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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: November 30th, 2023

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  • The wild part is, the stepvans have wayy more visibility than a modern car. Like you can actually see your bumper and what it might run into. Taking time to learn the ends of your vehicle is important, but when you can’t see shit anyway, what’s the point?

    I understand, crumple zones and shit require bigger a-frames, but I’d rather be surrounded by more competent drivers than crumple zones.

    I recall hearing about some guy who was pushing for graded licenses and roads, and if you didn’t qualify as skilled for that road, you couldn’t drive there. It wasn’t a simple ‘this is harder, this is easier’, either. Tight-in low-speed city roads were a certain classification. Highways were another, twisties were another, and so on.

    I fervently wish that’d taken hold, along with a vehicle classification to match. Mopeds and scooters in the city? Easy! Stepvan in the city? Hard! Modern ‘pickup’ in the city? Fuck no!


  • Driving a truck is extremely more difficult than that.

    I’m continually boggled by the fact any jackass can walk into a uhaul and drive out with 30 foot box truck, because those are wildly different to handle than a regular car.

    Massively larger stopping distance, something almost no one leaves in their regular cars, massively wider turning radius, and heavy enough that if you make a mistake or lose control, there’s a whole lot more destructive capability that you clearly are not appreciative of.

    Going down a hill with a loaded box truck requires multiple different braking methods than just pushing the left pedal. You engine brake as much as possible, and use what’s called stab braking, to keep the pads and rotor cool enough so they don’t fail.

    All of this is multiplied when you go from an automatic transmission, straight box truck to an actual semi truck, which weighs another order of magnitude more, has usually has a ten speed manual transmission (and three pedals, not two) and the whole trailer aspect.
    And despite the extra weight, heavy winds can still blow the things over.

    Frankly your cavalier attitude about how easy it is to drive anything is exactly why the roads are so dangerous.

    Because nothing I said really mentions how people driving cars interact with trucks or buses on the road. It’s a constant stream of getting cut off and having to slam on the brakes because the dipshits don’t even know where the edges of their own vehicle are, let alone where mine begins, or the wildly longer stopping distance, or my extremely limited maneuvering capabilities , especially at speed, or the simple fact the larger vehicle will absolutely crush their whole car and everyone in it completely fucking flat.

    Driving is absolutely a skill, and like any other, it will atrophy without use.




  • Buddy.

    JC Penny, some years ago, tried to change their pricing scheme, from the typical “$29.99 +tax” to flat “$30, tax included”

    Their sales dropped so hard they reverted in two months.

    Americans are born, bred, raised to be fucking stupid, and forcefully shoved into shitty educational systems that make them that stupid. The design of American cities is built for people to be stupid and isolated.

    There’s a reason other countries refer to the people that live in them as citizens, and we get branded as consumers.

    There’s a level of respect from the top down that is sorely lacking



  • Ah yes, the sun, heating up my car to millions of degrees with its nigh-infinite fuel source. As it does.

    Yeah, insulation matters, that’s half the point of the forge. The other half is the fuel you’re using. Regular wood fires cannot get hot enough to melt steel.

    Oxy/acetelene torches burn hot enough they need no insulation to nearly instantly liquefy steel. Propane cannot do that. Even with the oxy.

    Anyway, are you talking about the live footage I watched in school? Where they clearly collapsed from the bottom, like a controlled demolition? The day it happened?

    We had a half day


  • Different fuels absolutely burn at different temps.

    I’m a welder and a blacksmith.

    When you’re using coal, you use an easily ignitable fuel, like wood or naptha to get the coal to burn.

    The coal burns hotter and is harder i start than your starter fuel, and cannot be started with just a spark.

    The coal burns down into coke, a totally different substance, which burns hotter than the coal.

    Even still, on your third level of fuel, in order to actually get steel to a workable temp, you’ve got to add more oxygen, to make it burn even faster and hotter.

    This is all inside a forge, a device that’s well insulated and made to heat steel to a workable temp.

    There are other fuels that can be made to work, and they all also require blower fans, to add more oxygen.

    Or in the case of an oxy/acetelne cutting torch, a bottle of pure o2

    Charcoal, derived from wood in a similar fashion to coke from coal, can sort of be used, but does not and will not burn hot enough for anything much larger than a spoon, and aimply can’t get hot enough for forge welding.

    Now, essentially a giant housefire, getting hot enough to get those steel beams to fail? Sure!

    Why’d they collapse from the bottom, that wasn’t on fire?



  • The concept of conspiracy theories as you understand it is a ruse, a misinformation tool.

    Look up mk ultra, and some of the other shit the cia has actually gotten up to.

    Or hemmingway, being paranoid and crazy. Ah, turns out they were following him and fucking with him, even inside the loony bin!

    Nowadays you get qanon and other obviously stupid bullshit rolled under the conspiracy theory label, and that’s the fucking point

    So sinclair, the one company that runs basically all major news outlets in the US, can discredit anything with one turn of phrase.

    So like yeah, you’re kinda right. But there is real, fucked up shit that gets swept under that label, and ignored at large because of it.