Note: The old ones wrinkle like the used tissue mentioned in this article, I believe the version 2.0 addresses this but buyer be warned. Still great pants, just require more ironing than I'd care to do post wash.
Huh, can't say I've noticed that on the 4-5 pairs I have. They definitely don't coming out of the dryer looking like they've been ironed, but that's about it.
I sent my two of my oldest pairs of Dearborn Denim to Denim Therapy in Brooklyn for them to do their magic reweaving of the thin spots in the butt/crotch and fix where the button hole was about to rip through. The work turned out excellent. It cost as much to ship the jeans there and back as the repairs, about $60 all-in. Sadly, that means there's no room in my drawer to try a pair from Origin.
A competent local tailor can do it for you, as well.
As I type this I am wearing a pair of Levi’s from the 90s that were (1) made in my hometown before the factory moved to Mexico that I (2) stole from my father. I have had the crotch redone twice.
Obviously a tailor could fix my button or sew on a patch, but I didn't research DT's claims that few people are able to reweave denim with a matching color and texture because that certainly doesn't seem like a normal tailoring operation, to me.
That’s abnormal depending on the size of the tear / hole.
I have some jeans that were done in that fashion while I lived in Chicago, but then I had near carte blance from Trustafarian Pizza the Hutt’s master tailor (who was on his payroll).
I don’t necessarily mind the look of obviously repaired denim. Denim ages quickly, that’s the point! And you can always buy more pairs.
As regards the loss of optimism about the future: that is also around the time American culture shifted into one more focused on generation-as-island instead of generation-as-link-in-the-chain. I suffer with this daily, and all I can do is work to be otherwise.
As regards the clown-car operation of MotoAmerica, from a distance, well it's still not great but at least no cameramen were almost run down in pit lane! Their website continues to be an embarrassment to website design everywhere, and their VOD layout makes me want to pull my hair out.
Supersport continues to be the Darryn Binder vs Josh Herrin show with Binder currently getting the leg up. This time Darryn hadn't even been to Mid-O before and still won both races. The first race was him learning the track and putting a hard late move in against Herrin in the final lap. What do I mean "learning the track?" he was faster and faster as the race went on; consistently improving with personal best laps. Race 1 is worth watching for this showcase in talent alone.
Race 2 for supersport is a four-way fight for most of the race and here it's worth mentioning Kayla Yaakov. She, a rarity of rarities, appears to be the real-deal in terms of competitiveness as opposed to the usual "look a girl racer!" who runs mid to back pack. She hung on to the top three within a few tenths for the duration. She is consistently faster than Blake Davis, Alessandro DiMario, Ty Scott, and the other boys she raced with in the Twins Cup. Herrin and Binder at the front changed lead several times. Herrin with four to go makes a pass which puts him in the lead for the next pair of laps before purposefully putting himself behind Herrin. The idea being to draft and block pass in the back straight. Darryn goes tight and blocks the move to hold on for the win with excellent racecraft. Yaakov takes Josh Hayes, the oldest man running, in the last lap for third.
King of the Baggers is the Hayden Gillum show and it is great to see him win. He is quite likeable as a personality and hilariously large which makes the bagger a fitting ride for him. This includes overcoming a trash tier start in race 1 to come back from 6th (the field is 11 bikes).
Superbike racing is still ongoing and the championship is surprisingly close between Sean Dylan Kelly, Bob Fong, and JD Beach (?!).
I have no clue about bikes or bike racing, but with a marketing background I had to open that website. "Interesting" choice to make the past events look "dead" on the start page.....
I suppose I should have specified that BOTH websites are atrocious experiences.
MotoAmerica DOT com and MotoAmericaLivePlus DOT com (why are these separate? why not a subdomain or just a URI segment for the vods? who knows). Neither support a flow that I would expect to be supported as someone who wants to check on the championship or as someone who wants to watch old races.
Regarding generation-as-link-in-chain, whenever I listen to or read older people bitch about younger people, I wonder if they all forgot how awkward and horrible it was to be that age and be making daily mistakes. I posted somewhere else that kids are better off with our understanding and patience, and of course some old guy attacked me for having such a dumb idea.
Jack et al: Hoping for some leniency in posting an OT item instead of an ORT item, but I have a time-sensitive “Ask Jack and his Readers” situation:
Gen-Z daughter recently moved to Chicago and in last Monday’s storm had a tree fall on her CR-V. City came and removed the tree (and made the damage worse in the process). We’re waiting for insurance to get back to us, but I’ll be very surprised if it’s not totaled. She’s currently between professional jobs, so if it’s totaled, me and mom will need to help her out a bit as her CR-V was not paid off and she has no equity.
Here’s where I’m looking for opinions:
Option 1: We have a 2016 Holda Pilot with 82K on the odometer that my wife drives, and we can just give to the daughter. It’s AWD, in great shape, always maintained. She’d have no car payment, but it’s also not under any sort of warranty so if something happens, it’s out-of-pocket for her (once she lands a new gig), or us (in the interim). It also seems kind of big for a city car. Wife and I both WFH so we can operate on one car until wife figures out what she wants sometime down the road.
Option 2: Carmax will give us ~$15K for the Pilot. We could use that as a down payment for something new in the $25K-$30K range, resulting in lower payment than she has now, and it would be new and under warranty. We’d cosign the loan (and we do really totally trust her to make the payments – she has for the last 3 years). CR-Vs are a little too pricey now, but Hyundai has 0% on Tucsons, and there’s also other lower cost new car options out there.
Option 3: I’m open to other suggestions.
Thoughts?
BTW, don’t let my screen name influence your responses – it’s from a song. I’m not well-heeled at all.
give her the pilot now and help her with repairs if needed with the option to have her pay you back for them in the future when shes settled if both parties agree with that statement. a truck might be less than idea for the city but its far better than nothing at all
Speed said it. That Pilot is worth more than fifteen grand. As for things going wrong...it's a Honda, and the miles are low for a ten-year-old car. It ain't gonna break, and if it does it won't be outrageous to repair.
This all day. Chicago is not a “big city” in the sense that it’s super dense like NYC or other east coast cities. We take my wife’s MDX into Chicago all of the time and it’s not too cumbersome at all.
we had older hondas go past 200k and one is still kicking at about 150. Wouldn't worry too much about the pilot. Take a look at what registration and taxes will cost on $30k and consider how much repair that alone could buy should the need arise.
Long time former Chicagoan here. Don’t put a new car on the streets of Chicago. Doesn’t matter the neighborhood. If it doesn’t get stolen, it will get vandalized or damaged by idiots parking by sound and feel instead of sight.
Credentials - had a three week old Silverado (long story) stolen from in front of my house in the best of neighborhoods.
I was over at a buddy’s condo smoking cigars in West Town a few days before Christmas in ~2017. We walked outside and noticed his neighbor’s brand new Tahoe sitting on cinder blocks.
I had parked it on the street out in front of the house because my wife was doing a “project” in the garage.
Nothing quite like coming out in the morning and not seeing it where you were sure you parked it. Then looking up and down the street and not seeing it either. Then looking down and seeing a puddle of broken glass.
In retrospect I was lucky. It had a fairly uncommon interior color. The cops said it was likely not a random theft and I might’ve gotten jacked otherwise.
Kudos to the thieves. It was found nearly completely stripped but with only a small scratch on the fender with four baldies and a milk crate for a driver’s seat. Cost as much to repair as I paid for it.
six hours old and beat to death (applies to this thread but also a new car left in chiraq)
under no circumstances will it be cheaper to buy something else. hand her the pilot with an IOU 1 Lamborghini and walk away knowing you did right by your child.
I'll add to the resounding "give her the Pilot" chorus and also note a 2016 Honda will almost certainly prove more reliable and mechanically trustworthy than a 2026... Anything. Including (especially?) a 2026 Honda.
Besides, it's what my own parents would have done, had they the means.
I’m very familiar. I grew up in Ukrainian Village nearby where my Mom also grew up. Logan is a dense neighborhood but I’m sure she can easily park the Pilot there. Good luck!
I replaced my daughter's Tucson with a CX-30. The Tucson went back to the dealer eight times for engine issues. The service dept agreed that the engine would have to be replaced but the number of steps required by Hyundai to do so was ridiculous. We have better things to do.
What Jack said. Wife’s on her third Pilot. First one lasted over 250k miles. It’s really big inside—if you occasionally need to move a lot of people or stuff. If you had to pick a vehicle to be in a wreck in, a Pilot has to be at the top of the list. Finally, they’re comfy on long road trips.
FWIW I love my 2026 Kia Sportage HEV (a Tucson with better-to-my-eye styling) as I have two earlier Kia Cadenzas, one 2020 Sportage and a '22 Hyundai Santa Fe. But I also only drive around 7500 miles a year and I never keep them longer than three years. A 2016 Pilot is absolutely the better long-term solution.
Give her the Pilot, and set up an auto transfer of the not-being-paid monthly payment into an interest bearing account. You’ll have more than enough money for repairs if needed, and she’ll have thousands of dollars when the time comes for the next thing.
A low mileage 2006 Pilot is a better product than any new $30k car from any maker.
One thing no one mentioned, that Pilot will need a timing belt in 18K, possibly less than a year at 82K and not paid off. At least $2K if not more, maybe that money is better sent elsewhere.
I assumed that the choice of "Britain" over "England" was intentional, less he invite obvious questions of the form "Watts with that list: are you some kind of a dumb Bell or a Loughead?"
A better chart tracks patent applications per capita. Not a surprise, Israel is ahead of US and China.
A better question is what quality of patent is actually granted. From my experience the cast major of US apps come from large corporations that made a policy decision years ago to apply for the most incremental, teivial and obvious improvements not in the hope of getting a valuable patent but to add to the portfolio and as a block against competitors.
"I could get an RMCR to ride locally then get a V85 Strada for longer trips", don't you already have like 49 motorcycles? (would have said "bikes" but I know you also have a collection of pedal power bikes - which will come in handy when the Socialist takeover is complete).
I would grudgingly add France to your list. I know they haven’t produced many physical things of note but they were very early contributors to mathematics and philosophy. There is a reason that as an undergraduate math major in a small liberal arts college, I was required to take either reading German or reading French. They both contributed greatly to the field.
Got a note from my buddy a few days ago about a Hennessy modified vehicle on BaT and how awesome it was and why wasn’t I bidding on it? Politely informed him I would never, ever be interested in anything with that guy’s name on it.
The only experience I have with a Hennessy is through someone locally who owns one. He made it a point to mention how much more power his F150 Venom has than the TRX that was being driven by one of the young ladies who works for me.
The aspect which annoys me most about the "cars are inefficient" argument is that is seems to be solely based on getting to and from a desk job. How many house cleaners out there rely on the personal vehicle to make a living? The car is the literal vehicle to start a small business. If you can think of a one person service business, the car can get you there.
The late Rob Pitts had a great story about a used pickup he sold to a guy with financial troubles. Years later he bumped into that guy, who had made a local trash pickup company with employees, and it all started with a used vehicle.
I regret that I only have one "like" to give this comment.
The pointy heads who always predict the demise of personal transportation assume everybody will live in an urban pod and commute to Spacely Sprockets on the hypertrain.
They forget that millions live (by choice, usually) outside urban centers and go to jobs that aren't in the same place every day with tools they need to do the work.
These are the same people who lump all the non-urban people into the “people who don’t count and I don’t care about because they’re all worthless rubes” category.
These are also the pointy heads who don’t know where their food comes from.
“people who don’t count and I don’t care about because they’re all worthless rubes”
I take that SUPER personally, since I'm an uneducated non-urban worthless rube (clinging to my religion and whatnot)... but it's really just the flip side of some of the comments we see/make here regarding who has worth and who doesn't. Turnabout really isn't fair play, even though it feels like it should be.
Getting old has made it easy to be bitter and cynical, but I'm still juuuust egalitarian and idealistic enough to continue to believe in the quaint old "brotherhood of man slop". I guess that makes me a sap, proving the point of "my betters" that I'm just a worthless rube -- and worse, that I'm happy to be one.
I don't think I'm any better than city-folk who want UBI and free healthcare... but I don't feel inferior in any way either. I like my irrelevant, free life out here in Flyover, USA, and I'm unlikely to give it up without somebody physically taking it away from me.
Me too, friend -- because it feels personal. I just want to be completely sure I'm not doing the same thing, because it is my default to think the gen-pop in most urban centers (and suburbs, TBH) are complete idiots.
We have a totally different attitude than that crowd. We just want to be left alone and they want us to do things their way.
We may stereotype but that’s just an inherent human survival technique. They stereotype constantly to see who is above and below them on the social and wealth ladders.
They see every social interaction this way. It’s their basic operating system. That’s why being around these people is mostly unpleasant. They’re always judging and we’re not.
Thats the issue though isnt it, the "somebody physically taking it away from me"
You have no issue with them living int her cities as they please, just leave you alone.
City folk have zero knowledge and much disdain for us. They'll gladly scrap the electoral college so they can have the whole accoirdign to their sensibilities and norms.
Were constantly assaulted by their view of norms, from education to the cars we can buy.
Tangentially related: I HUGELY dislike all these op-eds on death of a car, because they all come from large cities, and focus on solving the large city problems. "I hate traffic in New York, and I wish we had all that European public transportation, so New York wouldn't have so much traffic. It's the only solution for New York, so the car must die."
May I suggest that all these New York-focused solutions should die? The U.S., and world at large are much bigger, and MUCH better than the sad little New York. If these people were to get their heads out of their New Yorks, they would quickly realize that not only is the car NOT dead, but is also absolutely necessary.
Public transport can never take you where you want to go, and to make it do so would make what's-his-name's complaints about unnecessary asphalt Big Bang-distant. But if such expansive public transport were to be built, its' energy needs would make what's-his-name wet himself, and then faint.
Traffic complaints, energy crises complaints, public transport exultations, EV promotions, and internal combustion car eulogies all have one and only one thing in common: communism. More specifically, they want to restrict the population movement, in order to easily exert control over said population.
All those voicing their support of such measures are what the original communists called "useful idiots," and will be the first to meet fate similar to the original "useful idiots", if the measures they propose and encourage ever see the light of day.
I believe someone made a movie in the 1980s on how to solve the New York-style problem: you build a wall around it, and then drop in all similarly-minded individuals inside the walls, so they all enjoy the New York-style utopia.
I wish we could build something, anything that would stop the New York-style IDEAS from escaping their native environment, and polluting the free world.
These anti-car utopian whiners need to live by what they espouse.
Don’t ever set foot in a car again and walk or take public transportation everywhere. Start today.
Every op-ed hater needs to start living by exactly what they want their world to be right f*cking now, and not at some theoretical point in the future.
My simple message to all of them: You first. Lead the way. Start walking.
Yes. I worked with a League of Women Voters - in Bremerton, WA - who was always pushing mass transit. Her own commute from and to work? She had her retired husband drive her in in the morning and pick her up at night. Two round trips per day.
Anti-car? Da fuq is wrong with your reading skills. I literally wrote:
“So we won’t be banning cars, much less considering it, but let’s leverage 4-wheeled mobility to its fullest, when and where it’s best suited. Inside dense urban cores where critical masses of people drive productivity and safety, cars should be as physically small as possible with parking available as deep underground as possible, but generally be as limited and down-regulated as possible. Outside of dense urban cores, cars can and should roam free like motorised bison on the plains.”
Interestingly, some of the folks I grew up with in the 1960s have done just this : they don't own vehicles, not even a bicycle, they use the Boston MTA to get where they need to go .
It's a good system yes but I couldn't wait to get my own four wheels @ age 14 and begin driving my self wherever I wanted to go .
"one size fits all" solutions rarely work out well for everyone .
Yep. "I am a stupid idiot in a giant crappy city with a $5K/month, 132 square foot apartment closet and $4M in college loan debt and I AM CERTAIN cars' days are numbered!"
Thank you, I too noticed the bullshit dog whistle use of that word .
communism has never, _EVER_ worked in world history .
Socialism on the other hand, means clean drinking water, cops & firemen, traffic lights, Concrete side walks on and on, it's an important part of civilization .
Those who don't think believe they're the same when they're decidedly not .
Tough motorcycle racers? Tough, yes but not compared to professional rodeo bull riders IMHO.
Those guys lead the pack of people who simply have no concern for their personal safety or well being.
BTW and speaking of nutso, check out the front page of todays' Wall Street Journal featuring full color photos of a ninety-seven year old lady wing walking. That has to retire some trophy!!
Great point on the dumbing down of the overall population. All you have to do is take a look at the damage being done to the magnet high schools in Democratic controlled districts. For example Thomas Jefferson HS for Science & Math in Fairfax County VA, previously and for years the number one or two highest performing high schools in the USA, not just Virginia but the whole country. Well the teachers union and the radical leftist Democrats on the county board did not see enough diversity in the student body, so what did they do. They eliminated the testing for admission, they reduced the importance of junior high GPA, they reduced the weighting of referrals, and adopted a wholistic admission process (subjective) plus added guarantees to the top students at all the county high schools (schools that were not equal) plus put limit on the number of students admitted from a single school. See the problem was not that there were to many white students, it was to many Asian and white students. The Vietnamese parents sued and a judge said it was thinly vailed discriminating and told the school board to return to the previous admission merit system but the school board said they could not because they no longer had a contract with the testing company that had administered the admission test, and I kid you not, the judge bought it. Moral of the story the American secondary school system is being dumbed down by Democrats and thie union on purpose.
"...I found 4 more @CollegeBoard employees suspected of being foreign nationals without a green card at the moment of their donation. This brings the total to 5 individuals. Moreover, 16 people are possibly foreign nationals, but I could not identify them....
To the employees of the Ministry of External Affairs of India and affiliated entities who follow me on X, I would like to let you know that I am not afraid of you and will not stop what I am doing.
...
Leaks and perceived unfairness related to university admission tests lead to nationwide protests in India, Mexico, Egypt, Bangladesh, and South Korea. "
Princeton, N.J. — (June 30, 2026) — ETS announced today that it is acquiring ACT... This move combines the strengths of two mission-driven measurement organizations to address the significant challenges facing American education.
...
“Every student deserves a strong education, a fair shot at college, and a path to a good job,” said {Amit Sevak}, CEO of ETS
I think we are conflating two arguments. Yours is about how we educate our population, all IQs, the argument in the article is more about how people with a above average intelligence are reproducing at a low rate, and those with below average, example IQ 85, are reproducing at a higher rate
The irony is, if I remember how that scale works, and we assume that the generic factors of intelligence even out with the environmental factors, that if the trend continues long enough a current below average 95 will be a future just above average 105. So a mouth breathing paste eater could be average intelligence in the bot too distant future.
Your argument isn't expressed in Idiocracy, but I think it is shown. President Comacho an intelligent man by any standard, but he was educated by a system designed for idiots, with only the example of idiots to follow. So if the everage falls enough, it won't matter how many smart people there are.
Darryl Cooper absolutely crushes it this week on Tucker. If Tucker gives you a hate boner for whatever reason, know ahead of time that he doesn't speak much. There be dragons.
Tucker read the Bible once and then along with his buddy, child rapist Russell Brand, a man who equates Christ's humility with humiliation and instagrams himself getting fully immersed in only his tighty whiteys, begins to tell everyone how to christian.
This past week somehow I fell into researching his Dad, Dick Carlson. He pulled himself up from poverty by buying a nice suit and going gigolo with rich older women he met at high society parties. A family of man whores they are, the whole lot of them.
Degenerates that find Jesus are a dime a dozen. Tucker serves the system by acting as a pressure release valve and a guardrail to those at risk of drifting far right.
My thoughts on the personal automobile—As I am in a network engineering occupation, I tend to look at problems through that lens. I like to begin with the problem we are trying to solve. For personal transportation it is full-mesh connectivity, on demand. The personal car solves this as you can go from any A to any Z any time you want. Other forms of personal transportation have physical and environmental limits. I’m not going to ride a bike the 750 miles from my home in Arkansas to my son’s in Ohio.
Public transportation does not work as you have the last-mile problem to solve as well as the partial-mesh connectivity limitation.
The problem with personal cars is they sit idle 95% of the time on average and are very expensive to acquire and operate. Shared cars seem to be the answer here. Uber addressed this by allowing car owners to leverage their personal autos for it. The problem is, they have to drive them for the trip so it is a drain on their time. Driverless shared cars appears to be the best answer, if we can make them work for most of the use cases.
There are obviously a lot of challenges to overcome. I would gladly swap my personal city car for a reliable automated service at a reasonable cost. Then I could spend my automobile dollars on a fun car for personal enjoyment.
By “shared” I mean used by more than one subscriber where you are paying for the service as opposed to purchasing a personal car. I know it falls into the realm of the rental space where people can be abusive to what they rent.
Edit: These need to be driverless. Lord knows the abuse I have perpetrated on rental cars over the years. :)
Or simply peace of mind psychologically healthy. For those who can drive as second nature the car is a natural place. For nervous nellies driving is part fo their dually terror and the more bells and whistlers to vibrate them back into he lane the better.
Oh Ive spent years thinking of the ways to fuck with "shared robo cars" but Im old ,
Since I live in a place where I can reliably see fresh donuts in any given street and kids riding e-bikes at high velocity, rearranging santas reindeer lawn displays into interesting positions Im assuming the sprit of feedom and fun still lives in our youth.
What they will do to robo cars and flock cameras will help solve the problem
Is one going to be available at 5 minutes notice, at any time of day or week? How many robo cars need to be clogging up the roads to meet that requirement?
Is it going to be clean when it arrives? and not coated in various body fluids and other filth?
Is it going to be cost effective? LOL, like Uber? which constantly wants to gouge riders while paying drivers less.
Public transportation (busses, light rail, etc) can work in densely populated cities. BUT how do we retrofit our current cities (other than maybe NYC) to do this? Actually even NYC can't afford their current subway system. NO ONE is going to pay for the massive cost to retrofit our current cities (well the Socialists might try, but will quickly FAIL).
Valid points. I wasn’t implying they are the answer, but some of the answer. I think most cities have proved public transportation usually requires subsidies as they lose money if they try to keep the fares affordable. A lot of that is because government at all levels have shown they can do very little efficiently. It is a very tough problem to solve at scale.
Its not just a govt problem. No one wants to pay for a common use system. And don't even tell me that a corporate owned monopoly system will be any better.
I still want to see how these magical robo cars work at scale in a week long blizzard in the upper midwest. My prediction - they won't, at all. It will be a massive fiasco.
What’s dumb about the “cars sit idle 95% of the time” argument is that the 5% of the time is when (nearly) EVERYONE needs a car. We call it “rush hour” for a reason. So if you assume that most people need a car at some point between say 7 and 9AM and again between 4 and 6PM, you can’t just say “shared cars” because you still need the same capacity. Me owning or not owning my car that I use at that time doesn’t really change anything in the system overall, it still means one human needs one car to go a place at the same time as everyone else. And it probably results in a decrease in efficiency/satisfaction if I don’t own it, without any real offsetting benefit.
Trying to scale a robo car system to meet peak demand with acceptable response time is just impossible. It would quickly devolve into "oh, we can't provide enough robo cars, you need to share your ride with 3 other strangers". basically an inefficient bus system.
If you think about it, the root cause of the "rush hour" problem is that cities are built to cater to businesses. If a business, say a large business centralizes all their employees in a tall downtown building, then everyone has to be in one place at the same time. Now add more businesses (small, medium, and large) to the same ZIP code, and you can see the problem grow exponentially.
If you built the cities to solve the transportation and quality-of-life problem FIRST, then businesses would have to de-centralize. Smaller cities / large towns, short commutes, walking-distance schools, etc., but these areas would have to be able to connect quickly and seamlessly with each other for business purposes.
This will not happen, of course, for many reasons. At least not anytime soon. Perhaps the next high-IQ society may look at our failures, and go "Huh, maybe we could try this differently." But I won't hold my breath.
Before automation was a mainstream topic, ZIP cars (I think that was the name) had a bunch of cars in Denver. I don't know what caused them to disappear. The only shared system which seems to work are the electric scooters. Those at least get seemingly good use. Of course, the form factor has plenty of shortcomings. Maybe they're just easier to hose down, or just don't get the kind of ass time a four wheel vehicle experiences.
Thanks. My solution was something that popped into my head while defining the problem. Jack’s reference to the article on the future of cars prompted it. I didn’t put a lot of thought into it knowing it would generate a good discussion. It did. One thing about a good problem definition is it easily discredits weak solutions.
Jack, appreciate the engagement as always. A couple points:
1. Cold fusion would impact Thermodynamics but only that, doing nothing to invalidate Land, Geometry, History, or Human Health pillars. Even then, the ability of our aging and fractious western society to integrate near-infinite-free-energy would be inherently limited. Invention is not the same as distribution
2. Innovation is very right-tail-dependent, and even then much more contingent upon institutional cohesion and executability than median "participation" or some such. This is why China's "gaokao" university entrance exams are so powerful, they can sort 6-sigma applicants whereas SATs can only select 3-sigma at best
3. I guess I'm also more bullish on AI as a tool for critical thinking and intellectual development, even if only for a fraction of a percentage of "us"
If you have enough energy, you can build above and below the street to your heart's content. You can also provide healthy food to everyone. Last but not least, cheap energy leads to technological and sociological process. Or at least it always has up to the present day.
Below the absurd examples, however: if we understood how to safely and inexpensively build to 3km height, the density issue of every city around the globe would be handled. Additional intelligence would be useful there.
If we could engineer the space elevator, that goes a long way towards solving other problems. We are short on intelligence and always will be.
Free-ish energy changes the calculus between building up and building out, but up still requires a lot in the way of (relatively) scarce materials until we have antimatter powered replicators.
Maybe it is being done, but it would be a worthwhile use of grant money to try some realistic simulations of the effect of power that is too cheap to meter.
Would the cost of asphalt go up or down if we no longer needed to pump oil for energy? Same with polyethylene, the cost of which is almost entirely in its transportation and whatever steps it takes to turn it into something useful because it is a by product of energy production.
On the flip side does aluminum production become almost clean, and are lower grade ores viable? If energy costs are nil can we contain the byproducts of smelting copper to the point that it can be done in populated areas?
just after ww2 there was a big article in the l.a.times about electricity being produced by nuclear fusion--a network of identical hypersafe reactors, run by the government. taxpayers would be billed about $25/year ('40s dollars) for just about all the energy they could possibly want. regular electric companies shareholders would be paid off as they wouldn't exist any more...and that was seen as a huge problem...which it would be!
Energy "too cheap to meter" would mean a few of things in practice (that I can think of):
1. Scarcity turns next to materials throughput, then land, then water, then time and attention
2. Free compute, AI training costs collapse, surveillance and behavioural-surplus extraction becomes equally unmetered
3. Directed-energy weapons and unlimited-endurance drones become practical
4. Death of petrostates and a veeeerrrrry big war to settle the score and rewrite the rules for the next global paradigm, for there will always be another scarcity and another chokepoint from which to extract rents and define one's power
Don't be too sure on #4. Most of the world is plastic and plastic is made from oil.
On the other hand, with enough energy you can take waste plastics back to a crude oil state or near enough to it. So at that point, trash becomes the most important natural resource. All hail India!
That's where I'll disagree, brother. I work blue collar, and I've bossed quite a few crews. If you're dumb as a post, but you're conscientious and hardworking, I can use you and ten other guys just like you. If you're scintillatingly brilliant but lazy, I want you off my job site.
"Cold fusion" is a stand-in for unlimited cheap energy in this argument. Regular fusion would do fine.
6-sigma is more meaningful than 3-sigma only if the measurement correlates that strongly with what you are trying to measure. It doesn't. An example from memory, recalled only because he spoke about IQ quite a bit: William Shockley, one of the inventors of the transistor, had an IQ of 135. That is in the area of what is necessary but not sufficient to make contributions of similar level. My IQ is higher than that but I'm not going to invent anything significant. The Chinese are barking up the wrong tree there. Related: how did the ancient Greeks have so many people pinning the scale of human intelligence out of such a small population? I don't know, but there is hope beyond statistics.
Edit to add another point: "AI will not substitute for intelligence" - I'm pretty sure that's correct for LLMs. I won't argue that true AI is impossible, only that we do not know how to do it yet. Fortunately, we have a lot of science fiction testing scenarios in advance for us; some may be positive. I have not seen a combination of Idiocracy and AI gamed out yet - that would be interesting.
"The latter rider took an ambulance to the pits, refused further attention, got back on a different bike for the next race, and crashed again. Then he went to the hospital."
Think it was John Burns who wrote of seeing Mick Doohan peel back the medical glove under his gauntlet to display what appeared to be bone marrow. I'm almost certain that Jack Baruth wrote something about not racing motorcycles on track because he would wind up dead. In any case, the folks who do this deserve more of my time and attention.
PSA: Origin made a 2.0 version of their As Seen on ACF USA-made cotton pants, so they're running a closeout sale on the old ones: https://originusa.com/products/moab-stretch-cotton-pant-straight-retired?variant=51015227572502
Note: The old ones wrinkle like the used tissue mentioned in this article, I believe the version 2.0 addresses this but buyer be warned. Still great pants, just require more ironing than I'd care to do post wash.
Huh, can't say I've noticed that on the 4-5 pairs I have. They definitely don't coming out of the dryer looking like they've been ironed, but that's about it.
I've only got a pair of shorts and a pair of pants, but both come out more wrinkled than any of my other pants/shorts.
I sent my two of my oldest pairs of Dearborn Denim to Denim Therapy in Brooklyn for them to do their magic reweaving of the thin spots in the butt/crotch and fix where the button hole was about to rip through. The work turned out excellent. It cost as much to ship the jeans there and back as the repairs, about $60 all-in. Sadly, that means there's no room in my drawer to try a pair from Origin.
What a great idea! I didnt even know these people existed.
A competent local tailor can do it for you, as well.
As I type this I am wearing a pair of Levi’s from the 90s that were (1) made in my hometown before the factory moved to Mexico that I (2) stole from my father. I have had the crotch redone twice.
https://www.denimtherapy.com/about-us/
Obviously a tailor could fix my button or sew on a patch, but I didn't research DT's claims that few people are able to reweave denim with a matching color and texture because that certainly doesn't seem like a normal tailoring operation, to me.
That’s abnormal depending on the size of the tear / hole.
I have some jeans that were done in that fashion while I lived in Chicago, but then I had near carte blance from Trustafarian Pizza the Hutt’s master tailor (who was on his payroll).
I don’t necessarily mind the look of obviously repaired denim. Denim ages quickly, that’s the point! And you can always buy more pairs.
FANTASTIC NEWS
Was that a result of your OnlyFans work?
No but I am minded to name a boat “Priapic” when the time comes.
If you're wearing out the crotch, I think the name you should give your Monaco motoryacht is
CHUB RUB
Brb printing this on my wife's cricut for the Challenger
CHUB RUB & LIL SIS
THE WHISTLES GO … WHOO WHOO!
Nice call out, just bought two pairs.
Their 100% cotton is US denim and wears like iron. Their stretch denim is MX and doesn’t wear so well.
As regards the loss of optimism about the future: that is also around the time American culture shifted into one more focused on generation-as-island instead of generation-as-link-in-the-chain. I suffer with this daily, and all I can do is work to be otherwise.
As regards the clown-car operation of MotoAmerica, from a distance, well it's still not great but at least no cameramen were almost run down in pit lane! Their website continues to be an embarrassment to website design everywhere, and their VOD layout makes me want to pull my hair out.
Supersport continues to be the Darryn Binder vs Josh Herrin show with Binder currently getting the leg up. This time Darryn hadn't even been to Mid-O before and still won both races. The first race was him learning the track and putting a hard late move in against Herrin in the final lap. What do I mean "learning the track?" he was faster and faster as the race went on; consistently improving with personal best laps. Race 1 is worth watching for this showcase in talent alone.
Race 2 for supersport is a four-way fight for most of the race and here it's worth mentioning Kayla Yaakov. She, a rarity of rarities, appears to be the real-deal in terms of competitiveness as opposed to the usual "look a girl racer!" who runs mid to back pack. She hung on to the top three within a few tenths for the duration. She is consistently faster than Blake Davis, Alessandro DiMario, Ty Scott, and the other boys she raced with in the Twins Cup. Herrin and Binder at the front changed lead several times. Herrin with four to go makes a pass which puts him in the lead for the next pair of laps before purposefully putting himself behind Herrin. The idea being to draft and block pass in the back straight. Darryn goes tight and blocks the move to hold on for the win with excellent racecraft. Yaakov takes Josh Hayes, the oldest man running, in the last lap for third.
King of the Baggers is the Hayden Gillum show and it is great to see him win. He is quite likeable as a personality and hilariously large which makes the bagger a fitting ride for him. This includes overcoming a trash tier start in race 1 to come back from 6th (the field is 11 bikes).
Superbike racing is still ongoing and the championship is surprisingly close between Sean Dylan Kelly, Bob Fong, and JD Beach (?!).
I have no clue about bikes or bike racing, but with a marketing background I had to open that website. "Interesting" choice to make the past events look "dead" on the start page.....
I suppose I should have specified that BOTH websites are atrocious experiences.
MotoAmerica DOT com and MotoAmericaLivePlus DOT com (why are these separate? why not a subdomain or just a URI segment for the vods? who knows). Neither support a flow that I would expect to be supported as someone who wants to check on the championship or as someone who wants to watch old races.
Regarding generation-as-link-in-chain, whenever I listen to or read older people bitch about younger people, I wonder if they all forgot how awkward and horrible it was to be that age and be making daily mistakes. I posted somewhere else that kids are better off with our understanding and patience, and of course some old guy attacked me for having such a dumb idea.
Forget oil or rare earths: the resource most endangered in America is self-awareness.
That too Sir .
-Nate
I remember when I was a angsty teenager mad at my dad for being able to brush off embarrassing thing. Turns out he had 30 more years of practice.
Stupid bullshit still keeps me up at night!
Now it's the stress more than the embarrassment.
So very well said MD ;
I remember the feeling I had as a wayward youth and tried hard to be help/useful to all our foster boys .
"It takes a village" isn't hooey .
The simple fact that I'm still alive is largely due to the help and advice I received from so many others, mostly men who were WWII & Korea Veterans .
-Nate
Jack et al: Hoping for some leniency in posting an OT item instead of an ORT item, but I have a time-sensitive “Ask Jack and his Readers” situation:
Gen-Z daughter recently moved to Chicago and in last Monday’s storm had a tree fall on her CR-V. City came and removed the tree (and made the damage worse in the process). We’re waiting for insurance to get back to us, but I’ll be very surprised if it’s not totaled. She’s currently between professional jobs, so if it’s totaled, me and mom will need to help her out a bit as her CR-V was not paid off and she has no equity.
Here’s where I’m looking for opinions:
Option 1: We have a 2016 Holda Pilot with 82K on the odometer that my wife drives, and we can just give to the daughter. It’s AWD, in great shape, always maintained. She’d have no car payment, but it’s also not under any sort of warranty so if something happens, it’s out-of-pocket for her (once she lands a new gig), or us (in the interim). It also seems kind of big for a city car. Wife and I both WFH so we can operate on one car until wife figures out what she wants sometime down the road.
Option 2: Carmax will give us ~$15K for the Pilot. We could use that as a down payment for something new in the $25K-$30K range, resulting in lower payment than she has now, and it would be new and under warranty. We’d cosign the loan (and we do really totally trust her to make the payments – she has for the last 3 years). CR-Vs are a little too pricey now, but Hyundai has 0% on Tucsons, and there’s also other lower cost new car options out there.
Option 3: I’m open to other suggestions.
Thoughts?
BTW, don’t let my screen name influence your responses – it’s from a song. I’m not well-heeled at all.
give her the pilot now and help her with repairs if needed with the option to have her pay you back for them in the future when shes settled if both parties agree with that statement. a truck might be less than idea for the city but its far better than nothing at all
Yeah, I'd say give her the Pilot too.
*take me to the pilot by Elton John plays in background*
Everybody loves the pilot (except the crew).
Jesus, haven't heard that album in years. Where'd I leave that box with the Cd's?
I still have the vinyl I bought at Tower Records on The Ave in Seattle.
Speed said it. That Pilot is worth more than fifteen grand. As for things going wrong...it's a Honda, and the miles are low for a ten-year-old car. It ain't gonna break, and if it does it won't be outrageous to repair.
This all day. Chicago is not a “big city” in the sense that it’s super dense like NYC or other east coast cities. We take my wife’s MDX into Chicago all of the time and it’s not too cumbersome at all.
we had older hondas go past 200k and one is still kicking at about 150. Wouldn't worry too much about the pilot. Take a look at what registration and taxes will cost on $30k and consider how much repair that alone could buy should the need arise.
Ha ha charade you are.
Mazda cx3?
Glad you got the reference- it’s been among my favorite PF songs since I was about 14.
Re: Mazda CX-anything, I’ve had them as rentals and was always underwhelmed.
Long time former Chicagoan here. Don’t put a new car on the streets of Chicago. Doesn’t matter the neighborhood. If it doesn’t get stolen, it will get vandalized or damaged by idiots parking by sound and feel instead of sight.
Credentials - had a three week old Silverado (long story) stolen from in front of my house in the best of neighborhoods.
I was over at a buddy’s condo smoking cigars in West Town a few days before Christmas in ~2017. We walked outside and noticed his neighbor’s brand new Tahoe sitting on cinder blocks.
Merry Christmas!
I had parked it on the street out in front of the house because my wife was doing a “project” in the garage.
Nothing quite like coming out in the morning and not seeing it where you were sure you parked it. Then looking up and down the street and not seeing it either. Then looking down and seeing a puddle of broken glass.
In retrospect I was lucky. It had a fairly uncommon interior color. The cops said it was likely not a random theft and I might’ve gotten jacked otherwise.
Kudos to the thieves. It was found nearly completely stripped but with only a small scratch on the fender with four baldies and a milk crate for a driver’s seat. Cost as much to repair as I paid for it.
Interesting ;
My lower class Blue Collar Ghetto neighborhood, I can leave my 20 year old basic beaters in the street and so far so good .
-Nate
six hours old and beat to death (applies to this thread but also a new car left in chiraq)
under no circumstances will it be cheaper to buy something else. hand her the pilot with an IOU 1 Lamborghini and walk away knowing you did right by your child.
I'll add to the resounding "give her the Pilot" chorus and also note a 2016 Honda will almost certainly prove more reliable and mechanically trustworthy than a 2026... Anything. Including (especially?) a 2026 Honda.
Besides, it's what my own parents would have done, had they the means.
The Pilot is not too big for Chicago. What neighborhood does she live in?.
Rick T. is correct, don’t drive and park a new car in Chicago.
Giving her the Pilot is the path of least resistance
She’s in Logan Square. Seems like a nice area, except for the flimsy trees.
I lived in a nice area too. Had Penny Pritzker for a neighbor. Also the head of the Democrat party of Illinois before he went to jail.
I’m very familiar. I grew up in Ukrainian Village nearby where my Mom also grew up. Logan is a dense neighborhood but I’m sure she can easily park the Pilot there. Good luck!
Just have her pick up the lawn chair and shovel before winter begins.
FOR THE LOVE OF THE RISEN CHRIST, DO NOT TRADE IN A PILOT TO GET A ****TUCSON****!!!!!
Your pilot has a longer life ahead of than the 2033 Tucsons that have not yet been assembled out of pot metal.
I replaced my daughter's Tucson with a CX-30. The Tucson went back to the dealer eight times for engine issues. The service dept agreed that the engine would have to be replaced but the number of steps required by Hyundai to do so was ridiculous. We have better things to do.
Yikes! Glad I asked!
Did not know that Hyundais are that bad.
They were awful, then they got better... then they got WORSE!
They're very slowly getting better again. The Smartstream engines have proven to be pretty durable and reliable so far. JUST DON'T BUY A THETA II!!!
What Jack said. Wife’s on her third Pilot. First one lasted over 250k miles. It’s really big inside—if you occasionally need to move a lot of people or stuff. If you had to pick a vehicle to be in a wreck in, a Pilot has to be at the top of the list. Finally, they’re comfy on long road trips.
FWIW I love my 2026 Kia Sportage HEV (a Tucson with better-to-my-eye styling) as I have two earlier Kia Cadenzas, one 2020 Sportage and a '22 Hyundai Santa Fe. But I also only drive around 7500 miles a year and I never keep them longer than three years. A 2016 Pilot is absolutely the better long-term solution.
Give her the Pilot, and set up an auto transfer of the not-being-paid monthly payment into an interest bearing account. You’ll have more than enough money for repairs if needed, and she’ll have thousands of dollars when the time comes for the next thing.
A low mileage 2006 Pilot is a better product than any new $30k car from any maker.
One thing no one mentioned, that Pilot will need a timing belt in 18K, possibly less than a year at 82K and not paid off. At least $2K if not more, maybe that money is better sent elsewhere.
I think I paid $1400 for that on my Accord a few years ago.
The 100k service is the only service that car should need for a long time; the cost of sales tax on a new vehicle alone will be close to that.
Interesting thesis about the five countries that invent things. I'm assuming you mean the whole island of Britain.
I assumed that the choice of "Britain" over "England" was intentional, less he invite obvious questions of the form "Watts with that list: are you some kind of a dumb Bell or a Loughead?"
A better chart tracks patent applications per capita. Not a surprise, Israel is ahead of US and China.
A better question is what quality of patent is actually granted. From my experience the cast major of US apps come from large corporations that made a policy decision years ago to apply for the most incremental, teivial and obvious improvements not in the hope of getting a valuable patent but to add to the portfolio and as a block against competitors.
Very good point!
"I could get an RMCR to ride locally then get a V85 Strada for longer trips", don't you already have like 49 motorcycles? (would have said "bikes" but I know you also have a collection of pedal power bikes - which will come in handy when the Socialist takeover is complete).
There is no such thing as “too many motorcycles”, my friend.
Yes, I'm aware of that, though in my case its "yes I need yet another bicycle". I was just poking Jack for fun.
I’m just being snarky, I have discovered that for me, two motorcycles is all I can handle.
Sadly I have reached the same age / injury caused conclusion =8-( .
-Nate
I would grudgingly add France to your list. I know they haven’t produced many physical things of note but they were very early contributors to mathematics and philosophy. There is a reason that as an undergraduate math major in a small liberal arts college, I was required to take either reading German or reading French. They both contributed greatly to the field.
And Russia.
And Italy, and Greece
I commented that as well… France’s scientific contributions are significant.
“Idiocracy” is a documentary.
Got a note from my buddy a few days ago about a Hennessy modified vehicle on BaT and how awesome it was and why wasn’t I bidding on it? Politely informed him I would never, ever be interested in anything with that guy’s name on it.
The only experience I have with a Hennessy is through someone locally who owns one. He made it a point to mention how much more power his F150 Venom has than the TRX that was being driven by one of the young ladies who works for me.
It was an odd interaction.
imagine being that insecure
at least it comes off as that
Thankfully no intuition of member size. 🙄 I thought that always seems to enter the discussion around powerful pickups.
thinking about dicks is gay
dont do that
Yes of course.
Merely mentioned that the subject seems to always..never mind! 😂😂
Monster Truck behavior
Sounds about like what I would expect from someone who has one....
There’s one exception: Stealth/3000GT.
the twin turbo 6 cylinder awd flagship japanese supercar
no the other one
The aspect which annoys me most about the "cars are inefficient" argument is that is seems to be solely based on getting to and from a desk job. How many house cleaners out there rely on the personal vehicle to make a living? The car is the literal vehicle to start a small business. If you can think of a one person service business, the car can get you there.
The late Rob Pitts had a great story about a used pickup he sold to a guy with financial troubles. Years later he bumped into that guy, who had made a local trash pickup company with employees, and it all started with a used vehicle.
Socialists hate small businesses.
They hate themselves more.
Their personal inadequacies fuel their envy that produces their socialism since they can’t compete on their own.
When the market doesn’t value them according to their grandiose opinions of themselves it produces their rage.
Dog whistle bullshit .
Socialism is fine for the 1%, they get all the non thinkers to hate it .
-Nate
This is well stated. Some jobs require a vehicle and some jobs require a large vehicle.
Add the word "reliable" in there in two places.
Absolutely!
I regret that I only have one "like" to give this comment.
The pointy heads who always predict the demise of personal transportation assume everybody will live in an urban pod and commute to Spacely Sprockets on the hypertrain.
They forget that millions live (by choice, usually) outside urban centers and go to jobs that aren't in the same place every day with tools they need to do the work.
These are the same people who lump all the non-urban people into the “people who don’t count and I don’t care about because they’re all worthless rubes” category.
These are also the pointy heads who don’t know where their food comes from.
https://youtu.be/IuaYuDV14Tc?is=mCcNaKzgqw1qYmuA
“people who don’t count and I don’t care about because they’re all worthless rubes”
I take that SUPER personally, since I'm an uneducated non-urban worthless rube (clinging to my religion and whatnot)... but it's really just the flip side of some of the comments we see/make here regarding who has worth and who doesn't. Turnabout really isn't fair play, even though it feels like it should be.
Getting old has made it easy to be bitter and cynical, but I'm still juuuust egalitarian and idealistic enough to continue to believe in the quaint old "brotherhood of man slop". I guess that makes me a sap, proving the point of "my betters" that I'm just a worthless rube -- and worse, that I'm happy to be one.
I don't think I'm any better than city-folk who want UBI and free healthcare... but I don't feel inferior in any way either. I like my irrelevant, free life out here in Flyover, USA, and I'm unlikely to give it up without somebody physically taking it away from me.
I wrote that line because it’s the vibe that’s prevalent in all of these pronouncements I read from the urban class.
I’m really tired of it.
Me too, friend -- because it feels personal. I just want to be completely sure I'm not doing the same thing, because it is my default to think the gen-pop in most urban centers (and suburbs, TBH) are complete idiots.
We have a totally different attitude than that crowd. We just want to be left alone and they want us to do things their way.
We may stereotype but that’s just an inherent human survival technique. They stereotype constantly to see who is above and below them on the social and wealth ladders.
They see every social interaction this way. It’s their basic operating system. That’s why being around these people is mostly unpleasant. They’re always judging and we’re not.
Thats the issue though isnt it, the "somebody physically taking it away from me"
You have no issue with them living int her cities as they please, just leave you alone.
City folk have zero knowledge and much disdain for us. They'll gladly scrap the electoral college so they can have the whole accoirdign to their sensibilities and norms.
Were constantly assaulted by their view of norms, from education to the cars we can buy.
You're right both ways, nothing wrong with preferring to live out of town .
-Nate
THIS, EVER THIS ! .
Part of why I dislike electric cars, once they're 100% mainstream they'll come after our personal ICE vehicles, bet on this .
-Nate
Tangentially related: I HUGELY dislike all these op-eds on death of a car, because they all come from large cities, and focus on solving the large city problems. "I hate traffic in New York, and I wish we had all that European public transportation, so New York wouldn't have so much traffic. It's the only solution for New York, so the car must die."
May I suggest that all these New York-focused solutions should die? The U.S., and world at large are much bigger, and MUCH better than the sad little New York. If these people were to get their heads out of their New Yorks, they would quickly realize that not only is the car NOT dead, but is also absolutely necessary.
Public transport can never take you where you want to go, and to make it do so would make what's-his-name's complaints about unnecessary asphalt Big Bang-distant. But if such expansive public transport were to be built, its' energy needs would make what's-his-name wet himself, and then faint.
Traffic complaints, energy crises complaints, public transport exultations, EV promotions, and internal combustion car eulogies all have one and only one thing in common: communism. More specifically, they want to restrict the population movement, in order to easily exert control over said population.
All those voicing their support of such measures are what the original communists called "useful idiots," and will be the first to meet fate similar to the original "useful idiots", if the measures they propose and encourage ever see the light of day.
I believe someone made a movie in the 1980s on how to solve the New York-style problem: you build a wall around it, and then drop in all similarly-minded individuals inside the walls, so they all enjoy the New York-style utopia.
I wish we could build something, anything that would stop the New York-style IDEAS from escaping their native environment, and polluting the free world.
These anti-car utopian whiners need to live by what they espouse.
Don’t ever set foot in a car again and walk or take public transportation everywhere. Start today.
Every op-ed hater needs to start living by exactly what they want their world to be right f*cking now, and not at some theoretical point in the future.
My simple message to all of them: You first. Lead the way. Start walking.
Yes. I worked with a League of Women Voters - in Bremerton, WA - who was always pushing mass transit. Her own commute from and to work? She had her retired husband drive her in in the morning and pick her up at night. Two round trips per day.
huge shock (not really)
Lemme guess. Boomers living in Paulsbo (Paulsbore). Defined benefit public pension for him.
Anti-car? Da fuq is wrong with your reading skills. I literally wrote:
“So we won’t be banning cars, much less considering it, but let’s leverage 4-wheeled mobility to its fullest, when and where it’s best suited. Inside dense urban cores where critical masses of people drive productivity and safety, cars should be as physically small as possible with parking available as deep underground as possible, but generally be as limited and down-regulated as possible. Outside of dense urban cores, cars can and should roam free like motorised bison on the plains.”
That comment was not directed at you. It’s directed at the many urban dweller car haters that original commenter Joe appeared to be writing about.
You are obviously not an anti car utopian whiner. Carry on.
And ;
Go buy a Motocycle =8-) .
-Nate
Ataraxis is correct.
Thank you for confirming. Much appreciated!
Interestingly, some of the folks I grew up with in the 1960s have done just this : they don't own vehicles, not even a bicycle, they use the Boston MTA to get where they need to go .
It's a good system yes but I couldn't wait to get my own four wheels @ age 14 and begin driving my self wherever I wanted to go .
"one size fits all" solutions rarely work out well for everyone .
-Nate
Yep. "I am a stupid idiot in a giant crappy city with a $5K/month, 132 square foot apartment closet and $4M in college loan debt and I AM CERTAIN cars' days are numbered!"
Agreed. Part of the issue is so much media/news is generated out of Ny. Turn on fox, where's their studio New York.
They are really quite provincial.
Joe, you spent a considerable amount of time writing this comment and awfully little time reading my article or reflecting on the framing
I dare say “communism” isn’t in the top 10 things I’ve ever been accused of by anyone literate
Thank you, I too noticed the bullshit dog whistle use of that word .
communism has never, _EVER_ worked in world history .
Socialism on the other hand, means clean drinking water, cops & firemen, traffic lights, Concrete side walks on and on, it's an important part of civilization .
Those who don't think believe they're the same when they're decidedly not .
-Nate
Korean vitality? Credit kimchi.
Tough motorcycle racers? Tough, yes but not compared to professional rodeo bull riders IMHO.
Those guys lead the pack of people who simply have no concern for their personal safety or well being.
BTW and speaking of nutso, check out the front page of todays' Wall Street Journal featuring full color photos of a ninety-seven year old lady wing walking. That has to retire some trophy!!
Go, granny, go! 😎
We will have credit crunch while they credit kimchi
@ LOUIS, RE: "virility" .
I used to date a beautiful psychotic woman who once told me to stop taking my daily Ginseng extract........
I make no claims about my virility, I was just tying to keep up with her at the time .
-Nate
My post was with respect to "vitality" not "virility" but I get it.
=8-) .
She was a corker .
-Nate
Great point on the dumbing down of the overall population. All you have to do is take a look at the damage being done to the magnet high schools in Democratic controlled districts. For example Thomas Jefferson HS for Science & Math in Fairfax County VA, previously and for years the number one or two highest performing high schools in the USA, not just Virginia but the whole country. Well the teachers union and the radical leftist Democrats on the county board did not see enough diversity in the student body, so what did they do. They eliminated the testing for admission, they reduced the importance of junior high GPA, they reduced the weighting of referrals, and adopted a wholistic admission process (subjective) plus added guarantees to the top students at all the county high schools (schools that were not equal) plus put limit on the number of students admitted from a single school. See the problem was not that there were to many white students, it was to many Asian and white students. The Vietnamese parents sued and a judge said it was thinly vailed discriminating and told the school board to return to the previous admission merit system but the school board said they could not because they no longer had a contract with the testing company that had administered the admission test, and I kid you not, the judge bought it. Moral of the story the American secondary school system is being dumbed down by Democrats and thie union on purpose.
Speaking of testing:
https://xcancel.com/juicystar1908/status/2084376784087273683#m
"...I found 4 more @CollegeBoard employees suspected of being foreign nationals without a green card at the moment of their donation. This brings the total to 5 individuals. Moreover, 16 people are possibly foreign nationals, but I could not identify them....
To the employees of the Ministry of External Affairs of India and affiliated entities who follow me on X, I would like to let you know that I am not afraid of you and will not stop what I am doing.
...
Leaks and perceived unfairness related to university admission tests lead to nationwide protests in India, Mexico, Egypt, Bangladesh, and South Korea. "
Also:
https://www.act.org/content/act/en/newsroom/newsroom-archive/ets-acquires-act-06302026.html
Princeton, N.J. — (June 30, 2026) — ETS announced today that it is acquiring ACT... This move combines the strengths of two mission-driven measurement organizations to address the significant challenges facing American education.
...
“Every student deserves a strong education, a fair shot at college, and a path to a good job,” said {Amit Sevak}, CEO of ETS
Oh dear God!
This does not surprise me.
Makes me sad.
But does not surprise me.
I think we are conflating two arguments. Yours is about how we educate our population, all IQs, the argument in the article is more about how people with a above average intelligence are reproducing at a low rate, and those with below average, example IQ 85, are reproducing at a higher rate
The irony is, if I remember how that scale works, and we assume that the generic factors of intelligence even out with the environmental factors, that if the trend continues long enough a current below average 95 will be a future just above average 105. So a mouth breathing paste eater could be average intelligence in the bot too distant future.
Your argument isn't expressed in Idiocracy, but I think it is shown. President Comacho an intelligent man by any standard, but he was educated by a system designed for idiots, with only the example of idiots to follow. So if the everage falls enough, it won't matter how many smart people there are.
Darryl Cooper absolutely crushes it this week on Tucker. If Tucker gives you a hate boner for whatever reason, know ahead of time that he doesn't speak much. There be dragons.
Tucker read the Bible once and then along with his buddy, child rapist Russell Brand, a man who equates Christ's humility with humiliation and instagrams himself getting fully immersed in only his tighty whiteys, begins to tell everyone how to christian.
This past week somehow I fell into researching his Dad, Dick Carlson. He pulled himself up from poverty by buying a nice suit and going gigolo with rich older women he met at high society parties. A family of man whores they are, the whole lot of them.
But but but … Tucker is friends with your savior “JD Vance.”
Doubt that friendship can withstand Tucker's 3rd party delusions.
That’s a sacrifice Tucker would be willing to make.
Tucker is much more of a populist than “JD Vance.”
Degenerates that find Jesus are a dime a dozen. Tucker serves the system by acting as a pressure release valve and a guardrail to those at risk of drifting far right.
My thoughts on the personal automobile—As I am in a network engineering occupation, I tend to look at problems through that lens. I like to begin with the problem we are trying to solve. For personal transportation it is full-mesh connectivity, on demand. The personal car solves this as you can go from any A to any Z any time you want. Other forms of personal transportation have physical and environmental limits. I’m not going to ride a bike the 750 miles from my home in Arkansas to my son’s in Ohio.
Public transportation does not work as you have the last-mile problem to solve as well as the partial-mesh connectivity limitation.
The problem with personal cars is they sit idle 95% of the time on average and are very expensive to acquire and operate. Shared cars seem to be the answer here. Uber addressed this by allowing car owners to leverage their personal autos for it. The problem is, they have to drive them for the trip so it is a drain on their time. Driverless shared cars appears to be the best answer, if we can make them work for most of the use cases.
There are obviously a lot of challenges to overcome. I would gladly swap my personal city car for a reliable automated service at a reasonable cost. Then I could spend my automobile dollars on a fun car for personal enjoyment.
"seem," except when has "shared" anything worked? Even public housing bureaucrats recognize the necessity of "defensible space":
https://www.huduser.gov/Periodicals/CITYSCPE/SPISSUE/ch2.pdf
https://www.huduser.gov/Periodicals/CITYSCPE/VOL1NUM3/hersh.pdf
By “shared” I mean used by more than one subscriber where you are paying for the service as opposed to purchasing a personal car. I know it falls into the realm of the rental space where people can be abusive to what they rent.
Edit: These need to be driverless. Lord knows the abuse I have perpetrated on rental cars over the years. :)
The abuse to rental cars will pale in comparison to the abuse and destruction put on robo cars.
Exactly
Personal space is a big thing something. Modern connected screenslop autos miss
Modern personal space is just the continuation of our lifelong quest to avoid the bottom quintile at all costs.
Or simply peace of mind psychologically healthy. For those who can drive as second nature the car is a natural place. For nervous nellies driving is part fo their dually terror and the more bells and whistlers to vibrate them back into he lane the better.
When it comes to this, I don't want to be around the middle 60% either. People are annoying.
People can’t keep the screens or interiors in THEIR OWN CARS CLEAN.
Robo cars the general low IQ public uses are going to make a hotel room with bedbugs look clean.
Shared anything is only viable in a high-trust society.
Oh Ive spent years thinking of the ways to fuck with "shared robo cars" but Im old ,
Since I live in a place where I can reliably see fresh donuts in any given street and kids riding e-bikes at high velocity, rearranging santas reindeer lawn displays into interesting positions Im assuming the sprit of feedom and fun still lives in our youth.
What they will do to robo cars and flock cameras will help solve the problem
Tragedy of the commons applies?
Especially the urban commons!
Shared cars are NOT the answer.
Is one going to be available at 5 minutes notice, at any time of day or week? How many robo cars need to be clogging up the roads to meet that requirement?
Is it going to be clean when it arrives? and not coated in various body fluids and other filth?
Is it going to be cost effective? LOL, like Uber? which constantly wants to gouge riders while paying drivers less.
Public transportation (busses, light rail, etc) can work in densely populated cities. BUT how do we retrofit our current cities (other than maybe NYC) to do this? Actually even NYC can't afford their current subway system. NO ONE is going to pay for the massive cost to retrofit our current cities (well the Socialists might try, but will quickly FAIL).
And, not everyone wants to live in such cities.
Valid points. I wasn’t implying they are the answer, but some of the answer. I think most cities have proved public transportation usually requires subsidies as they lose money if they try to keep the fares affordable. A lot of that is because government at all levels have shown they can do very little efficiently. It is a very tough problem to solve at scale.
Its not just a govt problem. No one wants to pay for a common use system. And don't even tell me that a corporate owned monopoly system will be any better.
I still want to see how these magical robo cars work at scale in a week long blizzard in the upper midwest. My prediction - they won't, at all. It will be a massive fiasco.
Nyc has the highest cost per miles subway in the world by 70%. That’s public sector unions for you
Next closest is Paris and they’re socialists
The unions are only a part of the problem, and likely not even the biggest one.
Thank you Steve .
-Nate
I’ve never gotten in a Waymo with a dirty or smelly interior, FWIW.
They are always spotless.
Took three in the Bay Area this weekend, all were spotless.
Will say that most of them droning about town were empty, so maybe that’s why they’re so clean.
What’s dumb about the “cars sit idle 95% of the time” argument is that the 5% of the time is when (nearly) EVERYONE needs a car. We call it “rush hour” for a reason. So if you assume that most people need a car at some point between say 7 and 9AM and again between 4 and 6PM, you can’t just say “shared cars” because you still need the same capacity. Me owning or not owning my car that I use at that time doesn’t really change anything in the system overall, it still means one human needs one car to go a place at the same time as everyone else. And it probably results in a decrease in efficiency/satisfaction if I don’t own it, without any real offsetting benefit.
Exactly.
Trying to scale a robo car system to meet peak demand with acceptable response time is just impossible. It would quickly devolve into "oh, we can't provide enough robo cars, you need to share your ride with 3 other strangers". basically an inefficient bus system.
There would be an exacting interview and reference process for anybody who would want to share my car. What could go wrong?
everything!
thats all? what a deal
I hate passengers .
When I want to travel with others I ride my Motocycle in like minded groups .
-Nate
If you think about it, the root cause of the "rush hour" problem is that cities are built to cater to businesses. If a business, say a large business centralizes all their employees in a tall downtown building, then everyone has to be in one place at the same time. Now add more businesses (small, medium, and large) to the same ZIP code, and you can see the problem grow exponentially.
If you built the cities to solve the transportation and quality-of-life problem FIRST, then businesses would have to de-centralize. Smaller cities / large towns, short commutes, walking-distance schools, etc., but these areas would have to be able to connect quickly and seamlessly with each other for business purposes.
This will not happen, of course, for many reasons. At least not anytime soon. Perhaps the next high-IQ society may look at our failures, and go "Huh, maybe we could try this differently." But I won't hold my breath.
A substantial portion of work can be done from home Sir Tim Berners-Lee's mother, Mary WFH from 1955 - 1963, and it was proven at scale 6 years ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lee_Woods
Before automation was a mainstream topic, ZIP cars (I think that was the name) had a bunch of cars in Denver. I don't know what caused them to disappear. The only shared system which seems to work are the electric scooters. Those at least get seemingly good use. Of course, the form factor has plenty of shortcomings. Maybe they're just easier to hose down, or just don't get the kind of ass time a four wheel vehicle experiences.
I remember this from years ago in Chicago. Used it a few times. Apparently still around to my amazement.
https://www.zipcar.com/chicago
naturally I had to lookup Denver. To my surprise they're a bunch available. Are they just not labelled?
Whether I agree with you solution or not, I Iove how you expressed the problem.
Thanks. My solution was something that popped into my head while defining the problem. Jack’s reference to the article on the future of cars prompted it. I didn’t put a lot of thought into it knowing it would generate a good discussion. It did. One thing about a good problem definition is it easily discredits weak solutions.
I’m replying to myself to wrap this up. First, thanks to all for the great discussion.
I think it’s safe to assume we have come to a consensus conclusion that the personal automobile will be around for some time.
Jack, appreciate the engagement as always. A couple points:
1. Cold fusion would impact Thermodynamics but only that, doing nothing to invalidate Land, Geometry, History, or Human Health pillars. Even then, the ability of our aging and fractious western society to integrate near-infinite-free-energy would be inherently limited. Invention is not the same as distribution
2. Innovation is very right-tail-dependent, and even then much more contingent upon institutional cohesion and executability than median "participation" or some such. This is why China's "gaokao" university entrance exams are so powerful, they can sort 6-sigma applicants whereas SATs can only select 3-sigma at best
3. I guess I'm also more bullish on AI as a tool for critical thinking and intellectual development, even if only for a fraction of a percentage of "us"
If you have enough energy, you can build above and below the street to your heart's content. You can also provide healthy food to everyone. Last but not least, cheap energy leads to technological and sociological process. Or at least it always has up to the present day.
With enough free energy, we can make a new man!
Below the absurd examples, however: if we understood how to safely and inexpensively build to 3km height, the density issue of every city around the globe would be handled. Additional intelligence would be useful there.
If we could engineer the space elevator, that goes a long way towards solving other problems. We are short on intelligence and always will be.
Free-ish energy changes the calculus between building up and building out, but up still requires a lot in the way of (relatively) scarce materials until we have antimatter powered replicators.
Maybe it is being done, but it would be a worthwhile use of grant money to try some realistic simulations of the effect of power that is too cheap to meter.
Would the cost of asphalt go up or down if we no longer needed to pump oil for energy? Same with polyethylene, the cost of which is almost entirely in its transportation and whatever steps it takes to turn it into something useful because it is a by product of energy production.
On the flip side does aluminum production become almost clean, and are lower grade ores viable? If energy costs are nil can we contain the byproducts of smelting copper to the point that it can be done in populated areas?
just after ww2 there was a big article in the l.a.times about electricity being produced by nuclear fusion--a network of identical hypersafe reactors, run by the government. taxpayers would be billed about $25/year ('40s dollars) for just about all the energy they could possibly want. regular electric companies shareholders would be paid off as they wouldn't exist any more...and that was seen as a huge problem...which it would be!
Energy "too cheap to meter" would mean a few of things in practice (that I can think of):
1. Scarcity turns next to materials throughput, then land, then water, then time and attention
2. Free compute, AI training costs collapse, surveillance and behavioural-surplus extraction becomes equally unmetered
3. Directed-energy weapons and unlimited-endurance drones become practical
4. Death of petrostates and a veeeerrrrry big war to settle the score and rewrite the rules for the next global paradigm, for there will always be another scarcity and another chokepoint from which to extract rents and define one's power
Don't be too sure on #4. Most of the world is plastic and plastic is made from oil.
On the other hand, with enough energy you can take waste plastics back to a crude oil state or near enough to it. So at that point, trash becomes the most important natural resource. All hail India!
Materials and water become unlimited with enough cheap energy.
Or it leads to lazy slothful low iq people who dot need to bother to make an effort
hyper diligent low iq people arent really capable of much
Other than digging canals, laying railroad tracks…
unless theyre digging with shovels probably not
That's where I'll disagree, brother. I work blue collar, and I've bossed quite a few crews. If you're dumb as a post, but you're conscientious and hardworking, I can use you and ten other guys just like you. If you're scintillatingly brilliant but lazy, I want you off my job site.
i think our differences in opinion come from what we consider low iq
you might be talking about guys who cant do calculus
im talking about guys who cant add single digits
You have correctly identified the issue.
A couple more points:
"Cold fusion" is a stand-in for unlimited cheap energy in this argument. Regular fusion would do fine.
6-sigma is more meaningful than 3-sigma only if the measurement correlates that strongly with what you are trying to measure. It doesn't. An example from memory, recalled only because he spoke about IQ quite a bit: William Shockley, one of the inventors of the transistor, had an IQ of 135. That is in the area of what is necessary but not sufficient to make contributions of similar level. My IQ is higher than that but I'm not going to invent anything significant. The Chinese are barking up the wrong tree there. Related: how did the ancient Greeks have so many people pinning the scale of human intelligence out of such a small population? I don't know, but there is hope beyond statistics.
Edit to add another point: "AI will not substitute for intelligence" - I'm pretty sure that's correct for LLMs. I won't argue that true AI is impossible, only that we do not know how to do it yet. Fortunately, we have a lot of science fiction testing scenarios in advance for us; some may be positive. I have not seen a combination of Idiocracy and AI gamed out yet - that would be interesting.
“Hope beyond statistics”… truly words to live by
"Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" to "All Men Are Created Equal"
Foundational Errors
if only there was an asterisk at the end of those
now we have people thinking they were talking about every human on the planet
"The latter rider took an ambulance to the pits, refused further attention, got back on a different bike for the next race, and crashed again. Then he went to the hospital."
Think it was John Burns who wrote of seeing Mick Doohan peel back the medical glove under his gauntlet to display what appeared to be bone marrow. I'm almost certain that Jack Baruth wrote something about not racing motorcycles on track because he would wind up dead. In any case, the folks who do this deserve more of my time and attention.