For clarification, I ain’t no fortunate son. I am a humble, hardscrabble hillbilly with highfalutin tastes.
On the other hand, my bête noire - commentator “Adam Diamond” - is a nepo baby par excellence! He has finally, on the cusp of turning 35 years old, left the family firm and gotten a real, honest job.
I just want to say, I have an extremely high tolerance for watching you repeatedly keelhaul a fool. It is endlessly entertaining and I hope it never ends. Maybe this will be the one time Jonny admits he’s wrong, as his argument isn’t even debatable.
Having been an avid reader of car magazines since the 70s I enjoy the mudslinging about these people I’m familiar with. It’s fun to hear the behind-the-scenes stuff. You must have some Jean Lindamood Jennings stories
I’m an accountant, which is because I’m not that good at math beyond adding.
But what I am good at is understanding “does this make sense?” It’s something I had pounded into my brain as a kid, and I now pound into my kids’ brains, as well as occasionally my employees’ or coworkers’.
Just take a step back and use your noodle. Does the answer make any sense? Does it make sense you calculated profit at 3x revenue? Does it make sense OPEX is 40x last month’s spend? Does your math homework asking how many days to travel from A to B make sense if the answer is 7,000?
And same here. If you know anything at all about cars, the answer to “does a street car make more downforce than a race car” is blatantly obvious, unless there’s a rule limiting downforce on the race car making the statistic irrelevant anyways.
I am hereby nominating "Just step back and fucking THINK." for the upcoming AC t-shirt shop.
I remember one time in high school our Physics "teacher" created a problem for us to solve that involved an Evel Knievel-style Grand Canyon jump. She gave us the ramp and the distance and asked us to calculate the motovelocity required for him to clear it. Which worked out to about 2000mph. Pro tip: laughing at your "teacher" in front of the class will cause your afternoon to get suddenly booked.
Good on you for doing the math -- and that's another example of "anyone who has ever jumped a motorcycle would immediately recognize the implausibility."
Another pro tip for dealing with physics teachers...don’t tell them it’s ok for you to put your feet on your desk just because his favorite student is doing it.
I remember my calculus teacher consoled us after a pretty horrid exam that "most of you'll only ever use addition (bills) subtraction (wage-bills) and modulo division (for how many beers do I have money left)"
By the time our final in calculus rolled around, all of us had been accepted to pretty much the colleges of our choices so it was sort of a formality. Our teacher, Mrs. Adelman, whose son Bruce was in our class, created a test with the same number of problems as students in the class and they were harder than any we had experienced during the course. Fair in that we'd covered the material but very hard. It was a take-home test handed out on a Friday with the rule that we weren't supposed to work together on it. Of course she knew we'd get together for a study session over the weekend, maybe two, so to make sure we knew the answers ourselves, when we got to class on Monday we had to draw a number out of a hat and go up to the board and solve whatever problem we drew. We spent all day on Saturday at one of the kids' houses going over every problem until everyone knew the solutions. Then we had Sunday to review and test ourselves. On Monday everyone did fine except for one of the kids had a classic brain freeze when he went up to the board. We were all kind of rooting him on because we'd seen him work out the problem during the study session but I don't think he ever got his brain in gear.
As an engineer I have spent far too much of my life involved with numbers. It's easy - sometimes - to make a stupid mistake when making a glib comment. But then you take a step back and look at it and wonder how you could have been so dumb.
But when you're doing something for work, or for research, or debate?
Then you sit back and run the numbers a couple of times using different methods as a check, because being wrong then costs a lot more.
The biggest problem I see is that politicians are all lawyers, and lawyers have shit all for an education. They don't study anything harder than basket weaving in most prelaw degree courses and they NEVER study math or science. People think that are congress critters and senators are smart people.
No, they're just charismatic. None of them can count past ten without taking off their shoes.
There are lawyers and then there are lawyers with serious fluency in technical areas of law. Inside any big practice group at a law firm, there's always the one person that people call when things get complicated. Being that person is not a good way to make a lot of money, but it's a good way to be totally insulated from the usual annoyances and pressures of the law firm environment, because everyone knows you're indispensable.
There are fewer lawyers in the legislatures than ever before which is why they pass more laws which fail constitutional review and are subject to challenge, accidentally try to establish a state religion, or just take the the legal agenda of a PAC and put it in as a bill without hitting control F and changing the name of the state it was mutually introduced in to their state before submitting. Truly horrendous.
I tried to listen to the congressional hearing where Tik Tok CEO Shou Zi Chew was raked over the coals by both parties but for different reasons. After the first 30 minutes I had to switch to music to calm myself down. The incompetence on display by our leadership was genuinely embarrassing. Listening to our elected representatives stumble and stutter reading questions prepared by their staffs; many of them had zero comprehension of what they were asking. How can we have a democracy while we only elect the worst and the dumbest?
The smartest in Congress (Thomas Massie comes to mind) share the unique distinction of pissing EVERYONE (the uniparty and its donors) off by actually thinking. Not great for longevity, as it makes you rich for a primary.
As I approach middle age, I'm starting to think democracy is a giant failure. I'm not smart enough to offer remedies but something has to work better than this.
I was using the general "democracy" to cover all of the western countries that pretend our votes count. I'm not well read up on Europe or even Canada to know what the heck they do different than us.
Doesn’t matter, it’s a clusterfuck wherever you go. Canada is being led by a drama teacher with great hair that has been caught on camera in blackface not once, not twice, but three separate times. The only thing he does well is apologize for the past sins of our white forebears. Backing him up as deputy prime minister is a frantically nodding yes-woman who doubles as finance minister with zero qualifications in that field but a masters in Slavonic studies. WTF
That's because we're going from a constitutional republic to an oligarchy. We may exist as a democracy in between that for a decade or two, hard to say. But every since the got rid of civics and stopped teaching kids how our government works, it's been all downhill.
There are, it seems, two types of people who go into politics, and they're both sociopaths.
The first is the aforementioned lawyers, who are trained to baffle 'em with bullshit and twist words until they're warped beyond recognition. The second is businessmen, who've gotten rich by compromising and negotiating and never holding the line on any values they might have.
Understood. Trust me; plenty of my fellow JDs make it very hard to be proud of that accomplishment. Our society is so ridiculously litigious, ambulance chasers on TV…
I suppose it depends on what kind of lawyering that you need done. Not every legal task requires a skilled litigator and not every skilled litigator has the other skills needed to do all legal work. I suppose it might help to have someone who has defended their position in a court but is that really necessary for drawing up contracts, negotiating, or doing real estate and title law?
YES! Oh YES! NEVER EVER do contracts with a lawyer who hasn't defended said contracts in front of a jury. It makes a HELL of a difference. Learned this from a friend of mine who dealt with a lot of lawyers and a lot of court cases and as I started having to deal with more and more legal issues I learned it as well.
There's a lot more to law than logic and making an argument. There's the presentation and yes, the performance aspects as well. The courtroom is a theater and 'surprise' witnesses are always well coached and if at all possible actors to boot.
You need an attorney who is used to dealing with said shenanigans. You need an attorney with balls, experience, and foresight. You do not want someone who'll choke when opposing council pulls out something he's not allowed to, but the judge still allows it. (and yes, I've had this happen to me).
As an accountant, i interact with a lot of lawyers. Lots of them are very good but it’s always amusing to me when i get a new client whith a ridiculously complex operating agreement and the giy goes “my lawyers say this is the best” well, it is if you make 5mm a year but for you it’s extreme overkill
As you can tell by my name; I have Irish heritage, too. Another reason for attacks! Those Irish stereotypes really piss me off! The next time I hear one I might put down my beer and punch someone.
John Van Stry writes “None of them can count past ten without taking off their shoes.” Counterpoint: you should see how quickly we can calculate attorney’s fees, and with our shoes on.
When I was a kid, my dad traded his Opel Manta for an MGB, and had the MG's former owner, a guy with a Scottish brogue so thick you couldn't understand him, maintain it for him.
He sounded like a Glaswegian soccer hooligan until it was time to discuss the bill. Then it was all Received Pronunciation straight from the Court of St. James.
I used to do inventory for a defense contractor down in Mississippi. They'd have the plant workers do inventory. The plant workers in West Point Mississippi were not the most gifted men with numbers but they could put together and MRAP
It requires a lot of mechanical intelligence to work on an assembly line, book smarts not at all. Although I bet they just didn't give a fuck about inventory and did it half assed because the would rather build MRAPs.
So a lawyer is writing a will for an old lady, he completes it, and she pays him with a crisp new 100 dollar bill. As he sits at his desk rubbing the bill between his thumb and forefinger, the bill separates with a crisp shhusshh, and he realizes he has 2 $100 dollar bills in his hand. And now our lawyer friend has an ethical dilemma: does he keep the money for himself, or does he share it with his law partner?
My favorite story is from federal evidence, which was taught by the very distinguished dean of our law school. Older gent, bald, handsome, sophisticated, Saville row tailored three piece suit. He says, the first day of class: “I need all your help. You must keep my secret. Please don’t tell my mother I’m a lawyer; she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.”
Most of them (McConnell, Biden etc) had incredibly mediocre and short legal careers or just never practiced at all. You don’t see, like, the appellate chair at a BigLaw firm (or a distinguished lawyer at a big firm in one of the smaller states like AL, WV) making a run for office.
I'm not an engineer; I earn my living with words, but I apply the same rule with editing: take the time to check. If I've got even the slightest question, I'll double-check the dictionary or the appropriate stylebook to make absolutely sure I'm correct before making an edit or suggestion. I live in fear of some Inigo Montoya telling me a word does not mean what I think it means what I think it does. As an earlier posted noted, I can in most cases avoid that by taking a moment to just step back and fucking think.
It's hard to edit your own material because you read what you wanted to say, not what you actually put down, but also not every editor is perfect. One of my editors, who shall remain unnamed, was a pretty good writer but he once used "nadir" when he meant something more like "apex" or "apogee".
It annoys me to spell lead as "led", as in "he lead the team", but I worry that today's readers will get confused if I don't. "Led" would have gotten me a red check mark if I used it in K-9.
It wasn't you. It was someone who might have been my son in law today if he hadn't made a barely suggestive joke to my daughter that she took way too seriously.
The Ivy League-educated divisional CEO I used to work for would flag “lead” annd have me change it to “led” every month when I’d write his executive summary for the board. I never knew if he was trying avoid appearing ignorant or actually was.
Scott Adams once wrote that "leader" derived from "lead," the material bullets were made from, because the guy in charge was the one everybody wanted to shoot.
Had a lawyer teach me statistics in community college. He understood the material and used it as a lawyer. I do wonder whether his being a part-time community college instructor was because he enjoyed to teaching or needed money to fund his law practice but he was very intelligent for a community college instructor and unfortunately this was the ony class where I failed to recieve an A.
Bullshit on that buddy. Lots of lawyers who get math. Try to litigate patent law, antitrust or anything using regression analysis. What you mean there are a lot of crap lawyers don't don't know anything including math. They don't do very well.
It's true that many lawyers worshipped the mighty GPA and weren't willing to risk getting less than an A in a math or science course but not quite all lawyers or all politicians are complete dolts. Some of the patent attorneys that I've met have engineering degrees. Rand Paul is still licensed to practice medicine as far as I know and Thomas Massie has a couple of engineering degrees from MIT. On the other hand, Debbie Stabenow seems like a nice lady and has enough ambition to be in the Senate but isn't much brighter than a 5W incandescent light bulb.
Working prototypes are well before my time, and I am a grey haired old man. Always been a requirement as far as I know. You can prove you have qualifing coursework equal to an engineering or science degree, but I don’t know of anyone who’s successfully gone that route.
Adrian Newey...what a legend. CTO at Red Bull, and 40 years ago we had him in Hilliard working for Truesports. "Give me Adrian Newey and he’ll design the best race car and we won’t need the best driver to win." - Bobby Rahal
I'm ashamed to admit I don't think nearly as hard as I used to. I remember being concerned about climate change when my son was born about 20 years ago and crunching a lot of numbers and concluding that the world's sea level would probably rise between 6 and 8 inches* during my son's lifetime, and therefore it's nothing to worry about. But the "experts" never shut up, even though all their doomsday predictions were wrong, and now it looks like we'll be eating bugs and riding public transit because of this grossly exaggerated existential danger to humanity.
*Your mother made me rise between 6 and 8 inches last night, Trebek!
That reminds me of how Patrick Smith, author of "Ask The Pilot," described how when he flew short-haul regional jets, he'd keep a 3-ring binder with the words "How To Fly" written in crayon on the cover, in the cockpit.
These planes apparently had curtains instead of doors on the cockpit, so he'd get this binder out in view of the passengers if one of them was being a dick.
More stupid me: I have to carefully consider whether to spend $35 on a hardback book containing a brilliant man's lessons learned from his life's work - knowledge I will have access to for the rest of my life, and then my son will have it - but I don't hesitate to spend $200 on a fresh-fish dinner for four in a beach town that will be feces in a sewer system 36 hours later.
To be anal, the 150 mph Corvette was the 1985 with 230 hp. The Cross Fire was good for 140 mph. The ZR-1 top speed varied between 172-180 mph, which is a huge difference for no real mechanical changes.
Btw, I think I once said I don't give a damn, or something like that, about Lieberman. But, while I don't care about him personally, I also really enjoy your articles about him and the car mag industry in general.
"To be anal, the 150 mph Corvette was the 1985 with 230 hp."
I believe you're correct in terms of magazine tested performance; C/D got 142 from the Cross-Fire, but I seem to recall that GM claimed 150. Maybe they just drew a good one.
The Camaro didn't hit 150mph until the IROC-Z 350, right?
The 150 mph claim was for 1985. They handed out "Life Begins at 150 mph" t shirts and hats at the 1985 intro.
GM did do a lot of work updating the C4 from year to year. Oddly, when Porsche does that with the 911, it's a good thing. When GM does it, then it's an example of poor GM engineering.
And yes, I do own a 1990 ZR-1. It's funny, I'm kind of a Corvette guy, but I don't like the typical Corvette type folks. You don't see me at a Corvette club event or anything. Just sayin.
It was definitely north of 140. Though, I gotta say... how the F long was the straight stretch or test track where they could get to north of even 130??? Crossfire feels so breathless above 120ish.
The 91 car had the smoother nose with flush turn signals. It's aero was improved a great deal which helped. L98 engine was carried over, but it is possible there was a slight gear or trans change. Can't remember.
Actually, I don't think the aero changed much. It was more of a mid cycle cosmetic refresh. Top speed tests show no real changes.
I'd say the two best C4s, of the non-ZR1 variety were the 89 (6 speed, new rear suspension, digital dash, original (and best) C4 styling - best C4 sports car) or the 96 (dramatically more refined, OBD2, LT4, better materials - best C4 GT).
1989 was the first year for the 6sp manual and the last year for the disco dash. I've always wanted one, but I'm a short man with size 10 EEE feet and when I put the seat far enough forward to reach the pedals comfortably, I can hardly get out of the damn thing. It's pretty funny, actually.
Yeah, there isn't a ton of room there. But a 911 or 928 of that vintage wasn't better. Actually worse. And year for year, the C4 will outrun them on the track.
The sills are all thanks to Lloyd Reuss. A year before production, he decided that the C4 needed to be a proper targa, not just a T Top as the engineers had designed it. That was an awful big piece of structure to lose. The engineers did what they could within time and budget constraints to make up for it, and those stupid high sills were part of that.
The targa top was likely the right choice. However, the timing of the change wasn't. Reuss is known as a car guy. You'd think he'd be engineer enough to understand the magnitude of his request.
The Greenwood brothers spent a lot of time on that structure to actually make it handle and feel good. I wish I could post pictures of what they actually came up with. I'd love to drive one some time. I've heard it referred to as the best handling car of the 90s. John Greenwood was the real deal.
Finally, the Corvette chassis, as designed was actually stiff for its time. It would have been a hell of a car if McLellan and crew were allowed to finish it as planned.
Willful ignorance lies at the root of many problems. Happy thoughts from JL and his ilk can't alter physics.
This recent book was well done and worth a read. I've recommended it to a few who think by just eating bugs and driving a Tesla, we'll live in peace and harmony with all the latest tech in the most modern of buildings while magic makes food appear and waste disappear.
His wife Eva is a physician[4] and his son David is an organic synthetic chemist.
He lives in a house with unusually thick insulation, grows some of his own food, and eats meat roughly once a week.[10] He reads 60 to 110 non-technical books a year and keeps a list of all books he has read since 1969. He "does not intend to have a cell phone ever."[14]
Smil is known for being "intensely private", shunning the press while letting his books speak for themselves.[4] At the University of Manitoba, he only ever showed up at one faculty meeting (since the 1980s). The school accepted his reclusiveness so long as he kept teaching and publishing highly rated books.[4]
Seems like he does. Matt Farah said on a recent podcast (might have been a Patreon-only one) that Jonny sent him excerpts from your Valkyrie (sp?) piece.
“…it’s not as obvious as the size difference between, say, Kerri Strug and “Lizzo”. And yet the actual difference is more than a gynmast-to-beast relationship…”
I wish I’d said that. And frankly, these little gems are worth the price of admission.
I recently saw a photo of “Lizzo”. As Benny Hill said, “Everyone has a right to be big, but she abuses the privilege.”
Touching on simpery (or how some guys have no standards at all), we live in an age where SSBBWs (for readers who don't know, Super Sized Big Beautiful Women, we're talking real heifers that put NFL offensive linemen to shame, considering that most most self-professed regular BBWs left beautiful and womanly in the rear view mirror a few pallets of Haagen Dazs ago) post personal ads about being "Pillow Princesses" (for readers who don't know, that's a woman that only wants oral from a guy with no reciprocation of any sort at all and certainly no PIV) and there will still be guys who simp for her.
You were doing so well with acronym and phrase definition— then you stuck “PIV” in with no definition. (Pretty sure I figured it out— fornication. And yes, “stuck ‘PIV’ in” was a word choice done completely for the entertainment of the readers.)
Only tangentially related but my wife and I eagerly watched the Netflix PornHub documentary a couple weeks ago and we’re grossly (in both ways) disappointed to find out the star who get a large (heh) share of the screen time was a BBW model. Emphasis on the first B, sorely lacking in the second.
Jack would call it a flex. Popular entertainment is all a rainbow of fat and gay now except for the new marine recruit videos with all heterosexual whites to go die in ukraine
See my comment above. The term used to mean ladies like Lanie Kazan, what in Yiddish were called zaftig, which means juicy. A large woman who still has the shape of a woman. I suppose Rubenesque is close. Kazan is in her 80s now, but in 1970, when I was in 11th grade, Playboy did an 8 page spread of her. Magnificent tits that are burned into my memory. The kind with a straight line from her shoulders to her nipples. Something more or less SFW when she was 26: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/utEAAOSw5G1j5S63/s-l1600.jpg
I actually know what SWF means in this context. I remember from the last time I looked it up, I’m so proud of myself. (It used to mean single white female.)
The older I get the less a few extra pounds bother me on a woman. Not that anyone should give a damn about my opinion of the way they look. The important thing is being healthy. It’s very possible to be rather healthy with a few extra pounds. It’s impossible carrying around the extra load many are. Positive body image crap aside.
Great synopsis for us common folk. Interwebs chock full of toxic morons who look up data and spew them out of context. If only there was some mechanism for accountability.
You're only allowed to dislike white supremacy. Everything else must be liked. How do you know if it's white supremacy? If you're allowed to dislike it.
Well, if I were Jonny, I could say that the Bentley Continental GTC consumes less fuel than a Miata.
Which is obviously true, if you drive the GTC at steady 60 mph and test the limits of the Miata at the backroad.
However, even though this is an obviously idiotic example, not many people realise that fuel consumption (or Miles-per-Gator or whatever you use over the pond) is something that can't really be explained in one number.
Here in mileage-conscious Europe, many people ask me "and what's the fuel consumption does it get" about whatever car I'm talking about, and they usually look kinda weird at me if I tell them something like "between 8 and 60 liters per 100 km" (which is between 30 and 4 miles per gibon), which is the case of current RS6. True, I don't know many people able to drive said RS6 in the way that gets you the 60 l/100 km number and not die very quickly, but it's possible.
Even more interesting is the effect of the speed – again, people are not very good with square stuff. If you tell them that most cars get the best consumption at 110 km/h (70 moths per hour or something) and that most non-Corvette-shaped cars get at least twice as much at 160 km/h (160 makaks per hour), they're quite surprised, because they usually never tried to reset average fuel consumption again and again to measure it in various driving situations and only focus on "the one number", which can, of course, differ vastly driver-to-driver and scenario-to-scenario.
And as to the CO2 emissions reduction and focus on cars – I don't want to get involved in a "is it worth it" war, because I'm actually not that sure, especially with CO2-reducing measures historically having the opposite effect (CAFE and now the European CO2 standards have both helped massive proliferation of SUVs), but I actually don't think there's some special focus on passenger cars.
It's just that the passenger cars are just about the only area where CO2 limits affect a consumer product so obviously and so directly AND it's a consumer product that has one of the highest, or maybe even THE highest emotional value for the consumer.
Your new fridge is probably using several times less electricity than the one from 30 years ago, and its design has been changed by environmental regulations even more than that of your car. Do you care? Will you spend time to find and restore the golden era proper freon-circulating, energy-draining fridge? You might, and I bet there are such people, but it's much less probably than someone moaning about his new 7 series being a hybrid with 4-cylinder instead of a V8 that it used to be.
I know a guy who restores and collects vintage Berkel meat slicers. He has around fourty. And I know for a fact that vintage fridge enthusiasts exist, I've read something about them somewhere.
But still, 99.9% of people doesn't give a shit about their fridge and most probably don't remember the brand. You don't see them bragging about the power of the compressor or number of shelves.
With cars? Even people who don't know shit about cars can be heard bragging about their 3.0 V6 and 300 horsepower and some load of nonsense they think about their car...
I don't think it's BAD that cars are emotionally significant to people. They're the modern analog to animals, and people used to get pretty sentimental about their horses, even ones used commercially, hence the phrase "Busman's holiday"
Don't know about America, it might be true over there, but I don't see it here. Even EVs don't change that, maybe even on the contrary – people tend to love their Teslas and shit.
When the Tesla Model S first came out, the Detroit concours had a class of EVs and I was talking to a woman about their Tesla and I'd have to characterize her reaction to the car as aroused.
Of course it isn't! It's totally natural, as cars are a reflection of our personality and combination of art and engineering in a unique way.
I wasn't saying it as a bad thing, just a fact – that people don't buy cars rationally, even if they think they do, and often they buy cars for their perceived qualities, not real ones.
I'll admit to laughing out loud at miles per gibbon. Well played.
And people that don't like automatic 3-cylinder cars DO, in my experience, care more about new refrigerators' compressors dying prematurely. It saves on electricity, but surely that doesn't help the environment by causing you to purchase a new refrigerator every 5~10 years now. And have you SEEN the size of American refrigerators? You could put an entire... uh... Czechrepublicanian thing in there. Maybe you have a nice Czechian goat species? You could fit an entire goat in there.
We don't have that much goats. Also, I have seen the American fridges (they even sell them here), but you probably never seen a goat. I could fit, like, three to four goats in each of my refrigerators, if I chope them up right.
American fridge is more like... a huge pig? A deer?
As to the replacements, my last fridge has compressor warranty for, like, 14 years?
Ha! Cutting them up is cheating. I mean pick up a goat, stuff it in the fridge, close the door. Mine can certainly not hold more than one intact Nubian goat.
Imagine marrying a woman who looks like F. Murray Abraham and has had so many abortions during sex work that your poor weak fetus of a son has to demonstrate world champion mountain climbing skills just to stay attached to the uterine wall.
I'm not saying that about Jonny, which would be really unpleasant. But I'm sure there's another reason he's angry all the time.
I hear that a lot in the manosphere, that a woman who has been "run through" is necessarily going to have a stretched out vag from all that D. I wonder if those guys have ever seen a baby's head crowning. Even a guy with a beer can isn't going to stretch it that far. In any case, I'm sure plenty of guys think one that isn't tight is better than none at all.
And I've seen video of a human birth. Hands down the most awful, disgusting thing I've ever watched. It's been 34 years and I haven't touched apple butter since.
Sometimes when you find yourself debating the numbers, trying to understand them (or not), you've already been duped into missing what is actually going on.... even if you are technically right.
I swear 99% of boomers are simps. Back then if you played by the rules, you got a wife and kids. The wife might've detest you, but you got one. My boomer dad thinks my wife runs my life because my mom runs his. "Dad, Just tell her to fuck off when she's being crazy. She'll respect it more" "Oh no, I can't do that."
Arrogance and ignorance are the peanut butter and jelly of small minds.
Perhaps, but they're probably still better on bread.
Well it’s clear that Johnny has both
metaphorically and literally consumed a lot of peanut butter and jelly.
I let my arrogance think I came up the with “Insecure Egomaniac” deal after dealing with my old girlfriends dad. Man I'm ignorant
Kinda like our boy Jonny
OUAN, when can we get some more sweet, sweet truth about watches? I got a bonus coming I need to blow!
I think Mr. Farago is frying bigger fish right now!
Italian fish...
For clarification, I ain’t no fortunate son. I am a humble, hardscrabble hillbilly with highfalutin tastes.
On the other hand, my bête noire - commentator “Adam Diamond” - is a nepo baby par excellence! He has finally, on the cusp of turning 35 years old, left the family firm and gotten a real, honest job.
I hear he is scandalizing the clan with the operation of a NASCAR
It is exceedingly déclassé.
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate son, no no no...
sorry. I had to.
carry on.
The hillbilly bit died at W&L
I retain dual citizenship between my Appalachian aerie and Buckhood in Atlanta.
"If you started carrying two sets of ID since you were Born Again, you might be a redneck."
I am resolutely NOT a redneck, or a hick for that matter.
I am a hillbilly, which is a separate and distinct subculture.
Okay, so how does the social ladder work? Who's at the bottom?
Probably hillbillies - fewer opportunities for economic advancement.
But you don't dispute being portly.
I am a realist.
Had you pegged as one of those Peleton guys who don't eat carbs. Go figure.
Nah.
I have to give my detractors something on which to stand!
Amazing article on the fellow, Jon Staudacher, who made the motorcycle-powered "Staudacher" that apparently can best Jack's SR8:
https://www.secondwavemedia.com/baycity/features/jon-staudacher-feature.aspx
I just want to say, I have an extremely high tolerance for watching you repeatedly keelhaul a fool. It is endlessly entertaining and I hope it never ends. Maybe this will be the one time Jonny admits he’s wrong, as his argument isn’t even debatable.
I'd subscribe to an additional Substack that does exactly that.
Seconded! I’d sign up for that in a second.
jonnyisalwayswrong.substack.com!
IT COULD WORK!
Through poor willpower and a complete disregard of my character, fuck it we ball, I mean count me in.
Having been an avid reader of car magazines since the 70s I enjoy the mudslinging about these people I’m familiar with. It’s fun to hear the behind-the-scenes stuff. You must have some Jean Lindamood Jennings stories
I have a couple, yes!
I used to enjoy her writing in C&D when I was a teenager. I see that she’s still at it, but haven’t read anything recently.
I’m an accountant, which is because I’m not that good at math beyond adding.
But what I am good at is understanding “does this make sense?” It’s something I had pounded into my brain as a kid, and I now pound into my kids’ brains, as well as occasionally my employees’ or coworkers’.
Just take a step back and use your noodle. Does the answer make any sense? Does it make sense you calculated profit at 3x revenue? Does it make sense OPEX is 40x last month’s spend? Does your math homework asking how many days to travel from A to B make sense if the answer is 7,000?
And same here. If you know anything at all about cars, the answer to “does a street car make more downforce than a race car” is blatantly obvious, unless there’s a rule limiting downforce on the race car making the statistic irrelevant anyways.
Just step back and fucking THINK. Jesus.
But a GT3RS is basically a race car!
To an autowriter who can't really drive either.
I am hereby nominating "Just step back and fucking THINK." for the upcoming AC t-shirt shop.
I remember one time in high school our Physics "teacher" created a problem for us to solve that involved an Evel Knievel-style Grand Canyon jump. She gave us the ramp and the distance and asked us to calculate the motovelocity required for him to clear it. Which worked out to about 2000mph. Pro tip: laughing at your "teacher" in front of the class will cause your afternoon to get suddenly booked.
Good on you for doing the math -- and that's another example of "anyone who has ever jumped a motorcycle would immediately recognize the implausibility."
Another pro tip for dealing with physics teachers...don’t tell them it’s ok for you to put your feet on your desk just because his favorite student is doing it.
Careful, S2KChris, you're going to get flagged as a Covid skeptic...
I remember my calculus teacher consoled us after a pretty horrid exam that "most of you'll only ever use addition (bills) subtraction (wage-bills) and modulo division (for how many beers do I have money left)"
Most won't even understand that. They'll go on to post incessantly on social media "WHY DONT SCHOOLS TEACH PERSONAL FINANCE AND TAXES???"
You fucking idiots. They did. They fucking did. You morons.
By the time our final in calculus rolled around, all of us had been accepted to pretty much the colleges of our choices so it was sort of a formality. Our teacher, Mrs. Adelman, whose son Bruce was in our class, created a test with the same number of problems as students in the class and they were harder than any we had experienced during the course. Fair in that we'd covered the material but very hard. It was a take-home test handed out on a Friday with the rule that we weren't supposed to work together on it. Of course she knew we'd get together for a study session over the weekend, maybe two, so to make sure we knew the answers ourselves, when we got to class on Monday we had to draw a number out of a hat and go up to the board and solve whatever problem we drew. We spent all day on Saturday at one of the kids' houses going over every problem until everyone knew the solutions. Then we had Sunday to review and test ourselves. On Monday everyone did fine except for one of the kids had a classic brain freeze when he went up to the board. We were all kind of rooting him on because we'd seen him work out the problem during the study session but I don't think he ever got his brain in gear.
Thats why you're the accountant, bro! You get this stuff!
As an engineer I have spent far too much of my life involved with numbers. It's easy - sometimes - to make a stupid mistake when making a glib comment. But then you take a step back and look at it and wonder how you could have been so dumb.
But when you're doing something for work, or for research, or debate?
Then you sit back and run the numbers a couple of times using different methods as a check, because being wrong then costs a lot more.
The biggest problem I see is that politicians are all lawyers, and lawyers have shit all for an education. They don't study anything harder than basket weaving in most prelaw degree courses and they NEVER study math or science. People think that are congress critters and senators are smart people.
No, they're just charismatic. None of them can count past ten without taking off their shoes.
I am a lawyer with a chemistry degree. Most politicians don’t have the chops to practice law, which is why they go easy mode by engaging in politics.
There are lawyers and then there are lawyers with serious fluency in technical areas of law. Inside any big practice group at a law firm, there's always the one person that people call when things get complicated. Being that person is not a good way to make a lot of money, but it's a good way to be totally insulated from the usual annoyances and pressures of the law firm environment, because everyone knows you're indispensable.
There are fewer lawyers in the legislatures than ever before which is why they pass more laws which fail constitutional review and are subject to challenge, accidentally try to establish a state religion, or just take the the legal agenda of a PAC and put it in as a bill without hitting control F and changing the name of the state it was mutually introduced in to their state before submitting. Truly horrendous.
That I can believe
Fight fight FIGHT!!
I tried to listen to the congressional hearing where Tik Tok CEO Shou Zi Chew was raked over the coals by both parties but for different reasons. After the first 30 minutes I had to switch to music to calm myself down. The incompetence on display by our leadership was genuinely embarrassing. Listening to our elected representatives stumble and stutter reading questions prepared by their staffs; many of them had zero comprehension of what they were asking. How can we have a democracy while we only elect the worst and the dumbest?
Feature, not a bug; makes them more malleable by the people who pay for their elections.
The smartest in Congress (Thomas Massie comes to mind) share the unique distinction of pissing EVERYONE (the uniparty and its donors) off by actually thinking. Not great for longevity, as it makes you rich for a primary.
Massie's obviously very smart, but he also appears to be an arrogant a-hole.
As I approach middle age, I'm starting to think democracy is a giant failure. I'm not smart enough to offer remedies but something has to work better than this.
Democracy is ALWAYS a failure. That's why we don't live in one. We live in a Republic.
Absolutely true. But so far the best of the rest.
Always reminds me of the skit in Holy Grail. I am Arthur, King of the Britons.
King of the who?
King of the Briton’s.
Who are the Britons?
"I didn't know we had a king. I though we were an autonomous collective."
So good.
I’m being repressed, I’m being repressed.
Look at the violence inherent in the system.
"Democracy was a Greek drollery."
- King Charles I, "Cromwell."
I was using the general "democracy" to cover all of the western countries that pretend our votes count. I'm not well read up on Europe or even Canada to know what the heck they do different than us.
Doesn’t matter, it’s a clusterfuck wherever you go. Canada is being led by a drama teacher with great hair that has been caught on camera in blackface not once, not twice, but three separate times. The only thing he does well is apologize for the past sins of our white forebears. Backing him up as deputy prime minister is a frantically nodding yes-woman who doubles as finance minister with zero qualifications in that field but a masters in Slavonic studies. WTF
If you were elected that would be a good start to salving the problem.
There are serious advantages to Machiavellian rule.
Still prefer this republic. But.
It’s getting harder.
That's because we're going from a constitutional republic to an oligarchy. We may exist as a democracy in between that for a decade or two, hard to say. But every since the got rid of civics and stopped teaching kids how our government works, it's been all downhill.
And we can’t fix that at scale cause the teacher’s unions have that locked up, as noted in two separate WSJ articles this week. https://www.wsj.com/articles/students-flee-but-the-money-keeps-coming-hold-harmless-phantom-public-schools-proficiency-choice-66671227?st=xhv6yvow91qlqmv&reflink=article_imessage_share
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chicago-may-elect-a-sensible-mayor-paul-vallas-lori-lightfoot-crime-teacher-police-union-education-progressive-1b2fc515
I stopped using TikTok a while back but listening to that hearing for 5 minutes made me furious
There are, it seems, two types of people who go into politics, and they're both sociopaths.
The first is the aforementioned lawyers, who are trained to baffle 'em with bullshit and twist words until they're warped beyond recognition. The second is businessmen, who've gotten rich by compromising and negotiating and never holding the line on any values they might have.
re: lawyers: Richard Gere tap dancing in the courtroom in the Chicago movie 20 years ago popped into my head.
EDIT: At least I was entertained.
I thought of that exact same scene reading the comment.
I'll see your Gere and raise you a Pesci.
"...the two youts..."
The two hwhat?
I’m the only thing left that it’s ok to bash: a straight white male boomer with a law degree (who worked in financial services for almost 40 years).
Never a good idea to paint with such a broad brush. Not that I’m offended; I don’t give a shit.
I was aiming at the ones who run for office with the comment, I should have made that part clearer.
As for lawyers, the rule is: Have they ever tried a case before a jury? That's the litmus test.
Oh, and as mentioned above, I have 5 of them. Used to be 6, but one retired.
Understood. Trust me; plenty of my fellow JDs make it very hard to be proud of that accomplishment. Our society is so ridiculously litigious, ambulance chasers on TV…
Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe.
"What happens if you lose my case?"
"Then I get nothing."
"What happens if you win?"
"Then YOU get nothing."
I suppose it depends on what kind of lawyering that you need done. Not every legal task requires a skilled litigator and not every skilled litigator has the other skills needed to do all legal work. I suppose it might help to have someone who has defended their position in a court but is that really necessary for drawing up contracts, negotiating, or doing real estate and title law?
YES! Oh YES! NEVER EVER do contracts with a lawyer who hasn't defended said contracts in front of a jury. It makes a HELL of a difference. Learned this from a friend of mine who dealt with a lot of lawyers and a lot of court cases and as I started having to deal with more and more legal issues I learned it as well.
There's a lot more to law than logic and making an argument. There's the presentation and yes, the performance aspects as well. The courtroom is a theater and 'surprise' witnesses are always well coached and if at all possible actors to boot.
You need an attorney who is used to dealing with said shenanigans. You need an attorney with balls, experience, and foresight. You do not want someone who'll choke when opposing council pulls out something he's not allowed to, but the judge still allows it. (and yes, I've had this happen to me).
As an accountant, i interact with a lot of lawyers. Lots of them are very good but it’s always amusing to me when i get a new client whith a ridiculously complex operating agreement and the giy goes “my lawyers say this is the best” well, it is if you make 5mm a year but for you it’s extreme overkill
All white hetrosexual males of any age are fodder for the cannons. Boomers of any occupation just sit at the top of the list.
Yes we do! It’s fine.
As you can tell by my name; I have Irish heritage, too. Another reason for attacks! Those Irish stereotypes really piss me off! The next time I hear one I might put down my beer and punch someone.
Bro, you are wating the head on a beer to worry about that.
John Van Stry writes “None of them can count past ten without taking off their shoes.” Counterpoint: you should see how quickly we can calculate attorney’s fees, and with our shoes on.
When I was a kid, my dad traded his Opel Manta for an MGB, and had the MG's former owner, a guy with a Scottish brogue so thick you couldn't understand him, maintain it for him.
He sounded like a Glaswegian soccer hooligan until it was time to discuss the bill. Then it was all Received Pronunciation straight from the Court of St. James.
Like the scene in The Wire:
"Count wrong, they whip yo ass."
I used to do inventory for a defense contractor down in Mississippi. They'd have the plant workers do inventory. The plant workers in West Point Mississippi were not the most gifted men with numbers but they could put together and MRAP
Being book smart isn't necessarily required to build a tank.
Or drive one well!
It requires a lot of mechanical intelligence to work on an assembly line, book smarts not at all. Although I bet they just didn't give a fuck about inventory and did it half assed because the would rather build MRAPs.
Blame the idiots in finance for making those guys count.
It’s probably a hinderance. I’ve seen brilliant students who just didn’t “get it” when actually doing their job.
So they're like the opposite of Rain Man, who calculate big numbers in his head, but thought everything cost $100.
Or they're exactly like Ted Baxter, who was stumped by addition until somebody told him to put a dollar sign in front of the number.
So a lawyer is writing a will for an old lady, he completes it, and she pays him with a crisp new 100 dollar bill. As he sits at his desk rubbing the bill between his thumb and forefinger, the bill separates with a crisp shhusshh, and he realizes he has 2 $100 dollar bills in his hand. And now our lawyer friend has an ethical dilemma: does he keep the money for himself, or does he share it with his law partner?
Heard this one in law school:
A cruise ship full of lawyers sinks in shark infested waters; yet everyone manages to swim to shore. Why?
Professional courtesy.
My favorite story is from federal evidence, which was taught by the very distinguished dean of our law school. Older gent, bald, handsome, sophisticated, Saville row tailored three piece suit. He says, the first day of class: “I need all your help. You must keep my secret. Please don’t tell my mother I’m a lawyer; she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.”
My lobbyist friend always says that same line, except he inserts lobbyist for lawyer.
(Rimshot!)
He sounds like a great guy. What a fantastic way to break the ice and humanize himself.
I need to do some estate planning. I wish it was $200!
Well it *is* a very old joke.
Some of the smartest people I know are lawyers. Some of the dumbest people I know are also lawyers.
I have 5 lawyers. One of which is in the EU. I know all about that.
But the ones who run for office? They're not the brightest...
Most of them (McConnell, Biden etc) had incredibly mediocre and short legal careers or just never practiced at all. You don’t see, like, the appellate chair at a BigLaw firm (or a distinguished lawyer at a big firm in one of the smaller states like AL, WV) making a run for office.
I'm not an engineer; I earn my living with words, but I apply the same rule with editing: take the time to check. If I've got even the slightest question, I'll double-check the dictionary or the appropriate stylebook to make absolutely sure I'm correct before making an edit or suggestion. I live in fear of some Inigo Montoya telling me a word does not mean what I think it means what I think it does. As an earlier posted noted, I can in most cases avoid that by taking a moment to just step back and fucking think.
It's hard to edit your own material because you read what you wanted to say, not what you actually put down, but also not every editor is perfect. One of my editors, who shall remain unnamed, was a pretty good writer but he once used "nadir" when he meant something more like "apex" or "apogee".
Oh Yes! Thank you for putting into words what I know to be true. I live in fear of writing without an editor, but that’s the reality of my job.
If it was me, I'm certain I had my reasons!
However, I did snap at you once for writing "lede" in an email; I was so drunk I thought you had misspelled "lead"
It annoys me to spell lead as "led", as in "he lead the team", but I worry that today's readers will get confused if I don't. "Led" would have gotten me a red check mark if I used it in K-9.
It wasn't you. It was someone who might have been my son in law today if he hadn't made a barely suggestive joke to my daughter that she took way too seriously.
The Ivy League-educated divisional CEO I used to work for would flag “lead” annd have me change it to “led” every month when I’d write his executive summary for the board. I never knew if he was trying avoid appearing ignorant or actually was.
Oh. I know that fellow!
Scott Adams once wrote that "leader" derived from "lead," the material bullets were made from, because the guy in charge was the one everybody wanted to shoot.
Had a lawyer teach me statistics in community college. He understood the material and used it as a lawyer. I do wonder whether his being a part-time community college instructor was because he enjoyed to teaching or needed money to fund his law practice but he was very intelligent for a community college instructor and unfortunately this was the ony class where I failed to recieve an A.
Bullshit on that buddy. Lots of lawyers who get math. Try to litigate patent law, antitrust or anything using regression analysis. What you mean there are a lot of crap lawyers don't don't know anything including math. They don't do very well.
It's true that many lawyers worshipped the mighty GPA and weren't willing to risk getting less than an A in a math or science course but not quite all lawyers or all politicians are complete dolts. Some of the patent attorneys that I've met have engineering degrees. Rand Paul is still licensed to practice medicine as far as I know and Thomas Massie has a couple of engineering degrees from MIT. On the other hand, Debbie Stabenow seems like a nice lady and has enough ambition to be in the Senate but isn't much brighter than a 5W incandescent light bulb.
Every Patent Attorney must have a science or engineering degree. It is required to be registered with the USPTO.
Was that before or after they dropped the requirement to submit a working prototype with each application?
Working prototypes are well before my time, and I am a grey haired old man. Always been a requirement as far as I know. You can prove you have qualifing coursework equal to an engineering or science degree, but I don’t know of anyone who’s successfully gone that route.
Adrian Newey...what a legend. CTO at Red Bull, and 40 years ago we had him in Hilliard working for Truesports. "Give me Adrian Newey and he’ll design the best race car and we won’t need the best driver to win." - Bobby Rahal
I'm ashamed to admit I don't think nearly as hard as I used to. I remember being concerned about climate change when my son was born about 20 years ago and crunching a lot of numbers and concluding that the world's sea level would probably rise between 6 and 8 inches* during my son's lifetime, and therefore it's nothing to worry about. But the "experts" never shut up, even though all their doomsday predictions were wrong, and now it looks like we'll be eating bugs and riding public transit because of this grossly exaggerated existential danger to humanity.
*Your mother made me rise between 6 and 8 inches last night, Trebek!
That's good, because Bobby was far from the best driver! He was my dad's neighbor-ish in Muirfield, however.
Newey's book, How To Build A Car, is pretty good.
That reminds me of how Patrick Smith, author of "Ask The Pilot," described how when he flew short-haul regional jets, he'd keep a 3-ring binder with the words "How To Fly" written in crayon on the cover, in the cockpit.
These planes apparently had curtains instead of doors on the cockpit, so he'd get this binder out in view of the passengers if one of them was being a dick.
Sounds like I need to order that.
More stupid me: I have to carefully consider whether to spend $35 on a hardback book containing a brilliant man's lessons learned from his life's work - knowledge I will have access to for the rest of my life, and then my son will have it - but I don't hesitate to spend $200 on a fresh-fish dinner for four in a beach town that will be feces in a sewer system 36 hours later.
To be anal, the 150 mph Corvette was the 1985 with 230 hp. The Cross Fire was good for 140 mph. The ZR-1 top speed varied between 172-180 mph, which is a huge difference for no real mechanical changes.
Btw, I think I once said I don't give a damn, or something like that, about Lieberman. But, while I don't care about him personally, I also really enjoy your articles about him and the car mag industry in general.
"To be anal, the 150 mph Corvette was the 1985 with 230 hp."
I believe you're correct in terms of magazine tested performance; C/D got 142 from the Cross-Fire, but I seem to recall that GM claimed 150. Maybe they just drew a good one.
The Camaro didn't hit 150mph until the IROC-Z 350, right?
The 150 mph claim was for 1985. They handed out "Life Begins at 150 mph" t shirts and hats at the 1985 intro.
GM did do a lot of work updating the C4 from year to year. Oddly, when Porsche does that with the 911, it's a good thing. When GM does it, then it's an example of poor GM engineering.
And yes, I do own a 1990 ZR-1. It's funny, I'm kind of a Corvette guy, but I don't like the typical Corvette type folks. You don't see me at a Corvette club event or anything. Just sayin.
"The 150 mph claim was for 1985. They handed out "Life Begins at 150 mph" t shirts and hats at the 1985 intro."
I feel so stupid. I remember that as being for the Camaro, but OF COURSE they would have done it for the 'Vette first.
They did it again for the ZR-1 in 1990. Of course, then it was "Life Begins at 180".
The coolest vette’s have 2 cams ;)
It was definitely north of 140. Though, I gotta say... how the F long was the straight stretch or test track where they could get to north of even 130??? Crossfire feels so breathless above 120ish.
Is the variation between the 1990 car and the 91+? The C4 was refreshed for 91 and things were smoothed out a bit.
The 91 car had the smoother nose with flush turn signals. It's aero was improved a great deal which helped. L98 engine was carried over, but it is possible there was a slight gear or trans change. Can't remember.
I really like that design, the 91 refresh. If I was serious about getting a real sporty car, the end-of-life C4 would be near the top of my list.
I love the early rear end but the late front end. If I was keeping our '84, I'd throw a later nose on it.
LT1 T56 C4. Hard to go wrong with that one.
Actually, I don't think the aero changed much. It was more of a mid cycle cosmetic refresh. Top speed tests show no real changes.
I'd say the two best C4s, of the non-ZR1 variety were the 89 (6 speed, new rear suspension, digital dash, original (and best) C4 styling - best C4 sports car) or the 96 (dramatically more refined, OBD2, LT4, better materials - best C4 GT).
1989 was the first year for the 6sp manual and the last year for the disco dash. I've always wanted one, but I'm a short man with size 10 EEE feet and when I put the seat far enough forward to reach the pedals comfortably, I can hardly get out of the damn thing. It's pretty funny, actually.
I'm 6'4 and wear 13d's. The C4 is oddly the most comfortable tall man's Corvette.
Which is saying something. With a helmet, can still get a bit squeezy.
Yeah, there isn't a ton of room there. But a 911 or 928 of that vintage wasn't better. Actually worse. And year for year, the C4 will outrun them on the track.
The dashes are DEEP compared to what you'd expect. Doubly so having to climb over those stupid side sills.
The sills are all thanks to Lloyd Reuss. A year before production, he decided that the C4 needed to be a proper targa, not just a T Top as the engineers had designed it. That was an awful big piece of structure to lose. The engineers did what they could within time and budget constraints to make up for it, and those stupid high sills were part of that.
It's part of why the C4 feels so REAL RACE CAR to me, though.
The targa top or the flexy structure? :)
The targa top was likely the right choice. However, the timing of the change wasn't. Reuss is known as a car guy. You'd think he'd be engineer enough to understand the magnitude of his request.
The Greenwood brothers spent a lot of time on that structure to actually make it handle and feel good. I wish I could post pictures of what they actually came up with. I'd love to drive one some time. I've heard it referred to as the best handling car of the 90s. John Greenwood was the real deal.
Finally, the Corvette chassis, as designed was actually stiff for its time. It would have been a hell of a car if McLellan and crew were allowed to finish it as planned.
It was a GM ploy to make extra money selling replacements for cracked glass tops.
Willful ignorance lies at the root of many problems. Happy thoughts from JL and his ilk can't alter physics.
This recent book was well done and worth a read. I've recommended it to a few who think by just eating bugs and driving a Tesla, we'll live in peace and harmony with all the latest tech in the most modern of buildings while magic makes food appear and waste disappear.
https://vaclavsmil.com/2022/03/07/how-the-world-really-works/
I appreciate the heads-up on this book!
<WikiBot>
His wife Eva is a physician[4] and his son David is an organic synthetic chemist.
He lives in a house with unusually thick insulation, grows some of his own food, and eats meat roughly once a week.[10] He reads 60 to 110 non-technical books a year and keeps a list of all books he has read since 1969. He "does not intend to have a cell phone ever."[14]
Smil is known for being "intensely private", shunning the press while letting his books speak for themselves.[4] At the University of Manitoba, he only ever showed up at one faculty meeting (since the 1980s). The school accepted his reclusiveness so long as he kept teaching and publishing highly rated books.[4]
I love that whenever you shit on Lieberman, you make it a public post for his enjoyment.
I could put tomorrow's winning lottery numbers in the fourth paragraph and he'd be too stupid to read that far. I don't actually think he reads these!
If he did, he'd be here in the comments whining, as he is wont to do everywhere else.
But the rest of the Car Twitter crowd, along with his wife's, uh, associates are free to partake.
Seems like he does. Matt Farah said on a recent podcast (might have been a Patreon-only one) that Jonny sent him excerpts from your Valkyrie (sp?) piece.
That was a nice payoff to reading...my first thought from the title screenshot was "AT WHAT SPEED??"
Because you're not an idiot!
“…it’s not as obvious as the size difference between, say, Kerri Strug and “Lizzo”. And yet the actual difference is more than a gynmast-to-beast relationship…”
I wish I’d said that. And frankly, these little gems are worth the price of admission.
I recently saw a photo of “Lizzo”. As Benny Hill said, “Everyone has a right to be big, but she abuses the privilege.”
Yeah. I'm 250 pounds and I wouldn't wrestle her if I had ten grams of PCP in my system.
Touching on simpery (or how some guys have no standards at all), we live in an age where SSBBWs (for readers who don't know, Super Sized Big Beautiful Women, we're talking real heifers that put NFL offensive linemen to shame, considering that most most self-professed regular BBWs left beautiful and womanly in the rear view mirror a few pallets of Haagen Dazs ago) post personal ads about being "Pillow Princesses" (for readers who don't know, that's a woman that only wants oral from a guy with no reciprocation of any sort at all and certainly no PIV) and there will still be guys who simp for her.
'Imagine the smell.'
You were doing so well with acronym and phrase definition— then you stuck “PIV” in with no definition. (Pretty sure I figured it out— fornication. And yes, “stuck ‘PIV’ in” was a word choice done completely for the entertainment of the readers.)
Sometimes even Ronnie Schreiber is discreet.
Wrestle her, yikes! Seeing that photo was enough! More than enough.
Lizzo.
Dear GOD, what a pig.
Only tangentially related but my wife and I eagerly watched the Netflix PornHub documentary a couple weeks ago and we’re grossly (in both ways) disappointed to find out the star who get a large (heh) share of the screen time was a BBW model. Emphasis on the first B, sorely lacking in the second.
Had to look up BBW, strikes me as an oxymoron. But, if what I see on TV these days is any indication; I must be in the minority.
Jack would call it a flex. Popular entertainment is all a rainbow of fat and gay now except for the new marine recruit videos with all heterosexual whites to go die in ukraine
See my comment above. The term used to mean ladies like Lanie Kazan, what in Yiddish were called zaftig, which means juicy. A large woman who still has the shape of a woman. I suppose Rubenesque is close. Kazan is in her 80s now, but in 1970, when I was in 11th grade, Playboy did an 8 page spread of her. Magnificent tits that are burned into my memory. The kind with a straight line from her shoulders to her nipples. Something more or less SFW when she was 26: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/utEAAOSw5G1j5S63/s-l1600.jpg
I actually know what SWF means in this context. I remember from the last time I looked it up, I’m so proud of myself. (It used to mean single white female.)
The older I get the less a few extra pounds bother me on a woman. Not that anyone should give a damn about my opinion of the way they look. The important thing is being healthy. It’s very possible to be rather healthy with a few extra pounds. It’s impossible carrying around the extra load many are. Positive body image crap aside.
I carry a lot of extra pounds. This beast made me look Ethiopian.
Google “Gwen Adora” but make sure your safe search is on for your own sanity.
I think it’s in my best interests to pass on that.
Why? To the eagerly
Never watched something steamy with the wife and had it lead to your own activities?
But this documentary was more awkward and sad than “inspirational”.
I'd have to check with the wife but I don't think so. Before kids, we never needed to and after kids, we don't have the time!
I have it on good authority that the Connecticut housewives masturbate to shows like "Outlander" and "Sex/Life".
I’m from CT but my wife is from here (Chicagoland). I’ve gotten laid right after Outlander many many times.
Are you a tax accountant? Are you looking for a job?
Great synopsis for us common folk. Interwebs chock full of toxic morons who look up data and spew them out of context. If only there was some mechanism for accountability.
Just hit the YouTube "dislike" button...oh wait; that got canceled.
You're only allowed to dislike white supremacy. Everything else must be liked. How do you know if it's white supremacy? If you're allowed to dislike it.
Well, if I were Jonny, I could say that the Bentley Continental GTC consumes less fuel than a Miata.
Which is obviously true, if you drive the GTC at steady 60 mph and test the limits of the Miata at the backroad.
However, even though this is an obviously idiotic example, not many people realise that fuel consumption (or Miles-per-Gator or whatever you use over the pond) is something that can't really be explained in one number.
Here in mileage-conscious Europe, many people ask me "and what's the fuel consumption does it get" about whatever car I'm talking about, and they usually look kinda weird at me if I tell them something like "between 8 and 60 liters per 100 km" (which is between 30 and 4 miles per gibon), which is the case of current RS6. True, I don't know many people able to drive said RS6 in the way that gets you the 60 l/100 km number and not die very quickly, but it's possible.
Even more interesting is the effect of the speed – again, people are not very good with square stuff. If you tell them that most cars get the best consumption at 110 km/h (70 moths per hour or something) and that most non-Corvette-shaped cars get at least twice as much at 160 km/h (160 makaks per hour), they're quite surprised, because they usually never tried to reset average fuel consumption again and again to measure it in various driving situations and only focus on "the one number", which can, of course, differ vastly driver-to-driver and scenario-to-scenario.
And as to the CO2 emissions reduction and focus on cars – I don't want to get involved in a "is it worth it" war, because I'm actually not that sure, especially with CO2-reducing measures historically having the opposite effect (CAFE and now the European CO2 standards have both helped massive proliferation of SUVs), but I actually don't think there's some special focus on passenger cars.
It's just that the passenger cars are just about the only area where CO2 limits affect a consumer product so obviously and so directly AND it's a consumer product that has one of the highest, or maybe even THE highest emotional value for the consumer.
Your new fridge is probably using several times less electricity than the one from 30 years ago, and its design has been changed by environmental regulations even more than that of your car. Do you care? Will you spend time to find and restore the golden era proper freon-circulating, energy-draining fridge? You might, and I bet there are such people, but it's much less probably than someone moaning about his new 7 series being a hybrid with 4-cylinder instead of a V8 that it used to be.
You raise a bunch of salient points; people are better at estimating what they care about, for sure.
And while I don't know too many vintage fridge enthusiasts, I've certainly seen this with things like drill presses.
I know a guy who restores and collects vintage Berkel meat slicers. He has around fourty. And I know for a fact that vintage fridge enthusiasts exist, I've read something about them somewhere.
But still, 99.9% of people doesn't give a shit about their fridge and most probably don't remember the brand. You don't see them bragging about the power of the compressor or number of shelves.
With cars? Even people who don't know shit about cars can be heard bragging about their 3.0 V6 and 300 horsepower and some load of nonsense they think about their car...
I don't think it's BAD that cars are emotionally significant to people. They're the modern analog to animals, and people used to get pretty sentimental about their horses, even ones used commercially, hence the phrase "Busman's holiday"
I think attaching emotional significance to cars is waning. Lots of people see them as mere appliances. Unfortunately.
Don't know about America, it might be true over there, but I don't see it here. Even EVs don't change that, maybe even on the contrary – people tend to love their Teslas and shit.
When the Tesla Model S first came out, the Detroit concours had a class of EVs and I was talking to a woman about their Tesla and I'd have to characterize her reaction to the car as aroused.
Of course it isn't! It's totally natural, as cars are a reflection of our personality and combination of art and engineering in a unique way.
I wasn't saying it as a bad thing, just a fact – that people don't buy cars rationally, even if they think they do, and often they buy cars for their perceived qualities, not real ones.
I'll admit to laughing out loud at miles per gibbon. Well played.
And people that don't like automatic 3-cylinder cars DO, in my experience, care more about new refrigerators' compressors dying prematurely. It saves on electricity, but surely that doesn't help the environment by causing you to purchase a new refrigerator every 5~10 years now. And have you SEEN the size of American refrigerators? You could put an entire... uh... Czechrepublicanian thing in there. Maybe you have a nice Czechian goat species? You could fit an entire goat in there.
The new appliances all suck. And by new, I mean anything made in the last 20 something years.
Can you say “stupid regulations”?
Simian power sources, you say?
https://www.theonion.com/super-monkey-collider-loses-funding-1819564070
We don't have that much goats. Also, I have seen the American fridges (they even sell them here), but you probably never seen a goat. I could fit, like, three to four goats in each of my refrigerators, if I chope them up right.
American fridge is more like... a huge pig? A deer?
As to the replacements, my last fridge has compressor warranty for, like, 14 years?
Ha! Cutting them up is cheating. I mean pick up a goat, stuff it in the fridge, close the door. Mine can certainly not hold more than one intact Nubian goat.
I can also fit one goat per fridge.
But then it is very much possible that you Americans have BIGGER GOATS.
In real (rural) America they sell freezers based on deer capacity, usually somewhere between 1 and 4.
This subthread would be much funnier if you swapped 'goats' with 'journalists' or 'politicians'.
I've never seen a European goat.
I was walking on a woods trail near here and met a couple who were walking two dogs and two goats. The goats had better trail manners than the dogs.
Whether Johnny is right or wrong doesn’t explain why he’s seemingly such a miserable prick about everything.
Also, if an objective with your substack is to shamelessly convince someone like me to buy a Radical well then I’m here to tell you it’s working.
Imagine marrying a woman who looks like F. Murray Abraham and has had so many abortions during sex work that your poor weak fetus of a son has to demonstrate world champion mountain climbing skills just to stay attached to the uterine wall.
I'm not saying that about Jonny, which would be really unpleasant. But I'm sure there's another reason he's angry all the time.
Like throwing a hot dog down a hallway...
I hear that a lot in the manosphere, that a woman who has been "run through" is necessarily going to have a stretched out vag from all that D. I wonder if those guys have ever seen a baby's head crowning. Even a guy with a beer can isn't going to stretch it that far. In any case, I'm sure plenty of guys think one that isn't tight is better than none at all.
I was thinking metaphorically.
And I've seen video of a human birth. Hands down the most awful, disgusting thing I've ever watched. It's been 34 years and I haven't touched apple butter since.
It's so much worse in person.
'Untimely ripped' is paradoxicially easier on the eyes.
Yeah but did they show the placenta passing?
That's a treat.
It was a while before I could eat Italian food again.
Animal biology is quite nasty.
And wet.
Feature, not bug, perhaps. His following implies they either actually like him or the drama.
Sometimes when you find yourself debating the numbers, trying to understand them (or not), you've already been duped into missing what is actually going on.... even if you are technically right.
This was one of the enlightening things I picked up from Scott Adams as I hadn't heard of "talking past the sale" until him for whatever reason.
Scott is so right about so many things...
...and SUCH A SIIIMMMP.
I swear 99% of boomers are simps. Back then if you played by the rules, you got a wife and kids. The wife might've detest you, but you got one. My boomer dad thinks my wife runs my life because my mom runs his. "Dad, Just tell her to fuck off when she's being crazy. She'll respect it more" "Oh no, I can't do that."
Simping and genuine civilization go hand in hand -- what's more, they are NECESSARY for each other.
Lancelot? Super simp.
Every leading man for centuries in fiction and film, with the possible exception of Mr. Darcy, Heathcliff, and Rhett Butler? High simp quotient.
They literally re-shot the ending of "Pretty Woman" so that the audience would be satisfied by a billionaire simping over a hooker.
Simping works in all situations but 80/20 world, which is sadly where we are now.
In the end, you get a better result being a woman-repelling asshole than a simp. At least with the former, you keep your dignity.
And besides, isn't Love the game where the only way to win is to not play?
The ideal situation is to simp for someone who is truly worthy of it, I suppose.
Mutual respect and trust work.
Really.
Finding a woman that doesn’t play games is big, too.
Nice to be part of the 1%.
I knew the 1% would all be avoidable contact readers
Something something rhetoric vs dialect.