I witnessed this in the 90s and 2000s. AFAIK, it started in rave culture. People would lace their fingers around glow sticks and wave them in front of a friend’s face. I was told that the effect is really cool if your rolling on MDMA. However, I also saw Mormon kids doing it stone sober, because they’re always imitating things they see without understanding the drug component (e.g. a Mormon kid at a local high school who wore a pacifier on a necklace – an MDMA raver accessory to give something to chew on – despite zero awareness of drugs).

Personally, I think these photos are a combination of raver culture seeping into the mainstream, along with a trend of “reversing subject and photographer”.

Ok, maybe, I’d be interested in seeing a source on this

It’s really easy to find if you actually wanted to verify, rather than just disingenuously cast doubt. Planet Money has done podcasts episodes on it.

Not at all accurate

Entirely accurate. We were the manufacturing center for much of the world until Europe was able to build back, which was badly hampered by foolish austerity measures. This is literally the reason why America had such a phenomenal post-war boom and an explosion of the middle class.

but America isn’t less prosperous now. That prosperity has just been consolidated to the top 1%

Gee, I wonder if that has anything to do with the loss of manufacturing jobs, disappearing union representation, and subsequent devaluation of labor?

You’re identifying symptoms, not causes. Write less and read more.

So, uh, remind me again what happens when I go around corners?

You finish the corner and go back to driving straight, which is how the vast, vast majority of your driving miles are covered.

Mismatched tire diameters significantly increase wear on your differential(s). If you have a limited-slip system of any kind, you’re likely to destroy it shockingly quickly.

If you’re driving half a mile to work through residential and business districts, it’s not that big of a deal. If your commuting on the freeway, you’re going to significantly increase wear.

AWD systems can and do get used offroad pretty often. They’re not quite as good as 4WD in some specific situations

The moment that you have one wheel spinning with AWD, you are stuck. One wheel in the air due to a heavily rutted fire road? Stuck. One wheel on wet ice on the road? Stuck.

AWD is great for transient traction conditions, like roads that are partially snowy with patches of exposed asphalt.

AWD systems use a viscous clutch

In my experience, that’s rare. Most AWD systems that I’ve seen use an open differential with no viscous coupler or locker of any kind. The '94 - '97 Toyota Land Cruiser (w/ ABS) in the US market used a viscous coupler, and Toyota called it “full-time 4wd”. It also locked the transfer case in low range. To my knowledge, this was a really unusual configuration. They discontinued the viscous coupler after that, instead switching to their ATRAC traction management that used individual application of brakes to prevent wheel spin. Most of the Jeep SUVs in the last ~30 years, to my knowledge, used an entirely open center differential in AWD models.

It seems like modern, CUV AWD systems are usually FWD with computer controlled engagement of rear tires.

I bought a set of five Nokian all-weather light truck tires on closeout at Walmart for under $300. A set of more desirable all-terrains would have run me $1k and are probably now around $1500. The tires have been great.

Pay attention to the brand and reviews, not the store.

Alternate take: he could be a really shrewd buyer and good at selling privately.

Probably not, but it’s possible. I knew a guy whose hobby was entirely cars. Shopping for them, going through financing details, and sometimes buying them. He’d bolt on some mods and seemed to have a knack for finding buyers. He’d sometimes sell for more than the total amount he’d put into the vehicle.

He had almost no real understanding of cars. At most, he could do an oil change and slap on a K&N filter. But goddamn did that guy ever understand how to manipulate financing to his advantage.

While I definitely agree that the wealthy should be paying more in taxes, this isn’t an especially accurate take.

1. There were way more deductions available. Basically, nobody ever paid any taxes at such a high rate.

2. The primary reason for the post-war “golden age” that MAGA waxes nostalgia about is because almost the entire manufacturing sector of most European countries was wiped out. By comparison, the US was almost fully intact, and had a massive new base of workers trained in manufacturing. We went from a nation of farmers to a nation of city-dwelling industrialists almost overnight.

I don’t see how we could ever get back to the 50s - 60s era of growth and security again, but overhauling taxation and more union representation could probably at least wind us back a few decades.

They’d be shot, at best, arrested and imprisoned in the US

Worth it.

It absolutely blows my mind that no world leader has taken the opportunity, during one of these photo sessions, to simply punch the orange idiot right in the nose. I can think of no human being more in need of such a tune-up.