KPower are now swapping the robust K-series honda engines into the NC Chassis MX-5 miata. They offer full service installs as well, for a flat labor fee of $2950.
Let us all imagine the Miata as it was supposed to be, with a roots-blown K-series, and pray:
"Lord, protect me from the things I want, and my want of things."
I'm dealing with the race to the bottom at work right now...I helped hire a former employee back under a contract house (he used to be direct) at like 75% of his former salary and crappy benefits. His family is on vacation for Spring Break but he stayed behind to work because he has like 10 vacation days all year. He get no bonus, fewer holidays, unpaid sick days, and is under constant pressure to perform in an environment where cutting him loose is a phone call away at the mercy of our boss, essentially.
This is the new normal. We just don't hire direct anymore. We have people with no skin in the game tasked with managing complex engineered systems while we pay them less than they're worth.
I'm pissed. It isn't fair. It isn't just. It isn't the way we should treat people.
1. Guntherwerks and social media influencers - I see this in the gun world, too. The value of the product to your life or shooting is inversely proportional to how many "influencers" are talking to you about it, and exactly inversely proportional to how much "lifestyle marketing" is used to push it. Sigarms' "Legion" marketing is an excellent example of this. It's a Sig, with certakote and maybe a couple of nice to have features (SAO on a P226 isn't bad) but there's a challenge coin and a "community" that you have to buy the "Legion" to join, and...
No, thank you. To quote what we would have said when we were 19: That's gay.
2. The Radical and the halo: In my second go through college I took forensics as an elective because it seemed like it would be mildly fascinating and it fit my working full time plus running a side hustle plus trying to get another degree schedule. It was more than mildly fascinating, as I ended up having Dr. Drew Richardson as my professor for that class. Dr. Drew was formerly the head of the FBI's Chem/Bioweapon unit, one of the last of the people in the Bureau who carried a gun as an agent AND who had a PHD. These days the Bureau prefers the gun toters, the number crunchers, and the people who use a pipet to be kept neatly apart.
He was one of the world's foremost experts on the polygraph and fought the Bureau to try and get rid of it for essentially any personnel screening. He was also a bit of a contrarian as he was one of the few voices in the wilderness saying that a lot of what is considered "forensic science" has precious little actual science behind it. The sound of that drum is still softer than it should be today, but it's getting louder.
The dude loved paragliding and did it as much as he could. He had great videos of it in just about every class.
Dr. Drew and I hit it off right away because the first day of class he saw I was reading a book on Delf Bryce and in a class filled with mostly disinterested college students and one active duty police officer trying to advance in his career and already hopelessly out of his depth, I was the guy he could "vibe" with. Delf was a heavy influence in FBI firearms and tactics, although I'd argue an entirely destructive one because his techniques weren't applicable past him (he had such superior eyesight he could literally *see* his fired bullets...which makes "point shooting" much easier). Delf was a snappy dresser and good looking and he could do some amazing trick shooting....which got the attention of J Edgar Hoover.
When J. Edgar wasn't busy blackmailing politicians, assassinating political rivals, or taking mob bribe money through his massive gambling habit, he was wearing a dress and sucking dick. I'm convinced he wanted to savor the flavor of Delf himself and upon that basis Delf became the rock upon which all of FBI firearms training was based for decades. He looked the part and the trick shooting was great PR. And J. Edgar could fantasize about him when he was engaging in unnatural acts with the underage boys the mob provided him with. Win/win/win for ol' Edgar!
Of course, I didn't go that deep with Dr. Drew about it because to him Delf was a legend. And he still had faith in the Bureau despite the number of times they'd gone after his career for stubbornly insisting on scientific and moral principle.
I mention all of that because Dr. Drew removed the rollover guard from his riding mower. A couple of years after my class with him, he was on the side of a hill mowing and the mower rolled over on him, snapping his neck and killing him. I'm sure that this guy who had been on the scene of every major terrorist incident around the globe in the prior 25 years, who had dealt with the most deadly substances known to man, actively fought violent criminals to the death, and spent his leisure time strapped to essentially an airboat fan and a parachute hundreds of feet in the air never thought that the riskiest decision he would ever make was removing the hoop on his lawnmower but as it turns out his assessments on that particular risk turned out to be fatally flawed.
Consider the odd confluences of life where you drop a throwaway line about your Radical that just happens to get read by a dude who lost an unlikely friend with an extremely unlikely career of spiting in the grim reaper's face because of a lawnmower rollover.
I'm not saying that I'm a messenger from God...but if one were to believe that any amount of life is, in fact, non random...well...maybe buy that halo.
3. Baltimore - As a part of my unusual circle of acquaintances I have buddies who are (or were) Navy Nukes and intelligence types. There's a lot of conspiracy theories about that crash being a deliberate event, but most of it seems to be worked backwards from the outcome rather than by understanding the factors at work.
Pulling off a cyber-attack to produce that specific outcome would have required a lot of setup and the kind of precision in timing and location that is incredibly unlikely. Hacking a ship and doing so in a manner that will steer it directly at the most vulnerable part of the bridge makes for a good movie plot but it wouldn't be very plausible to people who know how ships work.
Poorly maintained equipment used by poorly educated personnel routinely produces disaster all over the place. And that seems to be the primary explanation for what happened here. Procedural mistakes by a low rent crew using a boat that probably wasn't maintained as carefully as it should be isn't as sexy as cyber attack, but it's a lot more believable.
If that worries anyone, it shouldn't because the crisis of competence gets way, way worse:
A generation of social experimentation on the US military combined with enthusiastically searching the world for new wars to get into has had it's toll on readiness and capability. Naturally the people at the top of the chain will deny that any gaps exist and they'll pretend it's still the military that just beat Hitler and Hirohito, but the catastrophic incompetence we've only seen peeks at here and there is becoming a pervasive feature.
This is one reason why we shouldn't be in any hurry to go finding more wars, especially not with near peer adversaries who are watching us *very* closely and probably have a much better idea of our true capabilities than any of the saber rattling dipshits in the State Department.
I generally try not to hate on the modified Porsche stuff too harshly. Mostly because I don’t have one and cannot afford one so my lamentation should count to no one. That said there’s just something “off” with the Gunther proportions. It looks inflated and bulbous with overly high front fenders and too long an overhang. More Cartoonish than refined design.
Half ass street / race cars has to be some sort of generational thing. You’re either all in one way or the other. A six point is about tops with factory safety equipment. I don’t even like driving my full cage car without helmet as it makes me nervous. Conversely I refuse to cage my c5 while it has stock seats, belts and bags. Like the rest of the car it’s playing pretend until someone gets killed. Guy really got lucky.
As for the boat and Biden…ugh. My thoughts will put me on a watchlist much less the discrediting of any supporters here.
In Baltimore. Fucking Baltimore! Of all the cities in the US. Not a single road worker was a Black American? And 22 people on the ship, making what, a dollar, three dollars a day?
I think that had it been Hamilton rather than Russell behind Alonso that crash never happens.
Because Lewis would have been thinking about what kind of dick move *he* would try if he were the car ahead, and so would have been alert to anything dodgy.
Georgie on the other hand was entirely focused on the hero move he was setting up, and just assumed Fernando would be a compliant accessory.
Good luck finding any color native born American willing to do manual labor, outside, overnight in a dangerous environment.
I’m in a constant state of hiring to maintain a crew of 6 tradespeople in the home repair/renovation business. We pay +/- $30/hr, company provided vehicle and tools- not chasing the bottom of the barrel at all.
I don’t agree with the very porous border situation here recently, but if there were no jobs, the flow would decrease considerably.
The legal immigrant workers I’ve employed, hands down, have a stronger work ethic than the native clock-puncher/wall-leaner class.
There is a huge shortage of willing and able people to do manual work. Government can help fix the “able” part with an increased focus and incentives towards trade schools and education. But the “willing” part is a much deeper issue, and one that I don’t have any policy suggestions to resolve.
There’s ample blame to go around in this shit show, but 6 hard working people that left their homes, cultures, and extended families to do hard, dangerous, thankless jobs that few others in this country would be willing to take should not be part of that blame game.
I am surprised collisions of this nature haven't happened before. I am very interested in the technical report on the nature of the casualty that caused that red over red situation.
I am equally interested in what procedures are required by merchants ships when transiting in and out of harbors, their might be some low hanging safety fruit there.
I think this will be more like the USS McCain incident, as in a difficult situation that where the sailors failed to rise to the occasion, rather than the Fitzgerald incident where the sheer incompetence at every turn was stunning. In a more civilized time the CO, OOD and whoever was standing watching in the CIC would have had the good sense to kill themselves after filing their final reports.
On top of that why is the instant decision of an old man with dementia putting me on the hook for a bridge that Baltimore might not really need? Their are plenty of harbor crossings for the traffic as is. The hazardous materials material can detour inland. Maybe given the choice Baltimore could find a more productive use for the insurance payout? Where is Biden even getting the money to commit?
If the will existed, America could wall itself off from the rest of the world, expel all - ALL - the troublemakers: The illegal aliens, the H1Bs, the Deep Staters, the career criminals, the elected Democrats, the welfare queens, everyone - and be our own self-contained little world. EVERYTHING we need to construct, operate & populate a moden industrial civilization exists in the Lower 48 + Alaska right now.
The rest of the world needs America far more than America needs the rest of the world.
One commenter has suggested that Biden pushing the bill on taxpayers protects both the insurers and anyone that might be blamed in the related investigation.
You can bet your ass that the bridge won't get rebuilt in our lifetimes.
And those planes that will be falling from the skies will be commercial. The cloud people fly private, prole.
It's important to remember that the cranes that would have unloaded the containers are probably made by a Chinese company (in China) or a finnish company (with as much Chinese labor as they can get away with)
"This massive ship had just 22 crewmembers on board"
This is about what we had on board American flagged ships when I was sailing almost 35 years ago. Captain, 1st mate, 2nd mate and a 3rd mate. The mates all stand watch with 3 able bodied seamen (1 per watch) and maybe one ordinary seaman who usually works days giving us a deck compliment of 8. Engine Department had a Chief engineer, a 1st, 2nd, and two 3rd engineers. The Chief and the 1st don't stand watches, so you have three watchstanding engineers and three watchstanding oilers, maybe a day utility or electrician, and a wiper giving you an Engine Department of around 10. Steward Department is usually just 3, Chief Steward, Cook, and Steward's assistant. Also, our ships sometimes carried a radio operator but I didn't interact with them very much. Total of around 22. A steamship might have an extra third engineer or utility to help with heavy maintenance, so that's 23/24. That's really all you need.
None of these guys are going to be doing major repairs underway, especially on a diesel boat. I worked on the shore-gang for Sea-Land in Tacoma for a few months and we would swap out pistons or do other heavy work while the ship was in port for a turnaround and the engine was off, but most maintenance underway is simple preventative stuff like cleaning things like sea strainers or maybe cleaning a fuel oil purifier. Otherwise, an oiler is just keeping an eye on stuff, blowing down compressors and adjusting valves that control the seawater cooling to ensure everything is running alright.
I don't have experience with foreign officers but have heard that most of the officers from India have a good reputation. My guess is that the Officers are Indian and the crew from places like the Philippines. Again, all good workers with pretty good reputations - especially of they are working for a company like Maersk. It will be interesting to see what exactly happened.
I'm totally taking credit for the Sobotka reference.
But I don't think you're going to hear a damn thing about their plight. Those guys were forgotten decades ago. You'll hear plenty from the Clay Davis types who are going to want a piece of the new bridge Biden already promised. Sheeeeeeeit.
Open thread:
KPower are now swapping the robust K-series honda engines into the NC Chassis MX-5 miata. They offer full service installs as well, for a flat labor fee of $2950.
Let us all imagine the Miata as it was supposed to be, with a roots-blown K-series, and pray:
"Lord, protect me from the things I want, and my want of things."
Src: https://kpower.industries/blogs/news/how-does-the-k24-nc-stack-up-to-the-original-kmiata-swap
Src: https://kpower.industries/blogs/news/big-news-bmw-transmission-upgrade-for-your-miata?_pos=8&_sid=ad88c93fa&_ss=r
Src: https://mercracing.net/shop/mr1320-tvs-supercharger-kit/
Note they're also doing full K-swaps for the FR-S/BR-Z for a mere 3 grand: https://kpower.industries/pages/turn-key-swaps
The Cut strikes again, and the girls are BIG MAD:
https://www.thecut.com/article/age-gap-relationships-marriage-younger-women-older-man.html
Get your popcorn ready!
So you’re saying a Hyundai crashed in Baltimore. Have we conclusively ruled out teenage gangs being responsible?
I'm dealing with the race to the bottom at work right now...I helped hire a former employee back under a contract house (he used to be direct) at like 75% of his former salary and crappy benefits. His family is on vacation for Spring Break but he stayed behind to work because he has like 10 vacation days all year. He get no bonus, fewer holidays, unpaid sick days, and is under constant pressure to perform in an environment where cutting him loose is a phone call away at the mercy of our boss, essentially.
This is the new normal. We just don't hire direct anymore. We have people with no skin in the game tasked with managing complex engineered systems while we pay them less than they're worth.
I'm pissed. It isn't fair. It isn't just. It isn't the way we should treat people.
Randomness about various subjects:
1. Guntherwerks and social media influencers - I see this in the gun world, too. The value of the product to your life or shooting is inversely proportional to how many "influencers" are talking to you about it, and exactly inversely proportional to how much "lifestyle marketing" is used to push it. Sigarms' "Legion" marketing is an excellent example of this. It's a Sig, with certakote and maybe a couple of nice to have features (SAO on a P226 isn't bad) but there's a challenge coin and a "community" that you have to buy the "Legion" to join, and...
No, thank you. To quote what we would have said when we were 19: That's gay.
2. The Radical and the halo: In my second go through college I took forensics as an elective because it seemed like it would be mildly fascinating and it fit my working full time plus running a side hustle plus trying to get another degree schedule. It was more than mildly fascinating, as I ended up having Dr. Drew Richardson as my professor for that class. Dr. Drew was formerly the head of the FBI's Chem/Bioweapon unit, one of the last of the people in the Bureau who carried a gun as an agent AND who had a PHD. These days the Bureau prefers the gun toters, the number crunchers, and the people who use a pipet to be kept neatly apart.
He was one of the world's foremost experts on the polygraph and fought the Bureau to try and get rid of it for essentially any personnel screening. He was also a bit of a contrarian as he was one of the few voices in the wilderness saying that a lot of what is considered "forensic science" has precious little actual science behind it. The sound of that drum is still softer than it should be today, but it's getting louder.
The dude loved paragliding and did it as much as he could. He had great videos of it in just about every class.
Dr. Drew and I hit it off right away because the first day of class he saw I was reading a book on Delf Bryce and in a class filled with mostly disinterested college students and one active duty police officer trying to advance in his career and already hopelessly out of his depth, I was the guy he could "vibe" with. Delf was a heavy influence in FBI firearms and tactics, although I'd argue an entirely destructive one because his techniques weren't applicable past him (he had such superior eyesight he could literally *see* his fired bullets...which makes "point shooting" much easier). Delf was a snappy dresser and good looking and he could do some amazing trick shooting....which got the attention of J Edgar Hoover.
When J. Edgar wasn't busy blackmailing politicians, assassinating political rivals, or taking mob bribe money through his massive gambling habit, he was wearing a dress and sucking dick. I'm convinced he wanted to savor the flavor of Delf himself and upon that basis Delf became the rock upon which all of FBI firearms training was based for decades. He looked the part and the trick shooting was great PR. And J. Edgar could fantasize about him when he was engaging in unnatural acts with the underage boys the mob provided him with. Win/win/win for ol' Edgar!
Of course, I didn't go that deep with Dr. Drew about it because to him Delf was a legend. And he still had faith in the Bureau despite the number of times they'd gone after his career for stubbornly insisting on scientific and moral principle.
I mention all of that because Dr. Drew removed the rollover guard from his riding mower. A couple of years after my class with him, he was on the side of a hill mowing and the mower rolled over on him, snapping his neck and killing him. I'm sure that this guy who had been on the scene of every major terrorist incident around the globe in the prior 25 years, who had dealt with the most deadly substances known to man, actively fought violent criminals to the death, and spent his leisure time strapped to essentially an airboat fan and a parachute hundreds of feet in the air never thought that the riskiest decision he would ever make was removing the hoop on his lawnmower but as it turns out his assessments on that particular risk turned out to be fatally flawed.
Consider the odd confluences of life where you drop a throwaway line about your Radical that just happens to get read by a dude who lost an unlikely friend with an extremely unlikely career of spiting in the grim reaper's face because of a lawnmower rollover.
I'm not saying that I'm a messenger from God...but if one were to believe that any amount of life is, in fact, non random...well...maybe buy that halo.
3. Baltimore - As a part of my unusual circle of acquaintances I have buddies who are (or were) Navy Nukes and intelligence types. There's a lot of conspiracy theories about that crash being a deliberate event, but most of it seems to be worked backwards from the outcome rather than by understanding the factors at work.
Pulling off a cyber-attack to produce that specific outcome would have required a lot of setup and the kind of precision in timing and location that is incredibly unlikely. Hacking a ship and doing so in a manner that will steer it directly at the most vulnerable part of the bridge makes for a good movie plot but it wouldn't be very plausible to people who know how ships work.
Poorly maintained equipment used by poorly educated personnel routinely produces disaster all over the place. And that seems to be the primary explanation for what happened here. Procedural mistakes by a low rent crew using a boat that probably wasn't maintained as carefully as it should be isn't as sexy as cyber attack, but it's a lot more believable.
If that worries anyone, it shouldn't because the crisis of competence gets way, way worse:
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/03/19/least-3-engineering-incidents-and-poor-leadership-kept-uss-boxer-deploying-investigations-reveal.html
A generation of social experimentation on the US military combined with enthusiastically searching the world for new wars to get into has had it's toll on readiness and capability. Naturally the people at the top of the chain will deny that any gaps exist and they'll pretend it's still the military that just beat Hitler and Hirohito, but the catastrophic incompetence we've only seen peeks at here and there is becoming a pervasive feature.
This is one reason why we shouldn't be in any hurry to go finding more wars, especially not with near peer adversaries who are watching us *very* closely and probably have a much better idea of our true capabilities than any of the saber rattling dipshits in the State Department.
I generally try not to hate on the modified Porsche stuff too harshly. Mostly because I don’t have one and cannot afford one so my lamentation should count to no one. That said there’s just something “off” with the Gunther proportions. It looks inflated and bulbous with overly high front fenders and too long an overhang. More Cartoonish than refined design.
Half ass street / race cars has to be some sort of generational thing. You’re either all in one way or the other. A six point is about tops with factory safety equipment. I don’t even like driving my full cage car without helmet as it makes me nervous. Conversely I refuse to cage my c5 while it has stock seats, belts and bags. Like the rest of the car it’s playing pretend until someone gets killed. Guy really got lucky.
As for the boat and Biden…ugh. My thoughts will put me on a watchlist much less the discrediting of any supporters here.
R.I.P. America. I so briefly knew you.
In Baltimore. Fucking Baltimore! Of all the cities in the US. Not a single road worker was a Black American? And 22 people on the ship, making what, a dollar, three dollars a day?
" Justice For Fernando! "
I think that had it been Hamilton rather than Russell behind Alonso that crash never happens.
Because Lewis would have been thinking about what kind of dick move *he* would try if he were the car ahead, and so would have been alert to anything dodgy.
Georgie on the other hand was entirely focused on the hero move he was setting up, and just assumed Fernando would be a compliant accessory.
All the effort to drive costs down as much as humanly possible and no thought given to their own countrymen.
How does one become so jaded and indifferent (if not outright hate) to their own people?
unless they arent american in the first place
and yes the gumption wanks 911 is still dumb and competing in a (somehow) highly competitive niche
Good luck finding any color native born American willing to do manual labor, outside, overnight in a dangerous environment.
I’m in a constant state of hiring to maintain a crew of 6 tradespeople in the home repair/renovation business. We pay +/- $30/hr, company provided vehicle and tools- not chasing the bottom of the barrel at all.
I don’t agree with the very porous border situation here recently, but if there were no jobs, the flow would decrease considerably.
The legal immigrant workers I’ve employed, hands down, have a stronger work ethic than the native clock-puncher/wall-leaner class.
There is a huge shortage of willing and able people to do manual work. Government can help fix the “able” part with an increased focus and incentives towards trade schools and education. But the “willing” part is a much deeper issue, and one that I don’t have any policy suggestions to resolve.
There’s ample blame to go around in this shit show, but 6 hard working people that left their homes, cultures, and extended families to do hard, dangerous, thankless jobs that few others in this country would be willing to take should not be part of that blame game.
I am surprised collisions of this nature haven't happened before. I am very interested in the technical report on the nature of the casualty that caused that red over red situation.
I am equally interested in what procedures are required by merchants ships when transiting in and out of harbors, their might be some low hanging safety fruit there.
I think this will be more like the USS McCain incident, as in a difficult situation that where the sailors failed to rise to the occasion, rather than the Fitzgerald incident where the sheer incompetence at every turn was stunning. In a more civilized time the CO, OOD and whoever was standing watching in the CIC would have had the good sense to kill themselves after filing their final reports.
On top of that why is the instant decision of an old man with dementia putting me on the hook for a bridge that Baltimore might not really need? Their are plenty of harbor crossings for the traffic as is. The hazardous materials material can detour inland. Maybe given the choice Baltimore could find a more productive use for the insurance payout? Where is Biden even getting the money to commit?
If the will existed, America could wall itself off from the rest of the world, expel all - ALL - the troublemakers: The illegal aliens, the H1Bs, the Deep Staters, the career criminals, the elected Democrats, the welfare queens, everyone - and be our own self-contained little world. EVERYTHING we need to construct, operate & populate a moden industrial civilization exists in the Lower 48 + Alaska right now.
The rest of the world needs America far more than America needs the rest of the world.
One commenter has suggested that Biden pushing the bill on taxpayers protects both the insurers and anyone that might be blamed in the related investigation.
You can bet your ass that the bridge won't get rebuilt in our lifetimes.
And those planes that will be falling from the skies will be commercial. The cloud people fly private, prole.
It's important to remember that the cranes that would have unloaded the containers are probably made by a Chinese company (in China) or a finnish company (with as much Chinese labor as they can get away with)
"This massive ship had just 22 crewmembers on board"
This is about what we had on board American flagged ships when I was sailing almost 35 years ago. Captain, 1st mate, 2nd mate and a 3rd mate. The mates all stand watch with 3 able bodied seamen (1 per watch) and maybe one ordinary seaman who usually works days giving us a deck compliment of 8. Engine Department had a Chief engineer, a 1st, 2nd, and two 3rd engineers. The Chief and the 1st don't stand watches, so you have three watchstanding engineers and three watchstanding oilers, maybe a day utility or electrician, and a wiper giving you an Engine Department of around 10. Steward Department is usually just 3, Chief Steward, Cook, and Steward's assistant. Also, our ships sometimes carried a radio operator but I didn't interact with them very much. Total of around 22. A steamship might have an extra third engineer or utility to help with heavy maintenance, so that's 23/24. That's really all you need.
None of these guys are going to be doing major repairs underway, especially on a diesel boat. I worked on the shore-gang for Sea-Land in Tacoma for a few months and we would swap out pistons or do other heavy work while the ship was in port for a turnaround and the engine was off, but most maintenance underway is simple preventative stuff like cleaning things like sea strainers or maybe cleaning a fuel oil purifier. Otherwise, an oiler is just keeping an eye on stuff, blowing down compressors and adjusting valves that control the seawater cooling to ensure everything is running alright.
I don't have experience with foreign officers but have heard that most of the officers from India have a good reputation. My guess is that the Officers are Indian and the crew from places like the Philippines. Again, all good workers with pretty good reputations - especially of they are working for a company like Maersk. It will be interesting to see what exactly happened.
I'm totally taking credit for the Sobotka reference.
But I don't think you're going to hear a damn thing about their plight. Those guys were forgotten decades ago. You'll hear plenty from the Clay Davis types who are going to want a piece of the new bridge Biden already promised. Sheeeeeeeit.