Well, it looks like I got my drone at exactly the right time. The US Government banned all new foreign-made drones in the U.S., essentially shutting DJI out of the domestic market as of yesterday.
Following up on last week’s earworm, Outshined is now stuck in my head:
An absolutely superior song by all measurements. And featuring one of the grungiest of grunge videos: fire, chains, dirt, sparks, the combination of shirtless black shorts and combat boots… I feel like it’s 1993 all over again.
Bonus: Brad Pitt’s best cameo appearance. We should all aspire to be Floyd.
The problems at Schlitz weren’t all legal. Beginning in the early seventies, the brewer made a series of spectacularly disastrous decisions in an attempt to gain market share. The first of these blunders affected the quality of the beer itself.
Esquire did a fascinating article on the downfall of the Schlitz Brewing Company in the late 1970’s, which details how business was done in the 1970s, and how a struggle for market share led to the consolidation of the industry.
We’ve been on the road since Wednesday, moving from rented minivan to hotel to restaurant at a pace that has us all pretty exhausted. Someone who has been an absolute rock through this whole anxiety-ridden trip is this goofball, who has weathered the new environments like a veteran traveler. She’s a ball of energy, an expensive pharmacological experiment, a confused mixture of competing instincts, and a bedhog, but she’s also the best dog in the world.
I’ve had this fucking song stuck in my head for the past five days now, and it’s probably one of my least favorite songs this band ever produced. I had a cassette of Louder than Love in high school and played it until it wore out, but found that my appreciation for Soundgarden’s last two albums fell off sharply, minus a few songs. I didn’t pay much attention to Audioslave even though it was a mixture of two of my favorite 90’s bands; the styles and genre didn’t mesh as well as I had hoped it would even though they gave it everything they had.
RIP, Chris Cornell.
Update: The same day I posted this, I learned that a group of excellent musicians—William DuVall, (Alice In Chains), Bill Kelliher (Mastodon), Charlie Benante (Anthrax, S.O.D.), and Mark Menghi (Metal Allegiance) among others, formed King Ultramega to do covers of Soundgarden tracks during COVID, and just started releasing them, beginning with one of my favorites, Rusty Cage. All proceeds go to support the MusiCares Foundation.
It’s been quiet around these parts mostly because we’re busy with camp and travel and family commitments and work. Somehow not planning a major family vacation has made this summer busier than ever, or so it feels. Finn is off at her first week of sleep-away camp, and we are praying she is having herself a good time. We got back yesterday evening and got to bed early, but I still feel pretty wiped out. I hope the next two weeks go smoothly.
I’ve got a ton of open tabs in two different browser windows right now, so that’s my sign to offload them here. In no particular order, here are a few:
- An excellent writeup on Hagerty about car alternators, and the differences between one, two, three, and four-wire versions. This explains a lot about the three-wire alternator in the Travelall and the one-wire in the Scout.
- With the passage of the Big Stupid Bill in Congress, all incentive credits for EVs are now gone. Which means that $40,000 EV will now be north of $47,500. Not that I was ready to buy an EV, but this will change the math for millions of people and fuck up the EV market for years.
- This is a really good video by a guy tuning his carburetor to run better; there’s a lot of basic knowledge that’s just good to absorb for future use.
Happy 4th, everyone. Let’s try to remember why this country was founded and what we’re actually supposed to stand for.
A long time ago, in my previous house, I had an ancient oil-burning furnace (converted to natural gas) ripped out of my basement along with all the assorted radiators and piping, and had a central air system installed. This was 1999 or so, and the house was only 1600 square feet in size. I paid somewhere around $5,000 for all of the demo and ducting work, and enclosed it all myself when they were gone. $5000 in 1999 equates to somewhere around $9500 today, factoring inflation.
We had a very nice man come to the house and give us an estimate for a ductless air system, where he spec’d out five wall units and one outside air handler. The total estimate came out to a hair over $25,000.
Guess I’m going to be humping window-shakers up and down the stairs for a while longer.
Being an adult means you can make a command decision for the family and make dinner a medium shake at the Baskin Robbins down the street. It also means the vestigial amounts of caffeine in the Jamocha ice cream will keep you up until 3AM questioning your life choices.