eigenvogel
E. Vogel
eigenvogel

It’s really just copying the strategy of the Silicon Valley startups of the late 1990s. If you give people stock options and make them believe they can be millionaires, they’ll sleep under their desks at night and work until they drop. Our Calvinist society lauds this but it’s really self-destructive.

Kinda like The Villages, which is a) one of the most heavily Republican planned communities in the country, and b) was designed so you can get around with nothing more than a golf cart.

Sort of? I mean, supermajorities just mean you have a bus where every passenger has their own brake pedal. The US Senate is a good example; it’s completely paralyzed by the supermajority requirement to end a filibuster. Supermajorities reward whichever party is the most vehemently polarized; they put a premium on

I think what we learned in Afghanistan also applies to Texas -- there’s only so much you can do when a government is determined to persecute its own citizens. In Texas it’s a government *elected* by the citizens which just further complicates it.

This is why I’ve never believed the “Texas will go blue any year now” talk. They will burn the state down before they let a Democrat win statewide office there.

Look into what the licensing requirements are in your state; that’ll probably be a good clue about where to look. Often there’s an apprenticeship requirement, which is why talking to a union local is often the easiest way in.

Because you’re arguing that the socially-conservative Republican minority should get to run things. We’ve seen what that looks like and it’s called Texas. There’s a reason I don’t live there; I wouldn’t be safe.

They’re not *quite* as bad for access as you’d think; between the interior “doghouse” cover, the front hood area (which is more useful than it looks once you remove the air cleaner assembly), and underneath, the only area you really can’t reach easily is the middle part of the top of the engine.

I know Agile Offroad currently offers a TTB conversion. It wouldn’t surprise me if other companies had too, but I don’t know specifics. It does have a lot of ride quality benefits over a solid axle. The solid axle setups can have issues with “death wobble” and ride quality problems if the geometry isn’t set up right.

The price seems in line to me, especially considering what new conversions cost. Sportsmobile’s interior build quality is good by RV industry standards, although the second half of that sentence is doing a lot of work.

The hard part with the V-10 (and other Ford modular engines) is the plugs are on top, in the lifter valley area, and there’s not much room there between the engine and the under-dash tunnel. Also, the plugs have a disturbing tendency to break in two with part of the plug stuck in the head. This is a frequent enough

Ford has never made a factory 4x4 Econoline, although dealers sometimes sold 3rd party conversions.

I love that era of Fords because they remind me of the Ford pickup I rode around in as a kid.

Looks like a torsion bar suspension, maybe? They’re not uncommon on utility trailers, but that’s an unusually exposed example.

I’m not sure if my classmates thought I was literally gay, but they definitely knew I wasn’t like them. They figured it out before I was ready to admit it to myself.

What’s different now is anti-vax used to be the province of a small portion of the far Left. (Think RFK Jr here.) What’s changed is a large swath of the Right is now rejecting anything that’s been touched by a Democrat, no matter how centrist, and the COVID-19 vaccine has (to their mind) Biden’s fingerprints on it.

Same. I don’t think they started out angry. I think having to try to keep order on a bus while also safely driving it made them that way.

Montana? It’s illegal to discriminate based on vaccination status there.

I think wages/benefits might be part of it, but I suspect a bigger part is cultural shifts. This is yet another example of a job that used to be mostly done by women, and because women had fewer employment options they could be paid less.