With the stated inflation rate still a full percentage point above a supposed "target", which appears to be nothing more than an aspirational suggestion, the Fed decided to lower rates again today. The target is at least 1% above what should be the target, making the stated rate of inflation 2% higher than it ought to be and probably 5% above what is being stated. It's time to goose the economy to really get it going before midterms. I feel like Mr. Trump has lost the plot regarding Americans' deep dislike for higher prices, and is going to leave us with a Congress full of Warren/AOC-wannabes.
I walked by a meat case today in a supermarket where I was dropping off parts for one of my guys, and caught a $49/lb SIRLOIN (not ribeye) steak price out of the corner of my eye. This reminded me of when a sheet of OSB went from $7 to over $50 when we were experiencing "transitory 7% inflation". 'Tis but a flesh wound.
OTOH, China junk from Amazon continues to arrive at my door every day unabated at about the same price as it ever was pre-"devastating tariffs". Some China junk has even gone down. HF tools are pretty much the same price, as are Chinese electric motors and whatnot. It's only 100% domestically produced goods like OSB and beef that seem to be affected by "global market forces" and tariffs. I'm still buying $10 east-Asian hoodies from Mr. Bezos.
I'm sure there's a super-great and very fancy sounding reason for all of this, but I suspect it has to do with the fact that I just don't see "value creation" when I see it. The great news is my portfolio is up nicely. The bad news is I'll need every dime of it to keep up with all this "value created" inflation.
Wages are an important side of the affordability equation. China, Mexico, and illegals are all disinflationary, so we should expect some inflation as we decouple: it will be survivable if and only if wages rise.
Are you suggesting that having tens of millions of people here competing for housing and food isn't driving asset inflation? Never mind that they qualify for government handouts that citizens don't. Or maybe we should mind.
No, not good catch: I should have said that globalization is inflationary for assets, especially housing, but deflationary for most other goods & services.
Do you think healthcare is cheaper because you have to pay for all of the illegals' healthcare when you're paying for your own? Do you think your wages and opportunities are greater because you're competing with illegals whose own income is supplemented by the government? Do you think that your college education is cheaper when you've got a new class of people who you have to pay for before you pay for yourself? Your taxes are higher. Your salary is lower. Your supply is up against a greater demand. Sure, there is some cheap disposable crap that is less expensive adjusted for inflation than the durable stuff it replaced, but your salary is going to housing, healthcare, taxes and education, so it had better be cheap. Otherwise, you might not be able to defend selling your children's futures for shareholder value.
When I was a union carpenter in SD 2 decades ago, the union scale was almost $20 lower than it was in LA, just 2 hours north. The illegals, even in corporate backed heavy commercial construction, really drove down the wages.
I would suggest that the multiplicity of local building codes which exploded after the 2014 rewrite of the "national" codes has been a major driver in housing prices.
The codes and the zoning restrictions most municipalities have embraced have added at least 30% to the cost of new construction, which in turn drives up the price of existing housing stock.
I've built 3 times since the new codes came into play. It's night and day different than before.
It's noticeable even in residential. I've got a 70 year old house that I've slowly redone over the years. When I want to install a new generator to replace an older one I learn that the "code" now specifies it needs to move 5 feet over. I need a new permit. I need to pay the Generac people $1200 to move the location. Then I learn the "code" now specifies a beefier power cable. That no longer can get routed through the basement. To plug into a new fuse panel that needs to move over two feet because "code" that didn't exist 10 years ago.
Repeat with sump pump discharge outlets that my good contractor can't touch and I need an off the books plumber to deal with to account for new "code" provisions.
All that and so much more, Andy. It's insane, has nothing to do with safety, quality, or making anything quantifiably better.
It's just a way for the local government to exert some muscle, and require a permitting fee (which is a major source of revenue). The current electrical code requires arc-fault/ground-fault breakers in nearly all applications in a residential panel. A SqD AF/GF breaker is about $90 instead of the $5 a standard breaker costs. This means that a "standard" 200a single-phase residential panel costs $5000 instead of the $500 it used to cost. Tell me -- when was the last time you heard of somebody getting electrocuted by an arcing switch? If you said, "never" that's because it's the correct answer.
Houses stopped burning down from faulty electrical when everything started getting a ground wire run with it, and when breakers started replacing fuses. That was in the 1960s. Everything since then has been nonsense, and has made an electrical job 10x as expensive.
Multiply that by 100 different things, plumbing and HVAC especially, and you have the rise of the $1M 2500 sq/ft home.
Oh, the stories I could tell you about "the great planning and zoning war of 2023" in Stanistan. I emerged victorious after getting a lawyer involved, but enough blood was spilled that everybody retreated to a neutral corner and we're very deep into "don't ask/don't tell".
That works until there is a project that needs a pro who does business in your area and wants to keep his license intact. Then the code violations need to be remedied or the pro walks.
I'd suggest Japanese-style zoning for America, but we're all a bunch of loud, belligerent, selfish assholes, so that project would achieve goose-into-jet-engine status in record time.
The entire idea behind English Common Law is that if you buy a thing, you own it -- and it's yours to do with as you see fit. As long as what I do on my property does not greatly diminish the value of my neighbor's property, I ought to be able to do whatever I want on my own.
where in tarnation is $49/lb sirloin being sold? beef prices are definitely up, but not anywhere near that crazy anywhere that I have been. maybe it was total price of $49 (4 lbs at $12/lb)?
Why has Johnny been to so many training opportunities and still sucks?
Well, here in the gun world we have what we call ITI.
Impervious
To
Instruction
It doesn't matter how many different ways you try to teach the concepts, like En Vogue they're never gonna get it. (Careful with that joke, it's an antique!)
To quote a friend, there are some people who simply do not have their hands and their brain wired together. They do not pick up kinesthetic skill easily. You can say "Do X" and they will look you in the eye and earnestly tell you they're doing X while you can see as plain as the sun in the sky that they're so far from actually doing X you'd need the Hubble telescope for them to even SEE X.
In class this is the person who I lay hands on. In other words I will use my hands on theirs to show them how I'm applying pressure to the grip of the gun. I will use my trigger finger over top of theirs to model how I'm working through the trigger on a shot. I will use clear, purpose built visual aids to show them how I'm using the sights.
I don't think there's a good equivalent in driver's training. Even then, it's not always successful. It works a lot of the time but sometimes you get someone who is simply completely overwhelmed by what's going on. They get behind the gun and their limbic system is lit up like they just turned a corner and found themselves face to face with a 600 pound male lion. They can't process most of what you say. They don't realize most of what they're doing.
In each of us, there is a man, a monkey, and a lizard. (Understand this is an imperfect model of the human brain, but grossly accurate enough to serve the purposes of exegesis) The man is who we think of as the apex predator of the planet. It's the rational, reasoning, cunning part of us that makes us able to plan and use tools and think our way through a complex and dangerous problem. The monkey is the emotional center. It has some utility in an emergency...namely providing that urge to deal with things quickly. It screams at us that the plane is crashing but it is utterly unable to do anything to correct it.
In other words, you need the monkey to tell you the plane is going down. But once you're behind the controls you cannot let the monkey try to fly the plane because monkeys cannot fly planes. The kicker is that the monkey is going to be fighting as hard as it can to take over because it is selfish and afraid. It is unable to trust higher reasoning because it doesn't have higher reasoning.
The phrase "chimp out"...replaced more recently with crash out...has some significant truth built into it regarding the behavior being witnessed.
What you're often seeing with someone like Johnny is that he is unable to actually wrestle the monkey out of the pilots chair and hold him at bay. To quote my friend Ed Monk, you need the monkey to motivate your movement but then you need to be able to shut the monkey up. I'm betting Johnny can't do that.
"You're not a deliberate man, Ed. I do not sense that about you."
Johnny doesn't have a "predator" setting in high stress situations. He's the prey,*and he knows it.* The guys I know who have done the best in gunfights...including realizing they were in one after they've been shot in the face and taken 1/4 of a magazine's worth of ammo...have been able to flip the switch in their head to becoming the hunter. They became the predator, not the prey.
This means they spent their very limited resources in the moment focused on the task at hand, took active control of themselves and the situation and started making things happen. Not sitting back and letting things happen.
You can see it at work in police gunfight footage. There's a ton of it out there now from dashcams and lapel cams. Two good instances to look up are the Kyle Dinkheller incident and the Jared Reston incident.
If you watch the Dinkheller video you are going to see a desperately terrified human being armed with a pistol who mag dumps three full magazine at a threat from about 1 car length to 1.5 car lengths away without landing a single hit. The individual actually stands at his truck, loads cartridges into a magazine, loads the magazine into an M1 carbine and then proceeds to murder the deputy. The last thing you hear are his blood-curdling screams right before he is executed on the side of the road. All because he told an older man to take his hands out of his pockets.
That older man...a white dude...came from an honor culture. The insult of a younger man ordering him to take his hands out of his pockets caused an immediate loss of face and had to be remedied by killing the other party stone dead. He was unapologetic for his actions all the way to the executioner's chamber.
Contrast this with Jared Reston who was fighting a shoplifter during an off duty gig. His first clue he was in a gunfight was when he took a .45 ACP round through his lower jaw. He thought at first he'd been punched harder than ever before, and it wasn't until he regained the power of sight, felt his collapsed jaw on top of his tongue, and saw the perpetrator shooting that he realized he'd been shot and was still being shot. Whereupon he fought his way into a kneeling position, drew his gun, and killed the guy who shot him deader than fried chicken.
Dinkheller let the monkey fly the plane. Jared took control and killed the shit out of the other guy by employing marksmanship. "Every time I saw my front sight on his chest, I gave him another one." He didn't think mean thoughts. He didn't "mindset" the other guy to death. He employed unsexy, boring, but highly effective marksmanship principles to get the job done.
Johnny is not a deliberate man. I do not sense that about him.
If he encounters a monster he will die screaming because he is unable to stop the monkey from flying the plane. The amount of training that's been poured into him is irrelevant because when it comes right down to it, he lacks the discipline to take control of himself and the situation and do something useful. He's the guy you hear on videos of awful things happening saying "Oh my god!", not the guy you see in some of the videos taking useful action to help the situation. He's the guy screaming for someone to call 911, not the guy grabbing his med kit.
The delta between who he is and who he thinks he wants to be is vast.
Who were the people who sat idly by as that disgusting N-word (and in my mind, all people of color are ** NOT ** N-words, just those who perpetrate crime (gang members, mostly), or sit on their lazy asses and let the government take our tax dollars and pay them to exist, so I mean no offense to anyone commenting here, or to the majority of folks of color that I know who are just going normally through life) blew away that poor woman on the subway, and then exclaimed “I got a bitch!” Are those lizards? Or are the perpetrators the lizards?
If it's okay, I might have another possible layer to add to this.
A quick bit of background: My college path was going to be a double major in Psychology/Communications, also known as "what I'm thinking or not thinking when I do or say something/what I'm actually saying", but I eventually encountered four problems:
1. Math (I seriously can't do college-level algebra)
2. There are some serious issues within Psychology and Psychiatry, more specifically, you really can make it all up as you go along (also, on a side note, take a peek at the gender breakdown of who goes to college for psychology here of late, it may terrify you)
3. In the end, it's rare when we actually want to fix what's wrong, as almost every issue or neuroses we have becomes part of our identity
4. The industry loves to be able to say that they solve mysteries, when in fact there are some mysteries that really don't ever need to be solved, and therapy models need to be adjusted at times for that.
My particular focus/proposed thesis was going to be on the sociopathy/psychopathy spectrum in the workplace and corporate circles. Yeah, not a real popular topic and I was already taking a considerable amount of shit from that idea (gee, am I right above the target?). After running/screaming from that college pursuit, I came up with an idea for a murder mystery series, a comedic, bumbling sort of complete and total Anti-Sherlock who always solves the wrong crime, and I spent more time in the sociopathy/psychopathy rabbit hole for story research purposes, as there is quite a bit of hay that is made with the confusion behind the question of Sherlock being a sociopath or psychopath (it's more of a spectrum).
I've done quite a bit of work on a few of these stories, but given how little money is made by anyone in the publishing industry (not only the darling automotive types being hit here of late, a recent lawsuit against the publishing industry at large revealed that there are only one or two massive blockbuster hits per decade, these pay the way for most everything else to be published, it's all pretty much a scam), there's little point in working on it.
Now, onto the show.
This passage in particular stood out: "like En Vogue they're never gonna get it. (Careful with that joke, it's an antique!)"
Oh, wait, wrong passage, while at the same time, I did something of a rabbit hole dive into what actually happened to them, and yes, given how much they gave away to sign onto their record label, essentially all it did was financially screw them for life, so in two ways they never really got it, both they signed anyway, disregarding "never sign anything without first reading the fine print!" and as a result, they never really got it because they never really got it.
Now, onto the real passage: "The last thing you hear are his blood-curdling screams right before he is executed on the side of the road. All because he told an older man to take his hands out of his pockets. That older man...a white dude...came from an honor culture. The insult of a younger man ordering him to take his hands out of his pockets caused an immediate loss of face and had to be remedied by killing the other party stone dead. He was unapologetic for his actions all the way to the executioner's chamber."
Yeah, there have been an astounding rash of vaguely similar incidents over the years involving Boomer guys who are sort of operating as if they're God and should never be questioned or ordered to do anything...oh, wait, now why does that sound familiar?
I'm recalling one helmet cam video of a motorcyclist and his girlfriend who attempt to pass a Boomer guy driving a white Mercury Cougar who's driving slow as hell, and as they try to perform a fairly lazy pass, he turns hard left and runs them off the road, injuring both rider and passenger. The guy pulls over, the other motorcyclist (who captured the video) pulls over as well, the Boomer gets out of his car and is confronted by the guy who captured the video, "what they hell are you doing?", and the Boomer responds by saying, "I don't care! I hope I killed them!", happy that he crashed someone who dared to pass them.
I seem to recall that his defense in court was that a spider or something caused him to be distracted. It didn't work, he went to jail.
Locally: A Boomer guy pulls out of trailer park, pulling out/turning right onto a busy 4-lane highway/with divider lane (trailer park driveway opening was facing East, guy pulls out, turns right, is now traveling South), in front of a teenaged girl driving an older Honda Pilot, girl panics and tries to avoid hitting the Boomer's vehicle, girl is somewhat inexperienced, ass end of Pilot begins coming around to where she ends up sideways (now pointed East on Southbound side of highway, going into Northbound traffic), is T-boned by a concrete pumping truck, girl is killed upon impact (the concrete pumping truck was in the passing lane, doing a tick over 60, passing someone going a lot slower), concrete truck is totaled, and the weird part is I know the girl who died, my wife worked with her mother, and I also know the guy who still owns the concrete pumping truck (the truck is still sitting in his yard as of a few days ago, it's now a parts truck for his other rig), this happened back in 2017-2018.
The common theme here?
The Boomer guy on the stand: "I didn't do anything wrong! She freaking deserved it!"
I travel a hell of a lot in and around Central Oregon, there are only shitty two-lane highways available to get to larger arteries, and I can verify one thing: There are a lot of shitty drivers, but the only drivers I have near-death experiences with are male Boomer drivers, who actively try to f***ing kill you if you dare try to pass them. I've brought this up to a few law enforcement types, they've noticed this as well, as if they're wondering if they're gonna have to draw on some of these people whenever they pull them over, almost to a man the Boomer types are incensed that someone dared to speak to them regardless of whatever stupid shit they were just observed doing, as if whatever they were doing wrong didn't register.
Yes, younger people can and are often assholes, but the Boomer types are often on another level entirely, and I'm loudly curious if this has anything to do with research on the topic of Boomers being labeled the most sociopathic demographic in all of recorded history.
I did some story research on this a few years back, and the search results (across different browsers and search engines) were mildly terrifying, in that this sort of thing kinda begins to turn into words like "plague" and "phenomenon", with folks like this who really begin to think they're God, how dare they be questioned or worse, ordered to do something.
Now, how and where does this apply to ITI?
I think there might be another layer to ITI, in that yes, there's a man, a monkey, and not sure about the lizard, but the additional layer is that of whether or not there might be some mental illness at play, I've personally watched countless corporate types say the dumbest shit imaginable while completely oblivious to an entire herd of elephants being in the room, often while being applauded by several other clueless corporate types who also say the dumbest shit imaginable, I've attempted to train upscale/corporate types how to use various pieces of equipment/drive a manual transmission vehicle/basic mechanical concepts/how not to treat employees like they're a doormat to trample/what not to do with the vehicle I've just modified for them/etc, etc.
They all have blank stares, they're all emotionally disconnected, they all have varying degrees of "how dare you even acknowledge my existence?" when you attempt to instruct them, and it's as if you're talking to a wall. They never really pick up on anything, they don't respond to emergencies, they're only focused on one or two things (themselves or whatever religious business quest they're on). They're also narcissists/relentless self promoters.
My spouse currently runs a medical business as its director.
It's mildly terrifying to note how many female employees under her are on some form of mood-altering medication, have a therapist they can't get by without, and also how many of them are varying degrees of batshit crazy, completely unable to to even the simplest of tasks without having a meltdown.
And people look at me oddly, still asking why I haven't married or if I want to have kids, as an older Millennial.* In my head I go, "Have you seen the shit that is around us? You think I want to deal with THAT?" To hear a peer, who I've had great conversations with, recount a story where she had a semi-big decision to make and was stressed, and she didn't know what to do, so she called her therapist to help give her an answer, did something else, and went ahead. I'm thinking, 1) [girl] you need a FRIEND and 2) Man, am I not gonna compete with a therapist being the pre-third wheel and confidant if I am going into a marriage. [there are nuances and caveats that I can employ to better explain my position here, but I don't want to write it all]. Don't get me started on so many women around me say "OMG the 8 hour work day is sooo long and hard, I don't know if I can do it, etc etc." Like please, remove yourself from the work force and let me/men do this. We're built to complain about work AND still do it, for decades on end.
*Kids are great and a lot of fun to be goof with, to talk to, to hold and reassure if they're sad or scared, to show cool monster truck videos to, etc.
"To hear a peer, who I've had great conversations with, recount a story where she had a semi-big decision to make and was stressed, and she didn't know what to do, so she called her therapist to help give her an answer, did something else, and went ahead."
I recall spending some time BS'ing with some (now former) driving instructors who used to ply their trade at a few local racetracks, the worst horror story was the wife of some local dry cleaner chain owner who suddenly materialized with a brand new 911 Turbo and wanted to learn how to drive it on a racetrack. She pulls onto the main straight, and then decides to pin it. Instructor says to back off, she ignores him, shifts into 4th, and then the chicane comes up...and she isn't slowing down.
He yells at her twice, she's ignoring him, no panic, just...a blank stare.
He hits her shoulder, doesn't really snap her out of it but she lifts off the gas, he yanks up on the E-brake, car slides, bounces off the wall, ends up on its side.
The driver was just sitting there with a dreamy look on her face. The instructor punched her in the face to try to get her attention, she just sat there until the car was eventually put back down on all four wheels, she got out of the car, smiling, and walked away. The husband and one of her sons was there, the instructor spoke to the son after he asked what happened, the instructor told him what happened, the son laughed and then said, "oh yeah, Mom has actually been diagnosed as being a psychopath", and then the husband and son just walked away and left the 911 there, as if it would just take care of itself on its own, they had to be contacted later to come get the 911, "oh, it's still there?".
In other words, I'm loudly curious if some of these people might be on the spectrum, and that there might be a lot more of them than previously thought (I think the current estimates around around ten million total, but there's also some research work out there that suggests that they're waaaay over-represented in C-Suite circles), and I'm also becoming increasingly convinced that there's zero difference between stupid people (otherwise known as people who actively do the wrong thing when superior information is readily available) and sociopaths/psychopaths who...do the wrong thing when superior information is readily available, the only difference being psychopaths are the types who get books written about them.
The common thread between them? The narcissist in both groups (the stupids, sociopaths/psychopaths) is so incredibly confident in their perceived superiority that it never registers to them that they might be completely incompetent at whatever task or hobby, they can't let their superiority sit on the sidelines while they try to learn something new, they're literally just mouthing the words of their instructor while they're hopelessly locked into their mental cassette tape of "Why do you need this guy? You're already an expert!" playing on infinite loop.
Or in the case of Andrew Brannan, how dare you tell me to take my goddamned hands out of my goddamned pockets, who the hell do you think you are, telling me to take my goddamned hands out of my goddamned pockets? And who the hell gives you the right to pull me over for going 98mph?
In the end, stupidity and sociopathy/psychopathy are all types of mental illness, the problem being that sociopathy/psychopathy just happens to be the most profitable mental illness in existence.
And now we're slowly drifting back into why people can't process instructions...
In life, starting with school-yard fisticuffs (getting my ass kicked) and racing motorcycles and then sports cars (see above) I saw this behavior and eventually understood it but I could not have explained it as well as you have.
Fantastic description! The "Oh my God" people drive me up the wall. But decisive, "emotionless" and effective action is "being mean" and "not being gracious" or some other gross misinterpretation. The world hammers people into believing the prey mentality is the nobler path, while discrediting any assertiveness (generally, masculinity). But we know this and see this, so I won't beleaguer the point.
The ever-relevant line from Donny in 2000's Gone in 60 Seconds rings still true here: "Shit, I can't swim. I know I can't! So you know what I do? I stay my black ass out the pool!" My dad is an electrical engineer, I am not. I have tried to understand volts, watts, and amps beyond their basic relationship in an equation (DO NOT try to "help explain it"), along with other principles, but it doesn't stick. I can do math and do like numbers, but I know where I can't swim, and happily let those that are good at what they do in their areas lead the way.
I’m one of those folks who has difficulty with kinesthetic skill. Some skills—such as high-performance driving—I can pick up very quickly and show promise, but polishing the last ten- to twenty-percent of skill is incredibly difficult, mainly to do with consistency. Other skills—such as snapping my fingers or playing first-person shooters—are insurmountable no matter how many times someone demonstrates the skill to me.
How on earth do I improve the connection between my brain and my hands? For people to be able to identify the problem, it stands to reason there is a solution—I just haven’t heard of it yet.
First understand that not everyone will reach an elite level of skill in everything, even with lots of practice. But the good news about using a handgun for self defense is that one does not need to reach the most elite levels of skill to use one effectively for self defense.
In what I teach, inconsistent results are almost always down to failing to be *deliberate* in what one is doing. To shoot at a high level under stress requires an intense level of focus on the process of what you are doing. You have to recognize that nothing good is going to happen unless you *make* it happen and focus on putting the correct inputs on the gun. Even a milisecond's lapse of focus at the wrong moment will produce a result other than the one you intended.
I had a client the other day shoot some exercises and tell me "I'm not used to shooting with this much focus." Well, yes. And that's why his skills haven't improved. He had been focused on round count. Which is like focusing on the amount of time you spend in the gym. Spending 60 minutes in the building doesn't do a damn thing for you. Spending 60-90 minutes holding your heart rate at between 120-150 bpm will increase stroke volume of your heart, making your entire cardiovascular system more efficient and when done sufficiently will lower your resting heart rate and increase your anerobic threshold.
There is a difference between "going to the gym" and showing up there with a plan of exactly what you are going to work on and why. Focus. Purpose. Intensity.
Then there is the matter of recency and relevancy.
If I do not touch a pistol but 2 or 3 times a year, I will not be able to perform at a high level with it. I need to have frequent, relevant practice of the skills I wish to call upon. If I'm not consistently working on the skills I'm looking to call upon, they won't be there. If I have already achieved proficiency at something and then I walk away from it for an extended period of time I can pick it back up and polish up quickly.
Think about it like a knife's edge. If I have a very sharp knife, use it some, and then put it down for an extended period when I pick the knife back up odds are it won't be as sharp. But a little work with a strop and it will likely get sharp again quickly.
Contrast this with a knife that was never sharp to start with. You need a grind and bevel on the blade if it's going to cut and without those there is no amount of stropping that will help.
To learn something difficult you need to find the key sub-set of skills to focus on and then practice those with your full attention and effort.
In shooting, this means dryfire. What I tell people is to spend 5 minutes 3-4 times a week dryfiring...but doing so with all the intensity and focus they can muster. This means real grip pressures, real approaches to the trigger, and watching the sights to see how they respond. I say 5 minutes because most people can't maintain the requisite focus more than that.
The person who does that dryfire work 3-4 times a week and shoots maybe 25 rounds the same week is going to progress far more in a year than the person who tries to shoot 50,000 rounds a year. Especially as most people are not autodidacts.
Frequent bouts of intense focus for limited amounts of time add up. The clients I see who struggle the most are the ones who come to class but don't put in the time and effort working on the skills after class. They get a long way in class but lose it within weeks because they don't follow that up with the practice program we give them.
I'm not a racing guy, really don't know shit about these particular posts. How about a learn to race session with Jack, followed by some low level entry race? I bet you could raise a ton of money by doing a lottery of your readers. For your charity of choice, possibly just the Charity of Jack?🤣
Possibly utterly stupid question, but can entry-level track coaching be done over video - by watching a recording of someone's lap and making suggestions - possibly with some kind of telemetry data too -or does the coach need to feel what the car's doing and so on? Video could make organising such things a lot easier, is all.
Dion von Moltke does this with Racers360, but you kinda have to be turning half-decent laps already in order to benefit from it. Absolute novice drivers are still best off with someone in the right seat.
Yes, I find that people doing stupid things behind the wheel respond much better to an actual real slap at their hands versus a virtual slap over a broadband connection.
Well, I was thinking recorded video, so it would be more "well your honor, here you can see exactly where he should have lifted off and turned, and then the accident would have been avoided..."
Live video, though, you could maybe do something with one of those dog-training zappers triggered remotely over the internet...
The crummy-enduro guys have been trying to put a live-coaching system together for a decade now. The problem is that racetracks tend to be places with spotty Internet.
I had an expert level driver coach me, I was not lost-in-space just a hack amateur, he mounted a video camera in the car recording to a VCR strapped to the passenger seat ( this was in olden times - a Showroom Stock Playboy Cup race ) and marched me - helmet still on, sweaty drivers suit - into his van to review the tape live & direct. Having an expert explain in real time, the proper lines, where to brake most effectively, and to listen to tire howl and engine bark, etc. was THE MOST important learning experience in all my years of racing.
I picked up 3 seconds I think next session, somewhere mid-pack, and the car was a lot happier too!
1) to Johnny Lieberman’s slight credit, he was very open about how slow he was and also how much he wanted the team to drop him as a driver on the second day.
He seemed to be even a bit embarrassed by his performance on Farah’s podcast. So, something to be said for that I suppose.
2) “In his first-ever stint in his first-ever race, he exited the pitlane backwards”
How is that even possible?
There’s gotta be a story to tell about “Murilee Martin.” Dude has hung around the fringes of auto writing for decades talking about cars he found on streets and in junkyards across, basically, every notable online publication I can think of.
I just came across another one named Victoria Scott whose book is a “transfeminine automotive look book.” I have no idea what that means, nor do I want to find out. How can you pretend to speak for women if you have the wrong chromosomes? Halloween dress up gone mad!
You know, on a message board where Speed says something offensive to most of the western world about 22 times per article, you calling me out for saying “older white dude” is more than a little funny to me.
Allow me, sir, to relay to you a response given to me by a California Highway Patrol officer on the occasion of his writing me a traffic citation. I had run thru a manual STOP sign on my bicycle. While standing there we both observed other cyclists committing the same offense. When I complained that he was not citing them his response was simple, "I can't catch everybody."
I'm vaguely recalling something regarding this very concept back in the early 1980's and it supposedly being illegal to allow three hundred or so cars to blow through a freeway speed trap and only catch the very last one.
No; he wrote (at Jalopnik?) that he got a gig writing trashy adult pulp fiction and made up his _nom de plume_ by slicing up newspaper headlines and stitching them together (also the process used to write Talking Heads lyrics).
"I got a contract from Nexus, the smut wing of Virgin Books, to write a 70,000-word BDSM novel for their readership of British perverts (now available as a Kindle download for all perverts). Though I’d never even read a smut novel, I had no problem knocking out the specified filth in a couple of weeks. Then the suits in the London office called up and wanted to know what name I’d be using..."
i have a lady about my age whom i've known since '55--she was born in '39--who told me how much she'd always lusted for me and made up a couple of the most incredible quick fantasies i'd ever heard. ross perot was after her back in the day! brilliant and cute. maybe i shouldn't post this at all but i just decided not to tell y'all what they were: a few days later the Lord told her to stop those thoughts and almost simultaneously the completely disconnected alarm in my 70'x40' garage went off. so we stopped that stuff.
"2) “In his first-ever stint in his first-ever race, he exited the pitlane backwards”
How is that even possible?"
Altamont was a short oval that was running the "snake" through the X near the pitlane. As I recall, pitlane exit was to the right as you entered the pits, which is counter to how it's normally done, even at Altamont.
There were about 100 cars out there running in seemingly every direction, and about zero in the way of grid or safety workers. It can be massively disconcerting to be strapped into a caged, low-or-no-sound-muffling car for the first time. He just panicked and turned left instead of right, at which point his personal nightmare began.
I have a few stories to tell about Phil, they are all good or at least they are funny!
I deeply respect Murilee's ability to sell the same idea to multiple publications at the same time.
Also, it's hard to take a bad photograph at a junkyard. There's a collision shop near my house that specializes in fleet vehicles, some of which get pretty mangled, and I've been tempted to ask them if I can occasionally shoot some of the wrecks.
Speaking of shooting photos, I need to get down to the Eastern Market in Detroit because the Robocop statue is finally on public display.
I certainly admire the hustle. I can only guess how little he makes per post, but especially since he sells it to multiple rags, that is good work if you can get it. Nice little side gig, I’d assume.
"Writers dont make shit. Jack probabmakes more on substack than the typical writer. I almost know this for a fact."
I was spending a bit too much time with some sci-fi writer types about a decade and a half ago, if your last name isn't "Grisham" or "King" or a couple of other financially popular last names, you could be selling your ass off in books but still have to keep a regular day job. I can think of two of them in particular who have several hit books (hundreds of thousands of copies sold), but if you're not connected very well politically, yeah, don't give up that day job.
See also: There was a fairly huge lawsuit against the publishing industry not too long ago, one of the fascinating things to come out of that were insider sales numbers, and it was revealed that the publishing industry has been a bust for quite some time, there are only one or two "Harry Potters" per decade, and everything else just sort of rots on the vine, they're paid for by the Harry Potter-and-related blockbusters.
I don't recall whether or not the politically-motivated books where the authors get multi-million-dollar advances but only sell 500 books were ever actually explained in that lawsuit, however.
I know a journalist in Baltimore from another car forum I've frequented for 25 years. He's typical -- pretty smart, smirky, always has to be the guy who knows everything about everything. He's almost always on the wrong side of any argument, but he's got lots of reasons why he's right.
Anyhow, his big shtick is that he's never made more than $30K/yr, but he keeps telling us how smart he is?
I've never judged somebody based on how much they make, but there's a point where you're doing no better (and probably worse) than being the second shift fry-chef manager at a fast food joint. I'm lost as to how that can be judged as a good life choice. \
My wife just wrote a novel, and is in the throes of editing and such. We joke about "getting out the hood" by selling the movie rights to Netflix or something after she sells her -hopefully- 100-200 copies. Gives us hope at least hahah
NOOOOO. I AM CONAN THE LARRY, DESTROYER OF BOTH HOPES AND DREAMS, BUT I AM ALSO SOOOO SADISTIC THAT WILL NEVER ALERT YOU AS TO WHICH I WILL DESTROY FIRST!
(Begins darting back and forth maneuver like you would expect from a drunken, 80-year-old former Soccer player/80-year-old current dementia patient thinking he can psych out one of the world's best goalies and make a Sportscenter-worthy kick into the metaphorical, soul-destroying net)
Off the very top of my head, I believe he’s had bylines at Jalopnik, AutoWeek, Hagerty, TTAC, and perhaps others doing the exact same thing for each one.
10-4. That's impressive to do the same thing for all of those pubs. I think I've seen his junkyard stuff on Hagerty, Autoweek and formerly FB? I think he prob stopped posting there when he started doing it for $$ for Hagerty.
"Where does he sell it other than Hagerty these days?"
Unless I'm mistaken, you're looking at it right now, in all of its Substack glory.
If I'm recalling correctly, Hagerty required a ridiculous series of non-compete clauses be signed before he climbed on board the Hagerty "Corporate Partner" Express train to nowhere.
It became something of a career Hail Mary that landed him in the endzone, but then the play was declared dead after a "corporate holding back" flag was thrown back at the line of scrimmage.
And because the rest of the industry is collapsing onto itself for laughably predictable reasons, his Hail Mary pass was on the career 4th down due to no fault of his own other than his suicidal insistence on wearing sweater vests.
I'd like to meet the guy. Many of his junkyard shots have been taken at the one I frequent in town and I've hoped to run across him. He even shot one of my cars that I found on his website. It looks better in photos than I ever will
I consider myself a pretty hardcore junkyarder but when I went on his webpage one time and looked at all the pics he had shot over the years, I realized I'm a rank amateur compared to him.
I listened to the same episode and didn't feel he was embarrassed at all. At many points in the podcast, he talked about being faster than other people at various times in his career and made judgements on the limit handling of various vehicles.
The only reason Lando was in the hunt was because something absurd happened to his teammate. Now, I'm not saying that McLaren harmed Oscar's chances. I'll leave that for the crazies on social media. But Oscar should never have been in that position to begin with.
The storyline of "I was getting toasted by my teammate, then I got toasted by Max in the 3rd best car, and I finished WDC" isn't history's most compelling one.
Gun to my head, I'd put the Red Bull and Ferarri equal, with the difference in results being that Ferarri barely developed their car this year and Leclerc being a marginally worse version of 2014-era Alonso.
That's not how I see it, Lando underperformed the first two thirds of the season, no doubt. He could have pulled a Sergio Perez season 3 and disappeared. But he didn't. Yes Max is a better and tougher driver, but Norris didnt choke. That's not soft, sorry.
Max would have won the WDC by 1 point if McKaren would not have swapped Brawndo and Oscar at Monza. Zak, Andrea and Snorris better be buying Oscar a hell of a Christmas present this year.
And how much did the Monza maneuver (that there was no question from then on that Brawndo was the favored driver) make Oscar overdrive the car in the next couple of races.
Thank you for your kindness. I'm pretty sure I'm not in Bezel's target demographic, because I'm cheap and not sure if the wristwatch rabbit hole I went down is really for me. I spent a few hundred getting a couple of my father's watches up to spec and I'm waffling on whether to stop while I'm ahead or throw more and more scarce pocket change at a new 'hobby'.
[Jack, if inappropriate in this forum, you may delete this message. Or move to another topic.]
Speaking of second hand. I have to dispose of a few watches before I can buy any more. Selling these for a song so they find a good home -- like around half of current market value. Drop me a DM if interested. Otherwise they will go on Chrono24; which charges me fees and you sales tax.
1. Seiko SSK-017 (yellow GMT). I decided that I'm not a GMT guy. Includes custom made cordovan strap in black with yellow stitching. Includes box&papers. $250 delivered in USA. About half retail. [typical example, not mine: https://www.jomashop.com/seiko-seiko-5-yellow-dial-mens-watch-ssk017.html ]
2. Citizen CB0160-18A White solar with WWVB radio time setting (actually 6 channel). Automatically sets time each night and corrects for daylight saving & 30 day months. $180 delivered with box and papers. [ typical example, not mine:<https://everywatch.com/citizen/eco-drive/watch-10029413>
3. Bulova Precisionist JetStar in ruby red. Accurate to a few seconds _per year_. Far more accurate than a sub $500 watch has a right to be. Selling for less than half retail (currently $650) of $250 delivered with box and papers. [typical example, not mine: https://www.helveti.eu/bulova-96b401-jet-star#example_group-2]
All of these are in really good shape. still look nice.
In Sherman's mind, there is only the "Value" of share price.
So Google, which revolutionized the world, didn't really have "value" until they stopped innovating and sat down to get the benefits of monopoly position and QE.
Similarly, Microsoft has much more "value" now than they had when they controlled pretty much every desktop in the Western World.
Okay, see, I figure "value" means something tangible a customer can use like a car, a knife, a stove - you know, a product. But I always hear sales weasels use "value" in the same way some meathead in a uniform says "professional."
There was more to our back and forth about “value.”
I believe that markets determine what is “valuable,” or not.
Jack believes that HIS OPINIONS determine what is valuable, or not. Just like his bizarro world brother, Butterfinger Brad Brownell, come to think of it.
I suggested that it is a profound shame that Jack lives where he does, and that he should hop the next Greyhound to Manhattan so that he can live in Zohran’s command economy.
You can make an argument about Microsoft being in a better position today due to their lockdown on most corporate productivity and large amounts of data, versus when they just sold the OS on every desktop .
I sort of think that many things and experiences and corporations perhaps shouldn't live forever. All of the ones today have gotten worse as they have aged, in parallel to their market innovation and growth stagnating. Like Apple/Google/Microsoft haven't invented anything new in quite some time. They have just got us all on the hook to pay more for the same shit. You used to buy a CDrom with a program on it, and you owned it for eternity. Now all your shit goes to the cloud and if you don't pay them every month it vanishes forever. Not to mention, for that privilege, they are scanning your files for illegal activity.
"Is that Johnny Drama behind you atop the LeMons car?"
It is. He is five years younger than I am, I think, but he appears to be disintegrating.
Matt will be the first to admit that he isn't consistently quick, although he has had his moments. Jonny ran a LOT of 2:52s and above in a car that could turn a 2:32.
That would mean something if either of them turned consistent laps the way a trained racer would.
Most of Matt's laps were 2:38 and above. Most of Jonny's laps were 2:50 and above.
What you see happen a lot with enduros is that your slow drivers will have one or two decent laps. When you review the footage, it's because they are following another driver, who then leaves them behind, and they return to doing "their pace".
This is why so much stuff in the automotive journalism world is lead-follow now. You just drive around behind someone, do exactly what you see them do, and publish the laps.
Great insight. The whole world is lead-follow. That should be the motto of the 21st Century.
I try to search for original thinkers online to try to learn something new, and it’s a near futile quest. I have to wade through 99.9% of what I see to find the valuable nuggets.
Also from the TST podcast: Matt said an ideal race team consists of one fast young driver, one fast old driver, and one guy who just won't crash. The safe role being what he fulfilled. In amateur competition, maybe that is pretty good but why wouldn't three fast drivers be better?
Lieb bragged about getting that racing suit custom made for him and gifted to him by one of the auto makers, Bentley, I think, on the Spike Car Radio podcast about a month ago.
1. Fascinating. Was not aware that the Subparperformance S1 was anywhere near $77,000 in price.
2. The picture of the broken WhattaBummerford Link looks like it was taken somewhere behind the Iron Curtain, possibly Bulgaria.
Or possibly somewhere inside Reactor #4 at Chernobyl, you know, where some brave soul took a picture of the most radioactive metallurgy ever created and then died 57 minutes later from cheaposity poisoning while trying to smuggle this picture out to the West.
3. In regards to the image above of Marko after winning Le Mans, is it just me, or does it look like hardly anyone washed their hair regularly during that time?
"It's okay, I'll wash it next month!"
4. What kind of dirt do they have on Tommy Kendall that he would willingly team up with a driver who's practically tectonic-plate-slow? I'm not entirely certain that even with my screwed-up lungs (thank you, Covid!), I couldn't perhaps push that car faster around the course than Lieberman.
It legitimately doesn't make sense apart from the whole "everything costs 10x as much when you're 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑢𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 at 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒔𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒆
If I'm not mistaken, the cheapest Fine Ass Element Analyzed equivalent of something like an S1 (Palatov DP4) which... is $131k complete* in 2020 dollars. God knows what it is now, frightening to think about it
Sounds like Kendall doesn't race much anymore. I think he said this was his first race in something like 10 years. His first win at any level in 21 years.
I’m sure there’s more to it than that. But what is it?"
I don't know. But I DO know that it's NOT "just business."
For one thing, Westerners have no idea of how to follow Indian customs or participate in the kickback networks, so Indians benefit from consolidating power amongst themselves to a greater degree than other cultures.
But one really needs to understand not only the money flows for the kickback and money laundering schemes, but also the culture of "Izzat" and the RSS / BJP / VHP / Hindutva / Khalistan / GATI / ItServe organizations:
Ford so disappoints me. "OK let's kill every model Klockau likes, then offer a bunch of ugly potato shaped turds, mostly lot poison EVs! Durr hurr hurr!"
I also found out from a buddy at the Cadillac dealer that my traded in MKZ had just begun to leak. So I dodged an imminent, pricey bullet there.
Can't see any Ford products in my future, unless it's a 97 Town Car Cartier or maybe a 70s Continental...
I’ve been shopping 80s town cars with the leather sofa seats and brick styling. I’m a diehard ford guy but I wouldn’t touch current inventory with a 29 and a half foot pole. The classic bench is deep and wide though.
"I could train the average nursing home resident to run 15 seconds off the pace in a BMW specifically designed for jerkoffs and zero-talents to operate in “professional” competition. "
But could you train Lieberman?
Have you ever coached someone that you felt was not trainable?
^ The entire document is potentially interesting, however the current Administration exceeds all previous administrations COMBINED in "volume of idle talk."
The Harmeet thing, and the exposure of her tweets worshipping her co-ethnics in the trucking industry while spitting on american truck drivers was telling if tragic. Like most of 2025
By now, it is very clearly a frog & scorpion situation for anyone with even the slightest awareness. We have to treat 100% according to the nature of 99.999%, no matter how unfair it is to the other 0.001%.
There is a reason that it was considered a huge change when Truman raised the Indian immigration quota from zero to 100/year.
"Off Topic" (as if there was such a thing), but:
With the stated inflation rate still a full percentage point above a supposed "target", which appears to be nothing more than an aspirational suggestion, the Fed decided to lower rates again today. The target is at least 1% above what should be the target, making the stated rate of inflation 2% higher than it ought to be and probably 5% above what is being stated. It's time to goose the economy to really get it going before midterms. I feel like Mr. Trump has lost the plot regarding Americans' deep dislike for higher prices, and is going to leave us with a Congress full of Warren/AOC-wannabes.
I walked by a meat case today in a supermarket where I was dropping off parts for one of my guys, and caught a $49/lb SIRLOIN (not ribeye) steak price out of the corner of my eye. This reminded me of when a sheet of OSB went from $7 to over $50 when we were experiencing "transitory 7% inflation". 'Tis but a flesh wound.
OTOH, China junk from Amazon continues to arrive at my door every day unabated at about the same price as it ever was pre-"devastating tariffs". Some China junk has even gone down. HF tools are pretty much the same price, as are Chinese electric motors and whatnot. It's only 100% domestically produced goods like OSB and beef that seem to be affected by "global market forces" and tariffs. I'm still buying $10 east-Asian hoodies from Mr. Bezos.
I'm sure there's a super-great and very fancy sounding reason for all of this, but I suspect it has to do with the fact that I just don't see "value creation" when I see it. The great news is my portfolio is up nicely. The bad news is I'll need every dime of it to keep up with all this "value created" inflation.
Carry on.
Wages are an important side of the affordability equation. China, Mexico, and illegals are all disinflationary, so we should expect some inflation as we decouple: it will be survivable if and only if wages rise.
Are you suggesting that having tens of millions of people here competing for housing and food isn't driving asset inflation? Never mind that they qualify for government handouts that citizens don't. Or maybe we should mind.
No, not good catch: I should have said that globalization is inflationary for assets, especially housing, but deflationary for most other goods & services.
Do you think healthcare is cheaper because you have to pay for all of the illegals' healthcare when you're paying for your own? Do you think your wages and opportunities are greater because you're competing with illegals whose own income is supplemented by the government? Do you think that your college education is cheaper when you've got a new class of people who you have to pay for before you pay for yourself? Your taxes are higher. Your salary is lower. Your supply is up against a greater demand. Sure, there is some cheap disposable crap that is less expensive adjusted for inflation than the durable stuff it replaced, but your salary is going to housing, healthcare, taxes and education, so it had better be cheap. Otherwise, you might not be able to defend selling your children's futures for shareholder value.
I don't think we really disagree. My initial point was that globalization has lowered wages, and that wage growth is essential to affordability.
Healthcare also runs contrary to the general trend: you are right that I left out many cases.
Don't you agree that wage suppression and Chinese manufacturing have been part of why Walmart prices haven't risen 10x after 25 years of near ZIRP?
I was not advocating for globalization; quite the contrary.
We are almost entirely in agreement. I have never defended selling children's futures for shareholder value.
Focusing on prices may lead to more cheap foreign labor and Chinese manufacturing, which I oppose.
Focusing on wages would lead to reduction or elimination of work visas, which I support.
When I was a union carpenter in SD 2 decades ago, the union scale was almost $20 lower than it was in LA, just 2 hours north. The illegals, even in corporate backed heavy commercial construction, really drove down the wages.
I would suggest that the multiplicity of local building codes which exploded after the 2014 rewrite of the "national" codes has been a major driver in housing prices.
The codes and the zoning restrictions most municipalities have embraced have added at least 30% to the cost of new construction, which in turn drives up the price of existing housing stock.
I've built 3 times since the new codes came into play. It's night and day different than before.
It's noticeable even in residential. I've got a 70 year old house that I've slowly redone over the years. When I want to install a new generator to replace an older one I learn that the "code" now specifies it needs to move 5 feet over. I need a new permit. I need to pay the Generac people $1200 to move the location. Then I learn the "code" now specifies a beefier power cable. That no longer can get routed through the basement. To plug into a new fuse panel that needs to move over two feet because "code" that didn't exist 10 years ago.
Repeat with sump pump discharge outlets that my good contractor can't touch and I need an off the books plumber to deal with to account for new "code" provisions.
All that and so much more, Andy. It's insane, has nothing to do with safety, quality, or making anything quantifiably better.
It's just a way for the local government to exert some muscle, and require a permitting fee (which is a major source of revenue). The current electrical code requires arc-fault/ground-fault breakers in nearly all applications in a residential panel. A SqD AF/GF breaker is about $90 instead of the $5 a standard breaker costs. This means that a "standard" 200a single-phase residential panel costs $5000 instead of the $500 it used to cost. Tell me -- when was the last time you heard of somebody getting electrocuted by an arcing switch? If you said, "never" that's because it's the correct answer.
Houses stopped burning down from faulty electrical when everything started getting a ground wire run with it, and when breakers started replacing fuses. That was in the 1960s. Everything since then has been nonsense, and has made an electrical job 10x as expensive.
Multiply that by 100 different things, plumbing and HVAC especially, and you have the rise of the $1M 2500 sq/ft home.
this is why some of us, ehem, do remodelling ourselves with bothering to ask permission from anyone.
Oh, the stories I could tell you about "the great planning and zoning war of 2023" in Stanistan. I emerged victorious after getting a lawyer involved, but enough blood was spilled that everybody retreated to a neutral corner and we're very deep into "don't ask/don't tell".
That works until there is a project that needs a pro who does business in your area and wants to keep his license intact. Then the code violations need to be remedied or the pro walks.
I'd suggest Japanese-style zoning for America, but we're all a bunch of loud, belligerent, selfish assholes, so that project would achieve goose-into-jet-engine status in record time.
The entire idea behind English Common Law is that if you buy a thing, you own it -- and it's yours to do with as you see fit. As long as what I do on my property does not greatly diminish the value of my neighbor's property, I ought to be able to do whatever I want on my own.
Generally, I agree with you.
However, I was specifically condemning the barking-dogs-and-thumping-bass cretins.
the zoning thing has been around for many many decades.
CA state has started to over ride local zoning requirements, and the local entities and NIMBYs are howling mad.
When the state of Kalifornia is more reasonable than your local government, you have a real problem.
where in tarnation is $49/lb sirloin being sold? beef prices are definitely up, but not anywhere near that crazy anywhere that I have been. maybe it was total price of $49 (4 lbs at $12/lb)?
Yep, those prices seem to be the (freaking crazy) norm. Something about a cattle shortage in the USA, due to drought or some nonsense.
Small, rural supermarket, Central Illinois. Off the beaten path.
I hope it was delicious!
I certainly didn't buy it, but it looked really nice.
Why has Johnny been to so many training opportunities and still sucks?
Well, here in the gun world we have what we call ITI.
Impervious
To
Instruction
It doesn't matter how many different ways you try to teach the concepts, like En Vogue they're never gonna get it. (Careful with that joke, it's an antique!)
To quote a friend, there are some people who simply do not have their hands and their brain wired together. They do not pick up kinesthetic skill easily. You can say "Do X" and they will look you in the eye and earnestly tell you they're doing X while you can see as plain as the sun in the sky that they're so far from actually doing X you'd need the Hubble telescope for them to even SEE X.
In class this is the person who I lay hands on. In other words I will use my hands on theirs to show them how I'm applying pressure to the grip of the gun. I will use my trigger finger over top of theirs to model how I'm working through the trigger on a shot. I will use clear, purpose built visual aids to show them how I'm using the sights.
I don't think there's a good equivalent in driver's training. Even then, it's not always successful. It works a lot of the time but sometimes you get someone who is simply completely overwhelmed by what's going on. They get behind the gun and their limbic system is lit up like they just turned a corner and found themselves face to face with a 600 pound male lion. They can't process most of what you say. They don't realize most of what they're doing.
In each of us, there is a man, a monkey, and a lizard. (Understand this is an imperfect model of the human brain, but grossly accurate enough to serve the purposes of exegesis) The man is who we think of as the apex predator of the planet. It's the rational, reasoning, cunning part of us that makes us able to plan and use tools and think our way through a complex and dangerous problem. The monkey is the emotional center. It has some utility in an emergency...namely providing that urge to deal with things quickly. It screams at us that the plane is crashing but it is utterly unable to do anything to correct it.
In other words, you need the monkey to tell you the plane is going down. But once you're behind the controls you cannot let the monkey try to fly the plane because monkeys cannot fly planes. The kicker is that the monkey is going to be fighting as hard as it can to take over because it is selfish and afraid. It is unable to trust higher reasoning because it doesn't have higher reasoning.
The phrase "chimp out"...replaced more recently with crash out...has some significant truth built into it regarding the behavior being witnessed.
What you're often seeing with someone like Johnny is that he is unable to actually wrestle the monkey out of the pilots chair and hold him at bay. To quote my friend Ed Monk, you need the monkey to motivate your movement but then you need to be able to shut the monkey up. I'm betting Johnny can't do that.
"You're not a deliberate man, Ed. I do not sense that about you."
Johnny doesn't have a "predator" setting in high stress situations. He's the prey,*and he knows it.* The guys I know who have done the best in gunfights...including realizing they were in one after they've been shot in the face and taken 1/4 of a magazine's worth of ammo...have been able to flip the switch in their head to becoming the hunter. They became the predator, not the prey.
This means they spent their very limited resources in the moment focused on the task at hand, took active control of themselves and the situation and started making things happen. Not sitting back and letting things happen.
You can see it at work in police gunfight footage. There's a ton of it out there now from dashcams and lapel cams. Two good instances to look up are the Kyle Dinkheller incident and the Jared Reston incident.
If you watch the Dinkheller video you are going to see a desperately terrified human being armed with a pistol who mag dumps three full magazine at a threat from about 1 car length to 1.5 car lengths away without landing a single hit. The individual actually stands at his truck, loads cartridges into a magazine, loads the magazine into an M1 carbine and then proceeds to murder the deputy. The last thing you hear are his blood-curdling screams right before he is executed on the side of the road. All because he told an older man to take his hands out of his pockets.
That older man...a white dude...came from an honor culture. The insult of a younger man ordering him to take his hands out of his pockets caused an immediate loss of face and had to be remedied by killing the other party stone dead. He was unapologetic for his actions all the way to the executioner's chamber.
Contrast this with Jared Reston who was fighting a shoplifter during an off duty gig. His first clue he was in a gunfight was when he took a .45 ACP round through his lower jaw. He thought at first he'd been punched harder than ever before, and it wasn't until he regained the power of sight, felt his collapsed jaw on top of his tongue, and saw the perpetrator shooting that he realized he'd been shot and was still being shot. Whereupon he fought his way into a kneeling position, drew his gun, and killed the guy who shot him deader than fried chicken.
Dinkheller let the monkey fly the plane. Jared took control and killed the shit out of the other guy by employing marksmanship. "Every time I saw my front sight on his chest, I gave him another one." He didn't think mean thoughts. He didn't "mindset" the other guy to death. He employed unsexy, boring, but highly effective marksmanship principles to get the job done.
Johnny is not a deliberate man. I do not sense that about him.
If he encounters a monster he will die screaming because he is unable to stop the monkey from flying the plane. The amount of training that's been poured into him is irrelevant because when it comes right down to it, he lacks the discipline to take control of himself and the situation and do something useful. He's the guy you hear on videos of awful things happening saying "Oh my god!", not the guy you see in some of the videos taking useful action to help the situation. He's the guy screaming for someone to call 911, not the guy grabbing his med kit.
The delta between who he is and who he thinks he wants to be is vast.
But what about the Lizard?
This is a great take on human nature, and unfortunately society proves to us seemingly every day that we are made up of far more Monkeys than Men.
The lizard breathes. It bites or it runs.
Who were the people who sat idly by as that disgusting N-word (and in my mind, all people of color are ** NOT ** N-words, just those who perpetrate crime (gang members, mostly), or sit on their lazy asses and let the government take our tax dollars and pay them to exist, so I mean no offense to anyone commenting here, or to the majority of folks of color that I know who are just going normally through life) blew away that poor woman on the subway, and then exclaimed “I got a bitch!” Are those lizards? Or are the perpetrators the lizards?
(Part 1, the rest is below)
If it's okay, I might have another possible layer to add to this.
A quick bit of background: My college path was going to be a double major in Psychology/Communications, also known as "what I'm thinking or not thinking when I do or say something/what I'm actually saying", but I eventually encountered four problems:
1. Math (I seriously can't do college-level algebra)
2. There are some serious issues within Psychology and Psychiatry, more specifically, you really can make it all up as you go along (also, on a side note, take a peek at the gender breakdown of who goes to college for psychology here of late, it may terrify you)
3. In the end, it's rare when we actually want to fix what's wrong, as almost every issue or neuroses we have becomes part of our identity
4. The industry loves to be able to say that they solve mysteries, when in fact there are some mysteries that really don't ever need to be solved, and therapy models need to be adjusted at times for that.
My particular focus/proposed thesis was going to be on the sociopathy/psychopathy spectrum in the workplace and corporate circles. Yeah, not a real popular topic and I was already taking a considerable amount of shit from that idea (gee, am I right above the target?). After running/screaming from that college pursuit, I came up with an idea for a murder mystery series, a comedic, bumbling sort of complete and total Anti-Sherlock who always solves the wrong crime, and I spent more time in the sociopathy/psychopathy rabbit hole for story research purposes, as there is quite a bit of hay that is made with the confusion behind the question of Sherlock being a sociopath or psychopath (it's more of a spectrum).
I've done quite a bit of work on a few of these stories, but given how little money is made by anyone in the publishing industry (not only the darling automotive types being hit here of late, a recent lawsuit against the publishing industry at large revealed that there are only one or two massive blockbuster hits per decade, these pay the way for most everything else to be published, it's all pretty much a scam), there's little point in working on it.
Now, onto the show.
This passage in particular stood out: "like En Vogue they're never gonna get it. (Careful with that joke, it's an antique!)"
Oh, wait, wrong passage, while at the same time, I did something of a rabbit hole dive into what actually happened to them, and yes, given how much they gave away to sign onto their record label, essentially all it did was financially screw them for life, so in two ways they never really got it, both they signed anyway, disregarding "never sign anything without first reading the fine print!" and as a result, they never really got it because they never really got it.
Now, onto the real passage: "The last thing you hear are his blood-curdling screams right before he is executed on the side of the road. All because he told an older man to take his hands out of his pockets. That older man...a white dude...came from an honor culture. The insult of a younger man ordering him to take his hands out of his pockets caused an immediate loss of face and had to be remedied by killing the other party stone dead. He was unapologetic for his actions all the way to the executioner's chamber."
Yeah, there have been an astounding rash of vaguely similar incidents over the years involving Boomer guys who are sort of operating as if they're God and should never be questioned or ordered to do anything...oh, wait, now why does that sound familiar?
I'm recalling one helmet cam video of a motorcyclist and his girlfriend who attempt to pass a Boomer guy driving a white Mercury Cougar who's driving slow as hell, and as they try to perform a fairly lazy pass, he turns hard left and runs them off the road, injuring both rider and passenger. The guy pulls over, the other motorcyclist (who captured the video) pulls over as well, the Boomer gets out of his car and is confronted by the guy who captured the video, "what they hell are you doing?", and the Boomer responds by saying, "I don't care! I hope I killed them!", happy that he crashed someone who dared to pass them.
I seem to recall that his defense in court was that a spider or something caused him to be distracted. It didn't work, he went to jail.
Locally: A Boomer guy pulls out of trailer park, pulling out/turning right onto a busy 4-lane highway/with divider lane (trailer park driveway opening was facing East, guy pulls out, turns right, is now traveling South), in front of a teenaged girl driving an older Honda Pilot, girl panics and tries to avoid hitting the Boomer's vehicle, girl is somewhat inexperienced, ass end of Pilot begins coming around to where she ends up sideways (now pointed East on Southbound side of highway, going into Northbound traffic), is T-boned by a concrete pumping truck, girl is killed upon impact (the concrete pumping truck was in the passing lane, doing a tick over 60, passing someone going a lot slower), concrete truck is totaled, and the weird part is I know the girl who died, my wife worked with her mother, and I also know the guy who still owns the concrete pumping truck (the truck is still sitting in his yard as of a few days ago, it's now a parts truck for his other rig), this happened back in 2017-2018.
The common theme here?
The Boomer guy on the stand: "I didn't do anything wrong! She freaking deserved it!"
I travel a hell of a lot in and around Central Oregon, there are only shitty two-lane highways available to get to larger arteries, and I can verify one thing: There are a lot of shitty drivers, but the only drivers I have near-death experiences with are male Boomer drivers, who actively try to f***ing kill you if you dare try to pass them. I've brought this up to a few law enforcement types, they've noticed this as well, as if they're wondering if they're gonna have to draw on some of these people whenever they pull them over, almost to a man the Boomer types are incensed that someone dared to speak to them regardless of whatever stupid shit they were just observed doing, as if whatever they were doing wrong didn't register.
Yes, younger people can and are often assholes, but the Boomer types are often on another level entirely, and I'm loudly curious if this has anything to do with research on the topic of Boomers being labeled the most sociopathic demographic in all of recorded history.
I did some story research on this a few years back, and the search results (across different browsers and search engines) were mildly terrifying, in that this sort of thing kinda begins to turn into words like "plague" and "phenomenon", with folks like this who really begin to think they're God, how dare they be questioned or worse, ordered to do something.
Now, how and where does this apply to ITI?
I think there might be another layer to ITI, in that yes, there's a man, a monkey, and not sure about the lizard, but the additional layer is that of whether or not there might be some mental illness at play, I've personally watched countless corporate types say the dumbest shit imaginable while completely oblivious to an entire herd of elephants being in the room, often while being applauded by several other clueless corporate types who also say the dumbest shit imaginable, I've attempted to train upscale/corporate types how to use various pieces of equipment/drive a manual transmission vehicle/basic mechanical concepts/how not to treat employees like they're a doormat to trample/what not to do with the vehicle I've just modified for them/etc, etc.
They all have blank stares, they're all emotionally disconnected, they all have varying degrees of "how dare you even acknowledge my existence?" when you attempt to instruct them, and it's as if you're talking to a wall. They never really pick up on anything, they don't respond to emergencies, they're only focused on one or two things (themselves or whatever religious business quest they're on). They're also narcissists/relentless self promoters.
(Continued)
My spouse currently runs a medical business as its director.
It's mildly terrifying to note how many female employees under her are on some form of mood-altering medication, have a therapist they can't get by without, and also how many of them are varying degrees of batshit crazy, completely unable to to even the simplest of tasks without having a meltdown.
Or just have a good old simple case of the vapors?
And people look at me oddly, still asking why I haven't married or if I want to have kids, as an older Millennial.* In my head I go, "Have you seen the shit that is around us? You think I want to deal with THAT?" To hear a peer, who I've had great conversations with, recount a story where she had a semi-big decision to make and was stressed, and she didn't know what to do, so she called her therapist to help give her an answer, did something else, and went ahead. I'm thinking, 1) [girl] you need a FRIEND and 2) Man, am I not gonna compete with a therapist being the pre-third wheel and confidant if I am going into a marriage. [there are nuances and caveats that I can employ to better explain my position here, but I don't want to write it all]. Don't get me started on so many women around me say "OMG the 8 hour work day is sooo long and hard, I don't know if I can do it, etc etc." Like please, remove yourself from the work force and let me/men do this. We're built to complain about work AND still do it, for decades on end.
*Kids are great and a lot of fun to be goof with, to talk to, to hold and reassure if they're sad or scared, to show cool monster truck videos to, etc.
"To hear a peer, who I've had great conversations with, recount a story where she had a semi-big decision to make and was stressed, and she didn't know what to do, so she called her therapist to help give her an answer, did something else, and went ahead."
There's something mildly terrifying about that.
But what can you do about it?
To quote Kuni from the should-have-won-every-Academy-award-there-ever-was blockbuster movie "UHF":
"Nothing! Absolutely nothing!"
Part 2
I recall spending some time BS'ing with some (now former) driving instructors who used to ply their trade at a few local racetracks, the worst horror story was the wife of some local dry cleaner chain owner who suddenly materialized with a brand new 911 Turbo and wanted to learn how to drive it on a racetrack. She pulls onto the main straight, and then decides to pin it. Instructor says to back off, she ignores him, shifts into 4th, and then the chicane comes up...and she isn't slowing down.
He yells at her twice, she's ignoring him, no panic, just...a blank stare.
He hits her shoulder, doesn't really snap her out of it but she lifts off the gas, he yanks up on the E-brake, car slides, bounces off the wall, ends up on its side.
The driver was just sitting there with a dreamy look on her face. The instructor punched her in the face to try to get her attention, she just sat there until the car was eventually put back down on all four wheels, she got out of the car, smiling, and walked away. The husband and one of her sons was there, the instructor spoke to the son after he asked what happened, the instructor told him what happened, the son laughed and then said, "oh yeah, Mom has actually been diagnosed as being a psychopath", and then the husband and son just walked away and left the 911 there, as if it would just take care of itself on its own, they had to be contacted later to come get the 911, "oh, it's still there?".
In other words, I'm loudly curious if some of these people might be on the spectrum, and that there might be a lot more of them than previously thought (I think the current estimates around around ten million total, but there's also some research work out there that suggests that they're waaaay over-represented in C-Suite circles), and I'm also becoming increasingly convinced that there's zero difference between stupid people (otherwise known as people who actively do the wrong thing when superior information is readily available) and sociopaths/psychopaths who...do the wrong thing when superior information is readily available, the only difference being psychopaths are the types who get books written about them.
The common thread between them? The narcissist in both groups (the stupids, sociopaths/psychopaths) is so incredibly confident in their perceived superiority that it never registers to them that they might be completely incompetent at whatever task or hobby, they can't let their superiority sit on the sidelines while they try to learn something new, they're literally just mouthing the words of their instructor while they're hopelessly locked into their mental cassette tape of "Why do you need this guy? You're already an expert!" playing on infinite loop.
Or in the case of Andrew Brannan, how dare you tell me to take my goddamned hands out of my goddamned pockets, who the hell do you think you are, telling me to take my goddamned hands out of my goddamned pockets? And who the hell gives you the right to pull me over for going 98mph?
In the end, stupidity and sociopathy/psychopathy are all types of mental illness, the problem being that sociopathy/psychopathy just happens to be the most profitable mental illness in existence.
And now we're slowly drifting back into why people can't process instructions...
A note: This is merely an opinion.
um......are you talkin' ta me?
a boomer ;)
In life, starting with school-yard fisticuffs (getting my ass kicked) and racing motorcycles and then sports cars (see above) I saw this behavior and eventually understood it but I could not have explained it as well as you have.
Great job!
Fantastic description! The "Oh my God" people drive me up the wall. But decisive, "emotionless" and effective action is "being mean" and "not being gracious" or some other gross misinterpretation. The world hammers people into believing the prey mentality is the nobler path, while discrediting any assertiveness (generally, masculinity). But we know this and see this, so I won't beleaguer the point.
The ever-relevant line from Donny in 2000's Gone in 60 Seconds rings still true here: "Shit, I can't swim. I know I can't! So you know what I do? I stay my black ass out the pool!" My dad is an electrical engineer, I am not. I have tried to understand volts, watts, and amps beyond their basic relationship in an equation (DO NOT try to "help explain it"), along with other principles, but it doesn't stick. I can do math and do like numbers, but I know where I can't swim, and happily let those that are good at what they do in their areas lead the way.
I’m one of those folks who has difficulty with kinesthetic skill. Some skills—such as high-performance driving—I can pick up very quickly and show promise, but polishing the last ten- to twenty-percent of skill is incredibly difficult, mainly to do with consistency. Other skills—such as snapping my fingers or playing first-person shooters—are insurmountable no matter how many times someone demonstrates the skill to me.
How on earth do I improve the connection between my brain and my hands? For people to be able to identify the problem, it stands to reason there is a solution—I just haven’t heard of it yet.
First understand that not everyone will reach an elite level of skill in everything, even with lots of practice. But the good news about using a handgun for self defense is that one does not need to reach the most elite levels of skill to use one effectively for self defense.
In what I teach, inconsistent results are almost always down to failing to be *deliberate* in what one is doing. To shoot at a high level under stress requires an intense level of focus on the process of what you are doing. You have to recognize that nothing good is going to happen unless you *make* it happen and focus on putting the correct inputs on the gun. Even a milisecond's lapse of focus at the wrong moment will produce a result other than the one you intended.
I had a client the other day shoot some exercises and tell me "I'm not used to shooting with this much focus." Well, yes. And that's why his skills haven't improved. He had been focused on round count. Which is like focusing on the amount of time you spend in the gym. Spending 60 minutes in the building doesn't do a damn thing for you. Spending 60-90 minutes holding your heart rate at between 120-150 bpm will increase stroke volume of your heart, making your entire cardiovascular system more efficient and when done sufficiently will lower your resting heart rate and increase your anerobic threshold.
There is a difference between "going to the gym" and showing up there with a plan of exactly what you are going to work on and why. Focus. Purpose. Intensity.
Then there is the matter of recency and relevancy.
If I do not touch a pistol but 2 or 3 times a year, I will not be able to perform at a high level with it. I need to have frequent, relevant practice of the skills I wish to call upon. If I'm not consistently working on the skills I'm looking to call upon, they won't be there. If I have already achieved proficiency at something and then I walk away from it for an extended period of time I can pick it back up and polish up quickly.
Think about it like a knife's edge. If I have a very sharp knife, use it some, and then put it down for an extended period when I pick the knife back up odds are it won't be as sharp. But a little work with a strop and it will likely get sharp again quickly.
Contrast this with a knife that was never sharp to start with. You need a grind and bevel on the blade if it's going to cut and without those there is no amount of stropping that will help.
To learn something difficult you need to find the key sub-set of skills to focus on and then practice those with your full attention and effort.
In shooting, this means dryfire. What I tell people is to spend 5 minutes 3-4 times a week dryfiring...but doing so with all the intensity and focus they can muster. This means real grip pressures, real approaches to the trigger, and watching the sights to see how they respond. I say 5 minutes because most people can't maintain the requisite focus more than that.
The person who does that dryfire work 3-4 times a week and shoots maybe 25 rounds the same week is going to progress far more in a year than the person who tries to shoot 50,000 rounds a year. Especially as most people are not autodidacts.
Frequent bouts of intense focus for limited amounts of time add up. The clients I see who struggle the most are the ones who come to class but don't put in the time and effort working on the skills after class. They get a long way in class but lose it within weeks because they don't follow that up with the practice program we give them.
I did Sage support for years around the turn of the century. Fully concur.
Ok, so what exactly is this Sage? Presumably its not the herb.
To Americans, the company that bought the publisher of Peachtree Complete Accounting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sage_Group
That was the first POS I ever learned, and I am not sure it was meant to be one. God it was awful.
I'm living the hell daily trying to report and plan strategy... Can't wait for our late 2026 ERP transition
I'm not a racing guy, really don't know shit about these particular posts. How about a learn to race session with Jack, followed by some low level entry race? I bet you could raise a ton of money by doing a lottery of your readers. For your charity of choice, possibly just the Charity of Jack?🤣
trackday club but everyone does a stint or something
We have the Trackday Club for that, nominally, but its a solid idea.
Possibly utterly stupid question, but can entry-level track coaching be done over video - by watching a recording of someone's lap and making suggestions - possibly with some kind of telemetry data too -or does the coach need to feel what the car's doing and so on? Video could make organising such things a lot easier, is all.
Dion von Moltke does this with Racers360, but you kinda have to be turning half-decent laps already in order to benefit from it. Absolute novice drivers are still best off with someone in the right seat.
Yes, I find that people doing stupid things behind the wheel respond much better to an actual real slap at their hands versus a virtual slap over a broadband connection.
Well, I was thinking recorded video, so it would be more "well your honor, here you can see exactly where he should have lifted off and turned, and then the accident would have been avoided..."
Live video, though, you could maybe do something with one of those dog-training zappers triggered remotely over the internet...
The crummy-enduro guys have been trying to put a live-coaching system together for a decade now. The problem is that racetracks tend to be places with spotty Internet.
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I don't know I'd have done very well if I'd learned to drive in the first place over zoom or something, so...
I had an expert level driver coach me, I was not lost-in-space just a hack amateur, he mounted a video camera in the car recording to a VCR strapped to the passenger seat ( this was in olden times - a Showroom Stock Playboy Cup race ) and marched me - helmet still on, sweaty drivers suit - into his van to review the tape live & direct. Having an expert explain in real time, the proper lines, where to brake most effectively, and to listen to tire howl and engine bark, etc. was THE MOST important learning experience in all my years of racing.
I picked up 3 seconds I think next session, somewhere mid-pack, and the car was a lot happier too!
That's exactly the sort of situation that the Racers360 staff handles very well nowadays.
Every time I show up for something like that, it quickly devolves into "keep that guy in the spectator area Club" for whatever reason.
Learning how to get around a track, even with some speed (trackday situation) is a whole 'nuther thang than learning how to RACE against others.
1) to Johnny Lieberman’s slight credit, he was very open about how slow he was and also how much he wanted the team to drop him as a driver on the second day.
He seemed to be even a bit embarrassed by his performance on Farah’s podcast. So, something to be said for that I suppose.
2) “In his first-ever stint in his first-ever race, he exited the pitlane backwards”
How is that even possible?
There’s gotta be a story to tell about “Murilee Martin.” Dude has hung around the fringes of auto writing for decades talking about cars he found on streets and in junkyards across, basically, every notable online publication I can think of.
How is THAT even possible?
Can’t say I know him personally, but to my limited understanding he’s just an older white dude.
I just came across another one named Victoria Scott whose book is a “transfeminine automotive look book.” I have no idea what that means, nor do I want to find out. How can you pretend to speak for women if you have the wrong chromosomes? Halloween dress up gone mad!
And if you haven’t had..uhh..something else done!
Then they’re just transvestites. Notice how we never hear that word anymore?
How come “trans” doesn’t include transvestites?
And how come all these guys playing dress up still keep doing male stuff?
How come none of them are pursuing Martha Stewart type activities?
"Just an older, white dude?" I find that offensive!! Don't know what color you are nor do I care, but if you're not older now you will be some day.
You know, on a message board where Speed says something offensive to most of the western world about 22 times per article, you calling me out for saying “older white dude” is more than a little funny to me.
yeah im literally the largest target here
no idea why he honed in on you for that
I don't know about that, you haven't been trying to annoy Mustang Cobra Terminator owners here of late, have you?
Not Sherman?
Allow me, sir, to relay to you a response given to me by a California Highway Patrol officer on the occasion of his writing me a traffic citation. I had run thru a manual STOP sign on my bicycle. While standing there we both observed other cyclists committing the same offense. When I complained that he was not citing them his response was simple, "I can't catch everybody."
I'm vaguely recalling something regarding this very concept back in the early 1980's and it supposedly being illegal to allow three hundred or so cars to blow through a freeway speed trap and only catch the very last one.
"You know, on a message board where Speed says something offensive to most of the western world about 22 times per article"
You exaggerating jerk! We both know that he only says something offensive about 21.79 times per article!
we round numbers here
none of that decimal frippery nonsense
No; he wrote (at Jalopnik?) that he got a gig writing trashy adult pulp fiction and made up his _nom de plume_ by slicing up newspaper headlines and stitching them together (also the process used to write Talking Heads lyrics).
https://murileemartin.com/wordpress/?p=1777
"I got a contract from Nexus, the smut wing of Virgin Books, to write a 70,000-word BDSM novel for their readership of British perverts (now available as a Kindle download for all perverts). Though I’d never even read a smut novel, I had no problem knocking out the specified filth in a couple of weeks. Then the suits in the London office called up and wanted to know what name I’d be using..."
i have a lady about my age whom i've known since '55--she was born in '39--who told me how much she'd always lusted for me and made up a couple of the most incredible quick fantasies i'd ever heard. ross perot was after her back in the day! brilliant and cute. maybe i shouldn't post this at all but i just decided not to tell y'all what they were: a few days later the Lord told her to stop those thoughts and almost simultaneously the completely disconnected alarm in my 70'x40' garage went off. so we stopped that stuff.
I'm thinking that everyone here should switch to using a porn name just for a week.
Oh, wait, I'm already doing just that.
"2) “In his first-ever stint in his first-ever race, he exited the pitlane backwards”
How is that even possible?"
Altamont was a short oval that was running the "snake" through the X near the pitlane. As I recall, pitlane exit was to the right as you entered the pits, which is counter to how it's normally done, even at Altamont.
There were about 100 cars out there running in seemingly every direction, and about zero in the way of grid or safety workers. It can be massively disconcerting to be strapped into a caged, low-or-no-sound-muffling car for the first time. He just panicked and turned left instead of right, at which point his personal nightmare began.
I have a few stories to tell about Phil, they are all good or at least they are funny!
I for one would like to hear stories! And he still writes as Murilee Martin, doesn't he?
Second this.
I deeply respect Murilee's ability to sell the same idea to multiple publications at the same time.
Also, it's hard to take a bad photograph at a junkyard. There's a collision shop near my house that specializes in fleet vehicles, some of which get pretty mangled, and I've been tempted to ask them if I can occasionally shoot some of the wrecks.
Speaking of shooting photos, I need to get down to the Eastern Market in Detroit because the Robocop statue is finally on public display.
I certainly admire the hustle. I can only guess how little he makes per post, but especially since he sells it to multiple rags, that is good work if you can get it. Nice little side gig, I’d assume.
(as only an accountant would)
What's it like to "almost" know something?
I don't know, but I've skated through for decades almost knowing lots of things.
Thanks, you made me laugh!
"Writers dont make shit. Jack probabmakes more on substack than the typical writer. I almost know this for a fact."
I was spending a bit too much time with some sci-fi writer types about a decade and a half ago, if your last name isn't "Grisham" or "King" or a couple of other financially popular last names, you could be selling your ass off in books but still have to keep a regular day job. I can think of two of them in particular who have several hit books (hundreds of thousands of copies sold), but if you're not connected very well politically, yeah, don't give up that day job.
See also: There was a fairly huge lawsuit against the publishing industry not too long ago, one of the fascinating things to come out of that were insider sales numbers, and it was revealed that the publishing industry has been a bust for quite some time, there are only one or two "Harry Potters" per decade, and everything else just sort of rots on the vine, they're paid for by the Harry Potter-and-related blockbusters.
I don't recall whether or not the politically-motivated books where the authors get multi-million-dollar advances but only sell 500 books were ever actually explained in that lawsuit, however.
I know a journalist in Baltimore from another car forum I've frequented for 25 years. He's typical -- pretty smart, smirky, always has to be the guy who knows everything about everything. He's almost always on the wrong side of any argument, but he's got lots of reasons why he's right.
Anyhow, his big shtick is that he's never made more than $30K/yr, but he keeps telling us how smart he is?
I've never judged somebody based on how much they make, but there's a point where you're doing no better (and probably worse) than being the second shift fry-chef manager at a fast food joint. I'm lost as to how that can be judged as a good life choice. \
Journos are a strange breed.
My wife just wrote a novel, and is in the throes of editing and such. We joke about "getting out the hood" by selling the movie rights to Netflix or something after she sells her -hopefully- 100-200 copies. Gives us hope at least hahah
NOOOOO. I AM CONAN THE LARRY, DESTROYER OF BOTH HOPES AND DREAMS, BUT I AM ALSO SOOOO SADISTIC THAT WILL NEVER ALERT YOU AS TO WHICH I WILL DESTROY FIRST!
HAAHAAHHAAA...HAAHHHAHAHAA....cough...cough...HAAHAHHA...cough...
(Begins darting back and forth maneuver like you would expect from a drunken, 80-year-old former Soccer player/80-year-old current dementia patient thinking he can psych out one of the world's best goalies and make a Sportscenter-worthy kick into the metaphorical, soul-destroying net)
where does he sell it other than Hagerty these days? He used to just post them on FB or wherever but I think that stopped when the paying gig started.
Off the very top of my head, I believe he’s had bylines at Jalopnik, AutoWeek, Hagerty, TTAC, and perhaps others doing the exact same thing for each one.
10-4. That's impressive to do the same thing for all of those pubs. I think I've seen his junkyard stuff on Hagerty, Autoweek and formerly FB? I think he prob stopped posting there when he started doing it for $$ for Hagerty.
"Where does he sell it other than Hagerty these days?"
Unless I'm mistaken, you're looking at it right now, in all of its Substack glory.
If I'm recalling correctly, Hagerty required a ridiculous series of non-compete clauses be signed before he climbed on board the Hagerty "Corporate Partner" Express train to nowhere.
It became something of a career Hail Mary that landed him in the endzone, but then the play was declared dead after a "corporate holding back" flag was thrown back at the line of scrimmage.
And because the rest of the industry is collapsing onto itself for laughably predictable reasons, his Hail Mary pass was on the career 4th down due to no fault of his own other than his suicidal insistence on wearing sweater vests.
I'd like to meet the guy. Many of his junkyard shots have been taken at the one I frequent in town and I've hoped to run across him. He even shot one of my cars that I found on his website. It looks better in photos than I ever will
He's great and always has interesting stories. He's usually at the Lemons High Plains races in his Subie Sambar.
His Impala Hell Project series is a great long read. https://murileemartin.com/ImpalaRoundup.html
Wow, I now have to log in to read that series.
They finally got the RoboCop statue up?!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/detroits-own-crime-fighter-robocop-finally-stands-guard-in-motor-city/ar-AA1RJ12K
I consider myself a pretty hardcore junkyarder but when I went on his webpage one time and looked at all the pics he had shot over the years, I realized I'm a rank amateur compared to him.
I listened to the same episode and didn't feel he was embarrassed at all. At many points in the podcast, he talked about being faster than other people at various times in his career and made judgements on the limit handling of various vehicles.
I dunno, how can you look at Oscar's obvious choke after he led by 34 points and call Lando soft as butter?
Precisely because of that.
The only reason Lando was in the hunt was because something absurd happened to his teammate. Now, I'm not saying that McLaren harmed Oscar's chances. I'll leave that for the crazies on social media. But Oscar should never have been in that position to begin with.
The storyline of "I was getting toasted by my teammate, then I got toasted by Max in the 3rd best car, and I finished WDC" isn't history's most compelling one.
"3rd best car" so you'd say the Red Bull was better than the Ferarri and Williams?
...Maybe?
Gun to my head, I'd put the Red Bull and Ferarri equal, with the difference in results being that Ferarri barely developed their car this year and Leclerc being a marginally worse version of 2014-era Alonso.
Was he though? (consistently amazing in 2018)
I'd argue that his CAR was consistently amazing. He just put it on the front row and drove it without crashing.
That's not how I see it, Lando underperformed the first two thirds of the season, no doubt. He could have pulled a Sergio Perez season 3 and disappeared. But he didn't. Yes Max is a better and tougher driver, but Norris didnt choke. That's not soft, sorry.
Max would have won the WDC by 1 point if McKaren would not have swapped Brawndo and Oscar at Monza. Zak, Andrea and Snorris better be buying Oscar a hell of a Christmas present this year.
And how much did the Monza maneuver (that there was no question from then on that Brawndo was the favored driver) make Oscar overdrive the car in the next couple of races.
Keep in mind, isn't this Oscar's first or 2nd season? He'll learn.
2025 was his third season in F1. The "rookie" thing doesn't apply here.
Fair
Hey Jack, any recommendations on a 2nd-hand watch marketplace type deal, like Reverb or something for timepieces? Fuck eBay, I'm tired of their shit.
Crown and Caliber? Bob’s Watches?
Chrono24 or Bezel. I've had positive experiences on both.
Bezel is much more "curated". They authenticate the watches and do escrow for the transaction. Chrono24 is more like "Reverb for watches".
My brother bought a pretty fancy watch off Bezel and it actually failed authentication. So they're at least KIND OF serious about it.
If you decide to buy anything off Bezel, I have a $150 off discount code from my first purchase there.
Thank you for your kindness. I'm pretty sure I'm not in Bezel's target demographic, because I'm cheap and not sure if the wristwatch rabbit hole I went down is really for me. I spent a few hundred getting a couple of my father's watches up to spec and I'm waffling on whether to stop while I'm ahead or throw more and more scarce pocket change at a new 'hobby'.
Which is more important, time or its calibration?
Me:
- Go to Bezel's site, click Shop Now
- Apply price filter: Max $500
Bezel: "Looks like no results match what you’re looking for right now."
Me:
- Realize which end of the pool I'm in
- Close browser tab.
Pretty much
OH GREAT, NOW EVERYONE IN THIS LITTLE MESSAGE GROUP IS ON A GOVERNMENT WATCHLIST.
bro you signed up to this substack you had to have known it would happen
YEAH BUT I WAS FINE UNTIL YOU PEOPLE STARTED TALKING ABOUT WATCHES AND NOW I AM ON A GOVERNMENT WATCHLIST.
HOPEFULLY IT'S NOT A CHEAP TIMEX-LEVEL WATCHLIST.
WHAT, I'M ON A WATCH WATCHLIST. AIN'T NUTHIN' WORSE THAN A WATCH WATCHLIST.
nah timex watchlists are great
some of them look pretty cool like this one
https://timex.ca/products/q-timex-reissue-38mm-stainless-steel-bracelet-watch-tw2t80700
Okay, that isn't too bad to look at.
... also not functionally or aesthetically any different than a Casio for less than $100.
https://www.amazon.com/Casio-MTP-S110-2AVCF-Solar-Powered-Black/dp/B07TCC7L4M/ref=sr_1_6?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.wMmchyPRnvfeqoGYXNicQH-nBnT0cxn1tRrq2va7JTcVdRJMqkmQh3-ES4f0hSeomXV5INfV5qK5JT6AVEaGA82Zq6kurXsoU7fFmfDM2HQHR4FPqULO6iJzIqjkZBYEHNY36h5koIqF6t81Gr7Q9VwJ_jHkLAfS3Eur7xe2aiz4OtBWapo_SLtjbDunIth0OTzeoT2ZiZgzB5jW8q0jEi1PzcFrGQ9xtUOJ-_qp4otcN7q5FL_4Cy6BSg9mAe6lFDMmzEBVTrXvEutDtFvG0cHAJhjJ-SPwvHfeWCJjfCU.doLUoYK5-GO0gdfVa6RVbeFBpEegv-7xDCwKQqmwhs8&dib_tag=se&hvadid=590016894476&hvdev=c&hvexpln=0&hvlocphy=9022093&hvnetw=g&hvocijid=4978112715796800489--&hvqmt=e&hvrand=4978112715796800489&hvtargid=kwd-332226257503&hydadcr=27441_14536792&keywords=casio%2Bdive%2Bwatches%2Bfor%2Bmen&mcid=af715d43c7a636a5b661632c98272c0a&qid=1765462749&sr=8-6&th=1
Heh, I had a govt security clearance for a brief time long long ago. I’m sure I’m still on multiple lists.
One list you're definitely on is the SSNs China got from the Office of Personnel Management
Didn't know the government made watches.
He's here all week, folks! Try the veal.
But why would someone pound it flat, coat it in bread, fry it, and cover it in Italian gravy?
They make Twatches. It's like those rubber Swatch watches, but made specifically for Twats.
Wait was I the only one who had to check yes about being on a Gov't watch list in order for my subscription to be accepted here?
I had to show off my impressive collection of two crusty Swatch watches to be allowed in the front door.
[Jack, if inappropriate in this forum, you may delete this message. Or move to another topic.]
Speaking of second hand. I have to dispose of a few watches before I can buy any more. Selling these for a song so they find a good home -- like around half of current market value. Drop me a DM if interested. Otherwise they will go on Chrono24; which charges me fees and you sales tax.
1. Seiko SSK-017 (yellow GMT). I decided that I'm not a GMT guy. Includes custom made cordovan strap in black with yellow stitching. Includes box&papers. $250 delivered in USA. About half retail. [typical example, not mine: https://www.jomashop.com/seiko-seiko-5-yellow-dial-mens-watch-ssk017.html ]
2. Citizen CB0160-18A White solar with WWVB radio time setting (actually 6 channel). Automatically sets time each night and corrects for daylight saving & 30 day months. $180 delivered with box and papers. [ typical example, not mine:<https://everywatch.com/citizen/eco-drive/watch-10029413>
3. Bulova Precisionist JetStar in ruby red. Accurate to a few seconds _per year_. Far more accurate than a sub $500 watch has a right to be. Selling for less than half retail (currently $650) of $250 delivered with box and papers. [typical example, not mine: https://www.helveti.eu/bulova-96b401-jet-star#example_group-2]
All of these are in really good shape. still look nice.
Nice homage to “We Were Soldiers…”
Fine movie and a finer book.
You'll forgive me if I'm a little fuzzy on the whole "value" thing. What does "value" mean with regard to a company's product?
In Sherman's mind, there is only the "Value" of share price.
So Google, which revolutionized the world, didn't really have "value" until they stopped innovating and sat down to get the benefits of monopoly position and QE.
Similarly, Microsoft has much more "value" now than they had when they controlled pretty much every desktop in the Western World.
Huh.
Okay, see, I figure "value" means something tangible a customer can use like a car, a knife, a stove - you know, a product. But I always hear sales weasels use "value" in the same way some meathead in a uniform says "professional."
That only makes sense if you assume making IE6 the Standard of the World destroyed value equivalent to a minor petrostate.
In 1970's music terms:
Leif Garrett >> Σ (Velvet Underground, Television, King Crimson, Sun Ra)
There was more to our back and forth about “value.”
I believe that markets determine what is “valuable,” or not.
Jack believes that HIS OPINIONS determine what is valuable, or not. Just like his bizarro world brother, Butterfinger Brad Brownell, come to think of it.
I suggested that it is a profound shame that Jack lives where he does, and that he should hop the next Greyhound to Manhattan so that he can live in Zohran’s command economy.
Fishback response to market absolutism:
https://xcancel.com/lucasdimos/status/1998344958676283629#m
You can make an argument about Microsoft being in a better position today due to their lockdown on most corporate productivity and large amounts of data, versus when they just sold the OS on every desktop .
Yes.
But are they now better?
I sort of think that many things and experiences and corporations perhaps shouldn't live forever. All of the ones today have gotten worse as they have aged, in parallel to their market innovation and growth stagnating. Like Apple/Google/Microsoft haven't invented anything new in quite some time. They have just got us all on the hook to pay more for the same shit. You used to buy a CDrom with a program on it, and you owned it for eternity. Now all your shit goes to the cloud and if you don't pay them every month it vanishes forever. Not to mention, for that privilege, they are scanning your files for illegal activity.
“…which are generally not long-life items and in any event are astoundingly subsidized by their government.”
Good thing you prefaced this as an explicit reference to Chinese EV’s. Would be easy to mistake as a reference to Farley’s own company.
Ouch!
Governments do love electro-crap Fords, Rivians, and in DC's case even Lordstown Motors Landfillmobiles https://carsandbids.com/auctions/rxXpR6J0/2023-lordstown-endurance?
Is that Johnny Drama behind you atop the LeMons car?
Also, Lieberman said “I was 10s off [Farah’s] pace” and “I’m not that slow” in the same paragraph which I found laughably absurd.
To paraphrase an NFL coach, “You are what the stopwatch says you are!”
"Is that Johnny Drama behind you atop the LeMons car?"
It is. He is five years younger than I am, I think, but he appears to be disintegrating.
Matt will be the first to admit that he isn't consistently quick, although he has had his moments. Jonny ran a LOT of 2:52s and above in a car that could turn a 2:32.
I was walking the dog during the podcast but pretty sure Matt’s fastest lap was 2:35.x and Lieberman’s was 2:45.x
That would mean something if either of them turned consistent laps the way a trained racer would.
Most of Matt's laps were 2:38 and above. Most of Jonny's laps were 2:50 and above.
What you see happen a lot with enduros is that your slow drivers will have one or two decent laps. When you review the footage, it's because they are following another driver, who then leaves them behind, and they return to doing "their pace".
This is why so much stuff in the automotive journalism world is lead-follow now. You just drive around behind someone, do exactly what you see them do, and publish the laps.
That explains a lot.
Great insight. The whole world is lead-follow. That should be the motto of the 21st Century.
I try to search for original thinkers online to try to learn something new, and it’s a near futile quest. I have to wade through 99.9% of what I see to find the valuable nuggets.
Very little is "new," it's simply new to you.
Also from the TST podcast: Matt said an ideal race team consists of one fast young driver, one fast old driver, and one guy who just won't crash. The safe role being what he fulfilled. In amateur competition, maybe that is pretty good but why wouldn't three fast drivers be better?
Three fast and disciplined drivers is what you want, but you won't find that in WRL.
A theory I've heard him mention for years
"Jonny ran a LOT of 2:52s and above in a car that could turn a 2:32."
Oh, I see the problem here, Jonny doesn't understand how time works on a racetrack, he's simply goin' for high score.
"I'm twenty seconds higher than everyone else!"
Any SWAG on which of your cars The Commander could do similar lap times in if given slicks and fresh pads?
An SCCA guy did it in 2:42 a few years back, using... an MGB.
I'd say my kid could beat 2:45 in my ES300 and my LS430, no sweat. In the Accord I think he could trouble 2:40.
Heh, I was waffling between one of the Mercuries.
I sold the Milan earlier this year, but last year we actually ran some half decent times around MidO in it.
Jonny wearing a custom driver’s suit is like me putting on a chef’s smock and hat to make toast.
Who are all of the dudes in that photo? You of course I recognize.
From left to right:
Some young gun mechanic and driver named Jesse from SoCal, I forget his last name.
The crew chief, we had a tussle during the race but finished pals, I have forgotten his name
Dave Schaible, who would go on to win Lemons seasons with a flathead powered ladder frame handbuilt.
Johnny Lieberman
MURILEE MARTIN.
Someone has to do it, and it can't be you!
Lieb bragged about getting that racing suit custom made for him and gifted to him by one of the auto makers, Bentley, I think, on the Spike Car Radio podcast about a month ago.
Think it was Bugatti.
That’s it! They are all B’s to me. :)
1. Fascinating. Was not aware that the Subparperformance S1 was anywhere near $77,000 in price.
2. The picture of the broken WhattaBummerford Link looks like it was taken somewhere behind the Iron Curtain, possibly Bulgaria.
Or possibly somewhere inside Reactor #4 at Chernobyl, you know, where some brave soul took a picture of the most radioactive metallurgy ever created and then died 57 minutes later from cheaposity poisoning while trying to smuggle this picture out to the West.
3. In regards to the image above of Marko after winning Le Mans, is it just me, or does it look like hardly anyone washed their hair regularly during that time?
"It's okay, I'll wash it next month!"
4. What kind of dirt do they have on Tommy Kendall that he would willingly team up with a driver who's practically tectonic-plate-slow? I'm not entirely certain that even with my screwed-up lungs (thank you, Covid!), I couldn't perhaps push that car faster around the course than Lieberman.
"Was not aware that the Subparperformance S1 was anywhere near $77,000 in price"
i cant imagine where that money actually went other than paying someone too much to put it together
It legitimately doesn't make sense apart from the whole "everything costs 10x as much when you're 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑢𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 at 𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒔𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒆
If I'm not mistaken, the cheapest Fine Ass Element Analyzed equivalent of something like an S1 (Palatov DP4) which... is $131k complete* in 2020 dollars. God knows what it is now, frightening to think about it
*https://palatov.com/wptest/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/D4-Brochure_NEW.pdf
The Noble was $77k.
My s1 was $23k for the rolling chassis and another $12k for the engine and transmission.
Hold on, you're getting a wrap?
only the kind with bacon egg and cheese in it
Sounds like Kendall doesn't race much anymore. I think he said this was his first race in something like 10 years. His first win at any level in 21 years.
"build infrastructure in India and China.
I’m sure there’s more to it than that. But what is it?"
I don't know. But I DO know that it's NOT "just business."
For one thing, Westerners have no idea of how to follow Indian customs or participate in the kickback networks, so Indians benefit from consolidating power amongst themselves to a greater degree than other cultures.
But one really needs to understand not only the money flows for the kickback and money laundering schemes, but also the culture of "Izzat" and the RSS / BJP / VHP / Hindutva / Khalistan / GATI / ItServe organizations:
https://xcancel.com/EngineerChiefCE/status/1983342138025775386#m
https://www.wnd.com/2025/12/inside-global-visa-cartel-replacing-americas-middle-class/
https://csrr.rutgers.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/hindutva-in-america.pdf
https://www.wnd.com/2025/12/hidden-force-behind-hire-act/
Ford so disappoints me. "OK let's kill every model Klockau likes, then offer a bunch of ugly potato shaped turds, mostly lot poison EVs! Durr hurr hurr!"
I also found out from a buddy at the Cadillac dealer that my traded in MKZ had just begun to leak. So I dodged an imminent, pricey bullet there.
Can't see any Ford products in my future, unless it's a 97 Town Car Cartier or maybe a 70s Continental...
I’ve been shopping 80s town cars with the leather sofa seats and brick styling. I’m a diehard ford guy but I wouldn’t touch current inventory with a 29 and a half foot pole. The classic bench is deep and wide though.
Tough time of the year to sell a bike.
Is $10 down and $10 week financing available.
If the house wasn’t behind the Iron Curtain, I might be interested.
I want another '93 Thunderbird Super Coupe.
With a Coyote swap.
That is also acceptable.
"I could train the average nursing home resident to run 15 seconds off the pace in a BMW specifically designed for jerkoffs and zero-talents to operate in “professional” competition. "
But could you train Lieberman?
Have you ever coached someone that you felt was not trainable?
"Have you ever coached someone that you felt was not trainable?"
great question
You would be a great economist with math skills like that.
Exactly the sort of math skills one needs when managing someone else's money.
The best Wall Street book title, from 1940: “Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?”
Having worked in that business, the title always made me laugh. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/288897.Where_Are_the_Customers_Yachts_
That seems like a good question for Sherman: Where are the OF girls' yachts?
I have never had a student whom I could not get to at least being safe on track.
Trump’s NSS is spot on about Europe. See page 25-26. For some reason I can’t copy and paste an excerpt.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf
^ The entire document is potentially interesting, however the current Administration exceeds all previous administrations COMBINED in "volume of idle talk."
There’s a lot going on other than Epstein and Comey.
I'll believe it when I see it. For now, we have this:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24-923/369268/20250808155642694_24-923%20--%20Save%20Jobs%20USAopp.pdf
versus:
https://www.grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/opt_letter.pdf
https://xcancel.com/RepGosar/status/1998152872630870174
and putting {{{ Harmeet Dhillon }}} in charge of investigating discrimination against Americans
The Harmeet thing, and the exposure of her tweets worshipping her co-ethnics in the trucking industry while spitting on american truck drivers was telling if tragic. Like most of 2025
By now, it is very clearly a frog & scorpion situation for anyone with even the slightest awareness. We have to treat 100% according to the nature of 99.999%, no matter how unfair it is to the other 0.001%.
There is a reason that it was considered a huge change when Truman raised the Indian immigration quota from zero to 100/year.
replace “idle talk” with “blathering idiocy and blatant lies”