I wrote a post in 2018 about Tesla.  I said that their engineer and battery technology was the best in the world and reflective of ingenuity and creativity of the best that Silicon Valley has to offer.  The rest of the car is a piece of shit that is reflective of the worst of the Silicon Valley mindset of “launch now, patch later” and disinterest in hardware longevity because users will replace it when the newest model comes out in 12-24 months.

Apparently I am not the only engineer who came to that conclusion.

From InsideEVs:

Ford Engineer Claims Tesla Has Big Issues: Shoddy Build, Unsafe Part

Allegedly, a Ford engineer thought it was wise to criticize Tesla for shoddy build quality and other questionable safety concerns, but then the engineer deleted all of the comments. Why?

Probably because Ford dropped a ton of bricks on him because Elon Musk is a supervillain who loves to sue people.

Good thing for us, the internet saved his post.

Hm. Insert classic my opinions don’t represent that of the company statement here.​
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TBH I love what Tesla has done for EVs. Simultaneously, their engineering is some of the worst shit I have ever seen in any industry. It’s often horrifying. Their tech and engineering in battery and HV electronics and harnessing outpaces the industry by 5yrs easy, but their logistics and quality is so poor I’m astonished that the things have as few problems as they do.​
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I’ve torn down dozens of vehicles. When we opened our Model 3 when it first came out, it had loose screws dropped randomly in the chassis near sensitive components. The fit and finish of the alignment of panels is ridiculous. Their electronics frequently flaunt safety guidelines and do not meet UL regulations.​
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So that being said, yes their engineering is top notch. They create custom solutions for vehicle programs that other OEMs could only dream due to the fact that they contract manufacture all of their parts rather than hire auto supplier companies to design it for them. A custom vehicle part for an OEM is 3x the cost of what it would be for Tesla, and the quality of the electronics when you build it in-house is far better than what you can get by adapting an industry design.​

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In my personal opinion, I don’t think Tesla is as good at building cars, both from a design/user experience perspective and from a manufacturing/logistics/process perspective, as almost all other OEMs. Does that mean they shouldn’t make cars? Hell no. That platform is something that you can ride to the bank, but at the same time I think you can see in how the Mach-E stacks up the to Model Y that it’s not that hard to make a car that has a soulful identity that resonates with customers that has a great powertrain as well. Cars are emotional creatures and that’s something that Tesla could do better IMO.​

Never let it be said that I wasn’t a good forensics engineer, and can’t identify the root cause of problems.

I’d love to start a car company as just a coachbuilder, and buy engines and batteries from Tesla.

What I could accomplish dropping their powertrain into a body designed and built by the engineers I poach from Toyota-Mazda and Honda here in Alabama.

The internet is all a buzz about the fact the Michael Bloomberg’s Super Bowl campaign ad focused on gun violence and not Trump.

This is what he spent millions of his own dollars to air:

Her son was just a good boy who loved football and got shot because guns are bad, and if there was more gun control because politicians would stand up to the big, bad gun lobby, her son would still be alive.

Except… not.

This is an excerpt from an original court document on this case:

The police are dispatched to the scene of a gun homicide This case arises from a gang-related shooting. On September 26, 2013, just before midnight, the police received a dispatch for shots fired in the Lakemont subdivision in Richmond, Texas. When they arrived, they discovered a deceased male, later identified as George Kemp, age 20, lying face down in a pool of blood. He had been shot five times.

At the scene, the police recovered ballistics evidence, discussed more thoroughly below, establishing that two types of handguns had been fired that night: (1) a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol and (2) a revolver of either .38 or .357 caliber.  The police investigate and conclude that Coleman was one of the shooters.

The police proceeded to interview several witnesses and received several tips. They determined that two groups of young men, most of them teenagers, had met that night for a fight. On the one hand, there was a group led by B. Dilworth, which included K. Molo, D. Lewis, and Kemp. On the other hand, there was a group led by B. Lacour, which included S. Spence, C. Coleman, and at least three other young men, identified inconsistently throughout the record. 

The police then interviewed the members of each group and further determined that, earlier in 2013, Dilworth and Lacour became embroiled in some sort of dispute, which led to Dilworth challenging Lacour to a fight. This, in turn, led to the two groups meeting in the Lakemont subdivision the night of the shooting. 

A fight ensued, and, at some point, Lacour yelled for someone in his group to shoot Dilworth. Coleman, armed with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol, and another member of Lacour’s group, armed with some sort of revolver, then fired multiple shots, at least some of which hit Kemp, killing him. 

So her son was a member of a gang that met up for a fight, which turned into a gang-related shooting.

But wait, there’s more.

Lacour, who ordered Kemp to be shot was only 17.

So we have gang members, some of them underage to legally obtain handguns, shooting each other in a pre-arranged fight, and somehow that’s the NRA’s fault and now you need to lose your gun rights because of it.

None of this is shocking to those of us who know what Bloomberg and the anti-gun crowd are all about.  They will always lie to get their way.

But now that Bloomberg is running for President, and against Trump at that, I can’t wait to see if his anti-gun bullshit gets fact-checked Trump style.

Sorry, but if she gets in trouble, she deserves it.

Florida voters won’t get to decide this year whether assault weapons should be banned.
A proposed ban didn’t get the 766,200 signatures needed to be placed on the ballot.
Supporters say they are now focusing on getting the question before voters in 2022. The group pushing the petition — Ban Assault Weapons Now — collected 145,000 verified signatures this past year. The deadline to meet the signature requirement for this year’s election was Feb. 1.

Floridians won’t get to vote on an assault weapons ban in 2020

Finally a good piece of news for the year. Of course, we still have all the bills in the Legislature that we need to make sure they don’t even come out of committee .

Do notice the language used by the author as if somehow evil and dark forces sabotaged the signature collection process rather that being simply they did not get enough people to believe in what they were trying to sell.

“Despite the best efforts of the NRA and politicians in Tallahassee to place obstacles in our path, we will continue our fight to save lives by working hard to ensure voters have the final say over their safety in 2022,” Gail Schwartz, Ban Assault Weapons Now’s chairwoman, said in a prepared statement.

There was issues brought forward about the movement, but at the end of the day it was simply one thing: Verified Signatures. They needed 766,200 signatures and only collected 145,000 or 19% of the needed target. I like to look at is as an 80% fail (I like round numbers.)

But disabuse yourself of the notion that they are going to sit down and take it in the chin. They will now switch their energies to the Legislature and push for the ban bill they have running.

I caught this Tweet of Joy Reid’s hyperbolic statements on the effect the Senate’s impeachment decision:

MSNBC’s Nance predicts the 2020 election will be compromised:

"This nation is going to be under attack, cyber-wise, unlike anything we’ve seen before. Not just disinformation … we may finally see people put their hands on the thumbs of the scales of American voting machines" pic.twitter.com/3uN7xmFAmW

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 1, 2020

Did you catch that?

“You’ve got the Saudis, you’ve got Israel, you’ve got Israel, you’ve got all sorts of countries that make have an interest in who becomes the next United States President.”

Israel?

Not China?

China, the country that is attempting world domination?

The one that launched an initiative called the Thousand Talents Program to bribe and coerce people with unique technical knowledge to come to China and bring their proprietary information with them.  It is “economic espionage and theft of intellectual property.”

The Chinese use various forms of leverage and coercion to force American companies to divulge trade secrets, and what they refuse to divulge, the Chinese steal.  Chinese IP theft is vicious and includes military technology.  China’s air force is nothing more than a counterfeit Louis Vuitton purse knockoff of our and the Russian’s best fighter aircraft including the advanced stealth and electro-optical targeting system from the F-35.

And we’re not sure how they got that.

That Trump has taken this threat seriously and stymied the Chinese makes China the most likely candidate to want to influence our elections.  You could put even money on China wanting a Biden or a Clinton to be President.  Someone who for the cost of giving every Presidential family member a $100 million salary on a company board (which would be a drop in the ocean for China) could guarantee them the plans for a US aircraft carrier, hypersonic missile, stealth bomber, and whatever else they want.

But no.  That never crossed Joy’s mind.

But a few million JOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSS in one of America’s closes allies, they are going to totally steal America’s democracy and implement totalitarianism.

It’s the little things like this which are the most telling sometimes.

Amazon Prime hit me with a trailer for a miniseries titled The Forgotten Army – Azaadi ke liye.

The series is described this way:

The Forgotten Army’ is the dynamic story of Lt. Sodhi and his daredevil band of men and women who fought a heroic battle for the independence of India as part of the Indian National Army which was forged out of British defeat in Singapore during WWII and led by the charismatic, indomitable Indian leader Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

Hmmmm…

Do they mean the same Subhas Chandra Bose who was a collaborator with Adolf Hitler and Imperial Japan to use Axis powers’ support to fight the British in India and hinder the Allied war effort?  And is this the same Indian National Army that was complicit in Imperial Japanese war crimes against other ethnic groups in South East Asia?

Therein lies the rub.  Even in India, there is controversy because it’s hard to separate Bose’s ethnonationalism from that of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan.

But clearly they are the unabashed heroes of this series because they are fighting the Imperial British.

It’s doubly ironic that they showcase the Women’s Army of the INA, as though that was some great Progressive leap forward that India had that the West didn’t when it was the British that introduced the very concept of Women’s Rights to India.  Outlawing things like widow burning and honor killings, and imposing Western ideas about punishment for rape.

Coincidentally, the more the British influence trickles out of India, the more things like gang rape on public trains, mass sexual assault, acid attacks, and honor killings take place.

But I digress.

I guess for the fans of anti-colonial Progressive history, this will be a wonderful series.

For the rest of us who know the ugly truth, I’d rather watch Netflix’s Siege of Jadotville, which makes the UN look like the bureaucratic shitty fucking cowards that they are.

This was reported by independent journalist Andy Ngo:

The following message was sent to me from the Twitter account of the Hanging Hills Brewing Company in Connecticut. pic.twitter.com/yEcyPtsuZr

— Andy Ngô ?️‍? (@MrAndyNgo) February 1, 2020

That’s is clearly a threat of violence over a political disagreement.

Following this unprovoked threat to Ngo, the brewery received backlash on Twitter.  The owner responded with this non-apology (unrolled):

Hey, it’s Joe. As a brewery owner, I love what I do. I love the people that come in and the people that support us. I want you and your families to have the best lives possible and I mean that sincerely. We go out of our way to make Hanging Hills a warm and welcoming environment. It is a core belief of mine and I think there are bad actors who go out of their way to undermine the greater good.

Out of frustration with one of these bad actors and his platform, I dmed him a joke pertaining to an incident that happened last year in Portland, a city I lived in and loved and has recently been ravaged by unwarranted violence and extremism. It was a bad idea that has led to some pretty uncomfortable phone calls and social media interactions. I remind my 5 yr old every day to do the right thing every day because I feel that in a moment, when faced with a decision, righteousness is always the correct action. I believe that we are obligated to do the right thing. I personally don’t agree w/what Andy Ngo does. It’s not about political beliefs, it’s about righteousness.

In a flash moment of frustration, I dmed him what I meant to be a joke. Based on the phone calls, emails, social media interactions, texts, etc, it was not taken as a joke by a lot of angry people. To those angry people, I wish you the best life possible. Whatever that life is.

I want you to wake up happy, well fed, loved, with healthcare, with a roof over your head and a well lived life. I don’t limit my love for people to just one political viewpoint. I mean that sincerely. Hanging Hills wasn’t set up that way and I don’t intend for it to change.

Although you’re angry, please don’t take it out on my employees or my colleagues. They’re good people who work hard and have struggles like everyone else. But they’re good people. I will field all communications. I said it so it’s my responsibility. Take care.

See, to Joe here, it was a joke, not a threat.  It’s also not about politics but righteousness.  By that he means that he’s righteous because he’s a hardcore Leftist and anybody who disagrees with him is a bad actor.  That’s why Antifa who caused a guy just taking pictures of them to have head trauma are not the bad actors.

Joe’s brewery is also a warm and welcoming environment, as long as you also agree that Antifa are the good guys and the people to call them out on their violence are the bad actors.

He doesn’t limit his love for people to just one political viewpoint.  He accepts Communists, Socialists, Marxists, Leninists, acolytes of Che, Jacobins, Democratic Socialists, Eco-Socialists, Socialists-Feminists, and just about anybody else that sees anybody to the Right of Elizabeth Warren as a Nazi Fascists.  I’m pretty sure if you tried to order a beer at his brewery while wearing a MAGA hat, your reception would not be warm and welcoming.

The thing is, as Miguel has pointed out, violence on their side is a dimmer and our side is a binary switch.  We have yet to activate, and most of the time law enforcement in these Lefty areas turns a blind eye to them, so they feel they can threaten to hurt people and actually carry out violence with impunity.

I just think it would be a real shame if this brewery caught fire and burned to the ground.  All those cloth sacks of dried grain are really flammable.

But I know that won’t happen on purpose because our switch hasn’t been flipped yet.