i inherited my dad's argus c3 and i must tell you it was no leica. not even close. if you want a good cheap leica knockoff, get one of the old canon rangefinder models.
Of course the two can't really be compared, but the Argus is the camera that popularized the 35mm format in the United States. The Leica is a precision instrument, the Argus works well enough.
The ironic thing is, after decades of living off dumb dentists buying M-whatevers, Leica makes some dynamite digital cameras with world class form-function. The L-mount alliance lens lineup is great, and a Leica SLS with Sigma contemporary lenses is $4-$5k worth of as good as you can get gear.
In other words, only idiots would buy and use $10,000 M bodies rooted in 1950s tech. So yes, TikTok film guy makes sense in that context.
I get the impression that government owned Air Canada is much like government run medicine; those that only use it occasionally have a pretty favorable opinion, while those that use it frequently loathe it.
While that is a valid comparison, the government actually owns less than 10% of AC these days. To be fair, AC isn’t that bad as far as airlines go. Their premium offerings could be a lot better (lounges are crap, and domestic/transborder business class is meh) but I’ve noticed that covid finally cleared the ranks of all the retirement-age schoolmarm FAs
I work for a family-owned company with a jet that's freely available for most staff. Having the plane wait for you instead of the other way around never gets old. We're a little infamous at FBOs for dirtying the place up and aggressive complimentary snack consumption, however.
Being able to travel 2000 miles in a day and still be home in time to pick a kid up from after-school practice is the ultimate luxury, and one I'd gladly trade any level of airline status for.
The fact that the plane is ready to depart whenever you are (earlier or later) is nicer.
The fact that it actually is going to depart and not get cancelled for no reason (shy of a hurricane), even nicer.
These days, the fact that the attendants at Signature would cater to any request, sparing you the humiliation of a TSA scumbag groping your grandmother or daughter - well that's very very nice, getting to be priceless.
The final fact - that when you fly private in a decent plane, you don't arrive tired and dehydrated--is maybe the nicest thing yet. Unlike commercial air carriers, private jets allow an appropriate, human level of moisture content to remain in the air based on their assumptions for airframe life cycles.
So yeah. It's nice to have time. But it's also nice to have nice.
So the dry air in a commercial airliner is lifecycle/durability of the plane thing? I flew to Australia twice and both times was astounded at how little I needed the bathroom in 15 hrs..
This is what I was told, by someone who should know. (It is also why the part-composite 787 is nicer to fly in when you can fly in one; less aluminum apparently means less need to minimize moisture.)
Naturally I defer to anyone in this crowd if they have mechanical engineering experience for Boeing Airbus Dassault etc...
Russia had a score to settle after the attempted putsch, but the West had an interest in keeping him out of Africa where he might have disrupted the flow of raw materials for our vaunted EVs etc
Reportedly, the top guys at Wagner were all on the plane. I’m sure the CIA wasn’t happy that they’d spent so much of our money on a coup and didn’t even get a tshirt. It’s not like we have AWACS orbiting in the area.
Very much Putin's style. Very much not ours. If it had been us, there would have been an unexplained, unattributed drone strike once he was in Belarus.
Also, this would not have happened had Prighozhin's jet been a Gulfstream. Because it is an Embraer, there is no basis for Western safety agencies to get involved, and it will be easier for the Russians to keep the cause just ambiguous enough for deniability and just clear enough to send a message at the same time. That last part is vintage Putin.
if prigozhin had kept a low profile and stayed in belarus, he would be alive today. flying his jet in putin's backyard was a flex he was in no position to make. respect where respect is due.
It seems such an integral part of modern society and yet when I was a kid I was taught that critics were the scum of the earth cos they could only criticise what other people had produced.
We seem to have increased our capacity to think critically but lost our capacity for critical thinking.
I walk around offices and think the same way as I see all the fancy integrated tech and meeting decisions. In a way, it's why I stayed away from trying to get in the manufacturer side - I want to enjoy cars, not think about work..
Unfortunately as the product guy, I’m officially in the stupid ideas department and the engineers can tell me it’s unlikely, and eventually the manufacturing guys tell me that.
The office tech side is from time spent in ProAV and UC/IT systems. That conference room tech, touch screen controls you see, smart senses, and the video distribution were all my product lines
I learned a hard lesson, the reason they fly you private is because they expect you to work on the flight. I don’t get motion sickness generally, but I do when staring at Excel while a NetJets bumps along getting to altitude.
One of my ham radio buddies has a son who's a pilot for JSX. They're just getting started, but they're trying to make a serious go of it. Their routes are limited, but if they're going where you want to go, prices are comparable to full fare economy.
Only flown with them once, but I thought JSX was awesome. The fare was not much more than flying economy. This was 5 years ago and I think they were just starting, so it might have been aggressive pricing so they could get people exposed to it. I haven't seen similar deals since.
Highly recommended. But keep in mind I'm used to the middle seat somewhere around row 25, so I might just be easily amused.
That was what I was getting at below. She is rich for real, but she wants to be a SOMEBODY. And she wants to be young and attractive, despite being neither.
Oh come on, she does not. She might not be the hottest woman in the world, but she's definitely not unattractive. I mean, not every woman can look like Lily James. Also, I think we're starting to be a bit mean spirited about this.
It truly blows my mind to picture myself caring what these people think. Turns out I’m cool enough to not care what people that are less cool than me think
I figured she has to be rich, she lives in Dubai…. Plus according to Wikipedia she has 1.4 Billion views, now if I remember my broadcast comm material correctly, advertisers pay for “eyes” and over a Billion views is a lot of eyes…. No saying anything about the quality of the output, but somebody is watching…,
What is it with the rich and their grotesque fetishes?
This guy's into tranny hookers, that one likes to be pissed on by black female dominatrices, the other guy over there has a Shetland pony in a gimp suit in his basement...
The story is told of a new student at the famed yeshiva of Novardok, one of the two leading seminaries of the pietistic "Mussar" movement in orthodox Judaism in the late 19th and early 20th century. The other yeshiva, at Slobodka, believed in uplifting the spirit in joy while Novardok was more austere and ascetic. Puzzled by a talmudic passage, the promising young torah scholar asked one of the more experienced students for help but was rebuffed with, "Oh, don't ask me. I'm just a nothing. Go ask a real scholar." This was repeated time and again during his early time at the yeshiva.
A couple of weeks later a new student arrived at the yeshiva and asked him a question about a difficult passage. "Oh, don't ask me," he replied, "I'm just a nothing. Go ask one of the real scholars."
One of the veterans said to another, "Gib a kook. Look at him. He's here only two weeks and already he's a nothing."
Now we know who is less than a nobody. I told a cute story, a version of which exists in just about every religious and philosophical discipline and you decided to show the world your ass as a Jew hating asshole. Welcome to the trash heap of history. You're welcome to stop using any and every bit of technology that some Jew had a hand in developing (like the device you used to defecate out that bolus of waste you posted) but you're too weak, too cowardly, and too selfish to actually take a principled stance . My Jewish grandchildren laugh at you.
Also, learn some fucking manners. That kind of disrespectful and childish behavior is not the kind of atmosphere our host here is trying to cultivate.
When it comes to blondes, Jodie Kidd has her beat every day of the week ;) Plus, she seems like an _actual_ car person, you know, one that cares about car stuff not just the bling.
I do too, but then I almost always park next to the cart corral.
Speaking of shopping carts, Lace Music makes the pickups for my Harmonicaster electric harmonica. The pickup company grew out of Actodyne, the company Don Lace Sr set up to make industrial solenoids and sensors, when he realized that one of the sensors he made worked well as a guitar pickup and got hooked up with Fender. I was talking to Jeff Lace, who runs the company now with his brother Don Jr and he mentioned that the system to prevent shopping carts from leaving a specified area was his invention, also based on inductive sensors.
"So you're the guy who broke my elderly mother's rib when that shopping cart stopped short!"
My day, probably 5 years ago, hanging with Webster, DeMatio, and Daniel Golson and some redhead guy who owned a Honda Beat (who was so unremarkable that I can’t remember his name) at the Concours in MI was fascinating. I vividly remember Golson, dressed in some wacky outfit, downing a non-insignificant number of champagne flutes in the MB tent and pretending to be very important to the wait staff. The entire thing was weird, hollow, obviously fake. Sealed me against ever wanting to do that for a living. I probably make more now than Golson, by a decent amount, and don’t have to sell my self-respect down the river to do it.
Daniel Golson, who I’ve been told mostly hangs around because his mother was like Csaba Csere’s assistant or something, is one of the genuinely goofiest people I’ve met. A person who is just impossible to take seriously; and not in the Chris Farley slapstick/class clown way, just pathetic.
I'm late to the party here, but Golson used to volunteer at the automotive museum I worked at when he was like 18 or something and had a nose ring. During a slow day we all pitched in to clean out the back garage area and someone handed him a broom. This kid, I shit you not, did not know how to use a BROOM. He gripped it up top with both hands and just kind of helplessly wiggled it around.
Yep, that’s him. Looks like he’s now an “EV and Mobility Analyst” for a company that appears to be some sort of buzzword-laden climate cult deal; and he’s adopted Lieberman’s pudgy, shaggy, poorly dressed appearance that makes him anathema to women.
I'm a Nobody with a student loan balance I'll never pay off, a bill for dental work that'd buy a fairly nice used car and a general attempt at making a life using only a significant fraction of the earnings it takes to be middle class, and guys like this glide through life on a slime trail of Shamelessness and Arrogance.
I literally cannot comprehend how, in this scenario, 2 + 2 = 4.
I'm not jealous - I'm disgusted. A functional society would see someone like this panhandling under a bridge.
I kept mine as well and use it almost daily. The limit never got raised. It’s perfect for high risk purchases like gas pumps and vending machines. If the card ever gets skimmed, nobody can really make big purchases with it.
I tried hanging on to my first card for the same reason. I didn't know banks could cancel it if you never use it, and that's what happened. I was displeased. Make sure you occasionally use it to buy lunch or something!
I have Patreon charged to my ancient card to keep it alive because, like the other fine gentlemen here, I didn't want to vaporize my longest lived line of credit! It looks good for my score!
My first card (early 1990s) had a $200 limit. At the time I was an unemployed college student with about $50 in my bank accounts. Got a free bag of M&Ms for signing up though.
I think the difference is that today these guys get a ton of visibility on social media, and we get told to think they're somebody, so some dumb exec pays the guy... In the past he would've been known in his town, and maybe at the local country club, as the dumb son of the local rich guy who's always smashing up the car his dad bought him.
From experience, I think the execs tend to be a different much more insecure type. A lot of them end up where they did by sucking up to the right people and not necessarily competence, so they just follow the herd and compare notes with each other. It always does seem to end up that everyone ends up at their level of incompetence, but how high that is can be very different based on where you weasel into.
It makes my job easy, because I just have to identify who the pied pipers are...
Supposedly, this is why celebrities shill for leftist causes.
They have all this money and influence that deep down, they feel they don't really deserve. A-list actors, in particular, got rich by being everyone but themselves and they want to be taken seriously, and for who they really are.
Makes them easy meat for charlatans and mountebanks.
Charlatans are usually harmless, they'll take your money if you give it to them; the mountebanks will take your money before you realize it's too late.
The most disappointing thing I have to deal with with my dream job is that the parasites are pervasive and will do almost ANYthing to not have to do real work.
This had consequences for people who aren't trying to get by with their last name, looks, gender or any other unearned 'quality'.
"Industrious Layabouts" is my name for them, as I place them in the same category as the average panhandler: Sneaky and willing to go to any length to evade actual work.
"I have enough open line on my credit cards right now to buy an F8 Tributo, although I would sink beneath the waves when the first minimum payment came due." It's amazing how much car a decent credit score and a HELOC can buy, actual payments notwithstanding.
I follow the F8 market pretty closely; it is soft, and will only become softer over the next year or so. Many opportunities to transact in the low $300s.
5k is on the high end in my experience, every dealer I've asked has had a limit somewhere in the 2-5k range, they don't want to pay the fees on anything over that unfortunately.
Had a friend (late 1980s) whose dad bought a brand new RX-7 via a credit card. One of that card's perks was doubling any factory warranty. Best idea ever for a rotary.
401k and IRAs are covered by federal ERISA (Employee retirement income security act) and are absolutely untouchable by creditors (except the IRS maybe) and in bankruptcy. The thinking being that society doesn't want destitute old people.
But I could be wrong; it's been 25 years since law school and I've never practiced.
I didn't get as far as having them run my credit cause it would be stupid, but the dodge dealer claimed they could get me financed on a Challenger that cost more than I make post tax in a year
I was hoping you’d tear this one apart. Too bad this guy wasn’t named Phil...
Tommy Kendall and Justin Bell have (had?) a “show” together during IMSA weekends. Is TK full of shit too? He obviously had a good run in TransAm, but he spent a lot of years as a TV analyst.
I was fortunate enough to see a REAL Nazi cars (including a 770k and a W31) in Sinsheim. Say what you will about the cars’ most famous passenger, but they were absolutely stunning in a way that most collector cars cannot touch. The 1923 Silver Ghost it was parked near looked almost unimpressive in comparison.
TK is a decent person who made himself a champion driver and who is just trying to get by.
I feel compelled to mention that the one time they put us on the clock (a short course at Autobahn in 2006) i was faster than him and the other 58 people there.
0-I found myself in a Bell Sandwich several years ago (2019?) at The Amelia, as both Messrs. Bell and myself relieved ourselves at a trio of urinals inside the Ritz. The younger of the two had clearly been enjoying the libations on hand. Side note: The Ritz is by far the worst place to stay for that event, in my opinion. It is ALWAYS crawling with people, from before sunrise to 2 AM (or later).
1-Justin’s fairly recent appearance on The Smoking Tire podcast - both his utterances and his behavior - made it clear to me that he struggles with alcohol; he also disclosed that he was recently divorced.
2-I have several friends who have worked for Faraday (Faraway?) Future in the past; I had the pleasure of a private tour of their “factory” in Los Angeles in 2016.
YouTube/Article idea: Restore/rebuild a car using the cheapest Chinese garbage possible. I’m talking suspension, engine, everything. Document the results.
Let’s ignore that most “NPD” muscle car restorations could fall into the above. I’m talking a doing this with a Civic or something that’s modern enough to have a good example as a benchmark.
You've sort of described Donut Media's "Hi-Low" car series in which two nearly identical cars are subject to a round of upgrades and modifications, the "Low car" using the cheapest offshore junk and "Hi car" using brand name products. That's not to say either have been put together well.
You're not missing out on much, if anything. It appears to be targeted at kids with little understanding of cars. These are also the same people that destroyed MULTIPLE Subaru engines for various reasons.
Grifters prey on the insecurity of the new money. A LOT of rich people or upper level execs either made it recently, or got it in some manner that makes them feel insecure about their wealth or success. In short they feel like frauds because all of the REAL wealthy people get to hang out with the Ultra Rich and Famous.
Which they don't.
So along come the grifters who have some connection to that (either real or faked) they show up with that 'vibe' of being rich, important, someone who matters, someone who dines with the stars and spends their spare time bedding starlets.
I've seen these people work - they're some level of narcissist and sociopath combined. There are no consequences, nothing too low to do to others, no lie to bold, and there is only them and no one else. What always blows my mind is how many people FALL for it. There are a LOT of stupid people with money. In fact I think one just killed himself on the Titanic while trying to pretend to be an engineer.
Imagine being one of the many immensely talented craftsmen entrusted with rebuilding one of the most beautiful pre-war German automobiles only for some ding-dong to call it a Krautwagen.
In its context it's fine. It highlights why the Bolshevists hate it so much.
I love these vehicles coming up for auction and winning things. They have real historical significance. What does it mean to society for MB to build a 2 off tube frame race car with sedan mechanicals? Now go and have a look at the car they built for Hitler and you have a window into 1930s Germany. People on the street saw that car and it stirred something in them, maybe changed their view of the regime
The sycophants chanting "EV, EV" are no different to the ones that chanted "Heil Hitler" but the cars are different. A Faraday Future may win Pebble Beach in 50 years because it was the only one ever made but no-one will be getting lost in the craftsmanship or the quality of materials used.
I bought a Panasonic body with some cheap Leica lens, a decade or more ago. I love that little rig. What is a “Tik Tok”?
I'm somehow less concerned about China collecting that data than our own rulers engaging in the practice
What if I told you they weren't all that different
I gotta admit that I believe the Chinese government has more benevolent intentions, regarding its own people, than ours
They're more benevolent towards US. I doubt the Chinese want to cut our kids' dicks off.
Yeah fuck that. I’ve had my spoon out against that Twitface tide since my 10yo could talk; Chinese ownership is just a bonus.
God knows how cool her mother will let her try to be, and her friends started sprouting phones this summer.
The information being unlawful carnal knowledge
Somehow I think that my dad's Argus C3 that I've used would impress a true photography enthusiast at least as much as a Leica.
i inherited my dad's argus c3 and i must tell you it was no leica. not even close. if you want a good cheap leica knockoff, get one of the old canon rangefinder models.
Of course the two can't really be compared, but the Argus is the camera that popularized the 35mm format in the United States. The Leica is a precision instrument, the Argus works well enough.
The ironic thing is, after decades of living off dumb dentists buying M-whatevers, Leica makes some dynamite digital cameras with world class form-function. The L-mount alliance lens lineup is great, and a Leica SLS with Sigma contemporary lenses is $4-$5k worth of as good as you can get gear.
In other words, only idiots would buy and use $10,000 M bodies rooted in 1950s tech. So yes, TikTok film guy makes sense in that context.
The Q is nice, the SLS-2 is in another league.
I shot my Trump rally book on film, it was a pain but worth it. I'm going to do digital for a while.
The real luxury of that is time IMO.
Whoa whoa whoa. Trashing Air Canada? Come on, man…some airlines deserve better treatment.
Air Canada however, does not.
I get the impression that government owned Air Canada is much like government run medicine; those that only use it occasionally have a pretty favorable opinion, while those that use it frequently loathe it.
While that is a valid comparison, the government actually owns less than 10% of AC these days. To be fair, AC isn’t that bad as far as airlines go. Their premium offerings could be a lot better (lounges are crap, and domestic/transborder business class is meh) but I’ve noticed that covid finally cleared the ranks of all the retirement-age schoolmarm FAs
I work for a family-owned company with a jet that's freely available for most staff. Having the plane wait for you instead of the other way around never gets old. We're a little infamous at FBOs for dirtying the place up and aggressive complimentary snack consumption, however.
Being able to travel 2000 miles in a day and still be home in time to pick a kid up from after-school practice is the ultimate luxury, and one I'd gladly trade any level of airline status for.
The fact you save time is nice.
The fact that the plane is ready to depart whenever you are (earlier or later) is nicer.
The fact that it actually is going to depart and not get cancelled for no reason (shy of a hurricane), even nicer.
These days, the fact that the attendants at Signature would cater to any request, sparing you the humiliation of a TSA scumbag groping your grandmother or daughter - well that's very very nice, getting to be priceless.
The final fact - that when you fly private in a decent plane, you don't arrive tired and dehydrated--is maybe the nicest thing yet. Unlike commercial air carriers, private jets allow an appropriate, human level of moisture content to remain in the air based on their assumptions for airframe life cycles.
So yeah. It's nice to have time. But it's also nice to have nice.
So the dry air in a commercial airliner is lifecycle/durability of the plane thing? I flew to Australia twice and both times was astounded at how little I needed the bathroom in 15 hrs..
This is what I was told, by someone who should know. (It is also why the part-composite 787 is nicer to fly in when you can fly in one; less aluminum apparently means less need to minimize moisture.)
Naturally I defer to anyone in this crowd if they have mechanical engineering experience for Boeing Airbus Dassault etc...
Not if you’re Yevgeny Prigozhin.
surely just a coincidence
Weird. For an airplane to just fall out a window like that.
Russia had a score to settle after the attempted putsch, but the West had an interest in keeping him out of Africa where he might have disrupted the flow of raw materials for our vaunted EVs etc
Yeah, I'm not so sure it was the Russians who killed him.
Reportedly, the top guys at Wagner were all on the plane. I’m sure the CIA wasn’t happy that they’d spent so much of our money on a coup and didn’t even get a tshirt. It’s not like we have AWACS orbiting in the area.
Very much Putin's style. Very much not ours. If it had been us, there would have been an unexplained, unattributed drone strike once he was in Belarus.
Also, this would not have happened had Prighozhin's jet been a Gulfstream. Because it is an Embraer, there is no basis for Western safety agencies to get involved, and it will be easier for the Russians to keep the cause just ambiguous enough for deniability and just clear enough to send a message at the same time. That last part is vintage Putin.
The most surprising thing is that he lived as long as he did.
if prigozhin had kept a low profile and stayed in belarus, he would be alive today. flying his jet in putin's backyard was a flex he was in no position to make. respect where respect is due.
CIA extractions can work some incredible magic
He'll probably have a big funeral with Putin attending. "YEVGENY!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU WERE LIKE A BROTHER TO ME!!!!!"
Disdain is way underrated!
I'm not a watch enthusiast. Is alcohol and CO2 bad for fancy watches?
I thought he was using the stainless steel for the flavour.
Very interested in your comment about critique.
It seems such an integral part of modern society and yet when I was a kid I was taught that critics were the scum of the earth cos they could only criticise what other people had produced.
We seem to have increased our capacity to think critically but lost our capacity for critical thinking.
I walk around offices and think the same way as I see all the fancy integrated tech and meeting decisions. In a way, it's why I stayed away from trying to get in the manufacturer side - I want to enjoy cars, not think about work..
Manufacturing is fun. Every time someone comes up with a stupid idea, you just say “Sorry, we don’t have time for that. Gotta keep the line moving.”
Unfortunately as the product guy, I’m officially in the stupid ideas department and the engineers can tell me it’s unlikely, and eventually the manufacturing guys tell me that.
The office tech side is from time spent in ProAV and UC/IT systems. That conference room tech, touch screen controls you see, smart senses, and the video distribution were all my product lines
I learned a hard lesson, the reason they fly you private is because they expect you to work on the flight. I don’t get motion sickness generally, but I do when staring at Excel while a NetJets bumps along getting to altitude.
For the rapidly shrinking number of people who are outside private equity yet not struggling to survive, I hear good things about flying JSX.com.
One of my ham radio buddies has a son who's a pilot for JSX. They're just getting started, but they're trying to make a serious go of it. Their routes are limited, but if they're going where you want to go, prices are comparable to full fare economy.
I'm tempted to try it next time I go to Dallas.
Only flown with them once, but I thought JSX was awesome. The fare was not much more than flying economy. This was 5 years ago and I think they were just starting, so it might have been aggressive pricing so they could get people exposed to it. I haven't seen similar deals since.
Highly recommended. But keep in mind I'm used to the middle seat somewhere around row 25, so I might just be easily amused.
That was what I was getting at below. She is rich for real, but she wants to be a SOMEBODY. And she wants to be young and attractive, despite being neither.
Under a bunch of sheikhs.
She's a year younger than you? Are you fifty-five?
She looks like a dog's ass.
I'm ugly so i can say that.
So who do you think is hot? Helena Bonham Carter?
Oh come on, she does not. She might not be the hottest woman in the world, but she's definitely not unattractive. I mean, not every woman can look like Lily James. Also, I think we're starting to be a bit mean spirited about this.
Why do people want to be Somebody, and so badly they don't care what it costs?
Fame is not an honorable goal. Most famous people are in fact INfamous.
The amount of people that know my name and what I do is directly proportional to an increase in misery.
It truly blows my mind to picture myself caring what these people think. Turns out I’m cool enough to not care what people that are less cool than me think
"My motherfucker is so cool that when he goes to bed at night, sheep count him."
I’m gonna put a spin on that and use it
The credit goes to David Mamet.
I'm very comfortable being a Nobody.
Me too, but the bank balance sucks.
Much preferred.
Was surprised (shouldn’t have been) that the obscenely rich people in Naples NEEDED people to know they were ballers.
I see this in the same light as you being truck buddy with the wife of the ms13 guy. Like you said, everyone has the right to do what they want.
Yeah, she needs a boob job and some other work done. If you're going to play off your looks, then you gotta have looks.
Me? I have a face for radio and a voice for books.
Which is why I'm an author! :-)
Looking awful with that much money must suck because it means you're the type of ugly wealth can't fix.
I can't afford it anyway so I'm in the clear
I figured she has to be rich, she lives in Dubai…. Plus according to Wikipedia she has 1.4 Billion views, now if I remember my broadcast comm material correctly, advertisers pay for “eyes” and over a Billion views is a lot of eyes…. No saying anything about the quality of the output, but somebody is watching…,
I bet she’s VERY popular in Dubai and the surrounding area.
You said “really attractive.” I hereby retract my statement.
Once you are covered in poo, does it really matter?
What is it with the rich and their grotesque fetishes?
This guy's into tranny hookers, that one likes to be pissed on by black female dominatrices, the other guy over there has a Shetland pony in a gimp suit in his basement...
Because they can afford to indulge them.
They’re bored.
Dammit, this is the second time this week that the "Dubai PortaPotty" has entered the chat for me. MAKE IT STOP
The story is told of a new student at the famed yeshiva of Novardok, one of the two leading seminaries of the pietistic "Mussar" movement in orthodox Judaism in the late 19th and early 20th century. The other yeshiva, at Slobodka, believed in uplifting the spirit in joy while Novardok was more austere and ascetic. Puzzled by a talmudic passage, the promising young torah scholar asked one of the more experienced students for help but was rebuffed with, "Oh, don't ask me. I'm just a nothing. Go ask a real scholar." This was repeated time and again during his early time at the yeshiva.
A couple of weeks later a new student arrived at the yeshiva and asked him a question about a difficult passage. "Oh, don't ask me," he replied, "I'm just a nothing. Go ask one of the real scholars."
One of the veterans said to another, "Gib a kook. Look at him. He's here only two weeks and already he's a nothing."
Fuck you and your Jewish god.
Now we know who is less than a nobody. I told a cute story, a version of which exists in just about every religious and philosophical discipline and you decided to show the world your ass as a Jew hating asshole. Welcome to the trash heap of history. You're welcome to stop using any and every bit of technology that some Jew had a hand in developing (like the device you used to defecate out that bolus of waste you posted) but you're too weak, too cowardly, and too selfish to actually take a principled stance . My Jewish grandchildren laugh at you.
Also, learn some fucking manners. That kind of disrespectful and childish behavior is not the kind of atmosphere our host here is trying to cultivate.
When I was younger I wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific.
When it comes to blondes, Jodie Kidd has her beat every day of the week ;) Plus, she seems like an _actual_ car person, you know, one that cares about car stuff not just the bling.
Vojta- are you familiar with Anna on Cars? I believe she’s local to you.
I hope everything is going well with the family.
I forgot about her. She is Anna on Roads on YouTube. From Switzerland.
That’s her, she’s a doll. I thought more Czech or Polish than Swiss, but I’ve been wrong before.
What a fool I’ve been toiling away to bring value to my customers! Thanks for yet another enjoyable takedown, Jack.
Honest labor?
Dumbass.
Look at this dingus, trying to be a decent man and all that. I bet he even returns the shopping cart.
I do too, but then I almost always park next to the cart corral.
Speaking of shopping carts, Lace Music makes the pickups for my Harmonicaster electric harmonica. The pickup company grew out of Actodyne, the company Don Lace Sr set up to make industrial solenoids and sensors, when he realized that one of the sensors he made worked well as a guitar pickup and got hooked up with Fender. I was talking to Jeff Lace, who runs the company now with his brother Don Jr and he mentioned that the system to prevent shopping carts from leaving a specified area was his invention, also based on inductive sensors.
"So you're the guy who broke my elderly mother's rib when that shopping cart stopped short!"
Same with parking - I can grab a cart to go in and then I only have to push the cart a short ways to return it.
Bonus is that I can crowd the passenger side if the family isn't in tow.
I’m such a dingus I can’t help but take mine and others back
Don't worry, I'm such a dingus (and have worked in retail management too long) that I start facing shelves in random stored
came out of retirement to work at a napa/ace hardware. i was born to straighten, arrange and clean. thats mr ocd to you
I run one of those aforementioned establishments. Most of my best employees are retired!
I’m that efwit who offers to take a just-unloaded cart with me as I head toward the store. Follow me on YouRube
Heck yeah!
Also can’t stand carts near nice cars. So looked like I worked at my local Publix
My day, probably 5 years ago, hanging with Webster, DeMatio, and Daniel Golson and some redhead guy who owned a Honda Beat (who was so unremarkable that I can’t remember his name) at the Concours in MI was fascinating. I vividly remember Golson, dressed in some wacky outfit, downing a non-insignificant number of champagne flutes in the MB tent and pretending to be very important to the wait staff. The entire thing was weird, hollow, obviously fake. Sealed me against ever wanting to do that for a living. I probably make more now than Golson, by a decent amount, and don’t have to sell my self-respect down the river to do it.
Daniel Golson, who I’ve been told mostly hangs around because his mother was like Csaba Csere’s assistant or something, is one of the genuinely goofiest people I’ve met. A person who is just impossible to take seriously; and not in the Chris Farley slapstick/class clown way, just pathetic.
Check out Golson’s Instagram!
why does he look like that
I'm late to the party here, but Golson used to volunteer at the automotive museum I worked at when he was like 18 or something and had a nose ring. During a slow day we all pitched in to clean out the back garage area and someone handed him a broom. This kid, I shit you not, did not know how to use a BROOM. He gripped it up top with both hands and just kind of helplessly wiggled it around.
I believe that was Mike Austin, who is one of the least impressive men i have ever met.
Yep, that’s him. Looks like he’s now an “EV and Mobility Analyst” for a company that appears to be some sort of buzzword-laden climate cult deal; and he’s adopted Lieberman’s pudgy, shaggy, poorly dressed appearance that makes him anathema to women.
Lieberman merely adopted the pudgy/shaggy. Mike was born into it, molded by it!
I had to look up his series - looks like he made a whopping 6 episodes!! I dislike his type too. Get a real job.
This stuff makes me sick. I mean physically sick.
I'm a Nobody with a student loan balance I'll never pay off, a bill for dental work that'd buy a fairly nice used car and a general attempt at making a life using only a significant fraction of the earnings it takes to be middle class, and guys like this glide through life on a slime trail of Shamelessness and Arrogance.
I literally cannot comprehend how, in this scenario, 2 + 2 = 4.
I'm not jealous - I'm disgusted. A functional society would see someone like this panhandling under a bridge.
My first credit card had a $500 limit. I was 16 and it was unsecured. The whole story is pathetic.
I kept mine as well and use it almost daily. The limit never got raised. It’s perfect for high risk purchases like gas pumps and vending machines. If the card ever gets skimmed, nobody can really make big purchases with it.
Not sure how many fill ups my truck could manage on a $500 limit.
That's about 11 tanks of premium for me.
Small tank.
WTF, Ford?
I tried hanging on to my first card for the same reason. I didn't know banks could cancel it if you never use it, and that's what happened. I was displeased. Make sure you occasionally use it to buy lunch or something!
I have Patreon charged to my ancient card to keep it alive because, like the other fine gentlemen here, I didn't want to vaporize my longest lived line of credit! It looks good for my score!
My first card (early 1990s) had a $200 limit. At the time I was an unemployed college student with about $50 in my bank accounts. Got a free bag of M&Ms for signing up though.
It's the little things...
First bag is free.....
I doubt he has only $600. More likely, he can't ACCESS more than that on unexpected short notice.
I think the difference is that today these guys get a ton of visibility on social media, and we get told to think they're somebody, so some dumb exec pays the guy... In the past he would've been known in his town, and maybe at the local country club, as the dumb son of the local rich guy who's always smashing up the car his dad bought him.
From experience, I think the execs tend to be a different much more insecure type. A lot of them end up where they did by sucking up to the right people and not necessarily competence, so they just follow the herd and compare notes with each other. It always does seem to end up that everyone ends up at their level of incompetence, but how high that is can be very different based on where you weasel into.
It makes my job easy, because I just have to identify who the pied pipers are...
Supposedly, this is why celebrities shill for leftist causes.
They have all this money and influence that deep down, they feel they don't really deserve. A-list actors, in particular, got rich by being everyone but themselves and they want to be taken seriously, and for who they really are.
Makes them easy meat for charlatans and mountebanks.
Charlatans are usually harmless, they'll take your money if you give it to them; the mountebanks will take your money before you realize it's too late.
Perspective is the most precious, and the most perishable, of man's capacities.
Try not to think about all the great technical and business ideas that will never come to fruition for lack of funding.
WELL NOW I AM
THANKS RONNIE
This is the stuff I'm here for. You won't hear any disagreement on the grifters from me.
Would you be surprised to know this kind of person can also exist in engineering?
No, I wouldn't.
Nothing shocks me these days.
The most disappointing thing I have to deal with with my dream job is that the parasites are pervasive and will do almost ANYthing to not have to do real work.
This had consequences for people who aren't trying to get by with their last name, looks, gender or any other unearned 'quality'.
“Hi. Do you have time for a quick call?”
No. Please send your question via email so I can document your laziness.
"Industrious Layabouts" is my name for them, as I place them in the same category as the average panhandler: Sneaky and willing to go to any length to evade actual work.
I would not.
"I have enough open line on my credit cards right now to buy an F8 Tributo, although I would sink beneath the waves when the first minimum payment came due." It's amazing how much car a decent credit score and a HELOC can buy, actual payments notwithstanding.
And they'll only give you the ability to do it if they are certain you won't do it.
I follow the F8 market pretty closely; it is soft, and will only become softer over the next year or so. Many opportunities to transact in the low $300s.
I think they will cost less than that next year!
When I was selling motorcycles back in the 90s it was commonplace to have someone buy a bike with multiple credit cards.
5k is on the high end in my experience, every dealer I've asked has had a limit somewhere in the 2-5k range, they don't want to pay the fees on anything over that unfortunately.
Had a friend (late 1980s) whose dad bought a brand new RX-7 via a credit card. One of that card's perks was doubling any factory warranty. Best idea ever for a rotary.
401k and IRAs are covered by federal ERISA (Employee retirement income security act) and are absolutely untouchable by creditors (except the IRS maybe) and in bankruptcy. The thinking being that society doesn't want destitute old people.
But I could be wrong; it's been 25 years since law school and I've never practiced.
I didn't get as far as having them run my credit cause it would be stupid, but the dodge dealer claimed they could get me financed on a Challenger that cost more than I make post tax in a year
I was hoping you’d tear this one apart. Too bad this guy wasn’t named Phil...
Tommy Kendall and Justin Bell have (had?) a “show” together during IMSA weekends. Is TK full of shit too? He obviously had a good run in TransAm, but he spent a lot of years as a TV analyst.
I was fortunate enough to see a REAL Nazi cars (including a 770k and a W31) in Sinsheim. Say what you will about the cars’ most famous passenger, but they were absolutely stunning in a way that most collector cars cannot touch. The 1923 Silver Ghost it was parked near looked almost unimpressive in comparison.
The Torque Show is awful.
I'd rather hear dead air.
TK is a decent person who made himself a champion driver and who is just trying to get by.
I feel compelled to mention that the one time they put us on the clock (a short course at Autobahn in 2006) i was faster than him and the other 58 people there.
the one time peter gregg ran the one lap i thought he'd be way above mid-pack
Did Peter and Hurley have a relationship?
I think Tommy's career plateaued when he got his legs rolled up like a window shade in a GTP car.
He is a quality guy.
just like getting an old 944 for free is actually a negative outcome.
Oh. Great. NOW you tell me...
It’s a shame that Derek Bell joined the grift. If that were my son, I’d be asking, “so what is it that you actually do?”.
I suspect Derek knows the answer and doesn't ask the question because hearing the answer would only break his heart.
Hey, he raised the kid! Never to late to beat some sense into him. If nothing else, the exercise will make you feel better.
and if you can afford it, you can always have hope!
That's why the notion that Joe has no knowledge of Hunter's business dealings doesn't pass the sniff test.
In addition to having more respect for a UPS long-haul driver, I'd wager he'd have far more interesting stories to share as well.
0-I found myself in a Bell Sandwich several years ago (2019?) at The Amelia, as both Messrs. Bell and myself relieved ourselves at a trio of urinals inside the Ritz. The younger of the two had clearly been enjoying the libations on hand. Side note: The Ritz is by far the worst place to stay for that event, in my opinion. It is ALWAYS crawling with people, from before sunrise to 2 AM (or later).
1-Justin’s fairly recent appearance on The Smoking Tire podcast - both his utterances and his behavior - made it clear to me that he struggles with alcohol; he also disclosed that he was recently divorced.
2-I have several friends who have worked for Faraday (Faraway?) Future in the past; I had the pleasure of a private tour of their “factory” in Los Angeles in 2016.
What does the factory of a vapourware company even look like?
There is no factory in the US, everything is drop shipped from a factory in China.
Probably.
YouTube/Article idea: Restore/rebuild a car using the cheapest Chinese garbage possible. I’m talking suspension, engine, everything. Document the results.
Let’s ignore that most “NPD” muscle car restorations could fall into the above. I’m talking a doing this with a Civic or something that’s modern enough to have a good example as a benchmark.
You've sort of described Donut Media's "Hi-Low" car series in which two nearly identical cars are subject to a round of upgrades and modifications, the "Low car" using the cheapest offshore junk and "Hi car" using brand name products. That's not to say either have been put together well.
It's AMAZING how much my desire to watch YouTube videos is influenced by their thumbnails, and I will never watch ANYTHING made by Donut Media.
That show's characters all suck. They look like the loser pothead cast of a Judd Apatow movie.
You're not missing out on much, if anything. It appears to be targeted at kids with little understanding of cars. These are also the same people that destroyed MULTIPLE Subaru engines for various reasons.
Sir, I am under an NDA so I cannot disclose much.
There was more to it than you would think, however.
1. Which explains why he was wearing out his thumbs texting my female companion/co-worker.
Grifters prey on the insecurity of the new money. A LOT of rich people or upper level execs either made it recently, or got it in some manner that makes them feel insecure about their wealth or success. In short they feel like frauds because all of the REAL wealthy people get to hang out with the Ultra Rich and Famous.
Which they don't.
So along come the grifters who have some connection to that (either real or faked) they show up with that 'vibe' of being rich, important, someone who matters, someone who dines with the stars and spends their spare time bedding starlets.
I've seen these people work - they're some level of narcissist and sociopath combined. There are no consequences, nothing too low to do to others, no lie to bold, and there is only them and no one else. What always blows my mind is how many people FALL for it. There are a LOT of stupid people with money. In fact I think one just killed himself on the Titanic while trying to pretend to be an engineer.
Well put.
Like little kids in that respect.
Imagine being one of the many immensely talented craftsmen entrusted with rebuilding one of the most beautiful pre-war German automobiles only for some ding-dong to call it a Krautwagen.
In its context it's fine. It highlights why the Bolshevists hate it so much.
I love these vehicles coming up for auction and winning things. They have real historical significance. What does it mean to society for MB to build a 2 off tube frame race car with sedan mechanicals? Now go and have a look at the car they built for Hitler and you have a window into 1930s Germany. People on the street saw that car and it stirred something in them, maybe changed their view of the regime
The sycophants chanting "EV, EV" are no different to the ones that chanted "Heil Hitler" but the cars are different. A Faraday Future may win Pebble Beach in 50 years because it was the only one ever made but no-one will be getting lost in the craftsmanship or the quality of materials used.
At least the ones chanting "Heil Hitler" probably didn't want to force me to eat bugs.
No, they just treated Gypsies and Jews as if they were bugs.
Deleted my comment. If you're a chanting sycophant, you're a chanting sycophant whether it's 2023 or 1932.
German cars of the 1930s were something that people actually wanted. Cheering for EVs its more like cheering the Gestapo.
they knew the job was dangerous when they took it!