solowingpixy
the resident car guy
No bio...
User ID: 410
As a Southerner who lives in Dixie Alley it was hard not to be brought back to 4/27/11 by the news coverage.
It's different when it's your family and your town where they're spray-painting X's on houses. I was in Tuscaloosa that evening, a student delivering pizza, and the level of destruction in the impacted areas (20% of the city, but more like 50% of my store's delivery area) and suffering inflicted upon victims was beyond description. Funny enough I'd spent much of the day worried about my family in north Alabama because they'd been hit earlier.
As you say, life is fragile, fate is capricious, and weather awareness only goes so far. To their credit the meteorologists got it right that day and managed to convey "This is going to be bad." in a way that penetrated typical Southern skepticism about storm warnings. Still, when you're talking about EF-4s and EF-5s there comes a point that not much short of a bunker is going to save you.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
11d ago
Broadly, it's bad fiscal policy in a way that fiscal policy has been bad in an escalating fashion for the last 10-25 years (Any self-described Republican fiscal hawks need to account for Hastert before we get to Ryan/McCarthy/Johnson.).
What I find interesting in the argument over Medicaid cuts is the fact that Medicaid spending somehow increased by 40% in the last five years? How?! I could see 25% given inflation, and a temporary covid bump makes sense, but we've allegedly had a strong working-class labor market for years.
Is a healthcare system that's rapidly approaching 20% of GDP even reformable?
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
6d ago
I think beards have become somewhat obesity/soy coded at this point thanks to too many out of shape guys using them to cover up a poor/mediocre jawline. On that note it works for JD Vance and very much does not for Ted Cruz (and it probably wouldn't even if Ted Cruz could grow one; he just needs to embrace his inner Gen Xer and stick with a goatee. See Chip Roy.).
There is a generational bit to it though. I've gone with a beard and just a moustache (the latter briefly because I thought it was hilarious how much I looked like a carbon-copy of my maternal grandfather) and the female millennial bartender was very much pro beard (and is dating a bearded lefty soylennial) while the zoomer barbacks (most of whom can't grow either) complemented the moustache.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
9d ago
I'm not sure what the alternative even is here, we clearly don't have an established alternative.
The alternative is exceedingly simple. "African-American" is commonly understood to mean American Descendants of Slavery, not Elon Musk. If the majority of your ancestors weren't enslaved Americans, you're not "African-American" and thus not entitled to any of the affirmative action schemes intended to benefit that group. You're just "African", and that's how it will be until race/ethnicity-based affirmative action schemes are totally abolished.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
6d ago
The mustache/goatee combo might be slightly right-coded because it’s popular with certain types of boomers and early Xers, but even that’s a weak indicator.
In my experience goatees are incredibly Trump-coded, but that's mostly because they seem to be almost universal among (mostly) high-school educated Gen Xers and the sort of Millennials (almost always blue collar) that wear them. On that note the only politician I can think of off the top of my head with a goatee is Chip Roy.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
5d ago
Yeah, I forgot about Fetterman. My Fox News watching boss (a normie not-online Gen X Trump voter with, yes, a goatee) mentioned offhand that he kind of likes the guy since he had his stroke.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
26d ago
Mike Johnson was going after gamers because he's too spineless to admit that elderly dementia patients are what's actually eating up Medicaid's budget. Arguments about single mothers or NEET gamers are a distraction from the fact that the welfare state mostly exists to subsidize the old and that nobody really wants to talk about cutting old people welfare.
As for the social conservatives, I think the goalposts have moved past abortion (which was mostly made obsolete by Plan B being made available OTC) once many of the dare I say Catholics among them realized to their horror that devotion to the awfully Protestant and capitalist sounding "success sequence" doesn't so much lead to abortions as a lack of fertility itself. See also: The Conservative Case for Teen Pregnancy.
The relatively secular far right may differ with the relatively Catholic social conservatives (though Mike Johnson is an Evangelical, which itself makes for a fun divide among both the secular and religious conservatives on the Israel Question) on the Single Mother Question, but nowhere near as bitterly as they differ over the Immigration Question (The secular far right see social conservatives and especially Catholic social conservatives as being unreliable on the Immigration Question, in alliance with the capitalists who are otherwise happy to crush social conservatives' fruitful multiplication with careerism and contraceptives.).
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
9d ago
We can expect it when it comes to the social justice issue that Americans are beaten over the head with more or less continuously. Being allegedly so "out of the loop" that you don't understand what "black American" is typically understood to mean should be an automatic disqualifier for college admission.
Torturing definitions for "face value" to pursue personal gain is undesirable behavior, as is the widespread acceptance of this in elite institutions because they'd rather dole out patronage to like-minded individuals even if it makes a mockery of the patronage's alleged purpose. Yes, "African-American" is an arbitrary definition if one is sufficiently pedantic, but a naturalized citizen born in Africa and a black American from Alabama are obviously not the same thing. Eric Adams is a son of black Americans from Alabama. Ask a high-school educated adult from Mississippi which one is "African American". That's the intuitive interpretation.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
1mo ago
On the other hand, I can also imagine him a sage of stoicism, someone who has so thoroughly embraced minimalism and detachment that he has transcended the weight of social expectations entirely.
I worked with a guy like that at a locally owned version of doordash in a college town, one of many characters we employed (Our long-term staff from ownership down were ground zero of the male loneliness/failure to launch epidemic, referred to as "the lost boys" by one of the more clever among us or "the expendables" by the owner.). I don't know his specific story, but he's in his early 40s, single, lives with roommates, etc. such that he has insanely low overhead. He doesn't really drink/go to bars, doesn't do drugs other than weed I guess, and is into Marvel and videogames and that's it. If his car craps out there's always another relative with a cheap Toyota, but otherwise he's self-sufficient. Nice guy and perfectly competent, but infuriatingly lazy, truly dedicated to working as little as possible with the bare minimum of hassle necessary to meet his expenses. We jokingly refer to him as something of a monk, in contrast to the suckers who grind and spend insane amounts of money on bar tabs for the illusion that they might gat laid, or at least have a pretty bartender remember their name.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
8d ago
Mania by Lionel Shriver. Her novels are fun in a way that's hard to describe.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
7d ago
As someone who was in Tuscaloosa when we were hit earlier that year I chalk the local nonchalance up to a few things. Aside from the over-prevalence of false alarms it's hard to really comprehend what "this happens" means unless it happens to you. I shrugged it off as a joke even as I was dodging an EF-4 in my car delivering pizzas until I was rummaging around bombed out parts of town with my friend whose survival had suddenly been in doubt looking for his friends because communications were pretty much totally gone. I learned something about myself that week: It's easy enough for me to be personally brave or at least unconcerned with my safety enough to do something stupid like volunteer to take a delivery knowing full and well that there was a tornado on the ground. Holding it together in the face of people who'd lost something to everything and who'd only been guilty of being less fortunate than I was in the space of a few minutes was not so easy. The sense of suffering and apocalypse was overwhelming and not something I hope to witness again.
People were understandably more obedient toward the weather people for some years after (and to the meteorologists' credit they got it right on 4/27/11) but over time I guess you're going to be a worry-wart or not. Maybe my take isn't the healthiest, but it's this: If it's an EF-3 or less you're unlikely to get hit in the first place and probably will survive even if your house gets trashed. If it's an EF-4/5 after having seen brick apartment buildings and schools flattened I feel like there's not much point in worrying because unless you've got a bunker to climb into whether or not you survive is more a question of fate than weather awareness.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
7d ago
Heh, it's been kind of entertaining watching Shriver wander from The Guardian to The Spectator over the last decade, her boomer 2nd wave feminist liberalism (and I don't mean that as an insult) not sufficiently hip for the contemporary left and she too stubborn to get with the times.
I suppose what makes her fun to read is her uncompromisingly brutal honesty (Critics would just call her uncompromisingly brutal, but hey, some people have a taste for bitter.) combined with a scalpel-like vocabulary. It doesn't matter if the story is especially great (some are; some aren't) when the telling is that fun to read. That several of her novels draw from personal disquiet only add to the charm. I only later learned that So Much for That (an over-the-top takedown of American healthcare) was actually based on a close friend's death from mesothelioma.
To be frank she reminds me so much of my favorite English teacher from high school (a unique, highly intelligent, and, yes, profoundly bitter person; we were kindred spirits in that regard) that I sent her my copy of We Need to Talk About Kevin after reading it.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
1mo ago
Work that should and could be done in weeks takes months
Coming from a history of working for small businesses to my first "real" salaried job at a large company I'm presently going crazy dealing with this. I'm current in "training" three weeks into the job and I've done next to nothing (My signature accomplishment so far has been performing a BIOS update on a coworker's laptop which just happened to fix his docking problem, sparing him a potentially weeks-long computer outage.). IT is either snowed over with work, incompetent, or just not a priority because their onboarding program doesn't exist and response time on tickets is glacial and requires escalating up the chain to get even basic shit done.
I was issued a company laptop without being told the username and password to log into it (had to call IT for that). The instructions for setting up the company phone didn't totally work and I had to figure it out myself (I'm a talented or at least "willing to Google it and try" or "capable of installing and using an easy Linux distro" user at best. I'm a car guy, not a computer guy.). It took me three weeks, multiple tickets, and multiple conversations with bosses to get the login to the dispatch software I'm supposed to use. I still don't have a login to the company intranet (Allegedly HR never created the account on their end.) and my email account is getting the wrong terminal's mail.
Call me crazy, but this is stuff that should've been done on day one, or week one at most. I should've been issued my devices with a piece of paper that had the relevant login credentials included and accounts already set up. My previous employer was a bunch of clowns that had their company phones shut off for a week due to non-payment and even they were capable of this. I'm assured that this is perfectly normal for the company, it's frustrating but par for the course, I'm not expected to actually contribute for a few months, and so on but I can't shake the fear that I'm totally wasting time in which I should be learning how to do my job and thus am going to wind up being thrown into the fire with little other than knowing the right people to call for help (because I've really spent most of my time hobnobbing and doing my best to present myself as eager to learn and do in lieu of actually doing anything) while I learn things on my own the hard way, under fire with expectations once the honeymoon period wears off.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
23d ago
It blows me away that despite a close connection to Russia, and increasingly China, they had such terrible IADS.
I would be careful not to overrate these connections. China and Russia have traditionally been rule followers when it comes to arms exports to Iran, which is to say that they complied with sanctions. China hasn't sold Iran any major systems and Russia only sold Iran four batteries of S-300s. Likewise, there's been much talk of Su-35 fighters being purchased, but no evidence of their deployment.
For comparison, Ukraine is a bit over a third of the size of Iran and reportedly had 100 S-300 batteries at the start of hostilities in 2022, enough to absorb the initial Russian strike and stay in the fight long enough for western-supplied systems like the Patriot to start picking up the slack.
Likewise, while we know that Iran supplied Russia with Shaheed drones (which Russia now produces and develops as the "Geranium"), for all the talk of Iran supplying Russia with short-range ballistic missiles, I've yet to see any evidence of them actually being deployed (i.e. actually having been shot at Ukraine or having been blown up by Ukrainians), unlike certain North Korean artillery pieces (e.g. the Koksan 170mm SPG).
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
25d ago
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
21d ago
In my experience (southeastern US) it depends on the trade. Plumbers and HVAC guys tend to run in vans while construction guys tend to run pickups.
During my brief membership in the white pickup mafia (I was a service/install technician for draft beer systems.) I drove a quad cab Chevy Colorado with a bed cover. Most of what I did could be accomplished with a van, but I occasionally hauled large refrigeration units (glycol chillers) that wouldn't easily fit in one. It was also nice to carry dirty/smelly equipment in the bed instead of the cab.
I'm not a truck guy, but I was honestly impressed with that Colorado (aside from. It was faster than it needed to be (300HP V6), nice for a base-trim vehicle (power windows/locks, excellent AC and stereo), and got decent fuel economy (21 MPG mixed and 24-27 MPG highway) while being easy enough to park (Backup camera is a lifesaver here.).
IMO the census definition should be made more specific to include ADOS and ADOS alone, but "Obama, not Mamdani or Musk" is close enough.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
12d ago
Wash it? Pretty much never. It's a light color that doesn't show dirt much, the paint job is roasted, and there's a bit of body damage so washing it doesn't really make it look much better. I keep the interior reasonably clean, though, and my tools are organized in the trunk.
I find anything to do with cleaning cars to be a chore, but worth it when I have a car where the effort actually pays off.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
15d ago
It doesn't, but it (in theory, at least) absolves the driver from being responsible for checking the order for accuracy (Many restaurants find drivers checking the orders to be annoying, and that's before the driver starts asking for all the sauces/dips that get left out.) while having the happy side effect of keeping their grubby little hands away from the fries.
Like no-contact deliveries, it was a covid-ism that stuck around.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
26d ago
As evidence that your outgroup is acting in bad faith, you bring up legislation from 40 years ago. 2/3rds of those voters are probably dead
40 years isn't that long in the scheme of politics. It's merely long enough for Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Mitch McConnell to have voted for the 1986 amnesty earlier in their careers. Three of the four were either President or their respective party's leader in the Senate six months ago and nothing in the 40 years that followed Simpson-Mazzoli suggests that any of those had an ideological change of heart.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
1mo ago
The race-based charts just line up in the traditional poverty order. I dunno if there was ever any possibility of it being otherwise.
Yeah, Hale County Alabama having a working-age disability rate of 25% (It looks like that's dropped to 20% since that article was written.) sounds scandalous until you consider that it's mostly a dying rural area, the sort of place that doesn't even have a Walmart to be a greeter at. Especially in the crappy job market of the early 2010s, a fifty-something country bumpkin with no education and occupational experience limited to blue collar work that they're aged or injured out of is pretty close to unemployable anywhere within a reasonable commute of the area. Tuscaloosa is 30-60 minutes north depending on which side of the county you're in, and that's pretty much it. Good luck competing with a bunch of underemployed college graduates!
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
1mo ago
IMO it's the confluence of several things:
For one, the pre-2010s Democratic Party were far more beholden to private sector organized labor and high school educated voters in general, and that group tends to be skeptical of immigration be it for cultural or economic reasons. For all his Millennial fans, Obama won in '08 because high school educated white Midwesterners (He won Indiana!) liked him. Since then, thanks to Millennials being the most educated generation in history, the college educated (who tend to be pro-immigration) are far more powerful in intra-Democratic party politics than was the case in the 90s and 2000s. The pro-immigration lobby has also arguably changed from mostly being a pro-business project (hence Bernie's quip about open borders being a Koch brothers policy, which is literally true if one reads the 1980 Libertarian Party platform) to being a project spearheaded by educated immigrants and second-generation children of immigrants themselves.
Relatedly, the fusionists (a bunch of highly educated/cosmopolitan northeasterners along with the pro-business lobby) lost control of the GOP to the populists (Trump has personality, yes, but his platform is largely cribbed from Pat Buchanan minus the hoe scaring social conservatism, nominating ACB aside.) representing the high school educated. The GOP aren't so much the party of big business at this point (Nationally, anyway; this is less the case at the state level.) as small/medium business owners, whose interests concerning immigration are more mixed (Some use illegal labor, yes, but others are irritated with having to compete with illegal labor. See also: free trade.).
IMO an underrated cause for polarization on both sides is internet media making the issue more visible and mobilization easier. It's true, yes, that post-2000 immigration has spread far beyond the traditional locales of border states and major coastal cities, but there's also the media factor. On one hand, we're seeing things from the right like truckers using social media to lobby for English proficiency requirements and crackdowns on non-domiciled CDLs on the back of several high profile fatal accidents involving immigrant truck drivers (I have no idea if anyone's actually quantified whether or not foreign drivers who can't speak/read English crash more.). On the other, enforcement of immigration laws has never been overly pleasant, but it's never been easier to capture the anguish of the unfortunate migrant being deported, akin to viral incidents of police brutality in general.
Finally, there's the obvious answer that immigration has become more contentious for the simple reason that the foreign born population is at or near historic highs. The last time we were where we are now in that regard we got the first red scare and the height of the second Klan.
solowingpixy
the resident car guy
1mo ago
You are no one's outgroup and everyone's far-group. You might as well be living in a different country. I used to think that I'd just learned some social skills and had the right attitude of "I can't lose friends over politics, because my views are too weird and I will have no friends."
Not OP, but one of my favorite party tricks is to critique Ronald Reagan from the right by taking the left's criticism of him as accurate (Tell a Boomer that Reagan was a continuation of Carter with a more optimistic demeanor and remind the social conservatives that he legalized abortion and no-fault divorce as Governor of California along with screwing the pro-lifers by nominating O'Connor to the SCOTUS. Heads will explode.). Really though, while my beliefs best map at whatever JD Vance is stabbing at (I'm not sure he even knows at this point.), I'm not overly ideologically certain compared to my youth spent as a firm member of the Ron Paul camp. I can be polite, though, and as long as their arguments are well-reasoned instead of being cable-news tier crap I'm willing to listen to and respect anyone.
As for my parents, they divorced long ago but they're both shrieking harpies when it comes to politics. Mother has been a Hillary Clinton Democrat of the worst sort as long as I can recall while Dad went from caring little about politics to being a Catturd following Trumper who worships Elon Musk. I just don't talk politics with either of them.
It's also worth noting that the gig economy was very much in its infancy at the time of this article's publication in 2013. Commuting 30-60 minutes to Tuscaloosa (The only city within an hour of Hale County, which itself is so rural that it doesn't have a Walmart or pizza delivery.) to drive for Uber or Doordash is a superior alternative to SSDI, but Uber didn't operate in Tuscaloosa until 2016 and Doordash didn't get into gear until a few years after that.
Relating to your point about wages, the labor market being much tighter than it was in 2013 means that managers hiring for the sort of light retail job suited for a lamed blue collar worker have much less room to be picky.
Thanks to social sorting by occupation/income/class/education I'm not sure that HBD is that obvious to your average layman. The kind of black person that hangs out in lefty college educated millennial circles is not the sort that drives an Altima with a fake paper tag. If anything, your average college educated white millennial might be more likely to know/be related to some embarrassingly white trash types than they would the average ghetto-dweller. Pro football players are supermajority black, but high school football players and more broadly football fans more closely reflect the demographics of the sort of places that are into it.
To give a Trump-coded example I work for a trucking company in the deep south whose employees are almost entirely black and white, and of the pre Ellis Island variety at that. Your HBD guy would argue that our black employees are in fact an above-average sample of the black population of AL/MS/GA while the whites we have mostly aren't (More accurately, there's an age gap. Our white employees are mostly older/from a time where college education wasn't that common and trucking was more widely considered a good job. Our average office guy was a trucker for a decade or few before they switched to the office.) but IRL it looks like a place where "90s colorblindness" (aka. the normie Trump voter position) is accurate. The black and white men (and it's all men) I work with are largely the same: high school educated/some college at most, very Southern/rural-coded, married or divorced with children (Educated incels would rage at the fact that fatass truckers can get laid and they can't.), of average intelligence, and somewhere between fat and fat as hell for the most part. The drivers (and frankly a lot of the office guys; I was hired into the office with no trucking experience based in part on the expectation that as a college educated white guy I'd have superior computer skills) might not be the brightest guys, but we pay well above-average for trucking so we get the kind who are experienced and by and large have their shit together (especially the owner/operators).
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