Interesting reads
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This Guy Took A 25,000-Mile Pub Tour Across The World In An Old TVR - Jalopnik
Have you ever been down at the pub with a few empty pints littering the table and come up with the best idea of your entire life? I’m sure that’s the beginning of many million-dollar-ideas, the genesis of many short-lived bands, and the starting point for many road trips. Ben Coombs’ pint-fueled...
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@snowy said in Interesting reads:
@jegga Braver (or stupider) man than me. I would like this quantified "didn’t break down much"...
For a TVR, or just didn't break down much?
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@antipodean said in Interesting reads:
@snowy said in Interesting reads:
@jegga Braver (or stupider) man than me. I would like this quantified "didn’t break down much"...
For a TVR, or just didn't break down much?
Yes I should have qualified that -"for a TVR".
It is unfair to compare their reliability to other vehicles, just other TVRs.
Mostly the ones with Lucas electrics. Lucas being the "Prince of Darkness". -
The current record holder sounds like a complete sociopath, agree there’s a Netflix doco to be made out of this
'World's Greatest' Car Salesman Refuses to Relinquish Title Without Proof
For over four decades, Joe Girard has held the Guinness World Record for the most automotive sales in a single year. The 89-year-old retiree is so proud of his achievement that his own website proclaims him as the greatest retail salesman in history while simultaneously urging you to purchase his...
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@jegga said in Interesting reads:
The White Darkness: A Journey Across Antarctica
At fifty-five, Henry Worsley began a solitary trek that became a singular test of character.
Fuck. Kind of depressing to lose such a man in those circumstances - but the achievements and adventure...
Go doing what you love I suppose. Pack in the adventures you can.
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A piece on the Opioid epidemic in the US. One quote:
"It is tempting to wonder if, in the future, today’s crisis will be seen as generated from the same kind of trauma, this time in reverse. If industrialization caused an opium epidemic, deindustrialization is no small part of what’s fueling our opioid surge."
Americans Invented Modern Life. We Use Opioids to Escape It.
The scale and darkness of this epidemic is a sign of a civilization in a more acute crisis than we knew.
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@nta that was good, and very depressing at the same time. I find myself thinking more and more about the world we have created for ourselves, and what it's going to result in for our children.
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@mariner4life yeah but the US is kind of fucked for these reasons. As the author states: denying people basic privileges and social fabric ultimately costs more in the long run.
Does put the school shootings stuff into perspective tho: a few kids in school per year plus tens of thousands of other gun deaths is still outweighed massively by overdoses and other health issues that regular people can't afford.
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@nta said in Interesting reads:
@mariner4life yeah but the US is kind of fucked for these reasons. As the author states: denying people basic privileges and social fabric ultimately costs more in the long run.
Does put the school shootings stuff into perspective tho: a few kids in school per year plus tens of thousands of other gun deaths is still outweighed massively by overdoses and other health issues that regular people can't afford.
It's just one element but therein lies the major flaw in the user pays system. The US in particular doesn't appear to be particularly keen on a national health system, and it is just one more way that the gap between the haves and have nots is widening. Just like you see in war torn parts of the world, once people get too downtrodden they lose their sense of decency or morality through denial of basic human needs. Then you wonder why they break into your house and steal your 60 inch TV
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@mariner4life A future I fear will be more bleak as we automate and find out we can't all make coffee, cut each other's grass and provide home loan advice.
Particularly now you can't get opiates in Australia without prescription.
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@nta said in Interesting reads:
@jegga said in Interesting reads:
At fifty-five, Henry Worsley began a solitary trek that became a singular test of character.
Fuck. Kind of depressing to lose such a man in those circumstances - but the achievements and adventure...
Go doing what you love I suppose. Pack in the adventures you can.
I know it's that kind of spirit that got man further, but part of me thinks his quest was selfish and his family will pay the price as he is no longer in their lives to fulfill his responsibilities as husband and father
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Looking at my NZ primary school report cards, I’m convinced if I had been born three, four, five decades later in the United States, I’d have been prescribed ritalin or some kind of mind-altering behavioural drug cocktail.
THE DRUGGING OF THE AMERICAN BOY
By the time they reach high school, nearly 20 percent of all American boys will be diagnosed with ADHD. Millions of those boys will be prescribed a powerful stimulant to "normalize" them. A great many of those boys will suffer serious side effects from those drugs. The shocking truth is that many of those diagnoses are wrong, and that most of those boys are being drugged for no good reason—simply for being boys. It's time we recognize this as a crisis.Full read here:
The Drugging of the American Boy
One in seven American boys will be diagnosed with ADHD before they're 18. But is there really a need to give psychotropic drugs to boys just for being boys?
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@salacious-crumb I know a kid who was in that group. Precocious, cheeky, hugely inquisitive, got put on Ritalin but he was just a normal boy. He's a perfectly good young man now, fortunately he got taken off the meds sooner rather than later by his folks
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Sir Roger Bannister died over the weekend - an interesting retrospective.
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Reading an old climbing book and one of the stories was about driving a "gas producer car" (powered by woodfuel) from Dunedin to Mt. Aspiring. I'd never heard of these, but my father knew all about them.
According to this there were more than a million of them running during WWII and mentions them being common in Australia and, presumably, NZ.
Wood Gas Vehicles: Firewood in the Fuel Tank
During the Second World War, almost every motorised vehicle in continental Europe was converted to use firewood.
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@chris-b said in Interesting reads:
Reading an old climbing book and one of the stories was about driving a "gas producer car" (powered by woodfuel) from Dunedin to Mt. Aspiring. I'd never heard of these, but my father knew all about them.
According to this there were more than a million of them running during WWII and mentions them being common in Australia and, presumably, NZ.
Wood Gas Vehicles: Firewood in the Fuel Tank
During the Second World War, almost every motorised vehicle in continental Europe was converted to use firewood.
Didn’t know we had them here, I’ve seen stories about them in Italy during world war 2.
Deadspin | The First Four-Minute Mile, In One Pain-Wracked Photo
