CrowTankieRobot [he/him]

IIRC, there were a couple additional issues with the Pinto. There was a problem with the filler tube that connected to the fuel tank (I think it was welded to the body or something), and this could cause a rupture and subsequent conflagration. The fuel tank was much too close to the bumper, and there wasn’t enough of a buffer zone around it; there were lots of structural items nearby that could cause punctures. Ford actually had the option to license a self-sealing “fuel bladder”, a design that came from the aviation industry, but the bean counters nixed that. The doors tended to bind and jam in a collision, trapping occupants in a burning vehicle. And finally, '70s-era Ford was really making some lousy cars, especially small ones. The Pinto is yet another case of “the hard way is the easiest to learn”. (I think there was an episode of Engineering Disasters that covered the Pinto fiasco in great detail).

The diagram you posted below shows what a defective design it really was. It’s almost as if they shoehorned in the fuel tank wherever they could, like it was an afterthought.

At least one of the charter schools in one of the smaller MN cities had to build an apartment complex next door to attract teachers. AFAIK, the apartments are reserved just for teachers and their immediate families. The charter school salary and benefits are crappy enough that without cheap (and good) housing, no one wants to move there to have a teaching career. I found out recently that this strategy has been given the rather euphemistic name “workforce housing”. IOW, they have to build housing as a sort of charity project.

Can’t wait for this article to hit the chud sites accompanied by the inevitable comments about “eating the bugs” and “living in the pod” for the millionth time.

Another example of this, maybe less important but still notable, is the defiance of many states over Federal scheduling of cannabis (a C-I drug, therefore “totally illegal”). While the FDA claims jurisdiction over all drugs, probably using the Interstate Commerce Clause (be advised, IANAL), the states have looked at cannabis as a states rights issue. Right now, I think they are avoiding really big legal trouble by using a few loopholes (e.g. MN is deriving its delta-9-THC and other cannabis products from industrial hemp, a fairly inefficient process). Outside of Native American reservations, I’m not sure that any state is actually selling anything like cannabis flower. But it is real defiance on the part of many states, since delta-9-THC and other cannabinoids are the substances which are actually scheduled and regulated by the FDA, and they have really pissed off the Feds with their actions. I don’t think you would have seen this at an earlier time in US history, and it’s an interesting development.

Then there’s the Covid response, or lack of it, mostly thanks to the chuds turning it into another front in the culture war. That’s also one for the history books.

Americans really love their signifiers of negative freedom (“freedom from”) and negative identity, and they turn those into religions just as much as any religion they might actually practice. So the tradcath thing is partly a silly aesthetic pose (e.g. Dasha from Red Scare), but it also usually serves an actual need, even if it’s something really neurotic. As the evangelical Protestants have become so perniciously anti-intellectual and backward, the tradcath option looks more appealing to those who value education and at least a minimal amount of intellectual content to their spirituality. It also has a big performative aspect (lots of costume dress-up for the clergy, Latin Mass zealotry, etc.) that allows one to differentiate from the evangelicals (negative identity). My guess is that’s why you see so many high-profile converts lately among the power elite.

Oh, yeah, back before YouTube or even the commercial internet, there were various crazy political groups that would send their videos to cable-access stations around the country. You would sometimes see their stuff played on late-night cable TV. I vaguely remember one that had to do with old rail yards being converted into FEMA detention camps or something. There was even an X-Files episode or two that riffed off of this stuff…it had quite an impact on '90s culture. The “FEMA camp” nonsense was even featured on Jesse Ventura’s ridiculous TV show.

Finally…an example of “jury nullification” for the left. Every other time I’ve heard that term, it’s always been from a MAGA chud. Too bad the incident (and court case) happened in the UK, though, not here.

So many cultural minefields to cross…anyone remember the George HW Bush incident with the grocery scanner? That was blamed in part for his loss to Clinton.

That’s rather ironic, since the right-wing economists at Stanford’s Hoover Institution would normally consider anathema any mention of “national industrial policy”, even if it was dressed up with all sorts of niceties about “public-private partnerships” and similar nonsense. The careers of so many there (Sowell, etc.) are predicated on a near-religious belief in the old Thatcherism “there is no such thing as society”. Similarly, for Hooverites, “there is no such thing as the public sector”, or at least there ought not to be.

Dr, Harris may live inside ivory towers and ivy-covered walls, but he apparently doesn’t understand that he’s a lot closer to the old plantation than he realizes. Something tells me that his heterodox “progressive market theory” (or whatever he would call it) is tolerated more because of his Third World background than for any other reason.

Don’t think so. Are you thinking of Dasha Nekrasova? She’s one half of the Red Scare podcast. They were somehow affiliated with Thiel (I remember there was something in the press about that).

And before this stunt, he was re-tweeting (or should I say, “re-Xitting”) Pepe frog Frenworld memes. He literally reposted plagiarized Frenworld content, just like an incel basement dweller.

What a joke of an article. These “think” tank morons just phone it in, every damn time. FEE has to be among the very worst, with seemingly no standards for what kind of garbage gets posted on their site. I recall that another FEE “writer” was featured on a Chapo episode some time ago, and their prose read exactly like this Jon Miltimore idiot. I wish I could remember more details–but I do know that the individual in question was a college dropout who had basically bounced around from marginal job to marginal job and somehow ended up at FEE. That seems to be how they find these people–I’m guessing that the pay is lousy and they prey on not-too-bright recent college grads or dropouts who have run out of options. I also noticed that Miltimore is affiliated with “Intellectual Takeout”, which is a really lame project run out of the Center for the American Experiment, a regional right-wing “think” tank in MN. “Takeout” exists basically to provide prefabbed term papers with right-wing themes which lazy students can copy in order to “pwn” their supposedly Marxist professors. However, colleges now use sophisticated anti-cheating software, and this is a really great way to get blackballed from higher ed by being expelled for plagiarism.

The MRA/PUA/incel Vice President, endorsed by Roosh V, ladies and gentlemen.

Actually, if memory serves, it was our side that ended up using the tactical nukes. I think the wargame scenario was that the chuds commandeered a tank battalion and were terrorizing the cities with large artillery fire. Enhanced radiation weapons (neutron bombs) were used to neutralize the threat. It turns out that this is one of the only practical ways to stop a mass armored attack.

As I recall, a couple of people from the Pentagon or other military agency wargamed a full-on (likely worst-case) Civil War 2.0, and the upshot was that “[tactical nukes] were used early and often”. The outcome would be grim, to say the least.

Fascism that’s so comfy…