The Biden administration’s efforts to provide $4 billion in debt relief to minority farmers is encountering stiff resistance from banks, which are complaining that the government initiative to pay off the loans of borrowers who have faced decades of financial discrimination will cut into their profits and hurt investors.
Yup, you read that right. these are the same banks that have made millions on the backs of Black and minority farmers with predatory loans for decades. Don’t tell me racism doesn’t exist, and don’t tell me the free market is fair to everyone.
I voted for this administration to do things just like this. I hope they write some big fat checks and let the banks suck on it.
I loved reading The Martian, Andy Weir’s science-tastic thriller about an astronaut trapped on Mars, and the movie adaptation was equally excellent. So I’m definitely looking forward to his new book, Project Hail Mary, which is written in much the same format but sounds like it’s got a lot more going on.
Jen got to drive her dream car last night! She was nervous but I think she had fun.
(P.S.I’m triggering the photo with my phone, not influencing my Instagram followers).
I mailed off a check and an entry form for IH Nationals last week, and talking with Brian and Bennett, we’ve got a room reserved at the hotel in Ohio. Barring any major outbreak of COVID or zombie apocalypse, we’re definitely going to head west in August for the full event.
I spent a lot of time working on other things over the weekend but I did put a half an hour into planning out the wiring layout for the foglights. Because I am impatient, I hooked both leads up to the battery and flicked the switch—I didn’t realize this when I bought them, but the lights are actually dual-position: a small line of LEDs on the bottom work as running lights, and the other toggle is for the main bank of LEDs. They’re bright! I bought LEDs because the draw on the battery (and thus the alternator) is significantly less than incandescent Halogens and I’m happy with how they look.
As I mentioned earlier, the harness is set up in a way that assumes there’s space right next to the battery to mount the relays—which Scouts do not. The battery is up front, tucked next to the coolant overflow tank, and the rest of the driver’s inner fender is covered with stuff:
My plan is to lengthen the positive battery lead and mount the relays on the firewall. There’s a ground connection already available there, and the leads to the lights will drop down along the frame and up under the bumper. I sourced some 14AWG wire, clipped the connector off the harness, soldered the two together, and covered them in heatshrink tubing. I’m going to head back out and rough in the wiring to make sure everything works, and then I’ve got to figure out how to get the switch inside the cabin.
Also on the menu this year: a new battery tray. Having moved batteries around over the last couple of months, I was shocked to see just how lousy the tray looks (and how much has been chewed out of the inner fender).
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
I think everybody spends time thinking about living a lifestyle larger than the one they currently do. Being directly on the dividing line between upper and lower middle class, we don’t want for much, but we don’t have a maid service or send Finn to private school or enjoy ski vacations on the West Coast. What we’ve got is due to luck, hard work, and no small amount of privilege—I’m not so stupid as to ignore that truth—and believe me, I’m thankful for the life we have together.
I do still dream, though, of having true fuck-you money, living the kind of lifestyle where we could just do something large and irresponsible without worrying about groceries for the next six months. A spontaneous trip abroad. A summer cottage somewhere warm and within sight of the water. The ability to go to graduate school and not worry about crushing debt. Given who we are, we’d probably still be working, but just to have the ability to do those other fun things the shiny people get to do as a matter of course would be great. As I’ve gotten older my vistas have scaled back somewhat, and now I dream of having the time, space and education to pursue other careers and travels.
It was with anticipation, then, that I waited for the flatbed to drop off Matt’s Mustang on Friday afternoon. The guy drove it off the back and parked it out front, and I hustled to get it in the driveway, recalling past horrors involving cars that weren’t mine out there. I’ve always wanted to have a stable of old cars to play with, and the Scout has been my salve for that itch. It’s nice, then, to have another, completely different one to play with for a while.
This Mustang is a 1965, black over red coupe with a 6-cylinder engine and an automatic transmission. Beyond that, there isn’t much mechanically. It’s only got manual steering and manual drum brakes, which means parallel parking it in the driveway is a full-body workout. The engine bay is about as complicated as a tractor’s: there might be eight wires in total, and three hoses. Sitting inside is like going back in time. You sit in two low-back bucket seats with lap belts, inches off the ground. The steering wheel sticks way out into your lap from a shiny steel and plastic dashboard. The ignition is to the right of the steering column, and the engine fires right up. Being a 6-cylinder it idles rougher and sounds more agricultural than the Scout. The transmission is vague and floaty: the detents that indicate where you are in the P-N-D-L sequence are rubbed away, so there’s a bit of guesswork involved before you unlock your left leg from the brake pedal and hope you’re aimed in the right direction.
I grabbed one of the Scout plates and put it on the back to take it for a spin around the block to give Matt my impressions. Out on the road, it’s another whole world. It cruises happily in second gear, and the world looks completely different from behind the shiny chrome wheel. The windows crank down smoothly, the wing windows let the breeze inside, and it just floats down the road.
I noted a bunch of things I saw and reported back to Matt: it hunts for second gear when it gets warm. There’s a clunk from the driver’s front suspension going over speed bumps. The seatbelts were installed backwards (latch on the door side). There’s rust in both rockers at the B pillar. But it fires up immediately and runs like a top.
I took Finn down the street for ice cream on Saturday night, and she had a big smile on her face the whole way there. So did I.
Matt has been awesome and told me it’s ours to drive around for a while, so we’re just waiting for him to send us the plates so it’s legal and then I’ll get Jen behind the wheel for some fun—she’s said this was her dream car (well, a convertible, if we’re being honest) and I’d like to give her the opportunity to live that dream for a while, even if it’s just a loan.
Adult Swim canceled one of my favorite shows, the Venture Brothers, last year, with little fanfare. They announced today they’re going to produce a follow-up movie for the series along with Metocalypse and Aqua Teen Hunger Force, two other canceled shows. It’s not as good as having a whole season, but I’d love to see things wrapped up (and have a little more time with Team Venture).
I haven’t mentioned the Mustang here because, well, it’s not here yet. The seller was being a little iffy about the possibility of it making an hour-long drive and crossing a 3-mile bridge with no breakdown lane, so we postponed the pickup and explored other options. I talked with Matt yesterday and he’s arranged for it to be towed here this afternoon, as he didn’t want us to get stuck on the bridge or somewhere in Eastern Maryland with a car we hadn’t ever driven. Which is, frankly, fine with me: as much as I’d love to road-trip it across the bridge, I’d rather do the 1-10-100 test with my USAA towing card handy.
In other news, I dusted off my acoustic guitar a couple of days ago, tuned it up, and put it behind my desk in the office. There are a bunch of simple songs I was learning back when I was taking lessons ten years ago—sweet creeping Jesus time has flown—and recently decided I’d like to pick this thing back up and learn them again. I found my notes and chord books and I’ve worked on the progressions for two songs already, and my fingertips already hurt. But it’s nice to make music again!
My views on gun control are pretty well documented here, and I’ve linked to stories about how the NRA is clearly run by crooks who have wrapped themselves in the Second Amendment to enrich themselves and their friends. Turns out a judge in Texas has decided they’re crooks too, and won’t allow them to declare bankruptcy to avoid federal prosecution.
Gen. Webb didn’t realize that the president was going to be there, so he stood to give up his chair, and President Obama just motioned him, no, you sit right where you are. Gen. Webb had this little laptop, messaging somebody. And so the president pulled up this hardback portable chair right next to him.
Politico does a great oral history of the leadup to and the day of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden from the POV of the government officials who planned and executed it. It’s a fascinating look at how global decisions like that are made, and underlines the fact that they weren’t sure he was even there—they took a giant calculated risk, and it paid off.
The Scout ran fine over the weekend, although with the rain I really didn’t get the chance to drive her too much. I did mount the new fog lights on the bumper to start organizing the wiring under the hood. The way the harness is organized I can wire it directly into the hot/neutral leads in the battery, but the way they prewired everything the relays are right next to the battery leads and I have no place on the driver’s side of the fender well to mount them. What I’m going to have to do is start with the relay location in the middle of the firewall and lengthen the hot lead so that it wraps around the driver’s side fender and directly into the battery. Because I don’t give a shit about my purple dashboard (I have two spares in the garage) I’m going to open up the vestigal manual choke hole to the left of the steering column and make that the switch mounting point.
I also started looking at pulling the steering wheel off the spare column I brought back from Flintstone. The first order of business was to get it mounted to something so that it was attached to the bench, which was pretty easy. Then I put two bolts into the wheel, mounted the cheapo puller I got at Carlisle and started cranking down on it, but when I was faced with a lot of resistance I backed off to double-check my bolts and reconsider the puller. It’s not anything pressing, and I’d like to save as much of the column as I can, so I’m going to resist the temptation to break everything to get it apart and take my time.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.