions were repurposed as immigration boosters.
100% correct.
What are you doing for water for your kids? We have an RO system but knowing what I know about PFAS i doubt its enough.
A 7 stage RO since my wife got pregnant with my first.
Further efforts have been limited by lack of sheer energy, but I'm open to upgrades at any price point. I was just using those as straw man arguments...
I'm doing the opposite: just drinking whatever happens to be 195 feet below my house. In the long run I'll be drinking my own urine, like Bear Grylls or a spaceman.
THe long run is the problem given the way septic drain fields work.
I would prefer to live rural but I think about logistical problems like this and have a hard time figuring the best way to do it.
Then again, IIRC I read that there's now PFAS in rainwater. Hopefully that's false but if not we're fucked in the long run
I'm drilled into rock past a couple of groundwater sources. It will be 20-30 years before today's waste water makes it into our well. The Teflon will still be there but I suspect everything else will have long since been diluted or deactivated to the point of unimportance.
we have an "artesian" well that's 300 or so feet deep, which I love the idea of, but am terrified of the bill for if it ever dries up or needs to be fixed.
Agreed I mean in the long long term.
In the olden days the aquifer itself could be said to provide filtration and that's still true for a lot of impurities, but hardly anything can separate water from some compounds, PFAS/teflon among them.
Your statement reminds me of a guy I read occasionally, Eric Peters.
He bills himself as The Libertarian Car Guy, but he strikes me as the sort who gives up his good job in the city to become a backwoods subsistence farmer because he's convinced the government's coming to get him.
He's a perfect example of libertarianism - he's not wrong, but he comes across as a self-destructive survivalist nut who nobody in their right mind would want to emulate.
The difficulty with "prepping" or "survivalism" is that so far it's been a losing bet -- and it might not even be a winning bet when the proverbial balloon goes up. I could hold out for 6 months to a year without the outside world getting involved... until I break my leg or get an infected tooth.
Exactly.
Too many decent people apply their moxy & gumption to things like making their own butter and chopping firewood, instead of directing it at taking over their crooked alderman's seat on the city council.
The most sensible "prepping" scenario is to plan for weather/natural disasters rather than the zombie apocalypse. For my area, that means Hurricane Season with expectations of high water (1 week, tops), contaminated municipal water supply (maybe 2 weeks), loss of electricity for up to a month, gas stations to run empty on day 2, and spotty FEMA help if you're ok standing in line all day for a case of bottled water. We can and do prep for that successfully. Anything else is end of the world scenario that most people won't survive no matter what prepping takes place.
i think from that depth any bacteria have been squished by the pressure; great way to partially purify water i read long ago: pump it down about 200' and bring it back up in a long u-tube
Very nice!
I'm debating upgrading, and/or doing a whole house system in addition to point-of-use. The whole house system would be unjustifiably expensive but The Kids Are Going To Drink Water From The Shower Nozzle No Matter What and I got no other ideas on that one.
Yep my kids drink some trivial amounts during their bath. If you don't mind sharing what you end up with on the whole house front I'd truly appreciate it.
35 years ago i had a filter system installed. a day or so later i was standing in the shower when 'rainwater' started coming out! i remember the marvelous sensation to this day!
seconding what boom said
ive been (very easily) led to believe that shower water can also impact the condition of your skin
Everything matters. Focus on the big stuff first before you start chasing that last 5%.
absolutely
While probably true, if youre still using drug store soap an experiencing excessive dryness, itch, other issues just go to an olive oil based unscented soap (this would be like a five year supply: https://www.soapforgoodnesssake.com/PROD/bulk-handmade-soap/bulk-olive-oil-soap.html ) and a non-sudsing shampoo bar if you can get through the "dip" to get your scalp and hair ok with it. something like this: https://www.amazon.com/J-R-Liggett-Shampoo-Virgin-Coconut/dp/B0134XJM44/
I would do these things first then worry about the water quality
Not 100% sure about skin, but definitely does impact your hair. A shower head filter and good shampoo makes a world of difference.
gonna turn this comment section into avoidable dandruff forever pretty quick
i use a bottle of ag care i found in a salon
figured it was better than pantene or what have you
The problem with RO systems is that you waste two gallons of every three. So your water bill triples. Then there's the service, which is expensive and often. Also, you have to dump those two toxic gallons somewhere.
The water here very alkaline and RO is the only way to deal with it, but the cost and the waste is insane.
Yeah. I think some of the whole-house systems are not RO, just five foot tall sand or carbon filters or both. Would help even in our situation with municipal water IIRC 700ppm
I wish there was a purpose I could discharge the gray water into. Probably good enough to grow a tree or other non-comestible plant
It really comes down to what's wrong with your water. Some issues won't hurt plants. Other's will. I wish there was an easier way to deal with our alkaline water, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I was seriously considering a remodel to put in an RO system (they take up a lot of space) until I saw how much water it wasted (water here isn't cheap) and how much periodic maintenance cost.
I've got a gravity-fed emergency water filtration system that claims it can purify 17,000 gallons before the filters need to be replaced, and my house backs up to a lake.
That's pretty damn cool. Respect.
I want to drill a well (somehow it's still legal in my suburb) but $$$$
(With a well, a generator, and a 1000-gallon propane tank, a person could survive quite some time IMO. With propane deliveries, chickens, goats, 1 ac planted - i mean indefinite sounds like too long but a very very long time seems accomplishable)
It adds up quick.
All I really did was start doubling up on staples at the grocery store shortly after the Ukraine situation started. After a few months we were fully stocked. Keep it on extra shelves in my home office and we just rotate them into our regular cooking.
i regret being satisfied with a brita filter
now i need my own water treatment plant
Having been driving across Spain two weeks ago when the protests started there, it's amazing that we're not seeing them here over this sort of thing. The tractors started rolling on February 6th to block highways and have been at it nonstop since over the latest EU regulations banning even more different types of fertilizer while allowing Moroccan (and other) imports of the same foods with them. I guess the corporatization of our farming is much bigger than I thought, and American's are much meeker than we're lead to believe.
I typically would've considered myself a "free market" conservative for a long time, but I've evolved over the last few years to more of a TR Rooseveltian outlook - we need to keep these big businesses competing, and keep the playing field level for national versus international. It's insane that we put in these regulations, and then basically encourage big companies to end run around them and go foreign.
"I guess the corporatization of our farming is much bigger than I thought, and American's are much meeker than we're lead to believe."
What I'd suggest here is that the tractor protests are born from a lifelong realization that European governments are simply royalty by another name, and they have to be fought to a standstill in Magna Carta style from time to time.
The American farmer assumes he can vote his way out of anything unpleasant. Which was legitimate for a long time. It's no longer legitimate. So when the aforementioned farmer realizes that, he'll take similar action -- plus he'll be armed.
You're much closer to it than me for the US folks, so that makes sense. I wonder if conditions here will allow it, because over there the police let a lot of it happen for folks to blow off steam. With how things are going here, I'd imagine the response would be just as well armed as the farmers and would look nothing like the BLM "response"
“So when the aforementioned farmer realizes that, he'll take similar action -- plus he'll be armed.”
They’re not going to do shit. Just like that trucker boycott of NYC that Breitbart et all were jerking themselves off over all weekend…until it didn’t happen, and Conservative, Inc immediately memory holed it.
One of the worst things about conservatives is this continual fantasy they engage in that “real Americans” are going to finally “do something.” It’s increasingly pathetic.
This is a good point. 2nd amendment ends up acting like an adult pacifier. Europeans, French in particular will take to the streets real quick. In the US it’s always “just you wait, keep pushing, we got guns!”
Part of that is because of the guns. Everybody understands that large scale European protests don't get people killed. Here in the USA that's only true for approved protests like BLM. Anything about real issues and there will be murders and executions.
see my comment up thread. Maybe your comment applies locally to you.
In terms of political violence all I see is leftist violence, eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_of_Aaron_Danielson_and_Michael_Reinoehl
Guns are a self-neutralizing totem for the right in that they make righties feel safe, but in a country THIS RIVEN by antipathy, only friendly laws, judges and juries can keep you safe. "The right has all the guns" and those guns don't do much, the right will be rolled up by the cops instantly if they even post on facebook: https://www.deseret.com/2023/8/9/23826780/witnesses-fbi-kill-utah-man-threats-biden-social-media
Not to blackpill of course. In your neck of the woods the situation is much better!
Oh, gosh, I'm not expressing myself well.
What I'm trying to say is that the first time we have a full-scale right-wing protest in this country, the Feds will open fire. The only reason it didn't happen on Jan 6 was because it was basically a guided tour of the Capitol that only got retconned into "insurrection" after everybody went home.
I absolutely agree. The only reason it hasn't happened yet is that most of the people who WOULD or COULD do something live in red states. Until the federal government significantly changes their way of life, it won't happen.
Eventually the dam does break. I have enough guns and ammo I think it might happen in my lifetime, but not enough where I definitely think it will. But yeah, it's mostly conservative fantasy. WACO was 30 years ago. Has it gotten any better?
In spite of all of the wailing, Americans still live too well for there to be a large revolt. Shit needs to seriously break before there will be any real pushback on the powers that be.
Our little brouhaha with Russia and the border could go south fast. But If I could predict shit, I'd be retired with Bitcoin and Tesla stock.
To be more specific, I'm not implying this will happen over Trump or gay frog birth control. It won't happen until farmers see children dying en masse in rural areas because the food goes directly to migrant zones.
Damn kulaks.
I'm thinking about the Cliven Bundy cattle stand off where a bunch of armed rednecks made the BLM and FBI blink. The lesson worth remembering is the Fed Cops don't want to go home in bag either.
100%
In 2020 we saw the closest thing to real-life executions, all the executions were executions *by libs* of conservatives, and only one of the two commie executioners got any sort of reaction. The executioner in Denver was not even charged!
The result of the denver execution: https://www.denverpost.com/2022/03/21/denver-protest-shooting-charges-dropped-matthew-dolloff/
Video of the Portland Death Squad murder: https://odysee.com/@PaulyFrog64:2/Portland-shooting-of-Aaron-Danielson:c
The video of the communist revenge execution of Aaron Danielson below is beyond belief, it was actually coordinated murder---you've can clearly observe:
-team operating out in the open with multiple vehicles (kitted out Jeep Grand Cherokee, Dodge charger)
-shot callers (identifying who to murder)
-support crews (driving support vehicles, swarming the scene after)
-clean up crews (see the guys running around the scene with flashlights to pick up shell casings)
-videographer to produce video to demoralize their opposition
-videographer himself was a part of the murder squad - he falsely claims having mace in his face as a code to let the antifa murder team to know the cops are coming
Right wingers acting like they'll take action - outside of friendly spots in ID or NH perhaps - is the biggest hope cope of all time. Left wing death squads already exist, already are training in real life, and have already drawn first blood. They've committed open air coordinated murder *ON VIDEO* and with the exception of Michael Reinoehl none of them ever faced consequences. I've never seen a right winger do much other than turn the other cheek (Kyle Rittehouse was a civic nationalist CENTRIST, who regularly disavows the right wing) but I'd invite anyone to correct me.
The Denver thing is nuts. Spraying bear spray can get you killed? But drawing a pistol on someone and trying to shoot them, or trying to take their head off with a skateboard, has to go to a jury.
"(Kyle Rittehouse was a civic nationalist CENTRIST, who regularly disavows the right wing) "
Let me offer some perspective: if you have to shoot in self-defense, whether you're found guilty of anything or not, you have to spend the rest of your life treading very carefully. Otherwise you'll be sued and SWATted and your employers will be harassed until you're flat broke and suicidal.
so get shot or spend your life wishing you were
pure hell
given how the right wing seems to have more people that are vastly more competent with firearms, I kinda expected some dude to reach out and touch them at 600 yards. There must be guys out there who can make these shots regularly. A sniper in their AO would rattle them pretty bad. Fry The Brain apparently talks about this
And again as a naive American, maybe I give us too much credit, but I wonder how much of it is that many Americans just quietly ignore laws because we’re spread out and there’s a lot of us and culturally we don’t mind breaking the rules, versus Europe where none of that is true. For instance in IL they passed some draconian gun control laws where you must register your “assault weapons” and “hicap” mags. A vast vast majority of us (like 90%+) just…didn’t. Fuck ‘em. Why take to the streets and paint a target on yourself when you can just ignore them?
I of course moved whatever scary guns I may or may not have out of state immediately, but you know, everyone else.
They were lost in a tragic boating accident.
I think a lot of "tragic boating" snark on the part of my friends won't survive a Louis Katona style ATF visit where they shove your wife into a miscarriage, stomp kittens in the yard, and put a gun in your mouth about it. Much of the tradcon rhetoric is designed for the world, and the Supreme Court, of 1955.
I have a good retort for this but I don't want anyone showing up at my door.
That's the thing. Nobody wants anyone showing up at their door. When that happens, you're as alone as a dissident in Soviet Russia.
" “oh here you go, sweetie, go pretend to be Jack London online in your little fancy station wagon while Mommy finishes paying the bills for the month.”
This is a real thing, a woman tried do get me to do it .
" P.S. I lost by ten feet, more’s the pity." (you're just jealous)
"In what world is it “inherently cool” to disrespect moms? " in my world it is . a sad thing to be sure but I didn't choose it that way .
"That’s why nothing you see online feels like it’s worth reading anymore. " happily this isn't so by a long shot .
I love my unsweetened Cheerios, thanx for ruining them for me Jack .
-Nate
So: who's producing good motorcycle content these days? I enjoy the stuff at Revzilla's Common Tread, especially Courts and Henning when they go race a sidecar rig in New England or ride Honda trail bikes across Alaska.
Revzilla is inherently suspect because they're a dealer, but yeah I think they're okay. I've been reading the British magazines for a very long time because there are fewer differences between the dealer inventories in Europe and America for bikes. (Notwithstanding the fact that we don't get the little ones.)
Revzilla’s Lemmy bought basically the same exact Bandit as my old one, within a month of me, and did a fantastic write up of it, so chalk me up as a fan of theirs, for the used retrospectives anyways.
https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/retrospective-review-suzuki-bandit-1200
Fortnine?
I’ve been watching a lot of YT motorcycle content but it’s all rebuilding old Honda CBs. Kentucky Yankee and Motorcycle Rewind are both good and amateurish and earnest. Common Motorcycle Collective is OK but the dude is very Lieberman esque.
I'll have to check that out. Love the old CBs; my first bikes were a pair of '73 CB350s I bought out of a woman's shed for $300 after her husband passed. Now I'm sitting here thinking about how much I loved riding those, but hated rebuilding carburetors.
Common Motor Collective is good for instructional videos on how to fix old CB's, plus has a very good store for parts. big help for getting my 73 CB350 back on the road. For sheer entertainment and knowledge, I go to FortNine. Best overall that I've seen.
The old dudes who hang out on the VintageHondaTwins forum seem to HATE CMC for some reason, and I’m not entirely sure why.
kevin cameron on cycleworld
i always have a tab open (i have far too many tabs) with his articles in them
For sure. Dude is an absolute legend.
That FortNine guy on YouTube seems well-informed.
he is remarkably clever at times
"It would mean that candidates with genuinely different positions could aggressively “primary” the existing elected Democrats..."
Buffalo, NY is one such city where the local Republican party does not even bother to run a candidate in elections anymore, including the mayoral race. Elections for any citywide office essentially come down to the Democratic primary. In the last race for mayor, the "change agent" came in the form of "Democratic Socialist" candidate India Walton, who won the primary over four-term incumbent mayor Byron Brown, who is very much an establishment Democrat. This meant that India Walton was the only candidate on the ballot for the November election, and the local Democratic Party had no choice but to endorse her as their candidate. And yet, she still lost the election. Byron Brown launched a successful write-in campaign and won a record fifth term as mayor.
Primary elections have been a disaster for parties and for our options. I'm all for bringing back the smoke filled rooms and letting the parties operate as the private organizations that they should be.
This happens all over in deep red and deep blue cities, and it's how we get AOC or Matt Gaetz. The primaries are all driven by the biggest wingnuts who turn out and vote for loudmouths who promise them the world because the sensible, establishment type negotiates and delivers incremental change.
Frankly, the parties aren't able to focus on winning elections and choosing a candidate who can because they have to be so terrified of their activist base. The Democrats have been this way post-Obama who leveraged the activist types to get in and Republicans fell for it with Trump who ran that playbook even better and absolutely wrecked the party in blue and purple states.
Turnout in these primary elections is historically so low, it doesn't really take many wingnuts to secure a win for their loudmouth candidate of choice. It could present an opportunity for a positive "change agent" type of candidate, but so far in reality it has mostly seemed to benefit the extremist types.
Exactly! It's really hard for a positive change agent to get past the activist wing nuts, especially in urban areas where they've built a non-profit industrial complex that really controls the party and drives turnout for these.
A base election like that is always about motivation, and the wingnuts who are deeply invested are much easier to turn out to vote versus anyone else.
There is nowhere near enough scrutiny of corruption in non-profits. Everyone looks at big organizations like Susan G. Komen, but how many receive sweetheart deals from local/county/state governments? Quite a few that we know of. Not to mention the number of people who cycle between .gov jobs and non-profits.
Nailed it! The real revolving door is between the non-profit "services" contractors to local governments and the government positions that decide the contracting. Everyone loves complaining about it for defense contractors, but there's way more of these.
One man's change agent is another's wingnut!
“Trump who ran that playbook even better and absolutely wrecked the party in blue and purple states.”
This. The GOP is dead and buried in places like the Chicago collar counties, largely because of Trump, but also because of demographic shifts. It’s not coming back.
The remaining base is just fine with this, and continues to increase its isolation from politicians and voters that aren’t completely loyal to Trump. This is not how you win national elections.
On the contrary, Trump is actually making gains in heavy urban areas and with the black vote. He won't win a majority but he can win enough to put the assumed permanent Dem hammerlock in question. And immigration is one of the key issues. Shutting down schools and community centers to house, feed, *and fund* immigrants by the million is not sitting well with residents in neglected urban areas that haven't seen a Republican anywhere near a local office in nigh unto a century.
It's even causing some of them to question whether or not they've been getting played as suckers by the party of Jim Crow all along.
The Bush GOP is dead. Or very nearly so in a literal sense. Establishment republicans are not a sellable candidate anywhere in the US. Their hold on power is all that keeps them where they are at, but even that slips more by the day.
Few people liked the Bush / McCain / Romney wing even when they were at the peak of their power.
"Who are the rubes gonna vote for if not for us?"
we'll just see, won't we? and you're ignoring dem vote corruption.
I’m afraid so. Let’s pray for a miracle.
Republicans are such fuckwits, so they probably all voted for the establishment scumbag rather than launch an effort to put someone reasonable on the ballot. Even if they’re only a single digit portion of the electorate, that was probably enough to tilt it.
And of course, even when they haven’t held office in years, and don’t even bother fielding candidates, the Republicans are still the boogeyman in big city politics.
It's so bad as to be now considered intentional.
Case in point, recent NY 3rd special election.
The GOP ran a registered Democrat and still lost.
And of course the Very Stable Genius made it all about himself by trashing the candidate for not supporting him enough.
Good thing I've never really eaten Cheerios, and I can't remember the last time I ate ANY boxed cereal. But I get your point.
The bigger point, of course, is What Can Normal People Do?
I remember somebody writing that one purpose of the law is to prevent acts of vigilantism against criminals. It seems that at this point, large-scale vigilantism is the only answer to so many of our problems.
Refusing to sell accommodations, services or goods to illegal aliens, in direct violation of nondiscrimination law. Lynching burglars. Burning carjackers alive. Beating shoplifters unconscious. Shooting rioters en masse. Rounding up "youths" and "good boys" in hoods from sea to shining sea. Public "Bonfire of the Vanities" -style destruction of cheap foreign-made products.
Things civilized people should never have to do. But what other course of action is there when the people we appoint to keep order WON'T?
It's entirely dependent on the bread and circuses.
If the Uniparty can keep the Cheetos and Netflix coming, most Americans will be happy to descend into a South African or Eritrean level of public insanity. Most of us will accept a frog-boiling as long as we have SOMETHING to lose.
If the power turns off, however, and people think it's not going to be reliably turned back on, you'll see violence ASAP. I wouldn't want to be a stranger traveling my road on Day Six of any such scenario.
The one thing, THE ONLY THING, keeping criminals on both sides of the law alive in modern America is normal people's belief that we still have SOMETHING to lose.
I've changed my opinion of Netflix somewhat. It's not the same as doom-scrolling where the algorithm shows you what's next. Of course they use an algorithm for recommendations but you are free to search whatever content you want and watch it or not. The content is also, usually, full-length so it can be described more as entertainment than a dopamine fix. I'm not saying it's a good thing, only far less evil than the others from that regard.
This is so true. Had our power turned off for 18 hours last week because the grid couldn't cope after a storm.
Suddenly DGAF Luke was researching batteries for solar, vehicles with v2L capabilities, writing letters to members, campaigning for coal power upgrades. I never felt so insulted in my life.
The "Horde" will see your house with lights on. You will be the only one with juice. It turns into the Walking Dead really quick.
Archer/Kreiger meme: "Stop! My penis can only get so erect!"
Time to go find a hooker, I guess.
Call girls. They’re only called hookers when they’re dead.
Dead hookers. Always good for a laugh.
In trunk of Lexus in Jersey optional, but highly recommended.
What can normal people do? Reject the strictures of our "betters".
Start with personal choices. The food pyramid is a scam. Do the opposite. Eat more protein and animal products, as unadulterated as possible. Grain finished and fed beef isn't ideal, but it's at least not full of the shit that's in Cheerios. (Even the name is sinister) Eggs are actually very nutritious and not bad for you. Lift weights.
Learn how to handle medical emergencies. Teach your kids crucial life skills. Teach them critical thinking because Lord knows they aren't getting it in school or college.
Read sources the mainstream media insists are too dangerous. Don't necessarily believe them, but read them and know what they say. Compare and contrast.
Get involved in local political and policy concerns.
To quote my departed grandfather, you can't clean up the whole world but you can at least pick up the trash in the front yard.
Control what you can. Do what you can. And when you have the opportunity to do more, you do that. Because ultimately that is all we can do.
Yesterday our esteemed host learned me on IG that GnR used to have someone actually named Gun in the band. Having stopped paying attention to rock when David Lee Roth left Van Halen I was ignorant of this. Knowing Jack holds GnR in high regard I started to listen to their first album but soon gave up and sent Tidal to Women and Children First.
I don't know if they still do this but when I originally purchased WaCF enclosed like a toy in a box of Apple Jacks was a poster of David Lee Roth wearing only leather pants on his knees and bound to a chain link fence. Listening yesterday I remembered visiting 1820 Candle Company in East Palestine and seeing that poster on the wall in the room where they make their candles. Hadn't seen one in years.
When Biden visited last week the only business that would let him in was 1820 Candle. I know for certain that the nicest restaurant in town refused to have him. Anyway, this has been a long winded way to tell you all that while Joey was listening to the few folks that would talk to him on the wall right across from him was a bound, bare chested David Lee Roth and that really amused me and I just had to tell somebody.
No Cheerios but I do eat a big ass bowl of Quaker Oatmeal every morning rationalizing that's what allows me to indulge in paczkis filled with butter cream wedding cake frosting. One more thing they're taking from me.
gonna need the location of those buttercream paczkis stat
love donuts
Candle making and David Lee Roth. That is intersectionality.
1- It's becoming easier and easier to see that these younger hack writers are trash. They repeat the same things over and over again. Am I the only one who feels like it is just history repeating with different actors?
2- We do have cereal in our house, but overall try to stay away from it. Most dyes are banned when we can help it. It makes a GIANT difference for our oldest.
3- The Uniparty IS the house... and the house almost always wins. We're sort of in the last death throws of it just due to the unrest in the culture. That's why they feel the need to censor and force people into unavoidable situations. I was extremely anti UBI, but I have to say I've been swaying given the track we're on. If I'm thinking this and I'm far from left, that's NOT good. Desperation breeds more than just a revolution fought via violence.
I could almost forgive the born and raised in NYC "journalists" who fail to understand anything outside of their bubble. After all, they've never left the bubble and have no desire to.
What gets my goat are the guys like Jack highlights above. They all do this weird Hunter S. Thompson cosplay, but are not smart/crazy enough to come anywhere close. Instead, we get these contrived stories about "mobbing" some piece of machinery that sound like they were written by Ron Swanson but with the writing ability of an eighth grader.
"Instead, we get these contrived stories about "mobbing" some piece of machinery that sound like they were written by Ron Swanson but with the writing ability of an eighth grader."
I mean we could just tag Matt here haha
To be fair, that was SUPPOSED to be a composite and not represent any singular person. Matt is just an easy target. He went from the guy who did fun/stupid things in cars on film (Bullrun, All Cars Go to Heaven) to shilling for stupid watches and branded ink pens. It's kind of sad in a way.
A lot of these guys practice some weird caricature of masculinity, which is why they get so offended when called out. Not that you needed me to explain this to you.
matt is a massive dork both literally and figuratively
"If you can’t pour raw CPU-manufacturing effluvium into the Colorado River, you shouldn’t be allowed to buy something that’s made by pouring raw CPU-manufacturing effluvium into the Yangtze. Why isn’t this broadly understood?"
Because this whole green initiative is a hoax. If you buy a diesel Ford Super Duty pickup, it will have about 25ft of extraneous piping, valves, heat exchangers, sensors and whatnot for pollution control. It will have an exhaust that most resembles a Mk12 torpedo both in length and girth, that has about $2000 worth of noble metals in it to bind carcinogens. This whole shebang will be worth exactly $0 when the truck reaches about 75.000-150.000miles, depending on load. At which point it will flash a light at the owner to go to a Ford dealer and spend about double an average American household's monthly income on renewing all of this.
If you're buying the same truck from one of the dealers in the Middle East, half of the engine bay will be empty. It won't even have EGR. Because air doesn't come back to us from those brown people, right?
Same if you buy something with a Cummins in it. The magic word is "oilfield duty" - this removes every piece of pollution control equipment invented since the 80s from the engine.
> If you're buying the same truck from one of the dealers in the Middle East, half of the engine bay will be empty. It won't even have EGR. Because air doesn't come back to us from those brown people, right?
It doesn’t, not significantly anyways.
Pollution control on cars improves local air quality. That’s actually a pretty huge public health benefit and quality of life improvement for tens of millions of Americans.
yup
but one motivated guy who wants to lop all that nonsense off should be allowed to do so as the impact is negligible
The amount of confusion between local air quality and CO2 emissions is so vast as to be deliberate. Some of us believe they only moved on to targeting CO2 emissions because the efforts to improve air quality were so successful that the environmental lobby was in danger of becoming obsolete, so what else are we going to do to push our global dystopian agenda if we can’t scare them with asthma and acid rain anymore?
The disappearance of smog did a lot to calm people down. Which didn't serve the agenda.
In the quest for MPGs, didn't DI pretty much set all that back 10-20 years? All of these government policies lack any understanding of what they are going to potentially do. California says its a consumption and CO and CO2 problem. Companies say ok, how about DI? California says "No No No, not like that."
DI is going to kill a lot of old people. It's a particulate generator on par with diesel.
as if i needed another reason to hate direct injection
also I'm currently in a class in which I should have been informed of direct injection particulates, but this is the first I'm hearing of it
and it's taught by a guy who absolutely knows about it too