Always watch The Daily Show. It is amazing when Jordan Klepper goes to political rallies and asks questions of the faithful.

I have seen where electric cars cause fear and loathing. There have been fires but anything that reinforces that fear, no matter how phony, will be believed. I saw a video that was said to show an electric truck on fire with a story about how firemen wouldn't get close to it. It was a truck carrying cylinders of flammable gasses and you could clearly see cannisters rolling across the road spewing fire, yet the suggestion that it was an e-car had people up in arms.

Remember how for a while everyone who died was because of the c19 vaccine? People were attributing deaths of celebrities to the vaccine even if the decedent had not had the shot.

A few minutes ago, I opened up that site that the filter doesn't like (starts with "R-" and ends with "-eddit").

The first ad I was shown:


Could the algorithm feeding me targeted ads? Or maybe it's just a random thing.

Next ad:


Not quite ready for a walker, but if I were, this carbon model looks pretty sweet.

Next up:


A prostate cancer drug, WTF?!

The targeted ad algorithm needs work.

TAOTD:

They are obviously worried about you getting to the bathroom in time and it style. Wonder how the algorithm picked up having a cancerous prostate? Too much time in the saddle? Maybe you need a light weight climbing model.

Notable non-sports-cars parked on Aspen Avenue today:

A quick check on the net shows gas cars to catch fire 60x more often than EVs yet I get asked frequently if I'm afraid for my wife to drive an EV. In fact, in my area, we average 85-100 gas car fires per year over the last 5 years. There have been no EV fires over the same time span.

It's going to be interesting when this conversation shifts to self-driving cars.

I had a mostly good ride today. We had 16 riders so we split into two groups, evenly matched. I felt good. At the halfway point, we stopped for some farm fresh ice cream and the guys decided we should split into a FASTER and slower group. Like a dumbass, I decided to go with the faster group. It got quite hot and humid, and a couple of the hammerheads were pushing the pace just a smidge harder than I wanted, so of course after about 10 miles of suffering I felt like crap and told them to go ahead, and I would drop back to the second group. I dropped my effort a modest 10-15% and within 5 minutes felt GREAT. We had a decent lead on the slower group, so I ended up riding solo for about 10 miles until they caught me. I finished the ride at a civilized pace and it was fine.

Life lesson: don't go with the fast guys.

A man’s got to know his limits.

I knew a guy in college who died of Metastatic Melanoma in his 30s, AND I had a couple painful sunburns as a ute, so when real, effective sunscreen came out, I was happy to use it.

One time we went to a theme park with some friends and their kids. The husband was as pale as me and freckled. When we were slathering the boys and ourselves, we offered him sunscreen but he said, "Nah, I'll be fine!" His nose was burned almost purple by the end of the day. It hurt just to look at it.

There's apparently a neurochemical "reward" when you think you've figured out something "THEY don't want you to know!"

That's EXACTLY what I was saying/visualizing when I dropped back.

Like the other day, when I finally had to give up on trying to stay with a younger, fitter, lighter rider after two 4% climbs when we hit an 8%. I did wave and say "Bye bye!", but he was far enough ahead he wouldn't have heard me.

I am guessing maybe you were saying something else that we can’t write in here.

Two words. First word begins with "F" and the second word is "this!"

On one hand after working in the automotive service biz for decades I have seen all kinds of failures, and when self driving cars came out I feared the inevitable failures.
On the other hand they will probably be way better than having drunken morons, street racers, texters, and road ragers driving. If all cars were suddenly self driving, I suspect the 37K traffic deaths per year number would go down.

My friend suggests that people who have been "less knowledgeable" suddenly feel empowered by knowing something others don't know.

They think of themselves as "skeptics", but their skepticism is unidirectional: "I'm skeptical of the published, peer-reviewed clinical trial data from multiple clinical sites and investigators, after watching this video from some rando on YouTube!"

TV doesn't help. I've seen episodes on more than one show where Big Heartless Pharma Company hides their clinical data, where lots of people DIE!! so they can get their drug on the market, where presumably lots of people will DIE!!! after taking it but nobody will notice or connect all those deaths with a drug all of them took.

I serviced electric cars for 10 years. I never saw one burned, or even heard of one of our customers' car burning.

At one time GM offered natural gas powered cars and pickups. I took the classes and they showed us research proving they were far less likely to have a fire during an accident. Some states even offered to pay to have the compressor installed at peoples' houses so they could fill up at home cheaply. There was so much fear about explosions that sales never caught on. That, and the whole lack of refueling infrastructure.