OTCarShoppingTalk: I sold the Land Cruiser (yay), but now face the task of (eventually) replacing it. Right now I'm testing out half sharing the wife's Prius, half driving the '77 Econoline. I foresee a future event that unfolds more or less like: 'I can't do XYZ with the van, and the wife's out driving her Prius.' That leaves the single option of my motorcycle, which is a bit more limiting.
I wanted to find a decent used Durango 5.7 Hemi/AWD but they are thin on the ground for my cheap ass budget. Their are V6's galore, but 'I could've had a Hemi' FOMO is real. Right now, a cheap-o '14 Citadel AWD w/ ~150k is at a small dealer lot not too far from me, I found records indicating 2 owners, then a fleet ownership, then sold at auction just last month. Maintenance records only go back to 76k, but it seems it did get regular maintenance and a 'driveline service' @ ~123k. Last time I bought from a small dealer was a long time ago, and the car was a buyer's remorse special, meaning it had literally no miles on it. Part of me wants to go and at least drive it and look under the hood etc. The other part of me thinks it's a waste of time.
I'm trying to save most of the cash from selling the LC, and this spec Durango is nearly impossible to find for peanuts, so maybe I need to give up on the dream above.
It is depressing how many people seem to be taking Casey Putz seriously as a gubernatorial candidate and don’t see him as the scumbag grifter that he is. Maybe this whole beer hall thing is him having a good laugh at how he has been able to sucker so many people with his campaign while sucking up as much campaign money as he can.
"The Patek Philippe Aquanaut is made in Switzerland of locally sourced parts." It is not. It is about 40% chinese parts in all Swiss watches. I was a buyer for luxury retailer and I know this for a fact.
I don’t think I need to feel bad about buying inexpensive homages to fancy euro watches just on the merits of the European watch community using China for parts manufacturing…
Speaking of "making watches," if you haven't already done so, Read LONGITUDE by Dava Sobel. It relates the story of a man devoted to creating an accurate clock and pursuing the prize offered for such a device, in order to aid sailors to determine their longitude at sea.
I've read it twice. The movie adaptation with Michael Gambon is also very good. It turns out there's an illustrated version of the book, which I just ordered from Abe Books.
It's hard to describe just how brilliant John Harrison was. Besides his technical skills, the many inventions he had to create to see his idea to fruition, his basic idea of determining a ship's longitude was the definition of simple and elegant. Determining latitude was fairly simple, based on measuring the angle of the sun or North Star (in the northern hemisphere) above the horizon. Longitude was much harder, and it seemed as though the politically connected astronomers of the Royal Society tried to make it even harder.
Harrison's insight was simple, but brilliant. No matter where you are on earth, the sun is at its apogee at noon, local time. If you have an accurate enough timekeeping device set to noon at the Greenwich observatory in England, every hour of difference from local noon to Greenwich noon works out to 15 degrees of longitude. 15 x 24 = 360.
There are so many things to learn from Harrison's story. His determination, his son's loyalty, how science can be corrupted by politics, how connected people screw the little guy.
It was more a statement of how much crap America buys from China, that is poorly made, but looking at the watches, they don’t look or feel poorly made.
True. But watches haven’t changed that much and their manufacturing is the same. I bet, outside of the price of gold, the any patek probably costs no more than $3k to make with the same finishing. Maybe less.
This is worth a separate discussion but there are several brands that are fully integrated vertically in CH and give tours to prove it. Patek is one of them. Only raw materials and glass are sourced from outside Geneva. That is their public and documented claim.
This is simply untrue. They may claim that, but you can look at various international shipping manifests and see manicuring centers shipping directly to Patek. It doesn’t behove them to make everything in Switzerland. Rolex. Vacheron, all of them have Chinese parts.
ok, who is going to come over and clean up the vomit on my keyboard and desk resulting from those Scotty photos? we need WARNINGs before scrolling thru such!
No one with an IQ above room temperature thinks Casey Putch is anything other than a spoiled D-Bag with delusions of grandeur that border on schizophrenic…right?…right??
He may be an insane moron, but at least he's OUR insane moron, rather than someone who is OUTSPOKEN about his animus against the people of Ohio and the US.
Baruth, this one paragraph "news" entry cracks me up. Quick! Semi feral cats living in an Oregon vagabond encampment need to be trapped and put in houses!!! Think of the homeless house cat!!
Nah, that's some nonsense from south of the border. Most Michigan fans (do national collegiate championships mean anything in the transfer portal / NIL age?) have no problem calling the second tier school in Columbus "Ohio State". You can park a car with Ohio plates in Ann Arbor and nobody will bother it. I wouldn't park a car with Michigan plates on High Street in Columbus.
True story. I once drove to Lima, Ohio to buy a PeeWee Les Paul. It's a kid-sized little guitar. An adult son was helping his dad, who had some kind of chronic respiratory disease, sell off his guitar collection. Before I walked in their house, from the banners and flags outside I knew they were OSU fans. The den was literally a shrine to Woody Hayes, with a lifesize bronze bust of the man in a place of honor. We had agreed on $100 the guitar, a fair price, but I said, "I'll pay you $150 if you sing The Victors." They turned me down.
"Let me get one thing straight for everyone: there is only one company that deserves the name Alembic, and it’s the guys who make Stanley Clarke’s bass."
The first Alembic bass was made for Jack Casady. Phil Lesh got #8, aka "Mission Control" which was set up for four channels and had all sorts of onboard electronics.
People like to poke fun at the Dead scene but the Grateful Dead and Owsley had a lot to do with making live amplified music actually sound good, the whole signal chain from the instruments to the PA. Owsley was the guy who put Ron Wickersham, Rick Turner, and Bob Matthews together in a back room at the Dead's rehearsal space in Novato to create Alembic. He likely also put up the money.
Speaking of which, on April 22, the Julien's auction house sale of Dead related stuff, including some of the McIntosh 2300 power amps used in the Wall of Sound. There's a small practice amp that belonged to Garcia that I considered bidding upon, but in online bidding it's already above the estimate.
From Grok: Phil Spector's Wall of Sound was his revolutionary 1960s recording technique that layered dozens of instruments (often doubled or tripled, including guitars, pianos, drums, horns, and strings played by the Wrecking Crew session musicians) along with heavy reverb and echo in mono mixes to create a dense, orchestral, immersive "symphonic" wall of sound for pop records.
The Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound was a massive PA system that almost bankrupted the band. It weighed 70 tons and was three stories tall. 604 speakers total (typically described as 586 JBL speakers + 54 Electro-Voice tweeters) and 48 McIntosh MC-2300 amplifiers (600 watts each), delivering a total of 28,800 watts of continuous RMS power.
When they played Watkins Glen in front of 600,000 people, they used digital delay units to time-align the sound coming out of the satellite speakers in the crowd so no matter how far you were from the stage, you got coherent sound, not an echoed mess.
From the very beginning much of Putsch's campaigning has been in the ridiculously over saturated market of microbreweries. I just assumed some politico convinced him it would be fun and trendy but knowing the Nazi trigger could be pulled should our boy actually get some traction. Here it is with early voting started yesterday and the trigger had just been pulled. It's hard to go full Nazi though while quaffing Peant Butter Banana Stout.
He's got my vote, just for shits and giggles, not like he has any sort of chance. I'll be taking a pass on November's election.
The United States doesn’t really have a watch manufacturing base, like Japan or Europe, there are a handful of what I consider luxury watch makers in the States, and then there is China, who is coming into its own watch making business, the Sea-Gull st19 movements are pure art,so my question is, how egregious is it to buy watches that are Chinese manufactured, especially when they are practically giving away their labor, these watches had they been manufactured in Japan would be multiples more expensive than Seiko, and a lot of these watches are using Japan made (speculative) movements, very few are actually counterfeit.
Sad to report... on my forced march to the wine shop... I used to pass past the showroom of the Speidel watch bands (and third-party) watches. They are the descendants of the mid-19th-c. German company that invented "Gold-Plated (jewelry) Chains" (a long story, that!).
Boils down to Vaughn Gittin JR accusing Car And Driver of a) writing with AI and b) not “understanding” the purpose of the $110k RTR Spec 3.
Worth a read. It’s rare and, frankly, unbecoming for the CEO of a company to go into a comment section and toss around accusations. Perhaps they should have made their car faster than one that cost $60k less instead?
Elana may be a "real and wonderful person", but she couldn't write her way out of a paper bag, so... I guess we know how well Thomas Hundal writes by extension.
I don't frequent "The Autopian", so I'll need to take your word for it
... but based solely on the linked article, there's nothing to make me want to read more. The "inside ball" various websites feel important to put up in response to things happening on other websites or with other autojournalists doesn't interest me in the slightest.
The only things worse are the political statements "The Drive", etc. feel are super-important to share, and breathless shilling for anything Chinese or electric.
That’s fair. I have no stake in the site, but this article I linked isn’t representative of much of what they post either tbh
By and large, and especially considering their competition, they do a good job of putting out interesting content and presenting it in a (relatively) balanced way.
I’d strongly recommend reading anything and everything that Adrian Clarke writes. I’d also say Ms Mercedes Streeter does some really good work in her longer, research-based articles.
OTCarShoppingTalk: I sold the Land Cruiser (yay), but now face the task of (eventually) replacing it. Right now I'm testing out half sharing the wife's Prius, half driving the '77 Econoline. I foresee a future event that unfolds more or less like: 'I can't do XYZ with the van, and the wife's out driving her Prius.' That leaves the single option of my motorcycle, which is a bit more limiting.
I wanted to find a decent used Durango 5.7 Hemi/AWD but they are thin on the ground for my cheap ass budget. Their are V6's galore, but 'I could've had a Hemi' FOMO is real. Right now, a cheap-o '14 Citadel AWD w/ ~150k is at a small dealer lot not too far from me, I found records indicating 2 owners, then a fleet ownership, then sold at auction just last month. Maintenance records only go back to 76k, but it seems it did get regular maintenance and a 'driveline service' @ ~123k. Last time I bought from a small dealer was a long time ago, and the car was a buyer's remorse special, meaning it had literally no miles on it. Part of me wants to go and at least drive it and look under the hood etc. The other part of me thinks it's a waste of time.
I'm trying to save most of the cash from selling the LC, and this spec Durango is nearly impossible to find for peanuts, so maybe I need to give up on the dream above.
Hemi FOMO is real, but I did just get ~27mpg on a 1300 mile trip with the 3.6 in my Grand Cherokee.
It’s an uninteresting engine, but it’s not a bad one.
Full disclosure: I am Asian and migrated to the US in my teens and will be hitting the half century mark this month.
Why is it that everything I hate about the US right now I can point to the leftist progressive female, who is almost always, white???
about half of white women are conservative compared to nearly all nonwhite women who are liberal
its not the whites
Good point, but I assume that the white women contribute a disproportionate amount of money and brainpower.
An asian trackday coach? She might be an asshole bigot but she's not suicidal!
I apologize in advance for this. Yuki is available.
That, my friend... was hilarious.
sushi tunoda making a few bucks on the side
gotta resist the urge to throw harpoons at her though
The worst part about Casey’s Putsch is that most people won’t even know the significance until it’s spelled out for them
You been reading my mail!!!
It is depressing how many people seem to be taking Casey Putz seriously as a gubernatorial candidate and don’t see him as the scumbag grifter that he is. Maybe this whole beer hall thing is him having a good laugh at how he has been able to sucker so many people with his campaign while sucking up as much campaign money as he can.
"The Patek Philippe Aquanaut is made in Switzerland of locally sourced parts." It is not. It is about 40% chinese parts in all Swiss watches. I was a buyer for luxury retailer and I know this for a fact.
I don’t think I need to feel bad about buying inexpensive homages to fancy euro watches just on the merits of the European watch community using China for parts manufacturing…
No one is saying you should? Just that Swiss watches aren’t all that Swiss.
The Swiss learned how to make watches from the Americans.
Speaking of "making watches," if you haven't already done so, Read LONGITUDE by Dava Sobel. It relates the story of a man devoted to creating an accurate clock and pursuing the prize offered for such a device, in order to aid sailors to determine their longitude at sea.
It’s a great book!
I've read it twice. The movie adaptation with Michael Gambon is also very good. It turns out there's an illustrated version of the book, which I just ordered from Abe Books.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHvt48S9l4w
It's hard to describe just how brilliant John Harrison was. Besides his technical skills, the many inventions he had to create to see his idea to fruition, his basic idea of determining a ship's longitude was the definition of simple and elegant. Determining latitude was fairly simple, based on measuring the angle of the sun or North Star (in the northern hemisphere) above the horizon. Longitude was much harder, and it seemed as though the politically connected astronomers of the Royal Society tried to make it even harder.
Harrison's insight was simple, but brilliant. No matter where you are on earth, the sun is at its apogee at noon, local time. If you have an accurate enough timekeeping device set to noon at the Greenwich observatory in England, every hour of difference from local noon to Greenwich noon works out to 15 degrees of longitude. 15 x 24 = 360.
There are so many things to learn from Harrison's story. His determination, his son's loyalty, how science can be corrupted by politics, how connected people screw the little guy.
Seconded. Great book.
Too bad the eccentric Englishmen are no longer a thing.
True. The US at one point was the leading watch manufacturing center.
It was more a statement of how much crap America buys from China, that is poorly made, but looking at the watches, they don’t look or feel poorly made.
True. But watches haven’t changed that much and their manufacturing is the same. I bet, outside of the price of gold, the any patek probably costs no more than $3k to make with the same finishing. Maybe less.
This is worth a separate discussion but there are several brands that are fully integrated vertically in CH and give tours to prove it. Patek is one of them. Only raw materials and glass are sourced from outside Geneva. That is their public and documented claim.
Now, Tissot and Tag...
This is simply untrue. They may claim that, but you can look at various international shipping manifests and see manicuring centers shipping directly to Patek. It doesn’t behove them to make everything in Switzerland. Rolex. Vacheron, all of them have Chinese parts.
ARTICLE REQUESTED (and I'm not even a watch guy)
Their jewelry on the other hand, not Chinese. In fact, one of the best is in the US.
ok, who is going to come over and clean up the vomit on my keyboard and desk resulting from those Scotty photos? we need WARNINGs before scrolling thru such!
that watch, in both $27k (seriously?!?) and $109 versions, is ugly. sorry.
Brown doesn’t help. But the aquanaut and the nautilus seem the same to me. I don’t think any patek watch looks all that great tbh.
That's kind of my point! If you just look at the thing you would never know how great it is to wear.
PVD/stainless > gold
Fight me.
No one with an IQ above room temperature thinks Casey Putch is anything other than a spoiled D-Bag with delusions of grandeur that border on schizophrenic…right?…right??
you are insulting people with room temp IQs
Hoping next month I can pick up a discounted Putsch for Governor hat or t-shirt to wear should our chief scribe host another First Principles.
Maybe I can find some Casey Putsch Indycar merch to wear
It’s in the 2026 Speedgear Spring Catalog between The Steve McQueen Collection and the Auto Art bathroom fixtures.
He may be an insane moron, but at least he's OUR insane moron, rather than someone who is OUTSPOKEN about his animus against the people of Ohio and the US.
The tragedy is that it got to this point.
https://idahonews.com/news/local/rescue-group-urgently-seeks-help-to-save-cats-from-ontario-encampment-sweep
Baruth, this one paragraph "news" entry cracks me up. Quick! Semi feral cats living in an Oregon vagabond encampment need to be trapped and put in houses!!! Think of the homeless house cat!!
I bet the homeless people are feeding them... so when the encampment goes, they'll be hungry. But yeah this seems oddly urgent for no reason.
I'll say it again, write in J. Baruth for Ohio guvnor!
Isn't Jim Tressel a former coach of athletic teams?
Yes, of a school which shall not be mentioned.
What do you have against Youngstown State?
Gang affiliation obviously
They are in the “who cares” category with MSU.
It needs to be mentioned, because it is one of the nation's largest universities and something just happened there which is highly concerning and also illustrative of what is happening in so many universities, corporations, city councils, and medical residency programs (note that the number of residency slots was capped by Congress in 1997, so each foreign resident is a 1:1 displacement of a citizen: https://x.com/MaryBowdenMD/status/2037514903330676838 , https://x.com/MaryBowdenMD/status/2039074211013042564 , https://x.com/marybowdenmd/status/2037905486020747410 , https://x.com/MaryBowdenMD/status/2038669980804280705 )
In March, a new president was installed in a very brief, very secretive, and very closed manner, which received criticism from many stakeholders including the local chapter of the AAUP, alumni, and concerned citizens: (https://www.dispatch.com/story/opinion/columns/guest/2026/03/18/ohio-state-president-ravi-bellamkonda-ted-carter-trustees/89198862007/ , https://www.wosu.org/politics-government/2026-03-12/ohio-state-university-hires-ravi-bellamkonda-as-next-president-without-wider-candidate-search, https://www.wosu.org/politics-government/2026-03-17/ohio-state-faculty-reaction-remains-mixed-at-bellamkondas-appointment-as-president )
I searched in vain for a photo of the the wife of outoing president Ted Carter (Vice Adm. USN-Ret.), but the press release (https://news.osu.edu/ravi-v-bellamkonda-appointed-18th-president-of-the-ohio-state-university/) prominently featured the {Beautiful First Couple}, in order to emphasize what happened: https://content.presspage.com/uploads/2170/88688672-8ec8-414a-a254-9872e31bc51a/1920_ohiostatepresidentraviv.bellamkondaandhiswifedr.lalitakaligotla.jpg?x=1773336449953
Just DAYS after the installation of {Bellamkonda}, {Vivek Ramaswamy} said that Ohio has "too many" colleges & universities and called for consolidation (if he closes enough universities, then his view that Americans are "unskilled" will become true!): https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/03/19/vivek-ramaswamy-said-ohio-colleges-universities-need-to-be-consolidated-we-have-too-many-of-them/
Subcontinentals are the best in the world at what they do; The Future is Frisco: https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/2040998821216600208
Nah, that's some nonsense from south of the border. Most Michigan fans (do national collegiate championships mean anything in the transfer portal / NIL age?) have no problem calling the second tier school in Columbus "Ohio State". You can park a car with Ohio plates in Ann Arbor and nobody will bother it. I wouldn't park a car with Michigan plates on High Street in Columbus.
True story. I once drove to Lima, Ohio to buy a PeeWee Les Paul. It's a kid-sized little guitar. An adult son was helping his dad, who had some kind of chronic respiratory disease, sell off his guitar collection. Before I walked in their house, from the banners and flags outside I knew they were OSU fans. The den was literally a shrine to Woody Hayes, with a lifesize bronze bust of the man in a place of honor. We had agreed on $100 the guitar, a fair price, but I said, "I'll pay you $150 if you sing The Victors." They turned me down.
"Let me get one thing straight for everyone: there is only one company that deserves the name Alembic, and it’s the guys who make Stanley Clarke’s bass."
The first Alembic bass was made for Jack Casady. Phil Lesh got #8, aka "Mission Control" which was set up for four channels and had all sorts of onboard electronics.
People like to poke fun at the Dead scene but the Grateful Dead and Owsley had a lot to do with making live amplified music actually sound good, the whole signal chain from the instruments to the PA. Owsley was the guy who put Ron Wickersham, Rick Turner, and Bob Matthews together in a back room at the Dead's rehearsal space in Novato to create Alembic. He likely also put up the money.
Speaking of which, on April 22, the Julien's auction house sale of Dead related stuff, including some of the McIntosh 2300 power amps used in the Wall of Sound. There's a small practice amp that belonged to Garcia that I considered bidding upon, but in online bidding it's already above the estimate.
https://www.juliensauctions.com/en/items/2208332/jerry-garcia-owned-and-stage-played-joan-baez-friends-gallien-krueger-250ml-warm-up-guitar-amplifier
Isn't the "Wall of Sound" associated with the late convicted murderer Phil Spector not the Dead?
That's a different Wall of Sound.
From Grok: Phil Spector's Wall of Sound was his revolutionary 1960s recording technique that layered dozens of instruments (often doubled or tripled, including guitars, pianos, drums, horns, and strings played by the Wrecking Crew session musicians) along with heavy reverb and echo in mono mixes to create a dense, orchestral, immersive "symphonic" wall of sound for pop records.
The Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound was a massive PA system that almost bankrupted the band. It weighed 70 tons and was three stories tall. 604 speakers total (typically described as 586 JBL speakers + 54 Electro-Voice tweeters) and 48 McIntosh MC-2300 amplifiers (600 watts each), delivering a total of 28,800 watts of continuous RMS power.
https://www.mcintoshlabs.com/about/news/mcintosh-and-the-grateful-deads-wall-of-sound
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmZT4Wl2jSA
There's a guy who has made 1:6, 1:4, and 1;2 scale working replicas of the Wall of Sound.
https://www.mixonline.com/live-sound/live-gear/bringing-the-grateful-deads-wall-of-sound-back-to-life
holy shit thats a lot of juice
probably sounded mental
When they played Watkins Glen in front of 600,000 people, they used digital delay units to time-align the sound coming out of the satellite speakers in the crowd so no matter how far you were from the stage, you got coherent sound, not an echoed mess.
well thats pretty clever
Different Wall! And Coltrane had the Sheets of Sound.
Is hip hop sheeits of sound?
The use of "of" of late has made me sick of "of" of course!
From the very beginning much of Putsch's campaigning has been in the ridiculously over saturated market of microbreweries. I just assumed some politico convinced him it would be fun and trendy but knowing the Nazi trigger could be pulled should our boy actually get some traction. Here it is with early voting started yesterday and the trigger had just been pulled. It's hard to go full Nazi though while quaffing Peant Butter Banana Stout.
He's got my vote, just for shits and giggles, not like he has any sort of chance. I'll be taking a pass on November's election.
I ran a micro-brewery, in our kitchen. I was devoted to making the world a better place one five gallon batch at a time.
I hope you will vote, because every vote sends a message to any future GOP that may try something similar (see https://www.avoidablecontact.com/p/wednesday-ort-beer-hall-putsch-scottys/comment/240468885 )
One third of Michigan's RNC delegation is literally a consigliere in the Subcontinental Mafia (ITServe); search for "Hima" here: https://gop.com/about-our-party/rnc-members/
The United States doesn’t really have a watch manufacturing base, like Japan or Europe, there are a handful of what I consider luxury watch makers in the States, and then there is China, who is coming into its own watch making business, the Sea-Gull st19 movements are pure art,so my question is, how egregious is it to buy watches that are Chinese manufactured, especially when they are practically giving away their labor, these watches had they been manufactured in Japan would be multiples more expensive than Seiko, and a lot of these watches are using Japan made (speculative) movements, very few are actually counterfeit.
Sad to report... on my forced march to the wine shop... I used to pass past the showroom of the Speidel watch bands (and third-party) watches. They are the descendants of the mid-19th-c. German company that invented "Gold-Plated (jewelry) Chains" (a long story, that!).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speidel#
70 or so years ago, Speidel was one of the largest employers in Rhode Island. I gather they had prospered on wartime contracts.
I just walked past, and the building is for sale; any and all reasonable offers considered.
In my youth, Speidel was a local sponsor of the "College Bowl" Quiz TV show.
The most amazing climax of which, I will now share with you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki8LojXY2NE
My dad had some spiedel watch bands.
So did mine. They're pretty comfortable.
Speaking of The Autopian, interesting article here:
https://www.theautopian.com/vaughn-gittin-jr-baselessly-suggests-that-car-and-driver-is-using-ai-after-slightly-negative-review-of-his-spec-3-mustang/
Boils down to Vaughn Gittin JR accusing Car And Driver of a) writing with AI and b) not “understanding” the purpose of the $110k RTR Spec 3.
Worth a read. It’s rare and, frankly, unbecoming for the CEO of a company to go into a comment section and toss around accusations. Perhaps they should have made their car faster than one that cost $60k less instead?
From the article (which I read):
"[𝘌𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘦: 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘴. 𝘌𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯, 𝘢𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳. 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘷𝘢𝘨𝘶𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘺 𝘶𝘯𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘥𝘶𝘮𝘣. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘧𝘵 𝘢 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯. 𝘎𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘯 𝘑𝘳. 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘶𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘸𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘥. – 𝘔𝘏]"
Elana may be a "real and wonderful person", but she couldn't write her way out of a paper bag, so... I guess we know how well Thomas Hundal writes by extension.
The Autopian is the best current automotive blog.
They are also kind and deferential to a fault.
I don't frequent "The Autopian", so I'll need to take your word for it
... but based solely on the linked article, there's nothing to make me want to read more. The "inside ball" various websites feel important to put up in response to things happening on other websites or with other autojournalists doesn't interest me in the slightest.
The only things worse are the political statements "The Drive", etc. feel are super-important to share, and breathless shilling for anything Chinese or electric.
That’s fair. I have no stake in the site, but this article I linked isn’t representative of much of what they post either tbh
By and large, and especially considering their competition, they do a good job of putting out interesting content and presenting it in a (relatively) balanced way.
I’d strongly recommend reading anything and everything that Adrian Clarke writes. I’d also say Ms Mercedes Streeter does some really good work in her longer, research-based articles.
"𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘧𝘵 𝘢 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯"
chat gpt has been out for more than 5 years at this point though
I love the idea of accusing automotive “writers” of being AI generated. That is genius.
I’m here for it. CEOs should be calling out lazy auto writing publicly.
Let's mount a write-in campaign for Mr. Baruth. If only to make ol Casey mildly concerned.