roadscholar wrote: ↑Sun May 15, 2022 10:09 pm
That's undoubtedly a very common usage, and sketchy at best, but this guy repeatedly juxtaposes "gay" with "heterosexual" explicitly. Maybe it's some of both.
He strikes me as the type who is fine with the concept of rape, and would always blame the victim. He may even admire rapists.
The guy's flakier than a French pastry.
I think he's more of a guy who is trying to justify his inability to have an intimate relationship (even outside of sex) such as cuddling... It's all gay and only incels(a real thing) and asexuals(a real thing) are "heterosexuals." Everything else is "gay" from his point of view.
Yeah, he's wacked... But he has an audience.
Re: Weird Headlines
Posted: Sun May 15, 2022 10:38 pm
by Suranis
roadscholar wrote: ↑Sun May 15, 2022 10:09 pm
That's undoubtedly a very common usage, and sketchy at best, but this guy repeatedly juxtaposes "gay" with "heterosexual" explicitly. Maybe it's some of both.
Possibly.
The guy's flakier than a French pastry.
Definetly
Re: Weird Headlines
Posted: Mon May 16, 2022 9:25 am
by Sam the Centipede
Suranis wrote: ↑Sun May 15, 2022 3:07 pm
The slang use of "gay" has been changing in the last decade and a half or so, moving away from the Homosexual meaning. Ironically this is becasue the Homosexual side of things isn't seen as terrible as before, so slang moved on. This has been upsetting some quarters as they accuse everyone of stealing "their" word.
I recon this will come up more and more and will confuse those who don't want to admit what's happening to language.
And it's ironic for those old enough to remember the complaints at the appropriation of the word gay away from its older non-sex-related meaning (happy, joyous, etc.)!
In the 2000s, the RWNJ site OneNewsNow outlawed the use of the word "gay" on their site. They installed a filter to adjust any incoming text, so one day their sports pages reported on a 100 metres sprint competition won by Tyson Homosexual. Oh, happy pre-trump days!
The slippage of the word "cool" (not in the temperature or mood sense) away from meaning something stylishly excellent to a weaker good or even just good-ish felt like a loss to me. A word with a specific and useful meaning dropped into the general pot of words or approval.
But that's how language works! Meanings slip and slide, grow and shrink, and that's as it should be. And even if it shouldn't be, it is.
Re: Weird Headlines
Posted: Wed May 25, 2022 8:21 pm
by Suranis
Screenshot_20220525-194429.jpg (54.79 KiB) Viewed 1631 times
Guess she forgot to write a chapter on how to get away with murdering your husband...
Last week, a California court ruled that bees could legally be considered a type of fish. Yes, fish. It’s the latest development in a years-long battle over semantics that began in 2019 when the California Fish and Game Commission (CFGC) designated four species of bumble bees as endangered under California’s Endangered Species Act (CESA). While the CESA explicitly applies only to “native species or subspecies of bird, mammal, fish, amphibian, reptile, or plant,” the CFGC successfully argued that bees could be considered a type of fish based on the Act’s definition of the category, which asserts that a “fish” is a “wild fish, mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, amphibian, or part, spawn, or ovum of any of those animals.” Technically, bees are invertebrates—animals that lack a backbone—though they live on land.
Re: Weird Headlines
Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2022 4:20 pm
by humblescribe
What a poorly written law.
Insects were excluded. Amphibians were included twice: specifically named and added to the definition of a fish.
So, what about other life forms? There are many terrestrial invertebrates that are not insects like millipedes, centipedes, and all the various flatworms, annelids (which includes leeches just so you know!) and nematodes. How about fungi and algae? The California coast is losing lots of kelp beds that provide protection and cover for many other marine life forms. This is a major reason why our abalone are in such decline.
No doubt the entire Bombus genus is celebrating:
Re: Weird Headlines
Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2022 7:48 pm
by Gregg
Tired of being outmatched in Potato Gun wars, technicians have begun to prepare the feared Watermelon Cannons for battle.
Re: Weird Headlines
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2022 12:28 am
by Gregg
This is what I was going on about on the call tonight.
If you didn't think car dealers were scum already.
Reading the link, I'm not sure that the dealers can't do markups, just that they need to meet specific conditions in order to do so.
Or am I reading that incorrectly? Do I not have all the information regarding this?
From the dealers’ perspective, so what if Ford hits them with a $25K penalty? They still make almost $45K in “ market adjustments” alone.
We have a Mustang Mach E on order (due to leave the factory in Mexico on 6/20). It was spendy, but no “market adjustment.” My husband read an article about some dealers in VA raising the prices on cars already ordered - when the customer showed up to get the car it’s now $5K more. The dealer didn’t care because there would be another buyer. My husband called our salesman who said something like, “They may be able to get away with that sort of thing in the big city, but we’d be out of business if we tried that out here. The price you contracted is the price you’ll pay.” So that was good. We’ll see.
Dealers can price gouge all they want if they hang onto the demo model, is that how it works?
Indeed, why would they care about a $25000 fine if they make enough to cover the fine and make a profit anyway?
I don't think there are any but the demo models available yet. Just pre-orders for them. And I doubt Ford will be shipping additional demos to dealerships that sell the demo they already got.
Re: Weird Headlines
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2022 2:03 pm
by raison de arizona
In late January/early February, we were looking for a new car. I liked the new Civics, the neighbor had a nice hatchback, and they seemed like a good deal. The local dealership had one advertised in the high $20s. Called. How much do you want for it, I asked. They said, well, the ad says high $20s. So I said, OK, if I come down there with high $20s, you'll sell me the car. Well, no, no, no, they said, market adjustment, mandatory dealer add ons (desert package, including some kind of mysterious under-seal to protect from dust I guess, etc.). Mid $30s. OK, sez I, we shall come down. Mid $30s seemed doable. You know, by the time I got in our car and drove down to the dealer, the price had risen to the low $40s? Strange how that worked. So now I'm looking at a Honda Civic, which is a fine car mind you, but for the low $40s. Walking out the door with taxes and reg and whatnot would have put us into the mid to upper $40s. For a Civic.
We ended up spending less for a lightly used BMW with 25k miles on the clock. Oh well.
Oh yeah. And forget Ford. That's what we were driving at the time, but when we called them everything we wanted had $20-25k dealer markups on them. Didn't even drive down there.
Re: Weird Headlines
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2022 2:55 pm
by MN-Skeptic
I remember my dad saying that after WWII there was increased demand for automobiles from the GIs coming home. Some of the dealerships tacked on additional charges. People remembered which dealerships did that when the inventories caught up with demand.
Dealers can price gouge all they want if they hang onto the demo model, is that how it works?
Indeed, why would they care about a $25000 fine if they make enough to cover the fine and make a profit anyway?
I don't think there are any but the demo models available yet. Just pre-orders for them. And I doubt Ford will be shipping additional demos to dealerships that sell the demo they already got.
Okay, all this I'm about to say is my opinion and not necessarily the opinion of the motorcar company.
By law, dealers can charge what they want and Ford is more or less powerless to stop them.
A fine can be imposed as provided by in the Dealer Agreements they all signed at one time or another and obviously if the fine is $25k but they can get $70K over MSRP I guess some of them are all in for that.
The "FCTP Mannequin" is something they do when a new model comes out, usually one that everyone is waiting on and there is gonna be some wait involved for them to get inventory. The Mannequin is the new model demo that a company sends and tells the dealer "this is to show off, we want it on your floor to advertise the ones that are on the way so don't sell it". It is ALWAYS a pretty tricked out high trim level all the options model. Dealers get in trouble for selling them early and I think but I'm not sure they are kind of pre-production models. Not prototypes but what are called PPAP models that are the ones sent down the line when we're still making sure all these parts we sourced from all over the world and have here now will actually work on the line we built to assemble them into cars. Its a thing, you can design a new part and then design a line to build the new part but there is a time when they first meet each other and sometimes there are questions.
SO the mannequins are fully saleable parts and they might well have flown down the assembly line with no problems the first time we tried. But that would be unusual.
Anyhow, sometimes they are pre production and may have things about them that got changed before production. Might have a cooler of seats that wasn't offered in the final version or a combination of options that you can't in real life order once they start building them for real. That does happen, it might work out that if you want X axel and Y wheels and the Z wheelbase, they will all fit together when an engineer designs them in a studio, but 4 years later when another engineer is trying to build them it turns out that the combination of those things is hard to figure out in the line as set up, or it might take more time to bolt all those parts together than what is called TAKT time, which is the unbendable amount of time for a process to be done. If TAKT time is 54 seconds, that means that every single task on the assembly line has to be able to be completed in 54 seconds and trust me kids, they will not allow for something to take 55 seconds just so you can have the Black 5 spoke wheels with the 3.73 differential and long wheelbase and dual rear wheels. They may only find that out when they try to build one that way, during the various stagers of figuring things out of which PPAP is one. SO its possible that there were 52 built that way and later sent out as mannequins, but when they crank up the line for real it never happens again. For this reason, sometimes they become collector's cars later one because they are things that shouldn't be. Mustangs in the 60s and 70s had some things like this. One I know of is a mid 70's Torino that an executive wanted with different color seatbelts than what you could get with the color paint it had. Just before that model year Henry Ford II had a fit about people doing things like that and when the executive asked, the Assembly Plant Manager didn't want to do it, but agreed to have them put the color seatbelts he wanted in the trunk, shipped the car that way, and techs in the E-garage in Dearborn changed them for him. (I got that story from a book, I don't know who it was)
Anywho, strange tangent journey later... Dealers can sell them if they want, they might have to pay a fine which they will.... but the revenge is, they might not get as many more of them as they want and if I ran the place, the one they slapped some stupid "Market Adjustment" on would be the last one of that model year they ever got. Furthermore, I'd make sure the dealers around them got plenty.
But I don't run the place, so...
Re: Weird Headlines
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2022 6:20 pm
by Gregg
BTW, the 1964 1/2 Mustangs were mannequins.
After they were built, Ford made several changes to the production models and that is how you can tell (besides the VIN) that a given car is a 1964 1/2 and not a 1965 which is what the title says on all of them.
Biggest giveaway it's a real 64 1/4 is it has a generator and not an alternator.
Re: Weird Headlines
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2022 6:42 pm
by sugar magnolia
Gregg wrote: ↑Wed Jun 08, 2022 6:20 pm
BTW, the 1964 1/2 Mustangs were mannequins.
After they were built, Ford made several changes to the production models and that is how you can tell (besides the VIN) that a given car is a 1964 1/2 and not a 1965 which is what the title says on all of them.
Biggest giveaway it's a real 64 1/4 is it has a generator and not an alternator.
I had a '65 Mustang that came from the factory with a striped gas tank. Never seen one before or since and the whole time I drove it total strangers would comment on it. I bought it from the original owner and had all the original paperwork from the sale, and it said on the sales stuff the stripes were an option.
Re: Weird Headlines
Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2022 7:04 pm
by keith
In Oz, ther was a story on the morning news about flipping electric vehicles due to short supply. Even dealers are doing it apparently. Not sure I understood it exactly, but apparently Kia dealers are selling to themselves, then selling the now legally 'used' car for a gazillion. There must be regulated maximum markups, or maybe new car taxes are higher I suppose.
Gregg wrote: ↑Wed Jun 08, 2022 6:20 pm
BTW, the 1964 1/2 Mustangs were mannequins.
After they were built, Ford made several changes to the production models and that is how you can tell (besides the VIN) that a given car is a 1964 1/2 and not a 1965 which is what the title says on all of them.
Biggest giveaway it's a real 64 1/4 is it has a generator and not an alternator.
I had a '65 Mustang that came from the factory with a striped gas tank. Never seen one before or since and the whole time I drove it total strangers would comment on it. I bought it from the original owner and had all the original paperwork from the sale, and it said on the sales stuff the stripes were an option.
I have read that three times and still don't get what you mean by a striped gas tank? You can't see the gas tank on a '65 Mustang so I'm missing something and now I MUST KNOW because I consider myself a Mustang trivia master.
