fiesta pizza used to be really good BTW. At least fiesta pizzas III and V. II was mediocre, and i haven't had original. Anyway, greek style pizza with really good sauce but super greasy crust and cheese. Normally i do not condone dabbing pizza with a napkin before consuming, but it is necessary with fiesta, literal pools of grease. Apparently all bought out 15 years ago though. so maybe they fell off.
Tie-in (via the history of using vibrators to treat “hysteria”) to a discussion of benzodiazepines, which like fossil fuels are bad because they’re good
I mean, if you've ever seen In The Next Room (the vibrator play) you'd know there's a lot there for them to riff on. Early vibes were wild, what they used them for was wild, and there's, again, a zany play all about it. I'm glad I got to see it live lol.
@@OutbackCatgirl They should announce when they're recording so we can all lock ourselves in our bunkers/basements for a week or two for safety's sake.
Fossil fuels being both really good and really bad is kind of an ideal form of a deal with the devil. Incredible energy density and utility for making materials like plastic, but comes at a genuinely unfathomable cost.
There's an SMBC comic that postulates fossil fuels were put on Earth by aliens to keep the planet sanatized of intelligent life. It's so useful that any intelligence will use it, thereby killing itself so the aliens don't have to.
Big energy density at the cost of wasting most of it as heat (on top of requiring half of it for extraction of said energy). What a terrible exchange rate at the cost of most life on Earth.
Literally I didn't notice the pod was late. A lot of us don't waste brain space on memorizing every creator's schedule, and instead we get to be pleasantly surprised whenever we check our subs. You just don't hear from us because we're not going to message you over there being no problem and nothing to comment on.
November "Nova" Kelly's life is vicariously exhausting. Playing video games, hosting three podcasts, and being a full time student; I'm so glad I get to listen to a nice relaxing podcast in which nothing has ever gone wrong ever.
Guys, they already talked about boat go bonk, bridge fall down. All they have to do to release a whole episode on this is swap the names from the Sunshine Skyway episode.
@@embersaffron5522 Hey I don't think it's possible to DM someone on youtube so I'm just telling you here: I think you still have your old name in your youtube description. I assume you don't know that and would wanna change it
Yay being namedropped on my favourite podcast :) I don't know if anyone's interested but low cost airdrop was/is my field of professional expertise at my old job. The US military (which by nature of its influence on NATO effectively means most Western-supplied militaries more or less follow these standards) has- very broadly- four categories of parachute; static line (unguidable) and "military free drop" (usually ram-air) parachutes are for personnel, while cargo drop is divided between low velocity parachute, high velocity parachute and free drop. Free drop does not use a parachute (1)(2)(3). Manned parachutes descend at between 8 and 26 fps (2.4-8 ms^-1, 5.5-18mph) LV drop is typically no more than 28 fps (8.5 ms^-1, 19mph) (1)(2)(5), and HV drop can be anywhere from 60-90fps (18.3-27.4ms^-1, 41-61.4mph) (4)(5). Cargo drop historically was done using essentially repurposed personnel parachutes, although much larger freight parachutes were also developed to drop full master pallet loads of up to a full size 10,000lb master pallet load. This resulted in the US mlitary expending a reported "over $31 million" worth of standard airdrop equipment in relief operations during the collapse of the former Yugoslavia in "Operation Provide Promise." In response, the US DoD (following a study on the effectiveness and cost of these operations (7)) submitted a request for a low-cost alternative to existing air drop options. This eventually resulted in the LCADS family of parachutes for standard "Container Delivery System" (CDS) airdrop, which is basically when you drop a 1.2m by 1m ISO pallet loaded up to a drop load weight of between 501 and 2,200lb (roughly 230-1,000kg). LCADS HV has roughly the same capability as the older HV CDS but costs $495 for the complete drop system as opposed to $1,230 for the older CDS (or did, in the 90s when the system was designed, I don't know what the current cost is). LCADS LV has roughly the same capabiliy as the older LV CDS but, again, initially cost about $1,260 as opposed to $3,815 (5). Other low-cost cargo parachutes have also been developed since but they're broadly equivalent in terms of function. The parachutes are visually quite distinct; the LV parachute (8) is visually quite wide and square, while the HV parachute (4) is much smaller and often appears very arched in descent. Both parachutes are composed of multiple broad strips of material arranged in a cross-hatch pattern. Some more recent videos of air drop in Gaza (notably the shoreline drop where people drowned trying to reach the supplies) use more traditional parachute designs more similar to the US T-11 or the older CDS designs. This isn't to say personnel parachutes or high-grade bespoke cargo parachutes aren't used for cargo drop; the Joint Precision Aerial Delivery System (JPADS) relies on a ram-air military free drop parachute attached to a GPS piloting system, for example, some militaries will use out-of-date T-11 personnel parachutes for cargo drop when available and the larger master pallet drop still uses a more expensive parachute because the LCADS parachute design doesn't scale up well beyond a certain point. I can't immediately find reliability data for LCADS systems but you see videos of LCADS parachutes failing all the time- I believe WTYP has earlier included stills from a video showing the rapid graviationally-assisted disassembly of a Hummer, for example- and several people I spoke to at trade shows while I was at my former job complained about having regular issues with equipment loss due to parachute failure, though there is an obvious selection bias in that broadly-anecdotal data set. The thing that DOES come across consistently when you speak to aid workers, however, is how incredibly inefficient and- frankly- dangeorus air dropping cargo often is, even in a military context, though especially so in humanitarian aid scenarios. Cargo air drop accidents killed soldiers in Afghanistan, but cargo air drop is regularly the cause of deaths and injuries in humanitarian aid. If you can't afford a parachute and you need to drop a lot of food, agencies used to just free drop 20kg bags of rice and so on. These, with a terminal velocity broadly in the region of 200mph, regularly cause casualties among the people they were intended to help when they are used. If you can find photos of old humanitarian aid drops you can see the impact they have on the ground; they look like small bombs going off. I struggled to find any just now because Google is crap these days, but they do exist. There are a wide array of reasons why most aid agencies these days use large numbers of very small free drop packages called Humanitarian Daily Rations (HDRs)(1)(6) wherever possible. These are dropped outside of any container from the aircraft, for several reasons; firstly, so that no single person or small group can monopolise distribution of the supplies, secondly so that no single package has enough kinetic energy on landing to seriously injure anybody and thirdly to reach as wide an area as possible so that aid distribution is not disrupted by contested terrain (this list is non-exhaustive). There are other ways of achieving similar results with more effort (i.e. the US "HOPE" system, as forced a backronym as you'll find), but broadly that's a much better way to not kill people. Even this isn't great though, as there's literally no accountability; like an inverse Kissinger lobbing tens of thousands of tons of high explosive into semi-random Cambodian forests, you might be giving thousands of families food for a few days, or you might just be hurling thousands of dollars' worth of aid into unoccupied terrain where nobody will find it at immense cost (running a military transport capable of air drop isn't exactly cheap) and you have basically no way of finding out which without having people on the ground- and if you have people on the ground that probably means you could have just driven there with tens of times as much aid on trucks that you can deliver orders of magnitude more effectively at a fraction of the cost. Uhh, yeah. I've done presenations on this stuff before. Kinda got stuck in my head. 1:cascom.army.mil/g_staff/g3/TTD/Products/QM-How-to-Handbook/Aerial%20Delivery%20How%20to%20Final%201%20Dec%202021.pdf "Aerial Delivery & Field Services Department "How To" Reference Handbook" 2: airborne-sys.com/product/intruder-ra-1-military-ram-air-parachute/ Airborne Systems RA-1 ram air "military free drop" parachute 3: airborne-sys.com/product/t-11-static-line-troop-parachute/ Airborne Systems T-11 non-steerable (static line) troop parachute system 4: nicheinc.com/pages/high-velocity-parachutes Niche Inc, "high velocity parachutes" (LCADS HV) 5: www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/systems/lcads.htm GlobalSecurity.org, "Low Cost Aerial Delivery System [LCADS]" 6: www.mreinfo.com/other-us-rations/current-us-rations/humanitarian-daily-ration/ 7: apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA368790.pdf Institute for Defense Analyses, "Bosnian Air Drop Study," Sept. 1999 8: nicheinc.com/pages/low-velocity-parachutes Niche Inc, "Low velocity Parachutes" (LCADS LV)
errata: The failed Hummer paradrop wasn't done using an LCADS parachute, I had intended to make a comparative point but forgot what I had meant to say when it came to actually writing the sentence. I probably made other mistakes but that's the most glaring one.
@@Idothewrenches Ok, but you could legit just have a tesla turbine attached to an off-centre weight and strap it over the barrel and use the gas pressure from blanks to just power it.
*I TRAVEL IN A €1.3 MILLION* EV every day - the BurgasBus - the city owns them and they own a solar farm so they don't pay for ANY fuel for the city's busses. We have trolleybuses and BEV busses - the Deisel are being phased out - and it costs 70 cents for THE ENTIRE DAY NO MATTER HOW MANY BUSSES YOU GET
Hush now - none of your people-centric socialism! Where's the profit? Where's the exercise of power to massage egos and salve daddy issues? WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE SHAREHOLDERS?
@@foxinsocks7531- I live in Burgas Bulgaria. There are many RU-vid videos about it - if you look for "Burgas - Bulgaria 4K Virtual Walking Tour around the City - Travel Guide" Our mayor is AMAZING he just got elected for the 4th time with a majority of about 70% - all he did to campaign was produce a 75 page glossy booklet of all the things he had done in the last 4 years. Turns out - people vote for you when you do stuff that benefits them. EDIT: My rent is $150 a month 😀 .
Car dealerships will be fine, even with low-maintenance engines, because now all of the cars are proprietary OS computers that are in constant need of repair. Someone I know recently had their windshield wiper circuit glitch out. The IT ticket from the dealership cost nearly $1,000. For windshield wipers.
Even if it wasn't like that there is still things like bearings, bushings, suspension. No machine is maintenance free. Even those bearings inside the electric motor will fail
@@Iamthestig42069 Yepp. And if they make less money from engine maintenance, they will absolutely increase the repair cost for something like brakes and suspension jobs. Because they already have the infrastructure and the costs associated with it.
Electric bicycles are the spiritual successor to early cars. The living-rooms-on-wheels that modern people refer to as "cars" are something else entirely.
@@MrJstorm4 Not road legal though. Maybe think more the electric milk float. Those remained in use for many decades because the routes they had to take are very predictable and always short, making them ideally suited for electric power. Gone out of common use now though because of the rise of the supermarket - there's no more need for the milkman.
@@heheheiamasuperstarcatgirl8485i remember i used to watch a guy on yt owning and driving road legal Batmobile with jet engine, i think he lives in Maine
*Ding "Good afternoon this your captain speaking. It appears the ground crew is securing our wings with string & paper clips. But rest assured, the good news is that the stock price is up 2%"
The lithium in lithium-ion batteries isn't the dangerous part; it's tied up in a lithium-cobalt oxide layer that makes up the cathode. What's dangerous about them is the electrolyte: In most Li-ion batteries, it's a flammable-as-shit liquid that ignites when the battery shorts or gets too hot.
IIRC from chemistry class, the lithium column (Li/Na/K?) of the periodic table are reactive as shit with water too. Don't know if that reaction can happen due to the presence of the cobalt.
I don't think it's a good answer. I live in rural Montana and you still can't drive them anywhere out here. It's like playing a video game with the map 40% locked. You can do the whole "map over dart board spontaneous road trip" thing with a $2000 buick anywhere in North America. Can't do that with trains or EVs. Spending 40-100 grand on something like that makes zero sense.
@Iamthestig42069 this is literally the same complaint as early gasoline cars. Tech is getting better and infrastructure is getting better. The other 95% of people it works for
@@Iamthestig42069 The dartboard thing is a stupid little piece of American culture which is going to have to die if humanity is to have a future. The technology which made that possible is literally burning down the biosphere. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer still having a livable planet in 50 years to being able to go on inane roadtrips in a ruined world.
Since trolleybuses were brought up, there's one thing that got left out about San Francisco's trolleybuses. One of the reason they exist is because they can traverse the steeper hills in SF. A diesel bus can't climb them. And I doubt a battery electric bus can either because the battery would add too much weight. Streetcars were also incapable of climbing them, which is why the cable car network survived invention of the street car (on that note, the cable car was created specifically to deal with the hills). Note that the streetcars keep to the lower-laying parts of the city and tunnel under the hills.
You know it wouldn't surprise me if it started off as some means of cancelling out vibration at specific frequencies for trains and someone just got off track... as it were...
Also, according to the founders the reason for adding the words "and Lube" was to make it sound quirky (the original proposed name being simply "Quaker Steak").
Maybe the worst thing about the food aid we're delivering to Gaza is that high calorie/high sodium MREs are simply not suited for a starving and dehydrated population.
Are they dropping actual MREs or HDRs? The HDR is made for this situation, but they do have halal MREs so if they're short on HDRs they may be dropping those
VinceMcMahonInterested.jpg: New WTYP episode VinceMcMahonExcited.jpg: it's about EVs VinceMcMahonAlmostThere.jpg: It's almost 2.5 hours long VinceMcMahonLaserClimax.jpg: "with Victoria Scott"
1:01:30 That wasn't Adam Savage in the coffin, it was the other host Jamie Hyneman. He ditched the minute the lid started buckling from the tons of dirt.
Okay I snorted at "Boemerta"... and I used to intern at a historic site in Upstate New York where the fancy getaway cabin compound had a gasoline generator in the basement to power the lights. Unclear if it charged anyone's electric car.
The thing about a misfiring engine taking a limb off reminded me of hearing Yvonne Craig speaking at a convention. She played batgirl in the 1960s batman tv show and she rode a motorcycle. She mentioned that in those days all motorcycles were kick started and sometimes they kicked back. Meanwhile shes in head to toe lycra or whatever that suit was made of so i think she described it as producing language not suitable for prime time television. So after this had happened a couple of times they ended up with possibly on e of the first motorcycles with an electric starter. Interesting lady, sadly no longer with us.
13:02 correction. These are the Army's version of SeaBees. SeaBees are Navy. The Navy also has the capability to built a temporary pier... but they sent in the Army instead.
Hey! I'm Ember, I've got so fuckin many stories of that goddamn place. Also hi Victoria and November! Also sorry Devon I don't watch these episodes usually on account of watching the pretty blue light
Even before Nova pointed it out, the words from my lips were "The Berlin Airlift this is not." It's really incredible how we as a species never seem to learn anything from our failures OR successes. Might even say it was "concerning." I don't know, I'm angry.
The failure to de-nazify europe after ww2 is similar to the failure of american reconstruction after the civil war to de-confederatize, and the effects of those failures are driving events in the present day
Isn't it crazy that the entire time gasoline cars had hand cranks, there existed electric motors what could drive a whole damn car. No one thought to put the two together.
Our goal must be "no cars", not "electric cars", though I am open for electric cars for all situations where public transport is the less resource efficient or practical option. (For example as vehicles for tradespeople who have to transport material and tools.)
Yeah good luck doing that in a reasonable timeframe. I don't really see how you are going to phase out a consumer good that has millions of units being manufactured every month. A consumer good that has hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure built around it. A consumer good that is continuing to grow exponentially in places like China, India, and in West Africa. This utopian nonsense of "no cars" is useless. People regurgitating it are useless. Not Just Bikes has poisoned the minds of millions of GenZ'rs. You are never going to accomplish a goal like that, nor would it even be a goal worth pursuing. Word to the wise, but NJB isn't exactly the best source of information on anything. A professional complainer at best, a grifter at worst. You've got maybe another 25 to 40 years to find a lasting solution for climate change. You aren't going to take away everybodies car in 25 years. Not even if you invested trillions of dollars in public infrastructure. Even still, a place like China invests literal trillions into the most advanced public transit networks, and their automotive production is still growing every year. Find a better solution.
No cars is an unrealistic approach to the problem. I agree that especially the US has to invest more into public transport. Cars are extremely useful transportation tools, and its absolutely no wonder why they are so successful. Keep in mind that most cars are used to commute to work and back home, and for groceries or other daily tasks. Most of them arent used for "fun".
Our goal must be "no cars", If that is your goal, then your actual goal is "we are going to do nothing". Because when you set a goal that unrealistic and stupid, it amounts to absolutely nothing.
@@Gentleman...DriverCars suck shit as general transportation; one of, if not the most inefficient means of transit. They take up lots of space per person, they're loud, create tons of pollution per person, and cost a ton of $$ to maintain (2nd highest expense only to housing in the US). People drive b/c it's often the only option after decades of spending to enforce car ownership, and zoning laws that make it illegal to build things close to each other. You don't require a car for either commuting or errands if your city/town allows it.
@@ubermenschen01 People drive cars because they are absolutely practical and because they are lazy and because they want to save time. I would rather spend hours in a traffic jam then having to rely on public transportation, which is dirty, noisy, you have to share it with all sorts of other people (the smells, the violence). Its often enough unreliable in my country (Germany), and many things more. Have been there, wont ever go back again.
I've worked in public transit for 20 years, and can confirm, rail is the best. Tracks everywhere. Give everyone UBI and a bonus to work on their local lines. Cover the earth in catenaries.
Nova, the president who was x-rayed after being shot and still died was Garfield not McKinley. But you’re forgiven for truncating them, nobody’s perfect except Victoria Scott
1:40 "Hello, and welcome to Well There's Your Problem..." 8:03 The God Damn News 18:22 The God Damn News, pt. 2 24:09 Main Subject dang, didn't know Hitachi was the 'Master of All Traits' company.. well know whenever I see a Hitachi my friends are going to be wondering why the fuck I'm loosing it right then and there Hitachi: the company that literally can't take its name off the world's best vibrator no matter how hard it tries. Wait so they're going to build a miniature mulberry harbour in Gaza? safe to say it'd make sense to just do what Germany does: PUT UP OVERHEAD ELECTRIC WIRES OVER THE FREEWAY- actually no just- JUST PUT THE TRUCKS ON A TRAIN ALREADY YEEEEES THE ADAM SOMETHING METHOD OF 'TURN EVERYTHING INTO A TRAIN' YEEEA Petition to make Victoria do a car review for an EMD GP7
Good luck with your driving test, Nova! Don't feel bad if you don't get it the first time. I failed my first time, blubbered a bit, and then passed just fine the second time.
When it comes to powering road vehicles from overhead electric, I keep thinking about bumper cars, with just a mesh above the road. For bonus points layer solar panels above the mesh and now you don't have to worry about weather on the roadway so much! (this is not a serious proposal)
On the list of people who bought beach houses by inventing something that improves the world - the Super Soaker guy, for sure. I hope he's got a beach house.
I don't know if you've heard of this but there is this bridge that fell down you could do an episode on. I think it was in Tacoma across a straight called The Narrows.
1:24:30 I probably told this story in the comments before, but in high school, I drove an '81 Ford Crown Victoria. It was a point of pride that I could fit half the jazz band and their instruments in my car, my slutty bigass car can fit half a jazz band. I miss that car. Whatever hasn't been stripped for scrap is probably rotting away somewhere in a landfill like that depressing scene from Brave Little Toaster.
I don't like using my mom's super fancy sewing machine that's button* operated, I can't imagine operating a car that way. (Also, embrace the Balatro addiction!) * Yes I know the difference between buttons and touch screens, my point is that in both instances you're going from using a pedal to start, stop, and control speed to tapping something with your finger. The experience is still a feeling of lack of control.
Trains don't go everywhere but roads do. Getting rid of cars would be devastating to rural America. Building high speed rail between every sub 1000 population town makes zero sense.
Wires are still up on much of the 73 line outside Boston. Biggest problem with the catenary lines were that this was one of the only trackless trolley lines. When there was need to shift drivers to other lines they could not temporarily flex them to another line and then back on the 73/71 lines, the drivers would just disappear resulting in very poor service with inconsistent and very long headways and crowding on a bus line that is one of the top 10 lines in terms of ridership in the system. We all want the trackless trolleys to continue because the diesel buses seem to break down more than the electric trolleys did, and we're not convinced the battery electric busses will prove reliable enough soon enough for good service.
I don't think that conversation with Netanyahu would be all that difficult. As soon as he hears the CIA's bomb going off in his car outside the window while you're making the call, it should give him some perspective real fast.
I think starting with “Hi Benji how do you fancy spending the rest of your miserable existence in a Dutch jail you disgusting piece of slime?” Ought to concentrate his mind enough. Biden has Netanyahu’s balls in a vice and could turn the handle anytime he likes.
@@alexcarter8807Right. They’d flub it just like many attempts in South America (Cuba in particular), Italy, and a few former Soviet Allies. Thanks Alan Dulles!
Re weird electrification standards from the past... Philly has some buildings still supplied with actual 2 phase (90 degree) mains and is probably the last place in the world still maintaining it. I heard about it from Fran Blanche, imo you should get her on the show sometime.
I love how Victoria and Nova both had an instant "mommy??? sorry, mommy?????" moment halfway through Safety Third lmfao .... i do not blame either of you honestly
Big fan of the idea of the Boeing Contract Hit situation being a David Fincher's The Killer situation and they were after somebody else for one of seventeen other incidents they've been involved in this year.
The difference in energy density between gasoline and diesel and batteries isn't as unsurmountable as you might think, because every single combustion vehicle throws away the majority of the energy in its fuel. Most of them are about 25% efficient at the best. And so it goes from being a 10 to one advantage to about a three to one advantage given electric vehicles can use well over 95% of the energy in their batteries.
yes and no - most gasoline vehicles nowadays are in the 30-35% efficient range (maximum theoretical is ~ 40% , and diesels are getting close to 40% (maximum theoretical ~ 50%) efficient. It's still throwing away the majority of it's energy as heat, but not nearly so bad as you initially stated.
aye, not to mention all those parts in the car for an ICE engine are sizably more than you'd get in an EV, and become essentially dead weight. EVs of course need their own engines, but a V8 motor is significantly less energy dense by torque than an equivalent electric motor, so I'd still imagine a three to one disadvantage is apt.
@@gagenater - the peak efficiency might be improving like that, but in real world application the engine will rarely run at its best speed. Not to mention regen braking. Mind you, the weight of the battery works the other way. Plug-in hybrids - that actually get plugged in - are probably the least-worst option for a personal car.
@@jrevillug For operations with a lot of stop and go, I'll readily agree to that - however ICE makers have gotten MUCH better at transmissions and EFI fuel air mixtures to keep the engine in the sweet RPM and fue/airl mixture ranges for maximum efficiency. OUtside of really awful traffic conditions, the overall efficiency of most ICE powered vehicles might really surprise you.
Outdated. Peak efficiencies are reaching 40-45% for gasoline, with normal operating ranges being consistently above 30%. Despite this and how much battery weights negatively affect EVs, electric is still a better option because the efficiency is so high that its worst case is still better than the best case of ICE power. For someone needing extra range, a hybrid or plugin hybrid is best. Getting anything that just uses gas is stupid at this point. Of course, the real issue is using cars at all. Public transit is the real solution.
The Frito Lay's truck is hella funny because (at least in NorCal) when they drive on 680 they (at least used to) send two Tesla semis per trailer because they obviously don't trust them to make the trip.
1:01:00 So with the doors on Tesla vehicles, from my understanding, all of the doors do in fact have some sort of mechanical over ride. However, there are some real big brain moves at play with them. The front doors all seem to be relatively reasonable in the current production models. There is a latch integrated into the armrest directly ahead of the window controls; this latch is fairly quick and simple to lift up provided that you know that it exists, The caveat is that if you use it when the vehicle has no power and the windows are up, the window trim gets in the way because the top of the window frame is part of the body of the vehicles, not the door (apparently this doesn't really make the door harder to open, but it does mean that trim will get damaged which is the least of your concern in an emergency). Older model years have the mechanical latch located next to the corner of the door window in a fairly visible location and it works in the same basic way. The backdoors are where it gets really stupid. On the models that have standard back doors, you have to pry the speaker cover off from the bottom of the door and find a little handle to pull on to engage the mechanical latch. It's even worse on the SUV with it's falcon wing back doors; the over ride is also located behind the speaker grill, but instead of a little handle that disengages the door latch, there is instead a metal wire with a plastic bead at the end that you have to pull on to over ride the door mechanism. After this you must then lift the door up whilst working against the hydraulic system that opens and closes the door. I'm not familiar with all the mechanics of the falcon wing doors so I don't know if a standard mechanical latch would work with them, but the fact that the standard rear doors have a completely hidden mechanical latch is fucking unacceptable, especially when the front doors have easily accessible (if somewhat non-obvious) mechanical latches.
Holy shit, this is terrifying. I sometimes have to take Ubers for work and they're often Teslas. Guess it's time to find a video about how to emergency exit them.
I've taken a nap in an EV1. Decently comfortable seats, in that 90's GM, grey on grey on grey interior kinda way. The engineering department at my college had one in the back lot. GM donated a number of them to schools after they took them all back from the folks who leased them, except they destroyed the motor controller and forbade anyone from driving them as EVs. The engineering dept was run by a lovable lunatic, so he promptly found a nearly identical motor controller from an EV S-10 (which were actually sold in very small numbers, so a handful pf parts existed out in the wild) and installed it. It worked, except the motor turned backwards. Some students eventually figured that out and got it running, and "converted" it to a "hybrid" "test bed" by installing a Honda generator in the trunk. They drove it around for a few years to early EV shows and whatnot, until GM found out about it and shit a brick (or so the story goes). Last I checked, it's still under a tarp at Western Washington University; Victoria, I bet they'd let you play with it if you went up and asked them.
In defense of Westinghouse, Westinghouse Electric Company still operates, building nuclear assets under the Westinghouse brand, with AP1000 system parts production occuring at least in Newington NH; now owned by Brookfield Renewable Partners and Canadian Mining and Energy Corporation. They're owned by someone else, but the AP1000's are critical and powering the grid, AP300's looking good, and the eVinci's moving forward!
Correction on the model x that got the billionaire lady - her model year had a normal shifter stalk, and the front doors of the model X have a normal emergency door handle where you’d expect it to be (the speaker thing is only in the back doors). Also her BAC was 0.23
Ooh, I think I know this one! Battery vehicles, when properly designed, are theoretically useful for the last few instances where you can't get fixed-route public transit for some reason, but we badly need to replace as much as possible with overhead-wire (or otherwise externally powered) transit, ideally all of it. One thing I'm interested in is that you can theoretically build an electric vehicle with MUCH less in the way of untrustworthy, manufacturer-supplied computers to potentially pose a liability in the future than a modern ICE vehicle -- it's a giant RC style Electronic Speed Controller with a regen braking feature, and a battery management/charging system, both of which are mostly independent and pretty reasonable projects to procure an open-source or commodity version of. Whereas a gasoline engine is a big black box full of sensors and actuators probably controlled by the same computer that runs the entertainment system... I know people DO replace ECUs with custom ones in some circles, but I couldn't imagine the complexity of that project. Unfortunately, nobody seems to be marketing a light, small, 'dumb' electric car with salt- and slush-resistant construction, good cold-weather insulation, and a heat pump heating/cooling it that I could maintain myself, and I'm not sure one could ever be built that would be safe from being crushed by one of the monstrous SUVs/luxury trucks that are the main vehicles seen in Alberta. But I know the province and its oil company masters would NEVER allow real transit to exist, only increasing degrees of car-centrism, so I kind of need one. It seems the only escape I have is to figure out whether there's some regulatory loophole I can use to convert an existing car to a plug-in hybrid with a kit and keep it road-legal... Fundamentally car-centrism needs to end, but as a fallback for whatever we fail to replace, we'll need either battery vehicles, synthetic fuel infrastructure and the supporting legislation to prevent fossil fuels from being cheaper (and an economic situation that somehow makes this work for people), or both. Let's see how far off my take is from yours. ...I really, REALLY wish I (and everyone I care about) didn't live in a place that was _specifically_ and deliberately hostile to anything that was even _perceived_ as 'environmental' out of spite and loyalty to the oil barons.
The white travel center in Raphine Va is a gem to the trucking community and I cannot tolerate any slander of my favorite truck stop. I once walked out of that place with a fresh haircut, new cowboy boots, rayban sunglasses, a set of chrome wheel hub covers and a nathans chillidog that I didn't have when I walked in. Iowa 80 wishes it could be white travel center and I'm sad to be an almost exclusively West Coast driver now.
(Squinting at the intro picture) Isn't that Grandma McDuck's car from Scrooge McDuck comics? Looks just like it and I remember some comics mention it's electric.
You missed the "best" part of the whole MBTA battery bus fiasco: part of converting the North Cambridge garage to BEB operation involves installing a diesel fuel pump because the BEBs will have diesel fueled heaters for when it gets cold in the winter. And this will result in a net increase in particulate pollution, not compared to trolleybuses but compared to DIESEL HYBRIDS, because while the BEBs will obviously burn less diesel than hybrids would, there are no emissions standards for diesel heaters so there aren't any diesel fueled heaters with emissions controls.
Yeah the airdrop fail is also contributed by: 1) US Forces likely only had MREs on hand as shelf-stable rations 2) MREs aren't designed to be airdropped without a chute Humanitarian Daily Rations are likely not on hand (they have a shorter shelf-life), but if they can get the HDRs on hand it would've been helpful because they're designed to be dropped without a chute - you can airdrop them individually over an area and it makes it harder for bad actors to hoard them for the black market - as pallets getting effectively "stolen" is a real complaint. Also HDRs have better dietary options for refugees, including food for infants.
